Asher went down on his knees, crawling into the open vent. The smell of rust stung his nose as he moved forward.
Then he stopped. In front of was a large bear trap, shoddily hidden by a layer of cloth. There were indeed people inside Aiko's hideout, and it seemed like they prepared a trap in defense of any intruders like him.
Asher considered just moving to another place, but decided against it. He wanted to see who was in the basement.
Gingerly grabbing the sides of the trap, he pulled it out of the vent by slowly inching backward.
"Sophie? Oh, a bear trap. How about we just go to the roof or something? It's not like we need to be hidden anymore." Aiko gave a sensible suggestion, but Asher shook his head.
"We have a responsibility as Fixers now. Don't worry, I will only take a peek." Although such a responsibility most likely didn't exist, and was perhaps even seen as selfish, Asher wanted to help people. Which is why he became a Fixer instead of, say, a Thumb Soldato or an Index Proselyte.
With that, he dived back in. This time, his path was uninterrupted by traps.
The vent led to a small basement, used for storing supplies. But it was so dusty and unused that any supplies had long since expired.
In the basement was a young woman dressed in rags, carrying a small child. The baby muttered she cradled it.
Scanning the room from the top of the vent, it seemed like a homeless couple had permanently settled there. He saw a cleared out sleeping space padded with blankets and rags, along with some canned rations along the shelves. The woman's partner was nowhere to be seen, probably outside trying to make a living.
The door leading into the apartment above was barricaded shut, so no one could enter without using the vent.
Asher quietly crept away, not planning to disturb the young woman. He emerged from the vents, nodding at Aiko.
"Right, let's just talk about it here." He plopped down on a slightly damp patch of grass.
Pete handed him the sheaf of paper, and Asher looked at the first sheet in the stack.
It was a paper containing their Office name, rank, and founding members. An Office's overall rank was determined by the grades of its founding members.
So currently they could only accept Urban Myth cases and below. In a way, Pete and his friends kind of dragged his Office down, but he didn't worry about that too much.
The next page was all about salary. Boring stuff, he knew. But it was important nonetheless.
There were two main ways to pay the Fixers under an Office. One was a fixed salary, like a regular job, or a mission based salary, where the money they received was proportional to the missions they did themselves.
Since Fixers weren't bound to Offices, the payment system was based loosely on a system of goodwill. The Captain's Fixers expected a reasonable salary in exchange for their services, and could easily relocate to another one if they weren't satisfied, lowering the Office's reputation along with their departure.
Pete and his friends discussed among themselves before finally deciding on the fixed payment system after an hour's debate.
To some extent, they had already experienced a mission based salary, having to scrounge the street for anything they could get back in their criminal days. They lived off of whatever they could find at the end of the day.
"So considering that an Urban Myth nets about 500 Ahn..." Asher looked at the three rookie Fixers. He could do Myths by himself, but Pete and his friends should only stick to Canards for their own safety. Even Yun, a Grade 8 Fixer, nearly died trying to do shut down Jack and Pierre's restaurant with him.
"I will think about it later, after we do some missions. First of all, we don't even have an Office building." Asher stood up from the ground, stacking the papers neatly.
Pete interrupted him, having already come up with a solution.
"We can just meet at a random place, like one of our hideouts, right? There's nothing that says we have to have a building, is there?" The rest of the group nodded, agreeing with his suggestion.
"Sure." Asher raked his hand through his glossy blond hair, mentally burnt out. They had been talking about money for an hour, and now he had to manage all of this stuff?
The realization of what he got himself into finally dawned on him.
But he knew that this was the right path to learn the secrets of the world around him. And perhaps managing an Office would be fun, he hoped.
The rays of sunset shined on him, coating the world in amber.
Asher was tired; he definitely liked action more than these intellectual matters. It was getting dark, so he had the perfect excuse to leave, anyway.
"I will read this in my free time tonight. This meeting is over. Tomorrow, we will meet at HamHamPangPang to discuss further." He promptly turned invisible, clutching the papers in his arms as he left.
Pete and Mangchi looked at each other before shrugging. They knew things would start off slow and confusing, so they weren't too worried.
...
Asher walked along the orange glistering streets, ducking into an alley to desynchronize.
He ran over what happened today as he meandered home.
