Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Shut Up, Thief!

"Morning." Pei Shuo greeted, all energy and sunshine.

"Morning." Lin Jianyuan nodded.

Pei Shuo really was the sunny, upbeat type fresh out of college—bright-eyed at the crack of dawn, clearly someone who liked coming to work.

Lin Jianyuan went to his desk, fired up his computer, and began the day's work.

"Bro, I thought you had the day off," Pei Shuo said.

He snorted. "Do I look like I could rest? The second I take time off the group chat blows up with @mentions. Watch—now that I'm here, the company's dead quiet."

"Uh, sorry." Pei Shuo said guiltily. "About yesterday—"

"You're not the one at fault—it's that dumbass Jiang Chen. Don't worry about it. Want coffee?" Lin Jianyuan opened the delivery app.

Even though Lin Jianyuan told him not to worry, Pei Shuo insisted on buying the coffee.

Lin Jianyuan didn't press it. Before long the coffee arrived—and so did Qin Shi's data analysis report.

"Doing data analysis this early?" Lin Jianyuan asked casually. "It hasn't even been 24 hours."

Qin Shi: "It’s that dumbass Jiang Chen again..."

After Lin Jianyuan became notorious for the egg-pancake incident, everyone tacitly dubbed him "that dumbass Jiang Chen."

Lin Jianyuan glanced at the report—the numbers were fine; handing it to the client shouldn't be a problem—so he didn't ask further.

Half an hour later Qin Shi came back from Jiang Chen's office, clutching her face as if in pain. "Two pieces of bad news," he said. "You want the bad one first or the worse one?"

Lin Jianyuan: "I want to beat the crap out of Jiang Chen first."

Everyone laughed, but then reality set back in. Qin Shi said, "One: there's a meeting at noon—no, make that 12:30. Two: Jiang Chen says from now on we have to do an immediate debrief after every livestream."

The office immediately erupted in wails of misery, with constant shouts of "dumbass."

Pei Shuo: "Huh? Isn't that a bit much? We're exhausted after a livestream."

Lin Jianyuan turned his head and shot him a look.

Pei Shuo froze and, timidly, asked, "Did I say something wrong?"

"No." Lin Jianyuan said. "Just surprised you can still hold back from cursing—your standards need to be lowered."

Pei Shuo burst out laughing.

The resolve Lin Jianyuan had made that morning didn't hold. He'd assumed the morning would be light, but instead a mess of crap came rolling in.

As an old hand at the company, he was used to handling this sort of thing—it's just that the company's computers were hopelessly crappy.

Some internal programs lagged so badly that a click would freeze things for ages. At times like that Lin Jianyuan would pull out his phone to slack off for two seconds, but the whole morning got eaten by the junk system, and even his good temper wore thin.

Thinking about the noon meeting made him even hotter under the collar. He decisively unzipped his backpack and took out that little squishy fidget toy from the morning.

"Eh, what's that?" Pei Shuo leaned over, curiosity written all over his face as he looked at the thing being pinched and squeezed in Lin's hand.

Splat. The bouncy snail shell popped in Lin Jianyuan’s palm, its translucent body squeezed out between his fingers.

Lin Jianyuan: “Stress-relief toy.”

“It really is stress-relieving!” Pei Shuo said, delighted. “Bro, let me have a go!”

Lin Jianyuan handed it over. Pei Shuo squeezed it a few times, a face of pure satisfaction, and said cheerfully, “I’ll go pick one up myself sometime!”

Lin Jianyuan: “Buy something different—then we’ll take turns.”

Pei Shuo: “Hahaha, sure!”

Stress toys were office essentials, especially in a workplace overrun by fucking idiots.

The others in the office crowded over when they saw the squishy snail, squeezing it so it splatted apart, then watching it snap back to shape with incredible spring. The bouncy, soft feel was utterly addictive.

After everyone had taken a turn, the snail ended up back in Lin Jianyuan’s hand.

