Summoning Our Country - NHS Kai

Chapter 17: A Complete Picture

Note: This is rose. Progress report on the rewrite: Chapter 1.5 has been rewritten, so that's 2 out of 8 chapters finished (Reminding you that Chapters 1 to 4.5 will be rewritten). Have a rose ✿

Discord: https://discord.gg/p7NJppEjza

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April 19, 2022 NOTE: This is to serve as a notice that this chapter is due for minor revisions. Any information mentioned here will soon be obsolete and I highly encourage rereading this chapter again in the future once the rewrite has been released.

Cent. Calendar 13/06/1639, Third Foreign Affairs Dept., Esthirant, Parpaldian Empire, 7:00

"Meow."

The soft yet low meow of a cat populated the otherwise silent, still atmosphere of the room. The drab, boring purple of the Third Foreign Affairs Dept. Chair's office gave way to the splendid striking velvet when rays of glowing sunlight flooding in from the clear glass windows found their mark on the room's supposedly brightly colored wallpapers. Interrupting the glorious span of purple were long banners of imperial red draping from the ceiling, each one marked with the prominent golden symbols of the Parpaldian Empire. Despite the grandiose display of awe-inspiring colors, it was still early in the morning, with the department still only populated by regular night shift watchmen and maintenance workers.

Dust particles danced aimlessly in the early morning sunlight, witnessed only by the ever glaring portrait of His Highness, Ludius, Emperor of Parpaldia, hung above the elaborately chiseled reliefs decorating the heavy doors of the office. And yet, the room was still asleep, with little excitement and progress. Then...

"Meow."

Another mellow meow.

However, it now had a hint of annoyance.

"Give me a break, Yvonne..."

Then, the groaning rumblings of a man half-asleep. After that, scratching noises. It sounded like something was being scraped against a wooden object over and over again.

The noises, which, while seemingly insignificant, were the only sounds he could hear in the tranquil, soundless ambiance of the room. As such, they reached the eardrums of the man, Kaios, the department chair of the Third Foreign Affairs Dept., without distortion. He was sound asleep, although he neither snored nor groaned, besides the moments in which he climbed past the barrier between being asleep and being half-asleep. The sounds of scratching tickled his consciousness, prompting it to respond without prior consultation by opening his eyelids.

Immediately after he started entertaining the stimuli coming from his sense of sight, his sense of touch wasn't far behind. He felt an itchy, thread-filled sensation all over his body, including his left cheek. He recognized what it was, and then his logic pointed to the circumstances in which he woke up.

Using whatever bodily energy and mental drive he possessed at the moment, Kaios got up from the carpeted floor of his office, where he apparently fell asleep the night before. His newly opened eyes looked down on the darkened stain on the carpet from where he just was a mere second ago. He realized he had drooled in his deep slumber and instinctively reached out for his cotton napkin before using it to wipe the dried recesses of saliva from his left cheek.

"How unsightly for me."

Kaios disappointingly commented as he tried to fix his appearance.

His attention then moved to the annoying, incessant scratching sounds that woke him up. Turning to his left where the sounds were emanating from, he saw a round, white ball of fur in front of the brown, wooden gates to his office. Stretching out from the ball of fur was a long, white line that twirled and twisted in the air. How adorable, Kaios thought, but another sound helped him snap from his early morning daze.