Chapter 65 — The Intern Who Shouldn't Exist
At first, there was no sound.
Only the sensation of being remembered by something that shouldn't have a memory.
Ne Job floated in darkness — or maybe he was the darkness. The idea of a "body" felt optional. Somewhere, fragments of light drifted like forgotten paperwork—forms without fields, names without purpose. Each one whispered as it passed him, syllables of bureaucratic code dissolving into static.
> "Directive nullified."
"Archive incomplete."
"Entity unrecognized."
He tried to move, but motion required direction, and direction required existence. He wasn't sure he had that anymore.
"...Yue?" he called, but the sound came out as light, splintering across the void.
Nothing answered.
It wasn't death. Death had rules. This place didn't.
A faint hum began — rhythmic, mechanical, like the Bureau's power systems, except slower, distorted. Each pulse felt like a heartbeat that wasn't his. Then came the echo: glass breaking, again and again, until the fragments turned into stars.
And through those stars… a corridor began to form.
Translucent walls. Floating memos. The ceiling flickered between clouds and circuitry. It was the Bureau — or a copy of it — drawn from his memory but missing half its logic. Desks appeared where doors should be. Signboards pointed to nowhere. Even gravity seemed uncertain.
Ne Job landed on a floor that wasn't quite solid. He looked down and saw lines of divine text scrolling beneath the surface like hidden code.
> "Containment breach detected."
"Intern classification: undefined."
He rubbed his temples. "Yeah, that's about right."
The sound of his own voice grounded him — barely. Enough to remind him he was.
And being, even temporarily, was rebellion enough.
He began walking — or what passed for walking when the floor occasionally inverted. His boots left faint ripples in the light, every step causing bureaucratic memos to scatter like startled birds. He picked one up. It dissolved in his hand, leaving only a faint afterimage:
> "Do not remember yourself."
Ne Job frowned. "Yeah, that's reassuring."
Something stirred deeper in the corridor — a flutter of static, like papers shuffling themselves. Then, faintly, laughter. It wasn't friendly. It wasn't malicious either. It was knowing.
He turned toward it.
From the shadows between two collapsing cubicles emerged a faint silhouette — thin, shifting, humanoid but insubstantial. Its eyes glowed faintly like mirrored code.
Ne Job squinted. "You're… not Yue."
The figure tilted its head. Its voice was his — distorted, stretched, echoed.
> "Define 'Yue.'"
He took a step back. "Okay, I've seen enough weird divine audits for one internship."
> "You are the audit," the echo said. "The forgotten intern. The erased directive. The unfinished line of code."
Ne Job rubbed his neck. "You're saying I'm… a bug?"
> "A symptom," the echo corrected. "A reminder."
The light flickered. Suddenly, there were two echoes. Then four. Then dozens.
Each one wore his face — some serious, some manic, some utterly blank. They spoke in overlapping tones.
> "You signed the form that never existed."
"You failed the test that was never graded."
"You lived the life that should have been deleted."
"Okay," Ne Job muttered. "So this is either a divine psych eval or I've finally cracked."
> "Neither," said the first echo, stepping closer. "This is your ledger. Every erased memory. Every overwritten identity. Every moment the Bureau decided you didn't fit the record."
Ne Job's throat went dry. "Then why do I remember any of this?"
> "Because the Directive is breaking."
At those words, the entire corridor pulsed — walls melting into streams of light. The Bureau's emblem appeared above him, glitching. The words beneath it flickered:
> "Order Through Memory." → "Memory Through Order." → "ERROR: PARADOX DETECTED."
Ne Job felt something tug at his chest — a pull not physical but cosmic, as if reality itself wanted him to dissolve back into the system. His pulse quickened.
He took another step back. "Okay, listen, I'm just an intern. I'm not—whatever this is."
> "You are," said the echo, and suddenly, its tone changed — softer, almost human. "You are the Spark."
The word hit him like an impact.
Memories flooded his mind — or rather, fragments of things that might have been memories. He saw fire raining from the heavens, not as destruction but as liberation. He saw gods rewriting existence into ledgers and manuals, erasing names to create obedience. He saw something — someone — standing against them, holding a light that refused to be categorized.
And then that light was him.
Ne Job gasped and fell to his knees. "No… that's wrong. That's not me."
> "It was," the echo said gently. "Before they buried you."
He looked up, eyes wide. "Bureaucrat Xian. He knew."
> "He made it possible," said another echo. "He believed control could contain creation."
The corridor trembled. Whole sections of the world flickered into raw data — numbers, words, half-written decrees.
> "The Directive is collapsing," said the chorus of echoes. "And when it does, you must choose."
Ne Job swallowed. "Choose what?"
> "To remember who you are… or to remain who they made you."
The ground split open beneath him — an endless void of light and reflection.
And in that void, he saw two images:
On one side, the Bureau — shining towers, order, hierarchy, Yue's face turned upward, desperate.
On the other, chaos incarnate — stars spinning out of control, divine structures unraveling into freedom.
He reached toward Yue's reflection, but his hand flickered. The choice wasn't moral — it was ontological. If he remembered everything, the world that defined him might vanish.
His echoes began fading, their forms collapsing into whispers.
> "She'll find you," one said.
"If you remember her first."
The void surged upward — swallowing corridor, light, and memory alike.
Ne Job closed his eyes and whispered into the brightness:
> "Then remember me too."
Everything inverted.
He hit solid ground again — hard. His breath came fast. He was lying on something rough and metallic. The hum of real electricity filled his ears. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him wasn't divine crystal. It was rusted steel. A broken maintenance dome. He could smell oil, smoke, and the faint trace of Aether leakage.
He sat up — dizzy, but alive.
The Bureau was gone.
Or maybe… he was finally outside of it.
He touched his pulse, half-expecting it to feel foreign. But it was his — irregular, human, defiant. The symbol on his intern badge flickered weakly before stabilizing, lines rearranging themselves into something unfamiliar:
> "Project: Rebirth / Status: Null-Active."
He exhaled slowly, a bitter smile curling his lips.
"Guess I'm not getting that promotion."
Then, faintly, from somewhere distant — not sound, but resonance — he heard a voice.
A whisper breaking through static.
> "Ne Job… don't forget."
Yue's voice.
Faint. Fragile. Real.
Ne Job looked toward the cracked dome above, where light from the shattered sky filtered through. For the first time since waking, he felt something almost like peace.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I won't."
The Bureau might have buried his name, erased his origin, rewritten his story a thousand times over. But for now — in this forgotten corner of existence — the intern who shouldn't exist did.
And somewhere in the heavens, a thousand fragments of divine code began to flicker — the first signs that the Chaos Spark had started to remember itself.