Preface: My friend recently told me I have an uncanny ability to keep characters IC in widely non-canon settings, and reading this chapter I can see why. Since YnM canon doesn't talk about any of the lower divisions other than in passing, I've used creative license to fill in the blanks. There is something special about the Processing Section, but I won't spoil it for you.
Warning: Multiple OCs are popping out to say 'hi'.
The black-haired teen, a thick folder underhand, flicked his grouchy black-brown eyes once above the line of his glasses at the Parliament building in front of him and then climbed the stairs at a blasé pace to the heavy doors that already stood wide open for his entrance. It was not the Parliament building, but a near copy of it. The comparison ended once a person set foot inside it.
Kyouya Ootori was in the land of the purgatory dead, Meifu, and the Ministry he worked for now served directly under the god Enma's guidance, or rather a council of around ten individuals served directly and commanded their individual regions conjointly, which were then divided into sections run by chiefs and held together by office workers. Two months had shown him how modernization had tied the god's work in knots. It would have been amusingly ironic if it didn't threaten to send him into a fleeting fits of frustrated despair.
By the two month mark, he could have precisely disseminated the antiquity of the Judgment Bureau's information processing practices and recommended critical measures towards rectifying the disaster known as the Processing Section he was based in, if he knew it would do any good. Without hurry or worry, he stepped into the communal office, past rows of cubicles standing like dominoes ready to collapse, and into the quaint work space he was afforded, pulling his rickety worn chair out and turning the computer on.
Technology and business practices had evolved more rapidly than the lowly funded section could match. The old apple computer screen with its low wattage green font display was an accurate testament to that as its sluggishly blinking cursor waited for his command prompts. On a cramped table to his left, a large stack of yellow-faded loose-leaf paper stood and to his right sitting on top of a filing cabinet, an empty basket labeled "Processed".
In his first week there, Kyouya had read the lengthy, burdensome technical manual that came with the FORTRAN-based computer software he was expected to use to input the half-century old handwritten summaries of Shinigami cases. At least the format of the records wasn't difficult to follow, but he did wonder why it was necessary to keep everything when right around 70 percent of the ones he had inputted ended peacefully. The most likely possibility was in the creation of an extensive database where a user could search for a similar case, but it simply made no logical sense to compare one drab report to another. However, he had learned that many ineffective methods were unquestioned bad habits perpetuated by an unchanging bureaucratic monopoly. Without any challenge to the status quo, anyone who understood business would easily acknowledge that stagnation would result, like a dictator in power too long.
The clock chimed eight times on the wall behind him in a space that amounted to 4 meters squared, a third of it used for furniture. For a moment he let the hectic rush and sound of the environment overtake his senses as the other 'public' servants scrambled about obviously late to work and eager to start with their endless stream of tedious tasks. He distantly noted the workplace disputes that occurred on a frequent basis and dismissed them as un-note-worthy, until maniacal laughter in the form of a bouncy teenage female dressed all in black, complete with a facemask, ran past the opening to his cubicle.
"Ninja win with cunning, Jiro! STICKY SHURIKEN ATTACK!"
Several white blurs flew past the opening, and seconds later, a heavy-set, plain-featured boy dressed head-to-toe in newspaper and topped with a matching hat trotted past, paper shurikens plastered in his hair and clothing, a newspaper machete held aggressively out as if it could actually do more harm than its materials suggested.
"Arrgh! Such puny attacks fer a land-lady, Shioeri-matey!!"
Yuki Shioeri and Jiro Hanasaki were most notable for their ninja versus pirate shenanigans and penchant for doing absolutely nothing the entire work day. As far as Kyouya could tell this did not damage the respect the other workers had for them. He attributed this group reaction to tradition. Though one wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at them like any of the workers around, chronologically they were the most senior workers in the section. Based on the information from other coworkers, Kyouya estimated that they were in their late 60s, pegging them being born sometime in the 1940s at the end of WWII.
