Convenience Store Woman Read online

  Jet black hairs were sprouting on the fingers of my hand holding the glass and on my arms too. Until now I’d always been scrupulous over my personal appearance for the sake of the convenience store, but now that it was no longer necessary I didn’t feel the need to shave. I looked in the mirror that stood in the living room and saw I had a faint moustache too.

  Once every three days or so, when Shiraha insisted, I reluctantly went to the same coin-operated shower I’d previously used every day.

  I had judged everything on the basis of whether it was the sensible thing to do for the convenience store, but now I’d lost that standard. There was nothing to guide me over whether an action was rational or not. Before I became a store worker, I must have been following some kind of logic in my judgments, but I’d forgotten whatever guiding principles I’d followed back then.

  Suddenly I heard an electronic buzz, and I turned to see Shiraha’s cell phone ringing on the tatami. He must have left it behind when he went out. I thought of just letting it ring, but it kept going on and on.

  Wondering whether there was some kind of emergency, I looked at the screen and saw the words “Wife from Hell.” Feeling a hunch I pressed ANSWER and sure enough the voice on the other end was that of his sister-in-law.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” she yelled. “I know where you are, and I’ll butt in on you whenever I damn well like!”

  “Um, hello. This is Furukura.”

  When she realized it was me on the phone, she immediately calmed down and said coolly, “Oh, it’s you, is it?”

  “Shiraha’s out at the moment. He probably went to buy some food. I’m sure he’ll be back right away.”

  “You’ll do fine. Can I ask you to pass on a message about the loan to my brother-in-law? I haven’t heard anything from him since he paid three thousand yen last week. What the hell is that? Three thousand yen! Barely enough to cover lunch for two. Is he taking the piss?”

  “Oh. Er, I’m sorry.” I stammered out apologetically.

  “Look, pull yourself together. I have his signature on the IOU and I’ll take him to court if I have to! Please tell him that, okay?” she said, clearly annoyed.

  “Yes, I’ll tell him as soon as he comes home.”

  “Make sure you do! The man is really greedy when it comes to money, I swear.”

  In the background, I heard the sound of a baby crying.

  It suddenly occurred to me that no longer having the convenience store manual to follow, perhaps I should use animal instinct as the standard on which to base my judgments. I’m an animal of the human species so perhaps having children to make my species prosper would be the correct path for me.

  “Um, may I ask you something? Is having children good for humanity?”

  “What?”

  She sounded so taken aback on the other end of the line that I thought I’d better explain what I meant.

  “After all, we’re animals, so isn’t it better for our species if we multiply? Do you think it would be best for me and Shiraha to quickly get on with mating and play our part in making humanity prosper?”

  For a while she was so quiet I thought she’d maybe hung up, but then I heard the sound of such a long, heavy sigh that I could almost feel her warm breath spewing out through the receiver.

  “Give me a break! How do you think a store worker and an unemployed good-for-nothing are going to be able to raise children? Please don’t even consider it. You’ll be doing us all a favor by not leaving your genes behind. That’s the best contribution to the human race you could make.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Keep those rotten genes to yourself for the course of your lifetime and take them to heaven with you when you die without leaving even a trace of them here on earth. Seriously.”

  “I see,” I said nodding to myself, impressed at her ability to think so rationally.

  “I swear that talking with you makes me feel dizzy. Plus it’s a waste of time, so I’m going to say goodbye now. Oh, and make sure you tell him about the money, okay?” she said and hung up.

  So apparently it would be better for the human race if Shiraha and I didn’t mate. Since I’d never had sex and the very thought of it was ghastly, I was quite relieved about this. I would carry my genes carefully to my grave, being sure not to rashly leave any behind, and I would dispose of them properly when I died. I was resolved on this, but at the same time it left me in a bit of a limbo. I understood the end point perfectly, but how was I to spend my time until then?

  I heard the door open, and Shiraha came in. He was carrying a plastic bag from a nearby hundred-yen shop. Now that my daily rhythm had been disrupted I rarely boiled vegetables for our feed, and instead he’d started buying frozen meals from the hundred-yen shop.

  “Oh, you woke up?”

  Even though we were both living in this small apartment, it had been some time since we’d last sat down to lunch together. The rice cooker was always left on, and my life revolved around waking up and shoving some rice into my mouth before getting back into my closet and sleeping again.

