Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 137: "The Paperstorm"
The morning began with the smell of ozone and ink.
By the time Ne Job and Assistant Yue reached the Bureau's central courtyard, the air was already vibrating—like the calm before an explosion. Clerks were running across the marble floors, scrolls and folders fluttering like startled birds. A storm was coming, not of rain or thunder, but paper.
"Status report," Yue demanded, her voice slicing through the chaos.
A trembling minor spirit saluted. "All divisions are backed up! The Overflow Dockets have reached the fifth tier—requests, re-requests, and divine appeals are colliding in the ether! It's—it's turning into a resonance whirlpool!"
Ne Job blinked. "Translation?"
Yue turned grim. "It means the bureaucracy is eating itself."
Then the first sheet fell. A single page, glowing faintly gold, drifting down like a snowflake. Then another. And another. In seconds, the sky over the Bureau cracked open, releasing a roaring cascade of documents—petitions, sanctions, audits, celestial apologies—all tumbling from the heavens in an endless spiral.
"The Paperstorm," Yue whispered. "It's real."
Lord Bureaucrat Xian appeared atop the central balcony, his robes whipping in the current. His eyes glowed like molten brass. "All departments! Seal the ledgers and reinforce the Divine Filing Vaults! The Heavens are collapsing under their own paperwork!"
Ne Job's hair whipped back as the storm intensified. "You mean—Heaven's literally filing itself to death!?"
Yue shouted over the wind, "Focus, intern! You trained for this!"
Ne Job stared down at his hands. The once-ordinary intern gloves now shimmered faintly with bureaucratic sigils—proof of his reluctant divine bond. "I didn't train for divine deforestation!"
"Then improvise!" Yue snapped, already forming glyphs in midair, her quill glowing like a blade. "We'll need a Resonance Seal to redirect the overflow into the archives!"
Pages slammed into the ground, cutting marble like blades. Each one bore red stamps of divine approval, the kind that no mortal hand should touch. Ne Job ducked behind a pillar, grabbed a handful, and shouted, "These forms—they're unsigned! That's why they're rejecting heaven's order!"
"Then we sign them," Yue said. "All of them."
Ne Job gawked. "There are thousands!"
Her expression was fire and frost. "Then stop whining and start authorizing."
Together, they launched into motion. Ne Job's quill danced like lightning, each stroke sealing a stray document with the authority of the Bureau's crest. Yue's glyphs wrapped around him in protective spirals, forming temporary order amid divine entropy.
But the storm didn't slow—it raged harder. Above, the clouds twisted into the shape of colossal ledgers, each page turning with thunderclaps.
And from within that storm, a colossal silhouette formed—a figure made entirely of paper, red stamps burning like eyes.
"The Manifested Backlog," Yue breathed. "Every unsolved case since the Dawn of Filing."
The creature's voice was a thousand bureaucrats screaming in unison:
"UNPROCESSED REQUESTS… UNFULFILLED DUTIES… INCOMPLETE INTERN!"
Ne Job gulped. "Yue, I think it remembers me."
"Then give it closure," she said, summoning her divine ledger.
Ne Job raised his pen like a sword, smirking despite himself. "Fine. Let's finalize some divine paperwork."
The Paperstorm howled louder, swallowing light and sound as the two dove headfirst into the chaos.