This crappy company is annoyingly well organized and uses intuitive software. Although I did study quite an enormous amount of material to finally understand the whole system, once you learn it – you'll never fail in it or forget to do a step. Yamazaki, eternal diarrhea be upon him, didn't lie in his talk about the company's workflow. Once a client appears, we search for suitable candidates in our CanPool, abbreviation for Candidate Pool. The fun part begins right after that. Not every registered candidate is dead in his previous life, we somehow manage to summon their souls here to get them interviewed and then send them back. Apparently, this way, the candidate does not remember a thing after he wakes up. That's not that convenient for us, since we will have to explain to him the entire plan. Even twice, if we want to introduce them to our clients. Every step of the workflow has to be documented by changing the candidate's status in his CV. The candidate has to be dragged out of the CanPool in case if we successfully transferred him or if he suddenly decides to withdraw his application, though it's not possible after his death in the material world. However, life would be too easy if our work would end here. Apart from interviewing and introducing candidates, we also have to accept new applications, otherwise our CanPool would be as empty as the Aral Sea. The most troublesome applications are those made by the youth. The only thing they care for is to get god-like powers and constantly bursting out pheromones from their bodies, to attract attention from the opposite sex. Yet, they are just as useful for us or our clients as my trash bin would be to solve my economic problems. Honestly, just shut up. How could you be useful for any world? You didn't have a proper education, nor got any specialized skills, like in economy or engineering or at least in some kind of martial arts. At this point, I could just transfer apes or other animals. The result would be the same. In the end, most of the young applicants either live their lives here in the city. There is a possibility that they will develop new skills thanks to their jobs here, and then we might get interested in them. Some of them eventually end up working here. On the other hand, actually suitable candidates that got the needed skills for us have quite a thick skin. They think of us as of some lunatics and schizophrenics when we summon them. Seems like 30+ years old people don't find the idea of leaving their families and relatives to solve some quests given by divine beings from other worlds that attractive. It may sound immoral, it is indeed immoral to do so, and I would normally despise it, but we mostly just transfer their souls forcefully, explaining to them their task only after they died in the material world. The method we use for the forceful death is immoral as well. The company has a specialized team with trucks that got some kind of advanced technology inside of them. Once they hit a human, the human gets into a state of coma in his material world and his soul is being transferred to one of our interview cabinets. Then they are introduced to their tasks, briefly introduced to the clients and forcefully transferred to the new world. The only difference here is, that Eventually they'll return to their bodies. It's upon them how long they have to be absent from their bodies. Inhuman? It might be. Do we care? No. Certainly not. A Russian engineer we had to transfer somewhere last week taught me a good saying, he said: "my house is on the edge". Basically, it means something like "I don't care, it has nothing to do with me". The irony, right?
…
[incorrect login and password]
[incorrect login and password]
[Please try again in 30 minutes]
"Senior-r-r-r! Why does it keep saying my password is incorrect? I did type everything right!"
My colleague's booming voice dispelled the sleepy atmosphere of the office. I had to forget about surfing through CanPoll and move my head to him.
Scratching the back of his head, Masaru with a confused face was looking at his screen. In this exact moment, he looked like a monkey indeed.
"You haven't read all the instructions, have you? If you did, you would memorize that the password should be your name's initials and the date of your enrollment in the company. Do everyone a favor and go take a day free to read everything, Masaru."
"He~, but why? I have you. No one explains things better than my senior! Too bad for him that he is stupid every so often. He could enjoy his life in the material world now… such a pity, isn't it, senior?"
"Then how about you? You are no better than…"
"Nah, you can stop right there! I would rather not reincarnate or get transferred to a fancy fantasy world. It was just a thought I had during my boredom. And then I died. But you were accidentally summoned here and were then tricked to sign the contract. We may both got here accidentally, but it's not the same kind of "accident". We are different, s-e-n-i-o-r! Hey, Furuya, what do you think, do you pity Kazuyachi?"
Masaru moved his head back to another worker of the company. Furuya was sitting back to us, looking into the screen with hand under the cheek.
"Tsk, don't involve me in your marital quarrel." — he waved his hand crossly and adjusted his glasses. — "And don't call me by my first name. Akashi Masaru, if you're that talkative, maybe you should go get some candidates interviewed? Or do you think your client can wait an eternity."
"Alright-alright, Mr. Ogawa. I wish I could, but the request is weird." — said Masaru while he grabbed his own head with both hands and leaned on his back.
Well, it was such. I remembered hearing it left me confused. However, I couldn't remember its content. I looked at my loud colleague.
"Come to think of it, what was it again?"
"Oh my, Kazuya senior, you want to lend me a hand? So lovely of you! I always knew I can count on you!"
"Never mind."
"Hey, wait! Hm, let me think. I think it is a request for a noir detective. At least 35 and maximum 50 years old, 187 cm height, short black hair, muscular body and a good posture, doesn't smoke. Ah, also "he should absolutely be not eccentric", that's what the client said."
"… What do they need him for?"
"Dunno. The client insisted it's confidential information."
