Seojun’s thoughts drifted toward daydreams of traveling across America in a truck. His striking features had settled into a distant expression, and his fingers absently traced the dimpled surface of a lemon.
Then the convenience store door swung open again.
“Man, I swear I saw a military truck yesterday! Damn, and Butcher Bren was with them, too. I was hooking up with someone in the alley when I saw it.”
A shrill voice grated against Seojun’s ears.
A brazen young man swaggered inside, arrogance pouring from every pore. His long chin and hollow cheeks gave him an unsavory appearance that perfectly matched his unpleasant personality.
The friends accompanying him were no better. Their reputations were every bit as foul as his own.
Brass Steve entered next, his coarse way of speaking bearing no resemblance whatsoever to that of his model-student brother, Richard Silver.
Last came Golden Casey, proudly showing off his bleached-blond hair.
The three of them were jokingly known as the Gold-Silver-Bronze trio.
Naturally, it was a nickname people used only when Golden, Richard, and Brass were nowhere close enough to hear it.
Golden, his bright blond hair impossible to miss, smacked Brass hard on the back of his unkempt head.
“Why would the military bother coming to this godforsaken place? Oh, wait. They must be here to take away our esteemed prophet, huh?”
If Bobby was merely irritating, Golden was outright violent.
His dark brown eyes often took on a dangerous reddish tint beneath the glare of the sun. They looked that way now as he gave Seojun a sinister chuckle and seized him by the collar, tightening his grip.
“So, Fortune Teller, what’s today’s forecast? Better keep it vague, though. Wouldn’t want the government cutting you open to dig out one of those precious prophecies, would we?”
Seojun’s face twisted as the collar constricted around his throat.
When he had been younger, still struggling to reconcile the memories of his previous life with the knowledge of his current one, he had been unable to conceal his visions properly.
As a result, he had once become the only person who knew where Golden’s bicycle had disappeared to—a bicycle purchased with money stolen from his father’s wallet.
Possessing that kind of knowledge had brought Seojun nothing good.
The memory of his broken nose and the searing pain that had accompanied it had taught him a brutal lesson.
After that, he had tried to keep a healthy distance from Golden.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done.
For a time, Seojun and Stefan, the heaviest boy in town, had become the Gold-Silver-Bronze trio’s favorite targets.
Fortunately, once the worst of their hot-blooded teenage years had passed, a trace of common sense seemed to find its way into Golden’s head. Their interactions had since become somewhat more civil.
Even so, Golden’s temper could still erupt without warning—much like a storm appearing beneath a perfectly clear sky.
Seojun wet his dry lips and tried to wrench Golden’s hand away.
Against Golden’s solid frame, however, Seojun—who was little more than skin and bone—could do almost nothing.
“Bring an umbrella.”
His quiet warning carried an eerie undertone.
Startled, Richard and Brass stopped snickering and glanced warily toward the sky.
“......”
Beside the blazing sun stretched a cloudless blue expanse.
It was an absurdly clear summer day.
“Damn it, you scared me!”
Brass lurched toward Golden and raised his hand.
But rather than striking Seojun’s pale skin, he began taking his frustration out on the store itself. He rattled the display racks and sent products tumbling onto the floor.
The satisfaction Seojun had felt after tidying everything vanished in an instant.
Brass’s muddy boots mercilessly crushed the fallen goods beneath them as he unleashed a stream of racially charged abuse.
“You Eastern fortune-teller! Go join a circus! What are you even doing here? Wait, are you some kind of undercover spy? Come on, show us your true colors!”
“Yeah, just like this banana!”
Richard’s laughter echoed through the convenience store as he snatched a banana from the display and peeled it with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Brass raised the banana high in the air as though presenting some sacred relic.
“Behold this creamy flesh!” Brass declared, his eyes bulging. “As pale as Stephanie’s breasts!”
He brought the banana to his nose and inhaled its sweet scent with a blissful sigh, his expression sinking into fond recollection.
“Ah, what magnificent breasts they were. Even bigger than Bren’s. Meanwhile, this alien is far too skinny. He should’ve eaten those tomatoes Golden gave him.”
