The Midnight Sun

Madame Naoki chuckles, not at the joke, but rather Kate’s reaction to her own joke. Adorable. She extends her hand to meet in the center of the table, and meets Kate’s gaze.

“Heh. You’ve given me a lot more than a tour today. I’m still expecting to wake up. I’m glad you enjoyed yourself; I hope to spend many more days like this with you.You are, of course, welcome to stay as long as you like, but I won’t keep you; I understand. Head home, get some rest. I’m tired, too.”

Naoki pauses here, and considers what more she might have to say. She had already spoke her main bit, just before dinner. There weren’t many more thoughts she had to share that she felt would be appropriate, and she wasn’t just saying that she was tired.

Taking unsteadily to her feet, Naoki takes a few careful steps across the blanket to approach Artemis’ door. With the back of her knuckles, she gives two short raps, spaced with a second-long pause. A non-urgent request for attention.

She fidgets a bit on her feet, unsure of how long Artemis would be.

As Artemis steps into the room, Madame Naoki steps back to allow her entry, nearly tripping over the edge of the blanket in the process. She recovers her footing, and addresses Artemis, with what is very obviously a jokingly formal tone. Naoki didn’t feel the need to use any sort of serious tone when around only Artemis and Kate.

“Ah, Artemis. Kate and I here have finished eating, and are ready to conclude the day. Much to my sadness, she would like to sleep in her own bed tonight. So, if you would, please escort Miss Kate back to her home.”

Artemis responds in an equally exaggerated manner, bowing deeply as she does so.

"Of course, my lady. I shall convey your compatriot back to her... uh..." her formal speech falters as she reaches for an appropriate word, totally breaking the effect. "Hmm. Domain... dominion... doppelganger... No. Whatever." She waves it off, and heads for the door.

"It was on the tip of my tongue, I swear. That fantastic dinner seems to have knocked the vocabulary right out of me, so please forgive any sins against grammar I may commit. In any case, I'm ready to go whenever you are, Miss Kate."

She waits at the door of the suite for Kate to say any desired goodbyes, before opening the door for her and following her out. Right before the door closes, "Domicile! It was domicile, dammit!"

Madame Naoki follows the two to the door, and leans out the door frame to wave as their backs disappear down the corridor. She lingers for a moment, staring into the empty space Kate once occupied, before realizing how silly she must look, and ducking back inside.

Closing and locking the door, she stands for a moment, thinking back on the day, and considering what to do next. Should have hugged her, or something. After a moment of deliberation, she sits down at the desk, sliding her journal to sit before her once again. Dipping her quill in the ink, Madame Naoki spends the next long while continuing and expanding upon her latest journal entry, recording her thoughts and feelings from the day, of which there were many. The minutes drag into hours, drag into multiple hours as Naoki tirelessly writes on.

It is when she reaches for the third quill, (the past two having been worn out) that she realizes how much time she has spent writing. She pauses, flips through the last few pages of hastily recorded thoughts.

She sighs, a deep, heavy sigh, containing elements of desire, longing, exasperation, and fatigue. Resolving to continue the next morning, she places the third quill back in the drawer, and puts her journal safely away in a locked drawer of her desk.

After changing into a nightgown, she finally lies down to rest, though it would elude her for a time, chased off by racing thoughts, both of the past day, and the future yet to come. Eventually, though, as the blackbirds begin to sing, Naoki slips away into that dark, comforting abyss of unconsciousness we call sleep.

Madame Naoki is sitting in her office, as she tends to be, when people knock. Before her on the desk, a few piles of paperwork sit in neat piles. She had cleared and organized the desk for Skarlet’s visit.

Madame Naoki is wearing her business suit, the one with the tie that dangles. Today, the tie is a deep maroon color, and is slightly off-center. Having stayed up the night before, Naoki is a bit sleepy, but not overly so. Rubbing the fatigue from her eyes, she calls through the door,

“Ah, Skarlet! The door is unlocked; come in, have a seat.”

She gestures, one of the visitor chairs has been swung around the desk to sit next to her own in anticipation of Skarlet’s arrival.

Naoki waits for Skarlet to be seated, and turns slightly in her chair to address her.

“Well, I plan to keep you here for a little while, and explain to you what it is I do, and teach you some of it, so that you might evaluate to see if you might like to do something similar.”

“However. Let me preface our time together with this small disclaimer. I’ve never taught anyone anything before. Almost of the knowledge I have, I have learned through personal experiences or books, and I’ve never attempted to share my methods with anyone. The ways in which I try to tell you things may not make sense, or I might omit a critical detail I thought to be self-evident. I would like to apologize in advance for any awkwardness or misunderstanding by my methods due to lack of experience.”

“With that said, though, I’m going to try my best. If you have any questions, just ask.”