"Hey, Ootori. Meeting at 10:30!" The busty, blue-eyed Shioeri had suddenly appeared above him traversing across the thin path that the faux walls made to create the illusion of privacy. The illusion of which obviously remained unconvincing to Kyouya.
"Thank you, but I read the memo, Miss Shioeri." He smiled politely at her.
"You're always so prepared!" She beamed at him and then ducked as several spitballs flew past causing the sudden shouts of disgust below her. Then she stuck her tongue out behind her, calling out in a fake accent. "I already best you and you back for more, pirate!"
"I WILL GIT YA, NINJA!"
Laughing she ran across the full span of the room, as he chased her on the room dividers. He was completely covered in shurikens, but surprisingly light on his feet.
Kyouya sighed, and began the day's horrendously monotonous, pointless task of inputting the dusty old records into the computer database. 'Equality in death' was true to its word. He had entered the place penniless and without connections with the supplies he had requested, only one outfit, a work suit, to his name, and a personnel file even he wasn't allowed access too. If one was accustomed to the inner workings of the commoner world, one might have been at ease working from the lower echelons of the social ladder and moving slowly up, but for Kyouya it proved itself to be an irritating experience.
As he waited for a much-anticipated transfer to another section, he considered the trivial filing he'd been assigned responsibility to as mind-numbing in its inconsequentiality. Plebeians of less skill could easily do his assignments.
A couple hours later, saving his work and shutting the computer off, he stood picking up his jacket and rolling the uncomfortable chair back into place behind the desk. Delicately retucking his leather-bound folder under his arm, he stepped clinically out into the jungle of mass-produced walls that smelled of dry rot. The entire section's furnishing should have been replaced ten years ago.
"Psst!"
Ignoring the attention-getter assuming it was directed at someone else, Kyouya turned waiting pressed up to a corner, checking his watch. A loud chime sounded at 10:00 and a stampede of workers flowed towards the break room laughing and gossiping amongst themselves.
"Psst! Mr. Ootori, I have a deal to propose."
He perked his head up looking into the paper-choked cubicle across from him. It was certainly a fire hazard, which was supposedly against company regulations. The neck-deep papers quivered and a middle-aged woman's head popped out with a sailor hat on grinning ear-to-ear at him. Unable to place a name, he opened his folder, clipping the cap off the pen, and jotted a few choice words down, then waited face a blank mask. She made no remark on his folder and pen, unlike many others in the office.
"I want you to try out a program for me!" She blurted out in a rush of air, red-faced as an arm appeared clutching a handful of floppy disks, the outdated 5" variety made of soft plastic. Kyouya knew that one couldn't even find informationally-unstable antiques like those anymore.
"Your name, madam?" He asked with cool politeness.
"Er… Nina. Nina Watari. Please call me Nina."
"What does your program do, Miss Nina?"
As she ducked her head the hat flew off and the entire stack she was in shuddered and then collapsed as she pulled out of it, the floppies held protectively against her. White-haired streaked with blonde, she barely came up to his breast bone. "I-it does the processing for you, three times faster."
His hand paused. "How does it gather the data?"
"I have an optical reading device to hook up to your computer." She whispered conspiratorially, "It uses lasers."
Kyouya was pleasantly incredulous at what he had heard, though it only appeared as a genuine smile. "You developed a scanner?"
Tilting her head she looked up at him quizzically, then grinned relaxing. "That's a better name for it than LAS-ORD."
"And what would you like in return for your program and regular maintenance of it?"
Blushing, she looked back and forth down the hall and hunched over. "Put Heiji in his place."
He smirked at the simple request. Heiji Kuroyama had been undefeated for years in winning the 'Number 1 Worker' title every month in the Processing Section with his perfectionism and OCD workaholic tendencies. If it weren't for his irreverent mannerisms, he would have been the model worker for everyone to aspire to be, which Kyouya had assumed was the original intention of the award. "What's the rate of error?"
"About 2 mistakes every 100 pages. I've spent a year debugging the program and fine-tuning the LAS-ORD."
His host flair spilled forth as he bowed and flourished his fingers still holding the pen towards his cubicle. "Be my guest, Miss Nina. I await the results of your ingenuity."
