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Yarver Bakema had spent enough time pacing. No amount of introspection was going to leave him better prepared for the interview, no amount of note-taking about what he absolutely had to ask. Nothing, he reminded himself, was strictly irreversible until it passed Psynateh's muster, and she had an instinct for what humans needed to painstakingly coax out of each other.
And yet, his role was important. If he made a mistake, it would almost surely spell doom for the applicant. The integrity of the Council was sacrosanct; if she disagreed with it, there was no letting her go. The risk of damage was too great. They would almost surely treat her cordially unless she turned violent, but rob her of her freedom regardless.
And so he had paced for a few hours, coming to terms with his role - until he had shed his anxieties like dead skin in a single dismissive gesture, found his centre, and let a casual air permeate through him, carrying both a friendly exterior and peace of mind.
He sat the reception desk of the Vale gym, one foot touching the ground, the other leg angled, slotting him into a loose sit. He had left the wrist watch he used to stop competitions at home, deliberately, knowing that he would otherwise constantly be checking the time until he drove himself mad with it.
He expected her to be extremely punctual, as the resume had promised, and he had no reason to doubt.
Adelaide Mawne, meanwhile, had seen the Vale gym from the outside before, so its appearance was not strictly a surprise.
Yet there was some absurdity in the idea that an interview for a position as a maid-cum-secretary (a butler, really, even if didn't say so on the tin) ultimately for a household not yet expressly named, that was palpably going to great lengths to weed out untrustworthy individuals, would go through such a proper establishment.
On the other hand, no one had ruled out that the Vale gym was where she would be working if she passed muster in the interview. She had already spoken to Yarver Bakema on the phone once, where he explained some of the subtext of the advertisement.
'Formally, I will be the one that would be writing your paychecks, Mrs. Mawne,' he had explained. 'However, your de-facto employer is in an ultimately very vulnerable position and thus prefers not to conduct the first-level interviews himself. Please don't hold that against him. Should you make it part the first-level interview, he will explain his concerns to you directly.'
It was to pay well. If she was being recruited into some kind of mafia, this secrecy then almost made sense, except that Yarver Bakema's flawless reputation, exemplary conduct and moral judgement utterly ruled out any criminal organisation.
In either case, she was here now, and perhaps he might volunteer some more information in the interview itself.
✘ IN PROGRESS