Note that it uses ax (16 bits) instead of rax (64 bits). I'd assume it has opcode 0x66 0x90, a 2 byte nop.

Now if the author can provide some more details, we'll see if the call is aligned on some interesting boundary.

I always wonder how much aligning code helps in real code. They seem waste a lot of bytes in the code segment. Aligning data, yes, that changes a lot, but the return position of a call in code?