Chapter Text
“Um, were those supposed to follow you?”
“..I don’t know.”
Yoon-Hoo’s expression was one of only mild concern, Spireal taking in the slight crease of her forehead and the tilt of her head as she studied the three fairies that had attached themselves to his clothing. Of course, that aside, she looked about the same as she did when they’d first parted ways, bringing Spireal a sense of ease.
“They aren’t hurting you, are they?” Yoon-Hoo reached forward hesitantly, poking the fairy sat on Spireal’s shoulder; it flinched, then waved at her. Her eyes widened so genuinely that Spireal almost laughed.
“Nah.” He would’ve shaken his head if not for the fairy untangling itself from his hair. “The opposite, actually. I rammed my augmentation into something and this one--” he plucked the creature from his hair with two fingers, holding it gently by the fat on its neck, “--hugged me. Or, uh, tried to. When it did, the pain stopped. It was kinda weird,” he added. Yoon-Hoo’s expression became surprised, then amazed.
“W-- whoa, really..? They.. they can do that?” After a moment, she smiled, a gentle thing. It reminded Spireal of his mom’s smile, almost. “That’s amazing.. Did you write that down?”
“Yeah.” He released the fairy (which earned him an irritated chitter as it dove back into his pocket) and pulled his clipboard out from under his arm, flipping it towards Yoon-Hoo so she could read his notes. “Sorry about my handwriting,” he mumbled.
“The Fairy Festival..? No, no, I can read it fine..” She took the clipboard in both hands, skimming over the writing on the page. “You did your notes in Korean..? Oh, I didn’t know if we were supposed to do them in English or not.”
“I didn’t either,” Spireal admitted. He managed a slight grin. “It’s just what I’m familiar with.”
Yoon-Hoo shot him another quick smile before glancing back at the paper, tracing over the words with her index finger. “Wow, you.. you really did a lot, Spi. These are really good! I’m sure Dakota will approve.”
She handed the clipboard back to him, and he took it with one hand, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck with the other. “..I’m glad you think so,” he replied. Yoon-Hoo nodded, reaching for the clipboard she’d attached to her belt -- wait, that’s smart. Why didn’t I do that? Spireal questioned himself as she offered it to him.
“Here’s mine.. I did a little doodle of the thing, too, if you look on the second page..” She seemed somewhat nervous as Spireal carefully took the clipboard from her hands, skimming over her notes written in clean, round English, making him take a moment to read them.
- the fragment of the universe.. or that’s what the manager said
> tall. very tall with long legs, has a bunch of hearts on it
> doesn’t seem hostile at all;; actually seemed happy to see me?
> it talks a little. they’re one-word sentences and they aren’t much but it gets the point across
> it was really fun to draw!! that’s not important it just made me happy
Flipping the page, there was a quick sketch of what Yoon-Hoo had described; a large, round figure with long legs, decorated with hearts. A heart-shaped antennae came from its head, and it didn’t seem to have a defined face. It was almost cute, actually. It was cute.
“..You’re a really good artist,” Spireal muttered, looking back at the notes. Yoon-Hoo laughed nervously in front of him.
“Oh, uh.. I’m glad you think so!.. I was gonna pursue art before I got this job.. I still draw sometimes!” she added, letting Spireal hand her back the clipboard.
“It talked, huh?” He tilted his head slightly, trying to imagine what a creature like that would sound like. “What’d it say?”
“Nothing much.” Yoon-Hoo shook her head a little as she reattached her notes to her belt. “It spoke a little Korean, actually. Mostly English, though.. oh, I should write that down!” She reached for a pen in her pocket as she spoke. “Thanks, Spi.. I don’t think I would’ve thought of that if you hadn’t ask--”
“Heyyyyyyy!” A high-pitched, vaguely accented voice called out from close by. Yoon-Hoo flinched and Spireal snapped to look up as the lobby door opened in front of him.
The blonde/brunette girl from earlier, the one who had been eating the cookies -- Joy was her name, right? -- was waving, smiling like a little kid as the door closed behind her, clipboard close to her chest. She came to a stop close to Yoon-Hoo, her hair falling over her face as she did so.
