Love

Ernest had a habit of always checking the time. He’d glance at the wall clock, his phone, and the upper right of his Apple laptop. Each second fed him with guilt that made him feel unproductive, even though he was being productive.

“I could’ve done more if I didn’t distract myself with Twitter.” Even while scrolling through Twitter, he’d swipe down his finger on the upper screen to check the time, the guilt of unproductivity haunting him. He deserved this free time since he’d already done so much, but he couldn’t stop assuming that “he could’ve done more if he didn’t distract himself with something.”

He sighed. Oft-checking the time hijacked a part of his brain. It worsened each day, and he couldn’t live without checking the time for every minute. Now he was on the verge of checking the time for each second. He closed his laptop and stood.

Ernest glanced at the wall clock and noticed it’d stopped. He took batteries from the drawer. He reached for the clock, unhooked it, replaced the batteries, then hooked it up. Furrowing his brows, he saw the clock wasn’t still running. Battery after battery, he realized the wall clock was broken, leading him to check the time again with his phone.

“11:03.” 11.03 a.m. He hadn’t lunched yet. While cooking, he checked the time. He thought his sense of time had gotten slow, so he slowly sliced onions and garlic. He checked the time again, and it was still 11:03 a.m. After cooking, it was still 11:03 a.m.

Ernest hastily set the food on the table and went for his laptop. He checked the time on the screen and it was 11:03 a.m. He thought the time had stopped, but after realizing he’d just cooked chicken, he dropped the idea since it’d be impossible for him to turn on the gas. Another idea led him to think that he was the only one moving in this world, so he went outside to check.

A man with a dog casually passed by. Ernest stared at him. He noticed he had a wristwatch. “Um, excuse me,” he said, “what time is it?”

The man with a dog ignored him. Ernest approached him and poked his back. No response. He flicked his ear. No response. He grabbed the dog’s tail, and yet it didn’t bite him. He waved in front of them and received no response.

“What?” Ernest looked at his wristwatch without asking. “4:32…” He assumed it was set in the afternoon. It made sense since no one wanted to walk their dogs in the heat of the day unless they wanted to get some Vitamin D. But walking a dog in the early morning wasn’t too unusual either. “But why is it still bright and hot?” He followed the man with a dog to find out.

Ernest kept checking the time, and it was still 4:32 p.m. This doesn’t make sense, he thought, and he was on the brink of having the idea that maybe people had different senses of time. He compared his phone’s time to his wristwatch’s time: 11:03 a.m. and 4:32 p.m.

Ernest left him and went to a random house. The door was locked. He knocked on the door many times, and no one responded. He found out the window was open, so he wormed his way in to check the wall clock: 2:24. He wasn’t sure if it was a.m. or p.m., but when he checked upstairs, he saw the whole fam was sleeping, even though it was still bright outside. So he assumed it was 2:24 a.m. unless they were nocturnals. He tried waking them up to warn them about the stopped time, but their sleep was too deep. He even slapped the daddy of the house in the face, and yet the daddy kept smiling as he slept dreamily.

Ernest went downstairs. It was still 2:24 a.m. He left and ran around the city, bumped into each passerby as he was ignored, and checked everybody’s wristwatch. He stole someone’s phone, and yet the owner of the phone kept walking, scrolling down on an invisible phone. Then he gave the phone back while being ignored. This made him distressed as he checked the time, and it was 6 a.m. 8:56 p.m. 4:21 a.m. 3:24 p.m. 7:16 a.m. 5:38 a.m. 10:08 p.m.—

11:03 a.m.

Ernest found someone who had an 11:03 a.m. in their phone. He’d stolen his phone to check the time, and the owner got mad at him. “What the? You thief!”

“Thank god!” Ernest hugged him.

Startled, the owner of the phone pushed him away. “What’s the big idea?” When Ernest gave his phone back, the man stared at him for a moment, almost glaringly.

“Time has stopped,” Ernest said. “Haven’t you noticed the time has stopped in your phone?”

The man looked at his phone and widened his eyes a bit. “Must be broken or something—”

“No! Look.” Ernest randomly stole someone’s phone and showed it to him. “Count for sixty seconds, and this will prove that time has stopped.”

