CHAPTER 17

  Who smokes Golden Rats anymore?

  “That will be four hundred and seventy-seven yen, Customer. Could I see your ID?”

  “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Oh great, this is not going to go well, I can feel it.

  “Customer, I need to see your identification in order to sell you any tobacco products.”

  “I am Busho. Everyone knows who I am. I am a Hero dammit!”

  “As I said before, I apologize, but in order to sell tobacco products, I must see an identification for age verification.”

  “Well, I don’t have one, you pipsqueak. It’s the goddam end of the world. Who the hell cares if I have an ID? Just give me the damn cigarettes.”

  Yeah, this is definitely not going to end well.

  “I’m sorry—“

  “If it weren’t for me, this whole place would have been run over by gobs. You and everyone else would be dead, you hear me? Show some gratitude, why don’t you? Now, just shut up, and give me my damn cigarettes. NOW!”

  “Customer, please under—“

  I didn’t even flinch when the fat, blob of a man raised his fist and slammed it toward the counter. Of course, it never made contact. This wasn’t the first tantrum I had seen like this, and this one ended the same as all the others.

  I had just finished restocking the cigarettes, when the doors opened and the chime rang out.

  BING! BONG!

  I didn’t even bother looking up. The man moved fast, despite his bulk, and in an instant, he was screaming at me.

  “Cocky son of a—“

  I let out a deep sigh. It was always the smokers who caused the most ruckus. And the cheaper the cigarettes they favored, the noisier they were. Golden Rats were the cheapest cigarettes we stocked. To my knowledge, they were the cheapest cigarettes you could get anywhere in the country legally.

  I wish we could just stop selling these. Not like they do anyone any good.

  I looked up, just in time to see the man running at the door like a charging rhino. He looked like ripping off my head would have been the highlight of his day at this point, and it was intimidating enough that I reflexively took a step back, despite knowing I was safe. He certainly had received a store ban already.

  This time, however, it was not the usual show of watching angry or drunk customers flail at the golden force field like helpless puppets. For the first time in a while, I felt a twinge of fear that someone might be able to breach the doors.

  He charged at the entrance exactly like a sumo wrestler making a head-first dash at his opponent. It was a move that meant to intimidate, and if his target was me, rather than a stationary building, he might have had more success.

  This was not an ordinary charge, however. As he ran, red flames seemed to engulf his entire body. His eyes were glowing white, which made him look like he was about to explode. Instead, there was a bright flash of white light when he made contact.

  Usually, when someone tried to force their way into the store, the field simply pushed their attempts back. Rather than a wall, it was like a completely frictionless surface, and the invader wouldn’t even get a scratch or a bruise. After a while of not being able to even touch the walls of the building, most simply walked away with confused looks on their faces.

  This time, however, the store reacted more forcefully, as if it had taken offense at the more aggressive assault.

  After the blinding flash, I saw the rotund man fly through the air like a volleyball, slowly carving an arc until he fell back to the ground, more than halfway across the street. He even bounced like a ball, skipping several times until he rolled to a stop, lightly tapping the wall of the building across the street.

  That’s new. Well, he did say he was a hero. Like that kid with the sword. Why do these guys keep getting kicked out of the store? Bunch of troublemakers.

  The other hero, the kid with a magic sword and middle-school syndrome, had not come back after that initial meeting. It did make sense, as from what I heard, the heroes were supposed to be busy pushing back the monsters at the borders of the town now.

  At least the kid had some manners, even though it was annoying trying to figure out what he was saying. This new hero was both more familiar to me, and more annoying. Just like the drunks and weirdos who showed up at the store in the middle of the night, they were often quick to anger, and unpredictable, sometimes even violent.

  I was a bit surprised, but not as much as before, when the brute made a second run at the door, to exactly the same effect. At least he didn’t look like he had been harmed, despite the acrobatics. It must have taken at least ten minutes of him slamming his fist at the windows, and charging at the door with his massive bulk, before he got tired out, and slinked away, waving goodbye to me with a rude hand gesture.

  To be entirely honest, I was a bit sad to see him go. At least it was a bit of drama to break through the monotony of my day. As I had predicted, once the knowledge of the online stores had been shared with the survivors, the substance of my day had gone through a noticeable transformation.

  The shipments to the delivery room were now mostly made up of special orders. The store had been fully restocked with most of the standard products, and I still had people coming in regularly to buy fresh food and other items, but the local groups and organizations had started to submit large orders, similar to the one the Governor had made during that initial test. These were filled with special order items from the online store.

  There were a lot of camping supplies, like the solar lanterns, which I could now see positioned in some of the nearby buildings, and even lighting the outdoor area around the store.

  There were also daily orders filled with boxes of survival ration types of food. Energy and protein bars and jelly packs, along with packs of microwave rice, dehydrated curry, and vitamins were some of the most popular items, along with camping stoves and gas canisters. I think that people realized that money was a limited resource, and after the initial splurging on comfort items, many had turned to more practical, long-term concerns, especially the public servant faction led by the Governor.

