Chapter 30 Tongue Inhibition

Chapter 30: On the Tip of My Tongue

Another pleasant weekend drew to a close.

Perhaps it was due to skipping a major cleanup, but Lin Jianyuan felt exceptionally well-rested this weekend. He had slept soundly and felt invigorated.

Then, the moment he started work, drowsiness set in.

The company seemed to possess a peculiar aura; no matter how well one rested at home, stepping into the office inevitably led to a slump in spirits and a pervasive aversion to work.

Today was no different. As Lin Jianyuan entered the office, he was greeted by Su Zhiwei’s frantic shouts.

“Argh! Why is the printer broken again!”

Su Zhiwei, scratching his head, gave the printer a couple of solid smacks.

Lin Jianyuan walked past and casually offered, “Try restarting it.”

Su Zhiwei: “Already did!”

Lin Jianyuan: “What about lifting the lid?”

Su Zhiwei: “Tried that too!”

Lin Jianyuan reached out and touched the printer, finding it scorching hot. He couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise, “How much have you printed? This printer is practically sparking. Starting work so early—are you trying to work yourself to death?”

“No, not at all! I haven’t printed much!” Su Zhiwei was already tearing his hair out in frustration. “Never mind, never mind, just let me use your computer!”

Lin Jianyuan promptly stepped aside.

Whether Su Zhiwei was having an exceptionally bad day or something else was amiss, after switching to Lin Jianyuan’s printer, the darn thing jammed after just two pages.

The printer’s light immediately turned red, blinking frantically like an alarm.

Su Zhiwei: “Argh!”

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

“Urgent, super urgent! It’s for that NFC apple juice project. I distinctly remember organizing all the materials and putting them in my drawer last Friday, but now they’re gone! I have no idea what happened! I need them by 9:30! What am I going to do?!”

Su Zhiwei was a nervous wreck, like an ant on a hot griddle.

“Try my printer!” Qin Shi stood up.

Su Zhiwei quickly yanked out his USB drive and rushed over to Qin Shi’s desk. Fortunately, this time the printing was successful.

Watching the printer churn out page after page, Su Zhiwei finally let out a sigh of relief.

Lin Jianyuan, however, was a little puzzled: “Did you lock your drawer? Logically, no one should have touched anything in there.”

Su Zhiwei: “Exactly! Well, whatever, anyway…”

Everyone waited for him to finish his sentence, but he trailed off mid-thought.

Lin Jianyuan: “Anyway, what?”

Su Zhiwei blinked, a bewildered expression on his face. After a moment, he scratched his head: “What was I just about to say?”

Qin Shi chuckled, “Who knows with you!”

“Forget it, if I can’t remember, it must not be important. I’ll bring it up if it comes back to me,” Su Zhiwei mumbled while rapidly stapling the printed documents. “Thanks, Qin Shi.”

Everyone returned to their workstations, resuming their tasks.

Lin Jianyuan was swamped. As he worked, he gradually felt his stomach churning. It then dawned on him: he hadn’t eaten breakfast.

Lin Jianyuan found it inconvenient to buy breakfast on his way to work, and the subway was too crowded—forget eating breakfast, carrying any kind of breakfast in hand would get it flattened.

Because of this, he had never developed the habit of eating breakfast. He’d only recently started occasionally having breakfast, but he hadn’t eaten today either.

No wonder he was hungry. Lin Jianyuan decided to scrounge up something to eat.

Just then, he noticed an empty computer chair next to his cubicle, and a sudden thought flashed through his mind.

That’s right—Pei Shuo!

Why hadn’t Pei Shuo come to work today? The guy hadn’t even called in sick.

Could something have happened to him on his way to work?

Lin Jianyuan turned to the others and asked, “By the way, have any of you seen—” Before he could finish, his stomach suddenly rumbled loudly.

The sound was particularly noticeable in the quiet office.

Qin Shi, at the next desk, heard it and said with a wry smile, “Did you skip breakfast again? I have some biscuits here. Do you want some?”

“Yes, please, thanks. I’m famished,” Lin Jianyuan replied, his stomach aching from hunger, as he reached out and took the pack of soda crackers.

His stomach was so painfully empty. Lin Jianyuan ripped open the pack and started devouring the crackers.

After just a couple of bites, more work came his way.

“Lin Jianyuan! Come up here!” Jiang Chen shouted from upstairs.

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

After dealing with Jiang Chen, a considerable amount of time had passed.

By the time Lin Jianyuan finally finished his work, he was no longer hungry, but his stomach had started to ache dully.

He figured it was from going too long without food. As lunchtime approached, he was thinking about heading out early for lunch when he saw Yu Xiuli frowning and walking toward him.

