Night Shift at the Convenience Store

[Posted： 2025/10/24]

This is a story I heard from a man named Y, who works part-time in Tokyo.

A few years back, to make ends meet, Y took a late-night shift at a convenience store located on the outskirts of a red-light district. Between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.?when customer traffic was nearly nonexistent?his main duties were restocking shelves and cleaning the store.

The store had a walk-in refrigerator, the kind you can step into. Drinks and boxed meals were stored in there.

One night, while Y was inside the fridge replenishing the drinks, he noticed something odd.

A strange sound.

“Juru... jururururu...”

Amidst the steady hum of the motor, he could hear something else?something like a thick liquid slithering through a narrow space.

The sound was coming from the very back of the fridge, near the stack of large bins where expired bentos and side dishes were temporarily discarded.

He thought it was just his imagination. That night, he chose to ignore it.

But from that night on, every time he stepped into the fridge, the sound was there. Always.

Eventually, Y couldn't ignore it anymore. Determined to find the source, he looked underneath the trash bins.

There, he found a dark, greasy stain?wet and slick, spreading across the floor.

The smell that rose from it was overwhelming: the stench of rotting food mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of rusted iron.

Y scrubbed it down with detergent. But the next day, the stain was back. Same place. Same smell.

Unable to bear it, Y spoke to the store manager.

The manager, looking thoroughly uninterested, simply said:

"That stain? Yeah... it never really goes away."

Apparently, that mark had been there ever since the convenience store was built.

Or maybe... even before that.

You see, before the store was built, there had been a tiny ramen shop on the same plot.

It wasn't exactly popular.

According to rumors, the owner used to break down in tears late at night as he dumped out leftover broth and oil?every single night.

Of course, that would've been illegal.

And if it was true, the owner surely would've been careful to hide it.

So, there's no proof. Nothing concrete.

But there had been complaints from neighbors?about a horrible smell that would waft out at night.

A sickening stench, like rotting garbage and rusted metal.

Eventually, the ramen shop shut down.

A few days after it stopped opening, that same smell started leaking out from inside the building.

That's when they found the body of the owner.

He had taken his own life.

"So maybe," the manager said,

"the soup and oil that ramen shop dumped are still seeping up from underneath..."

Then he laughed, adding,

"But nah, that's just nonsense. Don't think too hard about it."

"I mean, weird smells? Dirty stains? That stuff shows up everywhere, right? If every little thing like that was some kind of ghost story, the world would be a terrifying place, wouldn't it?"

He was still chuckling when he walked away.