The numbers of the day turn the moment sunlight breaches the distant mountains and lays illumination to the eaves. It seems ambiguous to me that time should be measured in such a manner and I wonder if there is anything different. On some of the larger public plateaus there are thick poles at about waist-height, upon which rest large, flat plates with markings, which I recall are called ticks, and these are significant to the telling of time. One of these dials is located in the garden of the hospital and from my window I can watch the shadows shift across it, enumerating my time. About halfway through the day, however, the shadow of the tower ward dims the entire dial, and so an indeterminate amount of time passes in dilution, before sunset again begins to gently trace out the time in orange and pink.

Just now the sunlight has only just begun. At the quarter-mark of it will be the first round of nurses; three-fifths of a fraction there will be morning food, and at the next quarter, more nurses, and so on.

It will still be a while yet before I am visited by anyone, but I find it difficult to sleep. I think I will ask the nurses to spare me light for this upcoming night. Somehow the dimness is disconcerting. Somehow in the night it feels that the shadows rise and brush the room gently, feeling it out, and I can hear it prodding at wood and fabric and flesh.

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