It had rained all through the night and was still drizzling in the morning. Assama sat in her room by the window with a hot cup of tea in hand watching the raindrops trickle down. As soon as it stopped raining, she would set out for the job she took from the guild hall not thirty minutes ago. She took another look at the paper in her hand and read over the request once more.

Her client today was named Jelies Sov. She's seen his name appear a few times on the request board. He frequented the guild, putting up requests every now and then. She hadn't cared much to look at what they said since most of the time she was either taking a request at the time or was just preoccupied with something else. This request he put up wanted somebody to essentially distract a senile man who also happened to like to rant about Satan in front of the Muramasa castle. As there was going to be an abundance of nobles visiting the castle for an upcoming event, Jelies wanted this old man, Leis, to be away from the nobles. He wanted Leis to be as far away from the castle as possible. It seemed like a request that could turn out to be rather interesting. After all, it wasn't every day you had to deal with a Satan-crazy man.

The last few raindrops trickled to a stop, just in time for Assama to take a final sip of her tea. After setting her mug by the sink, she pulled on her coat, stuffed the request in her pocket, and left the dorms. The streets weren't too crowded, like they usually were. She chalked it up to the fact that it was just raining. Sooner or later people would be pouring out of their homes and would go about their typical business. As for Assama, she predicted that she would just be standing by the Muramasa castle to wait for Jelies or the old man to show up. There was no way that they would have stood out there in the rain.

Assama was right. When she got to the Muramasa castle, neither Jelies nor Leis were there. Assama sighed and remained standing. She would have taken a seat on a nearby bench if it weren't for the fact that all of them were covered in rain drops. Instead, when she got tired, she found herself leaning against a lamppost trying to look, and feel, as alert as possible. Right as she felt as if she could have fallen asleep on her feet, she saw Jelies walking up to the castle entrance where Assama was standing. She stopped leaning on the pole and stood up straight. When Jelies arrived, Assama greeted him and introduced herself, explaining in addition that she was the person who was responding to his request. He thanked Assama for helping and went on to explain all the annoying things Leis had done, as if he had forgotten that he mentioned it in the request description. She let him rant though. There was no point in arguing with him. At one point, his voice trailed off. "Speak of the devil," he drawled. Assama turned to see an old man with shoulder length gray hair, slowly approaching in his wheelchair.

"I'll take care of him," Assama assured right before she went off to intercept the man. "Leis," Assama began. He looked at her skeptically. "How do you know my name? You must be possessed by the devil!" Assama resisted the laugh at the sheer stupidity of that claim. Instead, she came up with a quick lie. "No, you see, your preaching has gotten pretty famous around here and I was hoping that you could tell me more... privately, away from the castle." Leis seemed to be overly delighted with this. "Let's go then!" he exclaimed, immediately allowing Assama to lead him to wherever she pleased.

She led him away from the castle. In fact, she went as far away as she could from it. At one point, Leis asked "Why are we going so far?" Assama shifted her eyes away from him, trying to think of an answer. "There's just... some place there that's important." That wasn't a good enough argument for him. "Can't you go some place that isn't far away from the castle? Once I'm done talking to you I want to go back to my usual spot as soon as possible." "I know, I know. This spot is really important to me though." "Okay..." Leis grumbled. Assama cracked a grin. "Thank you."

They arrived at the location. It was one of the few places in Orchidia that didn't have an abundance of people bustling around. It was relatively peaceful for being right outside of the streets. "Okay, now you can start talking." And so he did. Leis went on doing his 'preaching,' which to Assama, sounded like complete nonsense. She tried her best to tune out what he was saying while trying to look like she was genuinely interested in what he was talking about, but ultimately failed, at least at the tuning-him-out part.

Leis later on trickled off the subject of Satan and onto his wife. She didn't exactly know what made him switch like that, but he seemed much less passionate or enthusiastic about this subject, and soon asked for Assama to lead him back to his house. Assama agreed and asked where he lived. He directed her to his house, but before he could go inside, he thanked Assama for spending the day with him. "You're welcome," she responded with a friendly smile. She was fairly certain that he wouldn't come back out, so she decided to back to Jelies.

It turned out that Assama had to wait until the event at the castle was over until she could talk to Jelies again. She ended up having enough time to go back to her room, grab a book, and read while she waited for the event to conclude. Once that happened, she closed her book and reported back to Jelies, who was very thankful for Assama's help with Leis. He rewarded her and she left to go back to the guild.

Word Count: 1042/1000