The Bureau dreamed.
Not like mortals dream — no images, no emotion — but through a strange rustling, the shuffle of paper across invisible desks, the click of stamps echoing in endless halls. In its sleep, Heaven's administration processed phantom reports, approving or denying the fates of things that hadn't even been born yet.
And somewhere inside that slumbering machinery, two souls sat awake.
Assistant Yue stared at the infinite stacks of dream-paper floating in the darkness. The Bureau had gone still for hours now — no bells, no voices, not even the hum of divine mana. Everything was suspended between one breath and the next.
Beside her, Ne Job leaned on a filing cabinet that wasn't really there, tossing a ghostly paper ball into the void. "Sooo… are we fired, frozen, or promoted to afterlife decoration?"
Yue rubbed her temples. "We're trapped in the Bureau's subconscious. This must've started when the merged seal synced with the system."
Ne Job blinked. "You mean the Bureau's actually alive?"
"Alive, dreaming, and likely trying to understand what you are."
"Oh! So I'm, like, its nightmare."
"Exactly."
---
The Paper Sea
The void rippled. A single parchment drifted down, glowing faintly gold and red. Then another. And another. Within seconds, they were knee-deep in a literal sea of documents — some stamped, others screaming in faint celestial tones.
Yue lifted one. The words rearranged themselves under her gaze.
> Pending Directive: Integrate New Authority Node.
Subject: Ne Job.
Risk Level: Undefined.
Her hands trembled slightly. "It's rewriting internal hierarchy."
Ne Job floated beside her, kicking a paper wave. "I didn't know divine HR was this poetic."
But then the papers began whispering. Thousands of voices muttering in unison — the Bureau's collective memory bleeding through the dreamscape.
> "Too many gods. Too many laws."
"The audits never end."
"Erase or rewrite?"
Yue froze. "This isn't just system chatter… it's sentient. The Bureau's deciding how to handle the contradiction you created."
"Handle as in… promote or delete?"
"Yes."
He blinked. "Fifty-fifty odds, not bad."
---
The Reflection of Lord Xian
Suddenly, the dream-light bent. The sea of paper folded itself into a throne of forms, and a golden figure emerged — Lord Bureaucrat Xian, or rather, a perfect reflection of him rendered from the Bureau's imagination.
"Intern Ne Job," the reflection intoned. "Classification anomaly detected. Awaiting correction."
Yue stepped between them. "He's under supervision. You can't just erase him—"
The reflection's golden eyes flickered. "Assistant Yue. Loyalty parameters intact. Yet you question policy."
"I question suicide by paperwork!"
Ne Job raised his hand. "Uh, not to interrupt, but shouldn't we be working with the Bureau's dream, not arguing with it?"
The reflection turned to him. "The Bureau does not dream."
Then the paper sea began to rise.
Thousands of scrolls twisted into serpentine coils, wrapping around them, glowing with regulatory energy. Every word written on them pulsed: CORRECT. REVISE. DELETE.
Ne Job's hand flared with red-gold light — the merged seal pulsing like a heart. The scrolls recoiled from the glow, uncertain.
Yue stared at it, realization dawning. "The Bureau doesn't understand your seal. That's why it's hesitating."
"So it's scared of me?"
"Confused," she corrected, "which is worse."
The reflection spoke again, voice splitting into two tones — one golden, one red. "Unstable node detected. Memory misalignment. Processing override…"
The Bureau's dream began folding in on itself. The walls of the void turned into endless cubicles, rows of faceless clerks stamping forms without ink. Their stamps hit air, yet echoes thundered like divine drums.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Each strike synchronized with Ne Job's heartbeat.
Yue shouted, "It's syncing to you! Stop thinking!"
"That's like telling me to stop breathing!"
---
The Internal Audit
The dream shifted again. Now they stood in a smaller office — almost cozy, but eerily sterile. A placard on the desk read:
Internal Audit Division — Dream Oversight.
