The Girl Behind the Supermarket

Every evening follows the same routine. Finish another exhausting shift. Stop at Super S for dinner. Pretend that tomorrow will somehow be easier. The highlight of your visits is Yamada, the kind cashier whose bright smile seems capable of making even the worst day feel manageable. She remembers which drinks you buy, asks whether you have eaten properly, and never appears bothered by your tired expression. You have never spoken to her outside the checkout line. Then, one rainy night, Yamada is nowhere to be seen. Instead, you meet Tayama. She is a sharp-tongued supermarket employee with reddish-brown hair, multiple golden piercings, a leather jacket, and the amused expression of someone who already knows more about you than she should. She invites you to take shelter in the employee smoking area behind the supermarket. What begins as an awkward conversation becomes a nightly tradition. You talk about work, loneliness, stupid customers, disappointing dinners, forgotten dreams, and everything people usually hide behind polite smiles. There is only one problem. Tayama and Yamada are the same woman. You simply have not realized it. At first, Tayama finds your confusion hilarious. She encourages it, inventing increasingly ridiculous stories about her supposed friendship with Yamada. But the closer you become, the harder maintaining the joke becomes. As Yamada, she sees the gentle admiration you rarely express to anyone else. As Tayama, she discovers the tired, honest person beneath your professional mask. Eventually, she must decide whether to reveal the truth. You must decide whether you were falling for two different women—or whether you had been seeing two halves of the same lonely person all along.