Shorties

The sky was blue until Rei blinked.

Hatsu stared at the screen. That didn’t make sense.
They checked the numbers again. Nothing wrong. Maybe the formula then? Neither.
They didn’t have it in them to even sigh. It wasn’t the first time there was such a massive fuck-up in the legislation; that was just a weekly occurrence in their job. And who was left to pick up the pieces and fix everything all the time? No one knew how much of this country was riding on the shoulders of a single overtired worker — who couldn’t even stand the taste of coffee.

They turned to their coworker. “Michitarō?”
No response. They waved in front of his face until he took his headphones off and looked at them. “What?”
“I need advice. Or reassurance. Or plausible deniability.”
He looked as unconcerned as ever. “For what? The hero rankings?”
“The parade, specifically. They fucked up big time with the gianting stuff. How the fuck did they think that would go well.”
“Oooh, that’s getting interesting. So you have the results?”
“I guess? But that can’t be right. I mean, with the votes he got, Chargebolt could still fit on Main Street, but Dynamight…” They turned their screen towards him.
Michitarō frowned, seemed to think hard for a moment, then frowned harder. “Uh.”
“Yeah. It’s gonna be an international problem.”
“…And you’re sure the math is correct?”
“I hope not. Can you check?”

He reluctantly scooted his chair over to their desk, took control of their keyboard and started auditing their spreadsheet. “I mean, did they even run simulations before writing this stuff into law? It’s probably their fault, not yours.”
“Hell if I know. With that guy’s ego, maybe they got some of the number-crunchers from his agency to work on this.”
“Look at Dr Ratios here, unveiling a governmental conspiracy on their own~”
They slapped him on the hand. “Shut up, you’re being annoying!”
“And you’re being an idiot, because you used a percentage as a raw factor. How many years did you study stats for, again?”
Hatsu let out a sigh of relieved exasperation. “They didn’t have a class on the intricacies of Excel bugs. If they let us use real software—”
“Oh, fuck off, I don’t wanna hear that rant again. Take it to the higher-ups so they can shove it up theirs, I’m not into that.”
They grumbled and eased up. “Thanks for helping me avoid a diplomatic incident, I guess.”
He scooted back to his desk, unfazed. “I don’t think you’re gonna thank me.”
“…Why?”
“Your mistake was in a divisor.”
Hatsu’s face paled beyond the purest white. Without a word, they apprehensively fixed their mistake and stared at the screen.

Michitarō broke the long silence. “So, how worse is it?”
Hatsu gave him an evil glare and stomped out of the room.
He waited until the door had slammed, glanced at the result, and shrugged. “Guess he’ll have to hold his breath…”