"No problem!" Zhou Zhuang answered instantly. He thumped his chest hard, making bang-bang sounds as he guaranteed it. "As long as you don't mind my taste."
"No. Why would I dislike your taste, Manager?" Angela shook her head.
"Well… it's not that you can't dislike it," Zhou Zhuang hurriedly added, patching his own statement. "If I pick something that doesn't match your preferences, you have to say no."
Angela took a sip of tea and nodded, indicating she would.
Zhou Zhuang relaxed, raised the cup of tea in front of him—now lukewarm—and took a drink to soothe his slightly dry throat. The room fell quiet again.
After finishing his tea in the silence, Zhou Zhuang realized he had nothing else to say. He stood.
"Um, Angela. I'll head back to my room and rest. Tonight, I'll invite you to dinner."
As he spoke, he waved a hand to stop Angela from rising to see him out. Then he quickly headed for the door.
Open—close—gently shut. Clean and efficient. In the blink of an eye, only Angela remained in the room.
With a faint smile, she drank the last bit of tea and set the cup down. This time, she didn't use the room's automatic cleaning function—she personally went to the sink and washed the cupware by hand.
Back in his own room, Zhou Zhuang replayed what had happened in Angela's room and, without thinking, started flailing his arms and punching the air like a man possessed.
"Ahhhhhh… so good!"
After exhaling deeply to steady himself, he looked around his room.
Angela wasn't wrong—his room was empty.But what was he supposed to do? He was unfamiliar with the City; even if he wanted to buy things, he had no idea where.
Sigh… the only "new" thing that had entered his room in the past few days was the huge bag of snacks he'd freeloaded from HamPangPang.
He stared blankly at the snack bag by the foot of the bed. After a moment, he remembered: he'd said he'd create an online poll for the Department Heads.
Thinking of that, Zhou Zhuang abandoned his plan to be sealed by the cup (i.e., to laze around), walked to the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down.
He took out his phone and started searching for the function Angela had mentioned.
The moment he unlocked it, a notification popped up at the top.
He thought it was some app advertisement—until he saw Angela's half-body profile photo next to the message. He assumed it was a tip from Angela, worried he wouldn't be able to find the function.
He tapped it.
The screen automatically jumped to the chat interface he couldn't find earlier, and Angela's message was a concise software tutorial.
After replying "Thank you," Zhou Zhuang followed her instructions and fumbled through the phone's features.
A while later, he stretched hard, shaking off the numbness from sitting too long, and muttered internally with shameless confidence:
Yep. I've completely mastered it.
He operated the phone for a bit, finally drafted the poll he wanted, and after repeatedly checking for mistakes, opened the interface that could be called the "work group chat" and sent it out.
At the same time—
Malkuth and Hod, summarizing issues from employee training,
Binah, staring at a dark R&D apparatus,
Netzach, grinding away at work in his office,
and Angela, washing cups in her room…
All felt the vibration of a phone in their pocket.
On Zhou Zhuang's side, as he stared at his own poll message, anxiety gnawed at him: What if nobody responds?
He kept dragging down the chat to refresh and check the poll—dozens of times—until finally, the poll data changed.
The very first person to vote was their beloved Angela.
No extra questions. After reading the proposal—"Whether to allow music of various types to be played during leisure time inside the company"—Angela decisively voted Agree.
"NICE." Seeing Angela's approval instantly made Zhou Zhuang feel like his proposal was absolutely brilliant.
Then the other Department Heads—inside this nearly-forgotten work group—began voicing opinions.
"Manager, Manager—when you say 'free time,' what time periods exactly?"
Zhou Zhuang thought carefully about what he currently understood of the company's schedule and replied cautiously:
"From waking up in the morning until work starts in the morning, and then from after lunch until bedtime."
"But Manager, Hod and I train the employees during the afternoon. Of course, if you want to play music then, it's still fine—your music can be used as attention training."
"Oh! And—if we scale monster difficulty according to your music, that could be great too. I should discuss it with Hod."
She was about to go consult Hod when she noticed Hod had already read the proposal and replied.
"Malkuth, don't try to add everything all at once. Our current employees can't handle overly complex training."
Then, thinking from the employees' perspective, Hod added:
"However, I do think the Manager's plan is feasible. The company is currently in the gap between worlds, and employees can't receive psychological comfort from the outside."
"So I think it works—use music to help stabilize employees' mental state. I agree."
Zhou Zhuang, seeing another "Agree," was already mentally opening champagne—but the moment that thought appeared, he felt like he'd planted a flag.
And sure enough—
The person Zhou Zhuang thought would never oppose it—Netzach—coldly cast a vote in the Oppose column.
Zhou Zhuang's eyes widened.
Net, what are you doing?! You of all people should love this kind of thing!
After voting no, Netzach posted his reasoning:
"I don't think playing music is necessary. Employees should learn to regulate their own psychological state instead of having the Manager accommodate them."
Zhou Zhuang screamed internally:
I'm not entirely doing it for them—I'm doing it for myself too!
Netzach continued:
"Also, employees currently don't have the right to enjoy this privilege. Using music to soothe mood should only be considered once employees reach at least Level 3."
Zhou Zhuang was about to explode.
Level 3 employees are basically the backbone of the company! Are Level 1 employees not human?! I ask you—are they human or not?!
....
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