Before the municipal inspector could pry the reinforced zipper of the canvas messenger bag from Ryan's fingers, a gruff, weathered village elder elbowed his way past the checkpoint guard with the aggressive persistence of a department head demanding overdue quarterly metrics. Without so much as a polite greeting, the elder shoved a heavy, tarnished leather ledger directly into Ryan’s chest, barking an immediate demand for the missing winter store tax records for the local lord's granaries. The sudden, invasive thrust of the book carried the exact same suffocating weight as an unannounced inventory audit dropped on an events coordinator's desk right when he was heading out for a sandwich.
Ryan let out a long, quiet sigh through his nose, his shoulders sinking with the bone-weary resignation of a man who had spent far too many afternoons cleaning up other people's administrative messes. Treating the centuries-old shakedown with the same deadpan, placid exhaustion he usually reserved for rogue vendor invoices, he caught the heavy book before it slipped. The damp, ink-stained pages inside were scrawled with grain allocations and storage tariffs that bore an uncanny, terrifying resemblance to the phantom logistics spreadsheets back at the office. With a mild, diplomatic nod, Ryan slid the tarnished ledger into his bag alongside his spare pens and crumpled run-sheets, silently calculating how many more impossible compliance hurdles he had to clear before he could finally log off for the day.