[Webnovel translation] I started working the night shift at a convenience store: (Prologue)

 Horror webnovel: I started working the night shift at a convenience store (Prologue)

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Prologue: Night shift hourly wage: ¥1300.

"Hmm... I'm going to ask you one more time: are you really okay with this?"

He asked, skillfully spinning his pen with his fingers, his face slick with sweat. The person asking me this was none other than my interviewer, the manager of a small convenience store called 'Happy-Mart'.

In a certain prefecture, in a certain city, in a convenience store, somewhere, I was going through a job interview in the hope of landing a part time job with a man whose hair was combed over his bald spot, and whose face and head were unusually glistening with sweat.

Was there some kind of issue?

As the interview drew close to its end, the manager asked me this question with an embarrassed look on his face.

What did he mean by this?

"Well, I assume the reason you applied for this job is how enticing the pay is, right? "

Would you look at this, this old man sure gets it.

But even then, this simply wasn't anything I could just nod at.

"N-No, it's nothing like that—"

"It's okay, don't sweat it. It's the same for everyone. We're not even in a city so an hourly wage of ¥1300 must sound appealing."

"R-right..."

"But people usually only work here for a week before they leave."

"Uh..."

"If you want to stop things here, it's now or never."

He said, waving the resume I had painstakingly written with his right hand.

I didn't get what he meant. What was he on about? Seeing how confused I looked, he stopped putting on airs and cut right to the chase.

"We've seen quite a lot of them around here lately."

"Them?"

"Apparitions."

I wanted to tell him to call a cat a cat and just call them ghosts, but decided not to. Instead, I just acknowledged him in a flat tone.

Right, that wasn't the place for that.

"It's scary, right?"

"S-sure..."

"You don't find it scary?"

"I don't really believe in these things."

"Right, that's what everyone else said too, at first."

He nodded, as if to let me know he had heard this countless times before.

"But it only took a week or so before all of them called it quits. That's why we look for people to hire all year round.

Someone gets the job, then they quit, then we hire someone else but they end up quitting too. Rinse and repeat, all the time."

"I see."

"Yeah, weird things tend to happen at night, you know? Daytime is different, nothing too weird happens... 

Well, not exactly, someone might occasionally come in to buy a rope, or a knife."

Come on man, this doesn't seem to be any laughing matter now does it?

"This may not be something I should tell you during a job interview, but if hearing this much makes you feel uncomfortable or uneasy then I don't think this is the place for you, and you'd be better off trying your chance elsewhere." 

 

This didn't seem to be only aimed at me, but also to everyone who had come here before me.

It didn't feel like a threat or anything like that, but it felt really earnest.

The shop manager was looking at me as if he was trying to read my thoughts. I'm sure to him I looked like I was thinking that walking out the door right here, right now, would be best, but I'm not smart enough to stop things here.

Rather, I'm the type who, if being told explicitly not to do something, would try to do just that.

 

"I don't dabble in this kind of thing at all. I've never seen a ghost and never been confronted to anything paranormal, and I doubt it'd rock my world anyway."

In a rural area like this wages could at most approach ¥800 an hour. So working at night when customers would be few and far between, just taking it easy the rest of the time for an hourly wage of ¥1300 was a godsend.

And this is without taking into account the possibility of a raise, this was an opportunity like no other. Ghosts might show up, so what? I don't have time to worry about that, it's all about that sweet, sweet money.

I'm sure that landing this job would allow me to resign from the others I'm currently working and still leave me enough leeway to live decently.

He was right, this wage really was tentalizing.

"There you have it."

"I get it, but I definitely won't give you the slip in a week."

Chickening out now because I was told about ghosts and whatnot would leave a bad taste in my mouth. I get why he'd think I would if I were a girl, but I'm a dude.

"We're understaffed at the moment, we might need you to help us a lot."

"It's all good, I don't mind."

I smiled at him, showing off my confidence and motivation, to which he answered by tapping his head with the tip of his pen a few times. 

"Alright, you're in."

"Wait... really?"

Hell yeah! 

I was basically hired on that day. I guess they really were that short-staffed. 

The manager told me to I'd start working the next day, which I agreed with in a heartbeat.

In a certain prefecture, in a certain city, I just got hired for a new part time job in a convenience store.

Let me tell fill you in on the details some more: the store was located near a vast expanse of trees known to be a suicide hotspot. 

"I won't disappoint you."

Back then, I had no idea of what I had just gotten myself into.

I couldn't have imagined just how unhinged and irrational things would get in this job, and how wrong I was to think that these things were irrelevant to me.

Unbeknownst to me, the most horrifying experience of my life was awaiting me, during this summer, at 25 years old.

I, too, joined the list of those who had been baited by this ludicrous ¥1300 hourly wage.

"I'm counting on you too, Mr. Hakamada."

On that day, I became one of them.

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Hi everyone!
I hope you enjoyed this translation, it has been ages since I've last translated anything like that.
I've been spending most of my time translating VTuber stuff for my YouTube channel, but I hope I'll have a decent rhythm for this webnovel.

Source: https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054880681711

Original author: 天野　アタル  (Ataru Amano)