Let me make this clear from the outset: I’m not a particularly nice guy.
I wasn’t the sort of person with enough room in my heart to concern myself with strangers who had nothing to do with me. I liked to think cold reason always came before warm feelings.
But even I couldn’t simply look away from this.
“Sniff… hic… ngh…”
I didn’t know what to make of it.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a grown man crying his eyes out while ringing up a roll of kimbap and a can of cola.
I deliberately kept my gaze fixed on the food and drink so I would not have to look at his face. He clenched the can in his hand as though he might crush it, then scanned the barcode with trembling fingers. Warm tears pattered onto the cold metal.
“Th-that comes to four thousand won… sniff…”
His voice shook just as badly as his hands. His eyes kept darting between the digital clock on the wall and the store entrance.
Like a puppy desperate to pee.
Is something urgent going on?
No matter how little I cared about other people, it was hard not to notice when a huge guy was standing right in front of me, crying like a child.
And it was even harder to ignore when that guy was an old classmate from high school.
Normally, whenever he tried to strike up a conversation, I just handed over my card without replying. But today, the question slipped out before I could stop it.
“What happened?”
Only then did I look at him properly as he took my card with tear-soaked hands.
His normally gentle face was a complete mess. It was impossible to tell how long he had been crying.
His eyes were badly swollen from the tears that would not stop. His lips had been bitten raw and split in several places, with blood beading along the cracks. His nose was already bright red from all the sniffling.
His shoulders, trembling helplessly, drew in.
“N-no… It’s nothing…”
“If you’re crying like that over nothing, then you’ve got a problem.”
“It’s nothing” had been his favorite phrase ever since high school. No matter what kind of awful things happened to him, he had never once cried.
There was no way this was nothing.
Unable to hide my irritation, I gave him a displeased look.
“I asked what happened. Tell me already, before I regret getting involved.”
“Uh… hic… well…”
His eyes wavered as he wrestled with himself. Then he drew in a deep breath.
“M-my grand… my grandmother is in the hospital…”
“Did she collapse?”
“Y-yeah… She’s been hospitalized for a while, but… sniff… they said she might not make it, so they told me to get there as soon as possible…”
Overwhelmed by emotion, he covered his face with both hands and broke down sobbing.
I knew he had been raised by his grandmother. Back in high school, he had crossed paths with some cruel, immature assholes, and even that had become ammunition for them to torment him with. His grandmother had occasionally stormed into the school and raised hell because of it.
As far as I remembered, she was the only family he had.
I couldn’t understand why he was still standing here scanning barcodes when the woman who had raised him might die at any moment.
My temper flared.
“What the hell are you doing here? Go to the hospital!”
Still sobbing, he struggled to wipe his red eyes with his drenched sleeve.
“B-but… the manager said no. There isn’t anyone to cover for me, and he can’t come in either, so he told me to work a little longer before I go…”
“What kind of lunatic is he?!”
There was no way I could stay calm after hearing that.
It was ridiculous enough that he had been left to handle the day shift alone in a store nearly 130 square meters in size. But now the manager was ignoring the news that his only family might be dying?
Neither the manager who had told him not to go nor this guy, who had stayed anyway, seemed remotely sane.
Holding back my anger, I took the barcode scanner from his hand and slammed it down on the counter.
“You. Get out. Now.”
The moment I stepped behind the counter, I reached for his staff vest.
Startled, he still took it off without resistance, too overwhelmed to object.
“W-why…? More importantly, you can’t just come behind the counter like this… hic… y-you’re not allowed…”
“Is that really what matters right now?”
I threw on his vest and pushed him out from behind the counter.
“The first job I picked up after starting college was at a convenience store. Go while I’m still offering to cover for you.”
Then I pulled the counter gate shut, making it clear that I was not letting him back in.
Once he understood what was happening, his expression crumpled.
“Jaeo… sniff… sob…”
“Stop crying and get going. Keep this up, and I might change my mind, grab the kimbap, and walk out without paying.”
Of course, I had no intention of washing my hands of this after going so far. I was the one who had decided to meddle, so I had to see it through.
He stared at me, his face a jumble of emotions, then suddenly bolted for the door.
“Thank you, Jaeo! I’ll find a way to pay you back! Thank you! Thank you!”
Instead of replying, I waved him off, telling him to hurry up and leave.
A customer walking in at that moment looked startled to see him rush out with tears streaming down his face. But when I calmly greeted them with a “Welcome,” they quickly turned their attention to the shelves.
Right. That was normal.
You could be startled by someone else’s tears.
But that was as far as it should go.
Anything beyond that was pointless meddling.
What I was doing now was a complete waste of time, with nothing in it for me.
Though it was probably different for him.
I gave a bitter smile, remembering the promise I had once made to myself: never meddle in anyone else’s business again.
Not yet realizing how much one broken promise would change everything.
That day—
The entire world fell apart.