CH02 - naoya & pandora's storage room

The first thing I learned while working at KONBINI L&F was… that the job itself was surprisingly normal. I wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. After that strange interview, I had expected something unusual to happen. Something dramatic. I don’t know, maybe something that belonged in a show or a manga. A weird initiation ritual maybe? Do they haze part-timers at convenience stores?

Instead, I cleaned the counter and organized the shelves. Pretty much everything I expected from a normal convenience store job.

At the very least, I wanted an explanation for why the manager had said I was “chosen.” Thinking about it again, maybe it made sense that the old lady had chosen me. She was the owner, after all. Only it was strange that Takumi—the manager who had interviewed me—seemed to be the one handling everything, but didn’t even know my name when I walked in last week.

“Don’t worry, we don’t do anything weird around here.”

I snapped back to reality and to the boxes stacked in my hands.

A girl was standing in front of me—probably in college, with her dark hair tied back in a loose, slightly messy bun that looked intentional. Her uniform was the same as mine, though hers showed signs that she had been wearing it for much longer. A little faded, with small stains.

Okay, that was kind of strange. Again, feeling like my thoughts were being heard out loud.

She smiled and held out her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you. Naoya, right? I’m Natsumi. Takumi asked me to train you for the rest of the day.”

Natsumi.

It was a name that made me think of beach days, fireworks, and summer festivals.

Unfortunately, the only thing this summer had given me so far was heatstroke.

This year’s summer was far from beautiful. It sucked. It was hot. Humid. Every time I stepped outside just made me question whether I really needed to leave the house ever again. Whoever named her had apparently experienced a very different season than I had.

Natsumi gestured toward the back office. Takumi had disappeared in there after showing me the basics to work through a mountain of paperwork, which I felt was a little exaggerated for someone managing a convenience store. Even when he had been mumbling through the rules, he had sounded like he was reading instructions he had memorized against his will. If he could’ve handed me an employee manual and vanished for the rest of the day, he absolutely would have.

“Of course he did.”

Natsumi tilted her head.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

I decided it was probably a bad idea to complain about my new manager to someone who actually worked here. Especially on my first day.

“Good answer.”

“You say that like it was a test.”

“It was.”

“…For real?”

“No.”

She started walking toward the aisles, hands in pockets.

“I just wanted to see the face you’d make.”

I shuffled after her.

“You like to joke, huh.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“If I acted like Takumi all day, customers would stop coming.”

I set the boxes down and looked around the empty store.

“There aren’t any customers anyway.”

She stopped.

“…Give it a minute.”

Then she turned back toward me.

“Oh, before I forget, there’s one rule you should remember.”

“Only one?”

“We’ll talk through them later, they’ll make sense once you get more time on the job.”

She pointed at me, like some corny anime character when they wanted to emphasize something.

“If you ever find something with someone’s name on it…”

She paused. Then she posed.

“…Don’t open it.”

I stared at her.

“…That’s it?”

“That’s the rule.”

“Why would there be something with someone’s name on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“…And what happens if I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never tried?”

She looked at me like I’d suggested sticking a fork into the power outlet.

“Would you open someone else’s mail?”

“…No.”

She opened her mouth to continue, but the bell above the entrance chimed before she could. We both glanced toward the door.

An elderly man stepped inside, his cane tapping against the linoleum floor. He didn’t scan the drinks or the magazines I helped set up earlier. He just stood there for a moment.

Natsumi nudged my shoulder.

“Hey, it’s a customer. Go deal with it.”

“What? Can’t you just show me how to do it?”

She shoved me forward, and I had no choice but to make my way to the register. I took a breath, trying to remember I’d practiced this exact greeting about four times that morning and none of them had gone particularly well.

“Welcome to KONBINI L&F. Can I help you find something?”

The old man had on a wistful expression, as if he wasn’t really here in the moment.

“I hope so.”

“What are you looking for?”

He hesitated long enough that I started to wonder if he’d forgotten the question. Then, quietly:

“My summer.”

We both stood there in silence. I was waiting for a punchline, but there wasn’t one. He looked at me, hands resting on his cane, like he’d asked something completely reasonable.

“…I’m sorry?” I blurted out.

“My summer,” he repeated, glancing toward the shelves as if what he looked for was sitting between the family-sized chips and instant noodles. “I lost it a long time ago.”

I looked over at Natsumi, half-expecting her to bail me out. Instead, she just gave me a small nod which I interpreted as keep going.

Right. Okay. I mean, situations like this probably happen often. Guess we’re doing this.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I admitted. “But I’m sure you can find it elsewhere. Do you need any water—”

The old man leaned forward and gripped the counter, hard enough that whatever I’d been about to say died somewhere in my throat.

“When I was younger, I thought there would always be another summer.” A faint shadow of a smile crossed his face. “If I missed the fireworks one year, there’d be next year. If I forgot to visit a friend, there’d be next year. If I didn’t tell someone how much they meant to me…” His voice broke. “…there’d be next year.”

Nobody said anything for a moment until Natsumi—who was suddenly right beside me—leaned in close enough that only I could hear.

“Second rule. Don’t decide what someone lost. You ask.”

I flinched, more than I’d like to admit, then tried to recover like I hadn’t just jumped at nothing.

Right. Asking. I could do that. Probably.

