2. Gas Leak, Aisle 4

What was happening in that parking lot looked like the suicide attempt of a convenience store clerk; some might think that restocking shelves had consumed his sanity, or that dealing with drunks at four in the morning had altered his hope in humanity and living any longer just wasn't all that interesting.

To the astonishment of everyone present, it worked. Through a single gesture, the dimensional rift gave way; that dark, flickering mass shrank in on itself and disappeared from the Shibuya parking lot in a flash, as if it regretted having appeared in the first place.

No one said a word; their facial expressions simply spoke for themselves.

In that moment, the street was terrified, frozen, and perplexed. The lady who had warned Soren about the rift remained inside the store with mascara running down her chin. In front of her, near the storefront window, was a rack with promotional magazines as well as the store's weekly novelties. Nothing could distract her; not even a new soy ramen featuring Pikachu's face on the packaging managed to catch her attention.

The next moment, the parking lot returned to its normality. The streetlights went back to shining at their subdued intensity, and behind the lot, you could once again see the garden where students went to drink their beers, leaf through some Tokyo Revengers manga, while others listened to music on speakers the size of airplane luggage.

Slightly in front of Soren's hand, floating like a feather from side to side, was a cigarette butt someone had dropped on the ground last Thursday.

2.2 seconds, between his gesture and the sound of a grape-flavored soda can rolling at the back of the lot. His back teeth ached for a brief moment, a result of his long inactivity, as if a professional athlete had stopped playing their favorite sport and was suddenly called to compete in the Olympic Games. Centuries ago, it used to take less time; it was like sitting down and getting up from a chair, but now was not the time to think about that.

Behind his ribs, Soren felt something moving, itching, something that hadn't yet awakened, but seemed to register what had happened, like the ear of a cat twitching when it pretends to be asleep, hearing a mouse passing nearby.

Soren lowered his hand and walked toward the MinouseMart. Behind him, it felt as though someone had sucked all the urban sound out of the world. No one blinked, not a single human noise was noticed; it was as if human brains recognized some kind of information they couldn't process, and then, deliberately chose the most sensible option: to temporarily shut down.

Days without use of power: [1094 → 0]

Personal record: [1094 days]

Record status: [Archived]

Ding-ding.

The electric sensor of the MinouseMart entrance door chimed once more; the automatic doors opened, and between them, Soren calmly walked inside the store, in no rush at all, as if his night shift had never been interrupted.

The freezers welcomed him once again with their eternal protest, and the ramen boxes remained stacked precisely in the same spot where he had left them before going outside. They were waiting for someone to care about them, as their place was on a display shelf, and they didn't want to stay piled on top of each other inside a cardboard box.

He picked up the apron he had left folded on the counter and, with the utmost care, put it on again. Despite everything, working in professional attire is important; it seems to convey a good image, especially when the job involves dealing with ramen. Soren faithfully believed in that, like a work philosophy for someone who no longer has much left to believe in.

As it happened, there was only a single flavor of ramen left to restock on the shelf, and of course, it just had to be the damn soy flavor. As always, he constantly left them for last; chicken and shrimp deserved restocking priority.

But it had to be done; their place is on the shelf, not at the bottom of a cardboard box. The headquarters protocol on product display demanded that ramen had to be at the customers' eye level. The protocol stated: "Consumer Decision Height." Soren found it amusing that someone invented these things, as if anyone were going to make any decisions at three in the morning.

Anomaly Detected

Event: [Fissure Closure (Class B)]

Method: [Unknown]

Time: [2.2 seconds]

Expected time: [15 to 20 minutes (WID Adventurer: Level 50 or higher)]

System processing:

Analyzing...

Analyzing...

Analyzing...

Result:

ERROR.

ERROR.

ERROR.

ERROR.

Entity Classification: [Failed to identify]

Skill Analysis: [Unrecognizable]

Power Reading: [FAILED TO MEASURE PARAMETERS]

System Recommendation: [Observe]

Secondary Recommendation: [Do not attack or be aggressive with the entity]

Tertiary Recommendation: [Seriously. Don't.]

