Chapter 382: He Really Has a Problem

Now that he understood why he was about to be fired, Duan Fei felt the difficulty of this instance ratcheting up.

It was safe to say the entire company was against him, wanting him gone as soon as possible.

Just dealing with the bald manager wasn’t enough. After that, there was HR, and other executives. The thought alone was thrilling.

Back at his workstation, Duan Fei started thinking about what to do next when he suddenly saw a woman being led to him by two security guards.

“Employee 9521, you are being terminated for leaking company secrets. Please leave company premises within fifteen minutes.”

‘A new event, huh.’

Glancing at the clock on his desk, Duan Fei saw it was 9:27 PM.

Everything around him began to distort as time started to rewind.

During this process, however, he heard the system’s voice ring in his ear.

“You have successfully held on for an hour. You are getting closer and closer to victory. God has closed all the doors for you, but you at least have a Crowbar and a small reward. You can allow one instance NPC to retain all memories from the previous loop. Who will you choose?”

‘So there’s a feature like this. It seems the rewards are based on how long I hold out. I get it.’

In the darkness, Duan Fei didn’t think for long before selecting the NPC whose memory would be preserved.

The bald manager.

After he made his choice, everything began to rapidly reverse, eventually returning him to the bathroom.

Pushing the door open, he didn’t rush back to his workstation as before. Instead, he walked into the manager’s office and saw the bald manager curled up in his chair, trembling.

Seeing Duan Fei enter, he yelled desperately, “What did you do!”

“It’s your reward.”

“I don’t want this kind of reward! I know this is your trick, trapping me in an eternally repeating time to torture me slowly! I don’t want it!”

“Your imagination is a bit too wild. I’m not that powerful.”

“You’re lying to me! This is a Demon’s lie!”

The bald manager had already descended into a panic. No matter what Duan Fei said, the man wouldn’t believe him.

In fact, the more Duan Fei tried to clarify, the more stubborn the bald manager became. The whole scene became exceptionally chaotic and took a long time to calm down.

Panting as he stared at Duan Fei, the bald manager clutched his head and said, “What must I do for you to spare my soul?”

“I haven’t taken your soul.”

“You mean, you want my body too?! Demon, just how much do you want to squeeze out of me?”

Seeing the man was about to have another breakdown, Duan Fei had no choice but to say, “Alright, I’m not a being of this world. Satisfied?”

“Mmm.”

“And I’m not interested in your soul. My request is simple: just don’t let me get fired.”

“Demons need to work too?”

“What do you think? The biggest workaholics are Demons, and the most overworked among Demons are Succubi. Every Succubus has to work gigs in five different adult manga. Compared to them, you guys aren’t even demon-scum.”

The bald manager swallowed hard, feeling that life in Hell sounded terrifying.

Rubbing his bald head back and forth, he finally managed to calm himself down and asked, “So as long as I don’t let you get fired, that’ll be enough, right?”

“Yes. And please note, I don’t lie.”

“…A Demon’s habit, always using sincerity to disguise lies. Even though I’m assisting you now, don’t think you’ll ever have my true loyalty.”

“Why would I want something that disgusting?”

Rejected so bluntly by Duan Fei, the bald manager felt a little hurt.

After confirming their cooperation, the bald manager said, “Like I said before, as long as you make it past midnight, the company will have no choice but to sign a permanent contract with you. I suggest you rest here and just wait it out until twelve.”

“There might be a problem. At 9:27, HR will fire me for leaking company secrets.”

“Did you call a senior executive a fucking idiot?” the bald manager asked with a frown.

“That’s considered a secret?”

“That’s true, any random person on the street knows that. My computer has access privileges. You can check your own recent communication logs and look for anything suspicious. If a log has been viewed multiple times, it means HR has already seen it.”

“Mmm, understood.”

“Alright, I have to get ready for a meeting. I actually have to kiss that idiot Goldman Sachs’s ass again in a bit. It’s disgusting just thinking about it.”

“Good luck with that.”

After sending the bald manager off to his meeting, Duan Fei cracked his knuckles and began to check the history logs.

It was now 8:15. There was still over an hour until HR would arrive.

Although Duan Fei could use his rewind ability an infinite number of times, real-world time was not infinite.

Therefore, he had to obtain as much information as possible within a limited time to reach the goal of not being fired.

Following the bald manager’s suggestion, Duan Fei looked through “his” communications from this period, growing more alarmed the more he read.

There was nothing wrong with Employee 9521; the problem was the company’s practices.

Working over fourteen hours a day was the norm, yet the company had employees clock out at 6 PM every evening to avoid paying overtime.

Employees had to install company surveillance software on their phones. Even during their personal time, all their chat content was recorded.

According to 9521’s chat logs, Duan Fei discovered that “he” had gone a record eighteen days without going home, basically living and eating at the company.

Moreover, he had no family; his parents had passed away. It seemed he had a lover, but their last conversation was in January of last year. Their final exchange was: “So tired. Let’s go get our marriage license when we get a holiday.”

The other person’s reply was: “Okay.”

And yet, more than a year had passed since that “Okay.”

Sighing, Duan Fei found the dates with the highest number of views and began to investigate them in detail.

These dates were all clustered around a week ago, spanning three consecutive days.

The chat content from those three days seemed normal at first glance, but the number of views was like a hint, telling Duan Fei that there was definitely something wrong with those days.

After going over the content of those three days repeatedly, Duan Fei suddenly had an idea. He picked up the phone and started searching through its photos.

Finding the photos from those three days, Duan Fei looked at them carefully for a while and discovered that there happened to be a large number of photos stored on the phone.

These photos also looked ordinary, but some of them had, intentionally or unintentionally, captured some numbers.

He wrote down these numbers on a piece of paper in chronological order. Then, Duan Fei reopened the chat logs for those three days. Using the numbers, he extracted the messages Employee 9521 had received in a specific sequence and finally saw the true content.

“We will make our move in seven days, at the stroke of midnight. Awaiting your response. -Kim.”

Having solved the puzzle, Duan Fei let out a long sigh of relief.

‘I thought Employee 9521 was framed, but it turns out he really is up to something!’

‘Not bad, kid. Not bad at all!’