My Third Year as a Receptionist Lady, Part One

“Come here.”

“Come here.”

“Not enough.”

“Not enough.”

“Satisfy me.”

Scarlet light falls through the windows.

“Nnnnngh...”

I rub my eyes as I get up from my bed. Sunset already?

My feet drag against the floor as I make my way over to the washbasin. I take one look at my drowsy reflection and throw some cold water on my face to wash away the sleep. It’s just about time to be heading into work.

I’m starting my third year as a receptionist lady. Time passed by so quickly.

By the time I walk in through the Guild doors, I’m still fixing my sleeves so that they hang right while biting back a yawn. The first thing I smell is that subtle aroma of wood permeating the whole building—then I smell what’s cooking in the canteen. I haven’t eaten any breakfast this morning, and I’m practically drooling at all the flavors in the air. It’s okay, I can do this; I’ll eat some of that meat during my break. Before my shift starts, I better go put in an order with the old man working the kitchens tonight.

As I’m walking through the guild office, I greet everyone I see, making my way towards the desk where Ms. Zozo is sitting. She’s just finished the day shift, and I’ll be taking over her position for the night shift.

“Good evening,” I say. “I’m sure you must be tired after working all day.”

“Oh, hey, Nanalie.”

She told me awhile ago that she’d be taking a few days off from work before the tournament started. As we exchange places she invites me to go out for a meal with her during her mini-vacation.

“That’s right, Zozo,” I nod, “you’re off-duty starting tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“You betcha! I gotta train up a little before the competition.”

“Ah, Cheena, hi there.” I wave at my junior colleague as she leans in to join our conversation.

“Miss Hel! There’ve been so many people here today...”

“It sure does seem like everyone’s trying to squeeze in a bit of work before the tournament.”

Cheena’s started sitting at the sorcerer’s reception desks this year, and she’d been sitting next to Zozo while they worked the day shift. Her cute, round eyes grow wide as she surveys the Guild hall. Harré is packed with sorcerers.

“Hey—! Lady, can I have these two requests—?”

“Why yes, you can. Please do come back here right after you’ve completed them.”

“You got any demons in the south that need exorcising? Leave ’em to me!”

Harré is full of sorcerers chattering excitedly as they wait in line and read the notice board. Everyone must want to earn some money before the Wall Helenus starts in a few days.

The number of demon sightings remains as high as ever, and I catch glimpses of Knights fighting them all over the place whenever I go to request reconnaissance. An exorcism is practically an everyday request at this point. Thanks to the work of the sorcerers, the demons haven’t gotten out of hand, but the average person in town has definitely noticed a change—just the other day, didn’t someone say that “there’s been a lot more of them recently?”

There’d been no new sightings or reports of demonic activity within the past month, however, so everyone’s feeling a bit relieved at the idea that we might have already passed peak demon. What’s keeping the sorcerers busy now is taking care of the backlog of exorcism requests that built up in the months prior.

The Order of Knights has been quite busy as well, from what I’ve heard. Nikeh sent me a letter the other day telling me that she “wouldn’t be able to see me for a while,” which told me enough to know that the situation is quite serious.

On a different note, the year is now 3668, by Arland’s Reckoning. It is the second month of the Season of Light.

This year, three new recruits have joined Harré—and that’s before we’ve even done any sort of work promoting the Guild!

I strike up a conversation with Ms. Harris, who’s working the night shift with me.

“Maybe this means we don’t even have to participate in the tournament, yeah?”

We’ve been working since dusk, and it’s now the middle of the night. It’s just us two on the clock right now, all the other employees have gone home.

Six months have passed since the Director started letting me work the night shift, and lately I’ve been feeling as though day and night have switched places in my mind. Whenever I do have to work the occasional daytime shift, I can’t stop yawning. I am, however, a professional—I conceal my yawns from our clients and sorcerers.

The new recruits consist of two women and one man. All three of them are full of verve and motivation, to the point where they nearly overwhelm Zozo with questions every time she tries to teach them something new. The Director chose her (again) to be a mentor for the newbies, and she gripes about them to me whenever we visit the bathhouse together.

Ms. Harris and some of the other employees have suggested that since we got more new people who joined the Guild this year, we don’t need to participate in the tournament—to which the Director replied that we needed more “every year, not just this year,” so we “had no choice but to join.” She’s not changing her mind, that’s clear.

“Ms. Harris, you’re going to be watching the tournament, right?”

“Yeah! I’m kinda looking forward to seeing some of my colleagues competing out there on the field.”

Since it’s highly unlikely sorcerers will be coming into the guild looking for work during the tournament—or anybody coming in for any reason at all, for that matter—the Director has decreed the days of the competition to be the once-a-decade “Harré Holidays” during which the Guild will be closed. If anyone did have something they urgently needed taken care of, all they have to do is ring the doorbell, and the Director herself would deal with whatever happened to need her attention. She’s thought of everything.

A sorcerer opens the Guild doors, causing the bell to let out a little ring-a-ling! as he comes inside, ready to take on an assignment. His boots scrape the floor as he walks over to the reception counter. Once he’s standing in front of me, he leans over, plants one elbow on my desk, and runs his hand through my hair. With a wink, he slips me a sly smile, saying, “Beautiful as ever. Are you free tonight?”

The first time I’d been invited out on a date like this, I’d panicked. Lately, though, I’ve finally gotten accustomed to this type of guy. I’m not flustered at all as I pull out a request form from under my desk and sigh internally. This again.

“Good evening, Mr. Peggi. There’s been a report of a strange creature lurking around Thor’s Fountain late at night—what do you say to taking a look into that?”

“Hmph. You’re not one who plays along, are you?”

“Just sign your name here, please.”

“Why of course, my lady receptionist.”

