The first thing Ne Job heard that morning wasn't the groan of the undead, or the rustle of ghostly files.
It was the sound of Yue, muttering over a stack of translucent scrolls, each one shimmering faintly like dew.
> "These aren't mortal records," she said, eyes narrowing. "They're… deleted ones."
Ne Job blinked the dust from his hair. "Deleted like—corrupted data, or deleted like 'oops, Heaven accidentally unmade your existence'?"
"Both."
That was not reassuring.
Around them, the Cemetery Backlog had shifted. The ghostly queue that once extended in tidy, spectral lines was now fracturing — souls looping into themselves, whispering complaints that folded into the fog. Gravestones were rearranging like bureaucratic filing cabinets. Even the soil trembled as if Heaven itself was trying to reorder its mistakes.
A voice slithered through the mist.
> "You shouldn't be here, Intern."
Ne Job froze. Yue's pen flicked once — the divine equivalent of cocking a gun. From between the headstones, a figure emerged: tall, draped in burial veils stitched from shredded memos. Each veil had names printed on it — faded, crossed out, rewritten, then erased again.
The Forgotten Clerk.
One of the Bureau's oldest record spirits. He was supposed to have been archived centuries ago, when manual record-keeping was replaced with divine synchronization. Yet here he was, eyes glowing with hollow purpose.
> "This cemetery isn't a graveyard anymore," the Clerk said, his tone both pitying and proud. "It's a correctional overflow. All cases Heaven can't remember end up here."
Yue stepped forward, calm but sharp. "Then we're here to reconcile them. The Bureau sent us—"
> "The Bureau is dead," the Clerk hissed, "and so are its promises."
His veils fluttered, and the ground split open. From below rose form scrolls, thousands of them, twisting into ghostly serpents. Each carried an incomplete name, an unfinished life.
Ne Job felt the Chaos Spark pulse beneath his ribs — a sudden ache like déjà vu. He remembered something… his own name, once erased and rewritten by the system.
He clenched his fists. "You're hoarding them," he realized. "All these souls — you're refusing to file them because you can't admit the system failed."
The Clerk's smile cracked like porcelain. "If I let them go, the Bureau will collapse again. I am the backlog. I am the delay that keeps reality intact."
Yue's pen glowed brighter, divine ink coiling in the air. "You're not protecting order — you're preserving rot."
> "Order is rot," the Clerk snarled. "It's what keeps everything from falling apart."
The mist churned violently. Forms fluttered like wings.
Ne Job moved on instinct — kicking off the ground as Chaos flared in his veins. The air exploded into fractal ribbons of black and gold. The veils tore, the cemetery shuddered, and every name in the air began to whisper his.
> "Ne Job… Ne Job… you were one of us…"
He stumbled mid-kick. That voice — not the Clerk's, not Yue's.
It was the same one he'd heard during his deletion.
Yue called out sharply. "Ne Job! Focus!"
He snapped back just as the Clerk lunged, wielding a quill like a scythe. Their clash sent spectral ink raining over the gravestones. The ground beneath them warped, each blow rewriting the terrain — a divine audit in real time.
When the dust settled, Ne Job stood amid a crater of fractured memory.
Half the souls had vanished — released, perhaps. The other half floated silently, watching.
The Clerk lay on his knees, veils unraveling. "You don't understand… I kept their records because without them, Heaven would lose its history."
Ne Job exhaled slowly, stepping closer. "History's already gone. We're just the footnotes trying to fix the typos."
He tore the last veil free — and the cemetery finally stilled. The fog lifted, revealing the dawn. For the first time, the sun touched the tombstones without distortion.
Yue walked beside him, exhaustion in her eyes but a quiet pride too. "You did well."
He smiled faintly. "You mean we didn't get devoured by paperwork this time?"
"Yet," she corrected. "The report's due in an hour."
They both groaned in perfect unison.
But before they left, a single form fluttered to Ne Job's feet. A plain slip of divine parchment, unsigned, unsealed.
On it, written in faint ink:
> INTERN FILE 0000 — STATUS: TEMPORARILY RESTORED
He stared at it for a long moment. Then folded it carefully and slipped it into his coat.
"Let's go," he said. "We've got more ghosts to balance."
Yue adjusted her glasses. "And I have a hundred forms to file about this mess."
"Then we'll make it a team effort."
The wind carried the sound of laughter — faint, echoing, and free — as they walked out of the cemetery.
Behind them, the forgotten names shimmered one last time before fading into peace.