When the morning sunlight broke through the window and into my room, I woke up to a bright ray of sunlight shining right into my eye. Even more painful though was the ache in my back that was likely due to sitting up while sleeping all night.
As I began to move to stretch my back out, I stopped and looked down to see what the strange weight was on my lap.
A small girl with shoulder length dark hair, snow white skin, and pajama clothes had at some point during the night taken up residency on my lap.
The events of the previous night went through my head quickly and I remembered why I was greeted with such a morning sight. A confusing feeling of grief washed over me as I remembered what had happened with Akira last night, but the feeling was quickly interrupted as the person in question shifted positions on my lap.
Uh oh… oh no oh no oh no… I can hear the sirens already.
Akira’s sudden movement in my lap had caused her pajama shirt to come open at the top due to the first three buttons being undone. Something dangerous came into view and my face got hot.
I thought she had begun to wake up so I tried to keep my eyes away from the crevice that was forming between the soft blue fabric of her pajama shirt.
Ano… She isn’t moving again… Is she still asleep?
I was finding it harder and harder to resist looking so I carefully moved my hand to fix her shirt. In the process I moved my arm over her face and just before my hand reached the fabric of her shirt, my arm moved past her eyes to reveal two dark pools looking up at me.
Ah… Good bye new job. Good bye new life. Hello police, I promise I didn’t do it.
We locked gazes for a while longer. My face started getting more and more red as I realized what the situation looked like.
“Umm… Akira-san…. About this, you know…”
“-diot…”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
I smiled at her as innocently as possible.
Akira placed her hand up next to her ear like a phone:
“Hello hello- Police?”
She got up and quickly retreated to the door.
“Wait, Akira! It was a misunderstanding!”
Akira looked at me with a sour face and continued to stare at me coldly as she slowly walked out of the door to the apartment and closed it.
Now I’ve really done it…
I waited for a few moments without moving while I was listening to rustling sounds coming from Akira’s room behind the other side of the wall.
As I faced the reality she might never talk to me again, I got up and started stretching the ache out of my back.
Iyaa… Man… I really slept in the wrong position las-
A knock sounded at the door.
I walked over to it and opened it too see Akira standing there in every day clothes of a skirt and a girly shirt. It’s something every high school girl probably wears, but I had never seen her wearing it so it was a bit of a surprise.
She looked up at me with a look as if she was demanding something and said one word.
“Food.”
Ah, so food builds bridges and heals wounds once again.
I stood at the door and awkwardly responded to her with my hands clasped in the praying position in front of me.
“Of course, what ever you want! And Akira… it really wasn’t what it looked like.”
Akira still looked a little mad, but she seemed content that now that she knew she was going to get some breakfast.
Thinking I was safe, she began to reach her hand out to me in which contained a small envelope.
“I found this outside your door.”
I took it from her and looked at it. The letter was addressed to me, and the sender was… City Management?!
“Uhh… It’s from my job…”
“Amazing… a bum like you has a job…”
Akira whispered something incoherent.
“What was that?!”
“Nothing, nothing. I’m just surprised that a lowly pervert like yourself with the confidence to walk around in only your boxers and an undershirt has a job.”
“What kind of person do you take me for?! And, I see you’re still mad. I really am sorry, won’t you forgive me?”
“Mah… If you feed me I will think about it.”
I better find some good food or I may really be looking at some jail time in the future…
I pause to read the contents of the letter and then look at Akira apologetically.
“Akira…san.”
“Yes, Kei-san?”
“We’ve gone back to honorifics at this point?!”
“I’m sorry Kei-san, I wouldn’t associate with perverts so I don’t know how I could have come to know you.”
“Hah… Well you see Akira-san… We may have to wait on that food…”
“Hi-- is this the police?”
After talking Akira down, and moving to our destination, we are both standing in front of an old strip center. Haila’s own branch of the City Management Office. Before coming here I put on the worn out suit I got from the old man at the convenience store, and now as we stood in front about to walk in, Akira was looking at me strangely.
“What… do you have to go to the bathroom or something?”
Akira quickly stomped on my foot.
“Uuuahh… No! Now I see what kind of company might hire somebody like you if they can’t even maintain a good store front.”
“Oi! What’s that supposed to mean?!”
We continued to send sarcastic remarks towards each other as we walked into the building.
