Chapter 17: Grey Rock Mode
Taiwan Edition v2
Location: The Mirror Realm・Jade Mirror Island Time: August—October, 1024 Protagonist: Lin Zhaoming
Study room.
When he wrote this section, he had to constantly remind himself: these things happened before November. The chronological order was important.
A certain day in August. Afternoon. The Boss walked past him.
Not a meeting. No calendar invite. No invitation. No meeting room. Just walking past. He stopped for a second.
"Zhaoming, got a minute? Let's have a quick chat."
The pantry. No one else was there. The Boss leaned against the sink, holding a cup. His tone was light. Casual. Like a post-lunch chit-chat.
"I'm telling you the truth. You know your own situation best."
Lin Zhaoming stood there.
"It’s best for you if you hand in your resignation yourself before September."
The water in the cup sloshed slightly. The Boss took a sip.
"I'm speaking to you as someone who has been there. Not as your superior."
He put the cup down. His voice lowered slightly. Not hushed. But the kind of volume you only use when it's just the two of you.
"You know how small this industry is. The colleagues you've met, the people from the ODMs, the people from the vendors—the circle is just this big. If you don't leave, we'll use every possible method to ruin your file. When you go out looking for a job later, and people run a background check—what do you think will happen?"
The refrigerator in the pantry hummed.
"Voluntary resignation. That's best for you. I'm telling you this out of goodwill."
The Boss's eyes were sincere. Genuine. As if he truly believed he was helping Lin Zhaoming. As if these words were the best gift he could offer.
You need to leave. Leaving is for your own good. The people who stay will make sure your reputation is ruined—this wasn't a threat, this was a reminder.
The pantry. No recording. No email. No one else. If Lin Zhaoming went to anyone and said, "The Boss told me to resign before September"—the Boss could say, "I never said such a thing. I was merely concerned about his career development."
Lin Zhaoming looked at him.
"Let me think about it."
The Boss waited a few seconds.
"Don't think too long."
He took his cup and left.
The pantry was left with only Lin Zhaoming again. The refrigerator hummed on.
He stood there. His brain was calculating.
August. Summer vacation. Looking for a job? Who was hiring? One month?
It didn't make sense.
He had no savings to start over. He had family. He had daily expenses. The Hong Kong side wouldn't stop just because he lost his job.
If he left on his own—no severance. Nothing at all.
If he didn't leave—they would fire him. N+1. Not much. But he needed it.
This wasn't a matter of principle. It wasn't a matter of dignity. It was math.
He chose certainty.
The days that followed.
No one brought up the conversation in the pantry. No follow-up emails. No documents ever recorded those words.
When the Boss saw him, he nodded, smiled, as if nothing had ever been said.
Lin Zhaoming continued to go to work. On time. Sitting in his seat. Turning on his computer.
September arrived. He didn't submit a resignation letter.
Mid-September.
A meeting appeared on the calendar. Booked by the Boss. "Catch-up." Half an hour. No agenda.
When Lin Zhaoming saw that invite, his body reacted before his brain.
He recognized this.
He walked in.
The same room. Not the one from last time, but the exact same size. The exact same two chairs. The exact same door closing behind them.
The Boss was already sitting there.
"Take a seat."
He sat down.
The Boss started talking. His tone was sincere. Just like every other time.
Lin Zhaoming no longer tried to memorize what he said. Last time he tried—six hours of content, and after coming out he couldn't remember anything clearly. This time he had learned. It couldn't be memorized.
He only paid attention to a few things.
One, the time.
Two, which specific words made his heart rate change when the Boss said them.
Three, whether the door had ever been opened.
One hour. Two hours.
The Boss's version was the same as last time. The same as the time before that. The same words. The same structure. "Your approach," "feedback," "I'm doing this for your own good."
Three hours.
Lin Zhaoming's mouth was already dry. He picked up the water on the table and took a sip. The water was lukewarm. He didn't know how long it had been sitting there.
Four hours.
He felt that thing coming back. The same thing from last time, and the time before that. Not pain. Not fear. It was a kind of weightlessness. Like you are sitting on a normal chair, but the floor is slowly sinking. You know you are still there, but you aren't sure where you are anymore.
