If owner or majority of staff observes CNY they're definitely closed for a few days.
Very fortunate news is that I found a tool that can read the disk contents just fine. 😌 It's probably a case of corrupted boot record which needed chkdsk be run. But I'll do it after I emergency parachuted my critical stuff.
I'll probably look around shopee for replacement now that I'm over the initial panic. New year new hard disk I guess.