《Oh, nowhere special. I just watch watch a lot of movies and TV shows and such.》 Anime ones, of course. Sometimes, even now, when I’m exhausted from work, I search job offers in the anime industry. I’ve always sort of wanted a job as an editor. Of course, I’d never quit my current job... I think hobbies should remain hobbies. I’m not naive. The job hunt is just kind of a daydream.
《Hmm. You have given me very concrete advice, but I still have very little in the way of confidence. Do you think that I, the humble Tricen, could truly be capable of such precision editing?》
《Well... You won’t know until you try, will you?》 I asked him.
《Yes. Thank you very much! I, Tricen, shall do my best, while hoping for the “fairy” to appear!》 It sounded like he was still waiting for someone else to save him, but that wasn’t for me to comment on.
《Well, goodbye.》
《Yes! Thank you for all your help! And Kobory-san, if I may ask, in order to keep my humble morale up, could you write it like “Go!☆ Go!☆” please?》
I typed in the phrase, my actual expression completely blank. 《Go!☆ Go!☆》
《Ah, I am thrilled! I, Tricen, could fight ten years on the strength of your words alone!》
If that was all it took, I could have written ten more Go!☆s. But it seemed like a pain, so I decided not to. 《I’m glad to hear it. Goodbye.》
《Kobory-san, may blessings of the Goddess Libra be upon you!》
《ツ》
Tricen-senpai seemed extremely excited about something. I just hoped he could make a proper PV.
I arrived at my local Moyori Station around 11:00 at night. The shopping street there tended to pack up early, so most everything was closed. I strolled into a nearby convenience store and did a little browsing of the manga magazines. Then I put some bread, a banana, and some milk in my basket for breakfast. I had a candy craving, too, but snacking at midnight was suicide (from a weight perspective), so I refrained and wandered away from the snack corner.
I suddenly realized that I only had 1,000 yen on hand, so I got some money out of the ATM. That’s when I noticed some customers who seemed like a couple flirting in the alcohol corner nearby.
“Huh? You can’t drink that much.”
“It’s fine. I can handle it.”
“You’re going to keep going?”
“I can handle it. I mean it.”
It was a very common, very silly conversation. If I were a more high-ranked Spirit of Earth with the kind of powerful magic that let me rot organic matter, I admit, I would have rotted the drinking snacks in the couple’s basket... maybe mixing in some E.coli bacteria. Of course, I wasn’t powerful enough to do that.
I did have the power to make food rot quicker than normal, and if I concentrated, I could move up the expiration date on the couple’s food from September 12th to September 9th. But that seemed pointless, so I didn’t bother. It would just make me kind of pathetic, and I didn’t want to acknowledge that I was jealous of the couple.
I paid at the register. The part-time worker recognized me and smiled. He was probably a student, and a plain but earnest-looking person. He’d helped me out before when I was having trouble with the copier (though I was very careful to make sure he didn’t see the drafts I was copying). It was a purely solicitous smile, of course, but it gave me a little pang in my heart.
“That will be 755 yen,” he said. As I opened my wallet and searched for a 50 yen coin and a 5 yen coin, the clerk said to me: “Working again today?”
“Huh?” I said, surprised.
“Ah... s-sorry...” he stuttered. “You always come in... at this time, so...”
“......” I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have a 5 yen coin, so all I was able to do was say “sorry,” in an apologetic, fading voice. He seemed like such a good person, but once I was offstage, I couldn’t even force a smile. It was pathetic. I paid, got 245 yen in change, then left the convenience store.
“Thank you for coming!” The part-time worker’s voice sounded louder than usual, for some reason.
On the way back home from the convenience store, I fell into dismal thoughts: the part-time worker might be interested in me. Well, I was probably just being too self-conscious, but for some reason, my heart was racing.
All kinds of fantasies ran through my mind. What if the next time I went to the convenience store, the worker got up his courage and gave me a letter? Or what if I got accosted by drunks, and he came to save me? No, even without that kind of melodrama... what if he just managed to say hello, and started up a little conversation? Of course, that wasn’t going to happen.
Either way, I was probably going to stay away from that convenience store for a while. I just felt awkward, and I could probably avoid the times when that clerk was there. I doubted I’d be able to greet him with a smile by the next time I saw him. I’d just freak out and bow repeatedly and he’d think “that girl is so weird.” Probably... no, almost certainly.
It was always that way. I’d been born an introvert, and it was hard for me to interact with people. I’d decided to work as a dancer, a job so unsuited to me, to try to fix that part of myself. Thanks to that, lately, I was no longer afraid of appearing in front of hundreds of guests. Of course, it helped that I had three friends with me, but... I’d managed to acquire a little courage.
Still, I had a long way to go. No matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t really say “I did that!” Likewise, “that’s my accomplishment!” was something I absolutely couldn’t say. That was why today had been so hard for me. I don’t like to lie, but while worming my way around it, I guess that’s what I’d ended up doing...