Chapter 5
I finished sorting the inventory without much trouble.
I even cleaned the shelves spotless.
The floor was clean enough to reflect my face.
And after scrubbing the (absurdly thick) glass of the outer walls until it gleamed….
“……”
I caught a glimpse of the sorrow of the self-employed.
Wow, seriously.
Is this for real? Is this actually happening?
‘I never expected that not a single customer would show up.’
At first, I was happy.
I took a look at the street outside through the opaque glass walls and beyond the entrance.
Of course, there were some perfectly normal people, but most of what I saw were drunkards staggering around as if a zombie virus had broken out.
They stumbled forward, backward, and sideways.
They were practically human roly-polies.
How much booze did they have to guzzle?
They had filthy beards growing thickly over their faces, and grimy tattoos covering their faces and the backs of their hands.
Personally, I thought public safety around here was especially bad, even for Sector 49.
Anyway, I sincerely prayed that a ‘perfectly normal customer’ would come to the store, if possible.
But then.
【01:06:PM】
It was around one in the afternoon.
Considering I had started working last night around dinnertime, I had already easily exceeded the working hours of a basic part-timer.
And yet I still didn’t feel particularly tired.
I was just bored as hell.
This young man is bored for free….
“Isn’t there anything else to clean?”
Back when I was in the modern world, I would have killed time on my smartphone or computer, but since I had nothing at all, I had no idea what to do.
[Dyu?]
“……”
[Dyu….]
I did my best to ignore the turret’s gun barrel.
There wasn’t even a ladder in the storeroom, so it was difficult to wipe down the turrets that popped out of the ceiling and disappeared again.
When I leaned my back against the chair, it tilted back at an angle that made it feel as if I were about to fall over.
‘Come to think of it, how late am I supposed to work?’
Surely it’s not twenty-four hours?
There were facilities inside the store where someone could stay, but surely she didn’t mean for me to eat, sleep, and live here, did she?
‘Whatever. I give up.’
I continued enjoying the precarious acrobatics, leaning back in the metal chair.
Jingle.
That was when the bell at the entrance rang.
Crash! The metal chair I was sitting in loudly clattered as it righted itself.
“Whoa, shit, you scared me.”
But without letting my surprise show,
I naturally attended to the customer who had come in as if I had been standing up all along.
“Ahem, welcome.”
I even gave an awkward, needless little cough.
The ‘customer’ who entered through the opaque glass door was a very short little child.
The top of their head came roughly to my chest.
Ever since entering the game,
my build had gotten bigger, so it was hard to judge accurately,
but there was no doubt the child was small.
The child had shaggy hair covering their entire face and was dressed in old, filthy clothes.
They were bent forward at the waist, hunching their body as tightly as possible.
Anyone could see that they were terrified.
[Dyu.]
A turret that could be called the grocery store’s mascot was even moving around inside the store,
so I could clearly picture the child running away without even looking back if I left things as they were.
“Hup!”
I hopped over the counter.
The child flinched at the same time, but still showed no sign of trying to leave the store.
“What did you come to buy, kid? Are you running an errand for your mom?”
A very kind voice came out of my throat.
The sight of the frightened child had reminded me of my little sister back home.
‘I disappeared all of a sudden. Is she worried?’
- Just ask him for your allowance!
‘No, probably not.’
I erased the image of my little sister from my mind again
and looked down at the fidgeting child.
Oh, right.
When there’s a difference in eye level, people instinctively feel afraid.
The same applies in the wild.
You know how they tell you to raise your hands above your head and make yourself look bigger when you encounter an animal like a bear or wild boar?
Therefore, I squatted down in front of the child and tried to look friendly.
“…!!”
Perhaps unable to anticipate my actions, the child looked flustered and backed away several steps.
In that moment,
the long hair covering their face swayed slightly.
I could see a pair of very round eyes.
They were large, dark-colored eyes.
Without realizing it, I reached out a finger and brushed the child’s hair aside.
Along with a snow-white forehead, the child’s startled expression was revealed in full.
“Huh? You’re cute, but why do you hide your face….”
I had no choice but to stop speaking mid-sentence.
At that point, the child quickly knocked my hand away, turned around, and ran.
“Huh?”
“Hey, kid!! I mean, customer!”
Please don’t go!
Leaving only my plaintive voice behind,
Jingle-jingle.
The first customer to show up in roughly twelve hours ran out of the store like that….
I learned anew the common wisdom that if a store clerk is too friendly, customers run away without looking back.
“……”
They didn’t run away because my face was scary, did they?
No way. Surely not. It had better not be.
For some reason, I felt as if my eyes were growing moist.
* * *
Sector 49 of Risk City.
