The Rules Are There to Be Broken

"Welcome to Smile 44~!"

Ding-a-ling— The cheerful chime of the doorbell rang out, and my capitalist-brainwashed mouth moved on pure reflex. Only after the greeting had already tumbled out of me did I realize my mistake.

One of the work rules the manager had drilled into me, absolutely non-negotiable.

In fairness, I had an excuse: this night shift job was pure honey. Hours on end without a single customer, lazing around in the stockroom watching YouTube—it had melted all the tension right out of me.

'Ah, damn it, I broke a rule. Eh, no way anything actually happens, right?'

Swallowing hard, I stepped out of the stockroom and headed for the counter. Right up until I planted myself behind it, I kept a wary eye on the customer who had just walked into the store.

A woman in a stark white dress, long hair spilling down to her waist.

'Huh? Wait—sunglasses? At this hour of the night?'

As I got closer, her strange getup came into focus. Beneath a wide-brimmed hat, she wore pitch-black sunglasses covering half her face. Sunglasses in the dead of night—I honestly wondered if she could see anything at all.

For a split second, my spine went ice-cold. I'd broken a rule, and in every classic ghost story, that's exactly when the customer turns on you.

But the customer showed no interest whatsoever in my greeting. She simply turned her head and shuffled toward the shelves deeper in the store—entirely normal customer behavior, focused only on finding something to buy.

Watching that dry, unremarkable back, the tension drained out of my shoulders, which had been locked rigid with dread.

'What was that? See, nothing to it. Maybe the manager's just a creepypasta nutjob.'

When nothing actually happened, my guard collapsed completely, and I went right back to thinking lightly of it all. The world is wide and full of hipsters, so I chalked it up to eccentric fashion, dropped my butt onto the counter stool, and lazily resumed web surfing on my phone.

Maybe ten minutes passed like that.

Rustle, crinkle—

From the snack shelf in the corner of the store came the endless sound of the customer rummaging through the merchandise. Usually a convenience store customer picks out what they want and heads straight to the register, but for several minutes now, all I could hear was that same frantic searching, over and over.

'What's her deal? Can't find what she's looking for?'

I lifted my eyes from my phone screen and stole a glance into the store. From the mouth of the customer standing frozen before the shelves, a faint, mushy muttering was leaking out.

"……isn't here."

Rustle, CRASH—!

Several snack bags came tumbling down from the shelf where she stood. The floor was already a chaos of dozens of scattered chips and candies, and the customer, as if taking out her frustration, kept groping at the shelf and knocking even the remaining items to the ground.

'Is she hammered out of her mind? What on earth is she looking for so desperately?'

I clicked my tongue at the absurdity—and that was when the customer, apparently sensing my gaze, slowly turned her head. But instead of looking straight at me, she jerked her head left and right, scanning the air around her in confusion. Then, with a creaking, shuffling gait, she glided close to the shelf near me and addressed— not me, but the empty space beside my head.

"……excuse me."

A sound so dry it crackled, like metal being scraped, rang through the store. I flinched and recoiled, but she didn't stop. She kept talking.

"……excuse me."

"……excuse me."

"……excuse me."

Goosebumps erupted across my skin, but she clearly intended to keep asking until I answered. With a long sigh, I finally replied.

"Ah, yes! Is there something you're looking for?"

Only then did the customer turn her head from the empty air and look directly at me. She pointed a finger at the now-empty shelf, its contents strewn across the floor, and murmured:

"……isn't here?"

That instant, the second rule flashed through my mind.

'Aw, damn it… I just answered. But hey, I was fine the first time too. What could possibly happen?'

Since I'd already broken one rule and walked away unscathed, I carried on serving the customer with that same complacent attitude.

"Ma'am, I can't quite hear you. What was it you were looking for?"

Without thinking, I stepped out from behind the counter and walked toward the snack shelf where she stood. The moment I got within arm's reach, the customer thrust her face right up into mine.

"Fresh eyeballs…… do you have any?"

"……?!"

I nearly jumped out of my skin, every hair on my body standing on end. It was the single creepiest question I had ever heard, but I was convinced that screaming here would trigger something genuinely catastrophic. Desperately grinding my gears, I improvised.

"Ah, ha ha… well, if you head over behind the snack shelf, we just got a fresh shipment of eyeball gummies in today! Care to take a look?"

