Pit

Noa had never done setup for an event before, so he wasn't sure what to expect. 

He arrived in the mid-afternoon, joining a ragged group of other people—mostly young, with a couple of the Kusumotos's day laborers he recognized. 

Kenshin was there, too—sized up to slightly taller than Noa for a change. He looked gangly and uncomfortable in clothes that were musty and didn't quite fit him. He kept bumping into things, and going up on his toes like he wished he could fly over people's heads instead of walking around them. 

The area they were in seemed to be a repurposed abandoned lot. One of the first things they did was throw streamers over the sides of the chain-link fence that walled off most of the property, and several bare concrete foundations were covered up with grass rugs and picnic tables. 

Then they were directed to hammer stakes, place cones, string ropes around certain areas, and erect tents. There were knots of people in suits going here and there, and as the opening time got closer the area became crowded with people who were apparently vendors. Gaps in the tents filled up with people's own, and a couple of auto-trucks even filed their way in, tucking into corners and setting up pop-up storefronts. 

The smell of food made Noa's stomach rumble, but he ignored it. He was here to work, after all. He distracted himself by speculating about what exactly was going on here. 

Nothing really seemed strange…at least, not on the surface. Maybe the people in suits with their clipboards were a little too polished for the atmosphere, and the neighborhood....

But the must suspicious thing so far was the way Noa himself had ended up here. Under the circumstances, he wasn't exactly complaining about it, but Noa wasn't sure how all these polished professionals were getting away with hiring through the fae. 

Though...none of his jobs with the Kusumotos so far had been as shady as he'd feared. When he'd been given a shovel his first day doing work through the Kusumotos, he'd thought he might be asked to bury a body or something—but it turned out he was just helping a pair of rather cranky elderly women with yard work. Then he'd been tasked with helping move an office to a new location—and that one quite possibly had been some sort of cover-up. 

But the work itself was honest, albeit grueling. It really had been just one odd job after another—and so far, this work fit the same mold. But Noa couldn't help but wonder.

Once the basic setup was complete, the crew was split into different teams—decoration, welcoming guests, patrolling. Noa was given an apron, a set of gloves, and a face mask. Once the festival started, his assignment was to stand at a set of trash cans and help people sort their garbage. 

It wasn't the position he could have chosen for himself, but it would have to do. 

Guests started filing in a little before sunset. They all laughed and chattered excitedly, barely looking at him as they tossed their garbage his way—often into the wrong receptacles. Noa gritted his teeth and corrected the sorting, saying nothing. 

Eventually, the bin for trash were filled to the top. Noa had been given instructions about what to do when this happened; as instructed, he shut the bin, picked it up, and carried it around to the far end of the field. 

He hadn't been sure what he'd find there—maybe a truck or a dumpster. Instead, there was…a hole. 

He stared, looking around, but there was no mistake. Another person came up, flipped the lid off their garbage, and dumped it into the hole. Then they left, pushing the bin in front of them as they went. 

Noa glanced around, and then leaned down, inspecting the hole himself. There was no way it could be what he thought it was…but he couldn't think of any other possibilities for what it could be. 

The hole was in the middle of a bare patch of ground, and had symbols traced all around it. Kneeling down, Noa bent to examine them. It really was what he'd thought—a window spell. 

They were called windows for a reason. They were sometimes used in cities, but always indoors, somewhere carefully guarded and maintained…not scrawled into the dirt, as far as Noa knew. 

Moreover, window spells took an absurd amount of magical power to maintain, and that power had to come from somewhere—

Noa stopped short where he'd been pacing the outer edge of the window. There, worked into the magic circle, where normally there would be an interface array…that symbol again. 

Like the rest of the circle, it was inlaid with what looked to be chalk, or perhaps crushed lime. It shone bone-white against the creeping dark of evening. 

Noa stepped back again. Very, very carefully, he dumped the garbage he'd brought into the hole. He didn't know where it was ending up, and that bothered him. Whoever these people were, they dabbled in illicit hiring practices and knew what Noa was fairly certain was illicit magic. They probably weren't following garbage disposal laws, either. 

And yet they could run an event with suits and laughter, booths and food trucks and signs about a fireworks display scheduled for after sunset. 

Noa was getting good at suppressing the urge to ask questions on the jobs the Kusumotos were sending him on, but this one left him with more questions more than any of the others so far. 

Still, he was on garbage duty, and there was only so long he could drag his feet. He stood and sorted and gave people stiff little bows when they actually bothered looking his way. 

And then he spotted a familiar figure approaching from the other side of the festival square. 

Two familiar figures, actually. One was Miyori, and the other he thought might be one of his former classmates. Tsujii, maybe? She was so dressed up that it was hard to tell, especially at a distance. 

But Miyori was supposed to be elsewhere, at an event that…

If he weren't wearing gloves, Noa would have smacked his forehead. The odds weren't actually that low, were they?

But Miyori had said this event was being sponsored by a bigwig corporation. Surely a respectable establishment like that wouldn't….

Or maybe Noa was just being naïve. Maybe big, rich companies did things like this all the time as cost-saving measures. 

Either way, as Miyori and Tsujii passed by, he dared a wave, trying to catch Miyori's eye. But her gaze slid over him—understandably, at that distance.

For the first time that night, Noa found himself chafing in his position. If he could just talk to Miyori for a moment, they could compare notes. Maybe she'd noticed something he hadn't. Maybe… 

"Hello there, young man. Thanks for your hard work." 

Noa jumped. A woman in a fitted pinstripe suit had approached him from behind, and now laid a hand on his lower arm, just above the curse. 

"Come with me, would you? The trash can keep itself, after all." 

Noa swallowed and stared. The woman had a pin on her chest that said Sato — Iseki Conglomerate. 

Beneath it was a very familiar symbol. 

Pieces he'd already been suspicious of clicked firmly into place. 

"Of course, ma'am. Whatever you need."