You've Been Optimized

Conference Room 208 was small. The lighting was bright.

HRBP Zhang Wei sat across the table, with a printed agreement and an unopened bottle of mineral water in front of her.

"Luyi, have some water first."

Han Luyi did not take it.

Zhang Wei cleared her throat. "The company has recently been restructuring, and your position needs to be optimized..."

Han Luyi barely listened to what came next.

It was nothing more than the usual: thank you for your contributions, the company's decision, N+1, non-compete agreement, wishing you a bright future.

Every sentence was standard corporate jargon, every word devoid of warmth.

"The compensation package is here. Take a look." Zhang Wei pushed the agreement over.

Han Luyi flipped through it: figures, clauses, signature line.

Five years.

He had joined as a campus hire at P5 and worked his way up to P7. How many weekends had he spent rushing code? How many all-nighters had he pulled, watching new versions go live?

One sheet of paper brought it all to an end.

After signing it, he stood and headed out.

The hallway was long, with rows of white fluorescent lights overhead.

Around the fifth step after leaving Conference Room 208, his head suddenly began to hurt.

It was not an ordinary headache.

It was excruciating pain that started at his temples, like someone was drilling into his skull with an awl. Han Luyi stumbled and braced himself against the wall with his right hand.

Cracks appeared in his vision.

No—not his vision. Cracks appeared throughout the entire world, as if someone had forcefully pressed down on a screen, warping every pixel beneath the LCD panel.

Then the world shattered.

And reassembled.

The entire hallway had changed.

The walls, ceiling, floor tiles—everything was covered in a layer of translucent light, as though someone had overlaid reality with an AR layer. Countless lines of code and data scrolled at breakneck speed.

Han Luyi clung to the wall, gasping for air.

A window popped up in the center of his vision.

[Reality Code Vision activated]

"...What?"

Han Luyi thought he was hallucinating. Had getting laid off driven him insane?

Yet the panel hovered clearly in the center of his vision. He tried reaching for it, but his hand passed through the light and touched nothing.

He blinked several times. The panel remained.

The number in the upper-right corner slowly ticked down: 99... 98... 97...

His Energy was dropping.

Just then, the door to Conference Room 208 opened. Zhang Wei emerged carrying a stack of documents and nearly bumped into Han Luyi, who was standing against the wall.

"Hey, Luyi? Are you okay? You don't look so good..."

Before she could finish, Han Luyi looked up and saw a translucent data panel floating above Zhang Wei's head.

It was just one line, hovering about ten centimeters above her head, translucent like a name tag in a game.

When Han Luyi focused on it, it was as though someone had opened a dropdown menu, revealing more information—

[Current task: Complete layoff interviews for 7 employees (3/7 completed)]

[Emotion: Fatigued (hidden: guilty)]

Han Luyi stared at that number for two seconds.

Forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two yuan.

Suddenly, warmth flooded his nose. Something trickled down. He wiped it with his hand, and his fingertips came away red.

A nosebleed.

Energy: 92... 91...

Zhang Wei jumped. "You have a nosebleed! Do you need to go to the clinic?"

"No." Han Luyi wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Sister Zhang, wait a moment."

He took out the agreement he had just signed from his pocket.

"I took another look at the compensation package."

Zhang Wei froze for a moment. "But you already signed it..."

Han Luyi's voice was calm. "Article 47 of the Labor Law. There's an issue with the calculation of my years of service. I converted from intern to full-time employee in July 2021, but the system records my start date as October. You didn't count the three-month transition period in between."

The expression on Zhang Wei's face shifted subtly.

Han Luyi continued, "Also, you used pre-tax salary as the basis for overtime compensation. But under the Implementing Regulations of the Labor Contract Law, it should be based on gross payable salary, including performance pay and allowances. Add those two together, and the discrepancy is substantial."

Zhang Wei did not respond, but her grip on the folder tightened slightly.

Han Luyi looked at the panel over her head.

[Emotional change: Fatigued → Nervous]

Han Luyi placed the agreement in front of Zhang Wei. "The figures are wrong. Let's recalculate them according to the law."

