The Gods Are Flat-Broke Again

There was no bell to end the miracle. No thunder. No divine voice whispering "Audit complete."

Just silence. A curtain dropping in a room that never had a stage.

The crowd left first. Yazhen left second. I didn't leave at all.

Not yet.

He hadn't built the scam because of the bet. He hadn't started laundering miracles because a god told him to. He started doing it because it worked.

He revealed it because he lost.

Because Hasamura, divine gambler and borderline corporate mascot, officiated a game Yazhen couldn't win. And somewhere in the rules—hidden behind calligraphy and humor—was a clause that said:

"If you lose, you tell the truth to the next auditor who walks through your gate."

And Yazhen, being Yazhen, didn't hide it. He made it a show.

Because if you're forced to tell the truth, you might as well sell tickets.

He showed me the system.

Unregistered miracles flowing upstream. Faith used like credit. Blessings printed off-script. Spiritual currency bent and bartered in back channels that technically shouldn't exist.

And I felt it.

That flicker of recognition.

Not admiration. Not yet.

Just the echo of something I had known long before coming here:

That the people who got what they needed weren't always the ones who followed the rules.

So I stood in the aftermath, badge cold against my chest, WP card buzzing once every minute like a heartbeat with a deadline. The shrine quieted around me. Somewhere, a priest rang a bell for evening offerings. A dice altar reset. A faith register closed its final ledger of the day.

And I debated.

The divine system was built to avoid favoritism. Miracles must be requested, earned, catalogued. Not doled out to whoever has the cleverest backdoor.

Allowing a system like Yazhen's opens every temple, every god, every clerk to corruption. If miracles can be sold on the side, if WP can be laundered, if doctrine becomes optional…

What's left?

What separates order from chaos?

I could report him.

Easily.

One message. One flagged log. The Department of Internal Theology would probably swarm this place within the hour.

It would be sanctioned.

Shut down.

Accountants would repossess every charm with teeth in it.

Hasamura himself might be forced to issue a statement.

It would all be very official.

Very clean.

And very wrong.

Because.

I saw the results.

The rerouted WP.

The unlicensed miracles.

The child who walked again. The farmer who got his rain. The widow whose debt vanished after a prayer scribbled on a food wrapper and jammed in the wrong donation box.

I'd seen the divine path.

It didn't always lead where it was supposed to.

Sometimes it forked.

Sometimes it skipped people entirely.

And Yazhen didn't fix it—

—but he caught what fell through.

So the question was:

Was that justice?

Or just forgery?

And which one mattered more?

--------------------------------------

I have a job.

A title.

A pin polished with the cloth Tamori gave me while I stood in a dormitory designed by a sadist with a folding bed.

My job is not to decide right and wrong. It's to file it.

I do not know all the gods.

I do not see all the variables.

I was given a framework for interpreting violations, not resolving them.

I am not a god.

So if I ignore this—If I bury it—Am I making the same mistake they do?

Arrogance, by omission?

Am I believing too much in my own judgement?

That I saw a good outcome and decided it excused everything?

Because that's how corruption starts.

Not with greed.

With confidence.

With the quiet certainty that you are the exception who sees the full picture.

---------------------------------------------------

And if I know that?

If I know the miracle queue is probably three years long in some wards—

If I know that first-time worshipers are denied blessings because they filled the wrong form in the wrong dialect—

If I know that divinity requires an interface now, and that interface is intentionally inaccessible—

If I know all of that—

And I see someone trying to fix it—

Even if it's illegal.

Even if it's unethical.

Even if it's a scam disguised as a sacrament disguised as a dice game—

Do I report him?

Or do I let it run?

Because I could do nothing.

And it would keep working.

And no one else would know.

And that silence would help people.

Even if it helped for the wrong reasons.

I looked down at my WP card.

Still glowing.

Still waiting.

Report Status: PENDING.

Recommended Action: Auditor Discretion.

And here's where I landed:

Justice isn't always about catching what's wrong. Sometimes it's about not catching what works.

Sometimes it's about waiting.

Not to decide if someone's guilty.

But to decide if you're the one who's allowed to decide.

I didn't hit "Send."

Not yet.

I turned off the card.

I stepped off the platform.

I left the ring empty.

Because I wasn't ready to rule.

But I was ready to watch.

Which, apparently, was the job.

To watch, to record, to decide nothing until everything was already broken or too late to fix. To pretend neutrality was wisdom. To treat divine error like a spreadsheet entry.

I'm a glorified safety inspector in a casino that knew it was on fire and offered me complimentary tea while it burned.

I hadn't moved.

The miracle was over. The crowd dispersed. The shrine quieted like a casino at dawn—flashing lights, stale incense, the smell of risk still clinging to the velvet curtains.

My card was off. My badge was covered.

I wasn't meditating. I wasn't praying.

Just sitting in the miracle ring, waiting to feel less… inadequate.

That's when I heard the voice.

"You're leaning twelve degrees left. That's guilt posture."

I didn't look up. "And you are?"

"Someone qualified to assess posture."

She stepped into the ring like she'd been waiting for the invitation.

Tall—slightly. Not enough to be imposing, but enough to suggest she wouldn't move unless she meant to. Her robe was regulation-cut, but someone had re-hemmed it precisely at the ankle, weighted the sleeves, and pressed a visible seam down the spine like a sword sheath. Inked kanji stitched the cuffs in neat rows—doctrinal affirmations, each too exact to be decorative.

Her posture had the uncomfortable elegance of someone who believed back pain was a moral failure. One hand rested lightly on a brass balance scale—polished to a dull gleam, no magic, just presence—and the other at her hip, near a sash that held chalk sticks, sealed scrolls, and a folded instruction manual labeled Field Ethics, Edition 7.3.

Her hair was pinned up with a lacquered rod shaped like a straightedge. Her eyes were dark, but not unkind—just… intolerant of anything unsorted.

She looked at me the way a shelf looks at clutter.