(4 days later)
Hai was standing with Ari in front of the place where they will be working at.
The place however…
"What the hell is this junk?" Ari bluntly asked after a minute of silence.
The place was even well-organized, cared and all. But the place where it is located at is what makes it problematic, for the lack of a better term.
This government's building is one of the "outposts" and this one is located close to a recently self-declared independent area.
"Well… It's our new work's place." Hai commented and started walking in.
Ari opened her mouth to say something but, in the end, she closed it and followed him.
Walking inside, both of them saw a simple lobby with some receptionists working behind their balconies and some robots cleaning here and there.
"Oh, you two are here." A voice came from the side.
Hai and Ari turned to look at the owner of the voice and saw a middle-aged dwarf man.
He had black hair, beard and brown eyes.
He walked closer to them and asked them to follow him.
Hai and Ari complied.
On the way, Hai was looking around and studying the place's structure in case he ever needed it. Meanwhile, Ari was already getting bored and she was simply looking ahead.
After a few minutes, they arrived at the 10th floor, the place where they will be working at.
The dwarf turned around.
"This is the place you'll be working at. As you can see, we're short in personnel due to we being near that area. There are several conflicts ongoing near here and sometimes they even manage to scratch the building, but don't worry, our security is top notch." He said and pointed to two desks on the far end of the room, away from everyone.
It looked like a "section" for a team or something that was empty.
"These are your desks. There are some holo-disks containing what you have to do, who you have to report something to and everything you need to know."
He said this and quickly walked away to the stairs.
Hai turned around, scanned everyone in the room and saw that nobody was paying attention to them.
He then started to walk towards his desk while paying attention to security cameras, mana sensors and other measures present on this floor.
After a few seconds of scanning things through, Hai finally arrived at his desk and sat down on the chair.
"…" He frowned slight as he felt that the seat was a bit harder than what he is used to.
'Being a young master for too long seems to have affected me in some things.'
Ari arrived on the desk right in front of Hai and simply plopped down on the chair.
*SIGH*
Hearing her weary sigh, Hai raised an eyebrow and looked at her incredulously.
"I wanna go home~" She muttered with a defeated tone.
"…" Hai said nothing and picked the holo-disk.
Before hearing it, he activated the silence mode option and selected both his and Ari's desk.
This option will make so that the selected desks can hear one another but others can't. It's very useful to deal with unreasonable people through calls.
Then, Hai put the holo-disk on top of his desk and activated it.
- Paper work is inside the box below your desk;
- PC is free to do anything you want to but depending on what you do, you'll answer for your actions;
- The boss will come from time to time and inspect everyone's works at every floor, so don't slack off.
"…"
Is that it?
'Where is the manual when you need it?' Hai picked a box below his desk, brought it up and opened the lid.
He looked inside and raised an eyebrow.
All of his "paperwork", that is, holo-paper, metal "straws" that project a paper-like hologram with contends in it. All of his paperwork was tagged with literal small black flags.
"Really? It's my first day and they already give me the worst problems?" He asked himself while taking all holo-papers out of the box and putting them neatly organized on top of his desk.
'Okay, let's see what we have…' Hai picked one and pressed a button.
A part of one side of the "straw" disconnected itself and started to float, then a blue screen came out of the straw and connected with the part that is floating.
Hai read the contents of this problem and not even 10 seconds later he was already frowning.
"Did I sign for a divorce lawyer job? I don't care about someone's matrimonial problems." He looked more carefully to see what made it be tagged as a black flag and quickly found the problem.
The two mentioned parties were from high-society. They fell from grace but still retained a good sum of money they saved up. Apparently, they have a huge grudge against someone from the government and are using everything they can to cause trouble.
"…"
'What is this? What I'm seeing?' Hai held in a sigh.
Is this even a problem the government solves?
Hai remembered the thick book he read sometime ago about the laws and obligations of the government.
And in none of them is said that this kind of problem needs to be solved by them.
Hai picked a metal pen and signed it.
- If you have so much time to play around, go start a business. You're in China Federation, kids are already working or starting a business, you dimwits.
He put it aside and picked another one.
*SIGH*
Another sigh came from Ari.
Hai didn't even raise his head and maintained his eyes on the holo-paper.
"What is it this time?" He asked while his face contorted after reading the problem in that holo-paper.
"I'm bored." She said while looking towards the ceiling.
"Hi bored, I'm Hai. Now, get to work." He said while writing down on the holo-paper.
Ari rose from her slumped position and looked at Hai with a blank face.
"Really?"
He nodded.
"Yeah, you really need to work."
Her eyebrows twitched at his words.
"Do you know I could be considered some short of princess back in my homeland?" She said while looking at him to see his reaction.
Sadly, his reaction is beyond what she expected.
"The correct question isn't if I know, but if I care. And the answer is 'no'. Now, pick the box beneath your desk and off you go." Hai kept signing while saying this.
Ari looked at him and picked the box.
She decided that he is one who can be talked to when he doesn't want.
She picked her box and opened it.
Then, she saw that her holo-paper were all tagged with small red flags.
"…"
"Life is shit."
