"Name?!"
In a daze that had begun at some unknown point, Huai Shi heard an irritated knock on the desk. "Did you hear what I said?!"
Bang!
The sudden crash made his shoulders jerk. He snapped awake, only then realizing that he had drifted off again—in his department supervisor's office, during a conversation that was crucial to his future...
"Name?" the young supervisor repeated expressionlessly.
"Huh? Oh, oh, Huai Shi!"
Huai Shi hurriedly put on a fawning smile and explained, "The huai from Chinese scholartree, and shi with the speech radical..."
"That's enough. I can read."
The supervisor named Yuan Zhao shot him a sidelong glance, looking at the file on the desk. "Huai Shi, male, thirty years old. That's you, right?"
"Yes, yes, yes."
Huai Shi nodded vigorously, afraid that a delayed response would displease his supervisor again.
"Take a look at this report you wrote. Name? Age? Gender? Is this a child introducing himself? How old are you?!"
Yuan Zhao sneered, grabbed the report in his hand, and tossed it into Huai Shi's arms irritably. "I told you to write a work summary. Nine years, Huai Shi. What exactly have you done since joining this company?!"
"Uh..."
Stunned, Huai Shi answered uneasily, "Just... work?"
"What work? Write it down! If you don't write it down, am I supposed to ask you personally? And if I ask, what can you even tell me?"
Yuan Zhao slapped the desk, growing angrier. "Whenever I ask, you say you've been out chasing performance. Every month, your performance barely scrapes past the passing line, and your evaluations and attendance are barely passable—at your age, you're not young anymore, Little Huai. Why don't you have even a shred of ambition?!"
"I'll work hard. I definitely will," Huai Shi answered ingratiatingly, but another slap on