This System notification still hung suspended in his vision. This was a different notification from his personal interface; it was a notification stemming from the true System, the one that classified rifts, evaluated monsters, and all awakened beings in Japan. It was the one that should be able to classify anything, including Soren himself, yet now the night shift clerk had left it confused—this was a rare occurrence, actually.

The woman who had alerted Soren was still inside the store; she remained exactly where he had last seen her before going outside. She was holding onto the energy bar display with one hand, as if it were the only real thing that existed in all of Japan. While she stared at him, her other hand still trembled with the sonic vibration of an electric toothbrush.

"Did you just..." she managed to stutter out these three words.

But Soren didn't even let her finish. "Gas leak." As he walked behind the counter, he didn't want to lose his working rhythm; he still had some tasks to do, as he didn't want to leave room to be that kind of psychologist clerk who is always willing to listen to any customer. It was then that he checked the cigarette inventory; there were still 42 packs of American Spirit available.

The woman couldn't take her eyes off him. "That wasn't a gas leak," she stammered again. Then she gathered her strength and raised her voice. "That was a..." She took a deep breath. "...dimensional rift. Everyone saw it, and you simply..."

"Gas leak." Soren instantly cut off her haunted speech. He aligned the row of lighters, standing up a few that had fallen, perhaps due to what had happened outside. "Very dangerous," he added. Truthfully, it sounded to him like a cheap attempt to deceive the woman. "Everything is sorted out now."

A brief silence settled between the two. She continued to stare at him, and Soren straightened a lighter that had the Great Wave off Kanagawa engraved on it.

"Are you going to take any of the energy bars, ma'am? If you'd like, we also have protein bars."

The woman shivered, finally looking to her right, and saw that her hand was resting over a smiling panda, which was the logo for a brand of vegan energy bars. Even so, the lady didn't reply; she maintained her astonished face, and Soren kept looking at the lighter.

"What I need is a drink," the lady said with some desperation.

"Aisle 2, the sake is on sale. Enjoy!" It seemed he already had this direction memorized on the tip of his tongue. She didn't move her body; she just looked at his hands, then at the aisle, turned her neck toward the door, and only then looked at the ceiling. The lady was merely thinking that the same man who had closed a Class B rift had now started adjusting an AA battery display.

🍲

Ding-ding.

The door opened again, and the couple who had been inside the car in the parking lot entered. The man was slightly ahead, the woman behind him, and on her left side the child—a girl, perhaps 11 or 12 years old—held her mother's hand as if she had just seen something she could never forget.

"What happened?" the man asked, addressing Soren desperately. His tone was completely unbalanced; there was apparently no noise in the store to justify such a loud pitch at that moment, but he was practically yelling anyway. For someone who had just recovered their ability to speak after a mental paralysis, it ended up not being an entirely abnormal behavior.

"What did you do?" he repeated.

Soren didn't even lift his eyes from the batteries; he simply replied. "Gas leak. It has already been reported to the authorities; you folks can rest easy."

"That wasn't..."

Soren was sharp and answered immediately to cut the conversation short. "A very rare type of gas leak. It has hallucinogenic properties, and it's possible you're still experiencing some psychological disorientation."

After a moment, he returned his gaze to the couple. "But there is a solution! I recommend you drink plenty of water. By the way, it's in Aisle 4, and it's also on sale."

The woman still maintained a terrified look, as if she had stepped right out of a horror movie, and finally took the initiative to open her mouth for the first time. However, it was the kid who spoke first.

"You made that disappear."

Soren's hands stopped over the display.

"I didn't make anything disappear." With a slight effort, he kept his voice serene. "Gas leaks dissipate naturally; that's a fact, it's written in chemistry books."

"But you waved your hand and closed it."