The man stared at the phone he’d just stolen and looked past at the owner who was fiddling with an invisible phone. Suppressing his confusion, he grumpily counted for sixty seconds, and it was still stuck at exactly 12:00 p.m. Counted for another minute, it was still the same.

“Oh, shit, you’re right…” The man stole someone’s phone to make sure he wasn’t being pranked. One phone after another, one wristwatch after another—the man finally accepted the reality. “How are we going to fix this?”

“I don’t know… I was just always checking the time, and this happened. And yet, everyone is still moving!”

“You’re always checking the time… What if we don’t check it?”

“Huh?”

Ernest was surprised the man was able to act calm in the face of absurdity. The man looked at their phones and wristwatches. “We should try not checking the time for at least an hour. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but there’s no harm in trying.”

“O-Okay!” Ernest threw away his phone onto the road. The man thought it was unnecessary, but Ernest wanted to show his resolve. The man threw it away too.

“Okay…” The man breathed. “Let’s go to the park and wait.”

The two went to the park and sat on a bench. They enjoyed the scenery: kids running around on a playground, teenagers practicing their dance in the open, and adults walking and talking on the pathways. It was a fairly large park. Ernest stomped his foot twitchingly, wanting to check the time. The man leaned back, his hands on his thighs, enjoying the skies. “Ah, it’s beautiful weather, isn’t it?”

Ernest wasn’t enjoying it. He felt guilty again. An unproductive feeling that always haunted him whenever he was idle. He wanted to do something. He wanted to do as much as he could again—maximizing the art of productivity, making the most of his life, for life was short and shouldn’t be taken for granted. The fear of unproductivity defined his actions unhealthily to the extent that he was beginning to sacrifice his sleep. He also thought he might stay single forever since it’d distract him from his ambitions—having a wife and children would eat away all his time.

And this constant feeling of unproductivity ruined his self-love.

The man noticed his shaking and gritting. “Calm down,” he said. “What’re you so worked up for?”

“I want to know what time it is.”

“I already told you we need to stop looking at the time—”

“I can’t do this!” Ernest stood up, but the man clutched his arm. He glared at him.

The man looked at him calmly. “You seem to be busy these days. You need to calm down. You need to learn how to maximize your free time as much as you maximize your work time. Harmonize rest and work, and we’ll be able to fix this.”

Ernest stared at the ground, nearing realization. He slowly sat down and watched the kids frolicking around. He sighed and stood up, and the man was going to clutch him again. “No, it’s okay,” Ernest said. “I’m just going to that playground.”

Ernest walked to the sandy playground. Everyone, the adults and the kids, ignored him. Ernest knew they couldn’t see or feel his presence. When the kiddy slide was vacant, he climbed up and sat on the edge. Despite his adult body, he slid down, but it was cut short. He did that many times to distract himself.

Then.

Everyone looked at him.

Ernest kept climbing up and sliding down, without a care in the world. He was laughing at himself. The adults seemed to be bothered by his insanity, but the kids enjoyed looking at him. Then the kids gathered around him and laughed.

Ernest stopped and noticed them. Embarrassed, he slowly left the park. But one of the kids said: “Mister, play with us!” Ernest tried hard to smile and obeyed their childish desires. They played hide and seek, tag, and a bunch of games he hadn’t even played before.

The man nonchalantly watched Ernest play with the kids. He looked at the skies and sighed. When the adults saw that Ernest was beginning to get tired, they called out the children and said they were going to leave now. The adults smiled at him, but Ernest didn’t smile back.

Ernest returned to the man. “Do you think everything’s fixed now?”

“I don’t know. Go check the time.”

“I mean, it’s already an hour, right?”

The man stared at the skies and ignored him. Ernest decided to leave him be and entered 7-Eleven to check their wall clock. It was 11:03. He made sure first by counting sixty seconds—until.

He saw a girl as she paid for her coffee. He found her beautiful. The beautiful girl went outside, and Ernest almost forgot why he’d gone inside 7-Eleven. He pulled the glass door and approached her from behind. “H-Hey.”

The girl, holding a coffee, looked behind at him. “Hm?”

“What time is it?”

Then Ernest felt the time had stopped again.