The fluorescent lights of the FamilyMart hummed a low note that Reiji had stopped noticing around minute five of his shopping expedition. Around minute fifteen, his shoulders ached from holding tension. By minute twenty—now—he was acutely aware of every sound the refrigerators made: the click and whir of the compressors, the soft rush of cold air escaping.

  He stood in the nutrition aisle, holding a box of energy bars. The last box. His third visit to this particular store in as many days, and each time the stock had dwindled. The bars were compact, calorie-dense, sealed in plastic packages that wouldn't spoil. Practical. In the original timeline, he'd regretted not buying enough of these. A lot of people did, once the System descended. There was a brief window—maybe six hours—where the stores were still stocked but chaos hadn't fully consumed them. After that, the shelves looked like wolves had picked them clean.

  A man rounded the corner with a hand truck loaded with more boxes. He was restocking, athletic and efficient in his movements, the kind of person who didn't waste motion. He wore the standard convenience store uniform—a black polo with the FamilyMart logo—and a name tag that read Taiga. His eyes assessed the situation in less than a second: a customer with the last box of the item he was currently stocking.

  "We just got those in," Taiga said. His voice was neutral, but there was something direct underneath it. "You don't need to clear the whole box."

  Reiji didn't turn around. He examined the nutrition facts on the back of the box with exaggerated interest. "Bulk purchasing is efficient."

  "Sure. But other people shop here too."

  There it was. The push. Reiji turned to face him. Taiga was a few inches taller, broad-shouldered, with the kind of posture that came from confidence or military training or both. His expression wasn't hostile—just firm. Not the expression of someone making a request. The expression of someone stating a fact.

  In the original timeline, Reiji had known Taiga Souta. Not well, not at the start. But Taiga had been one of them, one of his party members. Offensive class, born to charge forward and refuse to accept death. The System had classified him that way because Taiga was that way, had always been. Even now, before the System, before the classes existed, Reiji could see it in how Taiga held his ground—not aggressive, just immovable.

  "I'll buy what I need," Reiji said.

  "Then you don't need the whole box."

  Reiji turned back to the shelf. He placed the box down, selected five individual packages instead, and held them in his hands. His grip was steady. Taiga began to unload his hand truck, pulling boxes of the energy bars down and sliding them onto the shelf with practiced movements. No wasted time. No hesitation. Just work.

  The convenience store smell wrapped around them: coffee that had been sitting under heat lamps for hours, the faint sourness of the drain somewhere in the prep area, the neutral nothing-smell of air conditioning running too hard. The fluorescent lights made everything look slightly ill.

  "Personal project?" Taiga asked. He wasn't looking at Reiji anymore. Just stocking shelves, one smooth motion after another.

  "What?"

  "You come in here looking like you're building a bunker. That's a project thing, not a normal shopping thing."

  Reiji's jaw tightened. He was supposed to be inconspicuous. Just another customer. Just someone preparing for what was coming in—he checked his phone—less than twenty-four hours now. Except he'd gone to this store three days straight. He'd been too focused on the checklist in his head to notice he was creating a pattern.

  "Personal business," he said.

  Taiga shrugged, finishing another box. "Fair. But you look like you haven't slept in days. Whatever you're preparing for, you won't survive it if you collapse."

  The directness of it caught something in Reiji's chest. Not warmth. Not quite. But the absence of something. The absence of judgment, maybe, or the absence of lies. Taiga had stated a fact: collapsed people don't survive. It was practical and clear, the same way he'd moved through his work.

  "I sleep," Reiji said.

  "Not enough."

  Reiji walked toward the counter with his five energy bars. Taiga followed, finishing his restocking and coming out from behind the shelves. He rang up the items with the same efficiency he applied to everything else—fingers moving across the register without hesitation. A man who did his work and did it well.

  "Anything else?" Taiga asked.

  "That's it."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The register beeped. Total came to 2,890 yen. Reiji paid in cash. Taiga bagged the items in a small plastic bag, then paused. He was maybe twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. Reiji couldn't quite pin it down, but there was something in Taiga's eyes that suggested he'd thought about what came next.

  "Tell you what," Taiga said. "You buy what you just bought, and I'll give you thirty percent off if you sit down and eat an onigiri."

  "I don't need—"

  "You're about to pass out. And if you pass out in an alley somewhere, nobody's going to call an ambulance fast enough. If you eat something right here, with witnesses, at least there's a chance someone competent will notice."

  Reiji wanted to refuse. Everything in him wanted to grab his bag and leave, to get back to his apartment and finalize the preparations that still needed to happen. But Taiga was already moving toward the food warmer, pulling out an onigiri wrapped in plastic. The guy wasn't asking. He was doing. That was the Taiga Reiji remembered: the one who didn't ask permission to keep people alive. He just did it.

  "Tuna mayo," Taiga said, handing it over. "Eat."

