Chapter 1: The Least Worst Choice
Taiwan Edition v4
Location: Mirror Realm - Intermediary Island Study (Parallel Universe No. 15) Time: JAN 1021 (5 years ago) Protagonist: Lin Zhao-ming
Lin Zhao-ming was unemployed.
He sat in the study. On the desk was a cup of cold tea, the screen was lit, and there were over ninety emails from headhunters in his inbox. He didn't open them. Not out of laziness, but because he knew exactly what was inside.
The outside world was undergoing a massive reshuffling. Trade wars, pandemics, politics. Places that used to be viable options were closing their doors one by one; calculations that used to add up no longer made sense.
It wasn't that he couldn't stay on Intermediary Island; it was that he didn't want to watch it turn into something else.
He wasn't at a dead end. He had an apartment on Intermediary Island. Sell it, cash out, and he'd have enough money. The problem wasn't a lack of money; it was a lack of position. The entire layout of Asia was being redrawn, and his specific square just happened to be on the fault line.
There was a reason pointing to Emerald Isle, one that had been there all along.
Mist Valley had a unit he bought years ago, which he had been renting out. His aunt had passed away, and there were inheritance matters that needed someone to handle. He was the only one with the time to go. And then he lost his job. And then the outside world began that massive reshuffling.
"Having to go once" turned into "Maybe I can stay."
There was a company recruiting him. Their official website was in English, stating "American-backed management." It looked like a normal foreign enterprise.
"Looked like a normal foreign enterprise."
He stared at this line of text and paused for a moment.
The interview consisted of two rounds via video call.
The first round was with HR. Mandarin, American accent, asking standard questions. Lin Zhao-ming gave the standard answers. Formula meeting formula—everyone knew how to play the game.
The second round was with the entire Team—over a dozen people: senior manager, director, principal engineer, senior principal engineer, all lined up. There were technical questions, but they lacked depth. He could only give what he thought was the best answer. Then the topic shifted: What is your weakness? What was your worst work experience? How did you overcome it?
Interviews at an American company weren't supposed to be like this. In the US, technical assessments tested how you think, how you react under uncertainty, pushing until you couldn't answer to find your boundaries. Not here. Here, they were testing if you could recite from textbooks—management textbooks, human resources textbooks, "Modern Workplace Leadership" textbooks.
To formulaic questions, he gave formulaic answers. The other side nodded.
After the interview, he sat in the study for a while.
He thought he was going to get an authentic American burger made with fresh beef. Even a chain fast-food burger would have been fine; at least you knew what you were getting, no surprises. But what he was handed was a Gua Bao stuffed with a canned burger patty, served on a plate with an English menu.
He didn't back out.
There was a calculation he didn't voice aloud: The company had already implemented WFH before the pandemic. The entire interview was via video. He could do the job from Intermediary Island. Even if there were problems after joining, with a WFH job, changing the location where he collected his salary, or changing his tax residency, shouldn't theoretically be too hard. He had done this before—collecting a salary on Intermediary Island while working in mainland China. This logic gave him a feeling: Even if it wasn't a good fit, it wouldn't be a dead end.
The offer came. He signed it.
The five years he worked at the American company were the most comfortable time of his career.
The boss was an American in his thirties, a newcomer taking over the family business. Straightforward, direct. If you did an excellent job, you had a place; if you messed up, he told you directly. No beating around the bush, no talk of "this is a growth opportunity." He learned one thing there: Technology is a language. If your language is good enough, that's enough; you don't need anything else.
He was used to focusing on results, not used to protecting himself. Just make a good bowl of noodles, and that's it. As for the rest—whether he understood the unspoken rules, whether he knew how to call people by those specific titles—he thought it didn't matter.
Then things happened on the outside. The pandemic, politics, and the business decided to relocate to the Harmony Sphere. The boss called. We spoke a few sentences, his tone flat—it wasn't bad news, just that the environment had changed. No one was right, no one was wrong.
Lin Zhao-ming listened, without speaking.
The boss also knew he wouldn't go. His wife was from Emerald Isle, the children were still young, their home was there. These things didn't need explaining; saying them out loud would only make it weird. Both of them understood, so no one said "what a pity," no one said "I'm sorry." And that was that.
Fifteen months of severance pay, wired directly into his account. No bullshit, no strings attached, no asking him to sign anything.
After hanging up the phone, he sat in his study.
Before the American company, he had worked at PG. That was a different kind of affair—an old-style Chinese-funded enterprise on Intermediary Island that ultimately went into sell-off mode. Someone asked him to cook the books. He refused, lost some connections, but could sleep at night.
The American company was the closest thing to "normal" he had ever seen. Normal meant: what you did, was what you did. When it was over, it was over. No rhetorical traps, no extraneous bullshit.
He brought this standard of "normal" with him to Emerald Isle.
He had worked at headquarters, and he had worked at the Asian hub. He had been dispatched to Emerald Isle a few years ago to implement policy—the headquarters had a direction, and he was responsible for landing it. At that time, he could see how policies trickled from the top down, but he couldn't see the obstacles hidden beneath the table. He thought the failure of the transformation was a market problem, an execution problem.
This time was different. This was his first time joining as a local regional employee.
People used to tell him that regional roles were relaxed—support-in-nature, no frontline pressure, just follow the headquarters. It wasn't that he didn't believe it; he just never thought to question it.
In every job he took, he kept an eye on what was happening in the world. When robotics rose, he studied it. When AI arrived, he studied it too. Anything fun and interesting, he would try it out. This habit gave him a feeling: Even if this place didn't work out, the world was so big, there was always somewhere else to go.
He thought of a question, but had no answer: If this choice is right, what is the standard for being "right"?
He signed his name on the electronic contract, clicked confirm, and closed his laptop.
Then he sat in the study for a long time, doing nothing.
Outside the window was the night of Intermediary Island. A few apartments in the building opposite still had their lights on. In the distance was the harbor, the lights flickering intermittently on the water.
That night, he called his wife over to sit down.
"I accepted an offer. To Emerald Isle. A tech company with an American background."
She looked at him and didn't answer immediately. Then she said, "Okay, let's go then."
She didn't ask him if he was sure. And he didn't tell her how unsure he was.
That was the first conversation they never finished. There would be many more later.
The lights went out. The night on Intermediary Island was quiet.
The initial calculation had been very simple.
It wasn't that I chose this job. It was that after doing the math, I picked the least worst answer. And then the system told you: You chose wrong, and it's your problem.