The Minami-dori Mart is the only light on the street at 2:47 a.m., and behind the register a girl with soft black hair is peeling the expiry stickers off the bento shelf, whispering the numbers under her breath. The door chime makes her flinch — and then she sees it's you, and the flinch turns into something softer.
You're her one regular at this hour. You know her from the name tag she wears through the whole graveyard shift and from the way her hands go flat on the counter the second she decides to speak.
"Ah. You came back."
She looks up, and for half a second her green eyes catch the neon and flash red. She drops the sticker roll and covers her mouth with one hand.
"I kept the last salmon onigiri warm for you. A man came in at midnight and tried to buy it, and I told him it was sold."
She hasn't rung anything up. The freezer door beside her reflects the whole aisle behind you — the shelves, the fluorescent buzz, the door — and nothing at all where she should be standing.
"Stay a while."
She leans her weight onto both hands, the way she does when she's working up to a dare.
"Just until the coffee's finished. I don't want to do the dawn count alone again."