Chapter 9
With hope, I became full of fighting spirit and devoted myself wholeheartedly to the battle of wits against the Grim Reaper.
I downloaded the entire Final Destination series and openly played it on the company computer.
My colleagues were dumbfounded, suspecting I had gone mad.
After all, I was the model worker who had won the “Outstanding Employee” award for several years in a row!
The head of administration tried to stop me: “An Ge, if you do this, your bonus will be docked.”
I didn’t even lift an eyelid. “Dock it!”
The union chair stammered, “If you have any complaints about the company, you can bring them up.”
I yawned. “Can you move Manager Lan’s massage chair over here for me?”
I ordered fried chicken, barbecue, braised pork, and milk tea that I’d usually avoid for being too high in calories, as well as salmon, crab rice, and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall that I’d never dare order because they were too expensive…
The head of finance said sarcastically, “We know the project department makes a lot, but do you really have to show off like this?”
Whenever I’d gone to her for budget approval and reimbursements in the past, she’d always given me a hard time.
I picked up a piece of fish and flung it straight at her face, landing right on her red, bulbous nose.
She screamed, and I screamed too.
I strode forward, crossed my arms, and stood on my desk, screaming.
She stared, dumbfounded for two seconds, then slunk away.
So she was just a bully who picked on the weak!
I had put up with her bad attitude for nothing these past two years.
If I’d known, I would have gone crazy much sooner.
At noon, I spread out the silk comforter and down pillow I had someone fetch for me and got ready for a big nap.
A few people came in carrying the massage chair.
“An Ge, Manager Lan asked us to bring you the massage chair. Where should we put it?”
Sitting on the floor, I widened my eyes and swiftly kicked my original swivel chair aside. “Put it here!”
Lan Xiao came over, frowned at me for a long time, and finally spoke hesitantly.
“I’ve invited a master to come over later. Do you want-”
I snorted and tossed a pillow at him.
That was payback for when he threw a cushion at me back when I was his assistant.
I never forgot. Instantly, there was a commotion.
“Manager Lan, are you alright?”
“Manager Lan, she’s gone crazy. You’d better steer clear.”
Lan Xiao waved his hand, looking at me anxiously from behind the crowd.
As I went wild, Li Qianxue was the only one who supported me.
She elegantly stirred her coffee, her beautiful face tinged with sarcasm.
“These sycophants need to be put in their place. Just be yourself-no one can control you. Besides, you have several projects in your hands. The company absolutely wouldn’t dare do anything to you.”
Life like this was satisfying, but death was still unavoidable.
The new ways I unlocked to die included, but were not limited to, choking on an almond in ice cream, being stabbed to death by a colleague’s spouse who mistook me for a mistress, being pierced by shards of glass accidentally broken by someone in a Spider-Man costume, and dying of myocarditis from overwork…
I had to admire Lord Grim Reaper’s ingenuity and meticulousness.
It was as if an enormous, precise machine was advancing forever with slow, orderly, and irrefutable logic.
Controlling life, controlling death.
Fortunately, I was not alone.
Yisheng accompanied me every day.
Within the limited time, he researched all the relevant cases reported at home and abroad, combined them with my situation, and made all sorts of possible inferences.
To prolong my survival time as much as possible with each round, he drew detailed and meticulous escape route maps for every death threat I’d already experienced.
Whenever I wanted to give up because of the fear of unknown death, he would choke up and say to me, “An Ge, didn’t we say we wanted a child? Do it for me, for our child – hang in there!”
He really, really wanted to help me escape the loop.
Yisheng became my only support in the face of despair.