Stranger Ceiling
A strange ceiling.
A strange ceiling.
It was only natural. I had seen it only once.
“… Ugh.”
I grabbed my head and climbed out of bed.
On the sofa, the senior Kim Gichan was still asleep.
“Ha…”
I climbed down from the bed and changed my clothes.
Convenience store part-time job in Sanctum City.
Today marked the second day of it.
I looked around. The staff-only quarters inside the convenience store looked just like yesterday. Bed, sofa, and the movable stand hanging with the work uniform…
It was a ten-ryeong one-room style, but it didn’t look rundown. It had clearly been well-maintained.
The clock showed it was almost open time.
“Alright. Then… shall I start working?”
I stretched once…
“Kuhk, kek?!”
I kicked Kim Gichan, sprawled across the sofa, snoring loudly.
“Mr. Kim, it’s work time.”
Snoring should be toned down in real life.
Kim Gichan rolled off the sofa with a groan.
“Yo. You… really do that?”
“You haven’t finished your shift yet, but you’re already ghosting? As if you’re not the one who once killed your junior. Go change your clothes first.”
Even though this was a convenience store in another dimension, the basic duties were the same. During opening hours, I prepared to open. During closing hours, I prepared to close.
“At least the manual is pretty well organized.”
I put on the convenience store uniform and quickly flipped through the manual I had seen yesterday. The comments scattered here and there about family and the guilt of leaving work… if I just ignored them, the content itself was fine.
I squatted down, unlocked the glass door of the convenience store, and opened it.
Beyond the glass door was not the usual street or road scenery I was used to, but something that looked like a massive circular plaza.
I had seen it yesterday, but it still didn’t feel normal.
And the people constantly walking through that space… well, there were quite a few beings that didn’t look human at all.
There were humans with horns, tails, or ears. Some had giant or blurry bodies… in any case, a mix of exotic beings that simply shouldn’t exist on Earth or in Korea.
“Oh, hello.”
A gentle voice came from my side, so I turned without thinking.
A young woman with long, light-green hair smiled and greeted me. Her hair was incredibly long, and as it trailed downward it turned into thin vines. Those vines moved busily, arranging several potted plants in front of the shop.
“Ah… hello.”
Hmm. Are there really no normal humans left in Sanctum City?
Tentacle auntie, little demon lord girl… now even a woman with vine hair? I couldn’t tell whether her outfit covered her upper body or was made of grass itself…
Of course her chest wasn’t visible, but the outfit was still too revealing for my taste, so I looked upward. Then a sign on the shop entrance caught my eye.
[Ah! The cheapest flowers in Sanctum City!]
“… Cheap.”
“What?”
“Ah, no. It’s nothing.”
The sign name… and the neatly arranged pots in front and the interior of the shop, it looked like a flower shop next to the convenience store. A woman with vine hair working at a flower shop… the concept fit perfectly.
“Did you come to start working?”
“Yes. I plan to work for about a year.”
If I could resign properly.
“I’m Florance. As you can see, I run the flower shop next door.”
Because there were so many pots already placed outside, the shop owner who introduced himself as Florance smelled sweet like blooming flowers. I rubbed the tip of my nose a couple of times. Smelling it made me feel a bit lightheaded…
“I’m Yu Jinho. I’m a convenience store part-timer.”
“Did the person you worked with before quit?”
“Ah… I heard they’re transferring in about a week.”
Based on today, that meant six days left.
“Ahaha… he must have grown attached too. It’s a shame. Fufu.”
The shop owner smiled softly at the words.
With a gentle attitude, even her smile was pretty.
“We’re just getting ready to open. I’ll greet you again next time.”
“Oh. Good. I’ll come visit when I have time too.”
After a brief introduction with the shop owner, I stepped inside the convenience store. Inside, Kim Gichan was yawning and calculating the stock.
“Why does it take so long just to open one door?”
“I greeted the shop owner next door.”
“The shop owner? …Ah. The older sibling at the neighboring store.”
“What?”
What did he mean?
The person I met was supposed to be quiet and gentle.
Kim Gichan’s rebuttal made me laugh while adding, “You mean the shop owner with long hair that turns into vines at the end?”
“Yeah, but…”
“He’s a man. That older sibling.”
I replayed Kim Gichan’s words in my head.
A man?
Where exactly was the man in that appearance?
Of course, I thought her chest was small… but!
While I was confused between visual image and gender concept, Kim Gichan continued.
“When I first came here, I couldn’t adapt at first and was always smoking in the back alleys.”
“So?”
“But since the next door is a flower shop, I kept hearing complaints.”
That made sense.
From the start, the owner already looked half plant-like.
“Even so, yesterday he didn’t smoke all day.”
“I quit.”
“How?”
I had varied jobs, but there was always someone smoking nearby. Quitting shouldn’t be that easy.
Kim Gichan answered with a slightly vacant laugh. “That’s my first cause of death. No one else would do it after experiencing that.”
“Ah…”
Deathbed quit clinic!
We suddenly fell into a heavy silence.
“…Anyway. Because he’s your senior. Don’t mess around for nothing.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t smoke?”
