Chương 4: The Crypto Tanuki Is Judging Me

Back in the Shibuya district, inside MinouseMart, the clock — whose appearance raised certain doubts in customers about how well it actually worked — read 4: 47 AM. It was the hour when salarymen leaving their jobs late were off enjoying themselves in the bars, smoking and knocking back sake.

Outside, the buildings were lit up with neon that cut through the night, the kind that made anyone stepping out with tired eyes want to put on sunglasses on purpose, but there were jobs that had to make sure life in the city didn't die. Not exactly a shining example of nightlife promotion, there was a convenience store night-shift worker who made sure that, at the very least, the night wasn't ruined by a dimensional catastrophe — and that alone wasn't bad at all. Soren stepped back to admire his work.

He had just finished arranging the ramen cups, and he looked at that whole masterpiece with solemn admiration. Without any kind of exaggeration, he stood there for a few more seconds in that same apron-clad stance, with enough faith to rival what the clerics of his home civilization reserved only for the greatest gods. With a sigh that captured the full weight of his annoyance, Soren faced his next objective: the energy drink fridge.

For a max-level Archmage, restocking energy drinks was the equivalent of using the legendary staff of the world tree to mop the sticky floor of the store's bathroom — a floor that already mixed the smell of decade-old disinfectant with the urine of some drunk who only came into the store to use it. He started with the Red Bulls and the Monsters — stamina options of such low quality that even an insomniac goblin from his old world would refuse to drink those cans.

But then came the real challenge of the early morning: a local brand called GANBARU ENERGY, its can featuring a tanuki with a smile too wide and too many teeth for its species. To Soren, it was simply a canned abomination, the kind of creature with the exact facial expression of wanting to ambush you in some alley to sell you cryptocurrency schemes. Beneath the tanuki's smile, engraved in aggressively red letters, was a message in large type: DON'T GIVE UP!

Soren and the tanuki had a long-standing philosophical disagreement. He placed the cans in the fridge with care; the mission was simple — leave no empty space in the fridge. Now some hyperactive canid was standing there judging him from a can loaded with excess caffeine that cost no more than five yen, not to mention when they went on sale. Go to hell, you mutant tanuki, Soren thought.

When he was near the refrigerated cases, the frequency of the electrical hum was different — it suffered from an almost comical mutation. At the counter, he could make out that the lights gave off a much thinner sound, something like a whistle. He'd spent eight centuries honing his senses to detect invisible enemies, and as grandmothers always used to say, you never know what tomorrow holds. And they really were right — today, those skills were being put to use decoding cheap noises in Japan.

The real glory came from the soda fridge, which announced itself with a slightly flat D, the kind of note that only bothers people who have time to do nothing with their lives. Next, he glanced to the side, at the freezer cases whose label said they'd been manufactured in the year 2004. They snored — yes, they let out a snore like a demonic pig that hadn't eaten in two days.

Three monotonous years had gone by cataloguing and comparing the store's sounds in the small hours, when there were no customers around to disturb the acoustics. Soren had arrived at a small conclusion he was prouder of than he really should have been. Sure, taken separately, those noises sounded like nothing more than noise to an ordinary person — like the soundtrack to capitalist depression — but heard all together, they produced a transcendental harmony.

MinouseMart at four in the morning was an orchestra of amateur musicians armed with the worst instruments in humanity, composing classical music. Almost. But even so, something was missing. The symphony was imperfect. Even with the whistling, the low D, and the pig's snoring, something was off-key — a discordant microfrequency kept distorting MinouseMart's nightly orchestra. Soren spent six seconds trying to figure out what it was. He waited, but couldn't decipher it.

He shrugged and simply accepted that the human world was inherently flawed, then went back to the drinks. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. That was when, in the counter drawer, his phone started vibrating, sending the paperclips and last Tuesday's receipts jumping off the counter. Suspicious, Soren eyed the phone as though it might be hiding a trap. Who is the soul calling me at this hour of the morning?