The entrance room was the same as the first time I saw it when I met with Director. Including the woman sitting behind the small glass window. I walked up to it and Akira sat in one of the chairs placed around the rim of the room.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Hi… I got this letter today about a meeting with… Director. It told me to come to meet with him and to bring my… partner.”
I look back at Akira who is occupied with looking around the small white room.
“Do you remember me from last time we met? Tatsuo Kei?”
The woman looked up at me with a business-like expression on her face.
“I’m sorry, you must have met with somebody else last time. I don’t recall ever seeing your face.”
The woman brushed me off as if I was a fly on the wall.
Ahh… Well I look like I just rose from the dead so I am sure she isn’t able to recognize me.
“If you are meeting with somebody, please sign in and wait in the lobby.”
I signed in my name as well as Akira’s name and went to go sit back down.
“Um… Kei… why are we here again? Or rather, why did I have to come too?”
“Well, I received a letter this morning from my superior and it specifically said to bring you as well. How they knew about you, I have no idea. However, they may be asking some questions about last night….”
At the mention of the previous night Akira’s eyes got a little darker.
I looked at her with a smile.
“Just let me do all the explaining and we’ll be fine.”
“But Kei…. What exactly are you going to explain? I mean… in the first place… what did you even do?”
“I don’t really know myself, Akira. But I think we might find something out if we can talk with Director.”
“Who is… Director?”
“Ah, that’s my superior. He is the one that offered me this job in the first place.”
“And just what is your job?”
“I work for City Management.”
“So… like road cleaning and sewage?”
“Um, Well… I guess you could say that, but it’s on a bit of a larger scale than that. Honestly, I’m not really even sure how big of a scale it is. I think we both might learn something from this meeting.”
Akira was looking at me as if she was looking at a shady street vendor selling week old food.
Ahh… It hurts Akira, the cold stare hurts. I promise I have a real, paying job!
As I was thinking that the receptionist called my name.
“Is there a Tatusya Kei-san here?”
I looked around the empty room.
Who ELSE would be here besides the one person who wrote his name down?!
I rose to my feet with Akira next to me.
“Director is ready to see you now, go through the door, down the hall.”
I walk through the door and continue down the hall. It seems like the same hallway I walked through before. This time however, at the end of the hall there is a door with a golden placard that says “Director” instead of “Mr. A” like it did the first time.
I go into the room first and Akira trails behind me. The same man from before is sitting behind a large, wooden desk decorated with excessive wood finishings.
“Tatsuo-kun! So good to see you! And this must be the lovely Nakamura-chan.”
At the mention of Akira’s name using “-chan” I could see a look of annoyance from Akira as if she was saying “Who is this?”
“Excuse my late introduction Nakamura-chan, I am Director. You may refer to me as…. Director! I work here at City Management as Tatsuo-kun’s superior. And now, I also get to work as yours, Nakamura-chan!”
“”What?””
At that last piece of information both Akira and I let out some disbelief.
“Sorry Director, I must not have heard that right. Did you say that Akira was now working for you as well?”
“No! Forgive my lack of clarity!”
Both Akira and I let out a little sigh and we look at each other while laughing.
“-she is working for you.”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“”WHAT?!””
“Yes! Didn’t my letter inform you of this? I told you to bring over your partner so that we could move through the necessary paperwork.”
“Well, it mentioned bringing Akira here but I thought the paperwork was going to be for me….”
“Nakamura-chan, you knew about the employment, right?”
Director is looking at Akira with a questioning expression.
Akira shook her head.
“I don’t even know what kind of job Kei has.”
“Kehehe… they’re already on a first name basis… What else could they be hiding?”
““Sorry, what was that??””
Akira and I both look at Director intently.
“Nothing! Nothing… but this really does put me in a bind… You see, the fact that you used some of your management abilities in front of Akira. That is a problem. The other citizens that you used them in front of are fine, because well, they’re dead. But to openly use an ability in front of a citizen of your city is a big problem. Especially when using the particular ability you ended up using without killing them.”
“What? Why? I’m supposed to be helping the city with these abilities, right?”
At this point Akira is looking back and forth between us as if we are speaking in another language.
“Yes, that’s fine. But before starting this job, have you ever heard of any instances like this? No. Because we keep our interference in the shadows. All for the sake of changing a city for the better and making the people believe they did it themselves. Taking pride in one’s city is a big reason for it’s success, thus if all the credit is placed on one person, it takes away from the self-sustainability of the city as a whole.”