“Lin Jianyuan, eating breakfast during work hours. 50-yuan fine,” Yu Xiuli said.

Lin Jianyuan was instantly furious: “Even eating biscuits counts?!”

Yu Xiuli: “Of course it counts. This isn’t the time to eat—it’s work hours!”

Lin Jianyuan: “Then who’s responsible if I collapse from low blood sugar?”

Yu Xiuli looked him up and down and scoffed, “A young, strong guy like you—how could you possibly have low blood sugar? Besides, are you here to work or to have morning tea? If you really get low blood sugar from missing one breakfast, you should go to the hospital and get checked out. Maybe take some traditional Chinese medicine to regulate your body.”

Lin Jianyuan suddenly understood.

Yu Xiuli was clearly targeting him! It must be because of that AC incident last time—she was seizing the opportunity to make things difficult for him!

If anyone else had encountered this situation, they might have just swallowed their pride, but who was Lin Jianyuan?

He was a lunatic!

Lin Jianyuan immediately pulled out the squeeze toy.

The squeeze toy instantly got excited: “Is it happening? Is it finally happening?! My favorite humiliation moment! Tell me, Lin Jianyuan! How much time do you want me to steal from her? How many years should she age in an instant?”

Lin Jianyuan: “Half an hour.”

“Huh???” The squeeze toy couldn’t believe it. “Did I hear that right? No, Lin Jianyuan, don’t hold back. For someone like her—”

*Splat.*

Losing patience, Lin Jianyuan grabbed the squeeze toy and hurled it straight at Yu Xiuli!

The snail-shaped squeeze toy traced a graceful arc through the air, its soft, bouncy tentacles wobbling *duang duang*.

At the same time, the squeeze toy let out a sharp, piercing scream:

“Why is it always me who gets hurt, aaaaaah—”

The moment the squeeze toy landed on Yu Xiuli, her perception of the entire world sped up dramatically—

Seizing the opportunity, Lin Jianyuan began devouring the soda crackers like a storm!

Little Stone: “?”

Everyone else: “??”

The squeeze toy screamed: “Lin Jianyuan, what are you doing?! You threw me out to disable someone for half an hour just so you could eat the crackers?! Could you be any more pathetic, aaaaaah!”

Lin Jianyuan didn’t respond, just kept chewing on the crackers.

*Munch munch munch munch munch munch.*

*Munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch munch.*

*Gulp.*

The entire pack of crackers was gone.

The squeeze toy was retrieved. Time resumed its normal flow.

Lin Jianyuan glanced at his phone and said, “Three seconds.”

Yu Xiuli was confused: “What three seconds?”

Lin Jianyuan: “It only took me three seconds to finish this pack of crackers. You’ve been bothering me for a full three minutes. So, who’s really wasting my work time? Who’s wasting the company’s money?”

Yu Xiuli: “…”

Everyone else: “He has a point…”

The squeeze toy raged: “A point my ass!”

Just as everyone was wondering how Lin Jianyuan managed to devour a whole pack of crackers in three seconds, and the squeeze toy was pondering how a dignified Class A heretic like itself had been reduced to stealing time just so its host could munch on crackers—

Little Stone suddenly said: “Don’t you guys think…”

The squeeze toy: “What?”

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

The squeeze toy snapped: “Spit it out already!”

But Lin Jianyuan suddenly looked up.

The squeeze toy: “See, if you keep hesitating, Lin Jianyuan is going to beat you up!”

Little Stone whimpered: “But I really can’t remember what I was going to say just now!”

The squeeze toy fumed: “Did you leave your brain on the subway because you rushed out too quickly this morning?”

The squeeze toy was nearly driven mad by Little Stone, but the thought that the violent maniac would be even angrier made it secretly excited.

Unexpectedly, though, Lin Jianyuan didn’t get angry. He just returned to his workstation, a thoughtful expression on his face.

Yu Xiuli rolled her eyes but had no way to deal with this lunatic.

The office returned to peace, the sounds of keyboards and mice clicking rising and falling as everyone got busy again.

Time flew by, and it was soon noon.

People got up one after another to go to the cafeteria for lunch, but Lin Jianyuan waved his hand, indicating he wouldn’t go.

His stomach still felt uncomfortable, with a nauseous yet unproductive urge to vomit.

And for some reason, he had been incredibly busy all morning. It had been a long time since he’d felt this overwhelmed, and now he was just dizzy and disoriented, feeling like there was still something left undone.

Yet no matter how hard he tried to recall, he couldn’t remember what he had missed.

This feeling was incredibly frustrating.

Maybe he was just too tired…

Damn, feeling this exhausted just after starting work on a Monday. This shit job is unbearable.

Suppressing his anger, Lin Jianyuan lay his head on the desk, planning to take a short nap.

