Before Ryan could even turn away from the weathered gatehouse, a frantic clerk in a dust-flecked tunic came barreling around the corner, thrusting a fresh, frantically scrawled summons straight into his hands with the desperate energy of a panicked intern realizing the quarterly audit deck is missing its financial appendixes. The heavy parchment demanded immediate, unexcused witness before the shogunate magistrate regarding an alleged breach of provincial rice quotas—an administrative bottleneck that carried all the pleasant, career-ending weight of an unexpected calendar invite for a hostile executive review.
Ryan exhaled a long, tired sigh through his nose, adjusting the heavy strap of his canvas messenger bag as he scanned the dense brushstrokes with the clinical detachment of an events coordinator reviewing a deeply flawed vendor invoice. It was just another impossible action item dumped onto his overflowing desk, another fictional liability invented by a bureaucratic apparatus that seemed utterly determined to pin every regional deficit and logistical oversight directly onto his employee profile.
With the mild, professional resignation of a man simply trying to survive his shift before catching the evening transit back toward home, Ryan nodded politely to the trembling clerk. Tucking the new summons safely alongside his worn notebook and the rusted iron key, he squared his shoulders and stepped forward into the shaded stone courtyard, fully prepared to treat a centuries-old imperial interrogation with the exact same deadpan endurance he brought to every Tuesday afternoon at the office.