The flickering neon sign outside the convenience store buzzed like a dying wasp, its sickly glow bleeding into the perpetual twilight of Seoul’s forgotten backstreets. Inside, the air was thick with the stench of spilled soju, stale cigarette smoke, and something faintly metallic—blood, sweat, or perhaps just the lingering despair of those who wandered in and out. The graveyard shift here wasn’t just a job; it was a slow, methodical erosion of the soul, a purgatory where time stretched into an infinite loop of exhaustion and dread.

The clientele? A parade of the damned. Drunks with glassy eyes and trembling hands, their laughter too loud, their threats too casual. Gangsters—if you could even call them that—more pathetic than fearsome, their cheap leather jackets hiding cheap knives, their bravado as thin as the store’s peeling linoleum. The only thing separating them from the alcoholics was the cold weight of a weapon tucked into their waistbands, a silent promise that tonight might be the night things escalated beyond slurred insults and shattered bottles.

Quit? The thought slithered through Kyeong-il’s mind sometimes, a weak, fleeting fantasy. But reality always crushed it before it could take root. This wretched hole paid double what any other part-time job would, and Kyeong-il—Choi Kyeong-il, fourth-year business student, drowning in tuition fees, overdue rent, and the crushing weight of his own futility—couldn’t afford principles. Not when his bank account was a graveyard of overdraft fees, not when his landlord’s knocks on the door grew louder each month.

The work was mindless, degrading in its simplicity. Restock the shelves. Scan the items. Count the cash. Repeat. A monkey could do it. A corpse could do it. And some nights, Kyeong-il felt closer to the latter. His hands moved on autopilot, his mind drifting somewhere far away, anywhere but here. But the universe, it seemed, took pleasure in denying him even that small escape.

Because they always came.

The same faces, night after night, their voices grating against his skull like rusted nails. They knocked over displays, spat on the floor, demanded discounts with the entitled fury of men who had nothing left to lose. And Kyeong-il? What was he supposed to do? Stand up to them? Risk a knife between his ribs for minimum wage? No. Better to swallow the insults, to let his pride wither and die. Better to take the occasional slap across the face for being too slow with the scanner than to find one of those same bastards lurking in the shadows outside his apartment—a cramped, mildewed coffin of a room that smelled of damp concrete and defeat.

The clock above the register ticked with mocking slowness. Outside, the city pulsed with indifferent life, cars rushing past, people laughing in bars, living real lives. Meanwhile, Kyeong-il stood trapped behind the counter, a ghost in his own existence, watching the hours bleed away.

Some nights, when the store was empty and the silence pressed in like a physical weight, he’d imagine walking out. Just leaving. Never coming back. But then the bell above the door would jingle, another drunk would stumble in, and the fantasy would dissolve like smoke.

Because this was his life.

This was all it would ever be.

A cycle of exhaustion and fear, stretching endlessly before him, each day indistinguishable from the last.

And the worst part?

He’d stopped hoping for anything else.