I sat through Niamh's meeting feeling slightly spaced out but… well… amazing, to be honest.
It would be easier to follow along if my mind didn't keep replaying those four hours on the bed, and the previous evening in Llewellyn's Core Partition, and this morning in Llewellyn's kitchen and…
"…"
Wait, no. Focus.
Anyway. The meeting.
Every four years, Innishae held the big celebration for the day when the old island kingdom of Inishmore an Mhuir was renamed and officially became Innishae.
Located to the west of the Bay of Biscay, right under Ireland on the map, Innishae only spoke English and some Irish until 1898, when young Korean scholar Yun Seojun, who was traveling the world to discover other cultures, shipwrecked on the island and was immediately summoned by young King Eoghan, who likely couldn't believe his luck.
King Eoghan, who was in his late 20s at the time—a dreamer, an idealist, and extremely frustrated by the limitations of his own country—loved the arts and was annoyed that the great works of art, literature, and philosophy always reached Inishmore much later than everywhere else. He felt that we should have had our own Shakespeare or Beethoven, that we should be on par with Europe at the very least. But Inishmore was a poor place of shipwrights and farmers, and they could not care less about any of that, much to his chagrin.
Besides, our island was so unimportant, even though large-ish, that even the Brits never bothered conquering us—partly because we'd become really good at repelling armed intrusions by sea due to having the Bay of Biscay on the east and a pretty unforgiving coastline everywhere else, but partly because it just… wasn't worth the trouble.
While that was a blessing as far as the population was concerned, King Eoghan had always wanted Inishmore to be recognized as a land of intellectual and cultural greatness and was dying for knowledge, art, and beauty to flow freely.
So, anyway, it was no surprise that he jumped at the chance. Yun Seojun was around the same age, driven, enthusiastic about his intellectual pursuits, and well-versed in cultures (Korean, Chinese) that Europe at the time had almost no idea about. That was just what King Eoghan had dreamed of. Yun Seojun was the ideal partner in crime to start plotting the overhaul of the whole cultural landscape of the country from the top down with, which he did—starting with renaming the island from Inishmore an Mhuir to Innishae, which we still celebrated every year, with the "big" celebration being held every four years.
Not that Korean or Chinese actually became a second language. But Korean names were suddenly everywhere, and language and culture courses started to be widely sponsored, followed later by Chinese ones as the nation opened up and news of Asia's cultural presence in Europe spread.
"This year they're adding an exposition on Llewellyn as part of the festivities," Niamh said on my screen. "Which means we need to adjust our coverage."
Someone groaned, then realized their mic was on and quickly muted themselves.
"I know," Niamh said with a sigh. "I wish I could have told you earlier, but I was only informed when I called this meeting. There are two new sets of pages on Llewellyn we'll need to add to our monitoring rotation. One is on the Crown's website and socials, so the moderation will be stricter; the other is just the social accounts of the exposition, so we can use the normal guidelines."
She shared her screen, showing the pages in quick succession.
"I'm reshuffling some of the existing checks to make room. I'll add everything to the checklist as usual. Does anyone have any questions?"
"When do these go live?" Áine asked, looking a bit worried.
"The pages are already up, but they're not promoting or sharing them yet. We start monitoring tomorrow night. The real traffic will pick up closer to the anniversary."
Ah, damn it.
"For those who weren't with the agency four years ago," Niamh continued, taking a sip from a mug that said 'Team Llewellyn (against my better judgment)', "Yun Seojun's Festival tends to bring out... uh… strong opinions, no matter which account you're working on. I imagine Llewellyn's will only be worse."
That was an understatement. Every fourth anniversary the Internet lost its mind.
"The King Eoghan/Yun Seojun fanfics have already spiked," Altan sighed. "I imagine the discourse will follow right after."
Niamh nodded. "We'll need to be careful with that, especially on the Crown's pages. However, our main focus is Llewellyn. He's Innishae's most visible figure globally. Everything he does or doesn't do will be scrutinized."
I mean, it always was, but. She was right—it was always worse during this time of the year.
Shit. Now that I thought about it, was this really the right time to go to an underground auction?! People were going to find out. Was this going to be the era of Mafia AUs, after all?
"This team didn't exist four years ago," Niamh continued, unaware of my inner spiraling. "I know some of you have monitored the Seojun Parade before as part of some of the other teams, but this isn't what we're doing here. We're sticking closely to Llewellyn's owned pages and forum, plus the two new sets of pages I mentioned, plus the general social listening we do via scraping for his mentions across the web. That's it. We still report to Emma only, so let's keep that in mind. It's likely that some of the other project managers will reach out to you to ask for insights, maybe even some of the higher-ups. Nothing wrong with that, but please run it through me first, we need to make sure we're not forgetting our primary goal and you need to be properly compensated if they want you to do extra work. In general, we're not here to care about the celebration, the historical discourse, the food fights—none of that. Our concern, as always, is making sure Llewellyn is safe and keeping abreast of the conversation around him. We only respond to the owned pages and forum, if necessary, and just keep track of the rest and escalate to Emma if there's anything dangerous or concerning."
Ciarán unmuted himself. "Has Emma said if he'll participate? Even just walking in the parade might calm things down."
