Chapter 112: The Scale Slips Back

“The admissions office said as long as the official seal is clear and the student number matches, it’s fine. The signature got smeared, so sign again here next to it and add a red thumbprint.” The staff member hung up the phone; the receiver hit the base with a dull clack. Her tone was flat, as if she were reading from an operations manual. “Be more careful next time. Don’t let sweat smear the important fields. If the paperwork isn’t complete, the system can’t enter it. Next.”

Lin Chen pulled a black gel pen, nearly out of ink, from the inner pocket of his jacket. The tip hovered over the blank space on the application form for a second. Steadying his wrist, he wrote his name again. The strokes were light, but the structure was complete—horizontal and vertical lines clean and straight, no cursive shortcuts. Then he unscrewed the little ink pad he carried with him—Old Chen had shoved it into his hand while signing, and the edge of its aluminum case had already worn down to a coppery gleam. He pressed down with his thumb, leaving a bright red fingerprint to the right of the signature. The paper sank slightly under the pressure. The oily smell of the ink mingled with the sourness of sweat and lingered in his nose for a moment.

“All right.” The staff member took the form and picked up a long blue stamp, pressing it hard into the box marked “Verification Opinion.” The edges of the stamp were chipped and the ink lay unevenly, but the four characters—Verification Approved—were clear enough. “Leave the design statement and the circuit diagram. Interview notices will be sent out by the school in a unified batch. Next.”

Lin Chen nodded and turned away. When his left foot touched the ground, the numbness had already spread down into his toes. He had no choice but to shift all his weight onto his right leg, dragging the left behind him like a stiff wooden stick. The line was still inching forward. He retreated to the load-bearing pillar in the corridor, leaned against the wall, and slowly adjusted his breathing. Heart rate: 112. Too high. He closed his eyes and pulled the timeline back into place in his mind.

14:20. The last coach from the provincial capital back to the county left at 15:30. Travel time: one hour forty minutes. After getting off, it would take twenty-five minutes to walk back to school. Evening self-study began at 18:30. There was a fifteen-minute buffer in between. If the coach ran on time, he could make it. If it was delayed, or if controls on the old county road tightened again, the buffer would vanish.

He opened his eyes and pulled the ledger from the inner layer of his backpack. With a pencil, he wrote after “Variable 2: Verification Time”: Actual time: 28 minutes. Signature re-added, thumbprint applied. Documents submitted. The pencil paused, then added another line: Tolerance margin: 15 minutes → 10 minutes.

At 14:35, he left the administration building. The sunlight was harsh. Heat shimmered up off the asphalt, and in the distance cooling towers spat white vapor into the air. He walked along the sidewalk toward the bus stop, keeping his pace at seventy steps a minute. Each time he lifted his left foot, the bandage at his ankle scraped once against the wound. Fluid had already soaked through two layers of gauze; the edges had turned a pale yellow and dried into a hard crust. He did not stop to change the dressing. If he stopped now, the chain of time would snap. He could only compensate with the muscles of his thigh, compressing the contact time of each step to under 0.8 seconds. The sound of his soles against the ground was faint, like sandpaper dragged over concrete.

At 15:10, he reached the ticket window at the coach station. He slid over his loose change; the coins struck the glass counter with a clear metallic sound. The ticket seller tore off a stiff paper ticket, her fingernails rimmed with black grime as she handed it out. The waiting hall smelled of cheap tobacco, sweat, and orange peels. He found a plastic chair off to the side and sat down, keeping his left foot suspended to avoid pressure. Around him people chatted, played cards, dozed. Lin Chen spread open his notebook of mistakes from the comprehensive science exam and turned to the physics section on electromagnetism. The pen moved quickly over scrap paper. He was not reviewing; he was maintaining the operating frequency of his brain. He knew that once his body fully registered the pain, his concentration would scatter. He had to seal pain off outside himself with logic. Formulas, variables, boundary conditions—they meshed together like gears.

At 15:30, the coach pulled in on time. The diesel engine roared, black smoke coughing from the exhaust pipe and making the waiting room windows hum. He squeezed aboard and took a seat by the window in the last row. Dust filmed the glass, cutting the street scene outside into blurred blocks of color. The bus left the provincial capital and turned onto the old county road. The conditions were worse than in the morning. One-way traffic control had backed up a long line of freight trucks in the opposite lane, and when vehicles met they had to take turns edging into each other’s side of the road. The driver braked and shifted constantly; the clutch gave off a shrill grinding whine. Every jolt struck Lin Chen’s left foot like a blow from a blunt instrument. He clenched his back teeth, cold sweat seeping out across his forehead. The time markers in his ledger pulsed in his mind: 16:15, 16:50, 17:20. At 17:45, the coach rolled into the edge of the county seat. The red paint on the road sign had peeled away, exposing rust beneath.

