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

The woman put the confectionery in her mouth with three bites, downed it with a café latte, and when I thought that was the end of it, she proceeded to take a spoonful of pudding with whipped cream on it and dump it into her mouth, followed by tearing open a bag of melon bread. Her momentum was unrelenting. With her face downcast, as if possessed by something, she popped one thing after another into her mouth and slurped down the paper packet.

It was as though she couldn’t see anything in her surroundings, which made me feel fear, even if it was only faintly.

Was she experiencing a bad day? At first, I thought so, but then I became increasingly unsettled by the woman who was mindlessly devouring an enormous amount of food in the dark parking lot.

Something was off about her. The woman struck me as peculiar.

To my surprise, aside from the beverages, the woman devoured the majority of the food in the bag over the course of the following several minutes. After that, she showed no sign of leaving and remained motionless for a while, staring blankly in a direction I couldn’t quite make out.

The woman remained hunched over, not doing anything.

It seemed as if I was overlooking something. I was not amiss in thinking so.

Ballpoint pen, loose-leaf notebook. There was still another thing she had bought, right, that brown envelope.

The woman curled her body up and began frantically scrawling something on a piece of paper. Her right arm moved wildly in a frighteningly detailed manner.

In my life, I have encountered a variety of consumers. A weary young female office female worker slurping down a cup of ramen outdoors after pouring hot water in the store, an elderly guy smoking a full pack of cigarettes that he had purchased, an uncle sitting openly in front of the store after purchasing a pornographic magazine—but never a case like that woman.

It was not only that she was behaving abnormally. In stark contrast to the other people, she exuded a strikingly distinctive atmosphere.Translator: MadHatter

Rather it was a bit murky… I couldn’t exactly put it into words. Even though I had previously decided that this person was different compared to others, I was certain of it.

My pulse was racing and pounding uncontrollably.

What was she writing on the paper? Regarding that. By any chance…

It reminded me vividly of the muddy brown envelope that Yakumo had retrieved from the wrecked van, pulled out, and showed it to me.

[―-It’s a suicide note.]

Was I just jumping to conclusions, or might this be my intuition that I could trust? It turned out that I was the kind of person who, no matter how far I went, could not back down, despite my repeated conflicts with myself in the end.

Without learning my lesson, I decided to try to approach that woman again.

“Um…”Not shared on aggregator sites

How should I initiate a conversation? After leaving the store, I realized the obvious, and after a short pause, I fell into silence before the woman.

Then she had a small amount of cream on the edge of her mouth. At the sight of me, she looked awfully uncomfortable and stood up.

The loose-leaf notebook and brown envelope on her lap dropped. She picked them up in a hurry. The paper made a crinkling sound as she clutched it with one hand.

“Um, uh…”

I was such a fool. It was good that my words came out but what should I say in such a situation?

My hands began to perspire dramatically as I grew agitated. I had to say something.

“I am bothering you by staying in front of the store for so long, right? Excuse me, I’m leaving now.”

Before I had a chance to speak, the woman uttered in a low voice with a dark look on her face.

“No, I didn’t think of that.”

“It’s okay, you’ve been watching me for a while now. You must have found me to be a suspicious customer.”

What? So I was exposed…

“So I’m leaving.”

I don’t want to get involved anymore. The woman threw the wreckage in the trash, slung the bag from the convenience shop with the remaining items over her arm, and made a hasty departure.

“Ah―”

Keep her back, you idiot. A voice in my heart commanded me to do so.

That middle-aged man that Aoyama was dealing with, and Hyuga, had thoroughly affected me.

I was being driven into a corner. Tonight I was out of character.

That was why I had taken such a bold step.

“Please wait!”

I exclaimed to her as she walked briskly away from the convenience store and dashed out into the street. She didn’t even turn around but just took off running.

“Hold on!”

I reflexively went after the escaping woman. She was running down the street when I instantly seized her left arm.

“Wait!”

Again, I shouted. My voice was swallowed up by the darkness. The woman’s movement came to a halt. Simultaneously, she swung her arm away from me with all her strength.

“No!”

A piercing scream was released. Her outer clothing, which had been held at her side, fell to the ground. The collar of the blouse of the woman who quickly distanced herself from me with a frightened look on her face was greatly perturbed.

At that moment. I saw it. Her white neck, around her collarbone.

A large black bruise, brand new, like a bite mark.

It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to figure out that it was something I wasn’t supposed to see.

She must have seen the shift in my expression since she grasped her collar more than was necessary to cover it. Subsequently, she glared up at me with a powerful, murderous intent in her eyes.

“What the hell! …Since earlier, you!!”

“I am sorry…”

“Don’t follow me, w-what do you want…” the woman protested in a wavering voice.

On the impulse of the moment, I was so agitated that my heart almost ruptured. I may have been able to go back if I had apologized to her with all of my heart right now.

“Um, I am mistaken, right…”

Even so, I was too foolish to choose not to go back.

“Your direction isn’t that way, is it?”

In my agitated state, I kept breathing heavily, my shoulders were shifting up and down, and I said something even more outrageous.

“That’s the… same direction you came from, isn’t it?”

Where are you going now?

I voiced that out randomly. In my words, no such thing as certainty existed. I spat them out as if I was being guided. That was all. That was all there was to it but…

I thought she would either eat me up or scorn me.

“Why…”

Her reaction was far too unexpected.

“Hah, hah… hah―”

With a muffled voice, she put her hand over her mouth, her eyes widened, and she took a small step backward as the convenience store bag was dropped on the concrete.

“W-Wrong, I-I… I am.. ah.”

Clutching a handful of her black hair, she crouched on the spot with a hushed voice.

“I, I, no… not that.”

She spewed out incoherent words with a violent head shake and a terrified expression on her face.

“U-Um.”

A shrieking sound reverberated over the street as I moved toward her to calm down her abrupt confusion, stunning me and forcing me to stop in my tracks.

“No, stop it, don’t touch me!! No!!”

I had no time to be hurt by her denial.

It was abnormal to be so frightened, and that bruise I could see through the collar of her blouse. This frightened look… what exactly…

“Ugh, ugh, please, so leave me alone…”

Her voice seemed to fade away. Through her disheveled bangs, her eyes were peeking out, and she was looking at me with large drops of tears streaming down.

From the corners of her eyes, from the tops of her eyes, and down onto her cheeks. The tears were falling on the concrete ground.

As if the veil had been lifted from her face, she showed me for the first time her facial expression. The agony that overwhelmed her. The emotion of sorrow.

There was no way she could make this kind of face for no reason at all.

Unable to move, I froze, looking down at the woman. She fell on her buttocks, her nails digging into her head.

 “I am… better off… I… l-living… no… worth…”

That’s why.

I’m better off dead―

Indeed, she said that with a hiccup.

Ah, I knew it.

This person. So it was about that after all.

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