Chapter 134: The Office

Chapter 134: The Office

“I’ve changed my mind,” Noah declared. “Let’s just see what happens if I walk out of Arbitage. We can talk to them when they come to kill me.”

“Absolutely not,” Moxie said, grabbing Noah by the shoulder with one hand before he could rise from his chair and pushing him back down into it.

They’d arrived at the Office just a little over two hours ago. It was surprisingly plain – by Arbitage’s standards, at least. The building was made from plain but well kept white stone and stood several stories high, standing out like a sore thumb in a sea of other, far more extravagant ones.

However, any fascination Noah could have possibly even considered having with it had dried up like a droplet of water in the desert as soon as they’d stepped inside to find a secretary sitting at a large counter, eating what must have been a six course meal.

There were twelve other chairs around her, and every single one of them was empty, meaning she was the only one to talk to. And, as soon as the two of them had stepped up to the counter, she’d raised a finger to tell them to wait.

Noah had expected that she’d just needed time to finish chewing. What she’d actually meant was that she wasn’t going to speak with them until she’d finished off the rest of her food, and she clearly wasn’t in any rush.

They’d sat there for an hour until, finally, the woman finished her meal. Noah – whose eye had been twitching in irritation the entire wait – let out a sigh of relief as she rose, but it turned into a strangled curse as she strode off.

It was an hour before she returned. The secretary looked mildly surprised to find the two of them still waiting there. As if the very idea of helping them gave her physical pain, she’d ushered them into a tiny room.

It only had two chairs and a desk, and the chairs were squeezed so tightly together that they might as well have been a couch.

A minute later, a stack of papers as tall as Noah’s forearm had been plopped on the desk and the secretary had vanished once more, ignoring the Noah and Moxie’s questions and only pausing to slap a quill and ink jar down beside the papers before closing the door behind her.

“If you don’t fill this crap out, then we might genuinely have some serious trouble,” Moxie said, but even she looked exasperated. “Just do it. The faster its done, the faster we can leave.”

Noah shook the first paper in the pile at her. “How are these even slightly relevant? They’re asking me the length of my forearm. Why would I know that? I’ll show them the length of my middle finger instead.”

“They aren’t that stupid. You’re just being a complainer.” Moxie snagged the paper from his hands. Her eyebrows crept up on her forehead and she slowly set the paper back down. “Okay. I thought you were joking.”

They stared at each other. The irritation wasn’t helped by the tiny room around them, devoid of any decoration or even windows. It was just white walls.

“You sure you wouldn’t rather risk someone trying to kill me?”

“Tempting,” Moxie admitted. “But no.”

Noah sighed. “How long does my forearm look to you?”

***

It took another two hours to fill out all the papers. They asked a variety of, as far as Noah could tell, entirely useless questions that ranged from random factoids about himself to a literal sudoku puzzle.

When they finally finished, the two of them practically sprinted out of the room to find the secretary – only to realize she was eating dinner. Noah’s Runes trembled in his soul as the incredible urge to grab a plate of rice from the table and pelt it into her face beckoned to him.

“We’re done,” Moxie said, giving the bowl of rice a very long look.

The secretary held a finger up. The plate of rice tempted Noah even harder. He took a step forward.L1tLagoon witnessed the first publication of this chapter on Ñøv€l--B1n.

By some stroke of luck, a door down the hall opened and a man headed out. He paused as he spotted Noah clutching the papers to his chest with one hand, then frowned.

“What are you doing? We’re closed for the day.”

“I’ve been here for hours filling this crap out,” Noah said. “The least you could do was let me talk to the person I came here to see.”

The man looked down the bridge of his nose at Noah and adjusted a pair of round glasses that were perched on his long nose. “It takes a good amount of time to read through your introductory papers, you know.”

“Well, it took time to write the damn things,” Noah replied. “And it’s not even dark outside yet. What time do you close?”

He approached the door and, after exchanging a glance with Moxie, rapped on it. Several seconds passed. There was a thud followed by a click a second later. The door opened, revealing a room covered with papers strewn around in every direction.

Neir stepped out from behind it, his face taut in annoyance. His brow scrunched as he looked down at Noah.

“Who are you?”

“Vermil Linwick. We spoke briefly at the transport cannon,” Noah said with a frown. “About the Hellreaver thing?”

Neir tilted his head to the side, pursing his lips in thought. His eyes lit faintly and he nodded with a snort. “Oh, right. The Rank 1 Professor. What do you want? Have something useful for the case?”

“Not useful, but we’ve got an exam coming up pretty soon,” Noah said as he rubbed the back of his head. “You said I couldn’t leave the campus. Brayden took me out to our estate for a while, but now that I’m back, we figured it was probably a good idea to let you know before I did anything.”

Neir grunted. “Right. Where are you going?”

Noah glanced at Moxie.

“We haven’t figured it out yet,” Moxie replied. “But I’m a member of the Torrin family and he’s part of the Linwicks – we’ve both got reputable families. We aren’t going to run away.”

“I see,” Neir said. He heaved a sigh. “I was hoping you had something useful. All we’ve got to work off is a corpse. Pain in the bloody ass.”

Blake cleared his throat from behind them. “Keep the details between us maybe, Neir? Low Rank or not, we shouldn’t be leaking information.”

Neir grunted. “Like these two are going to do anything. They came to tell me he was going on a trip. You really think it’s part of some big plot?”

“It will be if you keep treating everyone that comes in like an idiot,” Blake said with a shake of his head. “Stop being so arrogant, Neir.”

“Hardly matters. Not like they can fight me, even if it was a plot,” Neir said through a yawn. “They’re weak.”

“So we can go?” Moxie pressed. “If you don’t think we’re a threat, then it shouldn’t be any issue at all. You’ll be able to track Vermil down if you need him for something – not that he’s actually capable of doing anything on his own. Why do you think I’m the one teaching his class for him?”

“Hey!” Noah exclaimed as both Neir and Blake started to snicker.

“Just get out of here,” Neir said with a shake of his head. “And don’t be long for longer than a month, or I’m going to assume that you’re on the run – and I will find you. Incompetent or not, we’ll be watching you.”

Noah and Moxie grinned.

“Thanks,” Moxie said, turning to leave. As Noah turned to follow her, Neir caught him by the shoulder.

Noah glanced back at him.

“When’d you hit Rank 2, by the way?” Neir asked.

“Just recently, while I was at the Linwick Estate,” Noah replied, keeping his words even. “Decided it was time to start working on myself a little more. I didn’t realize it was that noticeable.”

“You’ve got more pressure coming off you than you did before,” Neir replied with a grunt. “No matter. Try not to get yourself killed, or I’ll have even less suspects to claim I’m watching.”

Moxie and Noah nodded, then left the house. Only once they were a few minutes away did Noah let out a relieved sigh.

“That was stressful. And it also took a grand total of about five minutes. I hate the Office.”

“Can’t say I disagree,” Moxie muttered. “Let’s just be thankful that all we did was waste time. All things considered that could have gone worse. We should find Lee and figure out where we’re going to go to train.”

“Sounds good to me,” Noah said, sending one last glance over his shoulder before he turned back and followed Moxie back to the T building. Hopefully, that would be where things were left to lie with the Investigators. After all, the Linwicks were providing a replacement soon, and Noah was hopeful that the entire problem would soon blow over.