3. Please Do Not Fight the Convenience Store Clerk

Somewhere obscure in Tokyo, a notification appeared on large screens in a room of a government building; it could have been an earthquake warning, but no, it was much worse. This was the notification that would dictate a new era for the metropolis, the one where the state bureaucracy finally discovered that the apocalypse came disguised as a pay stub and a discount at a convenience store.

Priority Alpha

Classification event has been registered.

Location: [MinouseMart: Convenience Store, Shibuya District.]

Time: [3:41 AM JST]

Entity classification: [Complete failure]

Attempts: [147]

Successful attempts: [0]

Analysis of the technique used: [Incompatible.]

Method used: [Unknown to the System.]

Power level used: [Power exceeds measurement parameters.]

System recommendation: [Observe closely.]

Secondary System recommendation: [Never attack or be aggressive toward the entity.]

Tertiary System recommendation: [Seriously, don't do it.]

Alert: [The process has been flagged for review by the Directorate.]

All the screens in the room emitted a sound like a beep. It was a notification; that shrill beep could just as easily signal the end of the world as the start of a condominium meeting. This government building was not on any map of Tokyo, which actually made some sense because its finance department decided to spend most of the cartography budget on used underwear vending machines, rather than investing in the building's location.

This was a distinct room, it was a nervous room by nature, a national monitoring room, potentially claustrophobic, cozily stuffy, and illuminated only by the ghostly glow of the monitors that projected the ideal light to cause dark circles and ruin the morale of two underpaid interns.

Inside the room, a woman approached the screen and set her coffee cup on the table, so slowly that it seemed like a dramatic movement to test the gravity of planet Earth. The woman goes by the name of Director Tanaka. Actually, her name is just Tanaka, but because she had been working at the WID for 12 years, her given name had already been chemically fused with her job title; pronounced so many times, it functioned like a life sentence without parole.

This government division had two essential functions: it was responsible for the integration of awakened beings and for the classification of all magical powers in Japan. They had been easy tasks up until now.

The Director had already seen S-class adventurers, she had already analyzed dossiers on entities whose mere existence caused natural disasters and distorted the shape of reality, not to mention monsters whose egos rivaled the State budget. She had also supervised containment protocols for rare creatures that could not be killed in any way, and the Japanese army had already given up on killing them out of sheer exhaustion of patience; it was later concluded that these creatures could only be managed. But to be sure, Tanaka had never seen a classification fail, much less by such an expressive number: 147 times. Yes, that is the number, 147 times and 0 successful attempts. She stared at the screen, as she was still processing all the information one by one; the Director was so astonished that she was going to need help.

At the back of the room, a rather agitated voice emerged that tore through the silence of the room. "Director!" It was analyst Hayashi—young, having recently graduated from university, almost always nervous, neurotic, and competent whenever he remembered to breathe. The young man. With his trembling fingers, he opened the corresponding images, and in the images was the famous B-class fissure located in the parking lot in the Shibuya District. Tanaka picked up her coffee cup and took another sip, probably trying to anesthetize her soul with caffeine.

"The Fissure was closed before an anomaly response team could be mobilized to the site," Hayashi stammered, pointing at the graph. "The closing time was exactly 2.2 seconds, Director."

Tanaka did not let Hayashi continue; she could not bear to keep listening to what the young man was saying over there. She immediately set her coffee cup aside on the table. "That is impossible, Hayashi. It is impossible for someone to close a B-class fissure in that time, in the time it takes a human to close their eyes."

Hayashi could barely look the Director in the eyes, and he began to doubt the kind of response he could offer. Then, a lightbulb went on and an idea emerged: "I know. Director, look, I am going to play the video." And then, he approached the screen and clicked the play button.

The two of them stood looking at the images, like someone expecting to see a cheap Hollywood action movie for the first time in the cinema. But to the disappointment of both, they were very low-quality images; the video looked like it had been filmed by a potato.

The video began to play the parking lot next to a convenience store at three in the morning, totally ordinary for a Wednesday night in Tokyo; occasionally someone passed by to enter the convenience store, or someone went to a street noodle food cart, or even the night bus passed by in the early hours, sometimes stopping at the stop with no one getting off or getting on. Three-something in the morning, this playback was the perfect illustration of a cheap surveillance system; however, it was sharp enough to be able to make out the location.

It was then that the man walked out of the store slowly, determined, average height and average build too, in fact, absolutely normal, as banal as a typical convenience store employee who receives minimum wage and had already lost faith in humanity. He stood about five meters away from the fissure, raised his hand, and the Fissure simply evaporated from reality.

The Director impulsively expressed her desire: "Again, play that crap again, but slower this time, frame by frame." Tanaka this time put her nose to the monitor; the night shift employee's hand rose, and his gesture did not even truly look like a normal gesture, it looked more like a joint physical therapy exercise to combat arthritis.

