#or it's making lu guang speedrun some events lmao so he can catch up to the “correct” or “current” timeline

[protect-namine]

I agree that the timeline is weird, and I'd like to add something to this, but I'll be coming from a different angle. this ended up being a long reply, so bear with me!!

but first: I could be wrong or may have missed this, but I don't remember it being explicitly mentioned that they met in high school? cmiiw though. I just thought they always met in university. or at least, they started being close friends during university. though I agree that the uniform could imply they met in highschool, but tbh I just thought that's just usual lu guang fashion and not necessarily a high school uniform lol.

about when they met: from how I understood it... it looks like cheng xiaoshi and lu guang didn't really start getting closer beyond being "basketball buddies" until the scene where lu guang walked upon qiao ling and cheng xiaoshi renovating the photo studio for business. lu guang helps out, and then just... stays in their lives permanently ever since. the way this was shown in S1, they didn't seem close enough yet since cheng xiaoshi was content to let lu guang just walk away without annoying him to stay. if they were close friends, I have no doubt either lu guang would have already made the decision to stay, or cheng xiaoshi would have endeared himself to him to stay. but in actuality, it's qiao ling that grabbed lu guang's attention and asked him to help around. if she hadn't said anything, lu guang really would have just walked past them.

if we are to believe that anime con really did happen after this scene, then that's just another point to them not being close friends yet until after the shop renovation. lu guang loves to read books. if he was a video game character, that would be one of his default idle animations. and I think if cheng xiaoshi was good friends with him, he would have already known that lu guang doesn't just read classic literature. he would have seen him reading his webnovels or manhua.

the reason I think they renovated the shop during university years (aside from what yingdu shows us): cheng xiaoshi's parents have been gone since at least 2008 (since he was worried they got caught in the earthquake). in S1E10, qiao ling's dad paid 10 years worth of rent for the time photo studio; after those 10 years are up, cheng xiaoshi was expected to "grow up" and then pay back the money, implying that he'll open the business by then. in YE1, qiao ling mentions this again about how cheng xiaoshi himself boasted to her dad that he would be self-reliant once he grows up. which means cheng xiaoshi opens the studio for business around 2018, 10 years after 2008, when he's 18, when he's in university (since he's 21 in 2021 during S1). his parents could have left earlier than 2008, which means cheng xiaoshi would open the studio earlier, but to me that seems unlikely. qiao ling's dad probably would rather that qiao ling and cheng xiaoshi start their business during university rather than high school, and 18 is a good age/milestone for someone to say they have "grown up" enough to start being self-reliant.

this is how I imagined the timeline. cheng xiaoshi after his parents left him (~2008 or before):

cheng xiaoshi in high school (his only friend is still just qiao ling; possibly he may have met lu guang, but they're not close yet for some reason). notably, his clothes here are different from his "child" clothes, but it's also not his "university" clothes.

cheng xiaoshi at 18, in university (renovating the photo studio with qiao ling. lu guang appears 5 minutes later and helps out). this should be around the beginning of summer, 2018:

but actually, I've got another time discrepancy for you. in S1, xu shanshan already graduated after two years of post-grad studies, which means our trio graduated from university two years ago (relative to S1 timeline). the photo that cheng xiaoshi dives into is xu shanshan's post-grad graduation dinner/karaoke, taken "the day before yesterday" or two days ago relative to the current time in S1E8. (there's something odd about this, but I'll come back to it later).

in any case, we see all three of them saying goodbye to xu shanshan and dong yi together, implying that they all graduated at the same time. S1 happened in 2021, so they should've graduated around... june-ish of 2019?

but in yingdu, they're still university students in 2019. lu guang just transferred and is even called a newbie at the anime club. but in S1, he was friends with cheng xiaoshi, qiao ling, xu shanshan, and dong yi throughout their university years, before graduation. they played games together in the lecture hall!

based on S1, I feel like the proper timeline should have been:

before may 2008: cheng xiaoshi's parents disappear

~2017 or early 2018: lu guang transfers to guidu university. assuming they're doing a three-year course, they should be second-year students at this time.

2018, april: basketball meet-cute at the tail end of the academic calendar. it's also possible the meet-cute happened in high school and they went to university together later, but that means either the shop was renovated during high school, or they weren't close friends in high school (they only seem to get closer after lu guang helps with the renovation), which to me seems unlikely. so for this timeline, we'll go with a university meet-cute.

2018, summer: cheng xiaoshi and qiao ling renovate the photo studio. lu guang walks by and helps out. anime con. vivian case. lu guang moves in with cheng xiaoshi at the photo studio. yingdu trip + doudou kidnapping case happen simultaneously. qiao ling sees 2021!cxs during a dive, which makes xu shanshan call lu guang while they're in their yingdu trip

2018, september: third year of university starts

2019, ~june: graduation from university. xu shanshan and dong yi pursue their masters degree.

