Malic didn't know exactly what happened after that zapping sound from the status window, but when he came to, the others were gone.
Left in their place were strangers wearing suits and ties or pencil skirts and heels, people who didn't seem to find his presence odd as they walked around him for wherever it was they were heading to. Some were in such a rush that they didn't even care that they were bumping against his solid build, while some looked like they were marching to their deaths with how slowly they were trudging.
A look around gave him a view of rows upon rows of office cubicles, occupied by people wearing headsets—people who looked like they've never experienced a night of full sleep in their life. Some had multiple cups of coffee on their desk, some had candies, and others had thermoses of what looked like steaming soup or coffee.
He was at an office, that much was clear, but how did he get here? Why was he in this place, and where were the others?
[ Ding! ]
He looked up, and ended up frowning as he read the details from the mission window.
[ Mission: Story Revision
Category: Main
Difficulty: B
Clear conditions: The world might have gone to apocalyptic hell, but to some others, that hell is more like heaven when compared to their daily life.
Rewrite the story of Nikolai Canlas before the beginning of the end, and give him the happy ending he desires.
Reward: 900 coins
Penalty for Failure: ??? ]
...rewrite his story?
Nikolai had given vague hints that his life before the apocalypse wasn't all that pleasant, but it wasn't like he'd detailed every little thing that happened to him. If this was how things were going to be, then he should've probed the man for more details before they even got to this mission.
But it was too late for that now. All he could do at this moment was gather information, locate everyone else, then formulate a plan from there.
The first step to that was to figure out his own role, and identity in this place.
"Malic!"
He turned to the voice calling to him, only to be met with an overly familiar hand over his shoulder. Instinctively, he smacked the hand off of him without much thought for possible consequences—
And he received a boisterous laugh in return.
He scowled. What the hell was wrong with this guy?
"Grumpy as ever, hey?" the space invading-jerk chortled, making to grab at his arm again until he deftly avoided it. "Alright, fine, no touching! Jeez, you'd think we haven't been buddies for years…"
"Are we?" he deadpanned. Perhaps he can get answers from this man, given how chatty he seemed to be.
"You're so cruel, dude," the other man said, shaking his head. A brief flash of his ID as it hung from his neck showed the name, "Benjamin." "Just because you're the company's ace doesn't mean you can leave all of us in the dust!"
Company's ace? That was one decent bit of information, even if still vague.
"What a useless nickname," he said, looking around still. If this were a story revision mission and he had a role he was playing, then it wasn't unlikely that the others were the same. It wasn't the kind of setup he was used to given the usual violence of hunting monsters, but he'd deal with it just as he had the previous missions.
He'd succeed, like always.
"A nickname you earned, so be a little proud of it!" Benjamin said, almost as if bragging in his place. "You even have a few fans, though you should be careful about getting some of their hopes up…"
A fan.
There was one who seemed exactly like one, wasn't there?
"Nikolai," he said, turning his attention back to Benjamin when he couldn't find any of his companions in this particular room. "Where is he?"
"Who..? Ah." Benjamin blinked, then frowned as if he'd just remembered something unpleasant. "The guy who shut you down in front of everyone?" The man scoffed as he waved a hand in seeming dismissal. "No idea. Probably in his cubicle slaving away, since he can't seem to deal with the rest of humanity."
Shut him down? That seemed like something Nikolai would do, but the acidic tone to Benjamin's voice seemed to imply that the scene had been something worse than what he believed it to be.
"What's his department?"
Benjamin gave him a weird look. "What, you're forgetting things now? He's in Human Resources, why—hey, where are you going?"
Malic didn't bother to slow his pace in walking away even when Benjamin dared to chase after him. Bluntly, he said, "Finishing some business."
That seemed to be enough of an answer for the man, seeing as he didn't bother to follow after him any further. "Don't commit murder in front of any witnesses!" he cried out. Laughter followed after his words, having come from the people who were listening in.
It seemed that he was well-liked to a certain extent, even with his rough attitude.
He decided to flip a finger at Benjamin without looking back just to test it. Benjamin, the bastard, only laughed louder in response—the sound an irritating, ear-piercing thing as it boomed above the sea of tittering from everyone else.
