Chapter 21.

When I returned to my desk, I checked on the jobs assigned to me and found there were about ten work orders assigned to me. Altogether there were three laptops, two gaming consoles, two smartphones, two tablets and one camcorder.

Ugh. This was definitely going to take a while. I worked on them one by one and methodically identified and solved the problems each device had. After five straight hours of continuous work I’d managed to fix nine out of the ten devices. The only one remaining that troubled me was the camcorder.

The LCD refused to turn on no matter what I did. I tried rotating the display into the outward facing position, but it remained off. Through a bit of testing I could tell that although the LCD wasn’t displaying anything, the menu controls were still functioning. 

I tried replacing the LCD with a known working one, but that didn’t fix the problem. I tried factory resetting it through trial and error with the unseen menu and I also reinstalled the firmware, but that also failed. I checked the microswitches on it to make sure they were functioning properly and they appeared to be perfectly fine. 

I verified there was continuity between the lines on the LCD’s ribbon cable to the microswitches and to the internal processor. I also tested a brand new hard drive in case it was somehow a problem related to a hard drive failure, but similar to everything else I tried, there was no change. I even went so far as to individually check every single individual component on the circuit boards as well and didn’t find any blown fuses or faulty components. 

When I eventually exhausted everything I could think of, I marked it off as unfixable, but even then, my pride still wouldn’t let me resign myself to defeat.

Perhaps it was due to Rick's death, but nobody approached me the entire day and I spent that time working relentlessly trying to fix up the camcorder until the end of my shift with no success. By the time I realized it, everyone had already left for the day.

“Hey, it’s good to see you’re working hard, but it’s time to get lost.”

When I looked up, my boss was looking down at me while standing in front of my desk as she curiously eyed the camcorder in my hands.

“Shouldn’t you be more concerned about your statement to the cops rather than this broken piece of junk?”

“Haha. Maybe, but I’ve always preferred to do things like this to calm myself down when in stressful situations.”

“You mean like with your psychotic ex girlfriends?”

“Yeah. More or less.”

“You have really poor taste in women.”

“I get told that a lot.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Well, with your subpar social skills, it's no wonder you can only attract mentally unstable women.”

“You don’t need to add insult to injury.”

“Anyways, get lost. I’m not paying you for overtime.”

“Hey boss... you more or less know my situation, right?”

“Yeah, what of it?”

“Would it be okay if I stayed here tonight? I can’t really return to my apartment and I’d rather not stay in a hotel.”

“How about staying at my place?”

“I’d rather stay here and figure out what’s wrong with this camcorder.”

“Tch. Aren’t you the biggest beta ever?”

“If I were to stay at my beautiful, benevolent boss’ place, who is as noble and temperate as a summer’s day, do you really think I’d be able to control my desires?”

She simply rolled her eyes and grinned disdainfully towards my flowery words of flattery.

“You wouldn’t have the balls to make a move on your beautiful boss even if she threw herself at you.”

Well... she’s definitely not wrong. I’d be too afraid of her turning out to be another psychopath.

“Just for the record, I’m not a psychopath.”

“That’s what my last four exes said before I started dating them. In case you’re wondering, it’s the first question I ask any woman I’m interested in.”

“Haha. You really have bad luck. Or should I say you’re just too naive to think they’d just obediently say ‘yes, I’m a psychopath’ when asked?”

“Rather than bad luck, it’s probably just bad taste in women; and no, of course I don’t think they’ll really tell me the truth. I may be an unlucky man, but I’m not a stupid unlucky man. At least I like to tell myself that at night to make me feel better about myself.”

The boss presently in front of me was completely different when I compared her how she normally appeared when other workers were around. It was quite a contrast to what I’d seen when I first started working here.

“Well, seeing your circumstances, I suppose you can stay here for the time being. If you work on anything it will be considered your rent though, so don’t expect any overtime out of me.”

“Alright, that’s fine with me.”

Having received permission from her to freeload, boss turned away with her hips swaying from side to side and left the building. I couldn’t stop from looking up at her figure receding in the distance. I was slightly thankful towards the cold business version of her that hid a warm caring heart on the inside. It really wasn’t bad working for her despite the cold distant act she displayed on the surface.

After she departed, I was finally truly alone. The only thing remaining was me and the camcorder I was tinkering with in my hands.

The only thing that I hadn’t really taken apart was the camera lens itself. The lens appeared to be mechanically functioning as intended when zooming in and out, so I didn’t really suspect it to be a problem at first; but maybe, just maybe there was something more to it than I could see from the outside without having taken it apart.

But before I got to that stage, I wanted to verify whether the hard drive from the camera was functioning properly in the first place, so I hooked it up to a known working camera. It was a long shot, but if I was lucky there might just be a video showing when and how the camcorder came to the state it was presently in. Sure enough, a few videos appeared on the LCD of my working camcorder.

I played through one of the videos on the hard drive and discovered the owner of the camcorder was a young male in his early twenties. He appeared to be an amateur film maker. As I skimmed through the videos from oldest to newest I discovered a female started to appear more frequently in the thumbnails of the videos. As I was curious and I had nothing better to do to pass the time, I completely forgot about my mission to fix the camcorder and I watched a few of the videos they’d taken together.