Thinking this, I handed my badge back to Zoe in the admin department.

"Zoe, my fingerprints are a bit faint. Could you register all ten fingers for me? That way, I won't have trouble clocking in and having to keep bothering you."

Zoe paused, then smiled and took the badge, reopening the fingerprint registration system.

I took a deep breath and pressed my right index finger firmly onto the screen, making sure the entire fingerprint area was fully covered.

A beep sounded, followed by the confirmation that the registration was successful. Only then did I relax.

This time, I registered all ten fingers, carefully adjusting the pressure and angle to what should have been optimal. I hoped the system would finally recognize me properly.

Seeing how serious I was, Zoe joked, "You're the first one to do all ten fingers. But Emma, relax. The company's system is imported. It won't malfunction."

I smiled, thanked her, and went straight to the fingerprint scanner at the company's entrance.

I wiped my hands, then placed my index finger on the scanner.

"Fingerprint recognition error. Please try again."

The moment I heard it, a chill ran down my spine. Goosebumps rose on my arms.

"How is it still doing this?" I muttered.

Unwilling to accept it, I switched fingers and tried again.

"Fingerprint recognition error. Please try again."

"Fingerprint recognition error. Please try again."

I tested all ten fingers. The result was still the same error messages in that robotic tone.

I stared at the scanner. The glaring red text on the screen felt like a pair of eyes staring straight back at me. The error tone sounded almost like mockery.

I clenched my fists, feeling frustration and fear twist together in my chest.

Everything had worked perfectly when I registered my fingerprints in the admin department. Why did it fail the moment I reached the clock-in machine?

Was I really about to relive the same nightmare as my last life?

While I stood there frozen, several coworkers glanced over. A few even stepped forward kindly, asking if I needed help.

As I watched them gather, an idea formed in my mind.

I apologized timidly. "I am the new hire, Emma Lane. I'm sorry to bother you, but the fingerprint scanner just won't recognize me."

A male colleague volunteered immediately. "Let me try mine."

The moment he placed his hand on the scanner, it registered successfully.

They assumed my angle was wrong and asked me to try again.

I nodded and, in front of them, tried clocking in with all ten fingers. Every attempt failed.

"I just registered all ten fingers with Zoe, but it still doesn't work. Could this machine be faulty?" I asked, deliberately raising my voice so everyone nearby could hear.

In my previous life, I had always dealt with this alone in silence. That was why everyone thought I was making trouble out of nothing.

This time, I wanted witnesses.

Just then, Zoe noticed the crowd and walked over.

"What's going on? Why is everyone gathered around the clock-in machine?" she asked.

I immediately demonstrated again in front of her.

Zoe looked at the error message on the screen and frowned. "It's probably broken. I'll submit a request to replace it. Don't worry about clocking in for now. Wait until the new machine arrives."

I thought that once the machine was replaced, everything would finally be okay.

After the clock-in issue was temporarily resolved, I walked to my workstation.

The moment I sat down, a chill crawled up the back of my neck.

I jerked my head up and looked at the air vent above me. Cold air blasted straight down, and I sneezed several times in a row.

Anna Underwood, who sat nearby, turned at the sound. After glancing at what I was wearing, she spoke with the same well-meaning concern she had shown in my last life. "Even if the office has air conditioning, it's easy to catch a chill on the way to work. You should dress a bit warmer."

I sniffed, forcing myself to endure the cold. "Anna, do you feel like the office temperature is a little low today?"

She reached up and tested the air above her own seat. "It's warm. It's always this temperature. Besides, this is a central system. Every vent should be the same."

The moment she finished speaking, I stood up. "Anna, could I trouble you for a few minutes? Can you sit at my desk and help me check the temperature?"

She looked puzzled, but still sat down in my chair.

In my previous life, I had only gone to her seat to test the air myself. The airflow there really had been warm. This time, I wanted her to feel the cold air at my desk firsthand so that I could apply to change seats.

What she said next hit me like a blow to the head.

"There's nothing wrong with your seat. It's warm air."

"What? That's impossible. It was cold just now."

Instinctively, I raised my hand to test it myself. What I felt was warm air.

I froze up.

Unwilling to accept it, I sat back down in my chair. The familiar blast of cold air immediately returned, making me shiver.

Upon seeing how agitated I looked, Anna asked with concern, "Emma, are you okay? Have you not been resting well lately? Could it be nerves?"

I refused to believe it. I went to other coworkers' desks and compared them again and again. Every one of them had warm air blowing at them. The moment I sat back down at my own seat, it turned cold.

The sheer strangeness of it made my scalp prickle. I snapped my head up at the vent and shouted, "Why is it only blowing cold air on me? Why only me? This is ridiculous!"

My behavior started to draw looks, and the others began to think there was something wrong with me.

