Cupcakes for Dinner

As the pale young man slumped over, exposing the fine white hairs on a surprisingly thin neck for the amount of strength and stamina he had shown throughout the day, murderous intent filled the air.

A tiny and adorable cherub with golden curls and sparkling green eyes wrapped in white robes with tiny wings fluttering appeared while glaring viciously down at the figure that had been dragging him around and wasting his time all day.

This human was considered a complete dud and it regretted interacting with him.

As the angel flew forward, even though the boy was supposed to be unconscious, the body automatically jerked up at the movement, and the pale blue eyes with a hint of red stared straight at the angel even though the owner's consciousness was not supposed to be there.

Immediately freezing, the angel glanced around, ensuring it was empty and the employee handbook was properly glowing while being held before moving forward again.

This dud human couldn’t blame it for retaliating since he had threatened the angel first.

First, the angel would snatch the survey and fill it out as it pleased before submitting it. Since the human had already marked it with its blood, it would be no problem.

Then, it would shove those tickets against the boy and choose all the settings it wanted, then watch the show as this cheeky brat suffered and died, finally freeing it from this shitty small-time punishment so it could go back to its original place, not this useless Life Preservation Team that nobody wanted to be a part of.

But before it could move more than a couple of inches, the pale eyes turned to track it as if the owner was completely awake, and the familiar scowl appeared as if daring it to do something. The hand that was peacefully resting on the handbook twitched while the other was now crushing the survey repeatedly each time it moved.

Every little movement, from a wing flap to an arm movement, caused the body to twitch and struggle, almost as if it wanted to wake up. The glow of the employee handbook kept flickering as if the body's consciousness was trying to return, and the angel immediately froze once more.

“…What the hell? Why is his body so sensitive? It’s creepy.” The angel had already thought that it was odd throughout the day when the boy would turn his head this way and that way while speaking to the textbox, almost as if he could see its location, but it could 100% guarantee that consciousness wasn’t here since he should be receiving the specialty prize that would have belonged to it if the dud boy weren’t so insightful.

Grimacing that its large bonus was flying away, it decided first to get the survey and ensure the results were good so it could leave this stupid team and return to its original branch, which was way more fun.

It just needed to clean up after itself since it had played some tricks with its supervisor’s authority. Since that guy never showed up and didn’t care, and it wasn’t once or twice that things like this had been done, it shouldn’t matter too much.

It was just that this guy kept moving like he was awake. Once orientation was over, it would be in a world of trouble after the intern found out some information, so….

It would just take the risk, and even if the body kept moving, so what? As long as the handbook was glowing and it didn’t harm the body, that meant that consciousness wasn’t here, and the body couldn’t do anything but twitch around. Take the opportunity, submit a positive survey, and leave a fake form behind. Nobody would ever find out if the task difficulty was also increased and the intern got eliminated.

With its mind made up, the angel made to dash forward, but a calm voice, filling the air with a cloyingly sweet yet rotten scent, spoke out in a light tone.

“Ah ah ah, you heard the boy. No touchy. You’re disturbing the new employee orientation.” The light voice sounded out, almost like the epitome of what a cloyingly sweet face would be, and the angel immediately froze, sweat dripping down its back.

…what the hell???

Why was he here?

What was happening?

Why was his original boss here messing with another department recruit?

“I wondered why that guy was fussing about someone cursing furiously at him while desperately wishing to quit a job they accepted, so I came to see what was happening. I’m in charge of two branches today, you know, so I’m feeling a bit stressed.😊”

When the angel heard that, a cold sweat began dripping down its back.

This…..this might be the worst thing yet.

“Ah, it’s an honor to meet the esteemed Boss.” The angel hastily greeted with a bowed head but was completely ignored.

The only thing that appeared was a large, muscled, greyish-green hand with black claw-like fingernails. The hand began counting off on its hand, holding up one finger at a time in a languid, elegant, and terrifying motion.

“Lazy, petulant, greedy, Incompetent handling of recruitment, selling your boss’s name, impersonation, playing tricks, obstruction, not communicating tasks properly, not reporting issues, appearing physically without permission, plotting to commit fraud, inflating the difficulty of tasks, and more.”

As each of its actions was accurately listed, the angel felt like disappearing. The cheerful smile disappeared, and its lips quivered.

“Smile, smile, haven’t I always told you to smile? I’m not against the actions, but all employees have been warned to do it with moderation, especially this time around. You’re originally from my line so you should know better. Since your ears are just for display, get lost.”

Although the voice was calm, the angel became paler and paler while it’s brain began to churn as it tried to figure out who to blame.

“No, wait, please! Give me a chance. Boss, please! I caved under pressure! It wasn’t my choice!”

“Chance? No need. 😊You’re fired. 😊”

At the last syllable, a tolling bell sounded a death knell, and the angel's skin began to turn pale green. The body then began rotting, with pustules and boils exploding over any exposed flesh. With each toll of the bell, the rot and disease grew worse, causing the flesh to balloon and turn red, black, purple, and green as it was filled with infected liquid.

The previous beauty of the angel was nowhere to be found; instead, a bag of flesh with thread-bare wings hovered in the air, barely alive. The charming green eyes had twisted and shriveled into black stumps, the hair and fallen off leaving pustules and a partly exposed skull, while the teeth had rotted and ruptured with the gums filled with maggots and rot.

Thinking that it had survived the punishment with its life intact, the angel heaved a sigh of relief. Although it had become like this, it would just work hard again to regain points and build itself back up.

Unfortunately, it was relieved a bit too early.