  Having for once run into each other, we somehow ended up having lunch together. Shiraha defrosted some steamed dumplings and chicken nuggets and piled them onto plates. Wordlessly I put some in my mouth.

  I didn’t know what I was taking in nutrition for. I chewed the rice and dumplings to a pulp, but I couldn’t bring myself to swallow.

  * * *

  Today I was going to my first interview. It was only for a temping agency, but for someone like me—a thirty-six-year-old woman who’d only ever worked in a convenience store—just managing to get an interview was nothing short of a miracle Shiraha told me, looking jubilant. Almost a month had passed since I’d resigned from the convenience store.

  I was wearing a trouser suit I hadn’t touched since having had it cleaned over ten years ago and had tied my hair back. It was the first time I’d left the apartment in quite a while too. The money I’d saved while working at the convenience store, meager as it was, had been considerably depleted.

  “Well then, Furukura, let’s get going.”

  Shiraha said he’d see me to the interview and was dead set on waiting for me outside until it was over.

  We went out of the apartment into the hot, humid summer air and headed for the station. It was the first time I’d been on a train in quite a while too.

  “We’re a bit too early. There’s still over an hour to go,” Shiraha said when we arrived.

  “Is there?”

  “I’m just going to take a leak. Wait for me here,” he said and walked off.

  I wondered whether there was a public toilet nearby, but then saw that he’d gone into a convenience store. I should go to the toilet too, I thought and ran after him. As the automatic door slid open, I heard the familiar chimes.

  “Irasshaimasé!” a girl behind the till called out as I walked in.

  There was a queue to pay. I looked at the clock and saw it was almost noon. The lunchtime rush was just getting under way.

  There were just two young women behind the counter, one wearing a badge that said: IN TRAINING. Both were frantically ringing up items on each of the two tills.

  This was apparently a business district, since the customers all seemed to be either men in suits or young women who looked like office assistants.

  And then the store’s voice began streaming into me. All its sounds quivered with meaning, the vibrations speaking directly to my cells, like music to my ears. I knew instinctively what this store needed without even having to think about it.

  I was startled to see the open refrigerated display case with an ad announcing 30¥ OFF ALL PASTA! The pasta dishes were all jumbled in with the yakisoba and okonomiyaki and didn’t stand out at all.

  This wouldn’t do I thought, and I moved them to a more conspicuous spot next to the Korean-style cold noodles. A customer stared at me warily, but when I looked up and said “Irasshaimasé!” she appeared satisfied that I was a store
employee and took one of the packs of spicy cod roe pasta I had just neatly laid out.

  Perfect, I thought to myself, then immediately noticed the chocolates display. Hastily I took out my cell phone and checked the date. Today was Tuesday, new products day. How could the store workers have forgotten this, the single most important day in the week for a store?

  I almost screamed when I saw there was only a single row of a new line of chocolates on the very lowest shelf. This was outrageous! It wasn’t the way to display a limited seasonal white chocolate flavor of the very chocolates that six months ago had been such a huge hit and major best-selling product. I quickly rearranged the display, putting the sweets that didn’t sell so well into a single row to free up space on the top shelf for three rows of the new line. Then I moved the NEW PRODUCT! label to draw attention to it.

  One of the women on the tills was eyeing me suspiciously. She could see what I was doing, but she was busy attending to the queue of customers, unable to move. I made a gesture as if to show a badge on my breast and called out “Good morning!” taking care to not say it loud enough to disturb the customers.

  Apparently reassured, she bowed slightly and went back to working the till. I was wearing a suit, so she probably thought I was from head office. Being so easily duped showed poor security I thought. What if I were a crook and opened the back room safe or stole money from the till?

  I was making a mental note to warn her about that when I heard: “Hey, look! There’s a white chocolate version of this out now.” I looked around to see a couple of women picking up handfuls of new product I had just rearranged. “I saw an ad for this on TV just this morning. I have to try it now!”

  A convenience store is not merely a place where customers come to buy practical necessities, it has to be somewhere they can enjoy and take pleasure in discovering things they like. I nodded in satisfaction and walked briskly around the store checking the displays.

  It was a hot day, yet the stock of mineral water in the fridge was low. There was only one inconspicuously placed two-liter carton of barley tea out too, although these always sold well in hot weather.