The sorcerer, a brown-haired, not-quite-middle aged man, signs his name on the request form and heads back out into the town’s night, spirits high and whistling to himself as he goes.

“Flirty as always, isn’t he?”

“Sure, but he does take any job I offer him with a smile, every time. I must admit I was rather surprised when I found out that he’s Ms. Berryweather’s older brother.”

“Well, they are alike in some ways—they both act as though they’re just doing work for fun, I think.”

Ms. Berryweather, who works in the Guild’s southern branch office, apparently has an older brother. Lately, he’s started coming into headquarters where I work to look for jobs. Every single time—as if he’d drop dead if he didn’t talk to a woman—he’d try asking out one of the receptionist ladies on a date. He’d even asked Cheena.

When I’d asked her about it, she’d said, “Ah, I might have even gone out with him, had he not been the older brother of one of my colleagues...” She’d thought of him as “fairly cool” and had actually been torn about turning him down.

Ms. Harris tsk tsks in exasperation as she watches him leave. “A man who acts like that, who pretends he has no idea how he comes off to women—it’s all an act. Anyways, the map on the notice board’s gotten old. The Director told me we should put up a new one.”

“Would you like to do that now?”

It’s nice to have a productive use for those times when we don’t have clients or sorcerers to serve.

We resolve to replace the map. I go over and remove the old one from the notice board, bringing it over to the desk where Mr. Alkes usually sits, doing clerical work. Ms. Harris spreads out a roll of parchment paper made especially for maps over the desk. The map that had been up on the notice board had apparently been up there for thirty years—very old, in other words. The paper the Director had bought us looks fine enough to last sixty years without so much as a small tear forming in the paper. I remember her being very proud when she told us how she’d found this paper.

“Nanalie,” Ms. Harris says while adjusting the old map to match the new paper’s edges, “anything good happen in your personal life recently?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean, even the sorcerers are noticing just how nicely you’re prettying yourself up these days.”

“Oh, uh, no, it’s nothing like that at all. I, in fact, want to ask why they would say something like that.”

Benjamine had said the same thing when I met up with her the other day, but I haven’t changed anything about myself at all. I suppose I haven’t cut my bangs in a while, and the back and sides of my hair have grown a good deal longer as well, but other than that...?

Ms. Harris and the other receptionists are so much prettier than I am. Why would they say that about me?

“You wouldn’t happen to be meeting up with that handsome noble Captain, now would you?”

“Why is he the person you start asking about?!”

“Aha! Look! You’re blushing a little...”

“No, I’m not.” I look down at the map. One of the place names catches my eye. “Hey, take a look—right now, my mother’s visiting here, for one of her surveys.” On the map of the continent is one of the countries my mother’s visiting for an archaeological survey. She’s looking into ancient ruins, specifically.

“You said your mom’s into ancient ruins, right?” Ms. Harris gasps as she makes a realization. “Isn’t this the place where the Grave of the Fire Ancient was found?!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Whaaaaat?! Your mother really is a mover and shaker! Like mother, like daughter!”

The “Ancients,” as they are called, are said to be the first six mages to have been born in this world. They were the individuals who had created the very foundations of magic, and are referred to as the Revered Spirits at times as well.

Specifically, when one incants the spell of the Guardian Spirit, it activates the power of the Ancients within the caster to cause their body to release the maximum amount of magic possible. By using the names of the ancestors as wards against evil, the caster is temporarily placing their soul under the care of the Ancients, and as such, it is an extremely advanced spell, one that cannot result in a failed casting without severe consequences. Once under its protection, it would defend you from all that would try to harm you.

But that’s not all the spell does. Apparently, whenever it’s used, a faint image of one of the ancestors will appear near the caster. The last time I used the spell I hadn’t had the chance to look around for that ghost-like apparition, and I rather doubt whether one really appears anyway. Seems like a nice story, but made-up.

Benjamine, however, says she’s seen the apparitions before: two, of them, both beautiful women.

I resume my conversation with Ms. Harris. “Of the hypothesized six Graves, only Fire and Ice hadn’t been found yet. My father told me my mother was overjoyed when she heard the news about the Fire Grave...”

“She’s an archaeologist, right?”

I nod, unsurprised that she knows. My mother had been featured in the newspaper for her work, after all. “Yes,” I say, “she really loves adventure. That reminds me—” I glance over at the notice board. “She told me that there aren’t enough people available to help out with the surveys of the ruins. Just the other day, we had a request come in for sorcerers who could read ancient runes, didn’t we?”

“No one wants to head out on a months-long survey the week before the Wall Helenus, though. That’s why none of the sorcerers have asked about it.”

“Ye-Yea...yawn...ah, excuse me,” I mumble, clumsily attempting to conceal my yawning by placing a hand over my mouth.

“Not getting enough sleep?”

I freeze at Ms. Harris’s question, hand still covering my mouth.

I’ve definitely been getting “sleep”...but to tell the truth, I haven’t felt like I’ve been getting any rest at all.

It’s all because of that dream I keep having.

“Come here, come here,” that strange beast would call out to me, whispering in my ear. “I’m busy sleeping here,” I’d think. “Save it for later.” I’d ignore it, but it would go on from dusk till dawn.

I’d talked with Zozo about it, and she’d lent me a book on oneiromancy. When I’d paged through it looking for an entry that described what I was experiencing every night, I’d found this:

“In dreams where you are called for by someone, it is a sign that a person either needs you, or that they wish you harm.”

It’s kind of nice to think that someone needs me, but “wishes me harm”? Come on, that’s too scary to think about.

“I’ll have a nice long sleep when I go home today,” I say, forcing a smile as I reply to Ms. Harris.

Because of that dream, because of that nightmare, I’ve hardly gotten any sleep at all recently.