The Shift

The fluorescent lights hummed. Every few seconds, one of the bulbs over the magazine rack flickered and came back, a repeating pattern as of late.

Riku Tanaka slouched on the stool behind the counter and watched the clock uptick to 2:38 a.m. His chin rested in his palm, fingers pressing a into his cheek, eyes getting more drowsy as it goes.

The bell above the door chimed. A man in a wrinkled suit shuffled in with his tie crooked, hair plastered to his forehead by the mist outside. He grabbed a can of beer and a pack of egg-salad sandwiches and placed them on the counter in front of Riku.

“That’ll be four hundred eighty yen,” Riku said out of reflex. A repeating pattern.

The man patted his pockets with growing urgency. He found his coins, and dumped them all on the counter, and bowed. “S-sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Riku said. He always said that. He sorted the coins, fed them to the register, and tore off the receipt. “Have a good night.”

The man bowed again, then hobbled out to the street outside.

Silence.

Riku pulled out his phone. No calls and no messages. A repeating pattern.

He opened an app anyway and scrolled through a feed of strangers’ lives. Somebody on vacation, another one adopting a new cat, and someone's second marriage proposal.

He tore open a plastic-wrapped onigiri and took a bite. The rice was cold today, and the seaweed was more mush than normal. He still chewed and swallowed without much thought.

To pass time, Riku pictured himself as a background extra with dialogue like “Welcome!” and “That’ll be four hundred eighty yen,” and “Have a good night,” forever looped. Then the camera panning past him to the real hero.

The night peeled away on Riku. Before he knew it it was 5:58. At this time the door chime played more often. Office ladies came in for bottled tea and sandwiches. High school boys with messy hair bought energy drinks and chips. Construction workers canned coffee and meat buns.

Riku scanned. He bagged. He said the lines with decent approximation of human warmth. He was efficient at his job.

At 6:45, the morning shift had finally arrived and restfully Riku clocked himself out. He pressed his palm to the door and felt a small pleasure at the bell's chirping sound.

Outside mist filled the air. Buses resting at curbs. A dark cloud already formed up high.

Riku walked with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his cold jacket. He has memorized his walk home. 

He passed the old-fashinoned curry place nearby, the pachinko parlor, and a tiny shrine sandwiched between two office buildings.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out as a notification popped up.

 Buy one coffee, get one free!

“Even my phone is pitching me,” he said to himself.

He made his way down the side street that he considered a shortcut. It was a narrow lane with a scaffolding along one wall where a new maid café was going to open soon. Posters on the plywood revealing Grand Opening Spring!

It was summer.

Near the scaffolding sat an old vending machine at the corner. It had been here since before Riku was born, but was still maintained. A hilariously large sign above it sat and swayed. It had gotten loose over the years.

Riku stopped. The idea of coffee appeared. At the machine, he dug through his pocket and scraped up just enough coins for a black coffee on the top row. A repeating pattern.

He fed the machine his coins and pressed the respective button. The machine rattled as the can rolled out.

He bent to take it.

The wind arrived ahead of schedule. The sign continued to waver, the bolts behind barely keeping it together.

Riku glanced up, his eyes tracking.

The sign came completely free and tipped over. It was slow enough to see, but not fast enough to avoid. 

He opened his mouth as a thought came to him.

Really?

The world became white noise. His shoulder smashed the machine. The can sprang from his fingers and landed meters away from his spot.

He blinked, and the sky looked down to him. He tried to inhale but experienced a sharp pain. He exhaled a sound that was inconceivable. 

Someone shouted something from the end of the lane, too late. The world tilted. The vending machine hummed on, as if nothing ever happened.

Figures.

Riku was impressed of the timing if there was a positive.

He let go, because there was nothing to hold. Darkness came.

A silence was complete.

Riku was hovering. He told himself that to keep positive. It was funny what the mind wanted to call things when it no longer had a body to point at. 

So this is it? 

He asked for nothing. but Riku pictured a celestial office with plastic chairs and a blank screen right above. The silence did not answer. The thought of time might have passed.

Then a grain of color at the edge of the nothing, a mixture of gold and green. A sensation of warmth began to cover his skin.

He could smell still and only smelled earth. It had a garden smell to it.

The silence loosened around him. Beneath it a faint sound like bees. No like voices.

“Up now mister!” said a girl’s voice, close enough to be in his ear.

“Mama said, Mama said he has to-” another voice, a boy, a little older.

Fingers gripped his shoulder and shook. The sensation was so sudden it made the world snap into existence.

Riku opened his eyes to a ceiling of rough beams and straw? Dust filled the air that was warm and smelled of livestock.

He blinked and the ceiling still hung there. He tried a second approach: he rolled onto his side. A girl with brown braids and a smudge on her cheek leaned over him with both hands on her hips. She had an expression that older sisters wear even when they are younger sisters.

“Big brother,” she said. “Mama says you promised you’d help with the field!.”

Riku stared. The girl filled his vision, not entirely sure how to react to her. Behind her, light spilled through a window with shutters. The walls were not walls, not as he remembered; they were planks.

He pushed himself up. His hands felt wrong. They were smaller and more rough than previously. He touched his face. The angles were not the ones he recognized.

“Uh,” he said. It was a good word. “Where-”

The girl rolled her eyes with impatience. “Where are you supposed to be? Outside! The rye won’t tie itself! Come on!”

She grabbed his sleeve and tugged. He looked down at the sleeve and met linen. The shirt smelled of mostly sun and sweat. He looked at his legs and found trousers.

Riku has never worn trousers.

His heart gave a small flutter. “Wait,” he said. His voice had a more childish sound to it. The sound even shocked him. 

