Ring! Ring! Ring!

That gloomy 6:00 AM greeted him once more. Arif opened his eyes without a trace of burden. The morning scenario had become a ritual he knew by heart: the alarm ringing, the fan whirring, and precisely at 6:15 AM, his phone vibrating with his mother's name. Arif deliberately let the call slide by, just like always. His focus had completely shifted now. The random exploration phase was over; today marked the start of true espionage.

Arif deliberately set off on time so he could arrive at the office alongside the first wave of employees. Stepping into the fourth-floor logistics division at 8:00 AM, Arif no longer wore the haggard face of a depressed, low-level clerk. He wore his best mask: convincing friendliness.

"Morning, Dan! Come on, let me grab a coffee with you," Arif greeted, patting Dani's shoulder as the latter just set down his bag.

Dani turned, slightly surprised by the unusual positive energy radiating from his cubicle buddy. "Whoa, you're awfully cheerful this morning, Rif? Usually, your face looks like unwashed laundry."

"Ah, slept like a baby last night, bro. Hey, there's actually something I wanted to ask you," Arif said casually, steering Dani toward the pantry.

In front of the coffee machine, Arif initiated his tactic. Knowing Pak Malik wouldn't page him via the intercom until 8:02 AM, Arif altered his timing by deliberately dragging out the pantry chat during today's loop.

He knew that as long as he wasn't at his cubicle desk, the intercom would ring unanswered, forcing Pak Malik's secretary to come out looking for him. This small delay bought him precious room to maneuver.

"Dan, didn't you find last month's internal audit kind of weird? It feels like our division keeps getting hit with high targets, but the bonus allocations or severance pay for the interns got completely slashed to the bone," Arif probed casually, his tone crafted to sound like casual office gossip.

Dani glanced right and left before whispering close to Arif's ear. "You're just realizing this now? I heard from Rika in finance that there really was a discrepancy in the northern branch logistics shipping reports. But hey, Rif, don't go making too much noise about it. You know how much power Malik wields around here."

Northern branch report. Rika from finance. Arif logged those two keywords deep in his mind.

Right at that moment, the heavy sound of footsteps slamming against the floor echoed out. Siska, Pak Malik's secretary, appeared at the pantry door with a flustered expression.

"Arif! Pak Malik's been looking all over for you, your intercom's been ringing off the hook. Get to his office right now, he looks like he sucked on a sour lemon!"

"Oh, right, Sis. Sorry, just finishing up this coffee," Arif replied with a polite smile.

Arif walked to Pak Malik's office not to negotiate or throw a tantrum like in previous loops. On today's repetition, his goal inside that room was singular: stall for time to study the room's layout and Pak Malik's nervous habits.

"Sit down, Arif," Pak Malik said, his face already reddening from having to wait two extra minutes. The white envelope containing the termination letter was tossed onto the desk with a sharper thud than usual. "The company is restructuring. And because your attendance is ruining the workflow—"

"I am deeply, truly sorry, sir," Arif cut in quickly, immediately bowing low with a meticulously faked expression of remorse. "I know I messed up. Could you please give me until this evening to tidy up the pending shipping files? I don't want to leave my work in a messy state."

Pak Malik looked slightly surprised by this sudden, extreme compliance. His arrogance felt validated seeing his prey surrender unconditionally without a fight. He leaned back into his leather chair, tapping the desk with his left index finger—precisely matching Arif's observations from the previous chapter.

"Good thing you have some self-awareness," Pak Malik scoffed greedily. "Fine. Get it done by five o'clock. Finish all the northern logistics shipping data reconciliations on your computer, then bring this signed termination letter to my desk. Don't try anything sneaky behind my back."

"Yes, sir. Thank you for your kindness," Arif said with ironic deference, then walked out of the room with a hidden smile.

The rest of the day was turned by Arif into a high-level intelligence operation. Because everyone assumed he was an employee counting down his final hours before getting booted out, they didn't harbor an ounce of suspicion.

Arif utilized several subsequent loops interchangeably to map out the information. On one loop, he spent two hours at Rika's finance desk, pretending to ask for help with end-of-period data reconciliation while his eyes sharply memorized the budget input codes glowing on Rika's monitor whenever she stepped away to the restroom.

On another loop, Arif used his still-active authority that day to rifle through physical files in the logistics archive room. Patiently, he cross-referenced shipping manifests from the northern branch container trucks. There, he uncovered a massive anomaly: the volume of goods leaving the central warehouse was listed as 100 units, yet the northern branch receiving report signed off by Pak Malik only recorded 75 units. Twenty-five high-value electronics units were vanishing every single week over the past six months.

Unsatisfied with just physical files, Arif pulled a riskier stunt on a subsequent loop. At 12:00 PM, when the entire office emptied out for lunch break and Pak Malik went to dine at an upscale restaurant outside the building, Arif slipped back into the deserted office.

He approached Pak Malik's computer cubicle inside the glass office. The machine was locked with a password. But Arif wasn't out of ideas. On a previous day's loop, he had deliberately dusted a light layer of talcum powder across Pak Malik's keyboard before working hours began, observing which keys his boss pressed first thing in the morning.

"M, A, L, I, K, 1, 9, 7, 6," Arif murmured, testing the combination of his boss's birth year found in employee files.

Click. The monitor screen unlocked, displaying rows of confidential company folders.

With brisk, tactical hand movements, Arif plugged in a flash drive he had bought at a minimarket that morning. He opened a folder labeled "Northern Project - Private" and began downloading the entire contents: documents, shadow account transfer schemas, and internal memo letters bearing Pak Malik's digital signature. The copying process unfolded tensely, the green progress bar creeping agonizingly slow across the screen while the wall clock's ticking seemed to race against the footsteps of people potentially returning from lunch.

Right as the indicator hit 100%, the outer lobby door clicked open. Arif swiftly yanked out his flash drive, snapped his chair back into place, and slipped out through the back fire-exit door just as Pak Malik's secretary stepped into the office.

Late that afternoon, Arif sat at a coffee shop across the street from the office building. Before him, a borrowed laptop glowed, displaying thousands of lines of corruption scandal data he had painstakingly gathered across these grueling, repeated days.

He watched the Frost Circle ring on his finger shimmer coldly beneath the café lights. The ring no longer felt like a punishing burden. The object had transformed into the deadliest espionage weapon on earth.

"Twenty-five units of goods per week, funneled to a dummy vendor under his wife's company name," Arif whispered, staring at the cash-flow chart he had mapped out on screen. "You didn't just wrongfully fire me without severance, Malik. You framed me as the scapegoat for the entire logistics deficit so internal audits would point straight at me after I left."

Arif leaned back into his chair, taking a sip of his now-cold coffee with a deep, profound sense of satisfaction. The information gathering was complete. Every puzzle piece, phantom number, and shady transfer receipt was now safely within his grasp.

Arif knew that the moment the clock struck 6:00 AM tomorrow, the physical flash drive in his pocket would vanish, and the data on this laptop would reset entirely back to square one. Yet the contents of every single corrupt document were permanently etched into his genius mind. He had memorized every digit, every transaction date, and every ghost account name belonging to Pak Malik by heart.

"One more day, Malik," Arif murmured with a chilling smile as he gazed at the skyscrapers beginning to plunge into twilight across the street. "In the next loop, I'll start tying your very own noose."