Turning back to face the desk, she gestures to the papers lying before her, and the world at large, making small, focused movements with her hands as she speaks.

“As you’re well aware, I own and manage The Midnight Sun here. My duties relate to the administration of the establishment and the employees. It’s my job to watch over everything, and make sure everyone else has what they need do their jobs properly.”

“Allow me to preface the explaining the technical portion of explaining my job with a few words about my policies and business practices. And, allow me to preface that with a bit of my own history. In the earliest stages of my youth, I observed, and was made to be part of, a business; one that was not unlike this one, at least as far as the services offered went. However, there were a number of policies and fundamental parts of running that business that do not at all carry over to The Midnight Sun of today.”

“To put it bluntly, there was no respect. The employer did not respect his employees, the employees did not respect him, nor their fellow employees, or even the customers. The atmosphere was… toxic. People hated each other. Managers worked their task-force like slaves. Heck, in some cases, the employees weren't ‘employees’ by definition, but actual slaves, in the most literal sense of the word.”

She pauses here, caught momentarily in memories of the past, before continuing.

“Everyone hated everyone else, there was more spite, discontentment and anger in everything done by that business than one could reasonably shake a stick at.”

“This atmosphere didn’t stop things from functioning, outright. However, it was obviously apparent, even to those who were taking part, that the atmosphere of the company was massively detrimental. When people start murdering their superiors to take their place, it becomes difficult to sanely describe it as anything other than detrimental. Let it suffice to say, that company has long since been... dissolved... and I carry memories of it only as an example of how operations should not be run.”

Naoki pauses here, to assemble her next point. She twirls a quill between two fingers, the feathered end waving around in short, tight circles.

“However, my experiences there have influenced the way I run The Midnight Sun today. A business, at its most basic level, is a group of individuals working towards the same goal of providing a good or service to the public in exchange for currency. It is my belief, first and foremost, that any group of individuals seeking to work towards the same goal, must first respect each other. Only from that foundation of mutual respect, can greatness be born. Once that basic establishment of shared respect is laid, it becomes so much easier to work together effectively.”

“I’m a staunch believer in the concept of holism. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and by promoting coordination and cooperation between individuals, the group can accomplish so much more than it would otherwise. The best way to conduct joint operations is to identify the strengths of each individual, and then intelligently assign tasks that would be best completed by that individual. It is this grand concept that is the philosophy that I founded The Midnight Sun today under, and is still the way I run it to this day.”

“I realize, as I say, this, that it sounds a bit... specious. A bit pretentious. But one can hardly argue with the results. The fact of the matter is that, by using this set of ideals to conduct operations, the business not only runs, but does so with a massive degree of success, as is evident.”

“Do you have any questions so far?”

Naoki nods slowly. She finds herself unsure of the etiquette regarding vampires, and their transition. She decides to skim over it and continue.

“Right. Excellent. So, with those ideas in mind, I’ve still got to do the actual business administration. My responsibilities include keeping track of each day’s profits and expenses, paying, raising, and negotiating salaries for each employee, negotiating agreements, making executive decisions regarding operations, ensuring that every employee is aware of what is expected of them, and making sure that they have the tools they need to fulfill those expectations. Those are general descriptions of the most major things, and there are also an innumerable amount of smaller tasks to be done. Making sure each of our suppliers meets their end of our agreement, making sure they’re paid for their materials. Checking to see that all of the goods and services we provide meet my expectations. There are tons of tiny jobs and daily maintenance things I do. I’ll often offload some of the workload to Mr. Cresno, as he often finds himself with a lot of free time, but it’s still a massive amount of dry, tedious work. I don’t really find the itself work enjoyable, but it’s what needs to be done for The Midnight Sun, and with it, all of us, to continue growing. With any luck, you’ll take a liking to, and have a talent for this sort of thing, so I can have you do all of the most boring tasks!”

At this, Madame Naoki chuckles, and lightly nudges Skarlet with her elbow jokingly, in a grand display of her poor sense of humor.

“One of the things I do is write contracts. A contract, in the sense that I utilize the word, is a written agreement between two parties, usually between an employee or supplier and myself, that states that both parties agree to the terms of an agreement, which are laid out as the body of the contract. These contracts can have varying levels of detail, and may or may not include agreed upon consequences if the agreement of the contract is broken, or stipulations regarding the methods each party will use to meet their end of the deal.”

“For example, one term that I include in all of my employment contracts is such that if I am forced to cancel their appointment, through no fault of their own, I agree to pay them a sum equal to six months of their salary at the time of termination as a severance package, and make the parting of ways as painless as possible.”