"And we're the toilet, so we deal with this shit on daily basis." Hai remarked while resisting the urge to burn the holo-paper in his hands.
Who the hell gets the government to solve a videogame's dispute?
He massaged his forehead and then signed the thing.
- Just solve this between yourselves. Eat each other's mother or something, but stop causing problems, you brats.
He signed it and put aside.
"Haaaai…~" Ari muttered in a weary voice.
Hai looked at her and he nearly jumped in fright.
She looked like a corpse.
He could swear he saw her soul leaving her body for a second.
"What the hell happened to you, woman?" He asked genuinely curious as to how someone could look like this after barely 10 minutes of doing paperwork.
"Help…." She pleaded and looked with adorable eyes at his own.
He smiled innocently.
"N-o-p-e." He spelled and winked at the end.
*GROAN*
Ari groaned in defeat and tried to do her job.
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*BAM*
Ari suddenly threw her holo-paper on the ground.
"Why the f*ck would someone get the government to solve a measly territorial dispute!?!?" She angrily yelled.
"This is why the government exists." Hai commented.
"To solve random people's unimportant problems!?!?" She screamed and looked at the holo-paper on the ground.
"No, to f*ck busty elf women's lives. Now shut up, I'm trying to work here." He said and picked another holo-paper.
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"Haiiiiiiii…~"
"He is on vacation, he will only come back on February 30th."
"Meanie."
"Yes, now start working. You have been doing nothing for the past 15 minutes."
Ari harrumphed and picked a holo-paper.
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*DING*
A dinging sound was suddenly heard across the whole floor.
Everyone stopped working and started to talk with each other while standing up and going towards the stairs.
Corpse Ari suddenly came back to life and jumped up from her seat.
"Lunch break! Finally!!!"
Her voice was loud enough to make Hai have a mild headache just hearing it.
"Stop shouting. You can go ahead." He picked another holo-paper.
"Eh?" She dumbly blurted out and looked at him.
Hai said nothing and kept working.
Ari then understood that he was serious.
"You aren't going to eat, Hai?"
"Eat?" Hai asked back and looked at her in the eyes.
"HIII!!!!" Ari shrieked and jumped away in fright.
Hai's eyes were dark, like a black hole. His semblance was calm but you could see a red and furious aura around him from time to time.
"I don't need food, I need answers." Saying so, he turned back to his desk and started reading another holo-paper with a lopsided smile that was constantly twitching.
"…" Ari sat down and picked a holo-paper.
She suddenly felt that her despair may not be as terrible as she thought it to be.
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*BAM*
This time, it was Hai who slammed a holo-paper in his hands on top of a pile of other holo-papers.
He is done.
He rose from his seat and went towards the stairs to have his lunch.
Ari looked at him and quickly skipped on her feet following him.
Some of the workers inside the office looked at them and one of them, a woman to be exact rose from her seat a bit and called them out.
"Hey, you two! Lunch break is already over. Get back to work. I swear, youngsters nowadays…" She shouted loud enough for everyone inside the office hear.
Hai stopped and looked at her.
"And who are you?" He asked looking at her with an annoyed face.
The woman looked at him and also got annoyed.
"I'm your senior, you brat." She stated while looking at him with a firm posture.
Hai looked at her up and down. Then back into her eyes.
"I see. I don't care how many museums requested your bones to put in exposition or how old you are. Anyway, I have finished my work already, and if you want to stop me from having lunch, I'm reporting you for false imprisonment and food deprivation. Now, shut up and do your work, 'senior'." Hai threw back at her and continued walking towards the stairs.
The woman was stunned when she heard his words.
Everyone in the office felt the same way as her.
1 second.
2 seconds.
3 seconds.
4 seconds.
5 seconds.
After 5 seconds, she recovered herself and when she was going to scream at him, she noticed that he was nowhere to be seen.
She stomped her feet on the ground and angrily sat down.
Some of her colleagues smirked and some other chuckled at her.
When the woman heard her colleagues' reaction, her face started to get red and she glared at everyone around her.
Everyone stopped and went back to their work as if that had never happened.
Gritting her teeth, the woman also went back to her work.
She was fuming inside about how Hai treated her but she consoled herself that she would have more chances for a payback now that he works here.
'I'll pay this humiliation back, brat.' She thought to herself and gripped her pen tightly.
*SNAP*
The coworkers working near her flinched when they heard a pen snapping in half.
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A/N: Hello there, I hope you're having a wonderful day!
So, what do you guys think about this chapter? This one was more focused on showing Hai and Ari's interactions along with their reactions to their new work.
Comment what you thought about this chapter, if you liked it or not, I want to read your opinions and interact more with you guys.
Also, another two things:
1- If possible, leave a review for this novel. I have noticed that there are several readers but few reviews. I want to see if we can make this novel be rated so, if possible, leave one, I'm grateful in advance;
2- Join our Discord community, there you can interact with other readers or with me in case you have questions or ideas about/ for the novel.
Discord server: https://discord.gg/9xy8v9MW
(The link is also on the novel's synopsis).
...….
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...….
Well, I believe that is all for today, thank you all for reading! 🍷😎