Chapter 45: Volume 1, - 45: A Monday That Was Mostly Work
The double glass doors of QuickMart slid open, releasing a blast of stale, chilled air into the morning grey. Ren Kisaragi stood behind Register 2, his gloved fingers moving automatically as he scanned a cold canned coffee, an egg sandwich, and a pack of mild cigarettes.
"That will be seven hundred and twenty yen," Ren said, his voice thoroughly practised.
The customer tossed a thousand-yen note onto the tray. Ren smoothed the bill, fed it into the register, handed back the silver change, and bowed slightly as the man grabbed his purchase without a word.
It was barely eight in the morning, but the fluorescent lights overhead already hummed with that dull, persistent vibration Ren had come to dread. For months, this floor had been his absolute reality. The steady wage that kept debt collectors from his mother’s door. But today, as he reached for a box of unsold pastries to log for disposal, a strange detachment settled over him.
He still broke down damp cardboard delivery cages in the alley, wiped sticky coffee nozzles, swept gravel, and restocked beverage coolers until his knuckles turned red. Yet every action felt distant, as though he were watching someone else work through thick glass.
Takashi Endo, the store manager, stepped out of the office carrying a clipboard with fresh schedule printouts. He didn’t look up as he approached Register 2, tapping his pen against the counter.
"Kisaragi-san," Endo said smoothly. "I need you to take your forty-five-minute meal break at ten-fifteen today instead of eleven."
Ren paused, holding a heavy rubbish bag. "Ten-fifteen? That’s barely two hours into my floor shift, Endo-san."
"Morita-san’s delivery coverage overlaps with the eleven o’clock rush," Endo replied, gesturing vaguely at the schedule. "We need flexibility on the registers. It’s better for store flow if you get your break out of the way early."
It wasn’t a request. It was the typical, low-stakes administrative shuffling Endo used to balance shift gaps. In the past, Ren would have absorbed it quietly. Now, a sharp prick of irritation burned in his chest.
’I negotiated a twelve-thousand-yen scope with Okada Stationery on Saturday,’ Ren thought bitterly. ’I drafted a twenty-thousand-yen diagnostic proposal for Kawashima yesterday. Why am I standing here getting angry over forty-five minutes of break timing?’
He caught himself almost immediately. The pride felt ugly and dangerous. He hadn’t replaced these wages yet. The QuickMart wage was guaranteed cash; unaccepted client proposals were not. He still needed this register.
"Understood," Ren said. "Ten-fifteen."
"Make sure the back rubbish bins are emptied before you go," Endo added, already walking away.
During his ten-fifteen break, Ren sat in the small back room, pulled out his phone, and checked two client notifications before locking the screen again. Yui Morita passed the doorway carrying a delivery sheet, glancing once at the glowing display before meeting his eyes. Ren slipped the phone back into his pocket without a word and picked up his tea.
By three in the afternoon, his shift was over. Ren walked back to Suite 302, his lower back throbbing with a dull ache. The room felt reverent after the hum of the store. On his screen, two client files were open: Fumie Okada’s revised reorder matrix and the proposal for Kawashima Household Goods.
Rubbing his tired eyes, Ren drafted a progress update for Fumie, attached the updated inventory spreadsheet, and hit send. Ten seconds later, an email notification popped up from Fumie Okada.
Fumie Okada: Kisaragi-san, you sent me a file titled ’Kawashima_Diagnostic_Proposal_Draft_v1’. There are no stationery items in this file.
Ren’s stomach dropped. Cold adrenaline washed away his drowsiness. In his haze of exhaustion, he had attached the unfinished diagnostic proposal for Kawashima Household Goods instead of Fumie’s reorder matrix. Fortunately It was an internal working draft. Nothing confidential from Kawashima was inside it, but the mistake proved how easily fatigue could compromise his work.
His fingers flew across the keyboard. He sent an immediate apology, asked Fumie to disregard and delete the mistaken attachment, and attached the correct file.
A moment later, Fumie replied:
Fumie Okada: Correct file received. Thank you for the quick adjustment.
Ren exhaled a long breath, leaning back in his chair..
By six-thirty, the corrected Fumie files were secure and Kawashima-san’s one-page proposal was finished. Ren walked the document over to Kawashima Household Goods, handed it across the counter to the owner, received only a brief acknowledgement, and walked back to lock Suite 302.
Stepping into the cool evening air, Ren felt an instinctive urge to call Suzune. He pulled up LINE and sent a quick message asking if she had time to meet for dinner.
Her reply came back five minutes later:
Suzune Akiyama: Sorry, Kisaragi-san. I’m having dinner with family and Aya tonight. Mum wanted to know if you’re free to join us tomorrow for the holiday meal?
Ren stared at the screen, his thumb hovering over the glass as his mind completely stalled.
First came a flash of petty, exhaustion-fueled disappointment, of course she’s busy tonight. But then the second sentence hit him, and a cold spike of panic instantly replaced his fatigue.
’Her mother asked?’
His brain began to spin into a rapid, unhelpful spiral. A Vernal Equinox holiday meal with the Akiyamas wasn’t just grabbing tea at the counter downstairs. Was Keiko inviting him out of polite hospitality, or had Suzune said something to her parents?
Was this an informal interrogation about his debt? Or worse, was this a family dinner where he was expected to sit across from her father while everyone silently evaluated whether a twenty-three-year-old part-timer with a precarious new consulting firm had any right courting their daughter?
’I don’t even know if this is about business or... us,’ Ren thought, a sudden knot forming in his stomach. ’Does Suzune even view it as "us" yet?’
He started typing three different replies. One overly formal, one hesitant, one trying to sound casually confident before deleting them all. He settled on a simple, polite confirmation, accepting the invite while his pulse hammered against his ribs.
Instead of going straight home to overthink further, he stopped at a supermarket near the station, bought a discounted bentō, and sat on a concrete bench in the plaza eating cold rice.
Back at QuickMart, the night shift had settled into its steady rhythm.
Yui Morita stood near the beverage coolers, sliding six-packs of beer onto lower metal shelves. The store was nearly empty, save for a lone businessman reading a magazine.
In the back breakroom, two part-time workers were folding blue aprons. Their voices carried through the thin partition.
"Did you see Kisaragi-san this morning?" one asked. "Barely said two words to Endo-san."
"He’s got a real office up near the station now," the other replied, tossing his apron into a locker. "If he’s too good for retail, he should just quit instead of leaving us to handle Endo’s schedule adjustments."
Yui paused, holding a heavy case of barley tea, listening to the resentful edge in her coworker’s voice before the door clicked shut.
She walked back to Register 1 and began wiping down the glass counter. She had noticed it too. Not just this morning, but during his ten-fifteen break when he had been staring at business messages on his phone. Ren completed his tasks with meticulous precision, but his focus was somewhere else. He was a man who had already stepped across a border, even if his feet were still standing on the QuickMart floor.
Yui looked down at her reflection in the polished glass. She felt a genuine relief for him; seeing him find a way out was inspiring. But a heavy realization settled in her stomach.
Ren’s exit wouldn’t change anything in this store. Endo would still manipulate schedules to cover gaps. Deliveries would still arrive late. The low hourly wage would remain unchanged. Ren escaping his circumstances didn’t open a door for anyone else. It simply left an empty shift that Endo would fill with another body.
Yui folded her cleaning rag into a neat square beside the register. When Ren finally left for good, he would walk away into his new life. But she would still be standing behind this counter, listening to the hum of the lights.
’When he leaves,’ Yui thought, watching the automatic doors slide open for a late customer, ’what am I going to do?’