Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Tongue-Tip Suppression

Another lovely weekend had come to an end.

Lin Jianyuan wondered if it was because he had skipped the weekly deep cleaning; whatever the reason, he felt especially well-rested this weekend.

He’d slept plenty, and his body felt brimming with energy.

But as soon as he clocked in, the drowsiness hit.

The company seemed to emanate a peculiar aura—no matter how refreshed he might have felt at home, his spirits wilted the moment he walked in, thick with loathing for work.

Today was no different. Lin Jianyuan had barely stepped into the office when Su Zhiwei’s frantic voice rang out.

“Argh, why is the printer broken again?!”

Su Zhiwei clutched his head and gave the printer two sharp thumps with his fists.

Passing by, Lin Jianyuan said casually, “Try restarting it.”

“I did!”

“Did you open up the top?”

“Already did that too!”

Lin Jianyuan reached out and touched the printer, only to find it burning hot. Puzzled, he said, “How much have you printed? The damn thing’s about to start shooting out sparks. Why are you working so hard this early—want to drop dead at your desk?”

“No! It wasn’t that much!” Su Zhiwei was practically tearing his hair out. “Never mind—let me use your computer instead!”

Lin Jianyuan stepped aside without hesitation.

Maybe Su Zhiwei’s luck was just that rotten today, but when he switched to Lin Jianyuan’s printer—bam! The paper jammed on the second sheet.

The indicator light went red, blinking furiously like an alarm.

“Argh!” wailed Su Zhiwei.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at the frazzled Su Zhiwei and asked, “What are you trying to print? Is it urgent?”

“Urgent, urgent, I’m dying here! It’s the project for NFC Apple Juice! I clearly sorted all the materials and put them in the drawer last Friday—but now they’re gone! No idea what happened! I need them for the meeting at nine-thirty! What the hell am I going to do?!”

Su Zhiwei was flailing like an ant on a hot pan.

“Try my computer!” Qin Shi stood up.

Su Zhiwei hurriedly yanked out his USB drive and rushed over to Qin Shi. Fortunately, the prints came out perfectly this time.

As the printer spat out page after page, Su Zhiwei finally let out a sigh of relief.

But Lin Jianyuan was puzzled. “Did you lock your drawer? No one should be touching your stuff in there, right?”

“Exactly! Ugh, whatever, anyway…”

Everyone was waiting for the punchline to his ‘anyway,’ but he trailed off, words suddenly stuck in his throat.

“Anyway, what?”

Su Zhiwei blinked in bewilderment, a blank look on his face. After a moment, he scratched his head. “Wait… what was I about to say?”

Qin Shi laughed. “How should we know?”

“Forget it, must not have been important if I can’t remember. I’ll say it if it comes back to me.” Muttering, Su Zhiwei quickly stapled the printed documents together. “Thanks, Qin Shi.”

Everyone returned to their desks and got back to work.

Lin Jianyuan soon found himself swamped. As he worked, he started to feel a dull ache in his stomach and realized a bit late that he hadn’t eaten breakfast.

It wasn’t convenient for Lin Jianyuan to buy breakfast on the way to work—the subway was far too crowded; never mind eating, even carrying a breakfast bag would risk its annihilation in the crush.

So he’d simply never gotten into the habit.

Only recently had he started eating breakfast now and then—but not today.

No wonder he was starving. Lin Jianyuan decided to hunt something down.

Just then, he noticed the empty office chair beside his workstation, and something sparked in his mind.

That’s right—Pei Shuo!

Why hadn’t Pei Shuo shown up today? The guy hadn’t even told him he’d be out.

Could something have happened on his way to work?

Lin Jianyuan turned to the others. “By the way, have any of you seen—” Before he could finish, his stomach let out a loud, rumbling growl.

In the quiet office, the sound stood out like a klaxon.

Qin Shi at the next desk heard it, and chuckled helplessly. “Skipped breakfast again? I’ve got some crackers—want some?”

“Yes, thanks—a lifesaver.” Stomach aching, Lin Jianyuan took the packet of soda crackers.

He tore open the wrapping and started chewing before he could even think.

He’d barely taken two bites before more work arrived.

“Lin Jianyuan! Get up here for a sec!” Jiang Chen bellowed from upstairs.

Lin Jianyuan had no choice but to put down his crackers and deal with that idiot Jiang Chen.

Dealing with Jiang Chen turned into a time sink; before he knew it, a good while had passed.