With a strained laugh, I took a natural step backward, then scurried back behind the counter. Pressing a hand to my pounding heart, eyes glued to the floor, I held my breath.

'She's insane. A genuinely elegant lunatic. Just a psychopath, probably. Ignore her. Ignore her.'

Steel-ing my nerves, I pulled my AirPods out of my pocket and was about to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠jam them into my ears when I glanced back toward where the customer had been. To my relief, she was slowly shambling in the direction I'd pointed her.

'Phew…….'

I was just about to exhale in relief.

Fzzt…… fzzkrk-!

The CCTV monitor in the corner of the counter, buried under a thick layer of dust, switched itself on.

The third rule flickered through my mind. This time I rushed to obey it, lunging for the power button.

But the moment I peered at the wildly flickering screen, my entire body petrified like a stone.

Tap.

The AirPods in my hand slipped free and rolled uselessly across the floor.

On the screen, buried in black-and-white static, was the customer. She had never been wearing sunglasses at all.

Where her two eyes should have been, there was nothing but hollow emptiness—and from those empty sockets, dark red blood was streaming down her face.

Worst of all, her neck hung at an angle no human being could ever achieve, lolling grotesquely from side to side.

"Ughk!!"

Seeing the thing's true face, I nearly screamed on the spot, but I barely managed to cram the shriek back down my throat.

Too late. From the direction of the shelves, an ear-splitting, spine-chilling voice erupted.

"IT'S NOT HERE!!"

I looked at the monitor in horror—the ghost, its identity now fully revealed, was charging toward the counter on all fours like a mad animal!

"AAAAHHH—!!"

I exploded out from behind the counter faster than light itself. To block the oncoming sprint, I threw my whole weight into the magazine rack beside me and shoved it over.

CRASH-CLATTER—!!

The rack toppled forward and came down right on top of the charging ghost, and in that gap, I bolted for the convenience store's front door at a full dead run.

But from beyond the front door came a deeply unpleasant sound: crunch… crunch…

The fourth rule surfaced at that exact moment, and with it, the cold certainty that something horrific was lurking outside the door.

'Shit, so there's no way out the front!'

I skidded to an abrupt halt and scanned the store's interior again. What greeted me was a grotesque spectacle that shattered every ounce of common sense I had.

Unable to escape from under the fallen magazine rack, the ghost had begun thrashing its lolling neck violently from side to side.

Crack-crack, pop-pop!

Bones ground out of joint, ligaments tearing—the ghost's neck began to elongate, stretching out like a serpent. And dangling at the end of that snake-like length of neck hung a pale woman's head, swaying back and forth.

The elongated head slid weightlessly through the air and began wriggling its way through the gaps between the store's display shelves, coiling and creeping.

Watching something straight out of a B-grade creature feature, the profanity poured out of my mouth on its own.

I forced my body back into motion to run—

'Run, right now, you piece of—wait. Don't tell me… that thing can't see in front of itself?'

My mind lit up like a struck match, puzzle pieces slamming into place. Knocking all the merchandise off the shelves, wandering aimlessly around empty air the whole time—could it all have been because it simply couldn't see?

After all, hadn't the sockets where its eyes belonged been hollow from the start?

Suppressing the heartbeat threatening to burst out of my chest, I strangled even the sound of my breathing. Then I flattened myself against the cold convenience store floor and began crawling, soundlessly, toward the stockroom.

Inhale… exhale…….

My prediction hit dead center. The ghost never noticed me crawling beneath its very head; it kept searching nothing but empty air.

Click.

The moment I slipped into the stockroom, I eased the door shut with excruciating care to make as little noise as possible. First order of business: I pressed the volume button on the side of my smartphone until it went completely silent. The kind of meticulousness born from the knowledge that even the smallest leak of sound meant the end.

Then, with trembling hands, I texted the manager.

The manager's text was unnervingly calm. Relief washed over me like I'd found a savior—until a chilling sense of wrongness slithered up my spine.

'Hold on…….'

This was the manager who had written out the work rules in meticulous detail, as if he'd known about all these grotesque occurrences in advance. Would a man that careful and cautious really barge in without even understanding the situation?

