Even the Dead Can’t Clock Out

Person in charge: “You’re an adult with a job. Dignity is important. How can a
working professional not care about face?”

Su Lai: “Why would I need face when I’m already working? Having face costs
extra.” “You’d have to pay me more.”

[……] The person in charge had never encountered such a thorny employee. They
fell silent on the other end of the walkie-talkie.

Su Lai simply pressed the button to end the call. Wanting him to pay to work?
Dream on.

But just as Su Lai was slowing down the flow of time by slacking off, the
irritating sound of dripping started again.

This was the third time. The break room faucet kept leaking, making the already
impossible patrol task even worse.

The patrol rules mentioned: if you encounter an unhandleable situation, press
the button on the walkie-talkie. A broken faucet needed to be handled by the
company’s admin and maintenance staff. He was just a security guard. No need to
do other colleagues’ work for them.

Su Lai pressed the walkie-talkie button again. The familiar crackle came
through——

[Have you considered purchasing the new employee extension service to extend
this patrol time?] The person in charge’s tone carried a smugness that said, “I
knew you’d regret it.”

Su Lai’s tone was business-like. “I’m here to submit a repair request. The
faucet in the 11th floor break room is broken. I’ve tightened it several times,
and it’s still dripping.”

[Hello? What did you say? What’s broken? The signal’s bad here, I can’t hear you
clearly…]

Su Lai: “The faucet in the 11th floor break room is broken. Please send a
professional to fix it immediately.”

[Hello? What’s broken? Figure it out yourself… The signal’s bad here… Can’t hear
you, I’ll hang up now… Crackle…]

That last “crackle” was simulated by a human voice.

No deal, no kindness. The person in charge, to pass the buck, simply pretended
to have a bad signal and turned off the walkie-talkie. This matched Su Lai’s
stereotype of the building’s person in charge perfectly.

Su Lai rolled up his sleeves and headed back to the break room, planning to just
turn off the main water valve. The constant leaking wasn’t good.

The patrol rules only required the patrolling personnel to tighten the leaking
faucet. They didn’t say he couldn’t turn off the main valve.

Su Lai returned to the break room. The dim, flickering lights began to flash.
The unplugged water cooler emitted a faint humming sound. The previously off
indicator light also started glowing intermittently, as if someone had pressed a
start button.

The entire 11th floor was empty. No employees, no boss. Who would be using the
water cooler? The damp red carpet absorbed all sounds. Su Lai looked around but
saw no suspicious footprints.

“Drip.” The faucet stood crookedly above the sink. It was already tightened. The
dripping sound wasn’t coming from it.

“Drip——” Su Lai followed the sound. A crimson trail spread across the stained
ceiling. The color was bright, obviously freshly stained. It starkly contrasted
with the dark, oppressive break room.

The surrounding dampness grew stronger, permeated with the smell of blood.

Su Lai shone his flashlight on it. The light trembled slightly. He focused and
noticed something hidden behind the ventilation duct cover. Looking closer,
damn——

It was a pair of eyes!

But Su Lai didn’t look away. He stood his ground, holding the flashlight,
staring unblinkingly at those eyes.

“Sigh.” After a few seconds of standoff, Su Lai sighed softly.

A bleeding wall, a ghost trying to scare people. The same old tricks. The ghosts
in this building had lost their imagination. Even their scaring was
conventional.

Seeing that the ghost had no intention of attacking rashly, he simply picked up
a rag by the sink and threw it towards the eyes behind the vent. His tone had an
impatient calmness. “Wipe up the blood you’ve spilled. You’re dirtying the
floor.”

The constant dripping sound just now had been this ghost, increasing Su Lai’s
workload.

The ventilation duct cover, old and unmaintained, fell off entirely when hit by
the rag. The ghost behind the vent, its cover gone, was completely exposed under
the flashlight’s beam.

Su Lai finally got a clear look at how this one had died. Its face was pale and
purplish, covered in large patches of cadaveric spots. The exposed half of its
wrist had a knife wound deep enough to see the bone. The blood on the wall had
flowed from this wrist.

Seems it had died from wrist slashing. Whether it had slit its wrists while
already in the vent, or had been hidden there after death, was unclear.

The wrist-slashing ghost was unmoved. It pointed at itself with its bloody hand.
“Are you talking to me?”

Su Lai nodded. “Besides you and me, is there anyone else on this floor?”

The wrist-slashing ghost waved its hand. With the motion, its already shredded
wrist looked even more precarious.

Ghosts seemed to naturally prefer silence. It only waved, not speaking. It was
unclear if it meant there was no one else, or if it meant it wasn’t human.

Su Lai simply tapped the wall with his telescopic steel fork, then the ceiling.
The hollow echo confirmed that, aside from this ghost, there were no other
bodies.

