Ne Job — Chapter 167: "The Audit That Eats Souls"
Arc: Vein That Should Not Sing
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1. When the Desk Stamped Back
The moment the Desk of 10,000 Years stamped him, Ne Job's mind snapped in two directions:
One half remained in the dusty office, clinging to Yue's voice. The other half went somewhere older.
Somewhere where desks weren't furniture, they were ecosystems.
He fell through stacked ledgers like falling through sky. Receipts rushed past like stars. Ink blotches like galaxies swallowed him whole.
A whisper followed him through the void:
> YOU ARE INTERN #00000001.
WELCOME BACK.
He hit flooring with his skull and his dignity.
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2. The Audit Begins
He was in a new room.
No—audit chamber.
The floor was dotted grids like tax worksheets. The walls were composed of pinned souls—shadows suffering under stapled halos.
And in the center sat a single entity, half-hidden in smoke and fluorescent light:
The Auditor.
Not a person.
Not a god.
An algorithm made flesh.
A humanoid shape composed entirely of black correction marks—erasures, strikethroughs, red-ink annotations that bent around its face.
Its voice sounded like a calculator swallowing thunder.
> BEGIN AUDIT OF INTERN.
Ne Job lifted a hand. "Can I have a lawyer?"
A fountain pen materialized above his head and stabbed downward like an executioner.
He ducked.
The pen buried itself into the floor, ink cracking like lightning.
The Auditor's eye—if the cluster of punctuation marks counted as one—focused.
> YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO REQUEST REPRESENTATION.
YOU ARE TEMPORARY LABOR.
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3. Yue Fights Back
In the original room, Yue wrestled against the Chair of Obligations.
It was no longer just holding her down—it was growing into her. Its arms sprouted into filigree manacles of ergonomic responsibility.
She grit her teeth and tore one arm free—paper cuts exploding across her skin like red lightning.
"Ne Job!" she screamed.
The forgotten god of paperwork stared at her in awe.
"You resist the chair. That should be impossible."
"Yeah," Yue spit, "I'm a junior admin. We resist chairs for sport."
She kicked back from the desk, shattering the casters under her feet. The chair shrieked like a dying stapler.
The Forgotten God's breath wheezed: "If you break it… the Bureau will… feel it."
Yue shook her ponytail loose, eyes blazing.
"Good."
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4. Intern #00000001
Inside the audit chamber, Ne Job found a stamp in his hand again.
Only this time it wasn't rubber.
It was bone.
It pulsed with that same ancient signature carved into the desk—the one identical to his.
The Auditor circled him like a predator made of corrections.
> YOU FILED THE DESTINY OF CIVILIZATIONS.
YOU PROCESSED THE FATE OF WORLDS.
YOU FAILED TO RENEW YOUR OWN INTERNSHIP CONTRACT.
Ne Job blinked.
"…sorry?"
A wall of stapled souls groaned behind him in the wind of bureaucracy.
The Auditor extended a ledger:
> ITEMIZE YOUR EXISTENCE.
The ledger pages opened:
Birth
Orientation
First Task
Catastrophic Failure
Additional Catastrophic Failure
Continued Catastrophic Failure
Ne Job stared. "…I don't know whether to be offended or impressed."
The Auditor struck the floor with ink.
> AUDIT BEGINS.
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5. Paper vs. Bone
The first test hit him like a hurricane.
Paper birds—made of shredded HR complaints—swooped from the walls, diving at him with beaks of sharpened staples.
Ne Job swung the bone stamp like a bat.
Each hit made a thud—not of bone against paper but of finality. Every stamped bird vanished with a puff of grey dust.
The Auditor hissed.
> YOU WIELD THE SIGNATURE OF THE ORIGINAL INTERN.
THIS IS AN IRREGULARITY.
"Yeah," Ne Job snapped, batting a staplebird aside,
"that's me!"
He spun, stamping the floor—
—and a perfect rectangular imprint glowed:
APPROVED.
Shockwaves blasted the chamber.
The staplebirds scattered.
The Auditor staggered backward, punctuation unraveling from its limbs.
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6. Yue Breaks the Desk
Outside, Yue had reached a decision.
She grabbed the legs of the Desk of 10,000 Years.
The Desk hummed, furious:
> DO NOT TOUCH THE SURFACE.
Yue didn't care.
She lifted it.
Bureaucratic ciphers screamed. Pages peeled off like scabs. Ancient forms wailed.
The Forgotten God collapsed. "No mortal has ever—"
Yue hurled the desk.
The office wall exploded into a storm of shredded centuries.
She dusted her hands.
"I've survived five budget cycles. Desk trauma is nothing."
The broken god whispered:
"…you might be worse than him."
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7. Audit Escalation
In the chamber, The Auditor was done being subtle.
> VIOLATION DETECTED.
EMPLOYEE HAS DEVELOPED PERSONALITY.
The ceiling folded open.
A new weapon fell:
A sword of pure deadline.
Ne Job recognized it instantly.
A blade forged entirely from emails sent at 4:59 PM on Fridays.
The Auditor grasped it with both hands.
> EXECUTION OF INTERN.
Ne Job held the bone stamp to his chest, breath shaking.
"Look, maybe we can talk this out—"
The Auditor charged.
Deadline blade screamed through the air.
Ne Job reacted without thought.
He stamped the sword.
The world froze.
The word appeared on the blade in glowing red:
DENIED.
The sword dissolved.
The Auditor's body convulsed.
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8. The Audit Devours Itself
The walls of stapled souls twisted.
Their voices all echoed the same phrase:
> DENIED.
DENIED.
DENIED.
The Auditor staggered, drowning in rejected destiny.
It clawed at its own chest, tearing punctuation marks free, trying to rewrite itself.
Ne Job's hand shook—he aimed the bone stamp at its head.
"Stop. I don't even know what I'm doing—"
The Auditor shrieked, voice breaking:
> YOU DO.
YOU EARNED YOUR TITLE.
YOU WERE THE FIRST INTERN
BECAUSE YOU CHOSE TO BE—
Its head inverted into a bundle of red line edits.
"…THE JOB IS YOU."
Ne Job stamped it.
The chamber collapsed into ink.
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9. Aftermath
Ne Job stumbled back into the real office, coughing black smoke.
Yue rushed him, catching him by the shoulders.
"You're alive!"
He blinked.
"Am I fired?"
She hugged him tighter.
"We'll worry about that later."
The Forgotten God stared at them.
"The Audit has devoured itself. That is… unprecedented."
Ne Job looked back at the ruined chamber.
"…so that means we're done?"
The god shook his ancient head.
"No."
He pointed into the darkness—where the Vein's song was no longer a hum, but a siren.
> THE DESK HAS AWAKENED.
AND IT IS COMING HERE.
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To be continued…