"Do we even have detectives in our pool?"
"Dunno, but didn't find one yet, that's for sure" — Masaru sighed.
A detective, huh. That's not a profession that you could find commonly in the CanPool. But that request… I doubt we will ever find one that fits the description, at least partially. It seems to me, Masaru will have to cancel the order.
Ogawa, visibly annoyed by our presence, said then – "I'd recommend you to ask Mr. Yamazaki before cancelling the order."
"Yeah, no, I doubt that sneaky creep will be useful."
"Can't do anything but agree with you, senior. Yama would rather laugh and send me back" – sighed Masaru.
"… to hell." — I added.
"What?"
Still not even moving his head back to us, Furuya sighed.
"You both forgot that managers have access to more pools. Especially when the orders are that precise, the pool that they got access to has more "specific" candidates. He might find one for you."
"Ugh, okay. I doubt it, but I'll give it a try."
"No, Ogawa has a point. Yama might help us. But you'll have to share your reward with him. As far as I remember, managers get 60% of the reward in such cases."
"Wha-a-a-t?! That's hilarious. It's a theft!"
"I mean, you use his personal access to find a candidate, please keep that in mind."
"Aaalright… senior, do you mind coming with me? I am frightened to be alone near that snake."
I sighed. It wasn't a pleasure to be around him for me, neither. But I guess I have no choice. Otherwise, that monkey, Masaru, will keep bothering me. "Alright, let's go then?"
Yamazaki doesn't have an own office, I don't know if it's his own choice, or he simply can't have one as a mere team manager. Moreover, he doesn't have his own desk, no one actually has, we have a simple rule "it belongs to whom saw it first today" and it implies on the team manager as well. Only Furuya has the same place each morning. However, he always comes before me and I have never seen anybody pretend to take his place.
After some searching, we found our boss's desk and stood in front of him. It was that awkward moment when no one wanted to start a dialogue. Nor me, nor my colleague… nor Yamazaki himself. However, after some time, we won in this silent game. The team manager looked at us and finally asked with a bit of annoyance.
"Puh, what did you two excuses of human beings lose here?"
"Mr. Yamazaki. Sir. Eh, you see… Senior, please!"
I really hope that milk you drank an hour ago was expired…
"Yamazaki, Masaru got a strange order, the client asked for a noir detective, 30–50 years old, 187 cm height, short black hair, muscular body, good posture and no smoking. We didn't find anything with our access in CanPool, maybe you could help us?"
"Jeez… I don't know, Kazuya, I don't know… You asked me for a favor, yet talked to me in an imperative tone."
I was genuinely irritated. I'd love to punch him right there, but it was a no-go. Fine. I'll ask you properly.
"Mr. Yamazaki, I wish you would assist us in our search for a suitable candidate for our dear client. It would be a shame if the company loosed a precious client because of a selfish manager, isn't it?"
"Yes, sure. But, please, spare me of that atrocity of face of yours. Jeez, and people call me a maniac and sadist… look at your creepy sadistic grimace. Then, let me do a quick research."
At first, I didn't see any difference in our CanPools, but it changed when he opened the search settings. Managers could search by various attributes such as ethnicity, sex, age, height, weight and much more.
"And, here he is! Mr. Kimoto Yuuki. Right, I am familiar with him, he was one of the first guys I interviewed as a consultant. Perfect 187 cm of height, quite a muscular body and got a good posture."
"What about his hair?" — asked Masaru.
"Who cares about his hair? As long as they don't look like mop, just as yours do, everything is fine. You can't afford a barber's service? Hm, come to think of it, the client requested someone who isn't eccentric, right? That might be difficult. Well, eventually, we could trick the client."
"Just like you tricked me, huh?"
"I have zero clue what you're talking about. Nevertheless, our clients aren't that smart. You all are overestimating them only because they call themselves "Gods". Selling them a slightly different product is easy, unless you've got the intellect of a sweet potato. Hey, dwarfs, take this and proceed with the order."
"We won't introduce him to our client?"
"Not necessary, add to your mail something like, "the branch manager guarantees the quality of our product and considers a further interview an unnecessary event that will only delay the whole process."
"Will it work, though?"
"Of course it will. They don't need him in the first place. Just think about it. Why the hell do they need a detective, and specially with those attributes? For me, it looks more like some bunch of selfish divine beings had an argument and one of them bet that we couldn't find them a suitable candidate. Just imagine their disappointed faces when they'll lose the bet."
"Even if so, will we really send them that man?"
"Yes, I bet we will get him back in a week or two. Even if dumb and selfish, Gods still care about their money."
We had no other choice but to proceed with the matter. I might work here just for a few months, but one thing I understood right ahead. I dislike Yamazaki, he is not someone I would like to see in my life often, but I have to admit one thing about him: his knowledge of this company and his work is not a joke. If he insists on something, then, with a high possibility, it might be the truth. In the end, the client accepted Kimoto, Masaru got his reward and split it with Yamazaki. And the most important part: Masaru didn't bother me for some time.
…