Gaps in the Calendar

Lao Ding, Ding Jianguo, felt time slipping through his fingers—not in the metaphorical "time flies" sense, but physically disappearing. This feeling began with the third "adjusted leave" announcement of the year. That A4 sheet, printed like an official red-letter document, was like a cold surgical notice, announcing that his upcoming weekend needed to be cut, moved, and stitched together in exchange for a distant and fragmented "mini-holiday."

He worked as an accountant at a medium-sized trading company, possessing an almost pathological sensitivity to numbers and dates. On his desk, there was always an old-fashioned desk calendar, from which he personally tore off a page each day, as if performing some sacred ritual. But ever since the term "adjusted leave" (调休, diàoxiū) spread like a new type of flu virus, his calendar seemed to have caught some kind of uncertainty. Those circled weekends designated for "make-up workdays," and the upcoming holidays gained through sacrifice, were no longer simple date markers in his eyes but had become black holes, devouring the smooth, continuous flow of time that should have been his life.

At first, he just felt tired. Working six, even seven days straight, just for a seemingly nice "three-day break," felt like a losing bargain no matter how he calculated it. But gradually, what he felt was more than just fatigue. He started losing things—not keys or his wallet, but more... ethereal things. For instance, a clear thought, a half-hummed tune, or even an entire afternoon. He would suddenly jolt awake, finding himself sitting at his desk, the setting sun already dyeing the window panes red, but he couldn't recall anything that happened between lunch and that moment. His colleagues joked that he was getting old, his mind wasn't sharp anymore. But he knew it wasn't like that.

"Don't you feel it?" he asked Xiao Li at the next desk during a lunch break, his voice low, as if sharing a forbidden secret. "After every adjusted leave period, doesn't it feel like something's missing? Not fewer rest days, but... time itself, it seems thinner, or maybe, part of it has been siphoned off?"

Xiao Li was busy scrolling through his phone, trying to snag discounted items. He looked up, bewildered, "Brother Ding, you're overthinking it, right? Isn't it just working on the weekend and taking the time off later? You get used to it. Look, I just got a half-price coffee coupon, didn't I just earn something back?"

Lao Ding looked at Xiao Li's excited face and said no more. He knew not everyone could feel that subtle discomfort, like sandpaper rubbing against the skin. He began to keep records, using his old ledger book. Besides the company's accounts, he started recording his own time: what time he woke up, what time he left home, what time he clocked in, even noting the precise times of every instance of zoning out or feeling dazed. He tried to use numbers to fight against that intangible sense of loss.

The results were startling. Around each "adjusted leave" cycle, unexplainable gaps would appear in his logbook, sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes over half an hour. These blanks were scattered through seemingly normal days like traces left by bookworms. He was certain this wasn't simple forgetfulness, but a "substantive absence" of time.

Where did this vanished time go? he wondered. Like the shifted weekends, was it also moved somewhere? Stored away for some grand, unknown purpose? The thought sent a chill down his spine, tinged with a Kafkaesque absurdity. He pictured a colossal bureaucratic machine made of countless gears and springs, manipulating the distribution of time behind the scenes, while ordinary people like them were merely cogs consumed in its operation.

One adjusted workday, a Saturday. The sky was gray, the city like a machine running on fumes. Lao Ding left work early. Instead of going home, he found himself inexplicably drawn towards the old clock tower in the city center. He had heard it was once the city's standard time calibration center. Perhaps he could find answers there.

The interior of the clock tower was more dilapidated than he imagined, thick with dust, the air filled with a mixed scent of old paper and machine oil. He ascended the creaking wooden spiral staircase, feeling as if he were entering a labyrinth of time. On the top floor, he didn't find the sophisticated instruments he expected, only an empty room with a huge table covered by a dust cloth in the center.

He hesitated for a moment, then lifted the dust cloth. Underneath wasn't some mysterious machine, but a ledger thick as an encyclopedia. Its leather cover was cracked, and inscribed in gilt letters were the words: "General Ledger of Time Resource Redistribution."

Lao Ding's heart pounded. Trembling, he opened the ledger. The records inside were dense, written in an extremely neat but lifeless hand. Each line recorded a date, a time period, a "source" (usually a specific area or unit within a city), and a "destination."

He quickly flipped through the pages, searching for entries related to "adjusted leave." Sure enough, after each adjusted leave announcement, there were numerous entries documenting fragmented time—minutes, seconds, even milliseconds—extracted from countless "sources." These time fragments aggregated into enormous figures.

So, the "destination"? Lao Ding desperately sought the answer. Where did this time, siphoned off through "adjusted leave," actually go?

He finally found it. On the last few pages of the ledger, marked in red ink, was the "Annual Time Resource Redistribution Summary." He saw that the time fragments, extracted from countless ordinary people under the guise of "adjusted leave compensation," didn't flow to some mysterious organization or fund any grand projects.

Their "destinations" were varied and trivial to the point of being absurdly mundane:

"Supplementing agenda time lost during 'important meetings': +4.72 hours" "Filling network latency caused by 'system maintenance': +12.05 minutes" "Offsetting office efficiency loss due to 'printer paper jam': +0.89 hours" "Balancing extra time taken by 'leader's speech' overruns: +22.14 minutes" ...

There was even one entry: "Used to extend advertising time before the 'Spring Festival Gala' midnight countdown: +3.5 seconds."

No conspiracy, no grand plan. The time Lao Ding felt had been taken, the time that unsettled him, was simply used to patch up countless insignificant gaps, delays, and inefficiencies within the bureaucratic system. Like water leaking from one pipe to another, it ultimately disappeared into the internal friction of the vast apparatus.

Lao Ding stood there, holding the absurd "General Ledger," the setting sun filtering through the dusty window, casting dappled light on his face. He suddenly wanted to laugh, yet felt an overwhelming sadness. He had always thought he was losing time itself, a precious resource that could be stored and utilized. But the truth was, this time wasn't even utilized well; it was merely consumed in an inefficient, chaotic, almost comical "redistribution."

He gently closed the ledger, replaced the dust cloth as if no one had ever been there. He slowly descended the stairs, walked out of the clock tower, and re-entered the noisy, weary, yet still functioning city.

Pedestrians hurried past, likely rushing home or to their next scheduled appointment. The sky remained gray, and the distant neon lights had begun to glow. Lao Ding looked up at the large clock on the tower; the hour hand pointed to six. He knew tomorrow was Sunday, but he had to work. It was a debt owed from the last "adjusted leave."

He sighed and took out his phone to glance at the calendar. The circled Sunday, representing the "make-up workday," lay there silently like an unfillable gap. He knew time hadn't truly vanished into some other dimension; it had simply disappeared in a more frustrating way, into the folds of life, into the vast and hollow concept of "adjusted leave" itself. And he, along with countless others like him, could only carry on with this small, unnoticed sense of loss, as if nothing had happened. After all, life must go on, mustn't it? Even if the calendar is riddled with invisible gaps.