"She's so young. Why does she act like a lunatic?"

"This is a company, not a shelter. How do they hire people like this?"

"She must be trying to cause trouble. First, the clock-in machine, and now, the air conditioner. She's making the whole office miserable."

The murmurs spread through the room and eventually reached management.

Mr. Tucker frowned and asked, "Emma, what are you doing? It's your first day. Instead of working, you're making a scene at your desk?"

I quickly pointed at the vent. "Mr. Tucker, the air blowing at my desk is cold. Wherever I sit, it blows cold air. I'm not making this up."

Hearing that, he walked over, stood under the vent, and tested the airflow with his hand. Then, his expression darkened.

"There is no cold air. It's warm. Everyone else sits here without any issues. How is it that the air turns cold only when you sit here?" His voice hardened. "If you keep causing trouble, don't bother coming in tomorrow."

After Mr. Tucker said that, I had no choice but to endure the freezing air for the entire morning. I shivered nonstop, my teeth chattering.

When noon finally arrived, I went downstairs to buy some cold medicine. As I passed the coffee machine, I barely raised my hand. I wasn't even touching it when it suddenly sprayed scalding coffee at me, just like in my last life.

I tried again and again, cautiously reaching out. Every time my hand got close, the machine would fire with uncanny precision, splashing boiling coffee onto the back of my hand.

On the verge of losing my mind, I stepped aside and watched. Other coworkers walked past the coffee machine without any problems at all.

Seeing scene after scene where I was the only one targeted and rejected, memories from my previous life flooded back.

The toilet flush had hated me, too. Whenever I pressed the button, it would either refuse to work at all or suddenly erupt with violent force, splashing water and filth all over me.

Coworkers would wrinkle their noses and cover their mouths whenever they came near me. They would look at me as if I were insane.

The printer swallowed my documents every single time. The moment I fed in my files, it would scream "Paper jam error"! No matter how I adjusted the paper or restarted the machine, nothing helped.

After it happened often enough, management grew dissatisfied. They criticized me—the so-called top graduate—for being careless and incompetent, unable to handle even basic office equipment.

The office computer was even worse. It froze and crashed at random. Project proposals I had worked on all night, struggling through overtime, would black out just as I was about to save them.

My teammates accused me of delaying the group's progress and kicked me out. I became the company's only permanent problem employee.

And it wasn't just one or two things. Everything that belonged to the company seemed to turn against me, finding ways to target and exclude me. Yet with every other coworker, those same objects were perfectly cooperative.

That was why, in my last life, I never used the company coffee machine. I avoided the restroom whenever possible. Even printing documents meant running hundreds of yards to a copy shop outside the building.

The torment from both lives gnawed at my nerves until I felt I was about to be driven mad by this absurd, malicious hostility.

At last, the workday ended. The new fingerprint scanner had been installed.

The moment it was time to clock out, I rushed over.

This felt like my only hope. If I could escape the curse of the fingerprint machine, maybe I could finally find a breakthrough or some explanation for all these bizarre events.

I took a deep breath and placed my hand on the new scanner.

"Fingerprint recognition error. Please try again."

The cold mechanical voice was like a bucket of ice water poured over my head, instantly extinguishing my last trace of hope.

I stood there, frozen, my hands moving frantically. "No! This can't be happening. Why are you targeting me? Why me?"

The coworkers behind me grew impatient and stopped pretending to be polite.

"Can you hurry up? We want to go home."

"I have never seen such a strange new hire. This morning, you said the machine was broken. This is a new one. Don't tell me this one is broken, too."

…

I don't even remember how I got home.

When I arrived, Adam had already cooked dinner. Seeing how hollow and shaken I looked, he hurried over. "Emma, what's wrong? Did something happen at work?"

The moment I met his eyes, all the resentment and terror from both my past and present lives surged up at once.

I broke down completely. Through sobs, I poured everything out. "That company is targeting me. Everything in that place is targeting me. I'm not going back tomorrow. If I stay there any longer, I'll die."

After calming me down, Adam tried to persuade me, just like he had in my previous life.

"How could office equipment target you? Machines aren't alive. There's no such thing as something that evil. You must be stressed from job hunting.

"Besides, your company has great benefits. You're making almost 60 thousand dollars a year before benefits, with weekends off and paid leave.

"Be good. Give it a few days, and you'll adapt."

I shook my head violently. "No. It is real. Please believe me. Look at my hand. The coffee machine burned me on purpose."

In my last life, from the day I joined the company to the day I died, only one month had passed.

This time, I wanted to resign. I didn't want to repeat that fate.

Just then, my phone rang. The moment I saw what was on the screen, I felt my blood turn to ice.

"So this is it…"

So this was the secret behind why I was being targeted.