Amnesia

"Today isn't the right date, is it?" Following the numbers with his gaze, Gu Mian looked toward a box beside the table. Its lid was open, revealing a neat stack of stone numerals—unused numbers.

"It's December 9 now?" He looked back at the numbers and stared at "12" and "10" for half a second.

Slaughter came to the table, quickly rummaged through the box, and pulled out four more numbers: 1, 2, and 9, along with another number. He arranged them beside 12 and 10.

"Right. Today should be December 9, 974, by the new calendar. But half an hour ago, I noticed the date here was set to the 10th. Whenever I set the date, I check it over and over. There's no way I'd get it wrong. So when I saw it was the 10th, I realized the world might have reset."

After setting 12 and 9 in place, Slaughter looked at Gu Mian again. "When I noticed the date was wrong, I immediately set today's date here—"

"After I saw that fat guy, I realized something might have happened here before the reset. I was even more eager to—"

As he spoke, Slaughter pointed toward the bed. Gu Mian turned to look and saw the round helmet lying on it.

"I've answered your questions. Now it's my turn to ask you." Slaughter shifted so he was facing Gu Mian. He had a whole list of questions he'd been wanting to ask. "Yesterday... no, last time. How did you get here? How did we meet?"

As he asked, he glanced at the clock on the wall.

Slaughter was sensitive about the time, so he had plenty of clocks around his place. At a glance, Gu Mian counted four: two on the wall, one on the table, and another