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

Forget about it…

After seeing everything there, I closed the website by clicking the X in the top right corner of my screen. The posts seemed to be continuing after that, but I couldn’t be bothered to read all of them. Since I didn’t even know their faces and they had the freedom to say anything they pleased, trusting anything posted on the internet was foolish. What was the point of seeing such things?

I switched on the fan and lit a pack of cigarettes that I had taken out of the box on my desk.

My physical condition had been rather lethargic lately, so perhaps summer fatigue had set in. Well, since beginning to work at night, my days and nights were reversed, so getting out of shape was a normal occurrence.

Even though I was getting enough sleep, I still felt sluggish all over.

Tomorrow would mark a week of working at that convenience store. And finally, it would be my first meeting with the rumored Takenaka. Not that I was nervous, but somehow I was dreading the prospect of meeting Takenaka.

Would I again experience an unexpected event while working part-time? Even if the events so far have merely been a sequence of coincidences, such strange happenings were unbearable. This time it wouldn’t happen… probably so.

My head was still fuzzy even after I resisted the urge to inadvertently brace myself in this way. Lest I became conscious of something that was gradually amassing within me, I let out a large amount of smoke from my cigarette to distract myself.

While I was doing so, the sun was setting and night was descending. In no time at all, the time was drawing near.

Oh, so dull…

Muttering internally, I parked my bike in the parking lot and proceeded to enter the store.

“Oh, here you are.”

“Thank you for your hard work.”

Today’s evening shift was Nagase… and the manager.

Oh, I hadn’t spotted this barcode man in a while.

“Long time no see, Hakamada. How are you?”

Immediately after entering behind the counter, the manager smiled and came to my side as if pleased with our reunion. What was with that expectant gaze?

“Well, reasonably well.”

“I heard from Aoyama that you are performing smoothly. I’m impressed.”

“I haven’t achieved anything that significant.”

Most of the time I simply stood here.

“No, no, keeping it going for a week is excellent. Recently, the replacement of new workers has been so rapid that I’m glad to find that the night shift staff will finally be able to settle down.”

“I see.”

“What’s wrong? You seem out of spirits.”

“No, nothing.”

“Oh, I get it. You must be tense because of meeting with Takenaka today.”

To say that I was not nervous would be a falsehood.

After sending off one of the customers, Nagase turned around and smilingly said, “If it’s Takenaka, he’s already arrived. He’s in the back room getting ready right now.”

“Eh.”

Today, I showed up twenty minutes earlier than usual since I was a newcomer, intending to be here earlier than Takenaka, yet he arrived here before me. How many minutes in advance did Takenaka arrive? Wasn’t he too early?

What was he doing in the back room to kill time?

“Takenaka is early, isn’t he?

“He usually comes in this early.”

“I guess he’ll be coming out soon. Since you still have some time left, why don’t the two of you have a little chat?

Nagase suggested this since standing around here wasn’t practical, so I put my hand on the doorknob to meet Takenaka, who was behind the door before me.

Even though my face was somewhat tight, I had to smile… When meeting someone new, smiling was a basic rule. I repeated this, yet for some reason, my smile turned strangely stiff. This was strange… I never experienced this with Aoyama or Hirai.

Why―

Right when I was having a strange struggle in front of the back room door, the doorknob in my grip moved on its own. At the same time that I lifted my head with a start, the white door before my eyes came closer and closer. It violently crashed into my face.

“Ugh―”

Right then, sparks scattered from my head and eyes. My vision faded to pure white, and the impact pounded me on the bridge of my nose. For several moments, what had taken place escaped my grasp.

“Ah.”

“Uwah.”

A dumb voice escaped my lips, and I staggered on the spot. The door opened at the worst possible time, striking me in the face.

Nagase, who was handling the cash register, the manager, and several customers in the store were all watching me.

Their faces were equally distorted, and their mouths were half open. All at once, the air within the convenience store froze. No matter how you viewed it, it was a bizarre scene that would have been out of the ordinary in a convenience store.

“Buh, uoh, uhhh~… ihee!”