He quickened his pace and went over to the counter. Unknown number — a string of zeros with four digits stapled onto the end, as if the phone network's operator had been too lazy to come up with a better one. This is government business, he thought, with total certainty. Well, government business equals trouble, as certain as a dragon preferring gold to treasury bonds. This meant the 1, 094-day streak was over, since those government folks had noticed his perfectly mundane life.

He remembered them — they were the kind of suit-and-tie bureaucrats who showed up on television to say things with expensive-sounding words, but deep down said nothing at all. He'd made up his mind, and he didn't answer the call. He stood there with both hands on the counter, staring down that electronic device while he thought it over. The phone started vibrating again. Again, and again — it became as irritating as a man begging for divine miracles on the eve of an escape.

He still didn't answer the call, until a message arrived from the same number. He opened the message, and it read as follows: 000-0000-57784: 57 Meeting request: World Integration Department (WID) Subject: A verification of your routine Location: To be determined Time: According to your availability Note: We appreciate your collaboration We appreciate the cooperation, written with the utmost level of bureaucratic coldness.

In his old world, that phrase would normally come paired with an army at the castle gates, but in modern Japan, it came in the form of a message threatening his peaceful ramen-eating routine. That was never a good sign. Never. They're already hinting that I'm going to have to cooperate with something — damn it.

Soren looked at the energy drinks, focused on the psychotic tanuki, then shifted his gaze to the 2004 freezer cases, closed his eyes, and took in that whole four-in-the-morning world that had been his refuge for the past three years in Tokyo. The store had become a fortress of solitude — discreet, but with its quirks, like the slightly sticky floor, especially on weekends. It was exactly as he'd wanted it, the ideal place to contemplate, in peace, the most sublime achievement of human civilization.

Finally, he pressed his lips together and looked down at his hand — the integration was at 8. 2%. And that girl, that twelve-year-old brat who saw too much, who could see inside a Fissure the way someone looks into a candy shop window. And now this government agency that Soren already knew all too well, a bunch of bureaucrats surrounded by reports and charts, had finally noticed him after three years. They wanted to know more — they always wanted something more — above all, to ruin his night shift. Damn it.

Not to mention the System, that supposed omniscient intelligence that seemed to have an existential dread of Soren. Sometimes it answered with the sarcasm of a gamer trying to blame his CS2 teammate for losing the first 8 rounds on Dust2, and other times it stammered out notifications in total panic every time Soren used tiny fractions of mana to heat his genmaicha tea. Soren already admitted to himself that every so often he genuinely wanted to torch his user interface. 1, 094 days of peace and quiet.

The days, perhaps, when he could rest his centuries-old exhaustion, the well-earned retirement of a man morally worn out from saving ungrateful worlds, only to discover that such salvation didn't even come with a meal allowance — those days had officially ended in that very moment. He looked at the fridge, and his left eye twitched slightly, because he saw that a single miserable can of GANBARU ENERGY was missing. That empty space in the fridge started getting to him — it became a geometric abomination.

He went over to the cardboard box holding the energy drinks and filled that void, which had felt like a personal affront. The alignment ended up millimeter-perfect. On the other side of the glass, the tanuki kept staring at him with that psychotic look, its screaming slogan of resilience implying it had never once had to save a single goddamn thing.

"I already gave up," Soren answered.

"That's why I came here." Now, finally, without a single flaw, he closed the door, and the store's harmony was restored. He looked again at the phone now in his hand and saw the meeting request once more. Suddenly, he placed his hand on his chest and felt an icy shiver run through his ribs. It was something that had begun to stir during a centuries-long sleep. An entity older than the System itself — though not yet awake — was beginning to stir, and it seemed to be growing.

Soren took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He felt the icy shiver fade and tried to focus on something that filled him with divine joy. He began to concentrate and pictured himself opening a cup of chicken ramen, then pouring hot water into the cup along with the seasoning — in two minutes it would be al dente, no complications at all.

Eight hundred years spent crossing empires and civilizations — Soren had witnessed the rise and fall of legendary dynasties, and never once had some idiot thought to invent anything so brilliant. Unlike everything else in this world, which insisted on ruining his retirement. Even so, time to open a chicken ramen.