“No, I don’t.”
“… Then let’s open.”
We moved in perfect sync for the remaining thirty minutes. While I carried down chairs from the table and took out garbage bags, Kim Gichan stocked shelves with goods pulled from the Backroom.
Only then did I realize I hadn’t seen the Backroom yet. Among the store products, there were many Earth-like items, but some corners and goods were unfamiliar.
From light snacks like World Tree Flavor Potato Chips to items with names like “Convenience Memory Eraser Light,” which sounded quite strong.
Even the modern-looking things, when looked at closely, seemed to be used in different dimensions.
The problem was that all of them were stacked in the Backroom… If Kim Gichan retired, I would have to figure out the inventory and restock everything alone.
“Before you quit, tell me about the Backroom and inventory.”
Kim Gichan looked at me with an indescribable expression. What? Does that mean it’s complicated?
“The manual has it, but… the Backroom is dangerous at times?”
“If even the store warehouse is dangerous, how am I supposed to do the job?”
“No, just… be careful with safety accidents. As long as you follow the manual, it’s fine!”
Kim Gichan then rested his chin on his hand and thought for a moment.
“Since goods are coming in tomorrow, I’ll tell you then. Ah, and there’s always a delivery person. They have… a figure that… uh…”
… I left Kim Gichan’s grumpy laugh and headed back to the counter.
The POS screen still had an intriguing button glowing.
[Trial Version]
Next to the usual menu, I pressed the subtly glowing green button. Four detailed options appeared.
[Staff Info]
[Gifts (Locked)]
[ ? ]
[ ? ]
— Trial ends in 1/4
The staff info was the same as before—store employee details and accumulated money. But the [Gifts (Locked)] menu didn’t open, and the bottom two items were completely unknown. And the remaining time for the trial… what was that?
“Senior.”
There was a senior for times like this.
“What is this function on the POS?”
I called for the annoying Kim Gichan, who had been daydreaming. The flow of his imagination broken, Kim Gichan returned with a tired expression and entered the counter.
“Only when needed. What… really what?”
“This. The green trial button.”
Kim Gichan looked back and forth between my finger, the screen, and my face several times. Then he grabbed my hand.
“… Jin-ho. You have to accept this. What kind of nonsense is a trial version? This world isn’t a game…”
“You’re turning people into crazy people at the worst possible time.”
I looked between the screen and Kim Gichan. It probably wasn’t visible to him.
“Snap out of it! You can’t get mad just because you died once! If you break, I’ll get called again to bail you out!”
“I wasn’t mad at all! Fine, go work.”
“Euhk.”
I gave Kim Gichan, who treated people like madmen, a firm warning and pulled my hand from the trial button.
For now, even deep thought couldn’t figure it out.
Yeah. There are customers who pay with telepathy in the store. What’s so strange about a button not showing in this neighborhood?
I’d ask the store manager later.
“But there’s no self-checkout for unmanned payment?”
I turned the topic and asked a question that suddenly came to mind. Kim Gichan, hearing it, completely forgot the earlier reaction and patted my shoulder with the kind smile of a saint treating a innocent lamb.
“Ha… You really ask pure and cruel questions, my junior.”
“What?”
“Where are we?”
“… Sanctum City?”
“That’s right.”
Kim Gichan continued.
“Sanctum City is a place where residents from other worlds come and go.”
“So?”
“Would there be a convenience store in their worlds? Would you ask a crazy person riding in on a mount for unmanned payment? Or would those who pay with their own blood and lift their clothes not spray their blood on self-service machines?”
Yeah. Definitely.
“… It was a stupid question.”
By the first day alone, I had met two strange cases.
An alien royal auntie who injects telepathy into someone else’s forehead.
And a crazy demon lord who kills people if things don’t go his way, despite being mute.
I later heard the payment was actually made by the secretary behind the little demon lord.
… If that was the case, why didn’t I just enter together from the beginning?
“Suddenly I’m getting annoyed again.”
“What? Your tragic fate?”
“That’s also because of that guy who quit without transferring.”
“Ehet~”
Ehet was nonsense…
After thirty minutes of opening, customers started flooding in and the friendly chat between senior and junior gradually faded.
What was the actual experience of running a convenience store in another dimension?
“Senior.”
“Why?”
“It looks like I’m about to die.”
I had met quite a few problematic customers, but this was a different flavor.
The true essence of convenience store work wasn’t anything else—it was the customers.
Enduring the ever-changing hero moves of villains was the highest dopamine content for a convenience store.
From classic regular problematic customers to humans who made me even doubt whether we shared the same language.
Even just putting same-language humans together created countless problematic customer stories.
What happens when a country or race doesn’t unify them?
“Let me help you with the calculation, sir.”
I called a customer who was standing in Kim Gichan’s line. They weren’t human. A skeleton with nothing but bones, yet flames burned brightly from its head, came forward and immediately thrust a bread bag in my face.
“I bought this, right? I’ll bring others, so wait.”
“… Yes. I bought it because of the sparks coming from the customer’s face. No exchange.”
Yeah.
Dimensional problematic customer time had begun.