  Of course, people still stopped by for personal orders and to browse the store, now that I had restocked the more luxury items like ice cream, cakes, and cans and bottles of soda. They also stopped by for the free water that I provided. My day had become mostly checking online orders and refilling water bottles.

  I was starting to find it frustrating. It didn’t take long to realize that now that the online orders system was taking care of everything, I had no impact on what was happening. While the survivors were getting organized, forming groups to fight off the monsters or manage resources, I was doing nothing but scanning barcodes, cleaning the store, and acting like a human water pump.

  I remember how I felt when I first started at this store. I hated the feeling of pointlessness that I associated with working in a place like this. I had been humiliated and depressed. I had never imagined that I would fall to the point where I had to work such a useless and humiliating job. I almost quit the first week.

  I think the only reason I stayed past the first few days had been the pep talk I had received from one of the other part-timers, a veteran convenience store worker who was tasked by the manager to get me onboard.

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  She had been working at the store for a few years, since she had been a high school student, apparently. In fact, she had worked at this location longer than anyone else, including the manager. When I had started, she was the one who showed me how to use the register, and access the online training programs. She also gave me a few tips on how to deal with the more annoying parts of the job.

  “You have to learn how to tune it all out. Don’t ever think of the customers as people, just tasks that you need to complete. None of it matters, just do what the system tells you to do, then forget it.”

  I didn’t take much heed to that at first. I was sure this was only a temporary situation. By the second week, I had a better grip on my situation, and I realized that I had no other options. That advice ended up saving me, helping me to survive that first month working in the store.

  But what worked then, might not be the best approach in this new reality. After talking to the Governor, I had a moment where I felt that maybe I could be doing more. Contributing somehow, at least more than I was doing now. In the end, however, all I had done was do what the store told me to do. For all my education, my value was only in dragging boxes around the store.

  More than anything, my inability to leave the store was starting to grind on me. I hated being so passive. I lived at the whim of the AI, I was no more than a feature of the store to most of the customers, doing nothing but retrieving their orders. For all the praise that people had heaped on me recently, I knew more than anyone that I had done nothing of any worth. I was trapped in the store, alone, like a prisoner in solitary confinement, with no chance of release.

  If there was just someone else in the store. After that first day, I hadn’t seen or heard from any of the other employees, not even the manager. The AI had been clear, that if I left, the Safe Zone would be discontinued. The only place with water and power, the new source of resources that everyone was relying on, I had no choice, but to stay. But that’s all it needed. Just a body to push a broom, use a dust rag, and read an order label.

  Kaho Saegusa, that had been her name, the part-timer who trained me. I hoped that she had somehow survived. I knew the chances were not good, but she had been the only person I had met in connection to this store who treated me like a human being.

  I thought about her, perhaps more than any of the other employees. Maybe even more than my roommates or classmates. She said that she was a part-time college student. She worked the days, so after the first couple of days, after I started working, I never saw her again, though I did see her name on the shift schedule.

  I realize now that I might have been a bit rude to her. I hadn’t asked her about anything, or even thanked her for giving me advice. She seemed like the typical nice local girl, calm, quiet, with a hint of kind vulnerability, a rarity in this line of work, from what I had seen. How she lasted years working here, I couldn’t even imagine.

  I was lost in my thoughts when I heard the door chime again.

  Bing! Bong!

  “Welcome to One Mart!”

  I tried to keep my service smile plastered on my face as I checked the customer to see if it was someone I remembered. Thankfully, it wasn’t another online order pickup or an angry sumo wrestler. It was one of the regulars.

  “Hey, Ming. How’s it going?”

  “Not bad. Just had a run-in with one of those heroes.”

  “No way! For real? Which one?”

  “I can’t remember his name. He was… a large…? customer…”

  I caught myself at the last minute. Saying something disrespectful about a customer was a big penalty.

  “Large? Was it Busho? Awesome! He’s cool. You know he was an actual sumo wrestler? He comes here?”

  I just nodded, deciding not to share the details of the hero’s visit.

  “Here for the usual.”

  The teenager placed four rental batteries on the counter.

  In my mind, I had started to call him “Tall”. His two companions were now “Short” and “Grande”, for the little annoying one and the big, silent one. I had seen a lot of them since that night.

  Tall had become the resident IT guy. The three high school delinquents were kind of under PTA Mom’s wing, it seemed, and she had roped Tall into taking over her battery duties.

  By now, the first batch of batteries had been marked in the system as bought out. It seemed that once they were rented without being returned for so long that the rental cost exceeded the value of the battery, then the system simply charged the full amount, and the battery was now the permanent property of the holder.

  Luckily, we still allowed those people to swap the battery for a fully charged one for free, so now Tall was coming in every day to swap batteries. He still had his original battery, along with three more, including the ones that PTA Mom had passed to him.

  Tall would run around the area and charge up people’s phones. This was critical for the new online store economy. A working phone was the only way to access the online store, and the only way anyone had figured out how to restart a phone, was to use the One Mart batteries to charge them back up.