Five hours.
The Boss checked his watch.
"Hold on a second."
He opened the laptop on the table. Clicked a link. Waited a few seconds.
The sound of a call connecting.
"Hello?" A female voice. Distant. With a slight echo. Like from another office, another floor, another world.
"Yvonne, joined. Zhaoming is here too."
The Boss's voice completely changed.
Lin Zhaoming sat there, hearing the shift. Like someone unfolding a piece of cloth and covering everything that happened in the previous five hours. The Boss's tone jumped from that—that thing that trapped you, soaking upwards like rising water—to another frequency entirely. Normal. Professional. "Caring for a subordinate."
A two-second switch.
Lin Zhaoming saw all of it.
But the person on the other end of the line heard none of it. Because the first sentence she heard was already a performance.
"Yvonne, I had a chat with Zhaoming about his career development. I think we can discuss a concrete plan."
"Okay." Yvonne's voice was clear. Fresh. Like someone who just joined the company, ready to get things done. "Hi Zhaoming, I'm Yvonne, HR Business Partner. Today we mainly want to chat about your recent performance and the direction of your development plan."
Her voice came through the laptop speakers into the room. Quietly. A bit distant.
She didn't know how small this room was. She didn't know if the door was open or closed. She didn't know how long Lin Zhaoming had been sitting there. She didn't know his hands were shaking under the table. She didn't know his water cup was already empty. She didn't know what time the hallway lights would switch to night mode.
All she knew was: she was asked to join a call and heard a manager and an employee discussing a development plan.
The Boss slid a document forward.
Performance Improvement Plan.
Lin Zhaoming stared at those few words.
He knew what a PIP was. Anyone who had worked in a large corporation knew what a PIP was. PIP didn't mean "helping you improve." PIP meant "we have already decided you are leaving, but we need documentation."
He opened it.
Three objectives.
The first: "Establish a complete product line document indexing system within this quarter, covering all existing technical documents, test reports, and historical revision records."
These documents—the very thing he had spent a year trying to do. Digitization. Standardized numbering. ERP integration. Every time he proposed it, every time it was blocked with "wait a minute," "now is not the right time," "no need for such a big move."
A task that couldn't be moved in a year, the PIP gave him one quarter.
The second: "Proactively establish effective communication mechanisms with cross-departmental stakeholders, submitting weekly communication logs and feedback summaries."
Establishing effective communication with the people who ignored his messages. And then submitting weekly reports to prove he was communicating.
The third: "Complete designated professional development courses and submit learning reflection reports."
"Effective Communication Skills," "Team Collaboration," "Self-Management."
He closed the document.
"What do you think, Zhaoming?" the Boss asked.
Yvonne's voice came from the speaker: "The purpose of this plan is to help you stay focused on development, it's not a punishment. If you have any feedback—"
"Yvonne, can I record this?"
The line went silent for a moment.
The Boss took over: "This is internal communication, no recording is needed. Yvonne will take notes."
Yvonne's voice returned: "Yes, I will take detailed meeting notes."
Her notes. On the other end of the phone. Notes covering only the version she heard.
Lin Zhaoming stared at the table.
He wanted to say: These are the things I wanted to do. The things you blocked for a year. Now putting them in a PIP—you don't want me to do them; you want me to fail to do them within an impossible deadline, so you have documents to say I couldn't do it.
He said none of it.
Because he had already been in this room for over five hours. The residue of every single time before this—the six hours, the four hours, the lunch-to-end-of-day sessions—was fully present. It wasn't this single instance that broke him. It was all those previous times combined with this one.
The Boss waited a beat. Then he said, "I suggest you sign it. This isn't a penalty; it's a development plan. It's helpful for your career."
Yvonne's voice: "Yes, a PIP is a supportive framework—"
Lin Zhaoming picked up the pen.
Signed it.
The Boss watched him. And took the document back.
"Yvonne, he signed it. Please make a record."
"Got it, I'll send out the notes to both of you tomorrow."
The sound of typing came across the line. Clack, clack, clack. Very quiet. Very far away.
"Thanks for your time. If there are any questions, you can reach out to me directly."
Clack, clack, clack.
