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

“Hiaaaaaa!!”

A voice I had never emitted before burst out of my mouth arbitrarily. I panicked profusely to such an extent that my heart palpitated and I was truly on the verge of crying.

This couldn’t be real. It must be a dream.

Slippery, cold fingers grasped my shoulders, despite my conviction that this was a dream. The discolored, foul-smelling claws sunk into me.

“Ah, aaah, ah, ah.”

The man moaned in my ear. It was not in Japanese.

Even so, I could tell that dark emotions such as suffering and grief were being conveyed.

He was appealing to me. He was trying to share those emotions with me.

Not good.

Not good.

Not good.

Not good.

Not good.

Breathing was a struggle and my consciousness was starting to falter.

I was terrified and was at my limit. Any further than this, I wouldn’t be able to bear it―

“…That person. You can’t.”

The voice that abruptly reverberated from right beside me wasn’t a moan. It was a dignified voice that was somewhat easier to perceive than the earlier one.

“…Please return quickly.”

It was Takenada.

“Haven’t I mentioned this over and over again? This is not a place for people like you.”

The hand that was painfully tightening its grasp on my right shoulder was lessened in power by his stern remarks.

“Ah, aaah, ug…”

Even so, an anguished moan was still lingering in my ear. Takenaka, who was barely within my sight, seemed to be taking a step toward me, and the sound of his shoes struck my eardrums.

“…If you still insist on not leaving.”

Before Takenaka could say anything else, the whole back room was enveloped in a grave atmosphere. A heavy pressure that threatened to penetrate me, or perhaps I should call it an exceptionally overpowering aura, surged in from right beside Takenaka, encompassing the back room with a formidable force.

My eyeballs moved with frantic effort as I sought to grasp what on earth Takenaka was intending to do. Even when I clenched my teeth and strained my neck to the utmost, it still didn’t budge. When my whole body felt the aura as acute as a knife being thrust at me, the sickening feeling of being entangled in something sticky and the chill crawling down my spine subsided gradually, and the presence of something standing right next to me faded away like a mist.

It disappeared after a while. It was roughly the same time that I was able to move my neck and body properly. I felt like I was breathing oxygen for the first time in a long time.

However, my whole body was drenched in sweat, and I collapsed from the round chair, quivering all over like a small animal, both from not grasping what had struck me and from experiencing a form of fear unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

Completely hunched over, my legs were drained of all strength. I didn’t have the luxury of viewing myself objectively, wondering how pathetic it must be for a man over 20 to be like this.

While I was unable to move due to cramps everywhere, Takenaka bent down on his knees and reached out his hand to me, presumably in an attempt to help me stand up. I looked up at Takenaka with my arms outstretched to cling gratefully to the hand that had been offered to me.

“―!”

My heart skipped a beat again.

Takenaka, no. It was because I saw Takenaka’s back. Someone entirely unfamiliar to me, who shouldn’t be here, and who seemed out of place was standing behind Takenaka, who bent down and extended out his hand to me.

His arms were folded, poised firmly and quietly as if gazing at me. The armored figure was standing right behind Takenaka.

It matched exactly what I had read about in middle school history textbooks. At the same time, the words “samurai” and “warrior” crossed my mind.

In contrast to Takenaka in front of me, his overall appearance was slightly transparent, yet his presence was still terrific, accompanied by an intimidating, yet in no way aggressive, sensation that made me feel numb. The piercing aura I felt was not from Takenaka, rather it was from the huge armor and helmet behind him.

What the hell… was this guy? Why was that thing behind Takenaka?

Since such absurd occurrences were unfolding one after another, I thought I was still dreaming. Who on earth could believe that this wasn’t a dream?

I wondered when would I awaken from this bizarre dream. Stupefied, I kept breathing heavily and staring at Takenaka and the person behind him, and a sickening coldness descended slowly over my right shoulder.

A strange sliminess and the sensation of a damp cloth sticking to my skin.

Slowly, I tilted my head back and looked at my right shoulder to pinpoint the strange sensation. I was at a loss for words. The blood in my body seemed to cool and recede all at once.

This was no dream…

On my uniform, around my right shoulder, lay an eerie handprint, as though a wet hand had grasped it.

The wet handprint was clearly visible, reminding me that what had taken place earlier was not a dream, but reality. The slimy, foul-smelling hand gripped me, and that was the reality.

The oxygen from my nose and mouth reached my brain, sending a tingling, searing headache.

This was real. It was not a dream. All of it―

A small tremor seized me from the right shoulder, and when the tremor engulfed my entire body, I couldn’t withstand it and puked violently on the spot. While twisting out my pathetic voice, I felt so sick that I started to cry physiologically and my vision blurred. My heart hurt and my head ached.

This was reality, and yet I refused to believe it. I couldn’t believe it but this was real.

This situation that I couldn’t embrace but was compelled to accept, threw me into turmoil and drove me to vomit so much that I lost all sense of what was unfolding. That was surely not the only reason. Perhaps it was a part of the exhaustion I had been accumulating until now that I had reached my limit just now.

Seriously, I didn’t realize it was this bad… until it exploded.

No matter how long time passed, the shivering throughout my body did not subside. Despite it being summer right now, I still couldn’t shed the abnormal chill I felt.

What would have happened to me had Takenaka not shown up?

Would I have died…? No, even if I hadn’t died, something fairly sinister would have ensued.

The inextinguishable dread led me to conclude so.

Takenaka gave me a back rub and took care of me silently until I ceased vomiting, maintaining the same expression he had when he assisted me regardless of the fact that I was vomiting and spewing gastric juice. Not only that, but instead of leaving me feeling empty inside my stomach after vomiting, he quietly brought cleaning supplies and wiped up all the gastric juice that had splattered all over the floor.

While watching this in a daze in the corner of the back room, I felt apologetic and simultaneously realized that I had made a terrible mistake with Takenaka.

This person, he was not the kind of person who would relish witnessing someone’s amazement, panic or fright.

I thought so when I watched him cleaning the floor with a rag and a mop.

Before long, the stern armor and helmet behind Takenaka were gone.

The fatigue I had been feeling and the fear I had experienced had completely overwhelmed me both physically and mentally and I fainted as it was.

By the time I woke up the next time, it was just before the end of the night shift, and Takenaka had put a spare uniform on me instead of a futon and apparently let me sleep like that.

Even I, after waking up, could no longer trust that what I had gone through was a dream. For I had already crossed a line that ordinary people were not permitted to overstep. Instead of returning to the point where I should have turned back, I let half of my body completely submerge into it.

The price I had to pay for disregarding the warnings of many people and persevering was not a light one. At the very least, I would be tormented for the rest of the summer to the degree that it would be beyond measure.

When I left the convenience store after working the night shift, I caught sight of it for sure.

I saw a woman with long hair clad in tattered clothes peering into the store from the glass outside the store.

From that day on, I began to see things that were beyond the realm of possibility.