The unexpected turn of events left me writhing in agony, covering half of my face with my hands and crouching there.

“Are you alright?! Hakamada!”

“Wow, that seems to hurt a lot…”

While I couldn’t take my hands off of myself, Nagase and the store manager cast worried glances at me and called out to me. Even the customers in line at the cash counter gazed down at me with widening eyes.

Stop looking at me, this was embarrassing, damn it. To the customer, I probably looked like an idiot clerk who slammed his face into the door, but it wasn’t my fault that I got slammed in the face by the door.

In this case, it was my carelessness that was to blame as well but… 

The person behind the door who opened it normally without assuming that someone would be in front of it was equally at fault…

“…”

With my nose and mouth pressed together with my hands, I slowly looked up at the individual who had opened the door, my face contorted in agony.

He sported a well-known uniform and had fresh, natural black hair that seemed to be well-received by the women. All the fundamental features of the face may be described as well-defined, with a prominent nose like a celebrity, well-shaped eyebrows, and slightly slanted eyes. He had a lean build and was tall enough to be level with the door.

A man with such a flawless physique would likely be referred to as attractive. With my hair having been repeatedly dyed with hair dye and lacking luster, my ears being heavily pierced, a build that exceeded the average height of an adult male but possessed no great merit, and having the face of a delinquent, he did indeed appear to be dozens of times more appealing to today’s women than I did.

So this was that Takenaka person huh.

Or rather… Apologize…! You hit me in the face! It hurt like hell!

Takenaka was looking down at me with hung-up, staring eyes while having half of his body protrude from the door as I stared up at him as if I were frantically complaining.

Unable to utter a word, I looked up at him, and Takenaka looked down at the frozen me.

We both held our gazes on the other for a short while without uttering a word. The man’s face was expressionless… He exhibited no sign of remorse—not even a smile.

What the hell was with this guy… Did he really think that slamming me in the face with the door served me right?

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be casting such a cold stare…

“Takenaka, Hakamada just slammed into the door, flat on his face, you know.”

Perhaps as a follow-up, it was Nagase who broke the silence. At that point, Takenaka blinked for the first time.

“Eh.”

I heard him said softly. He then politely apologized while staring at me.

“I am sorry.”

It didn’t feel like he was being insincere, perhaps… he hadn’t noticed. Despite feeling a little discontent, I retracted my hand that was suppressing the pain and stood up before forcing myself to smile.

“Hahaha, the timing is too bad, isn’t it?”

The height difference between us was… wow, huge. The same applies to Aoyama, but this guy was considerably more prominent as well.

What was he, a telephone pole? If he and Hirai were to stand side by side, they would look like a big man and a dwarf.

“Hi, I’m Hakamada. I’ll be working with you from today onward, Takenaka…”

A trickle of blood flowed from my nose as I prepared to say it with a casual air of indifference.

Nosebleed―

“Ah.”

Ahh… 

From behind, I heard Nagase’s and the manager’s voices.

This was bad…!

In a panic, I suppressed my nose with both hands, but the warm blood vigorously coming out leaked from between my fingers. Behind the counter, the blood began to stream onto the ground. My face became even heated up because the customers were staring at me wondering what was going on as I was dripping blood, and the flow of blood was…

Aaahhhh! It wouldn’t stop! How should a nosebleed be stopped!? Should I just turn my head upward!? I mean, drinking nosebleed drops wasn’t the way to go, right!?

Contrary to my blatant panic, Takenaka stared at me briefly before slipping back into the back room again, and just when I thought he had withdrawn, he held out a box of tissues to me, who was motionless and pressing my nose.

“…Here, please use these.”

Having my face slammed into the door and my nose bleeding while standing there with tears in my eyes, I pulled out several tissues at once and shoved them up my nostrils as if clinging to them. After shoving them in, I had to wait in the back room for several minutes, repeatedly changing the tissues until the nosebleed subsided.

During that time, Takenaka was apparently cleaning the store and mopping the floor that I had stained. They told me that when the manager and Nagase returned to the back room.

Well, what can be said? That my initial encounter with Takenaka went much worse than I had anticipated.