Fiction: After the Last Train

The first time I entered the convenience store, I did not notice anything strange about it.

It stood beside the station like every other convenience store in Japan: white lights buzzing behind spotless glass, rows of drinks lined with impossible precision, advertisements for seasonal sweets hanging from the windows. At two in the morning, the station was nearly empty except for salarymen asleep on benches and the occasional cyclist drifting silently through the cold. The store glowed against the darkness with the strange warmth only convenience stores possess… less welcoming than expectant, as though they remain open not for customers, but because closing would allow something terrible to happen.

I had moved to Japan a while ago. English teaching work at a junior high school, then a conversation school. Cheap apartment. Disposable routines. Like many foreigners who stay longer than they planned, I became nocturnal without meaning to. The days blurred into nights. I stopped calling home. I stopped cooking. My dinners became plastic trays warmed beneath fluorescent lights.

The convenience store became part of my route home after the last train.

At first, I only recognized the clerk: an old woman with gray hair tied behind her head. She never smiled, but she bowed every time I entered, slow and deliberate, as though greeting someone at a funeral. “Welcome,” she always said in a low voice. Not irasshaimase, like most clerks. Just “welcome.” I figured my foriegn face allowed her to practice the English that she knew. It usually did that.

The strange thing was that I never saw another employee. Not once. No matter the hour, midnight, three a.m., dawn, she was there behind the register beneath the fluorescent lights. Sometimes reading a newspaper. Sometimes staring toward the refrigerators. Once, I thought she was asleep standing upright with her eyes open. But she was always there.

And eventually, she began to recognize me.

“The same as always,” she would say softly when I approached the counter with canned coffee and microwaved pasta. She would slide the yellow package across the counter towards me and tell me my total.

I never remembered telling her my cigarettes.

One night late in autumn, rain swept through the city sideways beneath the station lights. My umbrella had broken in the wind. By the time I reached the store, my clothes clung cold against my skin. The old woman watched me enter.

“You missed the last train,” she said. It was not a question.

I looked toward the station clock outside. 2:13 a.m. “I walked,” I answered.

The old woman nodded once, as though this confirmed something important.

Behind me, the automatic doors opened. A man entered wearing a dark business suit soaked black from rain. He carried no umbrella. Water dripped from his sleeves onto the tile floor, but he did not seem to notice. He walked slowly toward the drinks section with his head lowered.

Something about him unsettled me immediately. Perhaps it was because he moved without sound. No footsteps. No rustling fabric. Only the refrigerator hum.

The old woman watched him carefully. Then she leaned toward me across the counter. “You should not come so late,” she whispered.

I laughed awkwardly, assuming she meant for safety. But her expression did not change.

“The things are different after the last train.”

The suited man stopped beside the refrigerators. For a moment, the glass doors reflected only the fluorescent lights. Not him.

I stared too long.

The old woman reached out suddenly and gripped my wrist with surprising strength. “Do not look directly.” Her fingers were ice cold.

The suited man slowly turned his head toward us. His face was not grotesque or wounded, yet there was something wholely wrong. It was almost as if it was unfinished, like a blurred photograph. His features shifted subtly each time I tried to focus on them: eyes too far apart, mouth indistinct, skin the pale gray of old paper left in water.

He began walking toward the counter.

No footsteps.

The old woman released my wrist and straightened immediately. “Your total is 1,284 yen,” she said calmly.

I fumbled coins from my pocket while the suited man drifted closer behind me. The air around him smelled faintly of wet concrete and train brakes.

“You should go now,” the old woman said. Her voice remained perfectly polite.

I grabbed my bag and left immediately.

The doors slid shut behind me. As I stepped outside, I looked back through the glass. The suited man was gone. The old woman stood alone behind the register watching me. She bowed her head once.

After that night, I told myself I would stop going there. But routine is stronger than fear.

A week later, after too many drinks with coworkers, I found myself walking the same road from the station again. The streets were silent except for distant traffic and the metallic creak of power lines in the wind. The convenience store lights waited ahead.

Inside, everything appeared normal: magazine racks, one fried chicken warming beneath the heat lamps, a pop song playing softly overhead.

The old woman looked up as I entered. “You came back.”

“I needed cigarettes.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Of course you would.”

I almost asked what she meant. But then I noticed the photographs pinned beside the register on a corkboard I had somehow never seen before. Small photographs arranged in careful rows: men in suits, teenagers in school uniforms, a taxi driver, a woman holding shopping bags. Dozens of faces, all photographed from inside the store.

I pointed toward the board. The old woman followed my gaze.

“Regular customers,” she said.

The station speakers outside crackled faintly in the distance. Last train announcements, but I could have sworn the trains had stopped at least an hour ago.

The old woman’s eyes shifted toward the windows. “You should not stay tonight.”

The automatic doors opened and cold air swept through the store.

Three people entered together: a schoolgirl, a salaryman, and a woman in a white coat. All soaked with rainwater despite the dry weather outside. None of them made any sound as they walked. None of them reflected in the refrigerator glass.

The old woman lowered her eyes. Without looking at me, she spoke softly. “They don’t know yet.”

Something inside me turned hollow. The three figures wandered the aisles slowly, examining products with quiet confusion, like travelers who had forgotten where they were going. The schoolgirl paused beside the instant noodles. The salaryman stood motionless near the ATM. The woman in white stared toward the station outside.

“The last train used to come around this time,” the old woman said.

I could not speak. My body felt distant from itself. The fluorescent lights buzzed louder and louder overhead.

“Why are you telling me this?” The old woman finally looked at me directly.

“Because you are beginning to stay too late.”

Behind me, I heard movement.

The suited man from before stood near the doors, watching me. His blurred face tilted slightly, as though recognizing me now.

The old woman placed something on the counter: a train ticket, old and yellowed at the edges.

“This station doesn’t see as much traffic as it once did. They cut most of the later trains a while ago,” she said. “People still wait for trains that no longer come.”

Outside, the station platform lights flickered weakly in the darkness. And for the first time, I realized something terrible about my routine.

I had never once seen another customer leave the store.