Your group manages to find one of the other missing students in town, but the rest won’t be so simple. The well-mannered ones took on jobs as housekeepers for the wealthiest families in town, relying on their salary and room and board to survive in this strange place. The rest who weren’t able to join them found themselves employed by the local factories, enduring backbreaking work and terrible fumes in order to feed themselves. Getting to them means infiltrating their line of work. Fortunately for you, a young baroness has made quite a name for herself in the city. Not only is she beautiful and wealthy, because her late husband owned many of the factories in the city, she is also exceedingly charitable. Perhaps to the point of foolhardiness, according to the gossips. Rumor has it that she will hire just about anyone, and a glimpse of her (and the striking birthmark on her left cheek) tells you that the rumors are at least two-thirds true. But that also means a job interview may be in your future…
“Oh, you are looking so very dapper, kiddo!”
Why is a child coming to a job interview with him?
It beggars belief, truly. Whatever. It’s not as though the monk can’t make do. With a grin, he gives Kana a definitely-not-super-condescending pat on the head and whirls on his heels. Coattails swish, and my oh my, he does feel like quite the gentleman - perhaps he can pull off some manner of miracle here yet.
Pausing in his steps, he turns around, nudges the little dragonling with his cane. Tips his hat. “Come along now, little Kanahara. We’ve business to attend to.”
Azama stoops a moment to straighten Kana’s bowtie. “There. Perfect.”
Except for the. The ears. The sharp teeth. The…
Azama straightens. Offers Kana his sunniest smile. “Do try not to make a royal mess of things, yes? Can you do that for me?” And then gives him a little pinch of the cheek, for good measure.
Quite shortly, their names are called. It’s go time.
Everything was fine up until the point that Azama produced an apparent costume with a flourish. Kana was fine with dressing up—heck, it was one of his favorite things to do—but it was nowhere near as fun when the clothes weren’t tailored to fit him precisely and the fabric felt like cardboard.
Nose wrinkles as little dragon wiggles out his arms for the umpteenth time. There was too much starch in the fabric, and the colors were dull and drab. Kana much preferred the sapphires or brilliant whites he’d be dressed in at home, or at the very least, the blacks and golds of the academy. A pout paints his face; this dragonling was not having fun.
“I don’t feel dapper,” he huffs, gloved fingers toying with the edge of his vest. At the very least, he had been able to momentarily replace his thick leather gloves for soft silk ones (even though Azama gave him a look as he slid them on). Still, the texture was a little off...
Monk ruffles silver hair. There was naught to be done to tame it without a bucketful of hair gel, and with the two of them standing side-by-side, well—their wild ‘dos made quite the picture, didn’t they?
The only nice part about this get-up was the pocketwatch he’d been able to snag. Even hidden in his breast pocket, Kana could hear its soft tick tock tick at work. It gave him something to focus on other than the weird stiffness of his cuffs or the just-barely-too-tightness of his boots.
He scowls at the “gesture of affection,” and more so at the condescending request. Kana may be young, and pretty dumb, but he isn’t stupid. Auntie’s retainer had always been kinda mean—it wasn’t something Kana particularly enjoyed. Still, he knew that it could be way worse; Azama could just refuse to tolerate him in any capacity, after all. So, little dragon responds:
“I’ll do my best if you do yours!”
They enter together, Azama a half-step ahead, with Kana only trailing due to being distracted by the itchiness of his dress shirt. The lady interviewing them certainly had a face one couldn’t forget—not to say she wasn’t pretty! She was very beautiful, Kana thought, but very unique-looking, too. That was probably a good thing. A lot of pretty people looked alike, after all, but not her.
The lady addresses them kindly and with a smile, which Kana found a little weird, because he thought interviews were supposed to be scary. At least, that’s what he heard. Not that he’d ever interviewed for anything in his life, except for...
“What has led you to where you are today?”
A blink. And then another. Now, wait a darn minute...
“I, um, well,” Kana begins eloquently, “well, we were looking for someplace to... set ourselves up for the future!” Hopefully his hesitation would come off as nervous and cute rather than unprepared. “And we’ve heard so many good things about you, ma’am.”