“You want me to what?! I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” Fujiwara Kaori sat in the typical-looking office of the typical-looking Japanese man with the very atypical-looking cat ears and whiskers, listening to his very atypical request.
Kaori had awakened here just a few moments before after falling asleep in her chair in her living room. She was by no means a lazy person though! She, relentlessly, worked for the personnel firm, to the point that she hadn’t had a day off in a couple of months. The firm she worked for provided personnel for numerous small media firms, some of which produced some of her favorite games, manga, and light novels back in her college days when she had leisure time and could enjoy them.
Recently there had been a shortage of personnel to fill a lot of the vacant spots in those companies and she had to borrow people from one company to meet the deadlines of others. At times she even found herself performing artistic writing projects and programming when there simply was nobody to pull for them. And as all talented people eventually realize, once you do something once, everyone comes to expect it of you. Fujiwara Kaori was very talented at her job!
That brings us back to the current situation where she found herself opposite a man referring to himself as an anthromorph and answering to the name Descartes Malafecto. The man in question had just told her the reason for her being seated opposite to him. It seemed he might now have to tell her all over again.
“You heard me correctly miss Fujiwara. But I have no aversion to repeating myself if it will help you adjust to the ideas as stated. I desperately need help! Firstly, let me offer my condolences on your untimely demise. I realize that being told that you died of exhaustion due to overwork is probably not the most endearing way of being asked to take a job. If I had the leisure, I would let you recuperate a bit first, however, I have issues piling up even as we speak that I will have to deal with once this interview is over.”
“As to the next topic, I doubt that there is any subtle way to ask someone to take on this kind of job. I’ll try, so do please let me know how I do so I can improve. In the interim, I would ask that you take me seriously as this is, in fact, a real job I am offering you. It has a great many virtues to go along with the ceaseless work it brings.”
As she settled herself, Kaori realized she had been in this situation before. A young and relatively new executive at the firm had asked her to help with the interview process. But in fact, what he asked her to do to help was to sit through a couple of mock interviews and give him feedback. Then there was the counselor at her high school who had asked the same thing of her when she was supposed to give mock interviews for college entrance. She readied herself. If this young man or whatever he was needed her help she would give her honest opinion.
As he prepared to give her his pitch she readied her best interview posture. She sat up straight with her legs crossed and her hands clasped on one knee. She was totally focused as he began. “You have read several Isekai novels according to your file and even played a few games based on that genre. You are therefore familiar with the idea of the sacred hero or chosen one. A person who is chosen to go to a new world and do valiant deeds in the name of a chosen god or ideal.”
With each passing word, Kaori grew more and more excited. By the end of the third sentence, her composure had slipped and she had a smile on her face, a gleam in her eyes, and her hands were balled into excited fists. Even if this was a dream, which she was starting to doubt by now, this was all very exciting! She couldn’t wait for him to ask her to take that job, she had long dreamed of doing great and mighty deeds heroically for the greater good.
Descartes looked across the desk at the woman sitting in the seat and smiled to himself. He could see the excitement on her face at the mention of what she considered fantasy topics. He was immensely glad that she was so engrossed in the topic and that he hadn’t misread the signs. He just hoped this whole bit of theatrics would get her to take the job. Even as he sat in this interview, he could tell, that problems were stacking up that he would have to sort out. But if she said yes it would be worth putting them off for a bit.
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As Kaori leaned forward in her chair Descartes continued. “I’m not going to ask you to be a hero, those guys are a dime a dozen and generally not too bright. If they were smarter, most of them would turn the job down or quit when they found out what the people they were saving were like or so on. Fortunately, most of them are too focused on their shiny new sword to realize that they are being bribed to do somebody else's dirty work.”
Kaori let out a sigh of longing, she had really wanted to be a heroine, or maybe a great villainess even! Descartes continued his pitch, seeing the timing was right. “In that same vein, you know of the creatures known as demonlords?”
Kaori couldn’t believe it. It was like he was reading her mind and she leaned forward again despite her intentions. “Yeah, those guys crop up pretty regularly. They might be terrible rulers who earn the title through their abuses of power or actual demons lording over their carved-out domains in the mortal worlds. But they are all too common.”
Descartes could tell he had her emotionally invested, she looked a tad sad that he hadn’t asked her to be a demonlord, he made a mental note of that for later, but she was still listening intently. Now to reel her in! He fervently hoped this would work. He would have said a silent prayer but there was no one to pray to! “What’s not common on the continually blooming magical worlds of the cosmos, are gods. Actually, not gods, but capable gods or goddesses. Those are truly quite rare and have to be chosen quite carefully! Which brings us to the current topic. Would you please become a goddess?”
Kaori wasn’t sure what she was expecting but that certainly wasn’t it. It wasn’t like she didn’t see the possibilities of becoming a goddess but the idea itself was preposterous. How does one simply become a goddess? She tried several scenarios in her mind to figure that out and quickly gave it up as a simple impossibility. Sure, there were legends of people in the past who became venerated by their descendants as deities but that didn’t make them actual gods, did it?
She settled her resolve, she decided the only way she would get the answer to that question was to have Descartes explain it to her. “I’m not yet convinced that this isn’t all a dream but I am interested. I would certainly like to know more before I give you an answer. You claim that you want me to become a goddess but how does one become a goddess?”
Descartes gave a slight sigh. She hadn’t turned him down but she hadn’t said yes either. This was all taking so much time that he needed to be devoting to fixing problems. Giving himself a mental shake, he braced himself for a long interview and proceeded. “Normally I would hand you over to a subordinate for all the details so I will have to be brief but I feel that if you do agree to take the position you would be somebody I could depend on. That’s the reason I will give you a bit longer with your interview. First, I feel that I should explain that I am a god and that I manage other gods and goddesses who in turn manage others. That goes all the way down to the mortals living on the many worlds under my care.”
“I am the chief deity over eight hundred forty-one worlds. Most of those worlds are just getting started and over one-hundred don’t even have any inhabitants on them yet. I will be sending you to one of the worlds that has started but is not being handled well. I need you to take charge of the deity there and bring that world to order.”
“I will be stopping the clock on that world so that you can get a better feel for it before you have to fix anything. At first, you will have virtually unlimited resources. You can change virtually anything you want about the world. I will leave you a source of power and control. Once you have the changes in place, as quick as you can snap your fingers time will resume for that world.”
“A word of caution, I would urge that you not try turning primitives into civilized races. Civilizations have to grow as do gods. I am sure that you had employees who you got fresh and had to wait on them to mature into their positions? This is the same thing. I did say that you would have one god under your wing when you get there right?” Descartes looked at the slightly bewildered woman across from his desk expectantly.
Kiori could tell that he wasn’t posing a rhetorical question and quickly thought back over the explanation thus far. She remembered mention of a god but then there was a lot to take in. doing what she did best she compartmentalized all of the info in her brain and cataloged it for processing while she mulled over the point in the conversation concerning this other god.