#ashveil

"Do you perhaps have a temporary position that I may assume? I... find myself in need of some quick cash."

Stelle moved her head slightly to look at him. "You don’t have enough money for a date, is that it?"

"I uh, well...you see-"

"No no, don’t bother trying to come up with an excuse," she said, waving her hand at him. "You make it far too obvious anyways."

"Ah...haha..."

"Here," she said, grabbing her phone off of her desk. "Treat her well."

Ashveil felt his phone buzz in his back pocket. He took it out and quickly fumbled to unlock the screen.

"T-twenty thousand credits?" he said in disbelief.

"Don’t mention it," Stelle said, returning to the very pressing matter of lounging about in her office chair.

"...Anything but actually hiring me, huh?"

Stelle acted as if she did not hear him.

Even if the ritual of asking the boss was somewhat humiliating, at least Ashveil now had some credits to his name. The last thing he was going to do was to let this brief window of free time slip away, as he was not shameless enough to ask a lady to pay for a date.

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Ashveil stirred the chopsticks around slowly. The brown broth glistened from the lights suspended above, tainted only by the seasonings floating on the surface. The thick noodles spiraled in the both, occasionally getting tangled in the chopsticks. Finally, after countless hours of passing off investigations as dates, Ashveil finally had time to spend with Kuchiba, though any plausible topic of conversation had escaped his mind. He had been so on edge racing against the clock to stop this Herald of Death that not even he and Narrator have had the time to spare for such casual chatter.

"Nekomata got your tongue?" Kuchiba asked, finally breaking the silence between the two.

Ashveil continued swirling around the noodles. Perhaps a sense of shyness had been quietly weighing him down.

"I am simply...at a loss for words," he admitted.

"The greatest charmer I know being at a loss for words? Impossible."

Ashveil subtly nudged the bowl under his face so that he could play his burning red cheeks as a side effect of the steam.

"You..."

Kuchiba smiled at him. She twirled some of the noodles in her bowl around her chopsticks then blew them off before eating them.

"So," she asked, "do you have anything that you like to do outside of your work?"

What did Ashveil like to do outside of his detective work? Come to think of it, he had been lacking horribly in leisure time ever since he arrived in Planarcadia.

"When I do have the free time, I do like to watch anime."

"Oh, really? Like what?"

"The Daybreak Squadron, or at least, I used to watch it. Kind of got tired of seeing it after that whole Herald of Death nonsense."

"Understandable," Kuchiba said as she held up some noodles to cool. "I only tuned into a few episodes to see if it would help me understand that case better.”

"And there’s no other cartoons that run on TV around here either. It’s all the same ol' 'don’t worry be happy' crap."

"Happens when you let one maniac run the television network."

"That should change. But I know it won’t, so I have DVDs for a reason," Ashveil huffed, taking a bite of his noodles while carelessly singeing the tip of his tongue on them.

"You should invite me over to your place then. Introduce me to what you consider worthwhile."

"Ah...I’d have to ask Stelle if she would lend me her office. I don’t exactly own a four-star cinema." Ashveil took another mindless bite of his noodles without cooling them, causing him to once again burn his tongue. "Yeouch!"

"Simmer down, hound dog," Kuchiba said, poking the bottom of his jaw with a chopstick.

"Apffptbbtpbbfttrpftrbtt..."

Ashveil’s tongue dangled out of his mouth, in pain from the hot broth. He continued stirring the noodles in defeat, hoping that they would gradually cool down. Kuchiba smiled at the detective, then went back to eating her own bowl, blowing out the noodles in the chopsticks before taking a bite. Ashveil huffed at himself for not doing so sooner, but it was a little late for that as his mouth had already been burnt.

A more fitting conclusion for Kuchiba to have drawn was that Oroboros had his tongue. That shadow didn’t want him to eat, nor did it even want him to speak. All it had managed to do was make him look like a fool. With a pout on his face, Ashveil held up the thick noodles in his chopsticks over the bowl, allowing them to cool before he ate them. Regardless of what he did from there on out, his tongue still stung from the pain.

Kuchiba had finished her bowl before Ashveil. The detective, meanwhile, was struggling to blow off his noodles with a burnt tongue. Things would only grow increasingly awkward for him, until the broth had finally gone cold and Ashveil finished his serving. At least Kuchiba seemed to not mind — her patience was hardened from years of experience in interrogating suspects — but Ashveil could not help but feel guilty nonetheless.

At long last, the check had arrived. Ashveil was held back by hesitation out of fear that he did not possess enough credits to cover the bill. Kuchiba very quickly caught onto the reluctance in his eyes and pulled out her phone. Before she could do anything. he reached forth and grabbed onto her wrist, with just enough gentle pressure to obstruct movement without leaving a single fold upon her jacket.

"Allow me," he said.

He finally forced himself to look at the bill. Just over ten thousand credits, it came to. A relief, as he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he came up even a little bit short. Ashveil, his confidence quickly restored, paid the full bill without a hitch, tip included.

"Things finally moving along in the office, hm?" Kuchiba noted.

"...You could say that."

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"Twenty thousand credits? That’s more than a month’s salary for me!" Furbulitzer protested.

"Be thankful I even pay you," Stelle said, further leaning back in her chair.

"We’ve been working around the clock," Paraprince added, "surely, a little extra won’t hurt?"

"Cook up that hit piece that takes the internet by storm and then we’ll talk."

"Yes ma’am!" the two furbos said in unison.