As the three bell tolls rang out continuously, large flies, the size of a grown man’s fists, appeared from the maggots and began taking bites of the angel. Some of them directly landed and started sucking the rotted fluid, rapidly deflating the bulbous bag of flesh.

Due to the feeding frenzy, several drops of golden-green pus flew around, landing on the ground, sizzling and boring a hole. At the same time, one large droplet seemed to coincidentally fall directly toward the pale blue eyeball with a red tinge behind it, staring upwards in the supervisor’s direction, almost as if the eye could see him.

The hand's owner waited until the final moment, when the droplet was about to touch the eyeball, before sweeping at a finger and causing the droplet to freeze in place.

If the eye blinked and the person moved, they would immediately be blinded or worse, but everything stayed the same; the only change came from the frenzied eating of the flies as they fought to consume the flesh bag that the angel had become.

“Oops, I can’t injure that guy’s latest and youngest employee, right? Especially on his birthday.” The invisible supervisor languidly flicked his finger, and the vibrant droplet of green pus reversed direction and rested on it.

Bringing the pus to his lips, the figure licked it as if it were the most delicious nectar in the world. Thoroughly enjoying the taste, the hand grabbed at the box of cupcakes sitting innocently beside the boy. Grabbing one, he dipped it against the flesh bag that was formerly the angel, scooping up the rot, pus, and maggots like a topping of sprinkles and tossing the whole thing, wrapper and all, into his mouth.

Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!

Smacking his lips after tasting the delicacy, the hand thoroughly licked his fingers before hovering over the cupcake box in thought.

He shouldn’t.

But….

Who would stop him?

Enjoying the thrilling taste, the remaining cupcakes were quickly devoured, and even the box had been used like sandwich bread to finish off the remaining bits of the angel, leaving nothing behind.

Smacking his lips at the unique yet delicious taste, the boss felt his previously irritated mood rise. It was hard doing double the work while people played tricks in the back.

This time, it was the company’s wrong, especially since they drafted a dud. He would never admit it was his fault for mismanaging his subordinates. The urge to eliminate the new employee surged through its mind, but remembering why he was sent here, it sighed.

Difficult to remove directly, but still a stain on the company.

Full of malicious intent, it directly modified the list of specialty skills given to employee, specifically choosing ones that were generically recomended in the handbook, ones that sounded impressive but couldn’t be used by a dud, and skills that were randomly gathered without anybody selecting them.

After some thought, he opened the employee store linked to this individual. He began modifying its contents as he pleased, dumping junk and low-level skills and items while removing the more valuable items and jacking the price up.

Although the store now had more items and a greater variety than before, the cost of everything was so astronomical that even with the immense discount provided to new employees, the 10 points couldn’t purchase a single thing.

This wouldn’t do; as a good(?) supervisor who had eaten an employee's good stuff who had been sent to clean up his subordinate’s mess because of greed, he couldn’t act in a blatantly obvious manner to discourage the employee.

He had to give him a narrow way out to still generate more profits before dying.

After thinking about it a bit more, he remembered there was a disobedient thing he was supposed to take care of. Since he didn't want to deal with it, he might as well dump it on a person who would soon be dead anyway.

As he struggled to force that item into a newbie employee store, the automatic balancer adjusted the price of everything until it was free. Unsatisfied, he increased the price to the limit of everything else so the employee would have no choice but to take the troublesome item.

Then, with a little more resistance, he modified the employee handbook to include a little more detail that shouldn’t have been available to such a new employee and increased the difficulty of the tasks.

Finally, sharp nails pierced through the three golden tickets, pinning them to the ground.

The arm pondered for a moment, the invisible scales in its hands balancing the scenario before twisting things a bit more, making it more difficult, and pushing things in one direction until the scale was as unbalanced as it could be without tipping over.

The company would still rake in profits, but in this way, if the intern did well, he might survive, if he did exceptionally well, he could profit slightly, and if he didn’t…

Well. He would follow the path of his predecessor and be culled as well.

Watching the pale blue eyes that followed his hands closely, the supervisor couldn’t help but tousle the fluffy hair, looking amused as black dye flaked off, exposing pure white hair hidden beneath. Finding childish satisfaction in messing the head up while watching the pupils continue to stare at him, he brushed the hair aggressively until all the black flakes were gone.

“😊Little White Cat, Take it as payback for the cake and for being lucky enough to catch that guy in a good mood. Still, I hope you die to one of mine so I can taste your end. I have a feeling it would be delicious. 😊”

The arm languidly waved as it considered leaving, but the frustration was still in his heart even though it had messed up the employee as much as it could.

“😊Since I’m still annoyed at having to work extra, spit out all the gifts you were given and work hard to earn them back or die quicker so I can have a taste😊”

With a gentle boop on the pale forehead, the mask, basket, and robes completely disappeared from another area while the consciousness was forced back to the body in front of him.

And with a jaunty wave, the arm disappeared.

It was time to join the orientation to taste the fresh meat used as a warning and identify which talent deserved to be nurtured or culled.

As for the life status of this boy here, considering the trials ahead, he fully expected the boy to be dead before the day was over and completely forgot about his existence.

After all, what could a dud do?

*****

Meanwhile, somehow, now back in my body instead of at the orientation where I had just walked through the door, I could only clutch my head in mental anguish.

I was forced to watch a live-action silent horror movie, which was immediately followed by watching the cupcakes that I had been saving while suffering throughout the day being dipped in the pus excreted by the former angel and devoured with not a single scrap of icing, wrapper, or packaging left behind.

Unable to help it, my eyes got moist.

No!

Give me back my cupcakes, you damned bastard of a hand!

I haven’t eaten a single thing all day long!