Seojun remembered the tomatoes that had once narrowly missed his head.
Fortunately, he had dodged them.
Otherwise, his mood would have been ruined for the entire day.
Of course, because Seojun had stepped aside, Bobby had taken the tomatoes directly to the face.
That, however, was hardly Seojun’s problem.
“Enough with the stories about that pig’s ass!” Golden cut in, his face contorting with disgust. “I’m not into men. Just hearing about it makes me want to puke, like the day I lost my bicycle.”
Golden made a gagging sound.
Seojun wished he would simply take an antacid and get it over with.
“Poor Golden!” Brass exclaimed with false sympathy. “Such delicate tastes. But look around this store! They sell milk with this idiot’s face printed on it. How is that supposed to count as customer service? Can I punch you between the eyes? Huh?!”
The abuse gradually swung back toward the convenience store employee.
Apparently, they had only just remembered that Golden’s stepmother was Korean as well.
Brass, who had been pretending to fire an imaginary gun, grabbed a carton of milk bearing Bobby’s face and hurled it onto the floor.
The carton burst.
Milk splashed across the tiles and began seeping into the cracks.
The mere thought of cleaning it up made Seojun’s head throb.
As he gloomily imagined himself wielding a mop against the mess, a long shadow stretched across the convenience store entrance.
A stunned, trembling voice followed.
“W-what happened here?”
Standing in the doorway was none other than Fred Frank, the owner of the convenience store.
Like Seojun, he wore a bright red cap and vest. His round glasses and immaculately groomed mustache made him look like a comic character who had wandered in from another era.
Fred stumbled inside, his eyes widening in horror.
Despite owning the store, he rarely visited.
Of all days, he had chosen this chaotic one to make an appearance.
“Boss...”
Seojun’s voice faltered.
Fred, however, appeared trapped in a world of his own. His hands trembled as he stroked his mustache.
“G-get out! All of you! What have you done to my beautiful, precious store?”
In truth, Fred’s attachment to the convenience store was rather superficial.
Aside from paying Seojun a meager monthly wage, he generally kept his distance.
Seojun wisely kept that observation to himself. He merely closed his mouth and nodded along with Fred’s lamentations.
Considering we get fewer than ten customers a day, I can’t really complain about being paid minimum wage...
Seojun regarded Fred with sympathetic eyes.
The owner of Hamon Convenience Store was a stout, middle-aged man, but his quivering voice, fogged glasses, and disheveled appearance only encouraged the bullies further.
Brass burst into laughter directly in Fred’s face.
Then he stomped a banana into the floor, his malicious grin stretching wider.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, sir. But until my jaw falls off,¹ I don’t think I could ever call this dump ‘precious.’”
¹T/N: Brass is speaking sarcastically. He means that he would have to lose all sense of taste—literally, for his jaw to fall off—before he could ever consider the convenience store “precious.”
“If this convenience store is excellent, then my brother is an alien,” Richard added, piling onto Brass’s mockery.
Fred’s face turned pale.
The tips of his mustache trembled.
Unable to endure their ridicule any longer, he forced out a firm shout.
“If y-you continue this nonsense, I will call the police!”
Golden’s shoulders stiffened at the manager’s warning.
Whether Fred knew that Golden’s father was a police officer or not, the threat struck precisely where it needed to.
Golden spat onto the floor in contempt.
“...Let’s go.”
Richard and Brass obeyed, though they continued jeering until the very end.
Seojun let Brass’s relentless taunts pass in one ear and out the other, a puzzled frown forming between his brows.
“Why did they even come here?”
Granted, people normally entered a convenience store to buy something, but this chaotic encounter could hardly be called a typical exchange between customers and an employee.
“Fred, are you all right?”
“Mm-hmm... Ugh...”
Fred carefully blew his nose, taking great care not to get anything on his mustache.
Then he shoved the damp handkerchief back into his pocket and blinked his reddened eyes.
“You can go home early today. Ugh.”
“Really?”
“Of course. After you clean all of this up.”
“......”
The convenience store floor was a disaster.
Spilled milk, mashed banana, and various crushed products covered the tiles.