Then the call disconnected.
Beep—
The room fell silent again.
The Boss stood up and patted his shoulder.
"Good job. Get some good rest."
Lin Zhaoming stood up. His legs felt weak.
He walked out of that room. The hallway lights had already switched to night mode.
The time Yvonne spent on the call—from "joined" to hanging up—was roughly fifteen minutes.
Of the five-plus hours before that, she knew nothing.
If anyone checked later, the record would state: "HR participated via conference call."
After the PIP was signed, the Boss walked past his desk. He paused.
"Zhaoming, during the PIP period, just focus on the items in the plan. Go ahead and hand over your current projects."
Verbal. No email.
The next day, people started taking over his tasks. There was no formal handover announcement. His name disappeared from the CC lists. Meeting invitations stopped arriving.
His work wasn't taken away. It evaporated.
He started working on the first PIP objective. Document indexing.
He opened an Excel spreadsheet and began listing the document locations he knew of.
The first drive. It contained three folders. Every folder had a different naming convention. Some used dates, some used version numbers, some used project codes. The dates had two different formats. The version numbers had three. The project codes—some were legacy code bases, some were new ones, some he had never seen before in his life.
He opened a report. The system said the format was unsupported. He tried another application. It opened. The data inside contradicted the data from another report. He went to find a third copy. The date on the third copy didn't align with either of the first two.
Three documents. Three sets of data. Three versions. None of them were inherently "wrong"—because each had a plausible context. But put the three together, and you couldn't find a single version that could definitively be called "right."
This was exactly the digitization process he had wanted to accomplish. The very thing he had pushed for a year, only to be stone-walled by "wait a minute."
Now these things were sitting on his desktop. Not because someone wanted him to organize them. But because someone needed him to fail.
He kept working on it. Because if he didn't, he would have even less to do.
Early October.
The QTR presentation schedule was released. Quarterly Business Review. Everyone's name was on it. Including his.
The Boss walked past his desk again. Using that same casual tone.
"You don't need to attend the QTR. Just focus on your plan."
Verbal.
His name was still on the calendar. If he went—he wouldn't be following "advice." If he didn't go—the calendar explicitly stated he should be there, but he simply didn't show up.
"Then who will handle my session?"
The Boss had already walked away. He didn't look back.
On the day of the QTR, he sat at his desk. The door to the adjacent conference room was closed. Someone inside was presenting. He could hear the voice. Far away.
He opened his computer. He worked on the document index.
There was one report he clearly remembered. He had written it himself. A yield analysis for the third-generation projection module. He searched the drive for it. He couldn't find it.
He tried another directory. Found a file with a similar name. Opened it.
It wasn't his version. It had been altered. He remembered the specific numbers he had written down. The ones here were different. Just off by a tiny bit. Off by just enough that if you hadn't seen the original, you'd never spot the discrepancy.
He had seen this kind of thing before. The incident in Chapter 8—Pei-shan changing dates. Seven days.
This time it wasn't seven days. It was a few percentage points.
He closed the file. Moved on to the next one.
The attachment for the next one wouldn't open. The link was dead.
The filename of the next one was completely identical to another document, but the contents were entirely different.
His Excel list grew longer and longer. Every single row represented a problem. Every problem required tracking someone down to verify. But there was no one to reach. No one replied on Teams. He walked over to people's desks, and the desks were empty—hot-desking, no one knew where anyone had gone.
The PIP deadline was the end of October.
The end of October.
Yvonne sent an email.
"We appreciate colleague Lin Zhaoming's efforts during the development plan period. After review, it has been determined that certain objectives were not met within the deadline. Related records will be filed for future reference."
He finished reading it.
He felt absolutely nothing.
Like a faucet that has been dripping for months; one day you realize you can no longer hear it. It's not that the water stopped. It's that your ears have simply stopped processing the sound.
November.
The post-PIP Lin Zhaoming looked much the same from the outside as before.
He went to work. Arrived on time. Sat down. Booted his computer. Worked on whatever tasks he had left. Submitted the reports that people still collected. Attended the meetings he was still invited to.
But one thing was fundamentally different.
He completely stopped reacting.
