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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Convenience Store Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conformity vs. Happiness
Work, Money, and Status
Gender and Sexuality
Mimicry
Change
Summary
Analysis
Keiko attends to the sounds of the convenience store. Hearing coins clink, she checks the register and sees a male customer approaching it. She quickly moves to the register, greets and bows to the man, and rings up his coffee and cigarettes. She notices him glance at the hot food but waits to speak until he requests a corn dog. Then she carefully disinfects her hands, fetches the corn dog, and rings him up. She is totally attuned to her customers.
Some readers may assume that convenience-store workers only keep their jobs for the money and are disengaged from the low-skill labor their jobs require. Yet Keiko’s intense attention to the store environment and to customers’ needs suggests both that convenience-store work requires more skill than outsiders might expect and that Keiko is invested in doing her job well, independent of the money she earns at it.
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Keiko senses the morning rush proceeding as ordinary. She thinks of herself as one of the “cogs of society,” like the people rushing by the store. When her supervisor Mrs. Izumi asks how many 5,000-yen bills the register has, Keiko says two. Mrs. Izumi resolves to go to the bank for more after the morning rush. Mrs. Izumi, who’s about Keiko’s age, is only a part-time worker, but because the store is short-staffed, the manager has promoted her to a supervisory role.
Usually, when people use phrases like “cogs of society,” they are criticizing society for enforcing excessive conformism. Yet Keiko seems to use the phrase in a neutral-to-positive way, suggesting that she has a conscious desire to conform. Meanwhile, although Mrs. Izumi and Keiko are about the same age and Keiko seems to be a good worker, Mrs. Izumi was given the supervisory role over Keiko—which may hint that Keiko’s coworkers have certain negative ideas about her despite her commitment to her job.
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Keiko has trouble recalling her life before she was “reborn as a convenience store worker.” In a flashback to her childhood, everyone thinks Keiko is weird, though she has normal parents. One time, she sees a dead pet bird other children are crying over in the park, brings it to her mother, and suggests they eat it for dinner—her father likes yakitori. Even after her mother reproves her, pointing out the other children crying, Keiko thinks they should eat the bird. When the children dig a grave for the bird and “murder[]” flowers to decorate it, Keiko thinks they’re crazy.
Another time, when two boys start fighting at recess, the other children are yelling for someone to stop the fight, so Keiko grabs a spade and whacks one boy in the head. She’s about to whack the other when teachers run over and demand to know what she’s doing. Though she explains that she was stopping the fight, her mother gets called in for a meeting. Yet another time, when her teacher is sobbing loudly, Keiko pulls down the teacher’s pants (Keiko saw a woman on TV get quiet after someone removed her clothes). Her mother gets called in again. Afterward, her mother asks why Keiko “can’t understand.”
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Keiko decides to stay quiet and copy other people. Keiko’s younger sister (Mami) and her parents really love her—but her parents worry about her. They take her to a therapist, but the therapist assumes Keiko’s strangeness is due to her family and encourages her parents to show her affection. Though she graduates secondary school and enters university just fine, she grows up “believing [she] needed to be cured.”
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In 1998, shortly after Keiko matriculates into university, a Smile Mart opens near Hiiromachi Station. Keiko sees the store’s “help wanted” sign, calls for an interview, and gets the job. In training, a trainer from the head office gives them uniforms, teaches them what to say, and tells them what facial expressions to use. He praises Keiko’s mimicry. It’s the first time anyone has taught Keiko “normal” speech and facial expressions. For two weeks, the trainees role-play interacting with customers. Keiko enjoys seeing the motley trainees transform into “homogenous” when they put their uniforms on.
On the store’s opening day, Keiko is astonished at how much noise the customers make. The first customer to reach Keiko’s register is an elderly woman with a cane. Keiko greets her in exact imitation of the actress in the training video the trainees watched. After Keiko manages to fumble through small talk with the woman about store hours, the manager praises her. As the next customer approaches, Keiko senses that she has been “reborn” as “a part in the machine of society.”
Keiko has worked for the Hiiromachi Station Smile Mart ever since. She’s now 36 years old and has worked under eight different managers. She knows how to act normally as a worker thanks to the employee manual—but not outside of the store. In her 20s she applied for some “career” jobs to appease her parents but didn’t get them. Now, thinking of the convenience store’s sounds lulls her to sleep at night. The store allows her to be “normal,” a “cog.”
