Entertainment Circle12 min read
My Day Job Is Catching Spirits — and He Won My Heart
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"This broth is perfect," I said, and my spoon made a small, happy sound against the bowl.
"You're the only person who eats noodles like it's a ceremony," Maki laughed from across the table.
"I'm Kaylie," I said, and then I paused, because the man by the window turned his head as if the name had been a bell. He had a look that belonged to magazine covers and late-night interviews. He had a faint scent like bamboo tea.
"Reid?" Maki mouthed. Camila blinked and covered her mouth.
I kept eating. I hid the way my pulse jumped. I had a job that said I should stare straight at spirits, not at handsome marketers.
"You're not from this office, are you?" he asked, moving his chair a small, polite distance.
"No," I said. "I'm a student. I study old things." I shrugged. "I also... help people who think their pets are ghosted."
He smiled. "Reid Youssef. I work on new products upstairs. I thought—your face in sunlight is good for photos."
"Photos make broth look smaller," I said, but he smiled like a child who had been handed a secret. He took a quick picture of me with his phone and then, almost shyly, put his phone away.
"Do you know how to be a model?" he asked. "Or at least how to let a camera like you?"
I made a face. "I chase foxes and fix tax forms for sprites. I'm not a commercial."
"Then stay for an extra bite. I like the way you eat." He was half-petulant, half-patient. I stayed because curiosity bit harder than caution.
After that, our days tangled. I kept my badge at the Department of Spirit Registration tucked like a secret under my jacket. Reid's business world was polished and loud; mine was a map of narrow rules and older hands. But he kept showing up at odd times: the bookstore when my class let out, the tea stall at dusk, the old cinema where nobody sat at night. He liked to sit two chairs away and watch me read as if my reading could be the world he wanted to learn.
One night, when the mall was close to empty, a rabbit in a cosmetics uniform hopped off its stool and turned human. I had seen that exact kind before — animal-born spirits who took jobs to pay rent. The rabbit's human form was Delaney Farmer; she blinked at me, ears folded like an apology.
"Please don't scream," she said, and her voice had a cotton softness.
"Relax," I said, and because I was a trainee with a badge, I did what I was trained to do. "Why are you in the mall with your seal unbound?"
Delaney scraped her hoof, embarrassed. "I wasn't supposed to be near that man. He smelled like orange and money. He walked past and then I couldn't stop. He put something in my tea. I woke up here in clothes and thought—"
"You were drugged," I said. "Did you see who it was?"
Delaney shook her head. "Only orange. And someone with green hair, like a tree."
I looked up. Reid had been standing in the hallway. He wasn't an ordinary observer anymore; his eyes had gone hard, protective.
"You're safe," he said. He sounded restless, and I felt something in the way he said it. "Tell me what you remember."
Delaney stammered and then told us a few broken pieces: a woman in an orange coat, a laugh like coins, a glint of a badge that wasn't a company logo. She described being told, "Just one breath," and the sensation of losing a choice.
"Someone set you," I said, while my hands already tightened around the seals in my pouch. "Someone is testing spirits. Someone chose you to fail."
"I'll pay you," Reid said suddenly. "Pay what you want to find who did it. We can make this public. Our foundation funds city safety projects. My company will cover—"
"No," I said. "You don't throw money at magic. You put evidence on the table."
Reid sat back as if I'd just arranged chess pieces into a challenge he couldn't refuse. "I'll help. Full transparency. Cameras. Guards."
Delaney gave me a look as if to ask whether this was safe. I had no right to promise safety. So I promised action.
We started small. Delaney returned to her counter under the watch of my little charms; Reid installed a short-lived camera in the cosmetics corner with a novice's permission and a very persuasive e-mail to facilities. My friends Maki and Camila teased me about being photographed by a handsome director, but they came to Delaney's counter and kept moving within sight, because that was the kind of human line that makes spirits feel less alone.
"You're not a spy, are you?" Delaney asked me one morning, apron still warm with the store's steam.
"No," I said. "I'm a collector of odd stories. And your story matters."
Weeks folded. Reid and I found reasons to sit together under neon signs. He was stubborn about ethics and awkward about gifts. He brought me a set of plain brushes and then left embarrassed when I knocked one against my teacup like a drum. He said kind things: "You don't have to be the one who fixes everything." He was steady like a quiet door.
