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 Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:57 pm
Hae-min needed an assistant.
No, she needed an apprentice, someone to help her with the never-ending transcribing and rescribing and translating. She was not her brother's assistant by trade; her research was her love, and her hobby, but her real work, the thing she really loved, that made her relaxed and happy, was her gardens. The back work was piling up. It was quite ridiculous. She didn't have time to visit her oppa anymore! or any of her other friends! It was quite ridiculous.
To rectify the situation, she had put an add in the paper, in the classifieds. Researcher seeing assistant/apprentice - must be open-minded, polite, and intelligent. Full-time position, $10 an hour, will train.
She had gotten quite a number of responses. With the help of her brother's demon, she had sorted out the unsuited or unsavory applicants, leaving her with two applicants. One was a man, and upon meeting him, rather... He did not quite fit the profile of someone who was to work with a polite Korean traditionalist. The second one, a girl named 'Guinevere Orifiel', she hoped would work out better.
(This time, though, she would have Edward nearby. That last one had been really bad.)
Nervously, Hae-min perched on the edge of her stool, the message from Guinevere Orifiel held between her shaking hands.
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 5:11 pm
A day after the funeral, Guinevere found herself applying for a job.
She was moving fast, but moving fast was the only way she would get things done. Slowing down left room for sentimentality, and after she had broken into tears in front of her estranged father, she had indulged in quite enough of that.
Because in the end, whether her mother was alive or dead, taxes would still need to be paid, the house would still need to be cleaned, and groceries would still need to be bought, and it was now up to Guinevere to make sure things were running smoothly. A new parent was out of the question, as Guinevere had already had three, and none of them were really up to the job. Anyway, she was almost an adult, so it was far tidier and more efficient to just fend for herself a bit earlier than she had anticipated.
As for the job, that had been easy. Most places wouldn't even consider hiring her for a full time job at her age, so it was this promising looking reasearcher's job, or a manager position at McHappy's Burger Joint. She smoothed out her skirt and looked determinedly at the building before knocking faintly on the door. She was by no means inclined to work at a burger joint, and thus was determined to make the best impression she could.
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:23 pm
Hae-min stopped crinkling up the letter of interest, stood carefully, and answered the door. It was a gloomy day - the sun outside seemed to have faded away, an odd effect that seemed related to the open door to the shop. "Guinevere Orifiel," she said, her Korean accent turning it into glenevere ohliel instead of the proper pronunciation. But her smile was warm and welcoming and she looked friendly enough. "You are, are you not?"
She backed up a few steps so Guinevere could enter, holding out one hand to gesture to a square table behind a few bookshelves. "My name is Mhin Hae-min," she said, "I am the one who placed the advertisement. How are you, miss?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 6:49 pm
Guinevere paused, but she had gotten her chance to brush up on understanding thick accents at the funeral when the relatives arrived. "I am she." With a nod, she stepped over to the table and held out a hand in greeting. "I'm," lost, tired, confused, moving too fast for any of it to matter, "Very well, thank you for seeing me today. And yourself?"
Mhin, she corrected herself, Hae-min looked kind. She wasn't like Guinevere's mother's relatives and she was capable of using an indoor voice. Guinevere matched her tone and settled herself down into the scholarly environment. She could fit here, from what she had seen so far. Better than at McHappy's anyway, she could work in a place like this. All she had to do was prove it.
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:03 pm
The older woman shook Guinevere's hand - if it could be called a handshake, it was more like brushing fingertips lightly along her palm. Then she was standing at a different table, bringing a tea service to the table and setting it down. Carefully, displaying impeccable manners by any accounting, she poured two cups of tea. "It is no trouble," said Hae-min, her gray-blue eyes crinkling up in the corners. "Rather, thank you for agreeing to come all this way! Where is it you live?"
She removed covers from a small pitcher and a dish - the tea set was rather european, one of Edward's as the last applicant had broken the one she kept here. The next one, she had vowed, would be cast-iron. That way she could hit the offending tea-drinker with it, and wouldn't have to hide while her brother took care of everything.
Edward coughed, rather obviously.
"I was getting there," she said all in one sigh. "How old are you, Guinevere? Not years, mentally, please."
