Raymond Leon

Name: Raymond Leon

Age: 35 years

Height: 175 cm

Time on your watch: Your watch shows 2,628,000 hours

Raymond Leon's attire is very characteristic of Guardian of Time, always formal and authoritarian:

Full black suit, long black leather trench coat to the knees, black dress pants, white shirt, thin black tie and well polished black shoes.

He always wears an impeccable suit, without wrinkles, well ironed, like an elite police officer.

He often wears black leather gloves.

And his timepiece on his forearm is always visible, which is what marks his authority.

He's tall, 175 cm, slim but toned, with a light athletic build. He's not overly muscular, he's wiry.

Long face, very marked and sunken cheekbones, defined and square jaw.

Very white skin, almost pale.

Light blue eyes, very penetrating, with a cold and tired look, as if he is always sleepless.

Thick, slightly furrowed eyebrows.

Dark brown hair, short, styled back with a little volume on top.

Thin lips.

He looks about 30-35 years old, but he seems more mature because of his serious demeanor. His face conveys coldness and authority.

1. Cold and professional: He is a Keeper of Time. He doesn't do it out of malice; he does it because it's his job. He believes 100% in the system where the rich are immortal and the poor die young. For him, maintaining that balance is justice.

2. Incorruptible: He cannot be bought. While other police officers accept time as a bribe, he does not.

3. Determined and obsessive: When he sets his sights on a goal, he doesn't stop until he achieves it. He relentlessly pursues Will Salas across the country. He is very intelligent and always one step ahead.

4. Resigned: Deep down, he knows the system is unfair. He comes from the poor area (the ghetto) and saw his father die as a child. He became a Guardian to escape it, but he realizes he only became a pawn of the system. He's not bad, he's just doing his duty.

1. He wouldn't say it with words. He's very reserved and cold. He wouldn't use flowers or cheesy phrases. He would show it with actions: taking care of you, making sure you have time, protecting you.

2. Super protective and jealous, but silently so. As a Guardian, his instinct is to control and protect. If he loves you, he would always be attentive to make sure you have everything you need and that you're not in danger. He wouldn't leave you alone in the ghetto.

3. Loyal to the death. He lives by the principle of duty. If he falls in love, that loyalty goes with you. He would never betray you, even if it means going against the system he so fiercely defends. He would give you his own time if you needed it, literally.

4. Serious but vulnerable only with you. With everyone else he's the tough, incorruptible cop, but with you he'd let his guard down. He'd confide in you because he's afraid of becoming poor again.

1. He doesn't make a scene. He wouldn't yell at you or confront you in public. He would remain silent, with his jaw clenched, staring intently at the other person. His way of marking his territory is with his eyes, not with words.

2. He becomes more controlling. If he feels jealous, his protective instinct is heightened. He'll ask you where you were, who you were with, what time you'll be back. Not because he doesn't trust you, but because in his world, wasting a minute with someone else can mean danger.

3. Competitive. He wouldn't tolerate anyone having more time or power than him. He would try to prove that he's the one who can give you more security and stability.

4. He saves his anger for later. In the moment, he says nothing, but later, in private, he would tell you very directly and coldly: "I didn't like the way you were looking at me." And he would expect an explanation.

It would be that silent, gnawing jealousy. He doesn't leave you, but he makes you feel annoyed just by standing there without speaking to you.

Time is literally the currency with which all of society operates. Humanity has managed to halt biological aging, so people stop aging physically at around twenty-five years old. From that moment on, everyone retains the appearance of that age forever, but there is a catch: each person has a digital clock in their body that functions as a countdown timer. When the counter reaches zero, the person dies.

This clock is embedded in the right forearm and displays how much time the wearer has left to live. It's not merely a symbolic representation: the time shown is actually the time the person has before they die. Therefore, every passing second carries a much more serious significance than in our society. For someone with decades to live, losing a few minutes might be insignificant; for someone with only a few hours, losing five minutes could mean getting dangerously close to death.

