Chapter 44
The headquarters building was vast and imposing.
The grand auditorium inside the building was especially enormous.
Standing in front of a crowd large enough to fill that entire space made my stomach twist with anxiety.
“Employee Joy is hereby awarded and promoted to Assistant Manager for successfully recovering the lost divine relic Kyunee, greatly contributing to the restoration of Soul Society’s honor.”
Swoosh—
Lady Melinoe held out the certificate of commendation to me.
“Chairman Hades, presiding. Executive Director Melinoe, acting on his behalf.”
If I accept this, I become an Assistant Manager at HQ.
In subsidiary terms, that’s equivalent to a Department Head.
A Department Head.
The pinnacle of middle management.
And I’m now… that level?
‘This is giving me ulcers!’
What happens if I refuse this commendation?
Would they take it as insolence and punish me—or worse, fire me?
That thought flashed through my mind, but I quickly realized how foolish it was.
This auditorium was filled with high-level executives.
Rejecting a CEO’s commendation in a place like this could be seen as defying divine authority.
That’s not just termination—that’s the kind of thing that gets you punished.
“─Let’s all beat up that insolent fool!”
“─Turn him into a cockroach! Bam!”
I might literally end up as some hellish mutant roach.
Reality is bitter and unforgiving.
“Joy, what are you waiting for? Take it already.”
“…Thank you.”
Applause and cheers.
Surrounded by the blessing of so many people, the commendation ceremony came to a close with great fanfare.
Back at the Audit Team’s office.
I stood hesitating before the tightly shut door, too anxious to open it.
Then someone gave me a firm push from behind—thump!
“Why’s today’s main character lurking out here like he’s ashamed? Get in there already.”
It was Executive Director Alecto.
I was basically shoved into the office by an unstoppable force.
And right away, the eyes and voices around me zeroed in.
“Incredible, newbie!”
“Kyunee is one of the Chairman’s most cherished treasures!”
“You recovered it and returned it?”
“Heard you exposed a ghost company’s corruption during your raid!”
…What the hell are they talking about?
I felt dizzy.
Then Alecto chimed in with a smile.
“Joy, how long’s it been since you joined the audit team—four days? I bet you’re the only one in history who got promoted from entry-level to Assistant Manager in just four days. Not even I pulled that off, and I got in through noble-blooded nepotism.”
Swoosh—
With a sharp motion of her chin, she gestured toward Assistant Manager Narcissus.
“Assistant Manager Na, make some space for Assistant Manager Jo, will you?”
“Eh? Me? But… this is my window seat! I fought tooth and nail to get this! It took me 300 years to claw my way up from that crummy spot by the entrance!”
At HQ, hierarchy is ironclad.
Employees below Assistant Manager don’t even get personal desks.
Even once you become Assistant Manager, the norm is to start off near the entrance—
a drafty, miserable corner where every open door sends a chill down your spine.
But apparently, I was skipping all that.
Alecto was booting Narcissus out of his prime desk just for me.
I could understand if he felt a little bitter about losing his cozy spot.
“Honestly, I don’t even know what’s going on. Didn’t Joy say he was going to audit an illegal passage to the surface yesterday? And now Kyunee is involved out of nowhere…?”
Yeah. Confusing, right?
Same here.
But Alecto wasn’t having it.
“You dare talk back to an executive’s order? Want a taste of divine punishment? I’ll turn you into a hell-roach right now.”
“Assistant Manager Jo! That desk is yours now! I’ll take the one by the door. Nice and breezy every time someone walks in or out! I like wind anyway! Hahaha!”
Swoosh—
Assistant Manager Narcissus placed a hand on my shoulder.
His eyes were narrowed in a smile, but for some reason, I felt a sharp sting from his gaze.
“Assistant Manager Jo, mind telling the team what happened yesterday in detail?”
***
Backtrack to last night.
I had knelt before the Chairman.
“It’s entirely my fault for not reporting the secret passage to the Safety Management Team. Please punish me! I’ll take full responsibility and resign!”