And the orange coat returned.
It happened at the company's gala. Our city prefers glass and floodlights for evenings like that. The product launch was at a hotel ballroom where chandeliers hung like small moons. Reid's company, headed by Valentin Duncan, had invited buyers and journalists and a hundred glittering strangers. I stood at the far end of the sponsorship display because Reid insisted I meet the new campaign team. Delaney was there as a vendor's guest, and Finch Chambers—the man who smelled like old cedar and who once revealed himself to me as a sentient tree spirit in the university courtyard—was quietly at the back with a small, ironic smile.
"Keep an eye on the coat," Finch said to me, like he had known what would happen. He rarely told stories he didn't mean.
I had a badge but not a place on the podium. From the balcony, the room looked alive as a hive. When the lights dimmed and Reid introduced the new serum line, I felt a shadow slip past the door like a folded rumor.
"Look," Delaney whispered. "There."
A woman in orange, same coat, same coin-laugh. She didn't look like a guest. She was too still. She walked the line of servers like a seamstress checking fabric. When she passed a waiter, his expression smoothed and the tray wavered for a heartbeat.
I moved. Reid saw me and, without a word, followed.
The camera feed we had installed in the cosmetics counter two weeks earlier now played on a rough table with a borrowed laptop, in the service corridor. I reached for the laptop with hands that didn't tremble and played the feed. The orange coat had been at the counter then too, watching Delaney with a cool curiosity. The footage showed a hand slip tequila-thin syrup into a thermos and set it near Delaney. Then the camera lost her. The frame cut.
"Pause." Reid said it into the dark, his voice sharp. "Who is that?"
We followed the coat through the footage—into the elevator, out a service exit. Then the trail ended. I leaned back, thinking of all the ways a person can vanish in a city. Then Valerie from facilities—Valentin's right hand—tapped my shoulder and handed a guest list.
"Her name is not on it," she said, "but she has been seen in other buildings. She sometimes uses the trade door to move between venues."
"Find out who she is," Reid said. He pulled his jacket on like a soldier. "And bring her here."
Valentin's security team had no patience for theater, and within an hour the coat was tracked to a low-floor access that opened onto a delivery corridor. We cornered her among crates of bottled water. She turned slow as autumn and then smiled like a coin.
"Axl Ortega," she said. "Do you know me? I'm a fixer."
"Why drug Delaney?" I asked. My voice was small but lined with the law that had trained me.
"You think small," Axl said. "I think big. Spirits are a resource. Pity you didn't see the ledger." He lifted his chin at the camera, and for a second he thought the room would applaud his nerve.
No one applauded.
"You used a spirit in a test," Reid said. "You hurt a creature doing its job. You made an experiment on a citizen."
"Experiment? That word is cute," Axl replied. "Call it research. Call it quality assurance. The market speaks in users and buyers. If I can make a scent demand, I sell the demand. If I can make spirits prefer one man, I don't just patent the product—I patent life."
Delaney's ears flattened. Finch's great, patient face grew like a breaking branch.
"You sold charms," I said. "You drugged-loved people. You used living things as marketing bait."
Axl's smile curdled. "You have no proof. You have stories and whim and a pretty face. Where is your file? Bring me your badge."
Reid snapped. "We filmed you. We have camera feeds. We have receipts and trucks. We have witnesses."
He called the ballroom manager, who opened the back room and rolled out the laptop. The video played on a screen. The room watched. Axl's face drained its color like happens to fruit in the sun.
"That's me," Axl said, and then his voice hit denial like a shield. "No— that's staged. You planted this."
Valentin, who had watched his company's name and investors in one eye and ethics in the other, stepped forward. "If this is true, Axl, your contract ends. If it is false, I will publicly apologize. Security, hold him until we sort this out."
Axl's mouth turned to a thin thread. He spat words that tried to be threats. "You think your cameras are perfect? You think your team won't be bought? You think laws will save you from what you need to survive?"
People in the ballroom began to gather around like moths. Phones shone like many small suns. Someone in the crowd said, "Is that the orange coat woman?" A whisper went from table to table.
