Part 9: A Hidden Message from the Real Du Hao

That night, Lyn couldn't sleep.

The fake Du Hao—or whatever he was—had finally left the workshop after pretending to fuss over a broken music box. He had smiled that same mechanical smile, tipping his hat before vanishing into the misty streets.

Lyn sat in the dark, her fingers trembling slightly as she clutched the old pocket watch she had pretended to fix earlier. It had belonged to her father once, but now it served another purpose. A message... she was sure of it. But how?

Turning it over carefully, she noticed something odd. The back of the watch was unusually thick—heavier than it should be. And when she pressed her thumbnail into the tiny engraved rose at the center, it clicked open, revealing a secret compartment.

Inside was a piece of yellowed paper, folded tightly.

Her heart hammering, Lyn unfolded it. The handwriting was unmistakable: Du Hao’s real, messy scrawl. No one could forge that chaos.

"If you're reading this, it means you already know something is wrong.

They replaced me. I don’t know how or when. I fought it, but I was trapped between the seconds.

Whatever you see now — it's not me. Trust only the gears. Trust the ticking. The real me left a path hidden in time. Follow the broken seconds, and you’ll find me.

— Du Hao"

Lyn’s hands shook as she read and reread the letter. Trapped between the seconds? Broken seconds?

A knock at the window made her flinch. She turned sharply, but there was nothing there—only the branches of the withered tree brushing against the glass in the night wind.

But the letter had awakened something inside her: a fierce clarity.

She wouldn't waste another second.

Du Hao was alive. Somewhere.

And now she knew where to start: with the old, abandoned clocktower—the one the fake Du Hao had been so strangely eager to visit.

She tucked the letter deep into her jacket, grabbed the old pocket watch, and set off into the night.

The cold air bit at her skin, and the streetlamps flickered as if whispering warnings she refused to hear.

Above the rooftops, the clocktower loomed against the sky like a skeletal giant, its broken face frozen at 11:58.

Two minutes to midnight.

Two minutes to save the man who had once sworn to save her.

As she approached, the heavy silence of the tower swallowed her whole.

Somewhere inside, hidden between the ticks and tocks of a broken heart, Du Hao was waiting.

And Lyn wasn’t about to let him wait alone.

To be continued…