Jin Qiang stumbled into the decaying toy shed, slamming the rusted door behind him. The metallic clang reverberated through the air, momentarily drowning out the eerie humming that had been pursuing him. He pressed his back against the door, heart pounding like a war drum, each beat echoing the terror coursing through his veins, as his hoodie clung to him with cold sweat.
Jin's breath came in ragged gasps, chest heaving with panic and adrenaline. The eerie, childish humming still floated through the playground air outside, sweet and cracked, like an old music box with waterlogged gears.
"Mmm~ mmm~ mm-mm~"
Jin crouched behind a shelf stacked with cracked board games and cobweb-covered wooden blocks, his shoulders pressed tight to the rotting wall. The scent of mold, rusted metal, and forgotten plastic filled the air, like the inside of an abandoned attic where time had curled in on itself.
Don't move. Don't breathe.
He squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. The humming got louder for a second, then faded again. Was Mengmeng just wandering in circles? Or… was she waiting?
Minutes dragged by.
Silence returned.
But Jin still didn't move.
Only when he could no longer hold his breath did he let out a shaky exhale through his nose and slowly rose.
Inside the shed was a clutter of broken toys scattered like offerings to a forgotten god.
He stepped in slowly, scanning for a doll twitch, a shadow shifting, or just any kind of movement.
The scene before him was grotesque in its innocence.
Cracked porcelain dolls lay with limbs splayed at unnatural angles. Their painted eyes stared upward with chipped lashes, some smiling, some frowning, many with their mouths gaping as if mid-scream. Teddy bears were gutted, stuffing torn and trailing like intestines. A plush rabbit hung from a noose of jump rope. A pile of jack-in-the-boxes sat silently, handles all bent in different directions, their lids closed. One of them ticked softly, as if daring someone to twist it open again.
A few toy trains had derailed off makeshift tracks of masking tape, frozen mid-crash, rusted tricycles, and deflated balls littered the floor.
He stepped over a mutilated rocking horse, careful not to step on a pile of plastic bricks arranged into a crude pentagram. His eyes scanning for any movement, any doll, anything.
DING!
[System: You have touched "Mr. Giggle – Unstable." This is not the Forgotten Doll.]
Jin's breath caught.
A sharp cackle exploded behind him, high-pitched and unholy, like a laughter echoing off broken glass.
Jin spun, nearly tripping over a plastic tricycle.
And nothing.
Only shadows and the laughter was gone.
"God, I hate this place," he whispered, backpedaling toward the shelf again.
[🥤JumpyMcCup: I fkn KNEW it would laugh. Mr. Giggle can die. Again.]
[🫠HauntMePlz: I REFUSE to believe that doll didn't move.]
[📍LostOnPurpose: Wait… did you hear something ticking?]
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Jin froze. The sound was rhythmic, measured, and mechanical.
It wasn't ticking from the jack-in-the-boxes.
He turned, slowly scanning the shelves, and spotted it
There, lying on a cracked wooden plank, was a doll unlike the others.
It wore a tattered conductor's hat, a dusty blue uniform two sizes too large, a wind-up key embedded in its back, and had a paper clock drawn in smeared red ink on its lap.
"…The hell is this?" Jin whispered, inching closer.
A rusted tag hung from its collar.
[TIMMY TIME]
[Help me fix my clock!]
"...Great," Jin muttered. "Haunted Thomas the Tank Engine knockoff."
CLICK. CLICK
The sound of a door being locked was heard, and the doll jerked upright, its eyes opening with a mechanical whirr, then its mouth moved in stiff, jerky spasms, and a voice emerged.
"Wanna fix my broken clock? "
"But be careful! Every mistake... steals your time~ KheKheKhe~"
The laugh at the end sounded like someone gargling nails.
Jin winced. "Yeah, that's not cursed at all…."
He then slowly turned the clock in Timmy's lap toward him, and noticed it had no hands and instead of numbers, the paper face displayed symbols:
A cracked moon where 12 should be.
An upside-down house at 3.
A red balloon at 6.
A white horse at 9.
And at the center, words were scribbled in shaky crayon.
[Find the moment she wept and the hour her heart broke.]
"The time she was lost...
The hour they forgot...
The moment it all began."
Beneath that, words in red form a short note.
"No one cried at the right time."
"Alright, think….. There's gotta be some clues around here…" Jin muttered, stepping back.
He looked around the shed. Old drawings were tacked to the walls. Most were child-like scrawls, but one stood out.
A picture of a girl, eyes X'ed out, standing alone beside a clock tower that read 7:00, and beneath it said, "They left me here."
"So... left at 7?" He muttered.
He turned back to the clock and hesitantly rotated the key in Timmy's back.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Faint red lines then appeared, glowing beneath the paper face, like hidden ink revealing buried thoughts, it was the clock's hands that were missing. They then began rotating and stopped at 7:00.
Timmy's head snapped toward Jin, voice shrill.
"Wrong~! Tick-tock, time block! Now you have... ten minutes less!"
The flashlight attached to his helmet flickered violently, and the mission time limit on his livestream blinked red, now showing.
Time Limit: 00:42:44
Jin's heart stuttered.
"Ten minutes less?!?!" he muttered. "For what, breathing wrong?"
✦ Sanity: 64% –> 63% - Functionally Frightened
The doll's eyes clicked.
"Only three strikes... before time runs out." Timmy rasped.
"Wanna play again, clock fixer?"
Jin grimaced, backing up as he used his left hand to wipe the sweat from his brow.
"Okay… okay. Let's try this the smart way."
He crouched before the doll, eyes darting between the paper clock and the surrounding walls.
"They left her at 7. So... the right time isn't when she was left. It's when someone finally realized she was gone."
Another old paper on the wall caught his eye. A rhyming chant that was barely legible.
"Ten ticks to cry,
But none did try.
She waited past eight,
Alone by the gate."
"Past eight… alone by the gate. So they didn't notice right away."
Jin's gaze darted back to the clock.
"What time do parks usually close?" he muttered. "Nine? Ten?"
He then remembered the line from earlier.
"No one cried at the right time."
Jin's breath was uneven, fogging slightly in the stale air.
He then stood and paced back and forth before Timmy, his fingers twitching at his side. The weight of the cursed game gnawed at his nerves, but he forced himself to think.
He turned to the drawing again with the lonely girl beside the clock tower. It showed 7:00, and beneath it read "They left me here."
"That's when they left her. But she didn't cry then…"
Jin then noticed another paper that was taped crookedly on the nearby wall, which showed a stick-figure girl holding a popped balloon, tears scrawled in thick crayon under her eyes. The clock drawn beside her showed 6:00, and below it read, "She waited and waited, but the fun was over."
"The red balloon… six o'clock. That's when she realized no one was coming."
He turned the wind-up key gently. The hidden red ink began glowing again. Slowly, he moved the hour hand to 6 to the symbol of the balloon.
It clicked into place.
Timmy didn't react.
"So far, so good."
Now the minute hand.
Jin's eyes swept back over the symbols.
-Upside-down house at 3.
-A red balloon at 6.
-A white Horse at 9.
-Cracked moon at 12.
Jin searched the room once again, looking for anything that had the same symbols as the paper clock.
Then he saw a splintered rocking horse in the left corner, hidden beneath it was an old drawing of a girl sprawled on the ground near a broken carousel, her limbs drawn wrong, stick legs bent like marionette strings cut loose. Her face was scratched out in red, but above it, were three words.
"She fell there."
"Wait..." Jin whispered, creeping closer to the drawing. "The white horse... the merry-go-round..."
His eyes darted back to Timmy's clock.
The white horse was at 9.
"That's where her heart broke?" Jin muttered.
He went back to the paper clock and slid the minute hand to 9.
Click.
The room then vibrated faintly.
Timmy's eyes flickered rapidly for a moment, then turned blue, glowing like distant stars through fog.
"Well done…" the voice rasped, slower now.
"That's the time her heart gave out."
"Now here's what she never let go of…"
CLICK.
Timmy's mouth opened with a mechanical creak.
POP!
And a small scroll dropped from his mouth.
DING!
[System Notification]
[You have completed: Timmy Time – A punctual player always wins.]
[Reward: Clue #3/3 – The Forgotten Doll does not belong with the rest. She waits where endings begin.]
Click.
The shed's door was now unlocked.
Jin picked up the scroll slowly and started unfolding it to see what was inside, but before he could fully open it, he froze.
TICK. TICK. TICK.
He carefully turned around to check where the sound was coming from.
One of the jack-in-the-boxes had begun winding itself.
Click... click... click...
Its handle turned... turning… turning…
"Okay…." he said, backing away from the spot. "I have all three clues. Time to go!"
Jin spun and shoved the door open, running out of the shed.
His boots crunched the gravel beneath him, and the cold night air hit his face.
The playground was unchanged, no signs of Mengmeng, no humming, no giggles, and no skipping sounds.
But the tension still clung to his skin like static.
Jin didn't look back at the shed. He didn't dare to.
Not when he had unpleasant 'glancing back' memories of the two places he had previously gained clues at.
Nope… This time he had learn his lesson…. Or did he?
Time Limit: 00:34:26