At 18:05, he reached the back gate of County No. 1 High School. He climbed over the low wall; when he landed, his left knee buckled and he nearly fell. He caught himself on one hand, sprang back up, and brushed the dust off his pant leg. Music for the eye exercises was playing over the loudspeakers on the athletic field, a woman’s voice mechanical and far away. He moved quickly along the shadowed side of the teaching building, avoiding the dean on patrol. At 18:22, he pushed open the back door of Senior Year Two, Class Three. The classroom was already full. Pages rustled; low voices overlapped. He walked to his seat and set down his bag. His deskmate glanced at him without speaking, then nudged over a stack of newly handed-out science mock exams.

At 18:30, the bell for evening self-study rang. Old Chen came into the classroom with lesson plans tucked under his arm. His gaze swept over the whole class and paused on Lin Chen’s seat for half a second. Lin Chen lowered his head and opened the science paper. In red pen, he marked beside the wrong answers: Question 24: force analysis omitted the friction component. Question 27: equilibrium constant calculation failed to account for temperature correction. The handwriting was neat, emotionless. The scratch of the pen on paper blended with the sound of pages turning all around him. He did not need to look up to sense the rhythm of Old Chen grading homework behind the lectern. That rhythm was steady, like the ticking of a second hand.

At 21:00, the dismissal bell rang. The crowd dispersed. Desks and chairs knocked against each other in waves of noise. Lin Chen packed his bag and left last. The motion-sensitive lights in the corridor flicked on with his footsteps, then went dark behind him. He stopped at the infirmary door and knocked. The old school doctor on duty was reading a newspaper. He looked up, frowned when he saw him, and said, “Went to the provincial capital again? What happened to your foot? Take it apart and let me look.”

Lin Chen sat down on the bench and untied his shoelaces. When he peeled away the bandage, the adhesion tugged at skin and flesh with a faint tearing sound. The wound had turned white. The edges were swollen and red, the seepage cloudy, carrying a slight raw smell. No fever yet, but the local temperature was clearly elevated. The old doctor cleaned it with cotton swabs soaked in iodine, his movements practiced but rough, rubbing again and again along the edge of the wound. “Early-stage infection. Don’t get it wet, and don’t put weight on it. Go to the township clinic tomorrow and get some anti-inflammatories. If you drag this out any longer, even the bone will rot. You students always think willpower can carry you past the laws of physiology.”

“Thank you.” Lin Chen put his shoe back on and tightened the laces. The pain was clearer now than it had been in the morning, but he was already used to this kind of sharp, measured clarity. Willpower was not for resisting laws. It was for carrying out the steps required to deal with them.

Back in the dormitory, he opened his ledger. Under today’s date, he wrote: Verification approved. Signature re-added, thumbprint applied. Return trip on time. Left foot wound: early-stage infection. Body temperature normal. The pen paused, then he added one more line: Tolerance reduced to zero. Original signed copy must be submitted to the county admissions office tomorrow. Before evening self-study, Old Chen did not mention cancellation of deferred exam status, but admissions audit begins tomorrow.

He closed the ledger and lay flat on his back. His left foot hung in the air, propped up on a pillow. Moonlight came through the iron bars of the window, casting several parallel shadows across the concrete floor. He closed his eyes, and his breathing gradually steadied. Tomorrow was Thursday. Admissions audit, anti-inflammatory medicine, release of the first mock exam results, list for interviews at Provincial Institute of Technology. Variables were stacking up, but the route was still clear. He only had to keep the tolerance of each step within millimeters.

At one in the morning, there was a soft knock on the dormitory door. Three times, a pause, then two more. Lin Chen opened his eyes. Outside, the class monitor’s voice was lowered, cool with the night wind. “Lin Chen, Old Chen wants you in the office right now. The county admissions office just called. In the documents for your deferred exam, your design statement is missing the academic affairs office’s review stamp. If it isn’t added before ten tomorrow morning, your first mock exam results will be filed as absent. Old Chen says the stamp is in a drawer in academic affairs, the key is in the guardroom, but the guard took leave tonight, and the key is at the director of general affairs’ house.”

Lin Chen sat up. The moment his left foot touched the floor, a stabbing pain shot up his calf like an electric current. In the dark he pulled on his shoes and opened the door. The wind in the corridor was cold, blowing away the lingering smell of iodine. He knew that the scale marks in his ledger were about to slip back by one notch again.