Calm things down?!
"…Make them worse, you mean," Altan said.
Exactly.
"He's right," I said, unmuting myself. "If he shows up, half the internet will say he's doing the Crown's bidding. If he doesn't, they will say he's rejecting his role as Innishae's hero and should be ashamed of himself."
Not that Llewellyn would care about the latter, to be fair. In fact, I seriously doubted he was going to go.
"Before you ask, I don't know what he's going to do," I added quickly. "He hasn't told me."
"Ryo's right," Niamh chimed in. "Which is why we need to be prepared for both scenarios. To sum up, we're going to get lots of noise around Llewellyn's presence, King Eoghan-related debates, general discourse, as well as Queen Seolene's speech reactions and overall festival stuff, but we're only actioning what's on Llewellyn's pages. Nothing else. While we need to keep up with the social listening and read anything that comes into our tool, we only tag and escalate worrisome stuff about Llewellyn specifically. We don't care about the rest—cultural appropriation, colonialism, whatever anyone is upset about… not our circus, not our monkeys. All clear?"
We all nodded.
"I have a question," Opal said nervously, raising her hand. "I'm really sorry if this is inappropriate, hopefully it isn't, but… I'm technically on shift right now and the content on Ryo just keeps coming in. I'm… I know we're only supposed to monitor Llewellyn's stuff but it hasn't stopped at all since they started doxxing him. We can't just ignore it, can we? Could we maybe use a tag for him as well, if there's anything really concerning? I'm not saying we look for it, but if we see anything dangerous for his safety while we check Llewellyn's content, can we tag it, Niamh? I feel really bad just scrolling past some stuff. I've been bookmarking the worst ones, but that isn't very helpful."
Ah, damn, she was the sweetest. I felt a bit embarrassed.
Niamh nodded. "I'd been thinking about that too. Technically we don't have to—there's no budget for it unfortunately, so I won't ask you guys to do anything outside your job description. I've set up a few alerts myself, but there's a chance some of the higher-ups will take them down if they think we're acting out of scope or occupying alert slots on the tool. Hopefully they won't notice." She took a sip. "But if you want to, yes, absolutely. I'll discuss this with Emma and see what she thinks."
Shit. I felt bad about this.
"I'm sorry, everyone," I said, scratching my head. "You don't need to worry about me."
Everybody unmuted themselves at once to protest.
"Don't worry, Ryo," Niamh said, waving her hand when things calmed down. "I just can't promise anything unless there's a contract unfortunately, because I can't allocate resources otherwise. But of course we want to make sure you're safe too."
Everyone unmuted themselves again to agree.
Maybe Llewellyn was right, maybe I just had to hire them. Or maybe figure out how to hire Emma, as he'd suggested, and let her deal with this.
Everybody else chimed in to say that it wasn't a problem and that they were happy to help if they saw anything, since they were reading the comments anyway.
"That's why I asked," Opal said, looking determined. "I want to do it. These people are mad and this isn't right."
Um. Well.
I'd also been that combative at her age, I think—and when I'd just started this job. I supposed her reasoning made sense, too.
I scratched my head, sheepishly.
"Anyone wants to add anything?" Niamh said, taking a sip.
I unmuted myself. "Me," I said. "Great mug."
Niamh grinned.
***
I'd somehow managed to go through the whole meeting without Penguin making himself visible on camera, but when I finished, he was a bit grumpy about it.
"I'm sorry," I said, scratching his head. "I couldn't skip the meeting. Would you like some cuddles now?"
Penguin chirped and waddled closer, expectant. I picked him up.
Thankfully, he mellowed out when I offered to take a nap together in the Core Partition. I knew I would've just wasted the afternoon away if I just sat there trying to read, since my mind kept going back to… uh… my previous activities with Llewellyn, so a Magic-enhancing nap felt like the best idea.
I picked up Artifact Behavioral Patterns: A Field Guide, and placed it on the nightstand, before sliding into bed.
***
After an hour in the Core Partition with Penguin, I texted Llewellyn.
He called immediately.
"I got all we need for the barbecue," he said. "I might need a hand teleporting it there though."
"No problem," I said. "Should I come over?"
"Just teleport in," Llewellyn said, and hung up.
Alright then. I picked up my things, asked the System to teleport us, and—Uh.
Um.
Well.
I materialized on Llewellyn's lap again.
Llewellyn looked up at me.
"Why are you in bed?" I asked, bracing myself on his shoulders and looking down at him.
Llewellyn's hands ended up on my thighs. "Just testing a theory," he said, amused.
"About the System wanting us to fuck?"
"Something like that," Llewellyn said, and pulled me into a kiss.
Uh.
I parted my lips.
Damn it, I'd gone dazed again. This felt so great.
"And I think," Llewellyn said, flipping us over effortlessly and trapping me under him, "that it's doing quite a bit to keep Penguin and Lumos occupied while we do so."
We could hear happy chirping and barking in the other room.
"No complaints from me," I said, craning my neck up to kiss him again. "But it's probably better if we have this barbecue first and… uh… indulge after."
"I know," Llewellyn said, looking down at me. "Core Partition later?"
Wait, did he mean more public…
I whimpered.