"We'll call the regulator," Finch said, suddenly clean and cold. He had the slow authority of a tree that had watched cities grow. "You used spirits in human experiments. That is a crime against living beings and the state."
The crowd softened into silence and then into murmurs. Axl's composure cracked. He tried to walk away.
"Don't move," Reid said. He was no policeman, but his voice was a brick thrown at the crack. "Security, hold him."
Security caught Axl like a net. The man fought like someone with the arrogance of a person used to getting his way. Phones recorded everything: the denial, the sudden fear, the soft sinking. Then Axl's face went through a play of colors.
"You're lying," he hissed. "I paid people. I bought research. I bought secrets. You can't pin me with your witch stories."
"Everyone, look at this," I said, and my voice did something I had practiced in interviews and field reports: it made people listen. I had the footage, the receipts I'd forced out of a supplier, Delaney's witness statement and a lab sheet from an illicit testing room that Valentin's legal adviser had found in a trash heap when he was running damage control. I held each thing up in front of the cameras like bones.
"And here's the worst," Delaney said. She had steadied herself and now stepped forward. "He kept a list. He sold scent profiles. He told men to buy them for dates, for power. He told investors little tricks to move markets. He thought the spirits would be invisible to everyone who has the money to pay."
Axl had no more lies. The crowd hummed and someone started to record live. "This man used a living spirit to test a product on a human," I said. "He endangered my... our lives."
Axl sank. He dropped to his knees as if gravity had finally remembered him. His voice was thin, "I didn't mean— I meant— it was business."
"Business?" someone echoed. "You call this business?"
"Get off your knees," he begged. "Please. I will pay. I will make it right."
Delaney's lips were tight. "You made me forget my choices. You gave me a price to breathe. You said I would be perfect content for a season."
The audience watched, some with anger, some with sick fascination, others already leaning into their phones recording a fall from grace.
Axl's face twisted. He tried to blame me. "She seduced me!" he blurted at one point, and the room laughed as if the sentence were a bad theater line.
Reid's hand tightened into a fist beside me. "You sold suffering as a market. You weaponized desire."
Axl's reaction changed quickly. He tried shame, and shame found him thin. He tried threats and found nothing. He tried money and found the ballroom's moral tide had already turned. Phones clicked. A woman in a velvet dress took a video and said on the mic, "We should call the regulator now." People started to chant quietly, the way crowds do when they have found a villain.
"Please," Axl said again, this time like a child who had hidden and now had been found. "I can fix this. I can confess. I can pay restitution."
"Confession has value," Valentin said. "But first, we call the police and the spirit regulation board. We hand over the evidence. We contact the Department of Spirit Registration. You are done here."
Axl's limbs trembled. He fell forward toward the crowd and someone held out a coat for him to lean on. He kept repeating, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," and then he split into a quieter plea: "Don't ruin me... don't ruin me."
People filmed him like a lesson on loop. Delaney stood a step away and watched him collapse. Her voice was calm when she spoke. "You don't get to buy people's breath back."
He was led away in handcuffs. Phones flashed and the room hummed. Two journalists were already composing their copy.
The videos spent the net in hours. The footage from the ballroom and the security feed stitched together into a timeline. Axl's world bristled into story fodder: his contracts, his blackbox receipts, the buyers. For three days, the story trended and his name sat in headlines with words like "exposed," "illicit trials," and "proof."
He tried to beg on the second day in a hearing room. He tried to plead for lesser charges. He tried to scapegoat suppliers. In court and out, each try ended with more evidence: the lab notes, the money trail, the text messages where he arranged trials. Business partners who had once laughed with him now walked away on camera. His mother put a hand over her face and looked like she couldn't breathe.
When he finally faced the regulator in a public hearing, it felt like an arena. Depositions were read aloud. Witnesses pointed. Delaney told how she had been led into a room and told she would be famous. She described the taste of the drug. The investigator produced the list of buyers. The regulator's gavel fell like a judge's wind.
Axl's face went from confident, to pale, to broken. He fell to his knees in front of the hearing room's glass, and bowed his head. "Please," he said, "I didn't know I would... I didn't know." With each word his voice broke and the court reporters typed on.
