Properly Speaking, Benefits Are the Best Anti-Quit Policy
The door let out a thin, uneasy squeak. With a faintly unsettled feeling, I pushed it open and stepped into the Vanta Design CEO Office.
What greeted me was a workspace that might as well have been a private study. Antique, I thought. Hardbound volumes packed the shelves from end to end. Quite a few books from the human world in there, too. A broad, handsome desk of solid wood occupied one side of the room, and in the leather chair behind it sat a blond man.
The same man I'd met on my first day saw me come in and brightened at once.
"Lee-hyun! It's been a week. Are you settling in all right?"
A guest chair had been set opposite the vampire's desk, as if in preparation for the meeting. I drew it in, sat, and answered.
"Yes. It's all thanks to the care you've shown me, sir."
...Right. As if anyone could be fine after signing a contract that unhinged. And it was your doing that I got thrown into the work on day one. Among other complaints. I turned the whole litany over in my head even as I tried, with everything I had, to look like a bright and eager new hire. If I wanted to get through this lunatic company without anything going wrong, that was the only way!
"Ah, still with the stiff titles! I asked you to call me Blair."
That startup fashion of making people address their bosses by first name instead of title needed to die out. It only made the people underneath uncomfortable.
"Haha. Nothing out of the ordinary while I've been away, I hope?"
Nothing out of the ordinary? Every single day is out of the ordinary!
Unable to hear the muttering in my skull, Blair carried the small talk a little further, laughing as brightly as he had that first day. Between the generous stretch of his mouth, his fangs showed.
Which raised a question. The blood... how did he even get it?
I went a little rigid with my eyes fixed on those fangs, and Blair let out a small "ah," perfectly happy to explain.
"I don't drink the blood of living humans, so please don't worry! If I did, they'd turn into vampires too, and then—imagine the awkwardness. Blood from the dead, or animal blood, is so much more comfortable!"
...He had a point. It would be embarrassing for everyone involved. Hearing it, some of the tension eased out of me. ...He didn't mean he turned living people into corpses and then drank from them, did he? A vivid imagination is a curse. No. Don't dig into it. For the sake of my sanity, if nothing else...
"In your world, there are all those movies where a vampire drinks a beautiful woman's blood, aren't there?"
Thinking of the films about Count Dracula, I nodded.
"That's what pathetic types do when they're bored and have no one to play with. They're trying to manufacture a companion they like! I already have plenty of fun just running the company. Where would I find the time to be bored?"
...Please let the CEO stay busy for the rest of his life. If that's too much to ask, then at least until I quit! I'd dreamed of a safe life in which no work came in and I simply drew a paycheck, but shuttling in and out of other worlds might actually be the better deal. ...Oh. If the company has no work, I can't pay down the debt either. One way or another, I needed the agency's jobs to come in like a bumper crop.
"You wrapped up that rush client request in fine form! Forty percent of the first-quarter target has already been repaid."
The vampire pulled up a settlement program on his monitor and turned it toward me. There seemed to be a separate page for managing the terms of my contract, and the first-quarter repayment graph sat nearly half full—the kind of display you could read at a glance.
Oh. One request, and I'd paid off quite a lot. If a weeklong project had brought in an extra twelve million won on top, the company was making a tidy bit of money off it, too. Blair explained that a client evaluation of Grade A or Higher brought in additional pay according to the grade.
Good. Manage the scores and I'll have this cleared in no time. The last job had been an emergency, which probably explained why the pay ran so high for the time involved. Thanks to that, maybe my left leg would get to stay where it was.
"I'll give you your official employee ID as well! I wanted to hand it over sooner, but you looked so busy that I'm only managing it now."
Thanks to you, I worked myself to the bone on overtime! In direct opposition to that disrespectful thought, I accepted the card with both hands, as politely as I could.
A six-digit number was printed in the card's upper right. The same format as the digits you punched into the keypad when crossing dimensions.
The unique number of the world I came from. Every human probably carried that same mark: #000255. ...I hoped I'd get to meet some of them, eventually.
Knock, knock.
At the sound, today's headless corpse came in carrying drinks, just as he always did. He offered a courteous bow of the head that was not, in any literal sense, a bow of the head, and approached us in a posture that was, all things considered, very much a butler's.
A soft tap. The secretary bent at the waist to offer an iced Americano in a plastic cup, which brought the cut plane of his neck uncomfortably close.
"......"
I did everything I could not to lock eyes with the cross-section where a head used to be.
Blair, watching, burst out laughing.
"Hahaha! Maurice can be a little frightening to human eyes, I'll grant you. But he works hard and he's kind—you couldn't ask for a better colleague! I found the poor fellow after he'd been wrongfully executed alongside his master, felt sorry for him, and brought him in."