“It’s just you, then. You’re an adult. Wipe it up yourself.”

His tone was so flat that the wrist-slashing ghost froze. For a moment, it
thought it was still alive.

It shook its bloody hand and couldn’t help but ask. “Don’t you… are you…”

Su Lai was speechless. “Stop shaking. You’ll splash blood all over the wall.
Hard to clean up.”

The wrist-slashing ghost stiffened again, rag in hand. It was just a deceased
person, dutifully trying to scare the other. It hadn’t succeeded, and now…

“Are you really not scared?” The ghost confirmed again. It might not care about
face, but it was stubborn. People should be afraid of ghosts. It was only
natural. Why wasn’t this guy in…

Could it be that this security guard wasn’t human either?

But then again, why was this security guard allowed to patrol in flip-flops? Did
the company allow this kind of “undignified” dress code?

Su Lai was even more confident. He pointed at the uniform on his body. “Why
should I be scared? Are you the security guard, or am I?”

The ghost shifted its body, making a rustling sound.

Ghosts had a magnetic field that affected electricity. As the wrist-slashing
ghost moved, the water cooler’s indicator light started flickering. The humming
current continuously irritated the auditory nerves.

Su Lai was naturally immune to ghostly magnetic fields. Unmoved.

The ghost leaned half its body out of the vent, revealing the security uniform
on its torso. The uniform was soaked in blood, a dried, dark red. Under the
high-powered flashlight, it took a moment to recognize.

“You’re a security guard. I used to be, too…” The ghost answered Su Lai’s
question seriously. “Too bad I’m dead. I don’t know if I still count as a
security guard…”

Patrol rule 6 stated: 「Remember during your patrol that there is and only is
you, the security guard.」 From a rules perspective, a dead security guard had
lost their position identity, becoming an existence that contaminated the
patrolling personnel’s mental stability.

But Su Lai didn’t share this sad news. His gaze lingered on the ghost’s pale
face and bloody uniform. Finally, he asked: “How did you die?”

His tone was like a community worker checking household records. Finally meeting
a ghost with stable emotions who could talk, it would be a waste not to ask a
few questions.

The ghost used its remaining fingers to poke at its fatal wound, letting the
strong light illuminate the torn open flesh on its wrist and the white bone
beneath the muscle.

“Like killing a chicken. Cut right here, drain the blood, and my body went
cold.” The ghost even physically demonstrated the suicide process for Su Lai. It
picked up a sharp piece of broken porcelain and, like slicing meat, forcefully
drew it across its own wrist.

The already dried wound was reopened. Fresh blood flowed from the withered flesh
and bone. Splashing all over the room and walls.

Su Lai found this ghost quite interesting. He ignored the urgent tick-tock of
his watch and continued his casual chat. “Why did you do it?”

The ghost, which had been gesticulating wildly, paused sharply. A look of
near-sorrowful confusion appeared on its face. “Why… yeah, why exactly…?” “I
don’t remember… I had no other choice… dying was the only way to escape from all
this… I thought death would end it…”

Su Lai, watching the confused ghost, continued his household investigation.
“What’s your name?”

Ghost: “911. My employee ID is 911.”

Su Lai: “I asked for your name, not your employee ID.”

Ghost: “I don’t remember… In Fortuitous Retribution Building… our names don’t
matter… We only have our employee IDs.”

Article 3 of the “New Employee Handbook” directly stated: You do not need to
remember your name. Your employee ID is your name.

The earlier jumper, 1120, and this wrist-slashing ghost, 911, both seemed to
have lost their names, left only with cold employee IDs. Like machine parts with
only serial numbers.

And Su Lai also noticed that in less than three hours since entering Fortuitous
Retribution Building, he had already encountered three ghosts. All three ghosts,
as if completing a task, had tried to scare him in very clichéd ways. But these
ghosts were all honest, easy to fool. Not the type to play pranks.

Something was definitely off.

“Come down and talk. Craning my neck is painful.” Su Lai rubbed the back of his
neck.

Seeming to think that staying in the vent was its final resting place, the ghost
hesitated. Su Lai then said, “We’re colleagues. You can’t expect me to keep
looking up to you.”

The ghost thought that made sense. It moved its body forward a bit more. Then,
losing its balance, with a thud, the corpse blocking the vent fell out, landing
headfirst.

Su Lai: “…” A grand gesture like that was unnecessary between colleagues, he
thought.

The ghost had been dead for some time. Most of its flesh and skin had rotted
away. Only its cadaveric spots-covered face remained somewhat intact. Its
dilated pupils rolled, trying to scare the new employee.

With the fall, its neck was twisted. Its half-severed hand was thrown off,
rolling to Su Lai’s feet along with its rotting eyeballs.

Su Lai sighed. He picked up the bloody hand and eyeball for the ghost and neatly
placed them next to its shattered body. “Tidy yourself up. Probably still
usable.” He said.