Logically, a genuine manager should have demanded to know which rule I'd broken or what exactly was happening before ever asking where I was.

The seed of doubt sprouted in an instant.

'What if… the one texting me right now isn't the manager, but that ghost?'

If it was playing pretend to lure me out, then the second I gave away my position, the stockroom door would be ripped off its hinges and my life would be over.

'Even granting, a hundred times over, that this really IS the manager—it's still a problem.'

This was a man who, fully aware that these monsters haunted the place, had baited a poor sucker in with a measly fifty dollars an hour and shoved him into a deathtrap. I had no way of knowing whether that promise to "come help" was genuine rescue or something far more sinister.

Either way, cheerfully broadcasting my location to an unknown party was practically suicide.

Buzz, buzz, buzz—

Then, as if trying to sever my deliberation mid-thread, texts began flooding onto my screen in rapid succession.

With no reply from me, the texts came pouring in, relentlessly demanding a response. That sinister persistence hardened my suspicion into certainty.

Swallowing hard, I decided to test this creepy theory for myself. My fingers pressed hard against the screen—and I sent back a completely different location.

The response came in another rapid-fire cascade.

CRASH-!!

The instant that last text landed, a thunderous noise erupted from the direction of the front door. Carefully raising my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠upper body, I pressed my eye against the small glass window set into the stockroom door.

Through the glass, I watched the ghost's serpent-stretched neck smash through the window beside the front entrance and pour out into the night. And at the same time, I finally laid eyes on the culprits behind that ominous crunching sound outside.

They were creatures with the bodies of enormous hounds and the faces of human beings—Human-Faced Dogs.

'Ugh! No, seriously, what the hell is THAT thing and why is it so goddamn ugly?!'

While I was retching profanity at appearances I could never get used to, the Human-Faced Dogs apparently took the ghost emerging from the store for prey. They came snapping and snarling, 'Arf! Arf!'

SCREEEECH—!

In that instant, the ghost's mouth split open vertically with grotesque enormity, revealing dozens of rows of saw-blade teeth packed tight inside. It seized the Human-Faced Dogs lunging at it and tore them apart in a single bite.

CRUNCH! SQUELCH—!

Flesh and bone shattered all at once, and the dogs were ripped clean in half like torn paper. Amid the spraying blood, the ghost began slithering at mad speed toward the bathroom at the back of the store—exactly the location I'd lied about.

"Hoo…… haa……."

Unable to control my trembling legs, I slumped against the stockroom door. I was alive. At least I'd survived the immediate threat of decapitation. All I had to do now was find some way out while that hideous thing tore the bathroom apart.

Just as I was about to gulp down the deep breath I'd been holding—

Buzz, buzz, buzz—

The screen of the phone clutched in my hand flared to life, texts cascading one after another.

'……Oh, you have got to be kidding me.'

It figured me out already?! My heart plummeted. The texts kept pouring across the screen without pause, and I could feel the ghost's fury at being deceived radiating vividly through every word.

Sliiide…… sliiide…….

I could hear the elongated head that had gone outside being rapidly reeled back into the store. The moment I'd sent that text, it had started hunting for my position.

'Ah, I'm screwed. If I just sit here, it's one hundred percent finding me!'

The thing was blind. But the store was cramped beyond belief. With that neck still stretching longer and longer as it widened its search, reaching the stockroom door was only a matter of time.

Against those nightmarish teeth, this thin sheet of metal door would tear apart like tissue paper.

'Come on, think. THINK! There has to be a way to survive!'

I wracked my brain, desperately churning through every possibility, but the extremity of the situation had bleached my mind pure white—no answers would come.

And in that moment, on the verge of spiraling into despair—

into my mind, which had been dead silent for some time, a voice vast and imperious came crashing down like a thunderbolt.

The moment I heard that insufferable laughter, the crushing, extreme fear that had been smothering my whole body vanished ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as if it had never existed.

"H- ha ha……."

I struggled to swallow the lunatic grin leaking across my face. If the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ghost outside heard me laughing and came looking, I'd be finished.

But hey, so what if he's insufferable? Right now, the only being in existence who could save my skin was that one narrow-minded old geezer.

Barely managing to get down on my knees on legs that had turned to jelly, I screamed a desperate plea inside my heart.

'Brother Zeus, PLEASE save me!'