A human coworker who dumped their work on you, versus a competent and pleasant colleague who happened to be a guillotined corpse. I ran a quick would-you-rather between the two and found that neither was easy to choose.
"And silence is golden, isn't it! When you're coming and going through a CEO's office where security matters, having no head to chatter with is a virtue."
...I was going to watch my mouth in this place. If I didn't want to get lopped off just like that and stuck on permanent mute!
"Let's see... what else I ought to give you. You received the translation smartwatch on the first day, yes?"
"Yes. It's amazing. It even renders things I've designed into languages I actually understand."
"Haha, doesn't it? Nothing like it exists in your world. Oh, and take this Door Keyring as well. I imagine you already know how to use it."
From watching the team leader use one last time, I'd gathered it was what you used to get back to the company. Slip the little model off the ring, set it on the floor, and it became a full-sized door you could cross dimensions with.
The thing that was going to be my lifeline! I promised myself I'd clip it to my bag the moment I got back to my seat, so there was no chance of losing it.
"Now let me explain the benefits. If you need anything else, feel free to suggest it!"
"What sorts of things are there?"
"You've already had the company meals, three a day. And as a benefit tailored to residents of world #000255, we cover two hundred thousand won a month in health expenses. Gym, sports—spend it on anything exercise-related, then file for reimbursement!"
Oh. That was a genuinely useful benefit. When it came to investing in its employees, at least, the company didn't behave like a predatory one, which only made me curious how it turned a profit. ...Was it simply flush, once you factored in the exchange rates of other worlds?
"Someone on your own team nagged me endlessly until I created it! Aside from that, there's a chatbot called Vanta Bot that the staff find very useful."
I remembered seeing a contact named Vanta Bot in the company messenger. I also had a vague memory of walking past while Hena asked the chatbot what was on the lunch menu.
"It's an AI we developed in-house, and it manages the agency's entire system. You can use it easily through the company messenger! Very handy for all kinds of research, too."
One of those natural-language AIs that were everywhere lately, then. Like ChatGPT. Surprising that so small a company had technology of its own—but then, there was nothing about this company that wasn't surprising.
"You can even make small talk with it, the way you would with a colleague! I hear it's especially popular with employees who find it hard to tell the people they know about life at the company."
Well, yes. Start talking about other worlds and tentacle monsters out there, and you'd be locked in a psychiatric ward before you finished the sentence. When my chest got too tight, it would make a fine place to vent.
"I hope you'll put it to good use. Oh—and if you ask the person in charge over in production, they'll make you business cards."
"Yes. I'll look into it."
The vampire, who had been rattling off one trivial thing after another, lowered his voice again, as if sliding into another confidential offer.
"And, Lee-hyun. By any chance... would you have any interest in transferring to the Research Team?"
What? To that impossible, worst-of-all team?
"You've built your career on the design side, so I understand the reluctance, but the Research Team is short-staffed at the moment. If you transfer, I'll write off the entire debt you've incurred with the company."
...Really?
I caught my breath. It was, without question, a tempting offer. I wouldn't have to go around shaking, never knowing when one of my limbs might be cut away.
...If I hadn't known better, I would have snapped up that bait like a fool. Haha. But I'd already heard the story from Si Yeon-woo! Company life really was a war of information. A veteran's tips were always worth keeping. Dodge a severed limb, and I might get my life severed instead. That wasn't a trade I could make.
Everyone assigned there had gone missing, and even people on the other teams wanted nothing to do with the place. Of course I was refusing!
"I'm grateful for the offer, but I'd really rather keep learning the design work."
"Hmm. Very well. I'll respect your wishes, Lee-hyun. Well—you'll have a chance to do related work on the Design Team regardless. We'll ease you into it a little at a time."
...If he was going to pressure me with a line that soaked in lingering regret, why bother saying he respected what the employee wanted? A contradictory vampire, and not for the first time!
"Lee-hyun. I believe you can bring me far more than you have so far. If you ever change your mind, just say the word."
...??
Is there something else he wants from me?
The CEO smiled, thin and knowing, and said something freighted with meaning.
"That covers everything I needed to pass along. Whenever you have something to say—or even if you simply need someone to talk to—come by the CEO's office anytime!"
Yeah. I am absolutely never coming. What kind of person would willingly spend more time alone with a vampire?
We traded a brief goodbye, and I left the office.
Ding—
Back on the floor, I headed for the Brand Design Team's seats. Four desks faced one another in a long cluster, with a fifth—the team leader's—set crosswise against the innermost end.
This space was starting to feel a little familiar. The staff had already come in, and unlike the quiet office of the morning, the room had a lively hum to it.
Pascal noticed I was back.
"You're here. A new request came in."
The moment to step, once again, into a new world.
...Could I even call it a new world? Because that place, strangely enough, was somewhere already rather familiar to us.