Intimate Trial Chapter 5

In the break room, the coffee machine hummed, the aroma of milk foam mixing with a subtle, sweet scent of caramel. Several blonde, blue-eyed employees gathered around a small round table by the window, holding the company’s cheap mugs, conversing in hushed tones.

“It’s started again, the high-level meeting, the door is tightly shut.” A technician wearing black-rimmed glasses and a plaid shirt took a sip of coffee and pursed his lips. “Javier’s face was green before he went in.”

“What can we do? It’s the big boss from headquarters, I heard it’s a woman, and she’s very formidable.” The speaker was a young woman from the Finance Department. She subconsciously glanced toward the door. “Elena asked me this morning to re-screen all the procurement flows for the third quarter, all because of that cursed Chip project. I think she’s incredibly nervous herself.”

“The Chip?” Another engineer, slightly older with thinning hair, snorted, his tone clearly complaining. “That batch of goods? I mentioned the potential risk of compatibility and the possibility of faster Market Iteration Speed during the initial warehousing test. The report went up, and then silence. Javier only said, ‘Follow the headquarters strategy.’ Now look, it’s become unsalable inventory, and they’re making us scramble to find the Raw Data… I wonder if those Test Logs and risk warning emails can even be found now.”

“It would be a miracle if they could,” the technician scoffed. “They were probably ‘optimized’ long ago. Now that the house is on fire, they want us to ‘recall’ and ‘organize.’ In the end, won’t the honest person be the one who suffers?”

“I heard that this time it’s not just General Manager Ye, but also a very young assistant, Asian face, who speaks Spanish extremely well.” The finance girl lowered her voice, sounding a bit curious. “I ran into her in the hallway just now. She nodded and smiled at me and even asked if the coffee machine was easy to use. She seemed… different.”

“Assistant?” The engineer was unimpressed. “No matter how different, she’s still one of them. Don’t expect anything to change. It’s just a change of packaging, not the contents. The people doing the work always end up taking the blame.”

“True…” The few people sighed, and the atmosphere became somewhat heavy.

Just then, the break room door was gently pushed open. The “young assistant” they were talking about—Shen Silin—walked in. She held an empty water cup and headed purposefully toward the coffee machine, her movements calm and natural.

The conversation by the window immediately ceased. The few people exchanged glances, feeling awkward and slightly wary.

Shen Silin seemed oblivious. She expertly operated the coffee machine, selecting an Americano. While waiting, she turned around, her gaze naturally falling on the slightly bald engineer. She spoke in fluent Spanish with a local Madrid accent, her tone as casual as if discussing the weather:

“The milk frother on this machine sounds a bit loud, doesn’t it? It didn’t seem like this last time I was here. Have the colleagues in the Engineering Department looked at it?”

The engineer was momentarily stunned. He hadn’t expected her to open the conversation with such a specific, technical detail. His wariness slightly lessened, and he subconsciously replied, “Ah, that… it was reported for repair, I think. They said it’s aging, and replacing parts requires going through procurement. The process is long, so we’ve just been making do.”

“Indeed, the procurement process can be quite tedious sometimes,” Shen Silin said, nodding in understanding as she took her filled coffee cup. “Especially when dealing with specific model parts, there are many approval steps, and you have to compare suppliers. It takes time.” She said this lightly, yet cleverly pinpointed the implicit dissatisfaction with internal process inefficiency that the engineer had just expressed.

The engineer felt a sense of resonance and couldn’t help but elaborate, “It’s not just parts; many things are like this. The process is rigid, but the problems are dynamic.”

Shen Silin smiled, but instead of joining the complaint, she asked, “Then for time-sensitive steps, like the Chip warehousing test before, does the process still follow the same route? Is there a special channel?” She asked innocently, as if merely out of curiosity.

The engineer’s expression subtly changed, and his eyes flickered. The technician with the black-rimmed glasses also looked up. The finance girl lowered her head, pretending to examine her nails.

“Theoretically… there should be,” the engineer said vaguely, clearly unwilling to elaborate.

Shen Silin knew when to stop and didn’t press further, only remarking, “It seems companies everywhere are the same; there’s always a gap between the ideal and reality. Thank you for the information. This coffee smells really good.” She raised her cup, smiled, and nodded at them, then turned and left the break room, her steps light, as if she had truly just come for a cup of coffee and a bit of small talk.

