Though Thea definitely enjoyed being back at work in a library, her joy was dampened by an irritating issue almost immediately. No students were due to show up until later, so the library was mostly empty and quiet. Upon checking with the rather tired looking librarian upstairs in the archives, Thea was told, “The head librarian is currently out,” and when she explained that she was to start her duties working there, she was met with, “See the attendant at the circulation desk as I don’t have time to chaperone.”
The archivist gave her a once-over out of the side of his eye before straightening the scroll tubes in his arms and walking away, as if to say, if you’ve forgotten your assigned duties already, then you should suffer the consequences.
Yes, well, due to the incidents that happened after her previous visit, any talk of her work duties had been postponed until today. Sure, there were probably books waiting to be reorganized onto the shelves and papers to file that could keep her busy until Adrien’s return, but it would be quite the mess if she were to clash with work others were already assigned to.
Thea stood in the hallway after the archist left. Her gaze landed on the door of the room she’d met Adrien in several days before, and she sighed. There was a possibility that Adrien wrote down information about her arrival and duties, but considering no one seemed to greet her or know about her, it was just as likely that he’d forgotten to mention much of anything.
Thea narrowed her eyes at that door as a passing suspicion that he was actually here but somehow managing to hide surfaced in her thoughts. She brushed it off though, remembering how it was during her internship. He may be good at putting duties he dislikes onto others, but that same tendency means that others would definitely know if he were here or not. They’d be trying to avoid his attention or else busy with tasks he assigned them. Thea was unsure whether his absence was an opportunity for a peaceful first day or whether she should be annoyed with him for missing it with as hard as he’d pestered her to come and work at the Central Library all these years.
Without any other option, Thea decided to head back down the stairs to the circulation desk as the archivist suggested. At the very least, perhaps there would be a way to check if there was something needing to be done that had not been assigned to anyone yet.
“Excuse me,” she said, attempting to get the attention of one of the men behind the desk counter. The eyes of the man closest to her flickered up from what he was reading, the rest of his body unmoving, before they returned to their previous position without a word. Thea’s jaw clenched at the man’s reaction; she was pretty sure he had just ignored her.
Taking a slow breath, she counted to ten just in case she had perhaps interrupted something important which he needed a few seconds to finish up or to get to a stopping place. But when he continued to stare at what he was reading on the desk well after that time, she decided it might be best to ask someone else. There was one other man at the desk, one much younger than the first, who now looked at her with a smile on his face. Once her gaze met his, he stood and came towards her.
“May I help you? If your young master or miss sent you to pick up a book for them, I’d be happy to direct you.”
Being mistaken for a maid or governess gets quite old, Thea thought to herself. It wasn’t the first time, but it was better than getting ignored outright, so she decided to try with this librarian and readied herself for the necessary explanation.
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She introduced herself as Lady Thea Chronwright, a librarian from the eastern branch that had just been approved to work at the library here at the academy. She finished with, “If you’d be so kind as to direct me to an area where I’m needed, I’d appreciate it.”
Plastering a polite smile on her face, Thea failed to be surprised when the friendly smile fell from the man’s face. He stepped away from her and plopped himself back into a chair behind the desk.
“Ristan, you deal with this. I just got through handling a large request from an archivist. Surely, your manuscript can wait a few minutes.” The man waved dismissively at his middle-aged colleague who finally lifted his eyes from what he was reading with a scowl on his face.
“If you have experience enough to be recruited to the Central Library despite your…status…shouldn’t you be able to figure out what needs completing on your own? Or perhaps you could wait until the head librarian returns? He’s sure to hand out several tasks before the day is out.”
Status? I see. Another one who thinks only sons of nobles should be working here. Thea had come across enough of their kind when she attended the academy and apprenticed under several of the senior librarians. It was one reason she enjoyed working in the Eastern Library for Commoners and had resisted coming back to the Central Library in the first place. So much for a peaceful first day.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on her, Ristan,” the other man chided from his seat before Thea found the words for her reply. “Wishing the head librarian’s to-do list on her is a bit much. She’s bound to be fine with dusting the shelves sorting out the study alcoves though. There’s plenty of that to go around.”
That was maid’s work, not librarian’s work, and certainly not the work given to a librarian who was only six months from receiving senior status. If this is how they’re going to be, I suppose I’ll have to do something that will be a bit more clear to them.
“I see,” Thea said finally. “Well, I should let you gentlemen get back to work. You look quite busy after all.” She smiled before turning around and walking out of sight of the circulation desk. There was some grumbling from the men behind her, but they soon quieted.
She let her smile fall once she stepped past the first, large shelf and decided that since they were allowing her to pick her own starting point for her work duties that a stop in the records office might be just what was needed.
Thea didn’t think Adrien would expect her to just put up with such behavior, and it was better to nip this in the bud right away rather than let those men begin to think their behavior was acceptable. Based on their attitudes, she was certain she could find something useful if she just looked deep enough in the right places.
What she was about to do might create more work for Adrien, but she was sure he could use something to keep him busy since he was missing so much of the morning work as it was. And it seemed Adrien had become much too lax with his personnel training anyway if her simply asking what her assigned duties were was too much for them.
Thea found the small office to be unoccupied, and since her mana registration had already been transferred to the library’s security array, a touch of her finger to the stone on the door and a bit of mana unlocked it for her. Finding no one in the office wasn’t surprising though. After all, it only housed the records of loaned books and work schedules and the like, so no one would probably bother to enter until it was time to file those records away at the end of the day.
The filing system in the office was at least in good shape, and she quickly found the records she was looking for. As she settled in for a type of work that she hadn’t anticipated doing today, she thought, I sure hope Luin’s first day at the academy is going better than this.
***
Meanwhile, over in the headmaster’s office, Adrien shivered. It was quite an odd sensation given that the cold didn’t really bother him unless he dwelled on the feeling.
“Roy, is it a shiver that means someone is talking about you behind your back?” he asked, pulling the curtain open a bit more as he stood by the window. Below, he watched the students scurry on to their classes.
Roy chuckled. “No, that would be itchy ears. Shivering usually means something you dislike might be coming your way, but usually nothing too ominous. Why? Did you get a chill, Master?”
“Hmm. It would seem so.” Adrien pressed his lips together for a moment. “Something I dislike…?”
“Perhaps someone, somewhere is making more work for you?”
“Don’t even joke about that, Roy.”
Roy’s only reply was to chuckle a bit more.