Working the Night Shift at Hoshimart

Some customers only need one thing. Some just need someone to point at the shelf. Mirei Kozuki is seventeen, chronically tired, and very good at saying "I'm fine." She works evenings at a convenience store on Route 9, where the freezer hums, the blue star sign buzzes, and not every customer who wanders in made it home. They can't leave until they buy something, and a receipt is the only permission the store knows how to give. A forgotten carton of milk, a pack of batteries, a can of cat food: for the lost, an unfinished errand is all that's left. Mirei can see them, so she helps them. It's easier than admitting she has no idea how to stop. Every night at 11:04, when she locks up, a silent boy in a red windbreaker is waiting across the road under a broken streetlight. He never comes in. He never says why. As her grades slip and her friends and manager start noticing, Mirei has to work out what she owes the dead, what she owes the living, and why leaving the store feels so much worse than arriving.