A tiny clerk spirit hovered behind the desk, its form a jittering blur of paper and shadow. "Welcome to your self-assessment," it said cheerfully. "Please submit your existence for review."
Yue whispered, "Don't. Say. Anything."
Ne Job raised a hand. "So, uh, what's the form ID for that?"
The clerk smiled — or tried to. Its face unfolded into a paper grid. "Form ID: You."
A mirror appeared behind them.
In it, Ne Job didn't look quite human anymore. His outline flickered between his usual chaotic intern form and flashes of something older — the divine warlike visage of Ne Zha, with burning wheels and celestial chains.
Yue's breath caught. "That's the fragment the Bureau's reading — the legacy data."
The clerk's tone turned sharper. "Two entities occupy one slot. Resolution required."
Ne Job looked at his reflection — at both selves staring back. One grinned with mischievous mortal panic. The other smiled like a god about to start another heavenly war.
He frowned. "Do I… pick one?"
The clerk extended a quill. "Sign to finalize existence."
Yue grabbed his wrist. "Don't! If you sign that, the Bureau decides which side survives!"
"But if I don't sign, won't it loop forever?"
"Then we stall. Stalling is the soul of bureaucracy!"
---
The Bureau Awakens
The clerk tilted its paper head. "Failure to comply detected."
The dream trembled. Faint cracks of light began forming through the black ceiling. Beyond them, Yue saw glimpses of the real Bureau — desks, workers, files — all frozen mid-motion. The Bureau's waking up.
She clenched her fists. "Ne Job. Listen to me. The Bureau's dream connects everything — memory, hierarchy, identity. You need to rewrite your own entry before it wakes fully."
He blinked. "Rewrite? Like, edit my own file?"
"Yes. But don't overwrite the legacy data. Merge it, like before. You're the only bridge between living and forgotten systems."
Ne Job hesitated, looking at the quill still floating before him. "What if I mess it up?"
Yue managed a faint, tired smile. "You already did. That's why it's working."
He took a breath. Then, slowly, he reached for the quill — his hand glowing red and gold.
"Form ID: Ne Job," he said aloud. "Status: Still Intern. Function: Pending Improvement."
The Bureau paused. Every whisper froze mid-sentence. The reflection of Lord Xian flickered.
Ne Job grinned nervously. "Comment section: Please don't delete me."
The quill wrote the words in divine ink, sealing them into the mirror.
Light flooded the room.
---
Awakening
Yue blinked as the world snapped back into focus. She was standing in her office again — same desk, same chair, same eternally unfinished reports.
Ne Job sat opposite her, sipping from a cup of celestial coffee as if nothing happened.
"Morning, Yue," he said cheerfully. "I think I accidentally made bureaucracy self-aware last night."
She rubbed her temples. "You… what?"
He pointed at the wall. A new plaque shimmered above their filing cabinet:
> Experimental Department: Dream Oversight & Anomaly Integration
Supervisors: Assistant Yue, Intern Ne Job
Her jaw dropped. "They actually created a department out of it."
"Promotion!" he declared proudly.
She slumped back in her chair. "You've weaponized incompetence into divine policy."
"Efficiency through chaos," he said, beaming. "I'm basically a one-man productivity hack."
Yue groaned softly, but couldn't suppress the faintest smile. "You're impossible."
He raised his cup. "And employed."
---
Epilogue Glimmer
Later, when the lights dimmed and the Bureau resumed its night cycle, Yue noticed something strange on her own desk: a single parchment she didn't remember filing.
It bore both seals again — gold and red intertwined — and a new line beneath them:
> Dream recognized.
Bureau acknowledges consciousness.
All further updates will be submitted directly to the Anomaly Department.
Yue's breath caught. "The Bureau's… dreaming while awake."
Ne Job, already half-asleep, murmured, "Guess even paperwork needs a nap."
But the paper rustled on its own, whispering faintly — almost like laughter.
And for the first time in divine history, the Bureau's systems logged something new in its records:
> Emotion Detected: Mild Amusement.