Golden’s spit served as the revolting finishing touch.
Faced with the wreckage left behind by the Gold-Silver-Bronze trio and the sniffling store owner beside him, Seojun released a heavy sigh.
Instead of becoming a joyful day of liberation, today had turned out to be even more exhausting than usual.
Even after the troublemakers had left, Fred’s complaints continued to fill the convenience store.
He was the sort of man who displayed every emotion openly. Muttering angrily, he clumsily wiped his fogged glasses on the hem of his shirt.
“Those rotten, damned bastards! Seojun, if this happens again, call the police!”
Seojun knew better.
By the time the police managed to navigate the winding forest road leading to this remote location, the troublemakers would already be long gone, their fun finished.
Still, Seojun felt a faint sense of kinship with his bespectacled employer, so he simply nodded rather than shattering Fred’s illusion.
Ever since switching to contact lenses himself, however, Seojun felt no nostalgic camaraderie whatsoever while watching the flustered store owner wrestle with his smudged lenses.
When Fred eventually emerged from the back room with his shoulders squared, he seemed like a different man.
But regardless of whether Seojun’s detached pragmatism swayed like a reed in the wind, the nature of their working relationship remained unchanged.
Fred was the boss.
Seojun was the obedient employee.
With a resigned shrug, Seojun retrieved a mop from the storage room and began cleaning.
Fred hovered nearby, his round glasses perched precariously on the bridge of his nose, muttering as though words alone might somehow repair the damage.
“I’d help, but I have something I need to do today.”
“Of course.”
As if.
Seojun could just as easily offer to help with no intention of doing so.
Fred continued stumbling through several more excuses.
“My brother is short-staffed and asked me to help. What else is a younger brother supposed to do?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child.”
Fred’s presence was becoming more of a hindrance than a help.
His frantic pacing across the food-smeared floor only made Seojun’s task harder.
Hoping he would leave soon, Seojun stared at Fred’s splendid mustache.
“You have a driver’s license, don’t you, Fred?”
“Yes? Ugh, yes, of course. A car is essential for commuting this far.”
Fred gestured with his chin toward the store’s side entrance.
Without a car, how else could anyone reach such an isolated place?
Unless one enjoyed extremely long bicycle rides, driving was the only practical option.
Even Christina’s group had come by car, with Johan behind the wheel.
Seojun pictured the six-seat van they had driven away in earlier, then spoke again.
“I’m planning to get my license soon, too. I’ve already looked into a few driving schools.”
“A license? Well, it’s about time, Seojun.”
Fred studied Seojun’s somewhat ambiguous eyes and slender yet sturdy frame with a thoughtful expression.
Then he spoke with a touch of bravado.
“Need help studying? I’ve driven on more than my fair share of roads.”
“No, I’m fine. I’ve been studying for the written test whenever I have time. Besides, I want to drive a truck.”
“A truck?”
Fred repeated the word as though Seojun’s long-held dream sounded faintly ridiculous.
But to Seojun, the thought of holding his freedom in his own hands was exhilarating.
Perhaps that was why he revealed the secret plan he had not even shared with his parents.
“Yes. Once I get my license, I’m thinking of traveling in a truck.”
“Traveling?”
Seojun nodded.
A strange mixture of relief and anxiety welled inside him as he finally put his hidden desire into words.
Is this what adulthood feels like?
The soul inside him—already matured by an entire previous life—scratched his cheek at the absurd thought.
Ignoring the unease crawling up his spine, Seojun continued.
“So I’m planning to quit my job at the convenience store. I’ll work until the end of this month, but after that, I’m done.”
“What? So suddenly?”
Fred’s face became a portrait of shock and dismay, as though the possibility of Seojun leaving ‘Wraithwood Warren’ had never once occurred to him.
Even as Seojun continued scrubbing the floor, Fred stared at him with the lost expression of a frightened child.
It was hardly a fitting description for a sturdy middle-aged man.
Nevertheless, that was how desperate he looked.
Wrinkling his nose at the sour smell of spilled milk, Seojun stopped mopping and rested his chin on the handle.
This obedient servant now takes his leave.
Farewell.