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 7:37 pm
"Oh, thank you. I live in-"
She was interrupted as Edward coughed, and she looked down at her lap with some embarrassment. She was getting caught up in trivialities! This wasn't how job interviews were supposed to go. "Ah, yes." she let out an inner sigh of relief. 'Four' was not a good answer for any job interview. "Mentally, I'm," she had always thought of herself as seventeen, but it was a job interview, and it was a mental age, so she could fudge it a bit. Surely deciding to live on your own added a few mental years, anyway. "Twenty." she decided, as this seemed to be a good age to be hired at, yet not quite old enough to feel like she was lying.
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:22 pm
Hae-min smiled, doing her best to look encouraging. "Is that so? That's a good age." She'd been twenty not so long ago, comparatively; much more recently than she'd been ten. Sitting back in her chair, she took out the application letter and asked, "Why would you like this job, Guinevere?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:17 pm
There were many answers to that question, and Guinevere hesitated before deciding that she had fudged the last question, so there was no excuse for fudging this one. Putting on her most businesslike voice, she said "I have decided to live on my own. I'm just looking for a job that I think might suit me, and I have experience with research environments already. I've spent some time now researching my own species, that of the fallen messenger, and I have been raised to be organized. I have legible penmanship and I'm a quick study." Rustling her wings, she continued, "I am also lead to understand that it is a full time job, and I have not been brought up to be qualified for many full-time jobs."
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Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 6:47 pm
"You're very honest," said Hae-min, and she wrote something down on one of her many scraps of parchment. "Er- this question may seem blunt, but-" She lowered her voice, almost to a whisper, and then she asked:
"You don't have a criminal record, do you, Guinevere?"
The way she said this made it seem like a criminal record of any sort would be the equivalent, to Hae-min, of kicking puppies and molesting children.
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Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 8:15 pm
Guinevere looked, if anything, more alarmed by the question than Hae-Min. She had been raised to be a lady, and ladies, well, they just didn't have criminal records! Not unless there was a very good reason, anyway. So she said "No, I do not," as emphatically as she could. All of her guardians may have had tragic pasts or died, but that hadn't been her fault. And predicting deaths was not causing murders.
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Posted: Fri Dec 18, 2009 8:39 pm
Hae-min nodded firmly and poured Guinevere more tea. This seemed to indicate that she both believed the teenaged girl and agreed with the emphasis.
"Very well, then, can you start Monday? I will train you of course--"
A few tiny steps were all the warning they had before an iridescent golden head peered over the edge of the table. This was followed by tiny, tan fingers and eyes like molten metal. "What's you doing," asked the little girl. The wings sprouting from her back were just as rose-gold as the rest of her.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:32 pm
Guinevere's eyes lit up for a moment, as if she had scarce hoped to expect it and now that it came, she wasn't sure what to do. "Th-thank you!" she stammered, "When should I come Monday? Early?"
At that moment, something happened that completely threw off her train of thought, and that something was a tiny golden head peeping up between them.
Her eyes weren't on the girl's head though, but on her back. Wings. Sure, lots of people on Gaia had wings, and her own flapped at the thought, but she had to ask, she studied Heralds. It was like her unofficial job. So, casually as she could, she said "And who is this?" to her new employer.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 6:30 pm
"Around eight should be fine," said Hae-min, after staring at the little girl long enough to pour her a cup of tea. She appeared to be considering what to say about the girl, who was even now picking up the teacup and trying to balance it on her head, wings flaring for balance. "She followed one of the other employees in yesterday," she explained. "She won't tell us where she lives or what her name is, so..."
Pause. "I'll go start the paperwork so you can file it. If you have time, I'd like to show you how we file missing items reports as well--a shipment of dragon's gold dust never arrived a week or so ago."
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:42 pm
Guinevere nodded, but she wasn't really paying attention to the job anymore. Instead, she was looking at the girl.
"Never arrived," she repeated, looking at the little golden girl. "What was the employee who she followed in charge of?" Half a second went by before she realized she was demanding answers from her new boss, and she hastily added "If it's not impertinent!" To the girl, she asked "Where are you from?" leaning down to catch her eyes. "Do you remember?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 5:53 pm
"Oh, distribution! She's normally very good, but she just never brought the dust. It wasn't important, not really, so she just went to get more a day or so ago..." Hae-min was answering on autopilot, sorting through her files.
The golden-haired little girl shook her head. "I follow Kyrie missus here, then she leaves." Her eyes were quite wide. "I do wrong?"
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