Not holding back his reactions. Actually, truly, not reacting. Like a piece of rock.
Before—when the Boss spoke, he would internally formulate a rebuttal. Even if he didn't voice it, his brain was churning.
Now—when the Boss spoke, he listened. Let him finish. No rebuttal. No formulation. No churning.
Before—if someone altered his reports, he would notice. He would remember. His brain would flag it.
Now—alter it if you want. No flags. Because what difference did a flag make anyway?
Before—during a meeting, he would analyze: Are there flaws in this proposal? Are these numbers correct?
Now—sit. Listen. Meeting adjourned.
His presence became entirely formal. An object occupying a chair. Attending without participating. Present but utterly disengaged. No emotion left to trigger. No opinions left to attack. No vulnerabilities left to exploit.
The Boss tried to prod him several times.
"Zhaoming, what are your thoughts?"
"No thoughts. It's your call."
"Are you sure you have no opinions on this?"
"None."
The Boss stared at him. He stared right back. His eyes were entirely flat. Still. Void of anger. Void of fear. Void of expectations. Void of disappointment.
The Boss looked like he wanted to say something else. But there was nothing left to say. Because Lin Zhaoming had given him absolutely nothing to catch onto.
You cannot argue with a stone.
You cannot trap a stone in a room for seven hours. Because a stone doesn't break down.
You cannot use the phrase "I'm doing this for your own good" on a stone. Because a stone doesn't require your goodwill.
You cannot smear a stone's file. A stone doesn't have a file.
Before the PIP, Lin Zhaoming was a person who reacted. Reactions created attack vectors. Attack vectors generated ammo. Ammo generated paper trails. And paper trails built the narrative.
After the PIP, the ammo simply vanished.
One day, the Boss walked past his desk. He stopped. He watched him for a while.
"Are you doing okay?"
Lin Zhaoming looked up.
"I'm fine."
There was something in the Boss's eyes. It wasn't care. It wasn't concern. It was a kind of... uncertainty. It was as if he didn't know how to process the person sitting in front of him. The previous version of Lin Zhaoming, he knew how to manage—apply pressure, wait for the reaction, harvest the reaction for ammo.
Now there was zero reaction.
His tools had ceased to function.
The Boss walked away.
Lin Zhaoming lowered his head. He went back to work.
He didn't remember much of the days from that period.
Not because nothing happened. But because everything felt identical. Work. Tasks. Silence. Leave.
What he remembered were microscopic details.
He remembered eating a bento box in the pantry one afternoon while two people nearby chatted. One said, "I heard there's gonna be another round of layoffs over there." The other replied, "Mm." Then silence. They both kept eating.
He remembered a day it rained heavily. He hadn't brought an umbrella. He stood at the company entrance, waiting. The rain poured. He stood there for ten minutes. He didn't think about anything. Just stood there. Watching the rain.
He remembered coming home one evening, and his wife asked if he had eaten. He said he had. He hadn't.
These were the things he remembered.
And then came the team building event.
Study room.
He put down his pen.
The day he signed the PIP—the first five hours alone with the Boss, and the final fifteen minutes when Yvonne's voice joined the call—he could now perfectly recall its entirety. But when he walked out of that room that day, he had only remembered a sensation. Not pain. Not rage. Emptiness. Like someone had opened his skull, removed several components, and secured the lid back on. He didn't know what was missing. He just knew it was gone.
He honestly didn't know if the Boss had specifically waited for him to cognitively collapse before presenting the PIP. He wasn't certain.
But for a Boss to drop everything and confine someone to a room for seven hours—that scale of time investment wasn't random.
That was a deduction. He didn't know it for a fact.
What he did know was: all the most critical maneuvers were verbal.
The pantry suggestion to resign—verbal. The instruction not to attend the QTR—verbal. The directive to hand over his projects—verbal.
On paper, absolutely nothing had happened. On the calendar, he was a completely standard employee. The PIP had his signature on it, given voluntarily. Yvonne's notes documented a "constructive dialogue." If he ever raised a formal complaint, the corporate narrative would be ironclad: a caring manager trying to guide an underperforming employee who struggled with communication.
