Chapter 309: 305. Corporate Slave

305. Corporate Slave

The dog days of summer; the sun was venomous, its scorching rays so intense they made it impossible for people to lift their heads. The heat seemed to want to roast everything on the earth until it was "sizzling," and the roads were choked with traffic. Everywhere it passed, it kicked up nothing but dust and heat waves, mixed with the scent of melting polymers and unhardened asphalt. Summer was always there, torturing people's senses.

It was already nine o'clock in the evening when Ji Jian got off work. He rubbed his waist, then his shoulder, standing at the back door of the Human Resources Building. He looked at the outdoor parking lot under the night sky, his expression one of resistance and reluctance.

He still craved the air conditioning inside the building.

It was impossible not to go home, but the only advantage of the workplace was that one could enjoy the cold air of the AC without restraint during the summer. Other than that, his own humble bachelor "dog kennel" was millions of times better.

"I'm off, I'm off, get home early." Just as Ji Jian was preparing to head out, he discovered a hand had pressed the door release button a step ahead of him. The owner of the hand also swiftly moved from his right, circled behind him to his left, and walked out of the building before him.

The moment the glass back door was pushed open, the terrifying heat wave hidden in the tranquil summer night rushed toward him like a demon. Ji Jian saw his colleague's expression collapse instantly; it took only a fleeting moment to go from the high spirits of finishing work to the miserable face of enduring the heat.

Ji Jian didn't laugh; he knew he was the same. He tugged at his collar, undid two buttons for the sake of decency, and followed his colleague out the door. "You get home early too, see you tomorrow."

The two walked together for a few meters before the colleague went to the parking lot to find his car. Ji Jian circled to the stairs at the front of the building, reached the roadside, and scanned a shared bike, preparing to ride home.

By the time Ji Jian got on the bike, his colleague's car happened to pull out of the parking lot, heading in the opposite direction from where Ji Jian was leaving.

This was Ji Jian's simple and unadorned day.

As a grassroots worker, nine-to-six was the working time written in black and white, but when the leadership felt your workload wasn't saturated, you had better "voluntarily strive" until eight o'clock.

Of course, the unit did not encourage overtime, so there was no overtime pay, and this wasn't called overtime either.

But the unit still maintained the necessary decency; everyone who "voluntarily strove" could receive a dinner reimbursement of up to 50 yuan.

Reimbursement—if there were no hitches, it should be obtainable within half a year.

Ji Jian pedaled his bike leisurely, his mood quite decent, because this year's Spring Festival holiday subsidy had finally been issued in July along with his salary.

Dinner reimbursement... that would have to wait a bit longer; perhaps it would come down at the end of the year along with the May Day holiday subsidy.

Ji Jian was a person easily satisfied, and he felt that only when his heart was calm and peaceful could he barely find a trace of coolness in the scorching evening breeze of summer.

He felt the evening breeze, riding his bike while imagining that tonight he might be able to have a glass of non-alcoholic Mojito, luxuriously set the AC to 26 degrees, and then, wrapped in an AC quilt, enjoy a B-Grade blockbuster from across the ocean.

Thinking and thinking, before he knew it, he had returned to the apartment building where he rented.

Park the bike, enter the elevator, go upstairs.

Back in his rental, Ji Jian immediately shed all his disguises, tossed his backpack onto the shoe cabinet, slipped into slippers, and went into the room. He took off his shirt while heading to the closet to find pajamas for a shower.

He played "Staring At You" by Diane Birch and walked into the bathroom, dancing with the steps of an elderly person's disco.

Half an hour later, Ji Jian had finished his shower and put away the laundry from the balcony. He lay smiling on the lazy sofa he had bought half a month ago, watching a 36-inch curved 4K monitor and binge-watching short-form anime.

Ding-dong!

Ji Jian heard the doorbell, let out a laugh, and rubbed his hands together to open the door. "Coming, coming."

"Sir, your delivery, please enjoy."

"Thanks for the hard work." Ji Jian took the lemon tea he had ordered from the sweating delivery rider, locked the door again, and returned to the computer to continue watching his show.

The true life scenario of contemporary youth: one thought after another.

Homemade drinks could be postponed until the holiday; on a workday night, ordering delivery was more practical. Ji Jian thought to himself. He used a straw to poke through the lid of the cup, used his free hand to operate the mouse, and switched to a B-Grade horror film called The Rats in the Walls to watch.

Rumble, rumble...

The sound of the drum washing machine on the balcony drifted into the quiet room very faintly. Ji Jian, fully focused on the movie, didn't feel disturbed at all. He kept a close eye on the protagonist's mental changes, which grew increasingly tense and chaotic as the plot progressed. He loved appreciating the expressions and movements of actors in different films, which made him very sensitive to the level of an actor's performance; he could quickly judge the quality of a film work from this angle.

Clearly, this recently popular The Rats in the Walls was a decent film. At least the protagonist's measured performance deeply attracted Ji Jian's attention. This sixty or seventy-year-old man had acting in his very eyes; it was nearly real, as if he had truly seen some kind of hellish scene.

Beep! Beep! Beep...

One-third of the way through the film, the sound of the washing machine on the balcony stopping rang out. Ji Jian had to wake up from his immersive viewing state, pause the film, go to the balcony to hang up the clothes, and then return to the AC quilt, sweaty, to continue watching.

Another hour and a half passed, the screen changed to the credits, and the film finally ended.

Ji Jian wore a look of reflection, saying nothing and evaluating nothing. He nimbly exited the browser interface for viewing, then glanced at the time in the bottom right corner, discovering it was already 11:45.

The place where he lived wasn't far from his unit, and he usually didn't leave until 8:15 in the morning, so seeing the time, he didn't think about sleeping early. Instead, he opened a video website client, flipped through short videos, and browsed some fresh, interesting short videos to relax a little more.

The cheating big data would occasionally recommend short videos related to The Rats in the Walls that he had just watched, such as speed-run explanations, film edits, original stories, and so on.

When Ji Jian first started, he would click on a few to watch, but because he had just finished the movie, he had some "aesthetic fatigue." He would switch away after watching for a few seconds, but the big data was very tactless, repeatedly recommending short videos related to The Rats in the Walls under "guess you might be interested." At this time, he couldn't help but sigh at the "self-righteous" little silly algorithm.

Before he knew it, Ji Jian had been scrolling until 12:30, but he had no sleepiness and was still in high spirits.

However, he wasn't panicked. He calmly clicked into his account's favorites folder, dug out a few sleep aid videos from "distinctive" female streamers, selected one to listen to, and then lowered his head to scroll through his phone, occasionally looking up to watch the "distinctive" content.

The "white noise" produced by the female streamer did indeed make one sleepy after listening for a long time. Ji Jian slowly finally felt fatigue and put down his phone.

He looked at the female streamer in the video working hard to please the microphone with her mouth and suddenly felt a bit tired of it, a bit bored.

After all, he had been watching and listening for a long time; the sleep-inducing effect of the sound wasn't as potent anymore.

Ji Jian's gaze drifted to the video recommendation area on the side, and suddenly a strange video thumbnail and title caught his attention.

Title: Underworld Sleep Aid, but the effect is good!

Thumbnail: A forest landscape painting that made one feel somewhat uncomfortable to look at.

"Is it because I just watched a horror movie that the algorithm recommended this to me?" Ji Jian chuckled and clicked on this so-called "Underworld Sleep Aid Video."