“You’re a really good person.” The ghost, now head-first on the ground, spoke
with its neck twisted. It seemed to have lost a few teeth too; its words were a
bit slurred. “You’re also the first living person not afraid of me…” “You are
alive, right…?” Seeing how calm Su Lai was, the ghost asked cautiously while
piecing its wrist back together.

Su Lai nodded expressionlessly. “Alive.”

The ghost stared at him doubtfully. “How can a living person not be afraid of
me?”

Su Lai picked up another severed finger and handed it over. “We’re both
laborers. Why should I be afraid of you?” “Back when I delivered food, I was the
one always hiding from security guards.”

The ghost seemed persuaded. After thinking it over, it nodded, still looking
troubled.

“The old lady who tried to scam me was in her seventies or eighties. Her limbs
and bones were scattered all over the ground. In the end, she tidied herself up
and reluctantly got by. After lying down for a couple of days, she was back to
scamming.” Su Lai encouraged the thoughtful ghost, dusting off its eyeball
before handing it over. “You’re still young. You have plenty of opportunities.
Cheer up.”

The ghost didn’t take Su Lai’s encouragement to heart. It murmured to itself.
“Delivering food is still better. Even though it’s hard, at least you’re free…”
“You can’t get out of here. No one can escape from this building. Freedom is
gone. Time is gone. And wages are gone…”

“Little brother, you’re here to patrol, right?” The ghost seemed to think of
something and asked. “You’re a good person. Let me tell you, no security guard
has ever left this floor safely. They won’t give you enough time to patrol. If
you’re not connected, this job is a trap. And if you are connected… you wouldn’t
be here either!” “The connected ones don’t come to the 11th floor. Their work
assignments are different from ours.”

“To complete the patrol task on this floor, the only way is to pay work hours.”
“But that debt will have to be repaid someday. They’re calculation-minded. They
won’t let you off!”

Su Lai smelled a clue. He continued asking. “Did you die here because of
patrol?”

The ghost nodded and shook its head, continuing to fall into confusion. “I don’t
remember… but I know no one gets out of here alive…”

Su Lai looked thoughtfully at the ghost. “You’re dead, but you still can’t get
out?”

The ghost: “.” After a brief crash, it started repeating over and over. “No
time… we’re out of time…”

Su Lai: “I know. The flow of time has been tampered with. If they want, I will
never complete my work.”

Fortuitous Retribution Building had hired them for exploitation. The two big
characters 「Blessed Retribution」 said it all.

Either compete yourself to death, or fail to adapt to the gaslighting and
exploitation, and be eliminated.

New employees without connections were just consumables.

Seeing his own pitiful colleague, the ghost seemed to recall its living
emotions. It falling into “What to do, it’s too late, if we don’t finish on
time, we won’t get paid” despair. It even forgot to put its eye back in. Picking
up the broken porcelain, it frantically slashed at its wrist. Blood oozed from
the withered flesh, splashing all over the break room walls.

Su Lai looked back. The computer screens in the office across from the break
room started flickering too. The Windows startup screen was covered in red
static, falling into crimson garbled code.

The lifeless office was also like a virus-infected computer. The walls were
dissolving like rotting flesh, gradually becoming distorted and bloody. The
contaminants were spreading rapidly.

Su Lai felt like he had accidentally eaten a poisonous mushroom. Toxins were
about to invade his brain, colorful hallucinations fermenting in his mind. These
gorgeous hallucinations were trying to disturb his senses, then take advantage,
controlling his thoughts like a computer virus.

But faced with the colorful chaos, Su Lai remained calm. He patted the
continuing-to-freak-out ghost and advised. “Brother, you’re already dead. Calm
down.”

But the ghost, dominated by despair and helplessness, couldn’t calm down.

It seemed the oppression and anxiety brought by work couldn’t be eliminated by
death.

Su Lai checked his watch. Affected by the contaminants on this floor, even
though Su Lai wasn’t patrolling faster, the second hand was accelerating, as if
on double speed.

Even time was becoming uncontrollable.

“What to do, what to do? There’s not enough time…” “The flow of time has become
so strange… There’s never enough… If I can’t finish the patrol, I won’t get
paid…” The ghost started screaming. The sounds and emotions it emitted were
highly concentrated contaminants, accelerating the collapse of the 11th floor.

It seemed the rule reminding that there was and only was you, the security
guard, was suggesting that if you encountered another one, you should run.

But Su Lai refused to follow the rules. Rules weren’t just for following. They
were also for offending.

Now he had to stop the ghost from freaking out——

“Brother, calm down.” “We’re both laborers. Follow me. I have a way.”

“Since they’ve tampered with the flow of time, trying to exploit us through
time.”

“Then we’ll just take back control of time——”