Chapter 110: Morning Shift and Signing

At 5:40 in the morning, the breathing in the dormitory had not yet settled into a uniform rhythm. Lin Chen was already awake. The water stains on the ceiling showed vague outlines in the gray-blue dawn light. He carefully lifted the thin blanket and set his left foot on the floor. The numbness wrapped around his ankle like a thick wad of cotton soaked through with water; when he stepped down, there was no pain, only the hard feedback of bone meeting ground. He felt around by the bedside for the iodine, gauze, and medical tape, and by the faint light filtering in through the window, removed the old bandage. The seepage around the edge of the wound had already dried into a dark yellow scab, but the tissue beneath still carried a dull swelling ache. He dipped a cotton swab in iodine and wiped in a slow spiral from the center outward, careful not to tug at the Achilles tendon. Then he wrapped it tight again, tied the knot, and pulled the zipper of his canvas bag all the way down.

At 6:05, the ticket window at the county passenger station had only just raised its iron grille halfway. A yellowing timetable was taped to the glass, its corners curling, barely held in place with strips of transparent tape. Lin Chen leaned in close, his gaze locking onto the Wednesday morning departures. 10:40 to the provincial capital. Fare: 14 yuan. It was twenty minutes earlier than the estimate in his ledger. He noted down the departure time, then turned and walked to the typing-and-copy shop next door. The rolling shutter was only half open. The owner was squatting in the doorway brushing his teeth, foam dripping from his chin onto the concrete.

“One-inch photo, and three photocopies.” Lin Chen handed over a folded admission ticket and deferred-exam application form.

The owner spat out the foam and glanced at him. “Photo plus print, two and a half. Cash now.”

Lin Chen pulled out the last two coins in his pocket and a crumpled one-yuan note. Two yuan. He was still short fifty fen. He pushed the money over and spoke evenly. “Take the photo first. I’ll take the copies back and make them myself, or I’ll make up the rest next time.”

The owner did not take the money. He jerked his chin toward the shop. “The darkroom bulb is broken. Can only do instant prints. Two yuan, no bargaining. The copier’s inside. Count the pages yourself, ten fen each.”

Lin Chen nodded. He walked into the dim back room and stood in front of a white backdrop. The owner pressed the shutter; the flash was harsh, leaving a brief white afterimage on his retina. Five minutes later, the photo paper was handed to him. Lin Chen trimmed it with the paper cutter, leaving a two-millimeter white border. He put the three key pages into the copier and pressed start. The machine rumbled; the sheets it spat out carried the smell of static and toner, their edges slightly warm. He checked every line carefully, making sure none of the formulas had blurred, before stacking the originals and copies together and fastening them with a paper clip.

Ledger balance: -0.5 yuan. He owed the owner fifty fen. The owner waved him off and squatted back down to brush his teeth. “Pay it next time you pass by. You’re a student—don’t let it hold things up.”

At 7:20, the bell for morning self-study had not yet rung. Lin Chen stood outside the teachers’ office, waiting for homeroom teacher Old Chen to come out. Old Chen carried a chipped enamel mug and a sheaf of lesson plans, his brows habitually furrowed; strong tea and a few dried chrysanthemum petals floated in his thermos cup.

“Mr. Chen.” Lin Chen handed over the documents. The deferred-exam application, one-inch photo, diagnostic note from the village clinic, and photocopies of the key pages were arranged in order. On top was the circuit design explanation he had taken from the hard-cover notebook.

Old Chen set down the mug and flipped through them page by page. His finger paused for two seconds over the line on the diagnostic note—“left foot soft-tissue contusion with nerve compression; reduced weight-bearing recommended”—then moved on to the design explanation. Formulas, parameters, tolerance analysis, the handwriting neat as print. The NE5532 bias-current calculation, the basis for choosing the DC-blocking capacitor in the feedback loop, the attenuation curve of the low-frequency response—line after line laid out on graph paper.

“The materials are complete.” Old Chen looked up, his gaze falling on the slight outward turn in Lin Chen’s left-foot stance. “But you know the rules. If you miss the first mock exam, it goes into the record as a zero. A deferred exam doesn’t mean no exam—it means a makeup. Once I sign this, what can you use to prove you’ll really make it back that same day?”