The office was empty except for him, all workstations quiet, with only the red ribbon at the air conditioner vent fluttering in the breeze.

The Eye Vines densely covering the walls swayed slowly.

Suddenly, the signal light on one of the computers flickered.

Then, the printer started up on its own.

*Click.*

Lin Jianyuan jerked his head up.

Right in front of him, at the empty workstation, the printer had suddenly started working on its own.

The rollers pulled in a blank sheet of A4 paper, printed with a series of *clicks*, and then spat it out from the output tray.

Yet what came out was still a blank sheet. There were no printed marks on it.

Lin Jianyuan: “?”

Had the printer gained a mind of its own?

Was it deliberately working overtime for no reason?

Fine, so it just loved working that much, huh.

Lin Jianyuan’s face darkened as he strode over and flipped open the cover.

*Snap.* The printer’s lid sprang open.

The A4 paper immediately stopped moving.

Lin Jianyuan returned to his desk and resumed lying face-down, trying to sleep.

*Click.*

The plastic mechanical noise clattered again.

Lin Jianyuan looked up in shock, only to see a scene beyond comprehension.

—The printer, its cover wide open, had started printing again.

It fed in blank paper and ejected blank paper.

Sheet after sheet of snow-white A4 paper fluttered down like snowflakes, as if inscribed with cursed texts invisible to the human eye. The plastic machinery clattered, its eerie and unnatural sound echoing through the office.

“Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong,” the stress toy suddenly perked up. “This is seriously messed up!”

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

At that moment, Lin Jianyuan shot up so fast his chair rolled backward, furious!

Damn it! What kind of stupid printer keeps running during lunch break?! So damn noisy—can’t it let anyone rest?!

Lin Jianyuan stormed toward the printer, yanked out the power cord, removed the ink cartridge, and emptied all the A4 paper from both input and output trays!

The printer, now completely stripped on the spot: “?”

Deprived of everything, reduced to an empty shell, the printer finally fell silent.

Suppressing his anger, Lin Jianyuan turned to return to his desk when he caught sight of Su Zhiwei’s computer screen out of the corner of his eye.

His eyelids twitched.

The desktop was a chaotic mess. PDFs, Word documents, and Excel files were scattered across the screen in disarray, a jumble so overwhelming it made your head spin.

Yet Su Zhiwei insisted this was convenient.

Lin Jianyuan clearly remembered that right at the start of work this morning, Su Zhiwei had been frantically searching for something—an extremely important file that had gone missing.

Su Zhiwei had originally printed the file and locked it in a drawer, but the physical copy had vanished. He wanted to reprint it but couldn’t even locate the original file on his computer. Sweating from anxiety, he complained, only to be mercilessly teased by everyone: “This is what happens when you keep your desktop like a disaster zone!”

Though everyone mocked him, they still helped piece the file back together, barely making it in time for the 9:30 meeting.

After that, all that remained was finalizing the draft based on the revisions discussed and sending it to the client.

But now.

Lin Jianyuan stared at the conspicuously empty space on the cluttered desktop.

The file was gone again.

He checked the Recycle Bin. Nothing.

He opened WeChat and searched File Assistant. Nothing.

Just then, everyone returned from lunch. Su Zhiwei was chatting and laughing with the others when he looked up and saw Lin Jianyuan standing by his desk. Puzzled, he asked, “Lin Jianyuan, what’s going on?”

Lin Jianyuan: “Did you back up that file from this morning?”

Su Zhiwei: “What file?”

Lin Jianyuan said impatiently, “The one you couldn’t find this morning, the one you were panicking over—the one Qin Shi and I rushed to help you reconstruct…”

He didn’t finish.

Because he saw both Su Zhiwei and Qin Shi staring at him in utter confusion.

Su Zhiwei: “What are you talking about?”

Qin Shi suddenly said, “Yeah, are you hallucinating? This morning, I was buried in work, same as you. When did we have time to help him rebuild anything?”

Lin Jianyuan suddenly felt as if a chunk of his brain had been hollowed out, leaving behind nothing but emptiness.

He couldn’t help glancing at the nearby printer. With its cover lifted and ink cartridge removed, it lay open, its hollow interior gaping like a mocking grin.

A lump rose in his throat. Fighting dizziness and nausea, Lin Jianyuan finally recalled the question he’d been trying to ask all morning—one that kept slipping from his mind the moment it reached his lips:

“Where’s Pei Shuo? Why didn’t Pei Shuo come to work today?” he blurted out.

As soon as the words left his mouth, everyone in the office exchanged glances.

Su Zhiwei, Qin Shi, and the other long-time colleagues looked shocked, uncertain, and uneasy.

After a pause, they cautiously asked:

“Who is Pei Shuo?”