2020: they continue doing their photo studio business, and gain enough of a reputation that they're talked about online and in their neighborhood (qiao ling is rumored to be an old witch). some of the chibi shorts probably happen during this year. life is good for shiguangling

2021: season one timeline. on april 8-12 someone profiles the trio in secret. emma dies on april 17. doudou case, xu shanshan case, and all of season 2 happen in october (except for the additional two months shiguang spent in the hospital recovering from their injuries afterwards, so S2 should end in around december-january).

hm, yeah, so something weird is going on. so what's actually happening in 2019? should they be graduating or should they be meeting for the first time? does doudou's kidnapping and their overseas trip happen? these all can't be happening in the same year... right?

the 2018 vs 2019 thing feels like one of those things that could be a continuity error or a retcon... but it's way too weird to retcon dates in a time traveling show. especially when certain dates are given important plot significance -- like lu guang's phone password in S2. link click has so many weird dates and times that don't make sense that it almost seems careless. is it deliberate, is it a mistake, or is time just broken in this show?

there are also some weird... timeline issues? in S1 itself. for example, the xu shanshan case happened in october. cheng xiaoshi dives into a two-day old photo from their graduation dinner/karaoke. but she should've graduated approximately around june. was it just a very late dinner...? (it looks like everyone in that room recently graduated, so this isn't a case of xu shanshan graduating late or anything). similarly, the emma case happened in april. but the mission qiao ling said was to get the data before the third quarter reports are released. fiscal years don't always align with the calendar year, but it looks like it does in china, so Q3 should be around july-september.

my initial theory was that maybe lu guang's watch is not as reliable as we think, especially since they like to blur out the dates sometimes in certain scenes. however, it does seem reliable enough. the date on his watched is synced with the surveillance monitor in the doudou case in S1, and also on the anime con board in YE1. here, it says june 10, 2019:

although... actually, there is one curious thing about that. in YE1, like you said, the year is hidden from us... at first. but they do start showing us the year after lu guang suggested doing a "divination" to find shen miaomiao.

it's blurred out the day before, when cheng xiaoshi visited the anime club. the date is june 09, unknown year.

it's also not shown at the beginning of the con, both from the con date board and lu guang's watch.

then, right after lu guang suggested doing a divination, they start showing the year on the con board. but... it's in a different style for some reason?

it could just be an animation error, but they show this style twice. and also, this episode has a lot of small differences as others have pointed out in other posts. for example: the blood pattern on the floor of the photo studio when cheng xiaoshi died, the photo frame where the glass is cracked vs completely broken, differences in lu guang's appearance in YE1 and S2 finale. individually, all of these could just be animation errors, especially since yingdu arc is made by a different studio iirc (same director though). but all of these continuity errors happening in one episode, in a time travel show? hmmm, don't know about that one

anyway, I feel like I strayed away from the original point lmao, but yeah. time is weird in link click. idk when anything is happening. I don't trust that we're actually in 2019. or rather, I don't trust that these events are supposed to be happening in 2019. something is very wrong here.

When the fuck is everything happening??? In 2018 (S1) or 2019 (Yingdu)?

Picking up from the discussion in the replies under @kuschelkissen’s post...

The year Doudou was kidnapped, Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi spent their summer* break abroad—we now know this trip was to Yingdu.

*Summer months in China are June-August

The kidnapping and the Yingdu trip happened 3 years before the events in season 1, which took place in 2021:

(Date and time on Lu Guang’s watch right before they first dived into the Doudou case: 2021-10-13, 14:30.)

Three years ago would be 2018—which means ShiGuang should’ve already met by then and grown close enough to be on a trip together. But as we’ve seen in YE1, Lu Guang hasn’t moved in with CXS yet by the end of the Anime Con, which was on June 10, 2019:

(Throughout YE1, this is the only frame of Lu Guang’s watch where the year, 2019, is not blurred out)

The Vivian case started right after…which means that ShiGuang establishing their partnership also happened later since that took place afterwarde. Notably, throughout the Vivian case, the date was never once shown. But it’s safe to assume that it started on the same day/the day after Anime Con.

So, summing it up so far, ShiGuang has not yet met/formed a partnership in 2018, which they should’ve already done to be able to go to Yingdu together, as implied in S1.

I tried to look for frames showing the actual year Doudou was kidnapped, but guess what I found instead:

Translation of relevant part:

He went missing at around 3 pm on 201X, X month, X day.

If the entire date was in Xs, I could’ve just brushed this off as a design choice to show that the actual date doesn’t matter. However, they purposely revealed 3 digits for the year, leaving only the rightmost digit hidden: 201X

The year being 2021 is prominent throughout season 1:

(see date on monitors)

The kidnapping case taking place three years ago was also mentioned several times. Doing the math is easy, so why still hide the 8 in 2018? Why not just have the entire year in Xs to make it uniform with the month and day?

Did the kidnapping and Yingdu trip actually happen in 2018? If yes, then ShiGuang meeting and partnership should’ve happened much earlier. It doesn’t align with what we’ve been shown in YE1 (partnership established some time after June 10, 2019).

There’s still room for the first meeting date actually taking place in 2018, since the year it happened was never shown. We can only infer that it took place on an April 11 from the date on Cheng Xiaoshi’s phone (April 12) and the text he sent (which uses the word ‘tomorrow’):

However, I’m gonna trust the directors’ scene order choices here. Let’s just assume Yingdu Chapter has ShiGuang first meeting on April 11, 2019.

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I’d like to think the confusion here over 2018 vs 2019 is simply due to an error in the anime. Maybe it’s actually just 2018. Or maybe they decided to change the kidnapping/yingdu trip to two years ago instead of three… But such discrepancy on a deliberate detail seems unlikely, especially for Link Click.

Did something happen that the events (first meeting and partnership establishment) are happening a year later than they’re supposed to be? Could Lu Guang be trying to prevent the Yingdu trip?

(Also, wasn’t it mentioned before that ShiGuang met in high school? Why is Lu Guang already a university freshman in the basketball match in Yingdu??? Why are he and CXS still wearing high school uniforms???)

I don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore