Finley Cai Aies Hall April 23rd, 20XX

Despite my initial plans to get to work before the day truly started, I didn't end up making it until afternoon.

As recommended by Nikolas and Will, the original plan had been to walk around the company and spend a few hours with each department. Apparently, this would help me get more familiar with my workers and the company I ran.

Ideally, knowing that their boss actually cared about what they were doing would bolster employee morale and work efficiency.

I checked my watch as I ran into the building and juggled the gifts I had got for everyone. I'd originally wanted to drop them off at their desks before they arrived at work, but it had been overly ambitious of me to think I could get to work before those three workaholics did.

"Dont you think it's a little much to call them workaholics when you're the reason they have to work so much?"

Aies's voice floated into my mind and took up enough mind space that I couldn't ignore it. Even worse was the knowledge that we were one and the same, so telling him to shut up would be the same as telling it to myself.

"Aleka!"

My secretary, who at some point had stopped greeting me with a professional smile, pushed herself out of her desk so hard that it shook and moved like she wanted to wrap me into a hug. I didn't know if I could quantify what I felt as disappointment when she caught herself and folded both her hands at her waist.

"Mr. Hall. You've finally returned."

I'd sent them all a text to let them know I'd be out of work for a small amount of time, but the amount of worry that radiated off her and the sheer number of calls and texts I'd come home made me realize just how unfair that had been.

While I hoped nothing like this would ever happen again, I also knew it was likely that I'd have to take another extended vacation. Whenever that happened, I needed to make sure I came up with a proper excuse for it.

"Aleka!… I'm back!"

It felt like such a drastic understatement, but it was the only thing I could think to say.

Will and Nikolas jogged up the hallway and stopped in front of my office. Will reached me first and harshly grabbed me by the shoulders. I winced to prepare for the lecture, but his exhaustion caught up with him, and he had to take a step back and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Funny enough, Nikolas, whose office was further away than Will's, looked fine, and his breathing remained normal.

Nikolas looked at me with an intensity that made me feel uncomfortable, but it wasn't an unpleasant feeling.

Will finally straightened himself out and wrapped me in a warm hug. Thankfully, Aleka's office was closed off from the rest of the office, so I didn't have to feel embarrassed, but it was still pretty overwhelming.

"Where the hell were you? I- We were so worried!"

He corrected himself to the plural once he received the glares from both Aleka and Nikolas. Although they were behind me, Aies was more than happy to let me know everything going on around me.

While I still couldn't tell him to shut up, I could at least somewhat regulate him to background noise.

"Sorry."

His face contorted with an entire range of emotion that started at worry, made a pit stop at relief, and ended in frustration. I could tell that he still wanted to yell at me, but I quickly weaselled out of his embrace and thrust the gifts I'd brought toward him.

While I didn't get the gifts as apologies, they would have to serve as one.

I could tell Will wanted to reject the presents, but after looking me over one more time, he gave in to his curiosity and opened the fancy box. At seeing that Will had let me off for now, Alexa and Nikolas did the same and opened the specially carved boxes I had put their presents into.

At seeing their eyes widen and Alexa prepare to return the necklace, I slipped around Nikolas's conflicted person and dashed out of the door.

"I'm heading down to the human resources department!"

Once they got over their shock, they would definitely try to give them back… or well, Nik might not, but Aleka most definitely would try. I would just avoid them until they came to terms with accepting gifts from someone they were angry at.

I started at a sprint but quickly slowed to a brisk walk as I reached a more heavily populated sector of the company building and had to keep up a proper image. The mask made it somewhat difficult to breathe as I ran, and my hair got in my face, but since I'd insisted on hiding my face and I hadn't had Will to help me style myself properly, I had no choice but to put up with it all.

The two heads of the department welcomed me and led me down to the audition room. The first was a stern-looking woman named Jorda, while the other was a weaselly-looking man named Acker.

The room was large enough for a great number of people to crowd into. There was a long table at the front of the room for the evaluators to sit behind and a space for any performances.

The two quickly led me to a comfortable chair in the center of the long table and took seats on either side of me.

I still didn't know what to do with myself, but I tried to look as professional as possible while the applicants filed into the room.

My fingers grew tired as I flipped through the virtual resumes and tried to match names to faces. Even though I would only be here for a few minutes,

I wanted to do a proper job while I was here.

Jorda and Acker took care of everything, but they would look at me before making final decisions on anything. I withheld judgement for the first few participants but realized that wouldn't really be possible with so much expectation on me.

Volui's most immediate project was to make a group of idols, so that was what we were most immediately looking for members for.

Squire had reached out to us and had recommended a group of singers from a failed company. They had pulled a publicity stunt a few weeks back, and there was a documentary that had come out about it, so they were still riding on the waves of publicity. Will and Nikolas were working on buying the copyrights of the song and group name from their previous company, but since the ex-CEO was in jail, it was hard to get someone to talk to and negotiate with.

I looked over the group of participants with as critical of a view as I could, but something kept catching my eye and distracting me.

Out of the group of thirty students, four of them had a mass of magic flecks surrounding them. It hadn't been obvious when they had first entered the room, but the longer I stayed in the room, the more excited the magic flecks became.

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The magic flecks bounced around the room and the students within it, but they only stuck around the four that had first caught my eye.

While the magic didn't freely enter and exit their bodies like I'd seen it do with the fairies in the other world, I could see the flecks trying their best. The four student's bodies relaxed, and I could see their gazes linger on me with a different intensity than the looks I got from the other contestants.

I didn't know how long I could stay here, but hopefully, I could leave before there was a repeat of the tragedy that was my and my fiancee's first meeting.

Jorda and Acker must have noticed my focus on the four students because they rearranged the order and had those four moved closer to the front. They looked confused and I sort of felt bad because my attention meant they would have less time to prepare, but this way, I wouldn't have to try too hard to get them into the company.

They were all good-looking to start, but I wanted them around so I could remember to ask the diary about what happened to those fairy children that were left behind. If my theory was right-

"Then what? you'll go around and collect them like butterflies? Or are you going to start an army of little fairy children here? And what about the goblin kids? oh wait, we don't abandon our kids for stupid reasons like gender or a lack of magic."

Aies's sarcastic voice broke through my fog of plans and put a damper on my spirit. He was right. What exactly would I do if I went around looking for these kids? And who was to say they were even all kids? It wasn't like it was my fault that their moms had come here and abandoned them.

The thought of the kids being abandoned for no reason beyond a lack of talent or their gender seized hold on my conscience, and I felt bad for them.

Even if I couldn't employ all of them, I could at least give them a bit of help as reparations. It wasn't like I didn't have the resources to do so.

"Correct! As a royal, it is your duty to ensure the safety of your people, a population that includes the 'lost ones'. So long as they have so much as a drop of our blood, they most return under your rule!"

Yeah. No way I would go that far either.

The auditions officially started with the four contestants I had noticed and moved on. They all did well, so I didn't have to push for them to be accepted into the company. Maybe it was because of that, but the rest of the group struggled to impress, and the mediocrity was painful to watch. There were a couple with potential that could be worth investing in, but most of them would have to go home.

Not all of them were singers, and there were more than a few actor hopefuls, but none were so spectacular that I wanted to sign them on the spot. I left most of it to Jorda and Acker's judgement.

The mask grew uncomfortable as well, and I felt it stick to my face as it repeatedly condensed my breath. I decided the next would be the last for me.

She was kind of plain-looking when compared to the surrounding stunners, but she carried herself well enough and looked determined. I sat up in my chair as I noticed the thin layer of magic that had wrapped itself around her. It was so structured that I suspected she was doing it on purpose, but there was no way to ask right now.

"Name?"

"Thelma Cornette"

The last name rang a bell in my mind, and I wondered where I'd heard it from. It was probably somewhere pretty impactful if I could remember it.

"Age and registration number"

"I'm seventeen and my registration number is 1-8-0-3-7. I am a recent graduate from North highschool."

Ahh. I'd wanted to go to North highschool since they had a more robust business program, but their scholarship program would have made it impossible for me to save up enough to move out of the government dorms by the university. Though, I didn't really have to worry about that now.

"Well. Ain't she a looker?"

Aies's rude voice echoed around in my brain as usual, but the content of the voice caught me off guard enough for Jora and Acker to take notice.

"Is something wrong, sir?"

I shook my head and declined to give an excuse. I didn't actually find her all that attractive, but if Aies was me… I wanted to put this on the list of things to ask Theodulus, but I quickly crossed it off the list.

"What are you here for?"

"I am an actress. Sir."

She tacked on that honorific at the end, but it was awkward. Well, she was about the same age as me, and Will hadn't helped dress me up today, so I looked much closer to my age than usual.

The audition officially started after that, and I tried not to look directly at her, as it might make her nervous, but that did little to help her.

She tripped over her lines, her tone was off, and her expression was a mess. It was so mediocre and poor, but somehow no one else in the room could keep their eyes off her. The magic flecks flocked to her in droves and made her shine like a star, but sadly that wasn't enough to cover up all the mistakes she had made.

Thelma finished her last line with a heavy sigh and looked down on the floor as she waited to be dismissed. Unlike the confident coldness she had entered the room with, she looked like she wanted to melt into the floor and out of the building.

I could see how much effort she had put into this, but the result was so disappointing. Unlike the other four that had passed on their own merit, I would have to interfere with this one.

I tried not to let my disappointment show, but the two heads caught onto it and sharpened their words. Jorda gave a curt evaluation that wasn't necessarily any harsher than the ones she'd given the others that had failed, but Acker took it a step above.

"Out of all the terrible performances I've seen, that has to have been one of the worst. Tell me, young lady, what made you think you could walk through the doors of Volui and give that type of performance? Where did the confidence come from?"

Thelma shrank and shrank under the berating and the light from the magic flecks dimmed and dimmed as they ran out of power. The used-up particles floated back towards me and waited for their turn to be recycled.

"Never mind the affront that you've put upon or eyes, you committed an even worse crime. You wasted our valuable time. Didn't we alert the group that our company head would come to supervise the auditions today? if you knew you were only at this level, shouldn't you have rescheduled to another day?"

Unpleasant memories surfaced as I watched the forty-year-old man bully a teenager like this.

I knew he was only going so far because he thought I would agree, but the blank look on Jorda's face made me think this wasn't the first time he had abused his position like this.

It made me feel bad, and I didn't like it. Never mind how harsh Acker was in his barrage; he had yet to give a real criticism of her performance.

"That's enough Acker."

I'd spoken quietly, but he was so taken aback that he stopped mid-breath. He turned back to me and his previously cruel face twisted into an expression of nauseating flattery.

"Ah, sir. As you can see, I was just making sure she realized what sort of company this is. To give such a performance, even as a joke-"

"And what type of company are we, exactly?"

The voice that came out of me was cold as I tried not to overlap his image with that of another, much more annoying adult I'd had the misfortune to encounter before.

Acker froze in place as he realized he'd made me angry, but he struggled to figure out where he had misstepped. I took a deep breath to calm down before spelling it out for him.

"Go on Acker. Why don't you go ahead and tell the entire room what my company stands for?"

His weasel-like eyes finally widened as he realized which of my toes he'd stepped on.

"Ah- sorry, sir. I just thought-"

"If those are the type of thoughts you have when facing prospective new hires, then maybe I can't afford to have you in a position that requires your thinking."

I wouldn't fire him since I wanted to believe that he had only gone so far to impress me. But I definitely wanted to discourage that sort of behaviour in the future.

"Never mind Acker. Just do better in the future. Jorda."

"Yes, sir?"

"Take her in on a four-month probation. If she isn't better by then kick her out."

I figured I would have found out everything I wanted to by then. If Acker had been any smart, then he should have just taken the loss and moved on, but he was still in shock.

"But Volui doesn't do probation! it never has! And even if we did, then it wouldn't be for someone like this!"

His way of respecting my mother's work while disrespecting me was so reminiscent of someone else that annoyed me that it put me in a foul mood. What was it about me that made people feel like they could walk over me and get away with it? Was I not mean enough?

"Acker, please leave the room."

He froze once again and tried to sit back down, but I just stared at him until he realized I wasn't joking.

"Acker. I understand you feel you don't have to take my words seriously, but if you don't leave this space right now, I will call security. Now, Jorda."

I returned to what I was saying, but she seemed to have understood what I meant and had already turned to Thelma, who still looked completely lost.

"Miss Cornette, I hope you take this opportunity seriously. You got lucky this time, but luck is not something you can rely on. Work hard and don't make anyone regret this. You can go to legal with the other applicants to work out a contract."

Thelma fervently thanked us and rushed out of the room. She went so quickly that she almost forgot all of her things. It was almost like she feared we would change our minds if she hesitated for too long.

Now, what to do about that, Acker?

"Hang him off a cliff for three days to think about what he's done. At the end, drop him. If he lives you can forgive him, if not well… consider that as the problem taking care of itself."

Was Aies's answer. Cai's was less violent but just as brutal.

"Put him under an illusionary loop in which he is the person he just humiliated. Have him re-live the scenario until his mind collapses and all he can do is apologize."

……. Or I could just demote him.

"If you already had an answer, then why bother asking?"

I wasn't sure which one of them had said that, but I didn't really care to investigate.