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'Watch where you're going!' Edo screeches at Meiji when they nearly collide noses in mid-air. 'I've got a box on my back – you just have a mail pouch! Fly on the left, idiot!'
'You watch where you're going!' Meiji shouts back; it doesn't matter that he wasn't paying attention. He'd had a drink with some other messenger tengu who were on edge-of-time duty. More than one drink, but never mind. 'I've just been back from future's edge: you won't like it when they put you on that shift!'
'Is it worse than telegraphs?' Edo groans. 'The poles get in our way!'
'It is worse than telegraphs,' Meiji nods grimly. 'So much worse than telegraphs.'
'But with fewer poles?' Edo asks, face beseeching.
Meiji's expression is dark. 'Different poles.'
'I've had it with this life!' Edo declares, swinging his mail box around like a mighty hammer, his face reddening further with rage.
'Then you should have been better in your last one!' Meiji snaps, crimson creeping down his nose.
'You're one to talk!' Edo points at the letter falling carelessly from Meiji's pouch. 'You can't even deliver things! What if that one needed response service?!'
'Sōjōbō won't care about air conditioning service discounts!' Meiji wails. 'Most of the mail doesn't even matter anymore!'
Edo smacks Meiji with the box, full-on. 'What's an air conditioning?!'
Meiji slaps Edo across the face with his pouch. 'Ha! I knew you were avoiding shifts in other eras. Do you even know which it is now?!'
'Shouwa..?' ventures Edo.
'Reiwa!' Meiji snarls. 'The one where they changed the money again!'
'So Shouwa, then Reiwa,' Edo mumbles to himself, trying to remember.
'You haven't even done a round through Heisei?!' Meiji screams, flabbergasted. 'That's it—I'm voting for a union.'
'No!' Edo yells. 'We must preserve the old traditions! No unions! Home-mountain privilege – Mount Kurama is most senior! Not like you Ueno scu–'
'Seniority-based shift selection is idiotic and Mount Kurama is an ossified–' Meiji shakes his head hard and cuts himself off. 'It doesn't matter anyway. Everything is email now!'
'What's–'
'Email!!' Meiji repeats, so loudly he spits. 'There are mailing lists! We have to deal with spam laws! We have to become SMTP administrators!'
Edo slings his box back over his shoulder. 'I'm going back to work,' he declares with a huff. 'You! Fly properly! Obey the right-of-way laws of the time-roads!'
'Sōjōbō is going to hear about you!' Meiji flaps his wings irritably at Edo's retreating back. 'Just wait – if the rest of us have to study POP3 and IMAP, so do you!'