The clock on the computer screen glowed a sickly blue, the numbers changing with a soft, digital flicker. 3:27 AM.
Lin Chen's finger, resting on the mouse, felt like a piece of dead weight. It was an effort to just press down.
Click.
The little spinning icon on the screen finished its circle. The word "Saved" appeared for a second before vanishing. It was done. Finally, finally done.
The file was a monster—a two-hundred-slide presentation about making a company's supply chain "more efficient." Li Chen had spent the last ninety hours on it. He knew, with a certainty that bored into his soul, that the client executive wouldn't even read past the first ten slides. The man probably thought "optimization" was a new brand of energy drink.
This wasn't hatred. Hatred was a strong emotion, and Li Chen had no energy for that. This was something deeper and quieter. It was a slow sinking feeling, like being buried in wet sand. Every late night, every meaningless task, every demanding email was another shovelful. He was just… numb.
He looked around the office. The open-plan space was a ghost town. The only light came from his monitor and the pale, greenish glow of the emergency exit signs. It was so quiet he could hear the low, endless hum of the server room down the hall. A floor polisher whined somewhere far away, a lonely sound.
The air was stale. It smelled of yesterday's coffee grounds, dust from the air vents, and something else… something like tiredness itself. He glanced at the desks around him. One had a framed photo of a smiling family, now just shadows in the dark. Another had a small, sad-looking plant, its leaves turning brown. No one was here to water it. No one was here to care.
His own desk was clean.There were no photos, no plants, no personal touches. It was just a space where he did work. It was a testament to a life lived elsewhere, or maybe not lived at all.
A sharp, throbbing pain pulsed behind his eyes. He'd taken painkillers hours ago, but they'd done nothing. It felt like a tiny, angry creature was trying to dig its way out of his skull. There was a tightness in his chest, too—a band of pressure he'd been feeling for weeks. He told himself it was stress. He told himself it would go away after this project.
The taste in his mouth was awful. Cheap, bitter coffee, now cold, mixed with the metallic tang of exhaustion. His back ached from sitting in the cheap office chair for so long. When he moved his head, his neck cracked. His vision was slightly blurry, and he had to blink hard to focus on the screen. He was twenty-eight years old, but his body felt decades older. It was a machine that was breaking down from neglect and overuse.
With a slow drag of the mouse, he pulled the massive presentation file over to the server folder. He hit "Upload." A progress bar appeared, filled with agonizing slowness. The green inched forward. It would take a few minutes.
He couldn't stay upright anymore. He lowered his head until his forehead rested on the cool surface of the desk. The chill felt good against his hot skin. He didn't think about his dreams. He didn't have any left. He didn't think about his future. It was a blur.
All he could think about was sleep. Not just a nap. Not a few restless hours. He dreamed of a deep, black, uninterrupted sleep. A sleep where no phones rang, no emails arrived, and no one needed a single, damn thing from him. It was a simple fantasy, but it felt more impossible than winning the lottery.
Ding.
The sound from his computer made him lift his head. The upload was complete. A new email popped up in his inbox. It wasn't from his boss. It was the automated system.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: File "SCM_Optimization_Rev12_FINAL_v3.ppt" has been successfully received.]
No "Thank you." No "Great job." No "Get some rest." Just a confirmation from a machine. That was all his work was worth.
He moved the mouse cursor to the start menu. His hand trembled slightly, the way it always did when the caffeine wore off and the fatigue took over. He clicked 'Shut Down.' A box appeared. 'Are you sure you want to turn off your computer?'
Yes. He was sure.
He clicked 'Yes.' The screen went black. For a moment, all he could see was his own reflection staring back from the dark glass. A gaunt, pale face with dark circles under the eyes. His hair was a mess. He looked like a ghost.
He pushed himself up from the chair, his body protesting every movement.
"Another day, another dollar," he muttered to the empty, silent office.
The words felt hollow. They tasted like ash in his mouth.
He corrected himself, his voice a dry rasp. "Or in this case, another night, and a half-day's pay after tax."
It was a bad joke, with no one to hear it.
He started the long walk out. His footsteps echoed in the vast, dark space. The office used motion-sensor lights, and as he walked, they flickered on ahead of him, casting a weak, white glow on his path. Behind him, they clicked off, one by one. It was like the building itself was erasing any proof he had ever been there. The darkness was swallowing the path back to his desk, to the last ninety hours of his life.
He reached the bank of elevators at the end of the hall. The polished metal doors reflected a distorted, tired version of himself. He pressed the 'down' button. The plastic was cool under his thumb. A little red light lit up above the door.
That's when it hit.
The tightness in his chest, the one he'd been ignoring for weeks, suddenly clenched. It wasn't a dull ache anymore. It was a fist, a vise, squeezing the air right out of him. He gasped, but his lungs wouldn't fill. It was like trying to breathe through a wet cloth.
A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He stumbled back from the elevator doors, his legs turning to water. His shoulder hit the cool glass of the office's main wall, and he slid down it, collapsing into a heap on the polished floor. The world began to shrink. The edges of his vision turned grey, then black, closing in like a camera lens focusing.
All he could see was a single, long fluorescent light on the ceiling above him. It seemed to be pulsing, throbbing in a slow, sick rhythm. Thump-thump… thump… thump-thump-thump. He realized it was beating in time with his own heart, which was hammering in his chest, wild and panicked and wrong.
His thoughts weren't panicked, though. They were scarily clear. A strange calm settled over him.
So this is the end, he realized, the thought dawning on him with grim certainty. This is how my story concludes. Dying on the cold floor of what has to be the most dull and miserable version of a broken world. My life's greatest achievement? A two-hundred-page slideshow about the logistics of shipping packages.
The sheer, stupid absurdity of it was almost funny. He felt a weak, bitter laugh try to bubble up, but he had no air for it. It died in his throat. All those late nights. All that stress. All for a file that would be forgotten in a week. He had traded his life for nothing. He was a ghost, in a ghost town, and now he was just making it official.
The world was fading to a pinprick of light, and then to nothing.
Somewhere, far away, he heard a sound. A soft, cheerful ding.
The elevator had arrived. Its doors were sliding open to an empty hallway, ready to take a passenger who would never board.
Then, there was only silence, and the dark.