People had liked him well enough for his face and capabilities back before the apocalypse began, but they weren't quite as kind or tolerant once they realized how rough his attitude actually was. Some others managed to stay for long enough that they found his roughness entertaining, but for the more sensitive, soft-spoken individuals?
He was just a walking bomb.
That was why, with him being treated in this way…he had to wonder, just who set the stage for him like this? Was it the asshole who created the System in the first place? Was it the System itself, trying to fuck with him? It wasn't even present in his view at this moment, and yet, if it were the thing that had chosen this role for him…
"Malic!"
A familiar, feminine voice.
"You bastard—"
Aha.
A small hand grabbed at his wrist before he could walk any further down the hall. That small hand he'd often seen hammering meat down into its most tender state, a hand that had hit him on the back more than twenty—or maybe even fifty—times in his twenty-nine years of life.
A hand he attempted to break free from purely for the fun of it, only to be halted when said hand grabbed onto him harder.
"Rhiannon."
She scowled at him. She was still wearing the office uniform he'd seen her wearing previously: white dress shirt, black pencil skirt reaching down to her knees, dark pantyhose, and a black pair of heels. The image she made was somewhat entertaining, if only because he knew how much of it wasn't her usual fashion.
"You'd dare to run from me, you punk? I'll break your legs," she spat out.
He huffed out a breath, and plucked her hand off his wrist. "I wasn't running. I'm assuming you haven't found the others yet?"
"No shit."
One eyebrow rose up to his forehead before he could stop himself. Rhiannon seemed to think that he'd have just as hard a time as her in finding the others, but she was wrong. "Nikolai's in HR."
Cat-like eyes blinked at him in surprise. "Huh? How'd you figure that out already?"
"I asked."
She stared at him.
He stared back, then let his lips twitch up in a smirk.
"...you're shitting me."
The smirk fully settled on his face when he saw the incredulousness in her narrow-eyed gaze. "No." He shook his head, and nodded a head back to gesture vaguely at the place he'd just come from. "One of the people I met along the way was helpful enough when I asked about Nikolai's department."
"Son of a bitch," she swore. "You really have it easy, don't you? Do you even think of the possible consequences of your actions?"
"You talk like I'm the only impulsive one."
They kept walking, looking at some of the doors they passed by for any labels that might refer to the Human Resources department. The halls were long, almost dauntingly so, yet they wouldn't stop. They had companions to find, and a mission to finish.
"Ah?" Rhiannon scoffed, glaring down the hall, "Don't think I'm anything like you, you instinct-driven fool."
"Better to have someone with reliable instincts than an overthinker."
"You shut your damn mouth."
"Guys..!"
Just like that, they both found themselves on the receiving end of a bear hug courtesy of Renato, who looked like he was only a blink away from breaking down into tears. He'd burst out of a corner they'd almost passed by; he was lucky enough that the people he took to hugging had decent enough instincts to not accidentally whack him a good one out of shock.
Malic took one look at his wet eyes, and glared. "Don't cry," he warned.
Renato sniffled, then gave a sharp inhale. He took a step back from their hug to wipe at his eyes, elbows tightly pressed to his wide chest as he did so; as usual, it was his habit to make himself seem smaller than he truly was. "Okay," he said, smiling a wobbly smile. "I just got a bit worried since we were separated, but now that I found you…"
He looked behind them, only to falter when he didn't find what it was he was looking for. Sotto voce, he asked, "You haven't found the others yet..?"
"Nikolai's in HR, apparently," Rhiannon said, before looking over to the corner room that Renato had burst out of. "And you were in the office clinic, so it's possible that we can find the others by figuring out what department's most closely related to their personal attributes."
"That's right..!"
"Ji-yeong would be in Security if it's like that."
"And Kira? What kind of department would have a literal kid?"
"Day care?" Renato guessed.
"Does this place even have something like that—"
"Excuse me."
A familiar voice interrupted Rhiannon before she could finish, making them all turn to the person hidden behind Renato's huge frame.
It was a familiar voice, and a familiar face, and yet.
The face looking back at them was cold and unfriendly. It was to the point of being more like a stranger than anything else, the way those eyes narrowed down into slits to eye them with irritation—even the voice was no different, blunt as it was when they spoke.
That familiar and unfamiliar voice said,
"Please move."