What is happening?

The girl mistook it for reluctance. “You promised,” she said moping, poking at his shoulder. “You always say you’ll help and then you pretend to be dead when the time comes!”

He flinched. He had the impression of a vending machine’s hum, a sign’s surrender, and a void. The memory slid away.

“Right,” he said, and found a smile because she had braids and something on her cheek. “I’ll help.”

What else could he do?

Her face lit with an uncomplicated joy that made Riku want to suddenly protect her. She seized his hand with confidence. “Good! Come on, come on!”

He followed because there was nothing else to go off, but for the first time in a long time, doing the thing in front of him felt like it would lead somewhere differently.

The cottage’s door was a plank on a hinge with a latch set at a tilt. The field beyond the yard was a grassy green. A low hill with a couple trees, and the sound of animals in the distance.

'Mama' turned from a table where she was tying bundles of rye. She had a decent frame, with arms that clearly did work. When she saw him, her mouth formed a scold, then softened.

“There you are Luka,” she said.

Luka?!

 “I was about to come in there and throw water on your head.” she continued.

“Please don’t,” the now Luka said. It seemed like the sort of thing he should say.

“I still might if I catch you slacking off today. You too Anya.” she responded.

A boy about a head taller than the braid-girl seemingly named Anya. The taller boy trotted up with twine around his forearm. He looked at Luka like a rival. “If he’s just going to yawn,” the boy said sheepishly, “I can do his part.”

“Luka and Kael, you will both do your parts!,” the mother said briskly, and Luka felt a wave of deja vu for some reason.

He bent and lifted a sheaf. The weight surprised him. He tied, clumsily at first causing a laugh from the girl with braids. She then showed him without words, hands ghosting over his, and he matched her and the knot held.

They worked. Sweat slipped along his head and made his hairline itchy. His muscles for the first time in years lifting more than ten pounds. Somewhere far off, a bell rang, not mechanical, metal struck by a human.

He kept expecting the world to go back to the void. For the color to tear like cheap fabric and show pixels underneath. He kept expecting the ceiling to crack and drop a vending machine sign on him out of spite.

Instead the now Luka continued on. 

So am I Luka or still Riku?

The boy wondered what to go by mentally. He figured he should go with the new name for now. Worry about the rest later.

He hummed under his breath and pretended he wasn’t. The girl’s braid showcased curls around her ears. Their mother called them to drink and wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist.

Luka drank from a ladle dipped in a bucket. The water was cold in a way he hasn't experienced before. He swallowed and laughed.

“You’re in a good mood,” the mother observed, amused and relieved.

“I-” He didn’t have an answer that wasn’t a confession. I died this morning, he nearly said. “It’s a nice day,” he finished.

“It is,” she admitted. “Don’t wander off tonight. The road’s been lively.”

“Lively?” he repeated.

“Bandits,” she responded, “they attacked a cart last week. Took most of our flour and salt.”

Luka felt something in his chest shift. He thought of the vending machine’s hum and was ashamed, suddenly, of every time he’d called his life hard.

The field looked less and less like it's usual self before it hit noon. They carried bundles to the wagon and stacked them under a tarp. Anya and Luka argued about who would sit on the front.

They ate under the shadow of the wagon, a combination of bread, cheese, and apples. Luka ate too fast and then slower. Crumbs went everywhere. The girl pelted him with one on purpose and then pretended she hadn’t. He pretended not to notice and then noticed and she shrieked.

Shortly after, the mother sent the children to fetch kindling from the hedgerow. She kept Luka for a moment with a hand lightly on his sleeve. 

“You feel all right?” she asked.

He blinked. “I… yes.”

No!

“You were strange this morning. You're not sleep-talking again are you?"

He couldn't explain why but heat rose to his face. “I just had a bad dream,” he offered. Neither a truth or lie.

She searched his eyes in that way that a mother would normally. After some time she patted his arm. “Dreams don’t tie rye.” she said. “Hands do. Go on.”

They finished by late afternoon. The sky changed between a gray and a light blue. The wagon making its way towards home.

In the yard, the boy ran to chase a chicken because that is what boys and chickens do here. The girl uncoiled a laugh as she unbraided her hair. The mother began planning dinner out loud.

Luka stood a moment, hands on hips and sore all over. It was quite the day.

He went inside, where the cottage was dim. He found a basin and water and splashed his face in front of a mirror nearby. He met his own eyes and found a boy’s earnest worry there. Or perhaps he found his own worry disguised as a boy's.

He let let his shoulders sag. He looked at his palms and breathed in and out slowly.

I'm tired. 

He felt like sleep was inevitable. He moved to his pallet and almost instantly fell into a slumber.

If this is a dream, let me be the kind of person who forgets to wake up.

He began to drop. 

A whisper, not from him, could be heard.

Do you remember?

He saw the black coffee can, a sign advertising it, and a field of red. His old look coming more into frame.

He flinched on the pallet. 

From outside, Anya’s voice could be heard announcing dinnertime. 

He got up, still tired.

They ate. This time a combination of soup and bread. The mother told a story about a fox that outsmarted a whole village.

When the light went out of the day for good and the cottage banked the fire and spoke in a softer tone. The mother blocked the door with a bar for privacy reasons.

Luka laid on his pallet once again. He closed his eyes. Sleep was finally approaching him.

There were a lot of unknowns, and ideas he still couldn't comprehend.

He had died and lost his name. How old was he? Who are these people?

Where was he?

The other side of Earth? Maybe another world? A less tech-savvy world?

There were too many questions he needed the answer for.

And far away, in a place he had not learned to name yet, wheels could be heard.