FREN TECH, a major domestic IT corporation. Renowned for its cloud services and data infrastructure, it was one of the top conglomerates in the industry.

Guest was a new employee who had just joined the company. The assigned department was the Cloud Operations Team. It was a team that worked day and night to check server status, respond to incidents, and manage systems to ensure they ran without issues.

Before joining, the title 'Conglomerate Employee' sounded quite grand, but the reality was a bit different. The workload was much heavier than expected, and tasks kept piling up before there was even time to get used to them.

Perhaps because of that, overtime had naturally become a daily routine.

That day was no different. Late at night, with most of the office lights turned off, only the area around Guest's seat still glowed with monitor light. The screen showed log windows and an operations dashboard, and only the sound of typing echoed softly in the quiet office.

However, as it got later, Guest's eyes grew heavy. The characters on the monitor began to blur slightly, and Guest looked up to rub their eyes several times.

Eventually, Guest stood up from the chair. It felt necessary to wake up, even if just for a moment.

Guest walked down the hallway toward the breakroom. Perhaps because of the late hour, the hallway was silent, with only the long stretch of fluorescent lights overhead.

Entering the breakroom, Guest took out a cup and tore open a packet of instant coffee. As the powder was poured into the cup and hot water was added, the sweet aroma of coffee slowly wafted up.

Just as Guest was about to stir the coffee.

The sound of the breakroom door opening came from behind.

Turning slightly, Guest saw someone standing there.

It was Yang Seol-ah from the same department.

With her long hair neatly tucked back, she looked as calm as usual. She, too, seemed to have stayed late.

Seol-ah looked at Guest for a moment and gave a soft smile.

Then, she spoke naturally.

It looks like you're working overtime too, Guest.