Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 141: "Fragments of the First Intern"
The deeper they walked, the colder the Archive became.
Not physically—temperature didn't exist in the Shadow Archives—but metaphysically, as though the weight of forgotten bureaucracy pressed against their ribs, whispering old rules in a language even Yue didn't fully recognize.
The shelves bent inward, arching overhead like the ribs of a sleeping beast. Every book they passed was sealed shut with black twine, each knot pulsing like a heartbeat.
"Yue," Ne Job murmured. "I think the furniture is judging me."
"It's not judging," she said. "It's remembering. And it remembers someone who looked exactly like you."
"That is not better."
"It wasn't meant to be."
---
The First Fragment Room
A staircase unfolded from the shadows as they approached—a spiral made of shredded edicts, leading down into a small circular chamber.
A single desk sat at its center.
A simple intern's desk.
Ne Job's chest tightened. "I know this desk."
Yue glanced at him sharply. "A recovered memory?"
He shook his head. "No. More like… the memory wants me to know it."
The desk was immaculate except for a quill stabbed straight into its surface, pinning a sheet of translucent vellum.
Yue examined it first. "It's a record shard," she whispered. "A fragment extracted from a sealed case. Someone left it here intentionally."
The shard reacted to her touch—glowing, then projecting a flickering image into the air.
A silhouette appeared.
Not a shadowy figure this time—
But crisp.
Defined.
Intern badge visible.
Face obscured entirely except for faint glowing eyes.
Yue inhaled sharply. "That badge… it matches the pre-rebirth design. This is your predecessor."
The silhouette spoke, voice steady and mournful:
"If you are seeing this, the Bureau has already failed."
Ne Job's stomach dropped.
The fragment continued:
"The cycle of Order collapses without the intern. Without me. Without you… whoever you are now. The Directors believed replacing the anchor would stop the decay."
A pause. Static.
"They were wrong."
Ne Job stepped closer. "Anchor? Yue, what anchor?"
But the silhouette kept speaking, unmoved by questions:
"I am leaving behind Protocol Delta-Null. Do not trust the Codifiers. Do not trust the clerks. Trust only the one who carries the Echo of Balance."
The shard flickered violently.
"If they are still alive."
Yue's eyes widened. "Echo of Balance… that's a myth. A conceptual assistant who maintained equilibrium between chaos and order before the Bureau standardized chains of command."
"A myth that might still be alive," Ne Job said quietly.
The fragment glowed again, but this time the silhouette turned—looking directly at Ne Job.
"And you—version, successor, echo—stop trying to forget what we did."
The room trembled.
"You and I broke Heaven."
The shard exploded into ash.
---
The Silence After
Ne Job didn't speak for a long moment.
He just stared at the burning embers drifting upward, his pulse racing beneath his ribs.
Yue's hand hovered near his back—not touching, but close enough to anchor.
"Ne Job," she said gently, "are you alright?"
He gave a shaky laugh. "Yue. Yue, Yue, Yue. I just learned Past Me might've broken Heaven, and apparently I'm the reboot. I am objectively, definitively, impossibly not alright."
She nodded. "Good. That's a healthy response."
He blinked. "How is that healthy?"
"Because the unhealthy response would be acceptance."
Fair point.
---
The Hidden Drawer
Yue leaned over the desk again. "Shards like this aren't usually left intact. Someone wanted us to find it."
Ne Job noticed something she hadn't: a faint groove under the desk's lip.
He slid his fingers beneath it.
Click.
A hidden drawer opened.
Inside was an old intern badge—tarnished, cracked, and humming with faint remnants of authority.
Ne Job reached for it—
—and the badge snapped to his Chaos Spark like a magnet.
His vision blurred.
His breath caught.
And for a split second—
He saw a reflection of himself in the polished surface.
Except the reflection was older.
Sharper.
Eyes colder.
And it whispered:
"Remember the Codifiers."
Ne Job staggered. Yue grabbed his arm.
"What did you see?"
He swallowed. "A warning. Or a threat. Maybe both."
Yue stiffened. "Ne Job… if the Codifiers were involved in your erasure—"
"They'll be involved in whatever's coming next."
The Archive responded to his words.
Pages rustled. Shelves repositioned. The air thickened with unseen pressure.
Something deeper inside the darkness woke up.
A voice—not human, not divine, more like recited protocol—rolled through the chamber:
"Fragment recovered. Cycle advancing. Prepare the next memory."
Yue pulled Ne Job close, manual glowing like a shield.
"Ne Job," she whispered. "This Archive isn't showing us clues."
He nodded grimly.
"It's reconstructing you."
Together, they turned toward the next corridor—the darkness stretching out, waiting.
End of Chapter 141 — "Fragments of the First Intern."