Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 92: "The Paper Tempest"
The wind howled through the broken courtyards of the Heavenly Bureau, shredding abandoned memos and discarded forms into spiraling flurries. The sky above was the color of burnt parchment — half ash, half divine ink — and somewhere between them, chaos simmered like a living thing.
Yue clutched her clipboard tighter as the gale roared past, the pages of the Incident Report #777-C nearly torn from her grasp. "Ne Job! Hold the stabilization seal steady!"
Across the field, the intern crouched over a circle of glowing scripts, his hair whipped back by the storm. "Trying! But the paperwork's fighting back!"
The glyphs beneath him pulsed — red, then white, then that maddening shade of bureaucratic blue that meant Heaven's Chain of Command is confused. Each time Ne Job tried to stamp the seal, it shifted, rewriting itself mid-air.
Yue skidded beside him, dropping to one knee. "It's the Shard residual. It's rewriting the Bureau's laws of order again. You're sealing a contradiction!"
"Great," Ne Job hissed, his hands flashing with faint flame. "Because what I needed today was a paradox trying to eat my job title."
The ground cracked. From the fissure, a swarm of paper effigies clawed their way out — half-formed angels of ink and decree, their bodies stitched together from shredded forms and divine warrants. Their voices were whispers of orders, complaints, and requests for reassignment.
> "Report to Division 12…"
"Form incomplete…"
"Appeal denied…"
Yue's pen flared to life. "I'll handle the audit! You stabilize the core!"
"Right," Ne Job muttered, though his expression betrayed a flicker of doubt. "And if the core doesn't want to stabilize?"
"Then you remind it who you are!" Yue shouted, slicing through a swarm of paper seraphs. Each stroke of her pen left trails of glowing ink that severed their sentences, erasing the words that gave them shape. "You're not just an intern anymore, Ne Job!"
That caught him. For a second, between the gusts and screams of folding parchment, he hesitated — eyes narrowing.
Then he laughed, low and sharp. "Heh. Right. Time to promote myself."
The seal exploded outward in a wave of crimson light. The paper storm convulsed. Pages reversed their flow, folding inward toward Ne Job's outstretched hands. His flames spiraled around him, no longer chaotic — now symmetrical, deliberate. Controlled.
The effigies screamed as their bureaucratic language burned away. Ink dissolved into ash. The remaining paper scattered, curling mid-air like dying snowflakes.
When it was over, the courtyard fell silent except for the faint rustle of one last page drifting down. It landed on Yue's shoulder. She plucked it free — a fragment of an old decree. The signature at the bottom glowed faintly.
Lord Bureaucrat Xian.
Her gaze softened. "He's still watching the system from somewhere…"
Ne Job straightened, brushing soot from his sleeves. "Yeah. Watching, meddling, whatever gods do when they don't file their own reports."
Yue gave him a small smile. "You stabilized the paradox. You realize what that means, don't you?"
He blinked. "That I finally get to go home?"
She shook her head. "That the Bureau still recognizes your signature. You're officially part of the system again."
Ne Job stared at his hands. The flame dimmed, leaving faint blue lines across his fingers — the mark of divine authorization. His tone softened, almost wary. "Doesn't that mean they can control me again?"
Yue hesitated. "Not this time. The Bureau's broken… but maybe that's our chance to rebuild it."
The wind eased, carrying the scent of burnt ink and ozone. In the distance, the towers of the Heavenly Archive flickered back to life, one by one.
Ne Job tilted his head, watching the faint lights. "You think the Shard Court will let that happen?"
"They'll try to stop it," Yue said. "But they don't understand you like I do."
"And how exactly do you understand me?" he asked, smirking.
She met his eyes, unflinching. "You're chaos with a conscience. And right now, that's exactly what Heaven needs."
Ne Job chuckled, flexing his fingers. "Guess that makes us the cleanup crew of the divine apocalypse."
Yue smiled faintly, though her gaze drifted upward — to the horizon where black clouds began to reform, carrying whispers of the next storm.
"Then we'd better clean fast," she murmured.
Because somewhere beyond the clouds, the Shard Court was already rewriting its next decree.