“I didn’t realize anyone else was done!! I just finished,” she rambled, out of breath like she’d been running, “and I have soooo many questions, if maybe one of you two could help me? Oh, actually, Yoon, can you do it? I don’t think he knows French.” She vaguely waved at Spireal as if she had to clarify, who blinked at her slowly, confused.
“..sorry?”
“Breathe, Joy..” Yoon-Hoo sighed, gently pushing Joy’s hair out of her face. Spireal recalled with a start that they were friends. Right. “I can look at them, yeah.. maybe we all need to do our notes in English from now on, ahaha..”
“Probably,” Spireal admitted, sheepishly glancing at his notes. I wonder if I can translate these before the other girl gets back.
“Oh! Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” Joy admitted. She gave Spireal an apologetic look. “Sorry!! I really wasn’t trying to be rude, I was just so excited for this job and I mean, I really wasn’t prepared for what I saw--”
“Slow down..!” Yoon-Hoo nudged Joy’s shoulder. “Tell us everything, okay? Slowly.”
Thank god she could say it. Spireal wouldn’t admit it, but with her accent, Joy was talking so fast that he could barely understand half of what she was saying.
“Right! Right.” Joy took a deep breath, walking over to one of the lobby tables and setting down her notes flat. Spireal shared a brief glance with Yoon-Hoo before following her and doing the same. Yoon-Hoo added hers, leaving an empty spot where the last girl’s notes should be. Spireal realized that he had forgotten her name and silently cursed himself for it.
“Okay. Look.” Joy put her pointer finger on her clipboard. “This. The Manager told me it was called the Bloodbath, which, um, only scared me a little, haha.. He was being literal, though.”
Spireal stopped, glancing at her face. She looked serious. “Sorry?”
“He was! It was a big bathtub, ‘bout this long--” Joy held up her hands in a loose estimate, making Yoon-Hoo raise her eyebrows. “--full of blood. Smelled awful in there. Pure metal. It made me nauseous! I really shouldn’t have eaten all those cookies,” she added under her breath, earning a quiet snicker from Spireal. This girl’s got a sense of humor.
“It was one of those like, old-style bathtubs, the ones with the silly little clawed feet and the shower heads that look like they’re gonna snap off.” She vaguely waved her hands around as she spoke, and Spireal wasn’t sure if he should be looking at her palms, her face, or her notes. She was so animated, reminding him a bit of Rogun. He wondered briefly what they were doing about now. Probably at the Nest with Daph ‘n Siki.
“The shower head was dripping, too. Blood, all of it, god, it was gross as hell! It had a little face on the front, too, eyes closed like it was sad. I wrote that down,” she noted, pointing at her paper again. Unsurprisingly, Spireal couldn’t read what she was pointing at. Her handwriting was sharp and quick, like when you’re finishing an assignment last-minute.
“Was it.. alive..?” Yoon-Hoo’s voice held something close to anticipation.
“Dunno!” Joy shrugged. “I think so. It didn’t open its eyes or talk to me or anything. It gave me this huge feeling of like.. despair though, looking at it. I dunno. When I walked out of the room again, I was fine!”
That’s not unnerving at all. Spireal held his tongue until Joy finally addressed him.
“Oh, well, maybe Dakota will have answers!! What’d you get?” she asked, tilting her head
like she was asking him what prize he’d won in a blind bag. It did kind of feel like that, actually. Then Joy blinked, pointing to the fairy still sitting on his shoulder; it had been passively playing with his hair in its small hands. “That?”
Spireal blinked, then nodded quickly, having almost forgotten about the fairies on him entirely. “Uh.. yeah. There’re two more that followed me. They’re in my pockets, I think.” He reached over, carefully taking the fairy off his shoulder with his augmented hand; the creature squeaked, but didn’t fight him as he gently set it on the table.
“There was a whole cluster of ‘em in the room. I didn’t count ‘em, but--”
“What is that?”
The incredulous voice that stopped Spireal short belonged to Dakota, whose harsh expression practically cut him in half as she quickly approached the trio, unceremoniously dropping her clipboard on the table in the empty spot and drawing a frightened noise from the fairy. It flinched away from her, scrambling towards Spireal, who held out his hand for it to climb on.