  This meant that Tall was now a very busy, and very popular guy. In exchange for his work, people would often share some money or food.

  I picked up the batteries, pressed the swap button on the display, and then one by one, I placed a battery into an empty slot, listened for a beep, and then waited for a fully charged battery to be ejected. After a few seconds, I placed four, fully charged batteries on the counter.

  “All set. Do you need anything else? Water refill?”

  “No, I’m all good. I just need to get going. Lot more people eager to log onto the online store.”

  I’ll bet. Just what I was hoping for. More orders.

  “Sure. Be careful out there. Oh, yeah. How’s the hand doing?”

  I remembered that Tall had injured his hand recently. It had been heavily bandaged the last time I saw him.

  “My hand? Oh yeah. It’s fine. People were worried, it did look pretty bad, but just went to sleep, and the next day it was all better. See, now there isn’t even a scar.”

  Tall waved his hand in front of my face, and I had to admit, I couldn’t tell it had been injured at all.

  They must have just used up all those bandages for a scratch. What a waste.

  “I actually wanted to ask you about that. Where did you get that drink you gave me? I checked the online store, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  What drink?

  I stared at him for a while.

  “What drink?”

  “You know, the one you gave me the other day. From the box.”

  The box?

  “The little metal bottle?”

  “Oh!”

  He must have been one of the winners of the giveaway. There had been ten bottles of that strange energy drink. I couldn’t remember who won them, but I had given out all the prizes, including the big box full of pocket tissue packs away days ago.

  “Oh yeah. I think that was a special promotional product. I haven’t seen it before.”

  “Well, the thing is…” the boy looked around, as though he had some kind of big secret.

  “…You see, the truth is, it was bad, my hand. It got torn up when I fell climbing through a downed building over by the park. I got it looked at by one of the doctors they have at the main base, but all they could do was bandage it up. They even said that worst case, I might lose a couple of fingers.”

  “Looks fine now.”

  “Yeah, that’s the weird thing. I was freaking out, then, the next day, it was fine.”

  “That’s good. You should be more careful though. I don’t know what kind of options there are now, but it seems like medicine is in pretty low supply now. All I have here is basic first aid supplies.”

  His face contorted with a mix of frustration and embarrassment. It mirrored how I felt when I was first learning the Japanese language. Like he was trying to say something, but didn’t know the correct words to express his thoughts.

  “Was there something about that bottle? Is it a magic drink?” He blurted the question out in a rush.

  “Huh?”

  “Like a potion. You know, in video games, they have healing potions. Like that?”

  What is he talking about?

  I just stared at him while he loosened up. The question about magic potions seemed to be the thing that was giving him stress.

  “I mean… I thought I might even lose my hand, or maybe die even. It was that bad. Then I drank that bottle. Thanks for that, by the way, I was depressed then, and I just drank it because… I don’t know. I just wanted something to take my mind off…”

  “It was just a free prize. I don’t even know where it came…”

  Waitasecond.

  I started navigating through the register screens, looking for a sign of that drink. I couldn’t remember the exact name of it, so I just searched through all the energy drinks. Nothing came up.

  “Hey, do you remember what that drink was called? It’s not one of our normal products.”

  “Sure. I still have the bottle too.”

  He reached into a pocket inside of his coat and pulled out a small metal bottle.

  [One Mart Select Red Lightning Energy Drink]

  I turned the bottle around in my hand. The details were surprising and familiar at the same time. It looked just like the other dozen or so similar items that we sold. Like everything else that we now sold, it was branded as a One Mart product, although this bore a slightly different version. The word “Select” was added in between the One Mart name and the circular logo featuring Wanma.

  I was sure that I had never seen this branding before. Still, everything else seemed normal. The ingredients and regulatory information were printed on the thin metal skin of the bottle. There was also a barcode.

  I grabbed my scanner and scanned the code into the register. Immediately a product screen full of information appeared on the monitor.

  Product: One Mart Select Red Lightning Energy Drink

  PROMOTIONAL PRODUCT: NOT FOR SALE]

  Unit Price: NA

  Unit Size: 220 ml

  Origin: XXXXXXXXXX

  Product Description: One Mart Select Red Lightning Energy Drink. Crafted for those who crave more than just energy, Red Lightning brings razor-sharp focus and limitless stamina to help you conquer any challenge.

  What sets Red Lightning apart is its amazing healing boost. Infused with a secret, enchanted formula, this drink doesn’t just support recovery-it accelerates it with a touch of magic, helping your body mend minor injuries and bounce back stronger than ever. Alongside enhanced strength and endurance, One Mart Select Red Lightning Energy Drink empowers you to push your limits and recover like never before.

  Due to its extraordinary potency and magical effects, no more than one serving should be consumed within a twenty-four hour period. Experience the future of energy, focus, and magical recovery with One Mart Select Red Lightning Energy Drink-unleash your inner hero, responsibly.

  I gawked at the description and the empty can in my hand.

  Magic? Wait. What happened to the other cans?