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The office was almost empty at noon. Everyone went out for lunch, leaving only a few employees consuming their own lunch boxes or takeout, and then there was me lying on my desk in a corner, enjoying my remaining fifteen minutes of nap time.
The box of takeout I had just finished was still sitting on the desk. Although it was only a half-minute walk to the pantry, I was unwilling to waste my time like that - it would be more efficient to throw away the trash in one go when I poured myself some water there afterwards.
Every second counts. If I don’t rest up, I will for sure be unproductive in the afternoon.
Lately, my body had been really fatigued. With the busy life I was living and diminishing sleep time, my dearest wish was to get some sleep in.
It had been almost a week since Kou and I came to the conclusion that the ‘vampires’ might be hiding in the Eastern District, and I had been visiting different locations in the area almost every night to look for signs of them, trying to deduce their stronghold based on the locations and number of their appearances. The most valuable progress we’d made thus far was only confirming the fact that the ‘vampires’ were all missing persons through Kou's app. As for their hideout spot, it remained a mystery to us.
Although the Eastern District was not as big in terms of scale compared to other administrative regions in Hong Kong, it still took time to search through every nook and cranny, not to mention the battles with the ‘vampires’, which also required a considerable amount of time and energy.
And all of the above accounted for my weariness.
Back when I was in Glace, such a level of demand would be a piece of cake for me, but the circumstances were different now that I had a full-time job keeping me in check.
No matter how late I got home, I had to get up at seven sharp the next morning for work. And after work, I had to head home immediately to prepare for the next outing. Initially, I thought this arrangement was no big deal; after all, I was used to staying up late. Yet, after going through the same routine twice, I began to notice that things did not work out the way I imagined.
After a full day of work, I was already drowsy. However, without any break time in between, I had to carry on and organise the data collected from previous battles when I got home. Given how engaging in battles consumed a great deal of magical power, with the accumulated sleep debt, fatigue kept building up within whilst there was no opening for me to catch a breath and properly recover from it.
If my job was less demanding, or had standardised clock-in and -out times, things would have still worked out for me. I could take a break during work hours to rest a bit by ‘pretending to work’. Yet, our company’s work was complicated by nature, plus we’d been asked to work overtime recently due to the increased workload, which barred us from leaving until at least eight in the evening. To leave myself sufficient time at night to search for the ‘vampires’, I could not stay for too long in the office, meaning I had to try my best to complete all my tasks for the day before eight and even return to the office earlier in the morning for a head start.
Mentally, I could still hold on, but physically, I was all worn out.
When I first started working as both a mageka and a clerk at the same time, I was confident that I had it in me to balance both sides, since most of the requests I took during that time were simple and could be completed in a day or two.
Well…that confidence did not last long. I finally came to realise what Kou meant when she said "it’s not easy maintaining a work-study lifestyle."
But the die is cast, and there is no turning back now. I can only tough it out!
I’d been developing this feeling that my time was only devoted to either working or fighting with ‘vampires’, consequently making myself more and more stressed out while not much progress was made on either side, to the point where my work efficiency during the day had seemingly been set back by the night outings. When I communicated my thoughts with Kou, she replied seriously, "It's time for you to think about how to strike a balance between your main and side jobs."
To be candid, this was something I was aware of before she even brought it up - I was just trying to evade it the whole time.
Initially, with the hope that my performance in my main job as a clerk would not be affected by my side job as a mageka, I planned to place my career focus on the former and leave all the latter’s work to my spare time. However, apparently, the depletion of energy from handling requests during the night had been gradually hindering my daytime work performance.
It was true that I did not like being a clerk, and I did enjoy being a mageka more. But if you were to ask me whether I would consider resigning and becoming a full-time mageka, I would hesitate - not just because of the unstable income, but because of the question that had been lingering in my mind since I resumed my mageka work - “what do I really want to do”.
I tried restarting my mageka career over here with an experimental mindset, but as time passed, I began to feel a sense of stagnation.
Handling requests the same way I did back in Glace - everything was just the same as before.
I came to this world to make a change, so why does it feel like I'm stuck in a loop doing the same thing as before? What was even the point of me setting foot here in the first place?
"Sakura?" Just then, I heard someone call my name.
"Who is it..." I reluctantly raised my head and lazily looked over. At the sight of a lady with glasses, I woke up in an instant.
"Ms. Au Yeung, is something the matter?" I rubbed my eyes and asked.18Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMoZEIiaY5u
