The glowing red numbers on the overhead projector didn't look like a quarterly review; they looked like a countdown to an execution.
Tama adjusted his translucent tie, his jaw clenched so tight his spectral teeth felt like they might shatter into dust. Around the conference table—which was actually just an oversized wooden crate salvaged from a shipping port in Tanjung Priok—his executive team sat in varying states of utter demoralization.
"Let's look at the data objectively," Tama started, breaking the suffocating silence with the forced cheer of a startup founder whose seed round had just evaporated into thin air. "Our user acquisition numbers are fine. Great, even. But our terror-to-token conversion rate is dipping. People are getting scared, but they aren't buying anything."
Senior Pocong slumped in his ergonomic rolling chair, his tightly wrapped linen shroud rustling like dry autumn leaves. "Maybe because mortals don't want to scan a QR code while a ghost is whispering existential dread into their Bluetooth earbuds, Tama. Maybe they just want to run away screaming like normal people."
"Running away doesn't generate recurring revenue, Big P!" Tama snapped, slapping his hand down on the wooden crate. "We aren't a charity foundation for traditional scares anymore. We are a B2B SaaS disruptor in the astral logistics space. If our KPIs don't reflect aggressive growth by midnight, the King of Tuyul is going to repossess our cloud servers and sell our ectoplasm to a local snack factory."
Kuntilanak tossed her long, jet-black hair over her shoulder, her emerald kebaya shimmering under the harsh fluorescent lights as she inspected her freshly manicured spectral fingernails. "Honestly, boss, the KPIs are totally mid anyway. My ASMR weeping campaign hit two million impressions, but the algorithm shadow-banned my aesthetic because some college student reported my audio as 'too psychologically damaging.' Like, excuse me? That's the brand, babe."
"We love the brand, Kuni. The brand is iconic," Tama said, flashing a tight, desperate smile before his expression hardened back into cold corporate ruthlessness. "Which is why we’re pivoting. Starting today, we’re shifting our core metrics from passive engagement to aggressive, high-yield terror deployment."
Pak Joko poked his head out from the breakroom kitchenette, holding a mug of cold, dark sludge that passed for coffee in the afterlife. "Aggressive terror? Mas Tama, back in forty-five we just stood in the middle of the road and let our bayonet wounds do the talking. No spreadsheets, no retention rates. Just pure, unadulterated trauma."
"And look where that got you, Pak Joko—bankrupt, forgotten, and haunting a damp basement with zero equity," Tama retorted, pointing an accusing finger at the civil servant's chest cavity. "We need a pivot. From now on, every ghost on our platform is required to meet a minimum daily quota of three heart palpitations per mortal, plus a mandatory upsell on our 'Curse-Free Guarantee' subscription tier."
The room groaned in unison. Senior Pocong rubbed his aching spectral vertebrae through his burial shroud. "Three palpitations? My lumbar region is already fried from sliding around on these caster wheels, Tama. If I have to chase a teenager down a hallway just to pitch a monthly subscription, I'm filing for voluntary soul-dissolution."
"You can't dissolve your soul, Big P, it's tied up as collateral in the Tuyul's vault," Tama reminded him smoothly, tapping away at his holographic tablet. "Now, listen up. The new KPI matrix is live on your dashboards. If your individual terror score drops below eighty percent by the end of the shift, you're getting reassigned to graveyard custodial duties. Meeting adjourned. Go disrupt some peace."
As the demoralized team shuffled out of the makeshift boardroom, Tama stared out the cracked basement window toward the neon skyline of Jakarta, whispering a silent prayer to the startup gods that his terrible business model wouldn't get them all permanently erased before the Series B funding round.