There was the Overseer, whose skeleton body was created by R Corp's singularity. He took out his phone, checking where R Corp was-
'Oh right, it's in Section 18. I forgot the letters correspond to the Section number. So then L Corp?'
He pivoted from R Corp to the Wing in his own Section, but the map showed that it was inside the Nest, about a two-day walk from where he was.
So that was useless for now.
His thoughts shifted to Mirinae. A cold beauty, hiding unfathomable pain underneath her professional demeanor. Asher couldn't imagine how life in the Backstreets could have been any worse than right now, but apparently in Mirinae's time, it was.
He remembered how her head was attached to her body by a single ring of stitches, implanted when she was only sixteen.
Asher's curiosity only grew; he wanted to figure out just what the history of the City was. The Ruins, too. Just why was over 90% of the world filled with monsters known as abnormalities?
Next was the Carnival memory. The less said about that, the better.
Then Yan. Hopefully things would settle down soon. Considering how she nearly kissed him when she thought that she was dreaming, things weren't going as bad as an outside observer might have thought. Now it was only a matter of time before she came to terms with her thoughts, and all the drama would end. Hopefully.
As for the Shi Association, he found them pretty nice. They seemed more human than the Hana Association, despite their uncanny reverence of death. And their group chat could be a nice supplement to his future revenue.
Which led him to the most recent event, forming an Office with Pete and his friends, Aiko and Mangchi.
Asher giggled to himself as he walked. He was a Captain now! Of only a few low grade Fixers, but it was a start nonetheless.
It just felt right to him. It appeased the ambitions in his soul. He was already glad that he formed an Office with people other than himself, because the warm feeling in his chest made him unconsciously smile.
He skipped up the steps of Mei's apartment, knocking on the door with energetic taps.
"Hey, Mei! I'm home~"
The door swung open, and Mei greeted him worriedly.
But what she saw shocked her senseless.
Mei was prepared to comfort an inconsolable boy wallowing in heartache, having even set a box of tissues on the kitchen table. But Asher only grinned at her, his mind occupied by other, more cheerful thoughts.
"Oh Mei, what's wrong?"
"...How did things go with her? Did you make up after that?" Mei referred to the spat Asher and Yan had at HamHamPangPang.
Thinking back to Yan, Asher's mouth twitched. On one hand, she broke his ribs. On the other hand...
'I mean, she didn't really mean to, did she?'
He coughed as Mei stared at him with increasing concern.
"Right. Yan... decided that she needs some time away. She needs time to think."
Mei nodded, stroking his head. She didn't press him further.
In fact, she regretted asking him, since it pulled him out of whatever was making him happy earlier.
That wasn't necessarily true. Asher stopped smiling, not because he was sad, but because his memories of Yan today were really confusing.
"I'll be in the kitchen if you need me, okay?" Mei watched as Asher walked to the bedroom with a stack of papers that she hadn't noticed earlier.
...
Asher sighed as he sunk into the soft pink bedsheets, rolling around to wrap himself inside them like a burrito. The sheets of paper were left neglected by the nightstand.
He muttered, breaking free from the comfortable embrace of the blankets to leaf through the stack of papers. He had to get through them by tomorrow, and he had to keep his mind busy.
Their contents were fairly simple. How to claim a mission, how to redeem mission rewards, how to send reports to Hana, how to request for specific services like Cleaners, and he was already halfway done with the pile.
'Hey, don't 'Cleaners' sound a lot like Sweepers?'
He shook away the thought.
Uniforms... unnecessary, but helpful. So was an Office building, too.
Next, independent contracts. Offices could take independent contracts along with their missions.
Offices could take whatever contracts they wanted, but. The Hana Association expressly wrote on the page that 'Hana knows what happens in the City'. Not creepy at all.
Basically, the worst thing that could happen if an Office took an independent contract was a loss in reputation if the contract was really against their principles or something. At the bottom page, the paper noted that in 'outstanding cases' of misused contractual freedom, a Hana representative would punish the Offices involved. The paper did not specify further.
The pages got more unsettling as he read further.
'Hana Association reserves the right to eliminate all Offices in opposition to the City's social order. Consult an Overseer for further details.'
The last page left an ominous note in dark ink for him to contemplate.
"Asher? Dinner's ready!"
Anyways, it was time for dinner.