Chapter 34: Yue's Return to the Chaos Department
(Arc 2: Audit from Heaven – Continuation of "The REWRITE Incident")
Assistant Yue had a bad feeling.
That alone was remarkable — she never had bad feelings. She was the kind of celestial aide who could walk through a bureaucratic earthquake, sip her tea, and finish three reports before noticing her desk was upside down.
But this… this was different.
She stood before the shimmering elevator that led to the Department of Form Evolution, clutching her clipboard so tightly the ink quivered. The entire bureaucratic tower was trembling. Pages fluttered through the air like migrating birds, and every announcement scroll she passed blared the same message:
> ⚠️ SYSTEM ANOMALY DETECTED. REALITY REWRITE LEVEL: UNDEFINED.
Yue frowned. "Undefined? That's not even on the scale. Who did this?"
Then she remembered exactly who she'd left unsupervised.
Her jaw tightened. "Ne Job."
The elevator doors opened to reveal a corridor that had rewritten itself. The signs were backwards. The carpet was rippling like water. A row of file cabinets were locked in a heated argument about whether they should alphabetize by vowel or by divine ranking.
One of them turned toward her and whispered in a metallic hiss, "Are you here to sign the new reality form, miss?"
Yue blinked. "No. I'm here to fix whatever nonsense that intern unleashed."
The cabinet sighed, "Then you're too late. The REWRITE has begun."
She ignored it, hiking up her uniform and running through the corridor, her divine hairpins glowing faintly with warding light. Every few steps, reality flickered. The floor tiles turned into parchment. The walls whispered lines of glowing script:
> "Sign here… sign here…"
Her shoes squelched on ink.
Her clipboard vibrated.
The closer she got to the lab, the louder the humming became — like a hundred quills scribbling at once.
Finally, she kicked open the lab door.
And froze.
The Department of Form Evolution was gone. In its place floated a cathedral made of paper and golden light. Every surface glowed with celestial script, shifting and rewriting like living code. Forms fluttered in perfect orbit, bowing toward a single glowing figure in the center.
Ne Job.
He was hovering two feet above the ground, eyes wide and terrified, holding a golden stylus that wrote by itself.
"Uh," he said weakly. "Hi, Yue. Funny story…"
Yue's voice was like thunder bottled in politeness. "Ne Job. What—did—you—touch?"
"I was just reviewing the Form ID 77-X like a responsible intern!" he said quickly, as if confessing to a crime and begging for mercy at once. "Then it rewrote itself! I didn't sign anything, it just—signed me!"
The glowing words above his head confirmed it:
> ACTIVE USER: NE JOB. REWRITE PRIVILEGE: SUPERVISOR LEVEL.
Yue's clipboard nearly slipped from her fingers. "Supervisor level?! That's divine administrator access! You can rewrite reality!"
"I noticed!" he yelped. "I just fixed a clock and now the furniture salutes me!"
Indeed, behind him, a filing desk stood upright and proudly declared, "All hail the Young Signatory!"
Yue pinched the bridge of her nose. "You promoted yourself to a god-tier scribe."
"I didn't mean to!"
"Of course you didn't mean to. You never mean to. That's what makes it worse."
She glanced at the floating script swirling around them — lines of divine text shifting every second, editing and undoing parts of Heaven's own architecture. She could feel the distortion bleeding into the administrative realm. Reality itself was treating every file, rule, and soul record as a draft version.
If Lord Bureaucrat Xian found out…
Yue's stomach twisted. "Ne Job, listen carefully. We have to stabilize the REWRITE Protocol before it spreads."
"How?"
"By sealing your access. The system thinks you're a supervisor, so it's waiting for your command."
Yue stepped closer, reaching into her robe for a sealing charm. But as she moved, the paper cathedral reacted — glyphs flaring, whispers rising to a chorus.
> "Don't stop the rewrite."
"Continue the draft."
"Perfect the world…"
Ne Job's stylus glowed brighter. The golden text spiraled faster. His body was trembling.
"Yue, I can't—control—it!"
Yue slammed her charm against the floor. The room convulsed. A shockwave of silver light burst outward, freezing half the floating pages in midair. For a brief moment, the rewrite halted.
Yue shouted, "Now! Give me the stylus!"
But when she reached for it, the pen burned with a pulse — and she saw something flash in Ne Job's eyes. Not his usual panic, but a deep golden shimmer.
The REWRITE was reading her too.
It whispered into her mind:
> "Assistant Yue. Would you like to optimize your workload? Redefine your limits? Reshape your fate?"
For a heartbeat, she felt its offer — the temptation of perfect control, of never failing again, of fixing every celestial error in one stroke.
Then she exhaled sharply. "I'm already perfect enough, thank you."
She struck the charm again. The stylus screamed — a note so sharp it cracked the lab's illusions — and the entire cathedral began to collapse back into mundane stone and shelves.
The world snapped back.
Ne Job fell to the floor in a heap. The stylus clattered beside him, dimmed and inert.
Yue steadied herself, panting. "There. Contained."
A pause. Then Ne Job lifted his head weakly. "So… I didn't destroy Heaven?"
Yue glared. "No. But you just caused the Bureau to rewrite twenty-seven internal memos into haikus and made Lord Xian's chair float away."
He winced. "Oh. My bad."
She sighed, rubbing her temples. "Ne Job, one day, your curiosity will literally edit us out of existence."
Then the intercom crackled again — but this time, it wasn't an automated voice.
It was Lord Bureaucrat Xian.
> "Assistant Yue. Bring the intern to my chamber. Immediately."
Yue froze.
Ne Job groaned. "I'd like to officially request sick leave."
She grabbed him by the collar. "Denied."
The moment they stepped into the elevator, the lights flickered again. For a second — just one second — Yue caught sight of a faint golden signature etched on Ne Job's wrist:
> REWRITE: Incomplete.
Her heart sank.
The protocol hadn't ended.
It was merely waiting.