By the time Lin Jianyuan finished, his hunger was gone, but now his stomach began to throb dully.

Probably pushed past hunger. As lunchtime approached and he considered sneaking out early, he saw Yu Xiuli striding over, frowning.

“Lin Jianyuan, eating breakfast during work hours. Fifty yuan deduction,” Yu Xiuli declared.

Lin Jianyuan bristled. “Crackers count as breakfast?!”

“Of course it counts. It’s work hours, you shouldn’t be eating anything now!”

“So if I pass out from low blood sugar, whose fault is that?”

Yu Xiuli looked him up and down and sneered, “You? Low blood sugar? You’re a strapping young man! Are you here to work or to have morning tea? If you get hypoglycemic from missing one breakfast, you should go see a doctor. Maybe try some herbal medicine to fix that up!”

In a flash, Lin Jianyuan understood.

Yu Xiuli was targeting him, plain and simple! It had to be payback from the last time they fought over the air conditioning—now she was just looking for an excuse to screw him over.

Anyone else might have swallowed it and let it go, but who was he?

He was a lunatic!

Right then and there, Lin Jianyuan pulled out his squish toy.

The squish toy quivered with excitement. “Are we doing it? We’re really doing it? My favorite—face-slapping justice! Tell me, Lin Jianyuan! How much time do you want me to steal from her? How many years do you want her to age at once?”

“Half an hour.”

“Huh??” The squish toy was incredulous. “Did I hear that right? Come on, Lin Jianyuan, don’t hold back. With a bitch like her—”

Smack.

Out of patience, Lin Jianyuan grabbed the squish toy and hurled it straight at Yu Xiuli!

The snail-shaped squish toy traced a graceful arc through the air, its springy antennae boinging wildly.

At the same time, it let out a high-pitched screech:

“Why am I always the one who gets hurt—aaagh!”

The moment the squish toy hit Yu Xiuli, the world in her eyes started to race.

Seizing the opportunity, Lin Jianyuan began to scarf down soda crackers at lightning speed.

Little Stone: “?”

Everyone else: “??”

The squish toy wailed, “What the hell is wrong with you, Lin Jianyuan! You threw me out to freeze her in time for half an hour just so you could eat crackers?! Can’t you have a little ambition!?”

Lin Jianyuan didn’t reply—he just kept chewing.

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.

Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.

Gulp.

The whole bag was demolished.

The squish toy snapped back. Time flowed again.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at his phone. “Three seconds.”

Yu Xiuli frowned. “What three seconds?”

“I finished an entire bag of crackers in three seconds. Meanwhile, you’ve been yapping at me for three minutes. So who’s really wasting company time here? Who’s wasting company money?”

Yu Xiuli: “…”

The crowd: “He’s got a point…”

The squish toy snapped, “That’s total bullshit!”

While the others tried to figure out how Lin Jianyuan had wolfed down an entire bag of crackers in three seconds and the squish toy wondered how it, an A-class Aberrant, had ended up stuck stealing time so its host could munch snacks…

Little Stone suddenly piped up. “Don’t you all think that…”

Squish toy: “What?”

Little Stone: “…Wait, what was I going to say?”

Squish toy snapped, “If you’ve got something to say, spit it out!”

But Lin Jianyuan suddenly looked up.

Squish toy grumbled, “Keep dithering and Lin Jianyuan’s going to smack you!”

Little Stone whimpered, “But I honestly can’t remember what I wanted to say!”

The squish toy exploded, “Did you rush out so fast this morning you left your brain on the subway?!”

The squish toy was about to die of exasperation, but thinking how the madman would be even angrier, it secretly started to look forward to the chaos.

Unexpectedly, though, Lin Jianyuan didn’t get angry.

He simply returned to his workstation, looking pensive.

Yu Xiuli gave a massive eye-roll but saw there was no dealing with this lunatic.

The office settled back into its usual rhythm, with the sounds of keyboards and mouse clicks rising and falling as everyone turned back to their work.

In the blink of an eye, it was noon.

Everyone else stood and trickled off to the cafeteria, but Lin Jianyuan waved them off, signaling he’d stay behind.

His stomach was still unsettled, a queasy feeling hanging over him, the urge to vomit but nothing coming up.

For some reason, he’d been abnormally busy that morning. He hadn’t felt so out of sorts in ages—rushed, scatterbrained, with the nagging sense he’d left something unfinished.

He wracked his brain, but couldn’t remember what he’d missed.

The feeling was maddening.