“One of the things I was working with. They followed me.”
Dakota raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms as Spireal put the fairy back on his shoulder, where it buried its face in the collar of his suit. “I see that. Is that-?”
“Safe? I think. Normal? I don’t know.” Spireal would’ve shrugged if he could’ve. Joy giggled, rolling her eyes.
“It’s just a little thing, Dako, it won’t hurt him! Ease up a little. If there were an issue, the Manager would’ve said something, right?”
Dakota hummed, not convinced, but she pushed it no further. “..Bring that thing back to where it’s supposed to be before our shift ends,” she ordered before turning her attention back to Joy and Yoon-Hoo.
Stuck-up bitch. Spireal immediately regretted the thought, but seriously, this girl was hardcore. And rude. Who put her in charge, anyway?
“What’d you see?” Joy leaned forward, palms on the table as she eagerly smiled at Dakota. “Hopefully something not totally horrifying..”
Dakota raised an eyebrow in response, spinning her clipboard around to face Joy. Spireal glanced at the paper, just barely able to read the neat, extremely clinical English from the side.
“ONE SIN AND HUNDREDS OF GOOD DEEDS”
* It’s a clean human skull, but it’s huge. It has a partial cross pierced through the center of it’s scalp, and a large crown of sticks and thorns placed just above its eyes. It floats maybe two or three feet off the ground. I don’t know if it can see. Aside from the cross, there’s no damage to it.
-- This is totally something relating to Christianity and Jesus Christ that I’m not getting because I’m not religious.
* The Manager told me to perform attachment-type work. Talk to it and define its needs.
* I don’t think that it’s capable of speech. It makes this harmonic, chorus-like noise sometimes. It’s like listening to a group of people chanting in a church. Its voice (?) sort of reverberates off the walls.
* It seems non-hostile. I’m pretty sure it can understand me.
The notes went on, overly descriptive, and Spireal tore his eyes from the page. Eugh. Seriously, didn’t Dakota literally say herself that this was technically still training? Why did she take everything so seriously? In spite of himself, Spireal kept a neutral expression on his face, though he already had a strong feeling he and Dakota weren’t going to get along very well.
“You.. you really wrote a lot, Dako..” Yoon-Hoo seemed almost ashamed as she offered her few notes to the table. Dakota gave her a thin smile.
“Yeah.. I might’ve overdone it. I don’t plan to write as much in the future.”
“Thank god,” Spireal mumbled light-heartedly. “No offense, but it’s a lot to read.”
Dakota’s smile faded a little, but she said nothing in response to Spireal’s comment. Tough crowd, he thought, watching Joy slide her notes forward. Spireal waited to offer his, knowing Dakota likely wouldn’t be able to read them herself.
“..’The Bloodbath?’” Dakota tilted her head at Joy, who nodded.
“Yeah.” She didn’t elaborate further.
Dakota blinked, then shook her head, leaning over a little to read Yoon-Hoo’s papers, then flipping the page to look at the sketch. “Cute drawing,” she muttered, earning a nervous smile and slight chuckle from Yoon-Hoo in response. “Did it say anything meaningful to you?”
“..not really,” Yoon-Hoo admitted. “Nothing I really understood..”
Dakota nodded vaguely. “Maybe it’ll make sense later.” She let go of the paper, finally looking at Spireal.
“Yours?”
He tapped on the clipboard a little with his augmented hand, turning it. “..it’s in Korean. I can tell you what it says if you need me to,” he offered. Dakota studied the paper, then Spireal’s face, before nodding again.
“..’kay. Lay it on me.”
He gave her a smile, trying to pretend her piercing pink eyes didn’t intimidate him as he spoke.
“..Manager called it The Fairy Festival. It was just this big cluster of-- well, of these little guys.” As he spoke, he carefully nudged the fairy on his shoulder with one hand; it clung to his fingers, allowing him to hold it out to Dakota. She narrowed her eyes at it slightly as it waved at her. Spireal heard Joy giggle and Yoon-Hoo sigh, and he realized with a start that they were watching him. Of course they were. He was the one talking. That made sense. That definitely didn’t make him nervous.
