Chen Jianfeng couldn't stop blinking.
He stood alone outside the academic building, away from the organized groups, staring at the sky — cloudless, enormous unfamiliar trees on the horizon. If he kept blinking, the world would snap back. That's how it had happened. One blink and everything changed. So he blinked and blinked and blinked, and the clouds stayed clouds, and the trees stayed trees, and nothing changed at all.
He squatted down. Head buried in his knees. Fists clenched, punching his own skull in hard thuds.
"I shouldn't have come to this fucking anniversary — I didn't even graduate from this school — why did I come — "
He wasn't from this school. He was a businessman — company of several hundred employees, wife and child back in the city. He'd come for the anniversary celebration on a whim. A networking opportunity. And now he was here, and they were all on the other side of whatever had happened, and he was squatting in the dirt hitting himself.
Dean Zhao saw him as he was passing. A man on the verge of total breakdown — squatting, self-harming, muttering. A doctor's instinct overrode everything else. He crouched beside Chen Jianfeng and patted his back.
"Friend! I know you're anxious, but this won't help. Hurting yourself won't bring you back — this is reality, not a dream."
The comfort had no effect. It made things worse.
Chen Jianfeng erupted to his feet. Finger jabbing at Zhao's nose.
"Get the fuck away from me! Mind your own fucking business! My company has hundreds of people! My wife and kid are still back there! I want to go back! I WANT TO GO BACK!"
Then he kicked. A right roundhouse — full force, no thought behind it — into the dean who was still crouching. Zhao went down like a bag thrown from a truck. He tumbled two, three meters through the flowerbed dirt, rolling, and when he pushed himself up with one shaking hand he was covered in dust, his face and forehead scraped in long red lines.
"If you're fucking sick, go get treated! Stop losing your mind out here!"
Xu Guangyu — a medical student who'd been following Dean Zhao — stepped between them, voice cracking with rage. He was heavyset, young, no fighting experience. Chen Jianfeng sneered at him. This fat college kid. Xu Guangyu shoved him. Chen Jianfeng stumbled, then threw a right hook into the student's face.
Xu Guangyu felt his upper lip split against his teeth. He looked at his palm. Blood.
Rage took over. He charged — grabbed Chen Jianfeng's neck, swept his legs, took him to the ground, mounted him, and started pounding. Fist after fist into the forearms Chen Jianfeng raised to shield his face, punches breaking through the gaps, connecting with cheekbone, jaw, eye socket.
Female students screamed. A few thin male students looked at each other and did nothing. Xu Guangyu kept hitting. Chen Jianfeng could only cover up. Two men rolling in the flowerbed dirt, blood and dust and screaming.
A police officer from Wu Dui's patrol finally arrived, dragged by two girls who'd sprinted for help. He pulled Xu Guangyu off.
Chen Jianfeng lay in the dirt. Both cheeks swollen. Left eye blackening. Blood at the corner of his mouth. He stared at Xu Guangyu being restrained and didn't move, didn't speak. Because he had just realized something: this kid could have beaten him to death, and there would be no trial. There was no law here anymore.
Li Wei had just sat down for the first time in hours. Liu Jinkao had found hot water somewhere and re-steeped some Longjing. Li Wei took one sip.
A student ran up, breathless. "Deputy Mayor — someone attacked Dean Zhao — "
Li Wei's hand jerked. Tea sloshed over the rim.
"What? Who? How bad is it?"
After the full account, he set the cup down. "It's not too serious." Then he turned to Wu Dui, opened his mouth, started to give the order — and stopped. Hand dropped.
"Forget it. Most people are probably in a similar mental state. Sending you over won't help much."
Some things needed to be explained to everyone. If people kept guessing, more of them would break down. The assembly couldn't wait any longer.
The flowerbed plaza had changed.
Same location as the first chaotic gathering, but someone had scavenged plastic chairs and arranged them in rough rows. A wireless microphone sat on the ledge next to a portable amplifier rigged to a loudspeaker. The information board from the first assembly was still standing behind the crowd, now covered in handwritten notices. It had become furniture.
The crowd settled into the chairs or stood at the edges. Quieter than before. Everyone could see Dean Zhao standing on the platform — the scrapes on his face, the way he held his ribs.
