Before Ryan could tuck the rough-cut travel permit safely back into his messenger bag, the magistrate’s heavy hand dropped back onto the wooden counter, blocking his path with the absolute finality of an HR director requesting an un-retrievable archive file. With an official scowl that suggested missing this deadline carried the same weight as failing an end-of-quarter financial audit, the official demanded an immediate, physical verification of Ryan’s ancestral family registry before the harbor curfew locked down the entire district. It was the sort of impossible administrative demand that instantly triggered Ryan's deepest corporate anxieties—the equivalent of being asked to produce a birth certificate signed in triplicate for a regional office he hadn't worked in for three years.
Ryan let out a long, quiet sigh, his shoulders slumping beneath the weight of his charcoal coat as he adjusted his grip on the canvas strap. With the practiced exhaustion of an events coordinator dealing with an auditor demanding proof of lineage for a temporary venue pass, he unzipped the bag and began flipping through his worn notebook, a spare plastic pen, and a stack of irrelevant run-sheets. He offered the stern magistrate a placid, tired nod, mentally calculating whether an ancestral registry check from his old hometown ward could somehow be substituted with his current Sydney lease agreement or a recent utility bill, hoping against hope that bureaucratic red tape translated roughly the same across centuries.