Nodding vigorously, she looked overjoyed and hopped into his cubicle without further preamble.
Re-capping the pen and closing his folder, he made his way towards the cherry blossoms out in the back. The trees seemed immune to the seasons, producing blossoms constantly.
An unfamiliar boy with strawberry blonde hair in casual clothing was reading in the spot Kyouya preferred to condense his notes, as it was quite some distance from the tables. After being crowded like chattel in a high production slaughterhouse for hours on end, he quite enjoyed the time and silence to himself. He turned around and headed towards the library not willing to rudely interrupt, and missing the green-eyed boy as he looked up curiously, noting Kyouya's presence even at their distance.
At 10:15, he entered the library quietly, nodding towards the twin floating poultry gods of bookkeeping who governed the sanctity of the library from two famously banned Shinigami, who held the record for destroying the place four times. The entire Summons Section was fraught with interesting characters, and while they were disgracefully underpaid they were the best funded out of all the divisions, which he attributed to high fees for property damages that occurred in their line of work.
"Kyouya, good morning to you." The twins stated, while the senior one moved to Kyouya's right a meter off the ground with books stacked in its arms to reshelf.
"Good morning, Gushoushin." It hadn't taken long to become accustomed to them even with their bizarre appearance. He didn't doubt that their boundless connections to people and funds helped with that.
"We have computers again!!" The one in the red hat, nearly squeaked out.
"Oh?" He smiled, immensely pleased. "Do they have internet access?"
"I believe so… Not a lot of people know about that, you know, especially if they're pre-1980s."
"Might I recommend tutorial workshops then? There is plenty of information to be gained from it." He neglected to tell them about the overwhelming amount of it being worthless as anybody could create a webpage without any credentials. He had his own reasons for wanting access.
"Hmm.. that's not a bad idea, Kyouya!"
"Of course. Let me know if you need help organizing it."
"You're such a nice young man."
He simply smiled politely, quashing the urge to reminisce on his life, and headed towards the computer stations. Sleek computer monitors using the Windows 98 logo met his eyes with Pentium 3 processors, not bad considering he had spent months staring at 30-year old apple models. Sitting down as he set his things down, he logged into an accredited financial website to check his stocks that were under aliases he hadn't put in his will, though if they had been inactive long enough they would have been automatically liquidated and donated to charities.
Finding their state somewhat lacking though better than he had originally invested, he sold the stocks and deposited them into the company-provided bank account. Then logged out of it, feeling accomplished. With that, he could move from the company dormitories of objectionable size to a more appropriate setting, away from his prying neighbors, who had been kind enough to help settle him in when he had first arrived.
Checking his watch, he realized he would be late for the weekly meeting if he didn't leave right that moment, and gathered his things.
The meetings had nothing of value in them. Knowing this, he sat down in the auditorium-sized room, directly in the middle of it where he wouldn't be brushed by as his coworkers passed him on their way to the empty seats around him. Many had no sense of another's personal space, and he found it was often a lack of forethought rather than insult. They had been trained to use space efficiently not elegantly. Precisely at 10:30, Chief Fusake walked on stage holding a speakerphone and energetically started his repetitious lecture.
Because it was Kyouya's seventh time through similar previous lectures, he ignored the vehement pomposity through which their thin, balding chief espoused the virtues of hard work and good coworker relations. He, instead, opened his folder and wrote out the locations in Meifu where his presence would be noticed as abnormal. He was well aware he would actually have to physically walk to available apartments to make any decision, but the list he was constructing was not to expedite the process through elimination. It was to alleviate his symptoms of boardroom boredom.
"What'cha writing there?"
He only smiled and closed it as the Chinese-featured young man, older-looking in respect to Kyouya by about five years, leaned in his direction. They were neighbors by three doors. "Mr. Xiadong, how is your art doing?"
"It's good. It's good." He leaned back, and opened his mouth to add to the dull roar of talking around them, but having anticipated Xu Xiadong's tenacity to ask personal questions Kyouya interrupted him.
