Chapter 258: Real Frame Rate

The advertising production meeting opened for seven minutes, and Han Qing said the third time, "Sorry, say it again."

His memory-processing lag made a simple discussion feel like slow‑motion playback. When Su Yu explained the storyboard, he needed an extra five seconds to grasp the symbolic meaning of "using the scarred garden's time‑lapse image as the main thread." When Zhao suggested adding a cyclical shot of tea cooling then reheating, he blinked three times before nodding.

"We can take a break first," Aili whispered, the medical kit containing a fresh stabilizer, "once the condition improves—"

"The condition won't get better," Han Qing interrupted, his voice calm, "68% is my new baseline. The advertisement we need to make must be understandable to people who are in the same poor condition."

He picked up the tablet and, with a clumsy yet steady speed, wrote down the ad's core appeal:

"It's not telling you that you must be exhausted. It's telling you that after fatigue, there are things worth the effort."

The meeting moved to the kitchen because Zhao said, "When the mind stalls, the hands must work." He kneaded a lump of fresh dough—flour milled from the first batch of wheat in the ruined greenhouse, a pale yellow like dawn.

Su Yu drew the storyboard on oiled paper with charcoal, the lines thicker than usual. She illustrated the time‑lapse of Han Qing's scarred garden on his chest from the first bloom to the eighty‑seventh, but deliberately rendered the lines discontinuously: "Like Memory Fragment. Real life is originally frame by frame, with blanks in between."

Xiao Yu handled the music frequencies. She tried to digitize various "real sounds": the gurgle of boiling tea, the rustle of folding paper, Zhao Xiaoshu's steady breathing while asleep, the faint crackle of grafted saplings' crystalline leaves growing. "But pure realism isn't enough," she said, puzzled, "the music of the Carefree Seed is too perfect; ours sounds… a bit chaotic."

Kaiwen pushed his glasses: "Chaos is right. I analyzed the waveform of the Carefree Frequency—each is a perfect sine wave, with identical cycles. The frequency spectrum of real emotions…" He pulled up the data, "looks like the internal stress distribution of the dough when Zhao kneads it—disordered yet with internal logic."

Han Qing listened, his fingers unconsciously tracing on the table a new symbol he learned after his memory damage—a circle with a gap, representing "incomplete yet still turning."

He suddenly said, "The ad doesn't need to persuade. Just display."

Everyone stared at him.

"Show a 'real day at 68% condition.'" Han Qing slowly organized his words, "When I understand slowly, you wait those few seconds for me. When I forget a word, Xiao Yu uses the light‑print cue frequency. When I'm too tired to speak, the cup of tea Zhao pushes over."

He paused, looked out the window: "Also… sometimes I wonder 'what if I chose the easy path.' Put that in too."

Production entered day three; material piled up like a mountain but lacked a main thread. During his recovery, Zhao Xiaoshu couldn't take on heavy mental tasks, so he wandered the base with a simple recorder, filming at will.

The footage he captured unexpectedly became a pivotal turn:

Han Qing stood for a long time before the grafted sapling, his finger hovering three centimeters above the crack—a moment of hesitation about whether to reconnect the memory again.

Su Yu folded an origami crane halfway, then stopped abruptly, crumpling the crane into a ball before slowly unfolding it smooth—self‑doubt and perseverance in creation.

Zhao stood by the tea cabinet for five minutes, finally choosing the plain green tea instead of the prized GuiHuaYuan tea—because "today doesn't merit the best."

Aili, while checking the medical kit, took out the seventh syringe and put it back, repeating three times—a tug of responsibility and fear.

Kaiwen pushed his glasses, slipped, and the glasses fell onto the data board—a perfectionist's small slip.

When Xiao Yu translated the frequencies, the light‑print on her forehead suddenly overloaded and flickered; she covered her forehead, breathed deeply for three seconds, then continued—a fragile moment for the bearer.

These shots had no embellishment; the footage even wobbled a bit. Yet when Zhao Xiaoshu edited them into a three‑minute quick cut, overlaying the simplest ambient sounds—wind, breathing, finger‑rubbing—the entire kitchen fell silent.

"This is our advertisement," Su Yu whispered.

"But it's too…" Xiao Yu hesitated, "too undignified. We all look… struggling."

Han Qing watched his hesitant silhouette on the screen, the black crack on his chest faintly heating. He nodded, "Right. Because struggle is the real frame rate. Perfection is every frame at twenty‑four frames per second, glossy. Reality has some frames clear, some blurry, some over‑exposed—but together they depict a whole person living."

On the day of the official recording, an accident occurred.

Han Qing had to narrate the origin of the scarred garden in front of the camera. When he reached the part about Chen Mo's death, his memory lag suddenly spiked—not a few seconds, but a full twenty‑second void. He stood before the lens, mouth agape, eyes vacant, like a jammed machine.

The set fell into dead silence. The cameraman (Kaiwen, also serving) didn't know whether to stop.

Then Han Qing slowly crouched, hand supporting his forehead, shoulders beginning to tremble slightly. Not crying, just a purely functional collapse—a neurological reaction triggered by blocked memory pathways.