“What do you miss the most?” I asked, turning back to him. I hoped it was the right question.

He thought about it for a moment, then said:

“Looking forward to the next summer.”

Something about the way he said it pulled the answer out of me before I’d fully thought it through.

“I don’t think you’re looking for your summer.”

The old man looked at me properly for the first time since he’d walked in. With a dead calm that seemed to put my own nerves to rest.

“Then what do you think I’m looking for?”

I swallowed.

“The part of you that believed there’d always be another tomorrow. Just the certainty that tomorrow would show up whether or not you were ready for it.”

In my mind, he wasn’t talking about a season. He was talking about every year he’d assumed he’d get another chance… but hadn’t.

Natsumi had gone very still beside me.

That’s when Takumi appeared, so quietly I nearly knocked over the register display.

“Come with me.” He gestured.

He led us through the door marked STAFF ONLY. I thought this was a mop closet.

“It’s mostly storage,” Takumi said, looking back at me. Again, weird. How do these people know what I’m thinking? Is it that obvious?

The room wasn’t as big as I expected at first glance. But the further down the aisles I looked, the more the shelves seemed to stretch into a blur. Much longer than the building outside could possibly allow, and a problem I decided was too hard to think about at the moment. Closest to the door were ordinary cardboard boxes, the kind you’d expect in the back of any convenience store. Further in, the boxes gave way to things that made no sense sitting on a shelf. For example, an envelope made out of aged paper, a neatly folded baseball uniform, a palette caked with paint, a single train ticket, a photograph of a couple I didn’t recognize.

No price tags or barcodes. Just labels, handwritten in careful, looping script.

COURAGE TO SEND THE LETTER TO A FRIEND WHO MOVED AWAY

SMELL OF DIRT AFTER LOSING AT KOSHIEN

INTEREST IN PAINTING AT AGE 10

PROMISE MADE UNDER AUTUMN LEAVES IN MOMIJI TUNNEL

SOUND OF MY PARENTS’ VOICES IN THE LIVING ROOM

I reached toward one without thinking, then remembered Natsumi’s warning fast enough to pull my hand back. Every label had a name written underneath.

The old man kept walking past me until he stopped in front of something I almost missed. A glass marble, perfectly clear and almost invisible. It was sitting alone like it had been waiting there for him.

BELIEF THAT THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER TOMORROW

He gingerly picked it up with both hands, cupping it with his palms.

“…I remember,” he murmured. A warmth had sneaked into his voice, making it feel a lot less hollow than when he had first walked in.

He turned around to face us, and I could’ve sworn he seemed years younger.

“Thank you.”

By the time we made it back to the front of the store, his hands were empty even though I hadn’t seen him put down the marble anywhere. I watched him walk out into the afternoon sun.

“So… did he get it back?” I asked, looking back at Natsumi and Takumi.

Takumi didn’t look up from the notebook he’d somehow started writing in again.

“What was the marble?”

Natsumi yawned and stretched against the counter like this was a completely normal Monday. “Naoya, people don’t come here to reclaim the past. They come here to remember it was real.”

I glanced back toward the storage room, the door still slightly ajar. “Does everyone who comes here lose something?”

“Everyone loses something,” Takumi grumbled, still writing.

“Then why don’t more people come here?”

“They can’t.”

“What? Why?”

“Most people never notice this store.”

Outside, people walked past without so much as a glance in our direction, even though we’d had a customer standing at this counter minutes ago.

“Only the people who truly need L&F will find L&F.”

“Then why could I find it?”

Neither of them answered right away. Then Takumi stopped scribbling and looked up.

“Maybe the store found you.”

Takumi turned and headed back into his office, while Natsumi looked off toward the deeper shelves instead, as if she was deciding whether to say something at all.

“When’d you start full-time?” I asked, seeing if it’d help her spill what was on her mind.

She hesitated. For someone who’d spent the last hour treating everything like a punchline, this, on its own, felt like some kind of answer.

“I remember my name. My birthday. My favorite food.” She gave me the same smile, but drained of humor and energy. “But I don’t remember how I found this place.”

“Seriously?”

“I know I started working here.” She shrugged. “Before that, it’s blurry.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“It should.” She laughed softly. “Every time I try to remember, though, I end up wondering if the thing I lost is still back there somewhere, waiting for me to pick it up.”

I didn’t say anything to that.

“But hey, don’t worry,” she poked my shoulder. “Our summer part-timers have a good time and leave before school starts back up. They never come back again.”

She paused, deep in thought.

“Oh, and you also forgot to accept payment.”

I blinked. “…What?”

“The register.” She nodded at it, like this should’ve been obvious. “You never rang him up.”

My brain was still somewhere in that storage room, trying to process a marble that apparently held a man’s entire will to keep going. “Did you charge him for it” felt like a splash of cold water.

“Wait, he was supposed to pay? For that?” I glanced at the register, then at the empty doorway he’d walked out of minutes ago. “How much does something like that even cost?”

“No idea. It’s different every time.”

“Then how am I supposed to—”

“You’ll figure it out.” She was already walking off, waving a hand over her shoulder without turning around. “Third rule, probably. We’ll get to it eventually.”

I stood there behind the counter, staring at the register drawer.

Great. First day on the job, and I’d already let a customer walk out without paying.