One hand on the mouse, the other kneading the stress toy, he worked and de-stressed at the same time—like someone dipping in and out of a pool.

Snail: “……”

In the blink of an eye it was noon. Lin Jianyuan felt like he’d done nothing. An entire morning was gone.

They wolfed down lunch and, still full of resentment, filed back into the conference room. Jiang Chen, on the other hand, looked raring to go and said brightly, “I know everyone’s busy today, so I’ll just croak a few words. I was—croak—chatting with a friend the other day…”

That friend-related opener—“just a few words”—dragged on for a full twenty minutes.

Stripped of their lunch break, the group oscillated between blazing fury and stupefying exhaustion until the conference room felt like a sea of dazed, glazed-over faces.

And in Lin Jianyuan’s mind, that sea was teeming with frogs.

After slogging through the opener, the meeting finally hit the main topic.

Jiang Chen said, “…so I plan to learn from the experience over on their side; from now on, after each livestream—croak—wraps up, within an hour we’ll run an immediate—croak—review. We’ll approach it from two angles—core metrics rapid—croak—and anomaly signal capture—aiming to catch the traffic-to-conversion funnel, identify—croak—drops in traffic and how they match up with orders, using that as a lever to provide—croak—strong data support for precise future livestream strategies. At the same time we need to strengthen cross-departmental coordinated combat capability—marketing—croak—operations—croak—tech—croak—and so—croak—on—croak—seamlessly; information flow absolutely must be croak-croak and croak-croak to avoid croak-croak islands…”

Splat.

Lin Jianyuan couldn’t hold back his primitive fury. His fingers trembled from gripping the squishy toy so hard.

Snail: “………………”

Frogs crawled everywhere in his head; Jiang Chen kept on croaking. The whole meeting room was nearly filled with croaks.

Lin Jianyuan felt like a balloon in his chest was about to burst. He sucked in a breath, rolled his eyes up at the ceiling, and clenched the stress toy until his knuckles hurt.

Goddamn it! It’s already 12:50! Even if that fucking idiot Jiang Chen shut up and went on lunch now, he’d only have ten minutes left! What the hell can you do in ten minutes?

Fuck! Every damn time the meeting starts at 12:30! Goddammit—what the actual fuck! He has to spew his bullshit during lunch? Would it kill him to hold meetings during normal hours? He should have his mouth sewn shut!!!

First shove a hundred and eighty goddamn frogs into his mouth and then sew it shut!

Put up or shut up. Boiling with rage and suddenly galvanized into action, Lin Jianyuan slammed the table and leapt to his feet—only to hear a scream from his palm.

“Noooo, I’m really going to explode, help—!”

Lin Jianyuan: “?”

By now Lin Jianyuan had already slammed the table and stood up; everyone jumped at the shock of his furious outburst.

Those who'd been half out of it snapped awake; even Jiang Chen, dumbfounded, was forced to stop and stare at him.

“Lin Jianyuan, w-what are you going to do?” Jiang Chen stammered, sounding scared and intimidated.

Lin Jianyuan ignored Jiang Chen, frowning as he stared at his palm.

The squeeze toy he had flattened with a slap in his palm was wobbling and returning to its original shape.

The snail-shaped squishy popped up in his hand with a wet wobble, its two antennae trembling like springs, its mouth flattened as it whimpered, “Don’t squeeze me, don’t squeeze me, you’re really going to squish me! I give up, I confess! I am Time Thief, skilled at breathing in and out time. Just promise you won’t—”

Why the hell does a little squishy toy have so much damn nonsense to say!

Fuming, Lin Jianyuan flung it to the floor and stomped on it.

“Ah!—” The squishy’s negotiation was cut short mid-sentence as it was crushed under Lin Jianyuan’s shoe, issuing a strangely lilting, tortured wail beneath his sole.