Li Wei stood on the raised ledge flanked by Zhang Xiaoyu and Dean Zhao. Emily approached from the information board area and stood near the platform.
Fang Peng's research group in the front rows, notebooks open, pencils ready. Wang Lei's alumni bloc center-left. Liu Laoshi's construction workers on the far periphery, standing, arms crossed. Foreign nationals in loose clusters, visible anxiety on faces that couldn't understand what was about to be said.
Zhang Xiaoyu stepped toward the wireless mic. Adjusted his glasses. A breath. The plaza settled to near-silence.
Zhang was not a public speaker and did not pretend to be one.
"If I could, I'd really rather just go home and have a cup of coffee right now."
Then Zhang's voice changed.
"We've most likely traveled through time."
A brief, suffocating silence. Then the crowd erupted — exclamations, gasps, sharp intakes of breath. The noise surged and then drained away, leaving a heavier quiet than before.
Zhang steadied himself and continued. Still on Earth, still the modern era, physics laws identical. The key question: where?
A female student stood. "If we've really time-traveled — where are we now?"
Zhang nodded. "That's exactly it. We need more data — latitude measurements, astronomical observations. I can't give you a number yet."
The physics students in the front rows exchanged glances — he'd explained nothing, really. Most of the crowd could only take away that they were still on modern Earth. The plaza settled into silence.
The foreign nationals were lost. They'd heard the eruption, seen the emotional wave, understood none of it. The French businessmen turned to each other. The German group exchanged tense glances.
Ahmed stood from the foreign cluster and began translating — English first. Summary of Zhang's conclusions: time-travel likely, still modern Earth, physics unchanged. Practical tone, not dramatic. He was doing a job.
Foreigners' faces shifted as the information landed. Not relief. Confirmation of the impossible. But at least they knew what had been said.
Ahmed moved to the French businessmen, switched to French. Then approached the German cluster — Finn Schmidt, a well-dressed auto merchant who'd been increasingly agitated since the displacement.
Ahmed began in German. Schmidt cut him off. "I understand English." Polite words, dismissive tone. "I don't need it explained again."
Ahmed moved on without comment. Not worth the time. He returned to the main foreign cluster and pointed toward Emily near the stage. "Her Chinese is excellent. She's trustworthy. You'll have a second bridge."
Zhang finished and handed the mic back. Li Wei retook it to announce inventory reports. Ahmed's hand went up from the foreign cluster.
"Deputy Mayor Li — the foreigners need simultaneous translation. Could someone—"
Li Wei looked at Ahmed. "Can you do it?"
Ahmed shook his head. "My Chinese isn't good enough for simultaneous. But Emily's is." He gestured toward the platform. "She'd be better."
Li Wei turned to Emily.
She stepped forward without hesitation. "It would be my duty," she said — a Chinese idiom, delivered with pitch-perfect pronunciation.
She took a second wireless mic and stepped up onto the raised ledge.
Ahmed flagged the non-English speakers among the foreigners. Li Wei called for volunteers — foreign-language students stepped forward for French, Japanese, Korean side-translations in the crowd. Quick, bureaucratic. Done.
Dean Zhao took the mic first. Steady delivery despite the scrapes on his face — performing steadiness over deep worry. Broad-spectrum antibiotics, roughly eight thousand doses. Painkillers, roughly twelve thousand. Basic surgical kits, about forty-five. Adequate for the short term.
Emily translated. The crowd relaxed fractionally — at least small illnesses wouldn't be a death sentence.
Wang Lixin took the mic. Boardroom mode. Solar panels, twenty-five units. CNC lathes and engineering machinery, roughly ten. Livestock from the displaced agricultural research station, about two hundred head. Construction equipment from the anniversary site.
Emily translated. Side discussions rippled through the rows — worry about solar panels (only twenty-five?), agriculture faculty defending their research livestock (those were imported at enormous expense — they're not food!), someone noting the construction workers had heavy equipment skills.
Five minutes of this. The small groups talked themselves out, and attention drifted back to the stage. Wang Lixin was preparing to continue when a hand went up from the crowd.
A slim male student stood. "Could you report the food inventory first?"
Wang Lixin paused. Read the room. Shook his head and yielded.
Wang Lixin read the inventory the way he read quarterly reports — steady, factual, boardroom-flat.
