The King of Traffic After the Layoffs

When a severance gift box and a viral hit with tens of millions of views arrive at the same time, he turns the fate of being laid off into a symphony of revenge in the age of algorithms.

Jia Pingfan, a 35-year-old director of paid traffic campaigns, is summoned by HR to a small meeting room on the 18th floor of ABCD's Northern Research Center. Beyond the glass wall, his colleagues slide past like one ad creative after another. Inside, he accepts the severance gift box, slices through its gold-embossed paper with a fingernail, and silently calculates the difference between his compensation and mortgage payments.

That same day, the silver-haired short video he personally promoted breaks ten million views. The traffic feels like mockery. Beyond the 18th-floor windows, smog caches the sun in grainy 480p gray.