One Clear Day

A primary school weather board has not said RAIN for 4,748 days. Pull the water-damaged originals and find out why.

A dawn-redwood board hangs in the gatehouse window of Bailu Primary. One character on each face: CLEAR, RAIN. At 7:50 every morning the duty pupil turns it to the day's weather and signs the roster. Since 1998, not one morning has been missed. Only one thing is wrong: since 12 July 2013, that board has not been turned to RAIN for 4,748 days in a row. You come back to find out why. Every original you pull darkens another part of the site for good, and at the end of it one square on the roster is still blank. Whoever signs it serves that one day. One day only.

A place ordinary enough to be boring

The container is not a dungeon or a spaceship. It is the website of a small primary school's weather corner: duty rules pinned in the gatehouse, handwritten rosters, a blue umbrella nobody has collected from lost property, the school calendar, a guestbook, a rain gauge, equipment registers. The first two acts are warm throughout — a crayon plane tree, a parent's thank-you note, a teacher's reminder about a child who forgot their umbrella.

The question is small: why has it not rained here in thirteen years? Following it leads to a log book with one word written over another, a struck-out line on a commendation notice, a roster recopied every year, and a line carved into the back of the wooden board in 1998.

This is a standalone world. It shares no characters or settings with our other titles, and nothing here assumes you have played them.

Two worlds: bright, then dark, with no transition

The first two acts are a sheet pinned to a noticeboard in daylight: grey wall, blue-black ink, square corners, sans-serif headings, vermilion kept for dates and stamps. The first time you pull an original in Act Three, the whole site cuts — one frame of pure black, then the rain-lit night room: blue-black dark, one breathing red duty lamp, water stains and bleeding ink on the paper. No fade, no warning, no way back.

Each further pull darkens another part of it for good, across seven levels. Go back to the daylight pages of Act One afterwards and they are already wet: record cards switch to the water-damaged text written for that same record, and the home page, guestbook and photographs all switch to the same objects after the water got in. These are not a second set of illustrations. They are the same things, changed.

That is the point of the game. The daylight was never a backdrop. Somebody spent thirteen years papering over one night, a page at a time. You are the one getting those pages wet.

How to play: read, search, turn, sign

Read the five pages and type a word you remember into the search box; names, dates, objects and numbers all work. "To look up" chips under each card fill the box for you, and three tiers of hints are available. No technical knowledge is needed.

Each case ends with a choice between CLEAR and RAIN. The board has only two faces (rule two: overcast counts as clear, snow as rain), and the right face comes from evidence rather than a moral judgement. A wrong face gives a line of reply and can be tried again; nothing is taken away. Four squares in the first two acts are CLEAR, six in the last two are RAIN.

There are six pulls, exactly matching the six RAIN squares. They are not returned, but running out cannot dead-end the game. After all ten comes the signing: a pencil, one day, four choices.

The one day is not a gift from nowhere

Low on the back of the board, a line was scored with a knife in 1998: "The 12 July square on the duty roster is blank. Whoever signs it serves that one day. One day only." Rule seven ("the board must never be left blank") and rule three ("no square may be left blank") came from the same hand. The blank square was left for somebody to come back and fill.

The four endings — rewind, rewrite, keep things as they were, and a hidden option that only appears if you find a leave form that was never handed in — are four ways of spending that day, and all four cost something. The game does not say which is the good one, and this page reveals none of their text.

Checking the numbers

42 records, 10 cases (4 CLEAR, 6 RAIN), 4 acts at 1·3·4·2, 6 pulls, 4 endings and 19 images are all computed from clear-day/src/data/. The streak of 4,748 is 13 × 365 + 3 leap days (2016, 2020, 2024), from 12 July 2013 to 12 July 2026. The 68 mm of rain that night, the 47-minute district outage at 23:41 and the 21 cm of water in the switch room can each be found in the weather log, the night log and the site note.

To check them yourself, read the ten cases in order: each square gives the reason for its own face on the page, so nothing has to be guessed. The 4,748 turns up three times — on the printed sheet in the window, in the row upon row of CLEAR squares in the rosters, and in the date carved on the back of the board — and all three agree. Once all ten are turned, the roster and the back of the board corroborate each other.

Content and image notice

All people, the school, its address and the events here are fiction, unrelated to any real school, institution or person. All 19 in-game images are AI-generated fictional images, not gameplay captures. The eight screenshots on this page come from a browser and are labelled separately from the illustration.

The game contains mild unsettling atmosphere: rain at night, water damage, an emergency lamp, altered old records. There are no jump scares, no gore, and nothing that requires sign-in, payment or a rewarded ad. Progress lives in localStorage on this device only.

Questions

Do I need to download or sign up?
No. Open it in a browser. Progress saves on your device and the game asks for no identity information.

Are there ads?
This site loads the same Google AdSense script as our home site. There are no pop-ups, no rewarded ads and no purchases.

Will this page spoil it?
It covers the setting, the mechanics, verifiable figures and the types of ending. No solution and no ending text.

Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The layout reflows for narrow screens and nothing depends on a mouse.

Will I lose progress if I close the tab?
No, the save is local. Clearing browser data or changing device will lose it; no copy exists on a server.

Is the English version complete?
Yes. The interface and all 42 records have English text; enter at /en/.

Is there a walkthrough?
Yes. A complete walkthrough in the deep dives lists the search term and correct board face for all ten cases, in both Chinese and English.

Turn the board — Runs on its own subdomain · no timer · progress stays on this device