By perfectionist standards, this was definitely waste footage.

But Su Yu gave Kaiwen a "keep filming" gesture.

The camera recorded the next three minutes: Aili rushed over to inject the stabilizer, her movements skilled but fingers slightly trembling. Zhao brought warm water, crouching beside Han Qing, softly saying, "No rush, the tea's still hot." Xiao Yu released a soothing frequency via the light‑print, as if caressing an invisible wound. Zhao Xiaoshu stood at a distance, recorder clenched in his hand, the camera never turning off.

After recovering, Han Qing's first words were, "That segment just now… usable?"

Aili glared at him, "That was a medical emergency scene!"

"But it was real." Han Qing stood up, his legs still a bit weak, "68% of people suddenly freeze. Among those watching the ad, there will be people who freeze too. They need to know—after freezing, someone is still there waiting."

He looked at the camera, "Continue. Pick up from where it froze."

The ad needed a concluding monologue. Everyone passed the task around, and finally Zhao was pushed forward.

"I can't speak," he protested.

"Just say what you usually say," Han Qing said, "talk about the dough, the tea, the seven years waiting for your son to return."

The camera focused on the kitchen's kneading station. Zhao, wearing an old apron, his hands working the dough, eyes not on the lens but toward the GuiHuaYuan outside the window.

"The dough my wife left behind hasn't spoiled for seven years." His voice was flat, like stating "the water's boiled," "some say it's because of a special preservative. Actually there isn't one. It's just ordinary flour, ordinary water. She kneaded it before leaving, saying 'when I return I'll make tangyuan.' She never came back."

He paused, the dough turning once in his palm.

"I waited seven years. Every day I watched the dough, wondering when it would spoil. It never did. Then I realized—not the dough that's imperishable, but 'waiting' itself that has a preservative effect."

He lifted the dough toward the light, "The 'Carefree Seed' you sell claims it can make people forever easy. I tried to imagine—if my son vanished for those seven years, I ate that seed, staying happy every day, not missing him… not thinking of him. Now he's back, what is my memory of those seven years? A happy blank?"

He shook his head, returning the dough to the bowl, "I don't want that. I want to remember the days of counting the grout lines each of those seven years. Because remembering how hard it was, now that he sits here eating tangyuan, I finally understand the price of that sweetness."

He looked at the camera, his gaze so direct it made one want to look away:

"The price of ease is forgetting. If you dare to pay, then buy it."

Recording ended. The set was silent for ten seconds.

Then Su Yu began clapping, light yet continuous. Soon everyone joined in applause.

Zhao's face flushed as he muttered, "Why say all this," turned to wash his hands, but washed for a long time.

Two hours remained for post‑production, when Xiao Yu's light‑print suddenly alarmed.

"The conservatives are monitoring our production in real time! They just released a promo for 'Carefree Seed 2.0'—directly targeting our ad's content!"

An emergency pull‑up of footage: the 2.0 ad displayed the Carefree Seed's "thoughtful upgrade"—when users feel fatigued, self‑doubt, or memory lag, the seed automatically emits a "soothing frequency," instantly putting them into a "warm carefree state." The tagline reads:

"Why endure lag?" We have a smooth patch.

More deadly, they clipped the blurry footage of Han Qing's collapse during recording (clearly hacked into the local network), overlaying subtitles: "See, this is the price of 'real aesthetics.' We can make you never have to endure this embarrassment."

The team instantly fell into low morale.

Kaiwen pushed his glasses three times: "They're waging a psychological war. It targets our current self‑doubt—whether this ad we're making even works."

Han Qing stared at the clipped footage, the black crack on his chest burning as if on fire. Then he suddenly smiled—a faint, but genuine smile.

"Add this part too." he said, "Add it at the end of the ad. The subtitle reads: 'They even want to steal our embarrassment. But some things cannot be stolen.'"

The ad finished final rendering at three a. m. It was named 'True Frame Rate', with a length of nine minutes forty-seven seconds.

Before uploading, Su folded a paper crane and slipped a small note into its belly: 'For everyone who has ever been stuck.'

Old Zhao brewed the last pot of tea, this time using his stored osmanthus—he said, 'Today deserves something good.'

At the moment of clicking publish, no one spoke.

One minute later, the first feedback came from the newborn civilization of GuiHuaYuan, consisting of only two frequency words:

"Watch" "Cry"

Next came the Awakened Civilization: 'This is why we chose to remember.'

Within the Silent Observers Network, the four hundred nodes of the Sensory Data Department simultaneously lit up warm orange. Haoqi-17 commented: 'It has been recorded as a core case in the Sensory Research Handbook. The proposed title is: "Proof of Imperfect Completeness."'

As for the conservative faction, there was silence.

A deep silence, as if brewing something.

Han Qing leaned against the kitchen window, watching the dawn slowly light up the ruins. His memory lag remained, his thinking still slower than before. But he suddenly felt—maybe a little slower, he could still wait for sunrise.