Introduction to the work "The Rulebook of the Clock Sanatorium"
When Lin Zhou, a programmer with a completely disrupted sense of time, entered a clock sanatorium with the motto of "repairing time rhythms," he thought it was just an ordinary recuperation. Until the first night of his stay, the old-fashioned clock in the room rang two tones at 3 a. M. That were not part of the "first day."
This sanatorium, which looks like a retro European manor, hides ten cold rules: the number of times the clock rings at 3 a. M. Must be consistent with the number of days of admission, the time difference of all clocks in the corridor must not exceed 5 minutes, you must cover your ears immediately when the gears ring on Wednesday afternoon, and you must not drink the crimson "time stabilizer"... And the most chilling thing is the legend about the "time ghost" - the translucent figure wearing a white robe and holding a pocket watch, always hovering on the edge of breaking the rules.
As the days of recuperation increased, Lin Zhou gradually discovered that there was a more terrifying truth hidden behind the rules: the old man who kept the watch secretly suddenly collapsed, the person who broke into the repair room on the third floor never came out, the black gear fragments seeping out of the clock, the misplaced bells in the corridor late at night, the faint clock marks under the uniforms of the staff... Every anomaly pointed to the same answer - what this nursing home repairs is not the perception of time, but some kind of existence imprisoned by "time".