Yvonne was on the phone for exactly fifteen minutes. She didn't turn on her camera. She had never seen Lin Zhaoming's face during that meeting. She didn't know the dimensions of the room. Didn't know if the door was sealed. Didn't know if Lin Zhaoming's hands were trembling beneath the table. All she heard was a manager expressing deep concern while discussing a development plan with his subordinate.
That was her entire reality of the event.
If there ever came a day when someone inevitably asked Yvonne, "Did you witness any inappropriate conduct?"
She would respond with absolute sincerity: "No. The atmosphere of communication was excellent. The employee signed the document voluntarily."
She wouldn't be lying. She would truthfully report everything she heard. And what she heard was entirely segregated from reality.
And after orchestrating all of that, the final severance package was standard statutory compensation. Exactly identical to a straight termination.
Which meant—none of those maneuvers were actually about firing him. You don't need a complex reason to fire someone. You just pay out the severance.
Those maneuvers were designed for the aftermath.
For what the paper trail would reflect. For establishing the corporate narrative in case he filed a grievance. The remaining employees watched him be processed into a "narrative" before disappearing—they learned the lesson clearly: an uncooperative employee gets attached to a very specific kind of story.
The chaos he originally wanted to fix had been reverse-engineered into the tool to punish him. The digital standardization he pushed for a year, which no one cared about, was surgically adapted into a PIP objective he couldn't possibly achieve in one quarter.
And on the day he signed the PIP, he firmly believed he had completely lost.
It was only later that he slowly realized the truth: He wasn't the one who lost. That was simply their very last card to play. Because he had abruptly stopped reacting. He stopped supplying them with anything they could use.
"Grey Rock" wasn't a deliberate strategy on his part. It wasn't a tactical countermeasure he plotted out on a whiteboard.
It was the biological default state of someone who had been beaten down to the point where there was absolutely nowhere left to hit.
It merely happened to be the one state immune to attack.
That night.
He returned home. His wife was in the living room.
He changed his shoes. Sat down.
"Did you eat yet?"
"No."
His wife went to cook something. He sat on the sofa. The TV was on. He wasn't watching it.
His wife brought out a bowl of noodles. She sat down next to him.
"That... that plan you were doing... is it over?"
His wife knew the PIP existed. He hadn't shared the mechanics of it. He only told her: there was a plan he had to execute. Once it was done, they'd know where things stood.
"It's over."
"And the result?"
"As expected."
His wife looked at him.
"So... what do we do now?"
Lin Zhaoming ate his noodles.
"We wait. They will do what they need to do."
"Aren't you going to do something about it?"
"There's nothing left to do."
His wife didn't press the issue.
They sat there together. The TV volume was low.
He finished the noodles. Put down the bowl.
"Thank you."
His wife took the bowl into the kitchen. He sat alone in the living room.
Outside the window was the Taipei night. Late October. It was starting to get cold.
Key Highlights:
"Forcing a resignation in the pantry—no calendar invite, no meeting room, no email—the Boss can deny it at any time. Out of the seven-hour PIP ordeal, HR only joined via a fifteen-minute call—no video, having never seen Lin Zhaoming's face. The very first sentence she hears is already a performance—because the Boss switched his frequency precisely two seconds before the call connected. Lin Zhaoming witnesses this entire switch. But the person on the other end hears nothing. Orally stripping away work, orally blocking attendance at the QTR—on paper, nothing happened. On the calendar, he remains a perfectly normal employee. If he files a complaint: 'He chose not to attend the QTR himself; no one stopped him. He signed the PIP voluntarily. HR was present the entire time. The communication was highly constructive.' Every single statement is technically true. But woven together, they fabricate an entirely different narrative. Yvonne isn't the villain. Everything she executes is fully compliant with procedure. But her functional purpose isn't 'witnessing'—it's solely so the paper trail can bear the sentence 'HR participated.' The 'no video' detail crystalizes this layer: she doesn't even qualify as a 'witness.' She was merely an 'auditor.' And the fifteen minutes she heard existed in an entirely different dimension from the agonizing seven hours of reality. The final line, 'And then came the team building event'—the reader has already read Chapter 16. The KTV session during the grey rock period. All those verbal barbs landing harmlessly against a literal stone."