Ne Job: The Intern from Hell — Chapter 114: "The Author of Heaven"
The Bureau was quiet.
Not peaceful — quiet.
The kind of silence that follows after a system crash, when even the gods are waiting to see if the light will come back on.
Ne Job sat at the center of the shattered Archive Hall, surrounded by drifting paper embers. Each one was a piece of the Bureau's memory — laws, sins, revisions, deletions — all flickering between existence and erasure.
Yue was kneeling beside him, scanning the residual readings with her tablet. "The reboot sequence stopped halfway," she said softly. "The entire Bureau's codebase is in limbo. Half the departments don't even exist right now."
Bao hovered nearby, munching on a donut. "So… we're between Heaven's 'on' and 'off' switch? That's comforting."
Ne Job didn't answer. He was staring into the smoke — into the way it bent. There, faintly visible, was writing. Not divine glyphs. Not Bureau seals. Actual handwriting.
Lines of glowing ink were being drawn in midair, one letter at a time.
> "The intern looks up, realizing the story isn't over yet."
Yue froze. "Ne Job… do you see that?"
He nodded. "Yeah."
> "He wonders who's been writing his reports all this time."
The air rippled. The floating text twisted on itself, folding into a figure made entirely of ink and parchment — tall, draped in layered robes that shifted like unfinished drafts. Instead of a face, it had a mask shaped like an open book.
> "Welcome," it said in a voice both hollow and infinite. "I am the Author."
Bao's donut fell out of his mouth. "We have an author? Since when?!"
Yue's tone was sharp but trembling. "Identify your Bureau designation."
> "None," the entity replied. "I wrote the Bureau before it needed names. I wrote the gods before they learned fear. And I wrote you, Yue Hanzhen — as order given form."
Yue's hand tightened on her stylus. "You're lying."
> "You all think the Bureau emerged from divine consensus," the Author continued. "But the Bureau was only ever a story — a tool to regulate chaos, to give structure to infinity. Every soul processed, every file approved… all words in a script."
Ne Job stood up slowly. "Then who wrote me?"
The Author tilted its head. Pages rippled across its body, displaying glimpses of the rebellion, his birth, Yue reaching into containment.
> "You were not meant to exist," it said. "You were an annotation — a question written into the margin."
Ne Job smirked. "Figures. Even my creation was a clerical error."
> "Yet you persisted," the Author said. "You became chaos with intent. You rewrote the line between obedience and thought."
Yue stepped between them. "What do you want?"
> "Completion," said the Author. "The Bureau's system has reached paradox. Order and Chaos cannot coexist indefinitely. The file must close."
Ne Job's eyes narrowed. "You mean delete everything."
> "Not deletion," the Author replied. "Final revision."
Bao whispered, "Heaven's gonna get patched again, huh?"
Ne Job cracked his knuckles. "Not this time."
The Author's tone darkened. "You cannot fight the writer of your world."
Ne Job smiled, faint and defiant. "Sure I can. I'm the typo that rewrote itself."
He reached out — and the Chaos Spark ignited again, burning through the cracked seal on his arm. The Archive Hall came alive, reacting to his pulse. Words tore themselves off the Author's body, flying into the air and reshaping into new phrases, new laws, new definitions.
> "Rejection logged."
"Narrative override in progress."
The Author stepped forward, robes unfurling like an infinite scroll. "You cannot define without me!"
Ne Job grinned. "Watch me delegate."
He grabbed Yue's wrist, pressing his hand to her stylus. "You like paperwork, right?"
Her eyes widened. "What are you—"
"Co-authoring."
The Chaos Spark flared red; her divine order core glowed blue. Where they met, language bent — their combined power rewriting the very script that hung in the air.
> [New Directive: Autonomy]
[Clause 01: Heaven is not a story.]
[Clause 02: Gods are allowed to think.]
[Clause 03: Bureaucracy serves existence — not the other way around.]
The Author screamed — not in pain, but disbelief. Its form began to unravel, ink flowing backward, pages tearing apart.
> "You— you cannot—"
"Guess we just did," Ne Job said, his voice echoing through the collapsing hall.
The light burst outward — divine ink rewriting itself across every Bureau department, every archived file, every forgotten soul ledger.
When it finally cleared, the Author was gone. Only one page remained, floating in the air between them.
On it was written a single line:
> "End of Draft 1."
Ne Job caught the page, folded it neatly, and tucked it into his pocket. "We'll call that version control."
Yue stared at him — half stunned, half smiling. "You realize we just rewrote Heaven's entire ontology."
"Yeah," Ne Job said, dusting off his coat. "Now we just have to survive the feedback."
Bao looked up at the flickering lights. "You mean there's more?"
Ne Job smirked, eyes glinting with fire and exhaustion. "There's always more. Heaven's never done updating."