Starting a Night Shift Part-time Job at a Convenience Store.

“U-Um―”

When I let out a hushed voice, I was gripped by the shoulder from behind. Turning around, I found Aoyama there. He conveyed the message to me with his eyes.

Don’t worry about that.

“Will… stop…” the middle-aged man said in a mosquito-like voice as I stepped back behind Aoyama. “I’m not going to buy it… after all…”

Tears pooled up in his eyes as he bit his lip.

The man’s body trembled, and after hearing this, Aoyama nodded slowly, holding his hand to return the bills to his pocket, and prompted him in a soft voice.

“It’s better that way.”

“Ugh, yes…”

“It’s better that way.”

As if to remind him, Aoyama repeated, and the man fell on his knees, which were shaking violently, and burst into a fit of sobbing on the spot.

Whatever occurred was not known. Nobody even tried to ask what had occurred. Even so, Aoyama did not release the man’s hand until he was ready to leave, nodded his head repeatedly, and waited for the man to stop crying.

“Take care.”

After receiving all the products on the counter, Aoyama carefully watched the man’s back slump as he walked out of the store until he was out of sight.

It was only an occurrence lasting several minutes.

Regardless, for me as a staff member, and for the customers who were gathering in the store, it was a record-breaking and out-of-the-ordinary event.

“It was chilling…”

With the last customer out of the store, Aoyama’s voice faltered, and he plopped down on the counter like a toppled bear.

“Hah… I was seriously freaked out too.”

While my knees trembled, I put my hands on the cigarette rack behind me.

“Hakamada, you’re perspiring heavily.”

“Aoyama, your face looks awful, too.”

I thought both of us must have been pale. My facial muscles kept twitching as I smiled bitterly.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen this…”

A person who was about to commit suicide―

That heavy atmosphere, that awful face that suggested he hadn’t had a restful night’s sleep in days. That lineup of products and the amount of liquor that one person could not possibly drink.

I didn’t even want to imagine what he was up to, but anyone could have figured it out.

If someone bought something like that in a place like this…

I knew there really existed people who would try to do that…

Of course, they existed… because this place was of such nature.

Several days ago, though reluctantly, I ventured into that place.

While I didn’t see any real corpses, I saw enough of the similarities that made me sick.

I hated recalling it, but it was truly appalling. The deeper I plunged, the more of the departed I caught sight of. Each and every one of them sent another shudder to me.

All of them remained in that state, in their postmortem form.

A man hanging from a tree, a woman with her tongue snapped.

I was reminded of how dreadful this place was.

“Hakamada, it was your first time, right… it must have been a surprise.”

“Y-Yes.”

“Occasionally, people like that show up. They are so easy to understand that I am amazed as well.”

Aoyama was such a veteran, having dealt with this kind of person many times before.

‘In case you’re wondering, this kind of thing has been going on for a long time, and it’s not only a couple of people…”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, some people blatantly buy things like that, but others mix them in with other things so you don’t notice, but I can generally tell… that there’s something wrong with this person.”

“That’s a vivid account…”

“Because it’s all real,. This place is not only for specters… some of the staff members were so shocked that they quit because they were so distraught that they were the ones who had sold the products to them.”

“I… couldn’t say anything at that moment.”

“Of course, everyone is in distress at that moment, and we have no right to turn them away so openly, saying ‘we’re sorry, that can’t be sold’.”

Even so, standing there in silence is not an option, Aoyama muttered. 

“Hakamada, you don’t have to worry about it, that person, he has given up and gone home.”

I was truly glad that Aoyama was present today. In the absence of this person, I might have simply… The thought of that horrified me.

“The person earlier… I wonder if he’s okay.”

“Well, I hope he realized it was a dumb thing to do and went home.”

“Yeah…”

After all, Aoyama noted, this convenience store faced challenges beyond the specters’ disruptions.

Among the suicidal people who congregated in such a dreary place, a few of them would drop by here, like earlier. The hourly rate was proportionate to how psychologically taxing the situation I was subjected to.

Nobody would naturally want to work a part-time job where you sometimes had to deal with suicidal people. It was not only due to bizarre phenomena but also because of the circumstances at play, the replacement of staff at this convenience store was drastic.