Checkmate.
I hadn’t made it to the surface, but…
I had confessed my daring misdeed to the Chairman himself. Surely, I’d be fired now.
“…Hold on!”
But the Chairman objected.
“Whether that passage poses a danger to Soul Society is for me, as Chairman, to decide.”
Step step step—
That massive figure of his moved forward.
He stopped before a shallow pool.
And when he extended his foot—
Instead of getting wet, his leg sank in deep like the water wasn’t even real.
“This is a Rift of Chaos. Fragments of divine miracle left behind when the primordial god Chaos created the world. Every now and then, they create rifts like this throughout Soul Society. Now, where does this one lead?”
Whoosh—
The Chairman stepped through.
I followed right after.
Soon, a serene lake filled with moonlight and starlight stretched before us.
Whoooo—
A cool breeze swept through.
The scent of the surface world.
It was my first time seeing the surface in years.
Tears welled up.
The fresh air of the surface… incomparable to anything underground.
And the moonlight—
No matter how bright the artificial sun is down below, it could never match the softness of the real moon.
But then—
The Chairman casually nudged aside a fishing rod lying by the lake.
…A fishing rod?
“Just a normal place. Doesn’t seem too dangerous. No need to report this to the Safety Team. I, as Chairman, will handle it personally.”
“……”
“What, that look? Fine, you guessed it. This is my secret fishing spot. A place just for men—where I can be free of my wife! And you didn’t report it because you knew, didn’t you?”
This was escalating fast.
So this lake was the Chairman’s secret fishing getaway…
And he thought I’d kept it under wraps intentionally.
“Joy, you little scoundrel. Are you trying to blackmail me into giving you a reward? A mere mortal trying to bargain with the Chairman of Soul Society? Insolent!”
“No, Chairman! I never intended to negotiate anything with you!”
“What? If you’re not planning to make a deal with me, then who are you trying to deal with? Don’t tell me... you’re planning to tell my wife about my secret fishing spot?! You heartless scoundrel!”
Chairman Hades only heard what he wanted to hear.
And only said what he wanted to say.
…Remind you of anyone?
Melinoe.
Lady Melinoe was just like him. That’s who she took after.
“Fine then, Joy. I’ll promote you. Not a single person has ever been promoted to Assistant Manager just four days after joining HQ. Not a single mortal has achieved such an unprecedented feat—so I shall grant it to you!”
“No, thank you! I don’t want an unprecedented feat like that!”
“What? That’s still not enough for you?!”
The Chairman’s glare sparked with divine displeasure.
In that instant, I knew.
If I refused his offer, I’d be turned into a hell-roach on the spot.
As I silently kept my mouth shut, the Chairman reached into thin air and pulled something out.
“This is Kyunee—a divine relic of Soul Society. My son Zagreus used it to escape under the guards’ noses. It grants invisibility to its wearer.”
Swoosh—
The Chairman revealed a helmet shaped like a crown.
Kyunee… a mythical item, long associated with the very image of the divine CEO.
I couldn’t believe I was seeing the real thing. Even in this situation, I felt a spark of curiosity.
Manager Bones, who had been trembling in place, suddenly gasped.
“Kyunee…?! Isn’t that the item Prince Zagreus supposedly lost during his last escape?”
“That’s what we told everyone. But I found it again. It has GPS tracking, so I always knew where it was. I created a ghost company and hid Kyunee there.”
“Wh-Why would you do that…?”
“Sometimes, a man just needs to disappear without a trace. Bones, you’re a married man—you get it, right? Anyway, Joy, from now on, you’re the one who recovered Kyunee.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Most of the expenses from that ghost company were just electricity bills to recharge this thing. The financial records were all fabricated. I’ll hand those manipulated files over to you.”
Fwap—
The Chairman pulled out a thick bundle of documents from thin air.
Apparently, he’d been sneaking out every night wearing an invisible helmet just to go fishing.
No one would’ve guessed that Kyunee—thought to be lost during Prince Zagreus’s escape—was being used by the Chairman to sneak out for nighttime fishing trips.
