Lights and Shore

On the day my father disappeared, he took nothing with him. His lab notes, his tea cup, the pot of pothos that he had grown for seven years on his desk - they were all there. Only one thing is missing. The pen in his pocket that he never uses. Ye Qing couldn't figure it out. Why did a person who never wrote take away a pen before disappearing? Then the city started to "leak". First there was the old lady selling sweet potatoes on the street corner - Ye Qing watched her start from her feet and turn into gray-white sand, like someone slowly removing the stopper from the bottom of an hourglass. The old lady looked down at herself, still saying "two dollars and five", and then stopped. The whole street saw it. But no one remembers it the next day. The surveillance screen is dark. The newspaper didn't publish it. Neighbors said: "That old lady? She should have moved away long ago." Ye Qing returned to his father's laboratory and opened the torn diary. The last page reads: "Don't believe everything you see with your eyes." She stared at the line of words for a long time until the lamp went out by itself. In the darkness, she discovered something: Her left hand is becoming transparent. She rushed into the bathroom and turned on the light. In the mirror. The wall behind her. There is a line of text. She recognized the handwriting— The missing pen. But what is written above is not my father's experimental data. There was only one sentence written on it, as if urging her: "You have 12 hours." She grabbed the phone and called her father's old partner. The person on the other side picked up and was silent for three seconds. Then a strange voice said: "You finally saw it." The phone was hung up. The pocket watch began to vibrate violently. There was nothing on the dial, but she felt—— The dial was looking at her.