When the girl heard the rumor about the newly opened ‘grocery store’ there,
she moved first and fast for the sake of her starving companions.
Jingle.
A bell rang, completely out of place in the dark city.
At the same time, a warm fragrance brushed past the tip of her nose.
It was nothing like the cold smell of metal, the dank reek of drugs, or the harsh odor of dry gunpowder.
Maybe it was just her imagination, but when the girl entered the grocery store, she felt as if a very warm breeze were blowing toward her.
A warm atmosphere and air that were difficult to experience in Risk City.
‘…Is this really an ordinary store?’
This place was unmistakably different from everywhere else.
The outside and inside were completely disconnected; it must have been an environment that none of her companions, including herself, had ever experienced in their lives.
“Ahem, welcome.”
An awkward greeting.
The sharp-featured man who appeared before the girl, whether a clerk or a thug….
did not outwardly display the menacing atmosphere radiated by everyone living in Risk City, the hostility of someone perched on the edge of a knife.
Perhaps that was why.
The girl bowed her waist even lower and hunched her body as tightly as she could.
The warm atmosphere felt hot instead, and she was afraid the blade hidden in her clothes might be discovered.
“What did you come to buy? An errand for your mom?”
If the girl had not barely managed to stop the blade from springing out like a coil when the clueless man reached for her hair, this story might have gone a little differently.
‘A little kid? How old do you think I am….’
The curt words in her mind lingered in her mouth, but she couldn’t bring herself to spit out anything sharp.
She merely turned around and ran far away.
Her footsteps continued to carry her away from the grocery store, but her gaze moved backward of its own accord.
‘…What on earth was that?’
This feeling, this sensation, the other person’s purpose—
all of it was impossible to understand.
The girl, wanting to resolve those questions,
Grrr….
clutched her still-hungry stomach and decided to secretly watch the grocery store, where bright light spilled out.
* * *
Roughly twenty-four hours.
That was about my limit.
“Yaaawn, I’m getting sleepy….”
My eyelids began to droop little by little.
I could have forced myself to hold out longer, but there was no reason to keep my sleepy eyelids propped open.
Even Christine, the boss, probably hadn’t expected me to keep the store open for twenty-four hours without closing it.
‘My stamina really has improved.’
My eyesight, hearing, build, and stamina had all improved.
And although I hadn’t properly checked, I hadn’t even developed muscle soreness after organizing the inventory stacked as high as my enlarged body, so
my strength must have improved as well.
It really was a body suited to the ‘protagonist’ of a game. But as someone who had lived his whole life as an ordinary small fry, I had no desire to try anything with these abilities.
I also still hadn’t gotten a proper feel for this world.
‘It’d be different if I could at least use the internet.’
In a cyberpunk world, would I have to stick some strange chip into my head just to search for something?
That immediately made me uncomfortable.
The human body wasn’t a computer—what was I thinking?
Still, there had to be separate devices that could connect to the internet from outside.
‘I need to sell something first if I want to make money.’
Wasn’t the money from selling the grocery store’s goods supposed to go to the boss?
She’d understand to some extent, right?
We were all just trying to make a living.
If she were sensitive about money, she probably would have warned me before leaving.
Recalling Christine’s indifferent attitude, I nodded to myself. Yeah.
“Ah.”
Come to think of it, there had seemed to be a reasonable selection of necessities inside the building where I had opened my eyes.
My reclusive, homebody mindset—afraid of going outside—was still intact, but I couldn’t truly live without going out at all.
I couldn’t stay in here for the rest of my life.
It was also clear that I needed to survive in this world for the time being.
The memory of what I’d gone through on my first day kept making anxiety well up inside me,
but my body still moved more easily than I’d expected.
Was I really this brave?
I actually found myself thinking that.
“I’ll be right back.”
[Dyu?]
“Yeah.”
After saying that to the turret I was gradually getting used to,
I opened the opaque entrance and headed outside.
Looking around, I didn’t see any suspicious shadows right away.
It was late in the evening, and I thought I would have to move by the light of broken streetlamps, but security was probably just as bad during the day as at night.
In that case, nighttime, when I could move around secretly, was probably better.
A smell like iron filings mixed into the bleak wind drifted toward me.
I more or less remembered the route, so it wouldn’t take long as long as I didn’t wander down another path.
I’d had plenty of time to sort out my thoughts, so my confused state of mind had eased a little as well.
‘Right. Worrying won’t change anything.’
This was a place where people lived too, so nothing strange would suddenly happen.
But there was just one thing.
If there was anything I was worried about….
It was the possibility that, just like when I first fell into this world, I might hear another strange sound.
【Going-Out Event!】
【Random Encounter Occurred!】
“Fuck me.”
Just like right now.
notes