A Party? Nope Just My Unit Co-Worker

For a glorious, fleeting week, my life had achieved a state of near-perfect equilibrium. The Cure-all Potion, now officially branded as ‘Princess Marie’s Royal Cure—All—Elixir’ (a name I found both hilarious and deeply ironic), was a smash hit. Marie was buried under a mountain of production schedules, supply chain logistics, and trade negotiations, leaving her with significantly less time to torment me. My tax-exempt status was official. My salary was higher. My duties remained nonexistent. It was paradise.

My office had settled into a new, chaotic rhythm. I would spend my days attempting to perfect the art of napping while appearing vaguely contemplative. Sir Justus would spend his time trying to foil my plans, replacing my nap pillow with holy texts and attempting to engage me in tactical discussions about the optimal way to sanitize a public fountain.

Edgar, now a minor celebrity for being the first person cured by the elixir, was buried in paperwork, processing the thousands of requests for the potion that were flooding in from across the kingdom. And Eliza, my personal auditor from hell, was a permanent fixture on the sofa, her one-month assignment having been mysteriously extended. She just sat there, watching me, her black slate always in hand, like a predator waiting for a particularly lazy gazelle to finally trip over its own feet.

It was a dysfunctional, bizarre, but ultimately manageable ecosystem. I had found a way to be lazy even in the face of overwhelming righteousness and scrutiny. I was at peace.

And then, of course, the King found a way to ruin it.

Prime Minister Vince burst into my office, his usual composure completely gone. He was sweating, and his hands were full of hastily rolled scrolls.

“Inspector Sukebe! Sir Justus! Auditor Eliza!” he panted. “His Majesty summons you to the throne room at once! A matter of grave national security!”

I didn’t even open my eyes. “Tell him I’m in the middle of a very important… sanitation stakeout. And it requires absolute stillness. For several hours.”

“This is not a request!” Vince squeaked, his voice cracking. “It’s an emergency!”

We ended up in the throne room, the entire bizarre cast of my life assembled before King Edward. Me, Justus, Eliza, Edgar, and Princess Marie, who had been pulled away from her new elixir empire and looked less than pleased about it.

The King was pacing back and forth in front of his throne, his expression genuinely troubled for the first time since I’d met him.

“It’s a disaster!” he announced. “A complete and utter mystery!”

Prime Minister Vince unrolled a scroll. “At dawn this morning, the guards of the Royal Treasury’s eastern vault reported a magical anomaly. A section of the archive wall, the one securing the deeds to the kingdom’s northern territories, has been covered in a series of unknown, glowing runes.”

He produced a magical projection—a shimmering, 3D image of a stone wall covered in intricate, pulsing orange script.

“The Royal Mages are stumped,” the King lamented. “They say the magic isn’t demonic, or elemental, or anything they’ve ever seen. They can’t decipher it, and they can’t dispel it. It’s generating a magical feedback loop that makes the entire wing of the treasury inaccessible! The Royal Knights tried to break through the wall, but their swords just bounced off!” He wrung his hands. “We’re facing a crisis we can’t understand and a wall we can’t knock down!”

I stared at the glowing runes, my mind filled with a single, profound thought: This has absolutely nothing to do with hygiene.

The King stopped his pacing and looked at us, a slow, idiotic grin spreading across his face. A look of terrible realization dawned on me. I knew what was coming.

“But then I thought,” the King continued, puffing out his chest. “Who in this kingdom has a proven track record of dealing with bizarre, unprecedented magical crises?”

He pointed a dramatic finger at me. “Hero Sukebe! Our unorthodox champion who solves problems no one else can even comprehend!”

He pointed at Justus. “Sir Justus! His righteous sword, ready to smite any evil that may be lurking behind those glowing scribbles!”

Justus nodded grimly, his hand resting on his sword. “I live to serve.”

He pointed at Eliza. “Auditor Eliza! Her keen, analytical eye for detail will surely uncover clues that others have missed!”

Eliza just crossed her arms, her expression unreadable. She was here to audit me, not to join my merry band of weirdos.

He pointed at Edgar. “Junior Inspector Edgar! The brave young man whose meticulous reports have become the stuff of legend in the halls of bureaucracy!”

Edgar looked like he was about to faint.

Finally, he pointed at his daughter. “And Princess Marie! Who, through her work with the elixir, has become the kingdom’s foremost expert on the Hero’s… unique and chaotic brand of problem-solving!”

Marie’s lips curved into a dangerous smile. She saw exactly where this was going, and she was going to enjoy every second of it.

“Therefore,” the King boomed, spreading his arms wide. “I am officially commissioning a new, elite unit! The Royal Special Task Force for Arcane Anomalies! And you five are its founding members!”

The silence in the room was deafening. My heart sank into my stomach.

And there it is, I thought, a profound sense of doom washing over me. Here comes the typical, unpleasant, unwelcome, narrative-driven plot. I could almost feel the author’s greasy hands typing out this scene, probably cackling with glee. Curse you, you hack! Why can't you just make my life easy? Was the slice-of-life, get-rich-quick, tax-evasion plot not good enough for you? Did you really have to introduce a damn mystery arc?

My newfound paradise, my beautiful lazy life, was being bulldozed to make way for a JRPG party I wanted no part of. The single greatest fear of any protagonist who just wants a quiet life had come true: the plot had found me.

I had to try. “Your Majesty,” I said, my voice strained. “With all due respect, my expertise is in sanitation. Clogged drains, cursed bath products, that sort of thing. This seems more of a… magical cryptography issue. A different department, surely.”

“Nonsense!” the King roared, waving away my objection. “You’re a hero! This is a weird, magical problem! Go do hero things! That’s a royal order!”

My last hope died. I had been promoted. Not in name, not in salary, but in the one area that truly mattered: responsibility. It was the cruelest joke the universe had ever played on me.

Our first “team meeting” took place back in my office, which was now apparently the official headquarters for the Royal Special Task Force for Arcane Anomalies. The place was a madhouse.

Justus was already at the blackboard, attempting to draft a “Mission Charter and Code of Conduct,” which included sections on mandatory prayer and proper sword maintenance.

Eliza was at my desk, having commandeered it, demanding that Vince provide her with all classified documents pertaining to the treasury’s construction and magical wards for the past five hundred years. She was treating a national security crisis like an audit, which, to be fair, was very on-brand for her.

Edgar was huddled in a corner, trying to design a new set of requisition forms for “Arcane Anomaly Investigation Supplies,” his hands trembling.

Marie had stopped by, bringing tea, and was now offering what she called “strategic oversight,” which mostly consisted of her watching the chaos with a deeply amused smile while suggesting things that only made it worse.

And me? I was face-down on my nap pillow, the one I’d managed to rescue from under a pile of Justus’s holy texts. My beautiful, simple job as a Hygiene Inspector was over. My lazy life was a distant, beautiful memory. I was now the unwilling leader of a team of misfits, on a mission I didn’t ask for, to solve a problem I didn’t care about.

I let out a long, muffled groan into my pillow. This was so much worse than fighting a Demon King. At least that would have been straightforward.