Lin Chen did not answer at once. He pulled the ledger from his canvas bag, opened it to Wednesday’s page, and pushed it across.

08:30–10:30 First mock exam (County No. 1 High School teaching building) 10:30 Hand in paper, walk to passenger station (1.2 km, 25 minutes reserved) 10:40 Coach departs 13:10 Arrive at provincial capital passenger station 13:25 Transfer to city bus for Provincial Institute of Technology 14:00 Verification check-in

Below it was one more line in smaller writing: Backup route: if the coach is delayed, flag down a freight truck along National Highway 312; estimated added delay 40 minutes. Verification closes at 14:15, error margin 15 minutes. If I still fail to make it, forfeit verification and accept a zero on the mock exam.

Old Chen stared at that line for a long time. The fluorescent tube in the office gave off a faint hum. From outside came the distant, orderly chanting of the students doing morning exercises on the athletic field.

“You’ve calculated it very carefully,” Old Chen said at last, his voice low. “But a road isn’t a line on paper. Cars break down, people get stuck, and your foot won’t hold up for twenty minutes of fast walking. The teachers handling verification at Provincial Institute of Technology won’t wait for you just because your calculations are precise. If the school stamps this, the school takes responsibility. If you get stranded, or fail the verification, what stays in your record is an absence, not some inspiring story.”

“I know,” Lin Chen said. “That’s why I compressed the margin to fifteen minutes. If it isn’t enough, I’ll accept it. I submitted the deferred-exam application myself. I’ll bear the consequences myself.”

Old Chen said nothing. He picked up his fountain pen and held the nib suspended above the “Homeroom Teacher’s Comments” box on the application form. A tiny black dot spread into the paper fibers. He flipped back to the diagnostic note, then looked once more at the circuit design sheet. In the lower right corner of the page, in pencil, was a small line: Tolerance ±5%; actual drift remains within acceptable range.

“You don’t need to take the afternoon science paper,” Old Chen said, lowering the pen, his handwriting crisp and decisive. “But before evening self-study, you must appear in the classroom. If you don’t come back, the deferred exam is void, and it will be treated as an absence. The school will not cover for you. You walk this road yourself.”

“Understood.” Lin Chen took the form back. In the signature line, the three characters 陈建国 pressed through the paper; the ink was not yet dry.

He thanked him and turned to leave. At the notice board at the end of the corridor, several people were crowded together, standing on tiptoe to read a newly posted announcement. As Lin Chen passed, the edge of his vision caught a notice stamped with the red seal of the county transportation bureau: Due to a landslide at Provincial Road K42, one-way traffic control will begin on Wednesday. Passenger coaches will detour via the old county road, with an estimated increase of 45 minutes for the full trip. Control period tentatively set for three days.

He stopped.

Wind poured in through the corridor windows, lifting one corner of the notice with a faint crisp flutter.

Forty-five minutes.

The fifteen-minute margin in his ledger had been wiped out in one stroke, and now he was thirty minutes in the red.

Lin Chen lowered his head and looked at his left foot. The numbness under the gauze was still there, but his center of gravity had already learned to shift by habit. He opened the ledger again, crossed out “Variable 1: coach timetable,” and wrote: Variable 1: detour via old county road. Added travel time: 45 minutes.

He needed to recalculate. From handing in the paper to boarding the coach, from the provincial capital passenger station to Provincial Institute of Technology—every step, every walking pace, every transfer interval, even the number of traffic lights he might have to wait through, all had to be compressed again. The extra forty-five minutes from the old county road meant that after handing in the paper at 10:30, he would have to cover the 1.2 kilometers in fifteen minutes. His walking speed would have to increase to eighty meters per minute. Given the condition of his left foot, that was the limit. If the gauze came loose halfway, or his balance shifted badly, the whole chain of timing would snap at once.

The bell for morning self-study rang out sharply. Lin Chen closed the ledger and tucked the signed application into the hard-cover notebook. Then he turned and walked toward the classroom. His steps were slower than when he had come, but each one landed in exactly the same rhythm. The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flicked on one after another as he moved, then went dark again one by one behind him.

The tolerance was still there. Only the scale had slipped back by one more mark.