Jelle trudges through the endless grey hallways of the Soul Management Department in a mood so disgruntled it should be organizing the fading wallpaper to peel itself off the walls.

It had been one of those shifts. It started when Jelle discovered the coffee maker empty by the time she made it to the breakroom, and it was all downhill from there. Paperwork gone awry, spreadsheets in disarray, the printer on the fritz again, and Sindi from Accounting (that stupid, gorgeous bitch) had perfect hair today.

Jelle hmphs as she blows a strand of her own limp bob cut out of her face. Some of us have more important things to do with our time than wake up two hours early to curl our hair, Jelle assures herself, and never mind that she wakes up two hours early to chew antacids and brood about her unbelievable bad luck.

It is bad luck. There's no other rational explanation for why she of all demons is perpetually thwarted despite being brilliant, talented, wildly attractive, funny, and incredibly modest. She's the best intake processor in her whole sub-department. Bad things should be happening to incompetent people instead, especially where she can watch.

But there is no justice in the universe, and the total unfairness of it all strikes Jelle again as she shoves open the door of her makeshift 'apartment' (also known as her 'hidden office locker room off-the-books remodel') to the increasingly horribly familiar sight of...you.

Every day Jelle hopes that you will disappear as mysteriously as you appeared in front of her desk in the first place, and every day she's disappointed. She'd say it's not personal, except it very much is: she is personally very inconvenienced by having to hide a misfiled soul so she doesn't absolutely tank her key performance indicators. She is not cut out for a demotion to janitorial work, or worse, Demonic Resources.

(Demonic Resources: the department responsible for processing severely demoted demon employees into resources, like the cushy executive office chairs made of sloth demons' essence Jelle covets.)

That had been the original motivation, anyway. As soon as Jelle had put together that you were emphatically not the soul on the paperwork Jelle was processing, Jelle had leapt into action to cover her own adorable ass. Whisking you off to obscurity while Jelle figures out how to fix this is crucial for her quarterly performance assessment to have a chance of cracking four out of five this decade.

It's only been with hindsight that Jelle put together the itty, bitty little flaw of this whole arrangement, which is the small issue of Jelle now harbouring an unsanctioned soul without turning that soul over to the proper court authorities. This might be a bad thing for her if she got caught and subsequently turned into office furniture, but of course she's not going to get caught. She has this situation perfectly under control.

"Ugh," Jelle says sourly, kicking her pumps off carelessly in the doorway. "Why is this place still such a dump? What were you even doing all day while I was out there, slaving away on trying to solve your problems?"

That's the stuff, she thinks, flicking the slight forks of her tongue against her small sharp fangs. Taking it out on you would be just the thing to cheer Jelle up, even if technically the place certainly isn't any worse than Jelle left it.

Which Jelle doesn't care about, just like Jelle doesn't care about the fact that venting to her captive audience this last while has been almost sort of...pleasant.

"Do you have any idea what kind of day I've had?" Jelle demands as she props her hands on her hips and twists her face into a scowl she tries to make intimidating instead of scrunched like some small Earth mammal given a lemon. "Do you even care? I could be turned into a water cooler over you, you know!"

Jelle affixes you with her neon green glare from behind her round glasses, her heart mysteriously jumping as she waits for you to speak.

It's probably too much coffee. Definitely not a flutter of anything else.