Nassar sent him to the city registrar on a Tuesday with instructions enough to fit in one breath find the original filing for a contract from four years back confirm the interest clause matches what was recorded and don't come back without a copy.
The registrars office was the kind of place bureaucracy went to be tedious on purpose all aisles and cabinets that hadn't been reorganized in a decade presided over by a single clerk who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. Ren had been given a slip of paper with a filing number on it. Absolutely no idea how the numbering system actually worked
He was still squinting at cabinet after cabinet trying to make sense of a filing code that seemed to follow no logic he could find when someone reached past him for the drawer he'd just given up on.
"That's mine" he said startled than territorial.
"It's the registrars actually" said the girl now holding the drawer open. ". Go ahead and file a complaint if you want."
She was about his age, sharp-eyed, already flipping through folders with the kind of speed that suggested she'd done this before and he clearly hadn't. Ren felt his ears go warm in a way that had nothing to do with the heat.
"I need a filing from four years he said. "Contract number ending in oh-four."
"Congratulations. So do I."
"You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking?" She held up a scrap of paper with her filing number scrawled on it and Ren leaned in despite himself close enough to read it before he'd fully thought through how strange that was going to look.
The last four digits matched his exactly.
They both stared at the paper for a second long.
"That's not possible" Ren said.
"Clearly it is since we're both standing here holding it." She said it without patience though there was something underneath the irritation that might have been amusement if she'd let herself show it. "Different contracts probably share the tail number. Happens more than you'd think in a filing system this badly organized."
"You know a lot about organized filing systems."
"I know a lot about numbers in general." She said it flatly not bragging stating something she'd clearly proven to herself many times before. "Which is more than I can say for whoevers sending you on this errand since you clearly didn't know the registrar files by year not by contract number."
Ren felt his face heat up further. "I knew that."
"You obviously did not know that."
He opened his mouth to argue realized he had nothing to argue with and closed it again. She smirked slightly in the particular way people smirk when they've won an argument they didn't even have to try very hard to win.
"Fine" he said. "You clearly know your way here. Help me find contract four-oh-four-one whichever year it actually is. I'll admit you were right."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because you're already standing in the aisle I need and it'll take you thirty seconds and you look like the kind of person who can't stand watching someone struggle with something you already know how to do."
That got a reaction out of her somewhere between offense and being caught out. "That's a specific and slightly insulting way to ask for a favor."
"Is it working?"
She gave him a look the kind that seemed to be measuring something and then without quite admitting she was doing him a favor pulled a folder from three drawers down and dropped it into his hands.
"Year matters more than the tail number" she said. "Try to remember that time someone sends you somewhere you clearly don't know how to navigate."
"Thank you" Ren said and meant it and also couldn't quite stop himself from adding "Was that so hard?"
"You have no idea how hard that was for me" she said deadpan that Ren couldn't immediately tell if she was joking which somehow made it funnier.
He flipped the folder open there in the aisle more out of habit than urgency and something in the numbers caught his eye almost instantly a small arithmetic slip buried three lines down that had nothing to do with why he was there.
"This totals off" he said before he could stop himself. "By two percent."
She leaned over without asking permission scanned the lines and went quiet for a second in a way that told him he was right before she said anything.
"Huh" she said. "You're not completely useless then."
"High praise."
"Don't get used to it."
They stood there a moment longer than either of them probably meant to the folder between them neither one ready to be the first to walk away. Then the clerk called out something about closing and the moment broke the way moments in bureaucratic offices tend to without ceremony.
"I'm Ren" he said mostly because leaving without saying anything felt strange after all that.
"Mira" she said turning back toward her own drawer though she glanced back once before rounding the corner like she hadn't quite decided yet whether she wanted to remember his name or not.
Ren stood there a moment longer than he needed to filing folder in hand feeling less annoyed about the registrars filing system than he had ten minutes ago and considerably more unsettled by something he couldn't quite name yet.
It wasn't until he was home that it hit him.
Mira. The same name Denny had said in Nassars office. The same fast careful hands Aldis apparently couldn't stop being pleased with.
He stopped walking in the middle of the street.
Of all the people, in Ashwick he'd just spent twenty minutes being outmatched by and mildly charmed by the one person whose loyalty belonged to the man now deciding what happened to his familys debt.