KOMBINI

The usual bunch of regulars comes in. Red-eyed and beer-breathed executives buy plastic combs, breath mints and miniature bottles of cheap cologne for emergency repairs before the ritual moment of judgement at home. Schoolkids loitering around the magazine rack, the boys eying off the porn magazines over the tops of the robotic violence-packed manga comics in their hands, and wondering how many pages they could flip through without getting caught but restrained from less-furtive glimpses by their company and their deliberately scruffy uniforms.

Skirt-centred high school girls lean on the racks as they devouring fashion magazines with their eyes, filling their cute tanks for free in between smiley-packed skymails. We never sell any magazines. Apologetic housewives rush to buy the rice and beer they have forgotten during the drugged domesticity of daylight. Toddlers trail in their wake, unaware of the need for speed because their father will return soon and even the neighbours know about his temper. They spill candy on the floor, swooping with greedy cheeks to stuff it in their mouths, sugar seagulls on the linoleum beach.

Everyone of them ticks a box. The old man who talks down to me just because I am working and he is retired. The office lady who keeps approaching the counter before turning away for just one more item, the pile of groceries in her crossed arms competing with the spray of shopping bags ensnaring her fingers. The engineer in the company logo shirt who complains about the standard of our steamed nikuman every time he comes in but always leaves munching greedily on another one, his bar-code combover fluttering in the night wind as the pork juice runs down his fingers. The twelve year-old girl who always has exact change for an end-of-day discounted bento box, trailed by a seven year-old boy with a right-handed nasal fixation; his left hand never lets go of hers. The ninety year-old woman who always does laps of the store until I hold out the pack of Mild Sevens that her emphesymic husband sends her to buy to help him sleep. The hairdresser with his leather pants and waterfalling haircut who pops in for emergency gel supplies and strawberry Pockies, eternally oblivious to (or simply unwilling to acknowledge) the fact that the boyish Idol look he still strives for is now more age-appropriate to his son.

The same faces and the same untold stories, appearing every night in the fluorescent theatre that never closes. Snack food, cigarettes, magazines. Every plastic package you could desire. All selectively overpriced and available around the clock in one convenient location. Just one link of 243 in the PeopleStore chain, which now stretches from Okinawa to Hokkaido. I am somewhere in the middle, beneath an expressway, outside of the Yamanote Loop, impossible to find in Tokyo suburbia.

Every night is soundtracked by customers mumbling requests (this is not a place to call attention to yourself), the deadened rumbles of the cars on the freeway (this is not a place to stop), the jumbled lyrics of incessant promotional jingles (it is, despite the nerve-shredding repetition, a place to shop), and the sound of a voice in the distance telling me that this will all be worth it one day (a place to stand before you drop). Five and a half days a week, twelve hours a shift, happyaku-en per hour, and no energy to spend it afterwards. Enough to live on, if not enough to live. The tape loop keeps winding around and around, the same day revolving at the same pace before my eyes, a patchwork futon cover appearing one square at a time, always in the same order. I can close my eyes or look away, straining to see out into the night, but every window is barred by the reflected the glow from within, and all I ever see outside is me, looking inwards, a spray bottle and cloth in my hands as I wait behind the counter for the next coloured square to be filled in.

Doctor working in his father’s surgery. Harried. Check.

Short-skirted schoolgirl with strange ears. Hot. Check.

Homeless man waving coffee up hopefully. Hardened. Check.

Computer geek needing blank DVDs. Hopeless. Check.

Giant mouse politely asking where the cheese section is. The futon tears.