I sat back in my seat with a sigh.
“So… then what happens now… I just wanted to keep her safe…”
“Oi.. Kei..”
“Well, we have two options. You can change her memories, or make her believe this never happened. But that sometimes doesn’t work very well. Especially for something as memorable as this… I mean, the clean up for your little rescue operation last night took forever. That reminds me, it’s being charged to your account.”
“Hey… Keiiiii!”
“What?! I haven’t made anything as is! At this rate I’ll be in the red for months!”
“Keiiiii!”
“The best option would just be to kill her right here really…”
“-huuuhhhh” *Sucking in air*
“No! I could never do that! There-“
“HEY! KEI! LISTEN WHEN SOMEONE IS SPEAKING TO YOU!”
My ears are ringing as Director and I look over at Akira with a frustrated look on her face.
“Finally! I’ve been trying to get your attention but you two just kept on talking! I didn’t ever say that I was against being employed. I just didn’t know about it! If you just ask me, I’ll tell you that I’m fine with it-”
“Akira, you really shouldn’t—”
“NO! Let me finish. Kei, you were the only one to ever treat me kindly. Before today, I had nobody I considered close to me. Not even my mom. You even saw how she treated me. Going as far as selling me! I have nothing. No life to go back to. If I had died, or been sold, I still would have been doing more than I was if I kept living my same old life. But you came for me. You cared about me. You took me back from the people who my mother sold me to and now I don’t want to go back to living life the way I was. Now I know there is a new path in life I can take and I want to take it.
So please, allow me to say something:”
Akira stands up and bows at a 90 degree angle, with her hands pointed towards me, holding her student ID card.
“My name is Nakamura Akira, Second Year, Class 2-1! I have no work experience, and no real talents! But please, Tatsuo Kei, consider my application for employment!”
The room is silent for a moment.
I take Akira’s hand and she looks up at me from her bowed position with wet eyes.
I was truly moved by what Akira said. Over the past few days she had grown closer and more important to me. And now, after hearing all that, I couldn’t imagine working without her.
“Akira… If you will take this worthless, and almost jobless man as your superior, then I promise to allow you to work for me for as long as you would like!”
We looked at each other for a short amount of time, smiling while holding hands still.
“PHEW! I really thought I was going to have to kill another minor there for a second… It always makes dinner taste bad when that happens…”
“Ehemmm, read the situation please.”
Akira looks at Director and coughs.
“Ah, pardon me. I am happy that no disciplinary action needs to be taken at this time for either party. And Tatsuo-kun, I am glad that you were able to make your first partner. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s review your… underwhelming… performance.”
And for the next hour I was lectured by director about how in the first week of my residency in this city nothing has changed except for the total amount of wearable suits, which now stands at a number two less than nine hundred and thirty seven.
During that time Akira also learned exactly what it was that I did as a City Manager, and how she would operate from her position as well.
Basically, her ability to act upon the lives of the people in the city and the city itself stemmed from a combination of practice and my ability level. And my ability level and ability to manipulate the world around me stemmed from a combination of things but was mostly determined by the size and success of the city I managed as a whole.
One decent piece of advice that Director gave me was something he mentioned as Akira and I were getting up to leave.
“Tatsuo-Kun, the ability you used previously. That is something that is not… normally found in city managers. While I don’t care what path you take as long as your city thrives, you should know that use of your particular ability has not always benefited my employees for the better. Also… because you have piqued my interest slightly, I’ll give you some advice. Watch out for people from other cities… I have found that different people raise different types of cities, and not all of those people can be considered “good” in the sense of modern society.”
I was thinking about that piece of advice as I was walking back into the city with Akira.
We had walked in silence almost the entire way there. We both had a lot to think about, and it wasn’t long before we made it to the middle of the long road that ran right through the city. The point just after where we had taiyaki the first time we met.
We both subconsciously stopped there and looked at the city around us. Small buildings and houses, fields and streams, with the backdrop of tall mountains brimming with life. We turn to each other and I smile at Akira, knowing that this was the first time in this city when I wasn’t alone. This is the first time I had a real friend with me.
Maybe we had been friends long before that though… Either way, we were here together as friends, work partners, and two people who had nothing else in the world besides the person standing in front of them, and that was enough.
I looked out at the city one more time.
“Akira… lets make a great city together!”
“Ou! Let’s do it, Kei!