Rice: about twenty-five hundred kilograms. Flour: about nineteen hundred. Pork: about fifteen hundred. Prepared foods from the cafeteria and supermarket: about eighteen hundred.
Emily translated the numbers into English.
Wang Lixin continued. This was one cafeteria of several — it served roughly five thousand of the school's twenty thousand students, bought three days of food at a time. The anniversary meant larger purchases than normal, plus frozen stock.
He paused. A cafeteria that fed five thousand, stocked for three days, with anniversary surplus on top. He did the division.
"Rough estimate — I'm seeing fifteen hundred to two thousand of us here. That gives us about ten to thirteen days of food."
The crowd erupted. "How is that only twelve days?" — "You should say luckily it's twelve days — maybe we'll be back before then!" — "We need to start hunting — sitting here eating through our supplies is suicide."
Liu Tianming walked to the stage.
Well-dressed, precise, not hysterical. A commerce student with a natural authority about him. He walked out of the crowd and onto the stage.
"Every number you gave us is round." His voice carried — sharp, controlled. "Did you count to the kilogram, or keep the remainder?"
Wang Lixin didn't flinch. "Anniversary purchases come in bulk — round numbers on the invoices. Leftover scraps have been allocated to tonight's dinner for cleaner accounting."
Liu Tianming nodded. Reasonable answer. Then the second question, harder.
"This is a twenty-thousand-student university. How can there be so little food?"
"One cafeteria of several. It serves five thousand."
Nod. Also reasonable. Then the third — concrete, specific, and sharp enough to cut.
"A student who helped inventory the campus supermarket saw approximately one thousand boxes of instant ramen that don't appear on your list. Have they been allocated to your personal supplies?"
The crowd tensed. Emily translated.
Before Wang Lixin could answer, a voice erupted from the crowd.
"Misappropriation!"
Zhang Yingjun — a businessman who shared circles with Wang Lixin in the outside world. He was on his feet, face flushed, pointing.
Wang Lixin fired back. "That case had nothing to do with me. Schoolmates here can testify. This inventory had sixteen volunteers and multiple parties double-checking every figure."
Wang Lixin turned directly to Liu Tianming. Ignored Zhang Yingjun entirely.
"We may have missed the ramen during the supermarket count. I'll send two volunteers — Xiao Wang and Xiao Liu — with you right now to recheck. You observe. You verify the numbers yourself."
Liu Tianming nodded and stepped down from the stage.
The immediate crisis was defused.
Zhou Lijun stepped onto the platform. Crisp, factual delivery.
QBZ-03 automatic rifles: over one hundred. DBP87 ammunition. Military communications equipment. Infrared night vision devices.
The crowd snapped to attention. Students turned to each other — where did those come from? This isn't a military school.
Wu Dui, the police captain, took the mic. Practiced voice — the line he and Li Wei had agreed on.
"Anti-terrorism drill equipment. Pre-positioned for the anniversary. The troops hadn't fully arrived before the displacement. Now under police custody."
Wu Dui knew custody was generous — a small police team, no proper armory. But this was what they'd agreed to say.
Emily translated. Wu Dui's words were brief and his tone final. The crowd settled. No debate followed.
Li Wei retook the podium. His voice carried a helplessness it hadn't had before.
"To be honest," he said, "I organized this assembly, but I don't know what to do next either."
Emily translated.
Li Wei delivered logistics — brief, functional, the mechanics of surviving one night. Kitchen to prepare dinner using fresh stock that wouldn't keep. Students in dorms, everyone else in classrooms and the library. Clothing donation drive after dinner.
Emily translated. One sentence each.
"About an hour and a half until dinner," Li Wei said. "If anyone has thoughts, proposals, anything — the floor is open."
He stepped back from the mic.
The plaza went quiet.
Two minutes. People looked at each other. Shuffling. A cough. Everyone had thoughts. Nobody wanted to be first.
Emily stood on the raised ledge, behind Li Wei. Her throat was raw.
Behind the crowd, someone had written "12" in large characters across the top of the information board. The sun was dropping behind the treeline. Beyond the campus, the forest was darker than any night Emily had ever experienced — no light pollution, no city glow. Just blackness where civilization should have been.
Emily looked at Li Wei.
"Can I say a few words?"