Maybe I’m just tired…

Damn, first day back and I’m already worn out. This fucking job is intolerable.

Seething, Lin Jianyuan slumped over his desk, planning to catch a quick nap.

He was alone in the office now, all the workstations silent, the only movement the red ribbon fluttering gently from the air vent.

The Eye Vines, creeping thickly along the walls, swayed in slow motion.

Suddenly, the power indicator of a computer blinked on and off.

Right after, the printer whirred to life all on its own.

Click.

Lin Jianyuan’s head shot up.

Across from him, at an empty desk, the printer had started working by itself.

The rollers pulled in pristine A4 sheets, clattering first as if printing, then ejecting them from the top tray.

But what came out was still blank. Not a trace of ink.

Lin Jianyuan: “?”

The printer’s gone sentient?

And it's doing pointless overtime, right out in the open?

Fine, fine, so devoted, are you?

Face dark, Lin Jianyuan strode over and flipped the lid open!

Snap—the printer’s top cover popped off.

The A4 paper stopped in its tracks.

He trudged back to his desk and put his head down again.

Click.

The mechanical plastic sound echoed again.

Startled, Lin Jianyuan looked up—and saw something completely beyond reason.

The printer, with its top lid wide open, had started printing all over again.

It took in blank sheets and spit out more blank sheets.

Page after snowy page flurried out, as if inscribed with some invisible human curse. The plastic gears clattered, an uncanny and sinister rhythm echoing through the office.

“Something’s not right, something’s way off,” the squish toy said, suddenly alert. “Off-the-charts not right!”

“Lin Jianyuan, what are you doing?” Little Stone said nervously. “Be careful!”

Lin Jianyuan kicked back his chair in a fury and shot to his feet!

God damn this idiot printer! Printing, printing during my break—noisy as hell, how is anyone supposed to get any rest around here!

He stormed to the printer, yanked out the power cord, tore out the ink cartridge, and emptied every last A4 sheet from every slot and tray!

The printer, gutted on the spot: “?”

Now an empty shell, the printer finally went silent.

Lin Jianyuan, still simmering, was about to return to his desk when something on the computer screen caught his eye.

His eyelid twitched.

It was a computer with an infamously messy desktop. Every PDF, Word, and Excel file lay scattered there, so packed together it made a person dizzy just to look at it.

Yet Su Zhiwei always insisted this was more convenient.

Lin Jianyuan remembered clearly—earlier that morning, Su Zhiwei had been a frazzled mess searching for something. A crucial file had gone missing.

He’d printed it out and stored it in his locked drawer, but the paper version had simply vanished.

He’d tried to reprint, only to find the source file had gone missing too, panicking as everyone else roasted him: Serves you right for keeping such a chaotic desktop!

But after ribbing him, everyone had pitched in and cobbled the documents back together, just in time for the nine-thirty meeting.

Afterward, all that was left was to incorporate the feedback and send the final version to the client.

But now—

Lin Jianyuan stared at the glaring blank space on the chaotic desktop.

The file was gone again.

He opened the recycle bin. Nothing.

Checked his WeChat, tapped file assistant. Still nothing.

Just then, the others returned from lunch, Su Zhiwei chatting and laughing with them. Spotting Lin Jianyuan at his desk, he looked puzzled. “What are you doing over here, Lin Jianyuan?”

“That doc from this morning—did you make a backup?”

“What file?”

Lin Jianyuan’s patience snapped. “The one you couldn’t find this morning, freaked out about, and Qin Shi and I practically broke our necks helping you reconstruct—”

He didn’t finish.

Because both Su Zhiwei and Qin Shi wore the same blank, baffled expression.

Su Zhiwei: “What are you talking about?”

Qin Shi: “Yeah, maybe you’re remembering wrong? I was in the weeds all morning, and so were you—when would we have helped him with his files?”

Lin Jianyuan suddenly felt as if someone had hollowed out a chunk of his brain.

Unable to stop himself, he looked at the printer—its lid flipped open, ink cartridge removed, its insides eerily empty, like a gaping mouth mocking him.

Something rose in his throat; fighting a wave of dizziness and nausea, he finally remembered the question he’d tried and failed to ask all morning—

“Where’s Pei Shuo? Why didn’t Pei Shuo show up for work today?”

At those words, everyone in the office looked at each other in confusion.

Su Zhiwei, Qin Shi, and the other old hands all wore puzzled, anxious faces.

Then, cautiously, someone asked—

“Who’s Pei Shuo?”