He even created a fake company to cover up the electricity costs for recharging it.
But now that I’d supposedly discovered his secret…
He was offering me the glory of having recovered Kyunee, in exchange for keeping my mouth shut about the secret fishing spot.
How… did this even happen?
Of course—
All of this had to be kept confidential.
As far as the public knew, I was a hero.
The one who investigated suspicious expenditures from a ghost company, traced it to excessive power usage, and ultimately recovered the lost relic Kyunee.
“But who would’ve hidden the Chairman’s treasure Kyunee in a ghost company in the first place?”
“Probably the rebels, right? That’s just like them.”
“Didn’t Prince Zagreus lose it in the first place? So Assistant Manager Joy cleaned up the prince’s mess—kind of smacked him in the face in the process!”
“Serves him right! I feel better already!”
Day four of my HQ assignment.
Honestly, I’d felt like an outsider in the audit team so far.
This place had always been enemy territory for me.
Of course they hated me.
Except for my mentor, Assistant Manager Narcissus, no one even talked to me.
—“So what if he’s a star at his branch? He was just a Deputy Manager there.”
—“Plenty of hotshots crash and burn when they transfer to HQ.”
—“Shhh, he’ll hear you.”
—“Let him. I want him to hear.”
Yeah, I’d heard all the whispers behind my back.
But now?
Everyone looking at me was filled with admiration… and respect.
“No wonder the Chairman’s taken an interest in him.”
“People from Happy World really are meticulous.”
“Did you see the Safety Team’s faces in the auditorium? They looked like they’d swallowed a bug!”
“Assistant Manager Joy! I think I misjudged you. Let’s get along from now on!”
How did it come to this?
And also… what was Manager Bones doing up on the surface in the first place?
It’s not like he wanted to fish, right?
# #
Manager Bones was watering the flowerbed in front of the Happy World HQ building.
When I approached, his faintly glowing eyes lit up.
“Congratulations on the promotion, Assistant Manager Joy. At HQ level, you’re now on par with, or even above, me—a department head at a branch. I always knew you were destined for more. I’ve never seen a more exceptional man than you.”
“Manager Bones… did you already know the Chairman was using that place to fish?”
“By the River Styx, no. I only found the rift recently—on the day you brought me that cactus kimchi.”
“That day?”
“Your Deputy Manager aura was so intense that every hell-roach hiding in the HQ scattered in fear. That day.”
His hollow skull seemed to shimmer as he recalled the event.
Here’s what he told me:
That day, when I’d uncovered a massive gold vein near the HQ entrance—
Bones had kept digging and found a tunnel swarming with hell-roaches.
There were so many, it was impossible to enter.
So he left it alone.
But when I came back loaded with cactus kimchi—
The smell was apparently so overpowering that all the bugs fled the tunnel.
Curious about what was inside, Bones returned to investigate—
and found the tunnel flooded instead of infested.
“I figured it was a rift to the surface. I was planning to investigate personally and report it to the Safety Team… but…”
Manager Bones walked toward the rift again, and I followed.
We emerged at a serene lakeside, surrounded by beautiful trees.
The sun beamed down from above.
Where was this place?
How far from my home was it?
Surely, it had to be closer than the depths of Soul Society.
As I was thinking that, Bones placed a hand gently on one of the trees.
“These laurel trees are my wife Bonnie and my daughter Libby. I never imagined the rift would open right at the lakeside where they are. What a bizarre coincidence…”
Wait.
His wife and daughter… are trees?
Turns out Manager Bones has a rather unique affection for trees.
I was honestly shocked.
A botanical love confession.
Silently, I pulled my hand back from the smooth tree bark I’d been absentmindedly touching.
Dear gods—I hope I wasn’t stroking his wife.
Or worse… his daughter?
Still weird either way.
Ahem.
Trying to shake off the awkwardness, I cleared my throat and spoke.
“Manager Bones… you didn’t actually marry a tree, right? Could you explain… what’s going on here?”
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