“Doomsday Loop: Dawn of the First Day”

The day broke earlier than he remembered.

Lin Chuan woke the moment the curtains were pushed aside by light. It wasn’t an alarm, nor a nightmare, but a sudden clarity—as if someone had pressed a “Continue” button in his mind.

The sky outside was an unreal shade of pale gray, somewhere between dawn and overcast. No clouds, yet no true blue either.

He instinctively glanced at his phone.

07:00.

Exactly on the dot.

He stared at the numbers, but there was no comfort in waking “on time.” Instead, a slow, creeping unease climbed up his spine—he was certain he hadn’t woken at this time for the first time.

Yet he couldn’t remember the last time.

Wash, dress, go out.

Everything moved with unnerving smoothness.

The breakfast stall at the neighborhood gate was already set up; the fryer hissed its familiar sizzle. The elderly man selling soy milk glanced up and nodded at him.

“Same as usual?”
“Mm.” Lin Chuan replied without thinking.

The words left his mouth, and he froze.

He didn’t remember coming here often.

But his body did.

The soy milk handed to him was the perfect temperature—neither too hot nor cold. The fried dough had been broken into extra pieces, convenient for eating while walking. Every detail felt rehearsed, completed before his consciousness even realized it.

He finished breakfast by the roadside and then noticed a troubling thought—
If this was truly the first day, why did everything feel like it had repeated countless times?

09:17 a.m.—the first anomaly.

Not an explosion. Not an alarm.

The wind stopped.

The leaves on every tree froze in the same instant, as if the world had been paused. Flags drooped, dust hung suspended in the air, even the distant construction noise was cut off.

The city held its breath for two seconds.

Then everything resumed.

Pedestrians continued walking. Vehicles continued moving. Leaves swayed again, as if the blank pause had never existed.

No one stopped.
No one looked back.

Only Lin Chuan remained, his heartbeat unnaturally fast.

Because in those two seconds, he had heard a voice.

Not from outside, but directly inside his mind:

“Day one. Observation allowed.”

12:40 p.m.—the news alert.

The headline was ordinary:

“Brief Electromagnetic Anomaly Observed Early This Morning; Experts Say No Cause for Alarm”

The image showed a blurred sky, washed-out gray and white, revealing nothing unusual.

Lin Chuan stared at it and suddenly noticed a detail:
The timestamp on the photo was three minutes earlier than the time he woke.

What it meant, he couldn’t say.

But an instinct whispered to him—
the sequence had been altered.

4:00 p.m.—the sky began to darken.

Not a sunset darkness, but as if someone had slowly lowered the contrast. The edges of distant buildings blurred, yet shadows were unnaturally sharp.

Colleagues began complaining about the weather, predicting rain.

Lin Chuan suddenly remembered that sentence.

Day one.

If this was the first day, that meant—
There would be a second.

And on the first day, only one thing was allowed.

Observation.

6:23 p.m.—the second anomaly.

At the subway station, the train announcement came—but stopped mid-sentence:

“Next station—”

The second half never came.

The train still stopped on time. People boarded and alighted as usual, showing no hint of confusion. As if the announcement had been meant to end there all along.

Lin Chuan stood in the crowd, overwhelmed by a sudden, intense isolation.

It wasn’t that he had been removed from the world.
It was—
He had been left behind alone, to remember.

Night fell.

City lights flickered on, one by one.

Lin Chuan watched from the window as the lights of the office building across the street blinked in unison, then returned to normal.

Like a system checking its status.

He closed the window. The room was left with only the ticking of the clock.

23:59.

He held his breath.

He didn’t know why, but he knew that the next minute would be important.

00:00.

The world did not explode.
It did not reset.
No grand catastrophe appeared.

But—
He suddenly realized one thing.

The first day was over.

And when he woke tomorrow,
he might not remember today.

The thought barely surfaced, and the lights before his eyes went out—suddenly, all at once.