The door closed softly.

The break room was silent for a few seconds.

“She… was just asking casually, right?” the finance girl said uncertainly.

“Casually asking?” The engineer frowned, recalling the conversation. “She mentioned the Chip warehousing test… was that a coincidence?”

The technician pushed up his glasses, deep in thought. “Her Spanish is too good, too good to be just for ‘business communication.’ And how did she know the Engineering Department handles equipment repair reports?”

A subtle unease, mixed with the tension of having an underlying truth inadvertently touched upon, quietly spread among them. The fortress they thought was secure, where they could privately complain, seemed to have been breached by a seemingly casual, yet elusive breeze.

Shen Silin gently placed a cup of coffee beside Ye Chang—the temperature and strength exactly as Ye Chang preferred.

“General Manager Ye, your coffee.”

Ye Chang looked up from the past reports she was reviewing, giving her a slight nod, but her eyes held a question.

“What did you hear?” She asked directly, without preamble, as if she knew Shen Silin’s departure was not solely for making coffee.

Shen Silin sat down in the chair diagonally in front of Ye Chang. Without taking out a notebook, she relied on memory to summarize in concise, clear language:

“One, Grassroots sentiment: There is widespread tension and alienation regarding the high-level meeting. They feel the decision-making process is opaque and that the execution level habitually bears the final pressure. There are complaints about the ‘Chip project,’ especially from the technical department, implying that risk warnings were raised early on but ignored.”

“Two, Key clues: A senior engineer in the Engineering Department mentioned that the Chip ‘had potential compatibility risks discovered during warehousing tests.’ His exact words were, ‘The report went up, and then silence.’ A young employee in the Finance Department revealed that Director Elena urgently requested this morning to ‘re-screen all third-quarter procurement flows,’ focusing on the Chip project.”

“Three, Process pain points: They complained that internal procurement and repair processes are rigid and time-consuming, affecting efficiency. I subtly probed the process for time-sensitive projects like the Chip. The response was wary and evasive, suggesting the possibility of non-standard operations or processes being bypassed.”

“Four, General distrust of ‘Original Documents’: The technical department privately believes that the true original records (such as Test Logs and risk emails) may have been ‘optimized’ (their original word). They are skeptical of the documents now being requested for ‘organization’ and view this as a precursor to ‘finding scapegoats.’”

Ye Chang listened quietly, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the cool wall of the coffee cup. Only after Shen Silin finished did she pick up the coffee and take a slow sip.

“The ‘Original Documents’ they bring up next will inevitably be meticulously prepared. They might even proactively offer some harmless ‘flaws’ to demonstrate their ‘candor’ and the ‘difficulty of the process.’ What we need to do is neither fully accept nor fully deny them.”

Ye Chang turned, her gaze sharp. “We will use these ‘Original Documents’ as bait and a reference point. Use the fragments you heard—‘risk warning,’ ‘re-screening flows’—to compare and question the timeline, the logical chain, and especially the missing links and vague conclusions in the documents. Your role is to appropriately raise these specific, grassroots questions during the meeting—in your own way. You don’t need to directly quote anyone, but you must hit the crucial points.”

She walked back to the table, leaning slightly forward with her hands braced on the edge—a posture of intense focus and pressure:

“We need to let them know that we are not just looking at what they are willing to show; we also know that some things have been hidden. Pressure will force the people hiding things to make the next move—either filling the gaps (which often leaves new traces) or shifting blame (which exposes cracks in their alliance). Either way, it benefits us.”

Shen Silin took a deep breath. Ye Chang’s thinking was clear and sharp, like a meticulously woven net. She was not just here to solve a problem, but to expose the people who created or covered up the problem.

“I understand, General Manager Ye.” Shen Silin nodded, feeling the weight of responsibility increase, but the goal was clearer than ever. “I will prepare the points of contention based on the documents they submit shortly, combined with the information I heard.”

“Good.” Ye Chang sat back down, picked up a report again, her tone returning to normal. “Time is almost up. Adjust your state and prepare for the next round.”

Shen Silin also straightened up, quickly sorting through the information she had just acquired in her mind, and began simulating the potential content of the upcoming documents and how she should “casually” yet precisely raise her questions.

The casual coffee chat in the break room had become the first probe directed at the core of the issue. The meeting about to resume would be the moment the probe officially pierced and stirred the deep waters.