"Have the fresco techniques of the 1400s done by European artisans brought a more intense color palette you desired into your painting?"
"Yes it has. Never reckoned that eggs could be used as a binding agent."
"That is a well-known fact in Western cooking techniques, so it's hardly surprising that it would cross disciplines."
"Yeah I suppose so." Properly distracted by a short attention span for random facts, Xu Xiadong looked away. The auditorium fell into hushed silence, which meant that the chief had finally come to the interesting part of his lecture. He listed off the names of individuals who would receive an extra stipend for dramatic improvement in their rank in the accountability system they used to measure 'hard work'. There were several excited whispers and defeated sighs as a result, while the chief orated for three minutes congratulating one set of workers and demonizing the rest in the same breath. Then, they were all dismissed, a scowling Xiadong leaving without another word. The man had been trying to climb that company ladder, clearly without success.
Knowing that his fellow workers would harass the ones who had the honor of a little extra money mercilessly, Kyouya shrewdly waited for the rush to untangle itself before standing, rearranging his suit by habit. He stiffened in surprise by the booming voice behind him.
"Good show, Ootori! Maybe we could throw a bash in your honor!" A clap on his back resulted in a one-armed hug. His face spasmed in anger, but he forced his face into tense calmness, waiting out her contact-oriented mindset instead of spurning it by bringing attention to it.
"While I appreciate the offer, I have other plans Mrs. Udo."
Kiko Udo was the rarity of a native redhead. Her predisposition to drinking in excess and an extreme possessiveness of all beautiful things was the root of her notorious temperament. In a good mood, the most she would do was provoke guilt in gullible workers where there was none. Otherwise, expecting money where none was due was her trademark.
Pulling away, she sighed discontentedly as if Kyouya had stolen her identity and put her into an obscene amount of debt. "Sure, Ootori. Take care. You know it's a shame that we hardly see you anymore."
"I wish you good health." Kyouya was rather proud of the fact that his neighbors were unable to bother him more, her especially since she was next door. Briefly, he recalled his apprehension when he realized that the dormitories were co-ed, thinking the communal bathrooms were the same. Luckily, it had been nothing more than a naïve conjecture.
With a despondent wave, Udo vacated the premises, but not before rudely producing gagging noises. Kyouya's eyes flicked to the side and met the sight of a short, brown-haired man in his early thirties.
"Ootori, congratulations on your bonus. Not many new recruits make it to the top ten list within two months." Nasally soft-spoken and rigidly composed, Kuroyama's stocky exterior greatly belied his true intents to the unsuspecting, though many in the Section knew of his venomous nature. "You might even be, dare I say, qualified for a transferal to better-suited divisions."
The once-called shadow king smiled, expressing no danger of the position that Kuroyama was in. "I'm flattered. Do you think I will usurp your lead?"
Kuroyama laughed taking the lesser experienced coworker's unconcerned tone as sarcasm and not the seriousness that it was. "As a rival? Oh, nobody can. I've been first place for five years running. I don't doubt that you will make second to me, but first? I've heard better jokes, Ootori. I give you an A for effort, but a C on presentation." With little more than a tilt of his head and a smug grin, the arrogant Kuroyama headed out, presumably to resume his regime of secretarial toil.
Having the large room to himself actually lent some comfort to Kyouya, despite the multitude of chairs standing in rows around him. With a malicious grin on his face and no witnesses around, he opened his folder and began to etch out a plan.
"Ootori?" A tentative voice called out into the spacious room, interrupting his scheming fervor.
"Yes, Miss Nina?" He glanced at his watch realizing that a half hour had elapsed, and closed his folder, heading towards the exit she was standing in.
Looking a bit intimidated she stepped behind the hooded trashcan by the double doors as he flicked off the lights and shut them. "It's done. You'll have to manually feed 150 pages in the slot, every two hours or so…"
Walking through the maze of cubicles to his own, he quickly did the math, slightly disappointed in the fact that her talents were wasted on old technology. "Roughly a page a minute?"
