Deal

«⟨ Deal ⟩»

“A deal?” Chitose asked.

A somewhat different reaction than what he had thought from the girl with the peak cap. With her eyes still piercing into him, he really thought she would get mad for his honesty of not giving a damn to her colleagues here. Does she also not give a damn about them?...

In any case, if she's the one offering the deal, then he could use this golden opportunity as a little handicap to fix the situation here.

“I'm listening…”

“You are pretty much a lost cause if you really think you can manage this place as our leader — Not only you don't have the proper certification for this job, but also managed to be labelled as a pervert on the first day — Congrats.”

Her words stung a little. Did chief tell her about me not having any credentials?…

“A-And your point is?...”

“My deal is simple — Leave the leadership to me — All you have to do is just paperworks and dealing with the higher ups.”

A rather bold proposal.

The girl basically suggested for Chitose to only be a leader in name, and stripped of his authority.

At first, one might think of such a proposal to be disadvantageous. But for Chitose, it's basically a good deal.

As Hazel said, Chitose has little to zero experience when it comes to this field. And taking charge of the automatas–whose job involves combating anomalies–would be too risky. The higher ups really couldn't care less about the risk anymore though it seems…

And his main objective was only to keep his job. So if all he had to do was simple paperworks, then that would really work out for him.

However,

“And how exactly am I supposed to handle the higher ups if they asked for reports; or documents; or whatever? — You wanted me to lie to them? — I'm pretty sure just saying ‘Oh, I just leave it to the automata to handle’, would really spark some problems.”

Clearly the A.P.S have a reason to put a human in charge over automata instead of automata themselves.

“That's why I'm here,” she pointed to herself, “Instead of blatantly stating that I become the leader just like that–we can use a pretext that it was for your training.”

“Training?”

“Yes — ‘Because the current leader is inexperienced with the organization's inner procedures, an automata will instead be assigned to him as a temporary guidance’ — Sounds fancy, no?”

That would work…

The deal was pretty solid.

All he had to do was to be laid-back and relax with the papers, while Hazel herself handles the hard parts.

But it somewhat doesn't feel right for him to just rely solely on her to do all the work.

“I don't know…” Chitose said.

“Why? You worried I'll steal your money or something? — I couldn't care less about salary right now.”

“No, that's not it.”

“Then what? Spit it out.”

“Being a free-rider doesn't sound too good.”

Chitose wouldn't really call himself a highly earnest person. But even then, he would still like to have a sense of sincerity in what he does.

“...Aren't you a diligent one…” Hazel raised an eyebrow and rolled her eyes to the side–perhaps flustered by the cheesy statement.

She's not gonna laugh at that?...

“If you're that concerned about it, how about this then,” she continued, “Rather than just using training as an excuse, I'll really train you out.”

“Really?... You?...”

Chitose eyed Hazel’s somewhat petite figure.

Now that he thought about it, would anyone care listening to her command if she were to lead them later? How long had she been working in this organization? And he still didn't know whether her relation with the other automatas was good or not.

This is quite worrying…

As if catching on his thought, Hazel opened her mouth, “You better not think about looking down on me there — I may look like this, but I can assure you I have everyone's respect here.”

“And… by respect you mean lashing out on your colleague for not caring about the rollcall just now?” Chitose referred to her argument with the purple-haired girl.

“Lena is a special case. Other than her, I'm okay with everyone else here.”

She then threw a pointing-thumb over her shoulder, where the silver-haired girl was sitting. I forgot she was there…

“Fryd can vouch for me.”

So that's her name…

The silver-haired girl–Fryd–was startled by the sudden mentioning of her name.

“eh?!.... ahhh!.... yeah… Hazel is like… our second leader…”

Again, her voice as soft as a feather. Was she actually listening to this?...

“See?” Hazel said.

Doesn't sound too convincing…

But Chitose doesn't really have much of a choice anyway. Maybe being a puppet leader wouldn't be so bad when he could really learn the inner workings here.

And if respect were to become the biggest benefactor here, then it would be wise to let Hazel handles that part.

“Urgh… Fine, fine…”

Chitose opened a handshake towards Hazel, “I feel like I'm going to regret this…”

Hazel then reached his extending hand, marking the establishment of their deal, “That’s none of my concern.”

Yeah, yeah…

Despite her saying that, maybe she's the one who cared about this place the most–considering how she even attended this dissapointing meeting when no one else showed up. There's also Fryd too…

And to think that she would even go as far as making a deal with Chitose meant that something deep is happening here.

Why risk getting reported to the upper managers for trying to demote a leader’s authority?...

It was fortunate that Chitose didn't care one bit about the power here. But would she have done the same with others?

Ugh… thinking about this is just going to blow my brains out…

Let's just not waste any more time right now…

“I know it's a bit early,” Chitose rolled his eyes to the empty chairs, prompting Hazel to do the same, “But seeing how no one is here anyway, how about we get to working?”

“Are you a workaholic?” Hazel gave him a weird look.

“Heck no! I just wanna learn things as soon as possible — Don't wanna ended up being a stuck-up.”

Hazel then took out her phone and started scrolling, “I guess we can start with this first.”

She then brought the phone’s screen closer to Chitose's face, “Reports.. &.. Archive?...”

As soon as he read it, Hazel took back her phone, and walked out the door.

“Come on, let's go, Fryd.”

“....o-okay…”

Fryd quickly packed her bag and followed behind Hazel timidly.

“We're not doing any combat stuff?” Chitose asked, hurriedly following the two already outside the hallway.

“I don't expect someone who didn't even know what kind of job we do to suddenly start with combat, you know…”

She got a point…