Prologue
Just to be upfront about it — I’m not exactly what you’d call a pleasant person.
I’m not the type to have enough warmth to spare on strangers who have nothing to do with me, and I think of myself as someone whose cold reason tends to win out over warm emotion.
But this particular situation — I couldn’t coldly look away from it.
“Hic… hh…. Ugh….”
I was thrown off.
It was the first time I’d ever witnessed a full-grown man crying pitifully while ringing up a single roll of gimbap and a can of cola.
I deliberately kept my eyes fixed on the gimbap and cola so I wouldn’t have to look at his face. The man gripped the can in his hand hard enough to crush it, and with trembling fingers, scanned the barcode. Warm teardrops splattered one after another onto the cold surface.
“Th-that’ll be… four thousand won…. sniff.“
His voice trembled just as badly as his hands. He kept glancing back and forth between the digital clock inside the store and the entrance — like a dog desperately needing to go outside.
Does he have somewhere urgent to be?
Even someone like me, who couldn’t care less about strangers, couldn’t help but notice a big guy bawling his eyes out like a child right in front of me.
Especially when that guy happened to be a high school classmate.
Normally, even when he’d try to make friendly small talk, I’d just slide my card over without a word — but today, my mouth opened on its own.
“Something going on?”
It was only then that I actually looked properly at him as he took my card with his tear-wet hand.
His gentle face was an absolute mess — it was impossible to tell how long he’d been crying.
His eyes were swollen to an alarming degree from the endless stream of tears, his lips were cracked and bleeding in several places from however many times he’d bitten them, and his nose, which hadn’t stopped running for a second, had long since gone completely red.
His pitiful shoulders, heaving without rest, shrank in slightly.
“N-no…. Nothing’s wrong…….”
“Crying that hard over nothing would make you sick.”
That nothing’s wrong of his had been a verbal habit going all the way back to high school. He was someone who’d never once shown a single tear no matter what awful things had happened to him — and here he was, sobbing in front of a customer. There was no way this was nothing.
I didn’t bother hiding my frustration as I shot him an irritated look.
“So what is it? Tell me before I regret sticking my nose in.”
“Oh, hh…. Well…….”
He was wavering, eyes darting wildly, before he drew in a sharp breath.
“A-actually… my gran…, my grandma is right now… at the hospital…….”
“Did she collapse?”
“Mm, mm-hm…. She collapsed and she’s been admitted for a while now, b-but…… hic…. Right now…, they’re saying she might not make it, so pl-please come quickly……. Huhh….”
Overwhelmed with emotion, he covered his face with both hands and began to sob outright.
I already knew he’d been raised by his grandmother. Back in high school, he’d had the misfortune of getting caught by the wrong crowd of immature idiots, and even that fact had been used against him as ammunition. Because of it, his grandmother had sometimes shown up at school and made a scene.
If I remembered correctly, his grandmother was his only living family.
I couldn’t understand why, with someone like that potentially on her deathbed right now, he was still here scanning barcodes.
A flash of anger hit me and I frowned.
“What are you doing here? You need to get to the hospital now!”
Still sobbing, he rubbed his reddened eyes with his thoroughly soaked sleeve.
“B-but… the, the manager said no…. There’s no replacement and the manager can’t come either, so j-just stay a little longer, he said…….”
“Is that guy out of his mind?!”
This was impossible not to be angry about.
It was already absurd enough that he was pulling a solo daytime shift in a store nearly forty pyeong in size — but ignoring him even when he hears a family member might be dying? Both the manager telling him not to go and this idiot who’d actually stayed after hearing that — neither of them seemed to have all their marbles.
Forcing down my anger, I snatched the barcode scanner from him and slammed it down on the counter.
“You. Get out. Now.”
The moment I stepped behind the counter where he was standing, I moved to pull off the employee vest he was wearing. Flustered, but apparently no match for my intensity, he obediently let me strip it off him.
“W-why…? And besides, you c-can’t just come in here like this… hic, th-this isn’t…….”
“Does that matter right now?”
Having thrown on his vest without much care, I shoved him out from behind the counter.
“The first part-time job I took when I started university was a convenience store. Just go — I’ve got this covered.”
As if to make it clear he wasn’t to come back behind the counter, I dropped the entry barrier shut. Understanding the situation at last, his expression crumbled completely.
“J-Jaeaaaa…. Hic, hhh….”
“Stop crying and get going. Keep this up and I might change my mind, grab my gimbap, and walk out like I don’t know you.”
Of course, I had no intention of actually backing out after going this far. I was the one who’d stuck my nose in, so I was the one who’d see it through.
He stared at me with a face cycling through countless emotions, then suddenly bolted for the door.
“Thank you, Jaea! I’ll, I’ll find a way to repay you somehow! Thank you! Thank you—!”
Instead of answering him with words, I just flicked my hand at him in a get going already gesture.
A customer who happened to be walking in looked startled seeing him leave with a tearful face, but when I calmly said “Welcome,” they quickly got on with picking out their things.
Right. That’s the normal response.
You can be surprised at someone else’s tears — but it stops there.
Anything beyond that is unnecessary meddling.
What I’d just done was truly worthless, a waste of time with no reward to expect.
For him, it might be different.
I smiled bitterly, thinking back on the past version of me who had sworn never to stick my nose into other people’s business again.
With no idea of the enormous change that act of meddling — breaking that very vow — was about to bring.
That day.
The whole world collapsed.