"Y-yeah.. As long as the paper doesn't get jammed, which tends to happen alot." Wincing, she said nothing else as if he was about to mercilessly critique her work.
"Considering the processing power and memory capacity of the models you have to deal with, I'm astonished it can even scan anything at all."
She stared at him, and then looked down at the badly worn, brown carpet ashamed of herself. Nina Watari even in her wiser years appeared to have low self-confidence in spite of her accomplishments. "W-well… I connected another hard drive to it, so that it would go faster and… I mean... when I tried to up the speed it would crash the computers and…" She hesitated and looked up at him, apparently baffled at his reaction.
"Were I to provide you with up-to-date technology, what would you do with it?"
She beamed. "Oh my goodness, if you did that, I.." She stopped again, uncertain. "I'd try to recreate LAS-ORD to see how much faster it could be."
"And if I were to say I was looking for someone interested in robotics?"
"Robotics?" Her face was alight in glee.
"Yes." That was the only answer he needed, and so ended their conversation as they neared his cubicle that was barricaded with a wall of vertically hanging papers with Buddhist or Taoist mantras on them. He paused not sure what to make of the paper amulets. He was aware of fuda magic, but had not actually witnessed someone perform it.
Making a quick sign, she muttered something unintelligibly, and they parted like curtains. He followed her through them, thankful that she had created a domed rather than a flat ceiling. With a flick of her wrist and finger, they closed behind her. A lamp that wasn't there earlier was conveniently on and standing in the corner.
The bulky contraption was already running, making a pile of papers in what remaining space Kyouya and Nina were not taking up, while the conjoined computers whirred softly the screen flickering as command prompts were entered automatically. He was writing notes. "Miss Nina, I do believe that your magic might garner unwanted attention."
"Nobody would care." That statement contradicted certain policies on use of fuda-magic during work hours, not that Kyouya particularly bothered with work policies having broken several already without negative consequences and planning to break another two.
"And why would that be?"
"They all respect you. You know everyone's name regardless of status or rank, and so nobody would rat you out other than Heiji. Besides, you seem like you're used to privacy and space, and the rumor is that you grew up in America for being a really smart kid."
The gossip mill never ceased to amuse him. Flipping the folder closed, he chuckled, deliberately eyeing the paper amulets. "So, I suppose two raps will tell you when I need you to let me out?"
"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. Do you know how to…? No, of course you wouldn't or else you wouldn't be asking. Ok. Well, here's what we have to do…" She sat down and explained in simple terms the fundamental mindset and the mechanics of the actual act, giving demonstrations each step of the way.
Within three hours, he had opened and re-closed the fuda wall by himself, and she assured him that it wouldn't respond to anyone else as it hadn't been 'attuned' to them. Once he knew their lesson was over, his furious note-taking re-began.
"It's also very good at blocking out spiritual energy, if you noticed."
"I'm unable to sense in that way." He smiled, omitting that there was cause behind it.
"Well, some time I'll show you how to make o-fuda. They react better to the original owner. To be honest.. I'm really just an amateur at this." Glancing at her watch, she eeped. "I missed lunch break! No wonder I'm so hungry." She stood up from her cross-legged position on the ground. "See you, Ootori!"
He nodded, and she did the appropriate moves to pass through the barrier.
Setting his folder down, he checked his computer, refilled the tray with records, and entered 'y' for it to resume, bending over to collect the processed sheets and dumping them haphazardly into the 'Processed' basket. No longer would his death days have to be filled with hellish monotony. He could do precisely as he wished during the times it wasn't expected of him to be at a meeting.
Grabbing his folder, he left the silent cocoon of fuda into the loud, over-paced setting of the office and its mishaps, proceeding at his usual pace to the library in search of recently old Meifu newspapers to find an apartment suitable to his taste, yet something he could afford over an unknown amount of time. His salary only provided a meager amount that barely covered his food and hygiene expenses.
It was not a comfortable feeling being so poor.
Two weeks later, well rested since the move into his new apartment, he began methodically pulling strings, using the weaknesses of his fellow workers as bargaining chips.
