Konbini Ossan Volume 16 Chapter 14 — If You Must Curse
“I will accept both your dream and your curse. Even if you think yourself ugly, I will accept it until the day you can believe that you are not.”
As I said that, I moved to the heart of the matter.
The words needed to free the world from this boy’s curse.
“So, do not curse the world. Curse one of the humans who failed to save you. One of those responsible for creating a world so terrible that it made you curse it. Would you curse me instead?”
I did not exist in the era when the boy was alive.
I had not harmed him directly.
But the present exists only because of the ages that came before, including the age that hurt him, and I live while receiving the benefits of that.
If a debt must be repaid, then not someone else.
At the very least, let me be the one to pay it back and bring this to an end.
“Why?”
The boy threw the question at me.
“You should have hatred too! Hatred for the world that forced other people’s unfairness onto you!”
The moment the boy shouted, the scenery around us changed.
It was a familiar sight.
A memory from my own past.
From before I became a convenience store clerk, back when I was still job hunting.
A memory of an interview at a certain company.
Back when I still had the arrogance to think I would pass easily.
「To be honest, people like you are a nuisance.」
I had researched the company’s operations, thought about what kind of work I could do there, even prepared something like presentation materials, and spoke about my plans after joining.
And what I was told in return was that I was a nuisance.
Looking back, what I had said then was built without truly understanding the company’s internal realities.
In other words, I had spoken enthusiastically from an off-target perspective, and even if I had joined the company and worked exactly as I described, nobody would have benefited.
Their conclusion was simple.
Showing enthusiasm that did not align with the company’s intentions was not something they could evaluate positively.
Now, I understand why I was rejected.
But at the time, I thought I had been judged unfairly, and my mind went blank.
I had spoken based on information the company itself publicly presented, so I must have felt betrayed.
It may also have been because the reality differed from what little I had heard from acquaintances and what I had learned through university job-hunting support.
I had been told that showing enthusiasm was important.
Thinking about it now, that too was only natural.
I was someone who had repeated years in university multiple times, to put it mildly, hardly someone with a normal academic history.
There was no reason they would judge me by the same standards as someone who had graduated properly in four years.
But back then, I could not accept that either.
In the end, I stubbornly repeated the same behavior, and was rejected again and again for similar reasons.
“And that’s not all! There were plenty of other times you hated people!”
Apparently, the hallucinations were not over.
The scenery changed again.
This time, it was from shortly after I became a convenience store clerk.
Days spent doing monotonous work that had become routine.
Even then, there were moments when I felt things were unfair.
「If you can’t even do this much, that’s a problem.」
An older female coworker criticizing me for not being able to do work I had never been taught.
「Don’t work so slowly here! You’re in the way!」
The store manager practically shoving me aside while I struggled with unfamiliar tasks around the register.
「We can just rotate breaks one hour at a time, right?」
An employee who suggested that arrangement himself, yet never once returned at the promised time.
「Thanks for always covering the morning shifts.」
The owner, who expressed gratitude with words, yet never really looked at me, with no emotion behind them.
Each incident by itself was trivial.
But together, they were more than enough to make me feel like I was being treated carelessly as a person.
That petty, foolish anger and resentment became chronic, eventually turning into resignation.
I gave up on others, and on myself.
Once I had given up, daily life no longer seemed all that bad.
I drifted along through inertia, unable to even think about changing anything.
And then, one day while still working as a convenience store clerk, I was summoned to this world.
The hallucination ended there, leaving nothing around us.
Within the gray space, the boy looked at me and asked:
“You remembered, didn’t you? You hated so many people. Resented them. Thought you could never forgive them.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
It wasn’t that I had forgotten.
But seeing it again made me understand all over again what kind of person I used to be.
“Then why can you say I should curse you instead?! Curse the world! Those feelings haven’t disappeared! So why?! Where did they go?!”
To the boy’s impulsive question, I answered.
“Here.”
And I lightly tapped my chest with my palm.
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E/N:
In this cruel little world, all we can and must do is struggle… I feel for Ossan 😭
As much as I appreciate Ossan's self-sacrifice, he should think more about his family! Ffs!
Stay tuned!
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