  I could hear the store’s voice telling me what it wanted, how it wanted to be. I understood it perfectly.

  There was a break in the queue, and the girl behind the till came running over to me. “Wow, that’s amazing. It’s like magic!” she whispered, gazing at the display of crisps I’d just arranged. “One of our part-timers didn’t come in today. I tried to get in touch with the manager but I couldn’t get through and was at my wit’s end being on my own with just one new hire …”

  “Is that what happened? But from what I can see, you’re doing just fine.” I said. “You’re polite with the customers and were doing everything right on the till. Once the lunchtime rush is over, be sure to put out some nice cold drinks. And now that it’s so hot, you’d better rearrange the ice-cream cabinet. Refreshing ice pops sell really well in this weather, so you’ll need to put out some more of those. And the sundries shelf is a bit dusty. Take everything off it and give it a good clean.”

  I couldn’t stop hearing the store telling me the way it wanted to be, what it needed. It was all flowing into me. It wasn’t me speaking. It was the store. I was just channeling its revelations from on high.

  “Yes, I’ll do that,” the girl said, her voice absolutely trusting.

  “And the automatic door is covered in fingerprints. They really stand out, so you’d better give it a clean too. Also, you have a lot of women customers, so you should put a wider variety of cellophane noodle soup dishes out. Please be sure to tell the manager. And also—”

  I was still relaying the store’s voice to the store worker when someone shouted, “What the hell’s going on here?” and grabbed my wrist. It was Shiraha, who had just come out of the bathroom.

  “Excuse me, but what appears to be the problem?” I responded reflexively, as if to a customer.

  “Stop taking the piss!” he shouted and dragged me out of the store onto the street. “Are you crazy? Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Listening to the voice of the convenience store.” The thin pale skin covering his face crumpled in an expression of disgust, but I didn’t back down. “The voice of the convenience store won’t stop flowing through me. I was born to hear this voice.”

  “What the—” He was beginning to look scared.

  “I realize now,” I went on relentlessly. “More than a person, I’m a convenience store worker. Even if that means I’m abnormal and can’t make a living and drop down dead, I can’t escape that fact. My very cells exist for the convenience store.”

  His face was still scrunched up as he tugged on my wrist, evidently still determined to take me to the interview. “You’re out of your mind. The village mentality of society will never permit such a creature to exist. It goes against the rules! You’ll just be persecuted by everyone and live a lonely life. You’d be far better off working to support me. That way everyone’ll breathe easier. They’ll be satisfied. They’ll even be happy for you.”

  “No, I can’t go with you. Think of me as an animal, a convenience store animal. I can’t betray my instinct.”

  “They’ll never let you do it!”

  I pulled myself up straight and faced him squarely, the way I did when uttering the store pledge in the morning ritual, and I said, “No. It’s not a matter of whether they permit it or not. It’s what I am. For the human me, it probably is convenient to have you around, Shiraha, to keep my family and friends off my back. But the animal me, the convenience store worker, has absolutely no use for you whatsoever.”

  I was wasting time talking like this. I had to get myself back in shape for the sake of the store. I had to restructure my body so it would be able to move more swiftly and precisely to replenish the refrigerated drinks or clean the floor, to more perfectly comply with the store’s demands.

  “That’s grotesque. You’re not human!” he spat.

  That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I thought. I finally managed to pull my hand from his grip and hugged it to my chest. That hand was important for giving customers their change and for wrapping their food orders. It felt disgustingly sticky from Shiraha’s sweat and I wanted to wash it as soon as I possibly could. It was discourteous to customers to leave it like this!

  “You’ll regret this. Mark my words!” Shiraha shouted as he walked off alone back to the station.

  I took my mobile out of my bag. First I needed to call the company that was interviewing me to tell them I wouldn’t be attending because I was a convenience store worker. And then I had to find a new store to work in.

  I caught sight of myself reflected in the window of the convenience store I’d just come out of. My hands, my feet—they existed only for the store! For the first time, I could think of the me in the window as a being with meaning.

  “Irasshaimasé!”

  I thought of the window in the hospital where I first saw my newborn nephew. Through the reflection a bright voice resembling mine rang out. I could distinctly feel all my cells stirring within my skin as they responded in unison to the music reverberating on the other side of the glass.