“Another term I always include is one that states that the employee agrees to follow the local laws of Isra, in the state that they are at the signing of the contract. If one of my employees breaks the law, and is brought to justice in the eyes of the public, it reflects poorly on the business as a whole. Some may say that there is so such thing as bad publicity, but there’s certainly undesirable publicity. The Midnight Sun will never be known as a bunch of criminals. Each term of each agreement has a purpose, and not all of the terms I could use are applicable to each contract. No two contracts are quite the same, and I’ll often need to create new terms on the fly, to account for the unique conditions related to each employee.”

“Seeing as how a significant portion employees have been with us for multiple years, and how rapidly the business, and the city are growing, I often find myself needing to update contracts. For each one, the process is mostly the same as the initial singing. I have to write the thing, and they have to read the new contract, and agree to it. Oftentimes, I won’t rewrite the entire thing, just make a little, few page addendum to the last one, but that still requires a new signature. For example, today I need to update the contracts of those employees who are now chefs. Mr. Maelik has drafted some of the formerly part-time preparers of food into full time chefs under his direct instruction, and their contracts all need to be updated to reflect their change in job title, along with a few extra terms have in mind, regarding the preparation of the food. The understanding that they won’t poison it, and such.”

She gestures to a stack of papers on the desk. A cursory examination would reveal them to be employment contracts, of those mentioned individuals Maelik has drafted to be chefs. Next to them, a small, informal note has a few bullet points relating to the content of the addendums, written by Naoki to remind her what needs to be done.

“Allow me to guide you through the creation of one of these documents from beginning to end. And since you’re here, why not your contract of employment? I don’t usually draft contracts with the potential signee present, but I think that this is a fine exception. Perhaps by the time we’re done, you’ll want to fill in the job title as ‘administrative assistant’ or somesuch.”

“The first thing I always do is create an informal outline of the terms I’d like to include, so I can put conscious thought into grouping the terms together with others like them, so the whole thing reads like one document, not a haphazardly thrown together collection of clauses. You can then use this later as a sort of table of contents. Let’s start with a couple of standard terms, like the ones I mentioned earlier, and go from there.”

Over the course of the next two hours, Madame Naoki takes Skarlet on an adventure though the wild and whimsical world of creating legitimate legal documents, and in the process, drafts an employment contract for Skarlet. The process of creating a single document takes so long, not because Naoki is a slow writer, but rather because she pauses often to explain concepts to Skarlet. Fun and interesting things, like the importance and distribution of paid time off, contractual liability, percentage based raises, healthy and unhealthy workplace practices, and the proper way to write an expense report. (Even though expense reports have nothing to do with the task at hand.) It’s an exhilarating task, really.

“...and I think that’s about it. There’s still a bit of work to be done, as far as job description, and the expectations and specifics of that job go, but this is a perfectly workable skeleton we can adapt to whatever job you’d like to do. What do you think? Did you follow all that?”

Artemis enters the room as Naoki finishes relating a portion of her backstory, bearing a tray with an insulated carafe, several mugs, and a plate of small cookies. With well-practiced movements, she pours three mugs of what proves to be rather excellent hot chocolate. She distributes two of the mugs to Naoki and Skarlet, before absconding into the sitting room with her own mug and several cookies, leaving the tray on the end of the desk.

She looks in mild irritation at the cushions and blanket from last night, still sitting on the floor. Neither of them had been in any mood to clean up, and had put the chore off until tomorrow. Now that that tomorrow had come, she was still not in much of a mind to do it.

She settles onto one of the couches, absently sipping her cocoa and relishing the comfort of the cushions. Naoki had stayed up late last night, so by extension, so had she. Morning had follow on the heels of sleep far too quickly for her tastes.

Eventually, her snack is consumed, and she sets about cleaning up the room. She occupies herself in that, and other chores around the suite, for the next several hours.

Madame Naoki nods her thanks to Artemis as she takes her mug. Carefully, she takes a sip, before leaning back in her chair, crossing her ankles under the desk.

“You know, I’m not really a fan of the winter. Far too cold for my taste. Snow gets everywhere; makes it difficult to do things, keeps potential customers in their homes. But there are a few seasonal traditions I enjoy, this drink being one of them. And Fur coats and sweaters are fun to wear, I suppose.”

She takes another sip, and carefully jostles the mug around, sloshing the smooth brown drink around the rim.

“Still too cold, though.”

Sitting back up, she considers the contract outline they had made, lazily skimming each term.

“Hmm. Well. Good that you’ve got a handle on creating documents in this way. It’s a skill that may turn out to be more relevant than you may think. Begs the question, however: what’s next? I hadn’t planned this far in advance…”

Naoki holds the mug in both hands, allowing its warmth to spread into her palms. Tapping her fingers in unison, she thinks about what else she had planned for today. Today is finances day, mostly. She had allocated most of the day to going through the month’s profits and expenses, balancing the checkbook of The Sun. But that’s dry work, not really something she wanted to explain to Skarlet. What else could they do? She considers this issue for a time, hunched over the desk, hands wrapped around her mug.