When Lin Che saw the number above that woman's head hit zero, she was crossing the street.
A red light. A crowd. She carried a canvas bag and looked down at her phone, one foot already on the crosswalk. Lin Che stood in front of a breakfast stall on the other side of the road, clutching the soy milk he'd just bought. He saw it all clearly: the string of numbers hovering about half an arm's length above her head, like a runaway elevator plunging from more than forty thousand seconds straight down to zero.
It wasn't ticking down. It was falling in leaps.
He didn't even have time to shout.
A heavy truck turned right, ran the red light, and came hurtling sideways toward her. As the woman was swept underneath it, she didn't even have time to look up. The soy milk fell from Lin Che's hand and splashed across his trouser leg. He didn't feel it. He stared at the spot where the woman had disappeared, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.
Then he felt it.
The string of numbers above his own head dropped by a chunk.
Twenty thousand seconds. Exactly like every other time in the past ten years: whenever someone died near him, his number dropped a little. As if someone behind the clock above his head had gently nudged its hand.
He knew the feeling. It had been ten years. Ever since he was thirteen, the clock above his head had been unlike anyone else's. Other people's clocks were dead: once they appeared, they ticked steadily downward, second by second, never turning back, never changing. Only his clock was alive. When someone died nearby, it dropped a little. When he saved someone, it rose a little. It wasn't his lifespan. It was a ledger.
A ledger recording the lives and deaths he'd witnessed and changed