Zhang Wei was silent for several seconds before saying, "Wait here. I'll verify it."

She turned and went back into the meeting room, closing the door behind her.

Han Luyi leaned against the hallway wall, watching the shifting numbers and floating streams of code in his vision. His Energy continued dropping: 85... 84...

His temples still throbbed, but the corner of his lips lifted.

Five minutes later, Zhang Wei came out, her expression a little stiff.

"Luyi, what you said... is indeed the case. I confirmed it with the compensation team. The compensation amount needs to be adjusted."

She handed him a newly printed agreement and tapped the final figure with her finger.

It was forty-seven thousand, eight hundred and thirty-two yuan more than before.

Han Luyi picked up a pen and signed it.

"Thank you, Sister Zhang."

He folded the new agreement and put it in his pocket. As he turned around, he saw someone standing at the end of the hallway.

It was Chen Bowen. He held a cup of coffee and leaned against the wall, wearing a half-smile.

Whenever Han Luyi had seen that face before, there had been only one word in his heart: endure.

Chen Bowen was Han Luyi's direct supervisor, a returned overseas master's graduate who had parachuted in as a P8. Two months ago, he had delivered a polished presentation using the recommendation system evolution Han Luyi had spent six months developing. Conversion rates had risen 37%, while retention had increased by 5.2 percentage points. Of the more than 2,300 commits in the code repository, 91 percent had come from Han Luyi's account, but the PPT was credited to "Chen Bowen's Team," and VP Wang Zhiyuan had nodded repeatedly from the audience.

At the year-end review, Chen Bowen received the department's only 3.75 rating, while Han Luyi got a 3.25. The feedback consisted of just five words: insufficient cooperation.

Then the project was taken away, he was kicked to the outsourcing team, and finally HR stepped in to finish him off. A complete one-stop service.

Han Luyi looked at him.

The data panel over Chen Bowen's head lit up.

[Emotion: Contemptuous (hidden: fear)]

[WARNING: This target has 3 critical Bugs (current level insufficient)]

"Luyi, you've worked hard. Get some good rest for a while." Chen Bowen's expression carried just the right amount of regret. "If there's anything you need help with, let me know."

Han Luyi smiled.

He removed his employee badge from around his neck and placed it on the reception desk beside him.

"Oh, right." As though something had just occurred to him, he said, "Is the conversion rate dropping?"

Chen Bowen's hand holding the coffee paused.

Han Luyi took out his phone and checked the time.

"After launch, it should be dropping by a few tenths every day. Have you checked the weekly trend line recently?"

The smile disappeared from Chen Bowen's face.

"How do you know?"

"I wrote it." Han Luyi slipped his phone back into his pocket. "Chen, good luck."

"Han Luyi! What do you mean by that?!"

Han Luyi ignored him, waved, and walked away.

As he passed through the revolving doors of Prosperity Group's building, February's cold wind struck him head-on. He stood on the steps and took a deep breath.

Energy: 61/100.

His head still hurt.

His upper lip itched where the dried blood from his nosebleed had crusted over.

Those translucent data and code still floated in his vision. Above every passerby's head was a small panel. He tried focusing his attention to turn the thing off—

The panels vanished.

The world returned to normal.

Han Luyi reached into his pocket and touched the new agreement.

He had been laid off.

He had gotten nearly fifty thousand yuan more.

And something seemed seriously wrong with his eyes.

He arranged those three facts in his mind and realized that he actually wanted to laugh.

So he did.

Standing in the cold February wind, a twenty-six-year-old programmer who had just been laid off, with dried blood still crusted beneath his nose, laughed out loud at the gray sky.

A passing security guard gave him a look.

Han Luyi stopped laughing and took out his phone to call a car.

The ride-hailing app displayed an estimated fare: 38 yuan.

But two other questions were on his mind—

What would happen when his Energy hit zero?

And what were Chen Bowen's three critical Bugs?

His phone buzzed. A push notification appeared: <Flash Tech completes ¥1 billion Series B funding round, valuation surpasses ¥10 billion>. Han Luyi glanced at it and swiped it away.

One billion.

It had nothing to do with him.