Nina's invention was remarkable, having caught up to preliminary second place, but at the rate Kuroyama was working Kyouya was still a week behind beating him.
The following day, accidents began occurring around one Heiji Kuroyama that prevented him from working efficiently. People were in his way when he would take a break or gossiping loudly about him near his cubicle no matter how much he yelled at them. Three days later his computer crashed and the computer technician couldn't be found. One thing after another added up that by the end of the week, there was a cheer of unadulterated delight when Kyouya walked on stage to receive the monthly-given reward.
"Let everyone know that with persistence and drive even a 5-year defending champion can be defeated!!" The chief exclaimed ending the shower of unoriginal praise to the award-winner. He pulled the speakerphone away, speaking lowly. "You have any heartwarming advice for your coworkers, Mr. Ootori?"
"Yes." The speakerphone switched hands, and a deviously innocent-looking Kyouya raised it. "Firstly, my winning had nothing to do with persistence. It was simply a matter of calculating the incumbent's rate of entry and surpassing it." Or lowering it, he left out. He paused as the crowd of faces laughed lightly and jeered at Heiji who was standing near the front of the stage with a look of abject fury on his face. "Secondly, I would like to thank Nina Watari for her relentless support. Even third place from the bottom, she selflessly encouraged my goal of outshining the best." Enough said, he handed the speakerphone back, and moved off the stage, award already tucked into his folder.
He had learned that Nina never came to the meetings despite their requirement, and knew her paycheck was docked some undisclosed amount because of this. Because of the consequence of a lower paycheck, he always attended them. Now that the entire room had heard that she was the catalyst, they would most likely buffer any verbal attacks Kuroyama made outside of Kyouya's hearing that he had predicted would have happened regardless of his announcement. Respect was a powerful influence on people.
As he passed Heiji, he did not acknowledge his presence though the same couldn't be said for the infuriated man, and the meeting adjourned. Once the room had emptied enough, he made for his exit, but not before hearing the dethroned champion make a claim of foul play on his part.
When Chief Fusake with Kuroyama in tow visited his cubicle not ten minutes later, nothing was amiss, the barrier and odd technology relocated temporarily.
"Ootori, Kuroyama has suggested you sabotaged his work last week. Is there any truth in this?"
"No, Chief. However, I am rather busy with my work, so if there's nothing else, please excuse me." With poise, Kyouya continued reading and typing, giving the explicit impression of a studious hardworker. As far as the chief was concerned, Kuroyama was being a poor sport, and reprimanded him accordingly ordering him back to work. Then the chief headed back to the only office with a door in the room, grumbling under his breath about Heiji's paranoia.
"Well!" Shioeri clucked her tongue and unburied the bulky scanner and computers from the paper heap in Nina's cubicle with Jiro's help.
Kyouya had already disconnected the monitor/computer, which was then lifted by Nina, who had timidly appeared behind him. Immediately Shioeri mothered her, admiration pouring forth for her creations and taking the company-issued computer from her.
"Th-thanks!"
"Hey, Kyouya, outta the way." Slipping past him, Jiro had both devices underarm the scanner almost scraping the ground, and set them gently in their desired positions. Nina hurriedly went about checking them over after plugging everything in properly and restarting the program as Jiro hovered over her shoulder watching curiously.
Shioeri held out a fuda for the newly appointed 'Number 1' worker.
"What's this?" Kyouya flipped the paper charm over piqued by the intricate patterning covering it.
"Now it won't look so obvious when you put that barrier back up. Though a simple fuda-assisted scan would detect it, it'll work for this environment." She winked. "I was taught by the best in the Ministry, you know."
"The infamous Tsuzuki?" He smiled knowingly.
Jutting a hip out and a closed fist on it, she huffed. "Okay, wise guy. What's he infamous for other than fuda magic?"
"Being the most powerful and oldest active Shinigami in history, causing more property damages both in the Ministry and the living world than half the employees of the Summons Section combined, and a terrible track record of not bringing souls in when given a summons." He listed off easily. "I could name more, but they're less known facts."
