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墨書 Inktalez
I clutched the termination notice from the Human Resources department, my fingertips leaving pale impressions on the beige paper. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, torrential rain poured down, and the clattering of keyboards in the office sounded like countless termites gnawing at my nerves.
Li Qiang's workstation was diagonally across from me. At that moment, he was grinning at his phone, his gums visible, and the reflection on the screen faintly revealed a stock market chart.
"The surveillance footage from last Wednesday? Oh, what a coincidence! The server was being upgraded that day," he said.
Old Zhang, the security guard, stuffed a chive box into his mouth, grease sliding down to the signature line next to "Li Qiang" on the duty roster. I stared at the suspicious coffee stain on the second button of his uniform and suddenly recalled the day the project proposal was stolen. Li Qiang had walked past my desk with a Starbucks cup in hand, the crisp sound of the plastic hitting the table echoing in my mind.
The office building at ten o'clock at night felt like a giant beast drained of blood. I crouched in the fire escape, counting Li Qiang's footsteps. The sound of his leather shoes striking the fire door abruptly stopped, followed by the rustling of paper.
Peering through the crack in the door, I saw him crouched in front of the shredder, a yellowed A4 sheet revealing half of a red stamp that read "Commercial Secret."
"Are you out of your mind?"
My girlfriend, Xiao Xia, slammed a cold hangover soup onto the coffee table, splashing it onto the sandalwood pen holder Li Qiang had given me last week. Inside it were last year's team-building photos, where Li Qiang's hand draped over my shoulder conveniently blocked out my title as "Project Manager" on my name tag.
I wiped my face and realized my palms were covered in printer toner. During the morning meeting, Wang Tao announced a new plan while the projector's blue light flickered like ghostly flames on his glasses. I focused on the frayed threads at his suit's cuff and suddenly remembered that batch of defective fabric from three months ago—when Zhang Li had signed off on the quality inspection report.
The microwave in the break room beeped, and I counted how many times Zhang Li heated her lunch this week; it was three times more than usual. As rain washed over the glass curtain wall for the seventh time, I dug up an expense report from five years ago in the OA system. The signature on that dining invoice from Xiao Chen in Marketing bore an odd hook at its end, similar to the "Chen" in an anonymous complaint letter.
A new intern from Administration passed by with a package; the shipping label showed it was sent from Li Qiang's hometown. In midnight dreams, I often saw countless hands tearing apart reports in darkness; once I woke up to find I had actually ripped my pillow apart.
The psychologist said this was post-traumatic stress disorder, but he didn’t know that beneath my medication lay scraps salvaged from Li Qiang's shredder—those jagged edges piecing together "Equity Transfer" were more unsettling than sleeping pills. Just as I prepared to toss my list of suspects into the shredder, a conversation from the break room sent chills down my spine.
"Is Team Leader Wang really going to go that far?"
A low voice mixed with the sound of the coffee machine's steam said, "His nephew's trading company is going public next month."
Amid the crisp sound of the ceramic cup clinking against the marble countertop, I heard Wang Tao say, "The fabric inspection report needs to be updated."
I crouched in the shadows behind the iron cabinet in the archive room, aiming my phone's camera at a blue folder sealed away since 2021.
Suddenly, a gust of wind rushed in from the central air conditioning vent, stirring up dust from the old pages and blurring my vision.
Through my tear-filled eyes, I saw my five-years-younger self standing at the edge of a departmental group photo, with the gold letters of "Emerging Project Manager" on the backdrop peeling away.
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