Chapter 5

Weekends always seem too short, and soon it was the dreaded Monday. But I knew there were people having a much worse day than me. The first to arrive at his workstation was Shi Ming. When he turned on his computer, he froze in disbelief. It turned out that Guan Yingying had deleted all the backup files of his design drafts, leaving only the most recent version. Shi Ming, visibly holding back his frustration, asked, "Yingying, I only asked you to send over the latest version. Why did you delete the others?" Yingying smiled innocently, "Your computer had so many files, and it was running out of storage. What’s the point of keeping the old versions? "Xiao Ming-ge, not to nag, but you really should develop better work habits and clean up your desktop regularly!" Shi Ming was on the verge of exploding. "But the client just emailed me—they want to choose between the first two versions! "Wait, maybe they’re still in the recycle bin." He hastily opened the recycle bin, only to look even more devastated. Yingying, looking sheepish, said, "Oh, um… I emptied that too, to save space." Shi Ming’s face turned pale, and he nearly passed out. I casually walked by with my coffee, feeling refreshed. "Xiao Ming-ge, what’s wrong? Someone help! Xiao Ming-ge’s about to die!" Yingying grabbed a massage gun from the desk and pressed it against Shi Ming’s philtrum. The next second, Shi Ming shot up, screaming, "Ow! That hurts!" I stayed at my desk, pretending to focus on my data but silently laughing so hard I almost cried. "Yingying, are you out of your mind?" Shi Ming shouted, clutching his face in pain. Yingying pulled out a handkerchief and, on the verge of tears, apologized profusely. Shi Ming was livid. "All you do is cry! If saying sorry fixed everything, would murderers still go to jail?" Good. It seemed the company had gained one more person capable of rational thought. Twirling the pen in my hand, I continued to observe the chaos. Soon, others began arriving at their desks. He Liangwen overheard Shi Ming’s shouting and, instead of sympathizing, punched him on the arm. "Why are you yelling at her? Can’t you see she’s already crying?" Shi Ming, exasperated, recounted his ordeal. "I spent ages revising that draft over and over! And now, out of nowhere, the client wants the original version! I can’t even remember what it looked like anymore!" He Liangwen sighed. "Not to blame you, but you should’ve kept more backups. If you left it on the desktop, how could Yingying know it wasn’t trash? Her cleaning it up was just an innocent mistake. "Forget it. She’s just a newbie, a young girl fresh into the workforce. Don’t hold it against her. I’ll help you sort this out later." With his friend's reassurance, Shi Ming gradually calmed down. But the drama was just beginning. By the afternoon, He Liangwen was pulled aside by the department supervisor, who had just returned from vacation, and was scolded for two straight hours. "What happened? Why is Xiao He getting chewed out like that?" Everyone eagerly speculated, their gossip lighting up the group chat with hundreds of messages within minutes. What none of them noticed was that Yingying, who claimed she was going to the restroom, had been gone for over half an hour.