"Have you actually met any of the Shinigami?"
"No." It was disappointing, but the Shinigami kept strange work hours and the Summons Section was off-limits to non-Shinigami personnel. It was far more likely to meet them outside of work than inside the Ministry, but, even then, the unlikeliness of such an event neared zero percent. Kyouya wouldn't stoop to stalking Ministry employees just to quell his curiosity.
"Ah. Well, our division has been a starting place for a few of the Shinigami who are stubbornly active."
"Are you hinting at something?" He cracked his folder open, pen at ready.
"I heard that you wanted a transfer there." She grinned, eyes flicking noticeably to his ear where the shadow-inhibiting jewelry was. "You're a little early, but Tatsumi went inactive before you were born, so he should be prepared."
If she was referring to his inborn talent that had been sealed away by the tiny obsidian clasp on his right earlobe, he wondered what the secretary of the Summons Section had to do with anything, not understanding the association.
Quickly reviewing what he had learned during his first month of reading through all the books the library had on the unusual trait of controlling shadows, he knew that shadow users were uncommon to the point to their being only one or two in the Judgment Bureau at any given time. When there were two, one mentored the other before retiring.
In less than a few seconds, he realized that Seiichirou Tatsumi would be his mentor. "Should he be, if I'm as early as you say?"
Shioeri shrugged noncommittally.
"Done," Nina murmured uncomfortably.
Feet shoulder-width apart and hands steepled, Kyouya concentrated on the paper slip humming a primitive chant out and the paper flew out and stuck itself to the wall directly across from the entrance into his cubicle, the sight and sound of Nina's machines disappearing under a cloak of magic, the sense of normalcy revealing everything was as it should be.
"Oh, excellent form, Ootori! If a little amateurish…" Shioeri commented.
"Th-that's my fault." Nina spoke up, and received a pat on the head.
"It demonstrates the ableness of the teacher too then. Rough, but he performed it without a mistake."
Nina fell silent.
"I have a question for you, Kyouya." Jiro piped up cheerfully. Kyouya quirked an eyebrow.
"How did you move out of the dorms? Your stipends couldn't have provided enough money for that!"
He smiled enigmatically, rearranging his hands on his folder. "Saving for the future is useful, isn't it?"
"And as usual, you never give a straight answer." Hanasaki puffed out his cheeks into a sulk.
"Would you really expect anything more from him, Jiro? Come on, there are other subordinates to pester, like shorty over here. Bye, Ootori!"
"Sh-shorty? Shorty?!" Nina parroted agitatedly, only to look up when Hanasaki and Shioeri looped their arms around hers.
"Good day to you as well, Miss Shioeri. Mr. Hanasaki. Miss Nina." And, off they went dragging a protesting Nina in between them and smothering her with affection.
Now that he had foiled Kuroyama in barely a month, he wasn't sure what he would do with his idle time, and re-entered his cubicle taking a seat. He could sponsor side-projects that used Nina's talent for only so long before he ran out of money. It was disheartening. Opening his folder, he added the little he knew to Tatsumi's profile, a bit curious to know what the man was like.
That was when a hush fell over the office. One of Enma's veiled messengers appeared at his cubicle with a blank closed envelope outstretched from its emanciated dark green limb. The messenger's body was wide enough to cross the space in between the cubicles and towered over the walls. "Ootori Kyouya, your new appointment begins the next work day." The voice was loud and raspy, sounding similar to multiple steel beads raining down on corrugated tin. Lord Enma certainly wasn't secretive about transferals, though Kyouya could hardly form an opinion only knowing the instance that was happening now.
Courteously thanking the courier, Kyouya opened the letter. Briefly skimming it, he reaffirmed that his transferal to the Summons Section had been approved. An audible pop sounded as the large being vanished out of the corner of his eye.
Suspiciously droll since he had tabulated that the average wait for a transfer was 2.5 years, he hoped that those lesser Death gods would prove to be entertaining, while his painfully ordinary coworkers swarmed to him like bees to nectar.
TBC.