Before the sweating ashigaru could drop his barrier or squint further at Ryan's laminated transit pass, the weathered provincial magistrate pushed past his own guard with the air of an exasperated regional director. With a sharp, dry rustle of parchment, the official unrolled a heavy, ink-stained scroll and thrust it directly into Ryan's chest. It was a formal, unsparing demand for immediate tax reconciliation for the entire northern merchant quarter—complete with cascading columns of brush-stroke arithmetic that bore an uncanny, terrifying resemblance to the phantom logistics deficits haunting Ryan's spreadsheets back at Barangaroo.
Ryan blinked behind tired, strain-heavy eyes, clutching the cumbersome document against the stiff fabric of his pressed white collar with the mechanical reflex of an events coordinator receiving a botched vendor invoice right before a major product launch. The dense rows of kanji detailing uncollected grain levies and municipal warehousing tariffs read less like ancient feudal decrees and more like the inflated storage fees from the liquidated Mascot depot. Adjusting the strap of his canvas messenger bag, he let out a long, quiet exhale that carried all the bone-weary resignation of a man sentenced to clean up someone else's administrative mess.
Searching the pockets of his charcoal suit trousers with mild, placid frustration, Ryan finally located his trusty plastic ballpoint pen rather than a traditional ink-brush. If the local administrative machinery was going to insist on treating him as the accountable manager for a provincial tax shortfall, the least he could do was inspect the columns for glaring discrepancies, jot down a polite administrative note in red ink, and log a formal grievance before the midday transport pulled away from the platform.