He simply made it cease to exist. The fissure could have collapsed slowly, or it could even have sealed its edges with an appropriate and methodical technique, like some kind of dimensional stabilization pattern for fissures known in the WID protocols. The guy simply made that anomaly cease to exist out of pure boredom.

"Director, the System cannot identify what he did," said the young Hayashi with some hesitation, his fingers still trembling. "There is no recognition of the activation of the technique used, no mana signature was identifiable. There is nothing like it in our records, Director. It is as if... He had asked reality to repair itself and…"

Tanaka looked at Hayashi and finished his sentence with her usual bitterness. "Right, and reality had obeyed like a very obedient dog trained to wag its tail."

A sepulchral silence settled in the room, interrupted only by the humming of the screens.

The Director's patience evaporated like a nuclear catastrophe; she looked at Hayashi with her eyes wide open. "Hayashi, I want everything on that location. Did you hear me? I said everything!"

Hayashi immediately grabbed his tablet and started noting down what the Director wanted, his fingers hammering the screen. "I want the employee records, I want all the security footage from the last year. Everything, Hayashi! I don't care if we have to analyze the expiration dates of ramen cups."

Hayashi hesitated, his voice trembling: "But Director, there's more." Tanaka swallowed the rest of the requests that were already on the tip of her tongue to dictate. "The System tried to classify the person responsible and failed completely, Director. A number never seen before, 147 times."

Now, with this reinforcement from the young man, the number began to spin in her brain, like a bureaucratic roller coaster. "And in the end, the process merely finishes with: Never attack or be aggressive toward the entity."

Tanaka furrowed her brow and narrowed her eyes at the same time, and asked aloud: "But since when does the System make any kind of recommendation? Hayashi."

"It doesn't." Tanaka immediately finished: "Or rather, it apparently didn't used to, Hayashi." She approached the screens and opened the notification. "Seriously? There's even a tertiary note, Hayashi?" Tanaka could no longer stop; she began to read the notification aloud, chewing on every word: "Seriously, do not do it."

Silence once again crushed the room, and it came accompanied by butterflies in their stomachs.

Tanaka remained with her mouth open, staring for exactly 42 seconds at that surgical notification. Hayashi stood motionless observing his boss; he looked at the Director searching for any sign of life. But the authoritarian trance eventually ended:

"In 12 years, Hayashi, I have never seen the System add an editorial comment to any classification whatsoever, much less a notification that looked like an existential panic attack. But what the hell is the name of this freak?"

Hayashi placed his hands on the control panel and opened the night shift employee's file. The photograph showed a man in his 30s, his hair was dark, straight, dark eyes, fair skin, and a totally neutral expression. It was clearly the face of an individual who invested a titanic effort into not being remembered. The perfect prototype of that guy who stays in the background of those family photos whom no one knows who he is, whom no one can explain why he is there or if he actually breathes.

"Soren Vonesdar, that is his name," Hayashi read with his voice wavering between horror and absurdity. "Night shift employee at the MinouseMart store, he has been an employee for three years… exactly the three years he has been living in Tokyo."

Again, a dramatic pause of silence between the employee and the Director. "Director, there are no earlier records. The guy has no birth certificate, has no tax debts, not even school records, no history whatsoever, Director. It is as if he had appeared out of nowhere in 2021 already wearing a red apron."

"Hayashi, no one appears out of nowhere, boy." Hayashi stood at attention again, in an upright posture, like a soldier in front of his general. "I know, I know, Director. But, anyway, the process said exactly that." Tanaka glued her face to the photograph, the man who had just exterminated a B-class fissure in 2.2 seconds. A physically impossible record, the same man who caused 147 classification failures in a supercomputer, and in turn triggered a nervous breakdown for it. "But damn it, he is a convenience store employee, it cannot be possible," Tanaka vented.

The Director clumsily issued another order: "Hayashi, get on the secure line and schedule a meeting right now."

"With whom?" the young man replied in astonishment, fearing his boss's answer.

"With whom, Hayashi? Not with the fucking Holy Trinity, that's for sure. With him, boy, this Mr. Vonesdar." Hayashi could not believe what the Director wanted to do. And stammering with his voice failing miserably, he said: "And… and if he refuses, Director?"

Tanaka looked away from the photograph and started looking at the video again. The video looped infinitely in terrible quality, from the gesture he made to the closing of the fissure. An absolutely casual gesture, even lazy, at an unreal speed. And most impressively, a complete absence of effort, like someone waving to an acquaintance on the other side of the road and walking away to go back to restocking the Ramen shelf.

"Hayashi, people who close B-class fissures in two seconds do not refuse meetings," said Tanaka, approaching the table to rescue her coffee cup. "Believe me." She took another sip of coffee; the coffee was already completely cold, but the bitterness of the caffeine was the only thing that could keep her sanity awake. "They just haven't invited him the right way yet, Hayashi." She flashed a small predatory smile at the young analyst.