The regulator did not dance. The law does not satisfy the taste for spectacle. But the public punishment was still complete: Axl was stripped from his position, his accounts frozen pending investigation, his licenses revoked, his contracts voided. His clients wrote statements condemning him. His social circle thinned like bad paint under solvent. Videos of his kneeling in the hotel corridor were shared and re-shared. The man who had thought to corner desire as if it were a product had been cornered by the very public that once admired him.
"He kept begging," Delaney told a reporter. "He came to us after. He sent me flowers. No. You don't get a second chance to take my choices."
The outrage had a strange kindness to it. People recorded Delaney's calm, people posted messages asking for donations for the spirits who had been harmed, and the Department of Spirit Registration tightened policy on human-spirit interactions. Reid's company organized a rescue fund for abused spirits and launched a public audit of its vendors. Reid held Delaney's hand once, in the quiet weeks after the storm, and I watched him listen more than speak.
After the storm, our lives rearranged. Valentin's company tightened ethics. The city's regulation changed. Axl's name became a lesson we repeated to children: "Don't sell what belongs to others."
And us? Reid and I built a strange, steady thing.
"I was foolish," he told me one afternoon while Delaney taught new recruits how to keep counters safe. "I thought hurry and money could fix everything. I learned that the right move is to stand in the light."
"Or to not move at all," I said.
"You mean when you stand there and let me fall into your orbit?" He smiled.
"You mean when I stand there and you forget who you are without being watched," I said.
He kissed my temple. It was the softest, safest thing, like returning to a chair that fits.
Weeks later, Finch came to the tea stall and left me a twig pin made from his old bark, polished and shining like a small memory. I pinned it into my hair before I left for work.
"Keep this," Finch said. "It is heavy enough to remind you to hold ground, light enough to let you move."
I kept it.
"Are you going to stay a tian shi?" Reid asked once at my kitchen table, where we ate eggs and debated the ethics of market research like it was a small crime.
"I don't know how to be anything else," I said. "I like the honest problem of a frightened spirit."
He reached for my hand like it was a map. "Then I will be your harbor. I will build you a safe place to do this."
"You promise?"
"I promise. I'll make sure your work never becomes a commodity in the hands of men like Axl."
I looked at him, at the steady man who had won a company to do the right thing. "And I promise," I said, "I will teach you the names of trees, and how to hear what the wind cannot say."
He pretended to be reluctant, then laughed. "Deal."
We married quietly, at first, with two old men who had stacked a complicated history around us: Valentin as my shout-of-approval, and my grandfather, who had always worried, smiling at two people who had stood tall. Delaney danced in a bunny apron, Finch brought a sprig that smelled like rain, Maki and Camila did a terrible toast that everyone loved.
At our wedding, I wore a hairpin in the bun—the little twig Finch had given me. Reid kept a folded photo of the noodle bowl we first shared.
The orange coat was gone from our lives. Axl's punishment had been public, complete and sharp. Delaney's work at the cosmetics counter became safer. Regulation meant that any human who wanted to test a spirit had to have permits, oversight and, importantly, consent.
And when the city asked for a public example of how to reconcile capital with life, we sent a team: Reid spoke about ethics and product safety; I spoke about choices and consent; Delaney spoke about dignity. The crowd listened.
"Do you regret it?" Reid asked one night, under an azalea tree that smelled like salt, and the city lights made long orange pools in the river.
"Regret what?" I asked.
"Meeting me. Being forced into a public story."
I pressed the twig pin between my fingers. "I don't regret any of it. We learned to hold a life like you hold a fragile cup. We learned to set limits. We learned to say no to the people who wanted to buy everything."
"And us?"
I looked up at him. He had a face I knew like the underside of a book's cover. "Us is a practice. We keep choosing."
He grinned. "Then let's practice."
We still ate noodles sometimes, with the same happy spoon noise. When the wind smelled odd, I would reach for my twig pin and know whether to follow it into a corridor or to shut a door. The world was less tidy than it wanted to be, but now there were more people who said "no" when someone tried to sell a life.
And when someone tried to kneel for forgiveness in the wrong room, the room kept its cameras rolling. The world learned to look.
The End
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