Chapter 2

When I called back, the phone was off—no one answered.

I sat in my chair, staring at the rejected leave request on the work app interface, my head throbbing.

I knew Rosemary came from a wealthy family. Maybe to her, a month's base salary without streaming commissions was just pocket change.

It probably couldn't even cover the price of one of her designer bags.

But still, this was a workplace.

If everyone acted like her, taking three days off without reason during a five-day work week, how could the company possibly function!

After rejecting the leave request, I marked Rosemary as absent without leave.

Then I started dealing with the series of problems caused by her absence.

Who would have thought that very afternoon, Rosemary stormed into the office.

She burst through my office door and slammed her Hermès bag—the little house-shaped one I'd seen in magazines—onto my desk.

"What's the meaning of this, Hazel? Not approving my leave again and making things difficult for me? Marking me absent for no reason—what the hell are you trying to do!"

I frowned, involuntarily covering my nose from the overwhelming smell of stale alcohol emanating from her.

Then I opened the window for ventilation, turned on the air purifier, and pulled perfume from my drawer, spraying two pumps into the air.

"What are you doing!"

"Nothing much, just that the bad breath is pretty severe and the air smells terrible."

"You said I have bad breath! I..."

Just as Rosemary was about to launch into a tirade, I cut her off.

"This is your third no-reason leave request this week. If there were no issues, I wouldn't say anything, but today there was a brand live stream that specifically requested you. Because you didn't show up, the company had to substitute another streamer and pay hefty penalty fees. Just marking you absent and deducting $50 from your perfect attendance bonus—I think that's already quite merciful."

"I just forgot! Why didn't you remind me? If you'd reminded me in time, I wouldn't have missed the stream, so this is all your fault!"

Her self-righteous attitude made me laugh.

"Am I your mother or your secretary? Are you paying my salary to remind you of everything? Those ten phone calls weren't enough to wake you up?"

"If you can do the job, do it. If not, submit your resignation now!"

That evening when I got home, my phone pushed a "People You May Know" video recommendation.

The video title was: "Leave Request Rejected and Marked Absent, Now I'm Stuck with Huge Penalty Fees."

And the person crying on camera was someone I knew all too well.

It was Rosemary, who had just confronted me about being marked absent that afternoon.

"Oh guys, you know I'm usually not in the best health..."

"I really didn't expect that when I'm not feeling well and want to take a day off, it would be rejected..."

"HR marked me absent—that's one thing, but she even made me pay hefty penalty fees and verbally abused me in the office..."

"Luckily you know I have a habit of recording vlogs, so I happened to capture it all. See, guys, this is why work documentation is so important!"

Then she played the "full confrontation" from my office that afternoon.

Rosemary's footage only showed me frowning and covering my nose, with subtitles reading "Workplace Bully Publicly Insults Employee."

She cut out all the dialogue where I reminded her about the live stream, leaving only the line "if you can't do it, resign"on repeat.

The sound of me pressing the perfume spray was amplified and labeled as "Deliberately Spraying Disinfectant to Insult Employee," mixed with her tearful voice-over: "She called me stinking garbage..."

The video quickly shot to the top of the local trending topics.

Countless netizens passionately commented.

「A bloodsucking vampire in human form? So jealous seeing a female colleague with a Hermès bag that her cells are separating?」

「Suggest investigating this old witch's employment history—definitely slept her way to the top」

「Already filed a real-name report with labor inspection, begging for the company address so I can send funeral wreaths」

「Feel so bad for Rosemary having to work with such a disgusting colleague!」

Watching the video play over and over, I was furious enough to laugh.

First time learning that "work documentation" could be done this way.