Even though he was here earlier, where did he go? The toilet?

Even if that were the case, it was kind of carelessness… to leave the store unoccupied no matter how late at night it was with no customers coming in. What if a customer suddenly appeared?

I supposed he was not expecting any customers.

I was the sole one in the empty store. Even so, I wasn’t busy. The hands of the clock have already passed 2:30 a.m., and most of the miscellaneous tasks have been settled with the instructions I received.

I wondered if it would go on like this until morning. By the time the sun rose, how many more customers would show up? If this kept up, I could probably memorize the number of customers, their faces, and the items they bought.

…Aoyama hadn’t come back yet…

All of a sudden, I felt a gaze on me and raised my head. It was the glass part of the magazine corner.

“Aoyama?”

That was what I thought, yet beyond the glass was pitch-dark, and not a soul, not even Aoyama, was standing there. Oh, so it was my imagination…

Things like this happened often. Without paying much attention to it, I returned my gaze to the store.

At that time―

The automatic door opened with a mundane chime.

Here it came…!

“Welcome―”

I said reflexively and directed myself toward the automatic door. A customer arrived after a long time.

Although I was prepared to greet them with my all-out business smile, I froze the following moment with my body turned toward the door.

No… what was this? Nobody was there.

The customer that was supposed to be there.

The customer that was supposed to walk in through the automatic door. They were nowhere to be seen.

The automatic door closed as if nothing had occurred. Even the chime stopped ringing.

…What…?

Squinting, I stared at the door, but found nothing out of the ordinary, simply an automatic door. No, the wind was not blowing that fierce today, nor was there anything that looked like trash near the door.

Something was wrong. When I tilted my head and thought so, the door opened by itself again.

“…”

Terrifying.

I didn’t think so.magic

At the time, I merely found it odd.

After confirming that the door closed again, I left the counter and stood in front of the automatic door. By standing in front of the automatic door, the sensor was activated and the door opened as a matter of course. Only my head stuck out of the door and I looked around. Needless to say, nobody was there… This wasn’t a prank, right?

If this was not a prank, only one thing can be conceivable.

“Malfunctioning huh…”

The sensor must be out of order.

The words of the manager and Aoyama recurred in my mind, but I was skeptical to assume that a mysterious phenomenon was the handiwork of a specter, even though I couldn’t see it.

Had it been a legless woman who stepped in, I probably would have believed in the existence of specter.However, when a door opened by itself in the absence of anything else, chances were that the door was malfunctioning or something similar.

What the hell…? I heaved a brief sigh as I looked outside.

Those who had resigned up to this point had simply quit out of fear, mistaking the automatic door malfunction for the handiwork of a specter huh.

How pathetic, how pitiful. I wasn’t spooked at all.

The lack of pedestrian traffic and the fact that the area was surrounded by a sea of trees and a well-known suicide site, all of which compounded the apprehension and terror, led to the illusion that they had witnessed something bizarre.

Unfortunately, I was not a deeply devout person. Stories without visible evidence were my ultimate abhorrence.

I mean, someone in the shadows was definitely having a good time with those kinds of stories. Thinking about it, wouldn’t it be extremely ludicrous to be swept along with the rest of the crowd that fussed and fretted about the horrors of such things? If this was the extent of it, a week would be nothing to worry about.

As I was about to return to the counter, the door that had nearly closed opened again, and this time it remained open even after the chime had finished ringing.

“…”

I stared at that with icy eyes.

When I was with Aoyama, this didn’t happen, right?

Beyond my gaze, the door remained open instead of being closed, constantly sending the warm air from outside into the store.

When a person was left standing in front of a door alone, this same phenomenon could arise.

No, no, it couldn’t be…

No way…

Back at the counter, I spent several minutes observing the bizarre automatic door.

As the automatic door didn’t seem to be closing, I got fed up and left the counter once more to examine the door.

Leaving the door open would allow insects to enter the store. I couldn’t tolerate it any longer. It’s probably just the rail or a piece of trash stuck in there somewhere, I figured.

Nevertheless, I crouched down and inspected the rail from top to bottom and found not a single piece of trash caught in it.

Did it really break down? Ah, about this. What should I do with this door left open?

At any rate, when Aoyama came, I would consult with him… I scratched the back of my head and pondered so.