“Cute little things,” Dakota concluded. “They look pretty well taken-care-of.”
Spireal nodded, trying to ignore the dry feeling in his throat as he placed the fairy back on his shoulder, where it resumed hugging his neck.
“They all looked pretty similar to that,” he noted. “Long hair, gold jewelry.. they were really playful, too. This one,” he pointed at the two pairs of little cyan arms falling out of his pocket, the fairy still resting there, “actually took my pen from me. Ticked me off.” He chuckled slightly, shaking his head a little.
“Are they hostile at all?”
“Not that I saw.” Spireal pointed at one of his notes. “They healed me, actually, after I hit my arm on something.” He didn’t find it important to mention he’d hit his arm on the wall trying to catch the fairies like a fool.
“..interesting.” Dakota gave him a smile, something he hadn’t expected. “Good work, Spireal.”
..oh. Oh. What?
He could only nod, having not expected the approval nor the compliment. Joy clapped her hands slightly, and Yoon-Hoo smiled, starting to take everyone’s papers off their clipboards and stack them up. Dakota sighed, finally sitting down at one of the chairs around the table. Spireal was about to join her when a slight whine of mic feedback caught his attention. With a flinch, he looked up, met with the sight of a screen against the front wall of the room flickering on and the intercom below it coming alive.
“Well done, the four of you.”
A cold, professional, slightly snarky voice. Spireal recognized it as the same voice that had given him his assignment earlier that day. The Manager’s voice. He heard the scrape of a chair on the ground and saw Dakota stand at attention out of the corner of his eye; Joy turned to face the screen, arms crossed; Yoon-Hoo simply stood like a deer in headlights. Spireal leaned on the table, finally looking up to take in the sight on the screen.
Leaning forward on a cluttered desk was a Korean man, maybe in his early thirties, with dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail that fanned out around his neck. He was pale and rather sharp-looking, with thin-rimmed glasses and an unreadable smile. His bangs covered part of his face, and only one of his cold, penetrating black eyes were visible. From what Spireal could see, he was dressed in a high-quality suit, surely something sewn in a Nest.
The Manager laid his hands on top of each other, bringing only brief attention to his perfectly manicured black nails. His voice was cold with a sharp, welcoming edge when he spoke again.
“It was certainly interesting to watch the four of you at work. The results were better than what I was expecting.” He laughed a little, reaching for an undecorated cup of still-steaming coffee on his desk.
Dakota nodded with some level of understanding. Joy and Yoon-Hoo shared a glance. Spireal raised an eyebrow, saying nothing. There was a brief pause where The Manager took a sip from his coffee.
“I’m very.. excited to see how the four of you progress,” he continued after some consideration, “and I’m very impressed with the problem-solving and unique skills you’ve all displayed.”
Unique skills? Spireal blinked slowly. He could think of Dakota’s leadership, Yoon-Hoo’s art, Joy’s communication, but nothing he had done particularly stood out to him. His gaze drifted to his augmented arm and something in his chest tightened as he forced himself to look back at the screen.
“I’ll let the four of you go now,” The Manager hummed, adjusting his glasses slightly. His smile never wavered. “Well done for your first day. If you have questions, please direct them to Malkuth, your department's Sephirah. She should be highlighted in all of your armbands,” he added. “Just remember the work won’t always be this easy. Keep your head up and your eyes open, Control Team.”
With that, The Manager cut off the broadcast, the click of the intercom echoing around the room, leaving the four of them standing in silence. Spireal glanced at Yoon-Hoo, who was staring at him wide-eyed, like she’d seen a ghost. Joy simply uttered a passive “Huh!” and made no further comment. Dakota turned away from the screen with something like deep consideration.
Spireal again pictured that knowing, cold smile, and that low, charismatic voice.
Just remember the work won’t always be this easy.
Somehow, he had this gut feeling that The Manager had been smiling at him when he said that. A new unease pervaded Spireal’s senses as finally turned away from the screen.