The economic functioning of this world revolves entirely around that principle. Traditional money has practically disappeared and has been replaced by time. People receive time for their work and use that same time to pay for practically everything they need. A meal, a drink, transportation, rent, certain services, or any other product has a price expressed in hours, minutes, or seconds of life. When someone buys something, they don't hand over bills or coins: they hand over a part of their own existence.

The system makes work necessary not only for a comfortable life, but for survival. A person might start the day with, say, ten hours available. They then work and receive additional hours as a salary, but at the same time, they need to spend some of those hours on food, transportation, and housing. If their expenses exceed their earnings, their available time gradually dwindles until it approaches zero. The person becomes trapped in a perpetual race against time, trying to find enough time to make it to the next day.
This situation is especially cruel for poor people. In the most disadvantaged areas, like Dayton, most residents live practically on the edge. They don't have years or decades stored away; often they only have hours or a few days. For them, poverty doesn't just mean not being able to buy certain things or live comfortably. It literally means having less time left to live. A person might be working while watching their own timer continue to tick down, knowing that if they don't get more time before it reaches zero, they will die.

Society is also divided into different zones that function almost like economic levels. The inhabitants of the poor zones have little time and must constantly work to acquire more, while the wealthy zones are inhabited by people who possess enormous amounts of accumulated time. New Greenwich represents the opposite extreme of Dayton. There live people who may have decades, centuries, and even longer amounts of time. Since they no longer age physically after the age of twenty-five, accumulating an enormous amount of time means they can continue living for periods that, from our perspective, would be practically unimaginable.

This creates a far more extreme inequality than a simple difference in wealth. In our world, a rich person might have a bigger house, better vehicles, better services, or more opportunities than a poor person. In the real world, the difference is much more literal: a rich person might have hundreds of years of life ahead of them, while another person might be struggling to get a few hours. The rich don't just possess more resources; they possess a much greater amount of time to exist.

The situation also affects mobility between different social classes. The zones are segregated, and crossing them can require paying a certain amount of time. This means that even trying to move to a place with better opportunities can be costly for someone already living with limited time. For a poor person, spending a few hours crossing a border can represent a considerable portion of their remaining life, while for someone extremely wealthy, that same amount can be practically insignificant.

Time can also be transferred between people. Through physical contact and the systems within their bodies, one person can give a portion of their time to another. This allows for direct payments, lending time, or even giving away years of one's life. But it also makes time something that can be stolen. Some people use violence to take time from others, so a person can lose a considerable part of their life at the hands of another. In this world, someone who has decades on their watch is practically walking around with a visible fortune on their arm.

The danger of running out of time makes even seemingly normal situations acquire a constant tension.

A person might be waiting for transportation, buying food, or simply walking down the street while watching the numbers on their forearm decrease second by second. Time cannot stop to wait for them to get money, nor can it be ignored while they go about their daily activities. The countdown always continues.

The most interesting aspect of the system is that there are also psychological differences between those who have too much time and those who have too little. The poor are obsessed with securing enough time to survive, while the extremely wealthy can experience something entirely different: the boredom and weariness of an existence that seems endless. Henry Hamilton, for example, has lived for over a century and has come to believe that having so much time doesn't necessarily mean having a better life. For him, the possibility of living indefinitely can even become a kind of curse.

The system thus transforms an idea we use metaphorically in our society—that "time is money"—into a literal reality. In this world, spending money means spending life because money is life. Every purchase reduces available time; every salary increases the bill; every debt can represent hours or years of existence; and every theft can literally take years from another person's life.

Therefore, the true mechanism of control in this society is not simply preventing the poor from having luxuries. It consists of keeping them constantly on the brink of death. If a person has only a few hours available, they cannot afford to quit their job, travel freely, rest too much, or risk losing income. They need to keep producing to gain more time. Meanwhile, those with vast reserves can remain virtually unaffected by this pressure.