It was then that Soren truly looked at the girl with dark skin and even darker eyes—eyes that saw too much and said far more than they were supposed to, and probably also meddled in things they shouldn't.

The girl was still wearing her school uniform, though it was wrinkled from her having fallen asleep in the car.

"Children have an extraordinary imagination," Soren pointed out in a convincing tone directed at the parents and the woman with the mascara. The girl hardly blinked; she continued to stare at him perplexedly.

"I saw teeth inside. In there, in the hole, there were really big teeth."

Now it was truly serious. Something cold moved inside his chest—a shiver, a déjà-vu, perhaps. She saw the inside of the rift; that shouldn't be possible, not for an unawakened human.

Damn it, this is impossible. Counting the teeth inside a rift wasn't even possible for the majority of awakened beings in Tokyo.

Dimensional barriers have a purpose; they were designed precisely to prevent common minds from perceiving what exists between dimensions. And yet, the girl was looking at a Class B rift with the utmost naturalness, without any sort of filter.

Soren couldn't resist and closed his eyes for a second.

Absolute Appraisal

Target: [Unknown (child in school uniform)]

Analyzing

Analyzing

Name: [Eva Sato]

Age: [12 years old]

Level: [3 (Non-awakened)]

Class: [Pending. 17 years old]

Potential: [Undecipherable]

Note: [Unusual perceptive sensitivity]

Unusual perceptive sensitivity… fantastic.

Eva still hadn't let go of her mother's hand; however, unsurprisingly, all her attention remained fixed on Soren.

Soren scratched his hair while simultaneously looking at the clock at the back of the store. "What do you folks do for a living?"

"We are both nurses at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hospital." The lady paused and took a deep breath. "This is our first time coming to this convenience store," Eva's mother replied with a tremendous effort to appear calm and appease the night shift clerk. "Ah! Your store smells nice!" She forced a smile.

"Very well, the gas leak is already resolved. I recommend you all go home and rest."

Soren went back to the batteries, trying at all costs to act like everything was normal. "And drink water, lots of water. That will help with your recovery."

It was clearly noticeable that the father wanted to keep discussing this matter with him; his facial expression didn't lie, and both his hands were repeatedly opening and closing.

But right after, the woman touched his arm and said, "Come on, honey, let's leave. We need to go get some rest." The child was so awestruck that she didn't even ask her parents to buy her a packet of gummy bears that were near the entrance. Soren had seen kids throw themselves on the floor when passing by that display.

The woman who had entered first took advantage of the moment and disappeared in the meantime. She left and ended up not buying the sake or anything else. Bad news for him; the sale ended on Sunday and nothing had been sold.

Soren was left alone with the sonic harmonization of the MinouseMart's appliances. It was four in the morning, and he looked at his hand—the same hand that had just closed a dimensional rift in 2.2 seconds; he couldn't deny that his skills were up to par.

Inside his ribs, something stirred; it was a different kind of pain, a sort of pressure, like a door being tested by someone on the other side. He opened his internal System status and ran an update.

Status Update

Crown Integration: [8% to 8.2%]

Technique used: [Reality Patch: Rank S]

Cost: [Minimal for the user]

Note: [The power usage counter has been reset]

Previous record: [1094 days]

Current streak: [0 days]

Seal status: [Stable]

The Crown's influence: [Negligible]

Note: [Congratulations! You have reached a new personal record]

To almost anyone else, that number would mean absolutely nothing; it couldn't even be rounded up. It was a completely mundane number. Even for Soren, on most days, it was just that—a number. It is the percentage of something that couldn't be measured, a rising countdown to a reckoning he had spent eight centuries trying to delay. But each use of power made it increase, and every tenth of a percent would bring whatever lived inside him closer to the surface.

He sighed and looked at the storefront window. 1094 days and a 12-year-old girl with overly attentive eyes looking to know too much. Hmm, this should be fun.

He went back to the shelves, because the bowls of ramen weren't going to stock themselves.