"Convenience Store Woman"

[fiefoe]

Sayaka Murata via Ginny Tapley Takemori's translation writes pretty breezily about a woman who already has her promiseland and almost lost it because of 'society'. Luckily the story ended as it should.

• The time before I was reborn as a convenience store worker is somewhat unclear in my memory. I was born into a normal family and lovingly brought up in a normal suburban residential area. But everyone thought I was a rather strange child.
• Everyone was crying for the poor dead bird as they went around murdering flowers, plucking their stalks, exclaiming, “What lovely flowers! Little Mr. Budgie will definitely be pleased.” They looked so bizarre I thought they must all be out of their minds.
• * I was good at mimicking the trainer’s examples and the model video he’d shown us in the back room. It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech.
• We practiced looking the customer in the eye, smiling and bowing, cleaning our hands with alcohol before handling items from the hot-food cabinet, putting hot and cold items into separate bags, and sanitary products into paper bags.
• * When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.
• The weather forecast is a vital source of information for a convenience store. The difference in temperature from the previous day is an important factor.
• “Oh really? Wait, do you mean those dark blue ones you wore to the shop before? Those were cute!” I answered, copying Sugawara’s speech pattern, but using a slightly more adult tone. Her speech is a rather excitable staccato, the exact opposite of Mrs. Izumi’s, but mixing the two styles works surprisingly well.
• * I’d noticed soon after starting the job that whenever I got angry at the same things as everyone else, they all seemed happy. If I went along with the manager when he was annoyed or joined in the general irritation at someone skiving off the night shift, there was a strange sense of solidarity as everyone seemed pleased that I was angry too.
• * I love this moment. It feels like “morning” itself is being loaded into me. The tinkle of the door chime as a customer comes in sounds like church bells to my ears. When I open the door, the brightly lit box awaits me—a dependable, normal world that keeps turning. I have faith in the world inside the light-filled box.
• But Yukari was right I thought. After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too. When we last met a few years ago, most of the store workers were laid-back university students, so of course my way of speaking was different then. <> “I guess. Yes, I have probably changed,” I said with a smile, not elaborating.
• * some of the customers who come into the convenience store look like ordinary residents, and I always wonder where on earth they live. I absently imagine them asleep somewhere within this cast-off-cicada-shell world.
• * I stroked my sleeping nephew’s cheek with my forefinger. It felt strangely soft, like stroking a blister.
• But so far as I could see, aside from a few minor differences they were all just an animal called a baby and looked much the same, just like stray cats all looked much the same.
• A convenience store is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated. The threatening atmosphere that had briefly permeated the store was swept away, and the customers again concentrated on buying their coffee and pastries as if nothing had happened.
• The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of. <> So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me.
• Shiraha looked down awkwardly. “Anyway, nothing’s changed since the Stone Age. It’s just that nobody realizes that. In the final analysis, we’re all animals,” he said, going off on a tangent. “If you ask me, this is a dysfunctional society. And since it’s defective, I’m treated unfairly.” <> I thought he was probably right about that, and I couldn’t even imagine what a perfectly functioning society would be like. I was beginning to lose track of what “society” actually was. I even had a feeling it was all an illusion.
• These past two weeks I’d been asked fourteen times why I wasn’t married. And twelve times why I was still working part-time. So for now I’d decide what to eliminate from my life according to what I was asked about most often I thought.
• * “Oh, sorry. It’s the first time I’ve kept an animal at home, so it feels like having a pet, you see.” <> Shiraha looked annoyed at my turn of phrase but said smugly, “Well, that should do.” Then he added, “Talking of food, I haven’t eaten anything since morning.”
• * I explained it clearly for him, but he didn’t seem to understand. Reluctantly taking a forkful to his mouth, he snapped, “It is like dog food!” <> Of course it is, I thought. That’s why I said that. I stuck my fork into a piece of daikon and put it in my mouth.
• “That’s because you’re just too far out there. A thirty-six-year-old, single convenience store worker, probably a virgin at that, zealously working every day, shouting at the top of her lungs, full of energy. Yet showing no signs of looking for a proper job. You’re a foreign object. It’s just nobody bothered to tell you because they find you too freaky. They’ve been saying it behind your back, though... “People who are considered normal enjoy putting those who aren’t on trial, you know. But if you kick me out now, they’ll judge you even more harshly, so you have no choice but to keep me around.” Shiraha gave a thin laugh. “I always did want revenge, on women who are allowed to become parasites just because they’re women. I always thought to myself that I’d be a parasite one day. That’d show them. And I’m going to be a parasite on you, Furukura, whatever it takes.”
• Until now, we’d always had meaningful worker-manager discussions: “It’s been hot lately, so the sales of chocolate desserts are down,”... Now, however, it felt like he’d downgraded me from store worker to female of the human species.
• “The bathroom? Is he in the bath?”.. “Yes, it’s really cramped when we’re together in the room, so I’m keeping him in there.” My sister looked incredulous, so I explained further. “I mean, this apartment is really old, isn’t it? Shiraha says that taking a coin-pay shower is better than getting into such an old bath. He gives me small change to cover the cost of my shower and his feed. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s convenient having him here. Everyone’s really happy for me.
• * I couldn’t stop hearing the store telling me the way it wanted to be, what it needed. It was all flowing into me. It wasn’t me speaking. It was the store. I was just channeling its revelations from on high.
• You’d be far better off working to support me. That way everyone’ll breathe easier. They’ll be satisfied. They’ll even be happy for you.” <> “No, I can’t go with you. Think of me as an animal, a convenience store animal. I can’t betray my instinct.”... I said, “No. It’s not a matter of whether they permit it or not. It’s what I am. For the human me, it probably is convenient to have you around, Shiraha, to keep my family and friends off my back. But the animal me, the convenience store worker, has absolutely no use for you whatsoever.”