  The convenience store seating area was small: two small tables with four chairs total, tucked near the window. Reiji sat. Taiga took a short break—he must have been closing shift—and sat across from him. They didn't speak for the first few minutes. Just the sound of plastic crinkling as Reiji unwrapped the onigiri, the soft sound of him eating.

  The rice was still warm. It was better than he'd expected, which meant it was worse, because now he was genuinely hungry, and hunger was a weakness he didn't have time to accommodate. He ate anyway.

  "You're not in trouble, right?" Taiga said. "Like criminal stuff. You're not running from someone."

  "No."

  "Just... life trouble."

  Reiji chewed. Swallowed. The rice caught slightly in his throat. "Ten out of ten life trouble. No notes."

  Taiga laughed. Not a mean laugh—a genuine one, the kind that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He wasn't laughing at Reiji. He was laughing with him, at the absurdity of the scale, at how perfectly that phrase captured a certain kind of desperation. Reiji had forgotten what that felt like. Someone laughing with you instead of at you. Someone recognizing a joke instead of requiring explanation.

  "Yeah," Taiga said. "I get that."

  They finished eating in silence. Reiji felt the sugar and carbohydrates hit his bloodstream. The world softened slightly at the edges, not better but less sharp. When Taiga spoke again, his voice was quieter.

  "I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know what you're preparing for. Doomsday thing? Personal crisis? Escape plan? Doesn't matter. But if you're actually planning to survive whatever this is, you need to sleep. Your brain doesn't work right without sleep. I've done enough overnight shifts to know what burnout looks like, and you're about two hours away from checking yourself into it."

  Reiji didn't argue. There was no point. Taiga was right—sleep deprivation had been catching up to him for days. It was just that every time he closed his eyes, his mind spiraled back to the same question: what had he forgotten? What detail from five years later was going to matter in the next twenty-four hours that he'd overlooked?

  "I'll try," Reiji said.

  "Don't try. Do it. Even four hours."

  Taiga pulled out his phone. "What's your number? I mean, if you do actually collapse in an alley, I want someone who at least knows to call an ambulance."

  It was an excuse to exchange contact information. That's what it was on the surface. But underneath it was something else: a lifeline. Taiga was offering it carefully, in practical terms, in the language of survival. Reiji took out his phone and they exchanged numbers. Taiga's contact was saved as "Taiga Souta – FamilyMart" in the format of someone already imagining having to call this person multiple times.

  They walked to the door together. The convenience store was empty except for the store clerk, who was doing inventory in the background, far enough away to give them privacy. Outside, the Tokyo night was alive—traffic sounds, distant sirens, the hum of the city that Reiji had been trying not to hear for three days. Everything was the same as it always was. Everything was about to change.

  "Get some sleep if you can," Taiga said, standing in the doorway. His hand was still on the door frame. "The world probably isn't ending tomorrow, but if it is, you'll want to be rested for it."

  Reiji looked at him—really looked at him. Taiga was serious. Not joking, not really. Just stating a logical fact in the face of the absurd. Whatever Taiga's instincts told him about Reiji, they weren't wrong. Something was coming. Taiga could feel it in the way Reiji moved, in the haunted quality of someone preparing for an end.

  "Thanks," Reiji said.

  "Don't thank me. Just don't die."

  Reiji walked back to his apartment. The streets were quieter at this hour—past midnight, the time when most people had retreated to sleep and the city belonged to the insomniacs and the workers and the lost. He walked past closed shops, past darkened offices, past the shrine that would be full of people this time tomorrow, desperate prayers echoing off the stone.

  His apartment was dark when he entered it. He didn't turn on the lights. He sat on his futon in the darkness and pulled out his phone. Taiga's contact was there. Just waiting.

  Reiji opened his messages instead. He had no one to text. No one to call. No one except this stranger who worked at a convenience store and had somehow understood, in fifteen minutes of conversation, something that Reiji had been unable to explain to anyone in three days.

  He set an alarm. Four hours. It was less than he needed but more than he'd allowed himself since he woke up with three days' knowledge of the future burning in his skull.

  As Reiji lay down on his futon, he didn't sleep immediately. He stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of his own exhaustion, the way his thoughts were beginning to fracture at the edges. By tomorrow night, none of this would matter. The System would descend. The world would change. And Reiji would have to survive it again—but this time, maybe not completely alone.

  His phone buzzed. A text from Taiga: "Don't stay up all night thinking about stuff. Your brain is lying to you when it's tired. Sleep first."

  Reiji didn't respond. But he closed his eyes. And for the first time in three days, in the space between consciousness and the weight of what was coming, he let himself rest.

  The alarm would sound in exactly four hours. The System would descend in less than twenty. But in this moment, in the dark of his apartment, Reiji held onto the smallest fact: he wasn't completely alone.

  Someone knew his number. Someone would notice if he collapsed. Someone had looked at him in the fluorescent light of a convenience store at midnight and had not turned away.

  It was the smallest thing. It was enough.