“L-Lin Jianyuan?” Jiang Chen’s voice began to tremble. “What are you doing now?”

Furious, Lin Jianyuan shot Jiang Chen a glare. Jiang Chen went silent instantly, waving his hands frantically to signal, “Keep going.”

Lin Jianyuan ground the squishy hard under his shoe and, in a casual tone, said, “It’s fine. You keep going too.”

The corner of Jiang Chen’s mouth twitched. With Lin Jianyuan having a breakdown right there, how could he possibly continue the meeting?! He could only wave his hand and say, “Alright, let’s end it here for today. Looks like everyone’s tired...”

Before Jiang Chen finished, Lin Jianyuan had already strode out of the conference room leading the way.

Pei Shuo hurried to follow. Seeing that, everyone else also left with brisk steps. Qin Shi even genuinely chimed, “Thanks, Boss Jiang! You’re so considerate!”

Jiang Chen: “……”

Jiang Chen’s fuss had completely ruined the lunch break. Lin Jianyuan returned to his desk, seething, and continued working.

“Bro, don’t be mad, I’ll tell you a joke,” Pei Shuo sidled over, smiling as he whispered, “Isn’t Boss Jiang the one who told HR to be strict about attendance? Well, this morning he was late. His punch card was exactly one second late, and the OA system automatically issued a public reprimand this morning—hahahaha...”

The whole reason Jiang Chen made people watch attendance was because he lived close by himself.

His home was a five-minute walk from the office, so of course he could always be on time. The obvious reason he was late this morning was that he hadn’t slept at his own place last night.

And on top of that, Pei Shuo had taken his car.

Lin Jianyuan’s mouth twitched; his mood lightened a bit.

But work is work. Who doesn’t go a little crazy at work?

At the thought of being forced to work through lunch for a meeting with no overtime pay, Lin Jianyuan got even angrier.

No way—he had to go and get it back!

Lin Jianyuan stood up decisively and pushed open the conference room door. The room looked exactly as they’d left it: frogs everywhere, croak croak croak. If you weren’t careful one could hop right onto the top of your foot.

He pulled out a bag and was about to scoop them up when a long, skyward howl rose from the corner.

"Waaah—why is my life so miserable—waaah waaah—"

The sound set Lin Jianyuan’s temper blazing again; he stormed to the corner and, forcing himself to be patient, said, "I'll give you three seconds. Three, two—"

"Ah? Ahhh?" The crying stopped mid-wail as the snail squishy looked up in a panic. "What three-two-one? What do you want me to do? Say it first—tell me what you want me to—waaah—!"

Lin Jianyuan's patience snapped; with a smack he stamped down on it again.

"No, what exactly do you want me to do? I'll cooperate! I'll cooperate!"

Smack!

Smack-smack-smack!

One minute later.

Lin Jianyuan picked up the snail, returned to his workstation, and went back to work. He clicked the mouse twice and the company intranet started spinning its loading circle again.

He casually tossed the flattened squishy onto his desk and said, "Get to work."

"Okay, hic." The snail sobbed, hauling its battered body as it began its shift.

This thing claimed it could swallow and exhale time. It could eat time so people felt it vanished in the blink of an eye. It could also spit the time back out, stretching a single second into several that you could use.

Right. My hallucination sure has an imagination.

Lin Jianyuan thought. No surprise—it's a creature that lives on creativity.

Maybe it was just psychosomatic, but once the Squishy Thief started working, Lin Jianyuan’s computer really did stop freezing.

"I call myself Time Thief, not 'Squishy Thief'...!" the Squishy Thief protested indignantly. "And why 'Squishy Thief'?! I steal time! I steal the flow of years! I steal the most precious thing you humans have! Calling me that makes it sound like all I steal are squishies! That’s so tacky! So degrading, aaahhh!"

True. "Squishy Thief" was quite a mouthful.

Lin Jianyuan: "Shut up. You're so annoying, thief."

Thief: "..."