Each morning, Keiko enters the store at eight, an hour before her shift starts, buys water and food from the store, and eats her breakfast in the back room, where the store’s security camera footage is displayed on a screen. In fact, Keiko tends to buy her breakfast, lunch, and dinner from the store, which makes her feel like “a part of the store.” After she eats, she checks the weather, as temperature influences the kinds of foods people buy.
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Around eight-thirty, Mrs. Izumi arrives, a 37-year-old housewife who works part-time as the day-shift supervisor. Though she dresses in “flashy” clothes outside the store, she’s an “efficient” worker inside it. After Mrs. Izumi comes Sugawara, a bubbly 24-year-old band member. A college student named Iwaki and a job-hopper named Yukishita also work the day shift, but both plan to stop working at the store soon. Keiko has adapted herself to mimic primarily Mrs. Izumi, Sugawara, her manager, and a few former coworkers. She believes that most people mimic the speech of the people around them, though—for example, all the members of Sugawara’s band sound just like her.
Keiko takes Mrs. Izumi for a characteristic woman in her 30s and so copies her style—but not exactly, because Mrs. Izumi would notice. Instead, she reads blogs by people who buy the same brands as Mrs. Izumi and buys other brands that the blogs recommend. This morning, Mrs. Izumi compliments Keiko’s flats, notes that she has boots from the same boutique, and then compliments her bag too, saying that she and Keiko must like the same styles.
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Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara complain about a worker on the night shift who didn’t show up. Their animated annoyance makes Keiko nervous, so she complains about the worker too. Mrs. Izumi laughs at how angry Keiko seems but agrees with her. To herself, Keiko notes that people like it when she gets angry at the same things they do—so she pretends to. She’s happy at having “pulled off being a ‘person.’”
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Mrs. Izumi tells Keiko and Sugawara that they should begin their “morning practice session.” Then she tells them to push the day’s special, a mango-chocolate bun, and to keep the store clean even during the lunch rush. Finally, they repeat in unison the set phrases they use when interacting with customers. Session complete, they check their uniforms and enter the front of the store. For Keiko, this is an almost religious moment: she has “faith” in the store world.
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Keiko is off work on Fridays and Saturdays. On Friday, she visits Miho, an old classmate with whom she became friends at an alumni reunion after Miho complimented her new fashion sense. Miho holds small parties at her and her husband’s house, which Keiko attends because they are “the only connection [she has] to the world” beyond work. That Friday, another of Miho’s friends, Yukari, comments that Keiko is speaking differently when Keiko mimics Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara. The women comment on Keiko’s new “flash[y]” fashion sense too. Then they suggest holding a barbecue with all their husbands.
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Abruptly, Yukari asks whether Keiko is married yet and whether she’s “stuck in the same job.” When Keiko’s honest answer disturbs Yukari, Keiko hurriedly alludes to “health issues” that prevent her from working full-time. Another woman, Satsuki, asks whether Keiko has ever been in love. When Keiko says no, the other women exchange glances. Belatedly, Keiko recalls that her sister (Mami) advised her to give nebulous answers to romantic prying. In fact, Keiko has no interest in sex—and it annoys her when people assume she must be unhappy due to her lack of a love life. She wishes she were at work, where she has an acknowledged purpose and all workers are the same due to their uniforms. She often imagines what’s going on at the store when she’s elsewhere.
If Keiko wakes up early, she exits the train before her usual work stop and walks the rest of the way to the Smile Mart. As she goes, she notices changes in the neighborhood that might affect the store. This morning, Keiko notices a building under construction close to completion, which might mean an influx of new customers. When she gets to the store, she buys breakfast and goes to the back room, where the professional, 30-year-old manager greets her. Though he’s the eighth manager Keiko has worked under, she sometimes thinks of the managers as “one single creature” whose looks change.
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The manager tells Keiko that she’ll be working with a new employee named Shihara that day. He asks Keiko to help Shihara, and Keiko agrees. The manager praises Keiko’s work. Then Shihara, a tall, skeletal man, enters the back room. The manager scolds him for lateness—he was supposed to arrive half an hour early on his first day. Though taken aback by Shihara’s thinness, Keiko greets him enthusiastically. Shihara mumbles in response. The manager notes that Keiko has worked at the store for 18 years and tells Shihara to ask her questions. Shihara seems startled by how long Keiko has worked at the store.
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Sugawara bustles in, greets Shihara, and says it’s good to have him. Keiko notices that Sugawara’s voice has become louder since the store got a loud manager and thinks it’s “a bit creepy.” The manager begins the “morning session,” giving the employees instructions, reminding them to push the day’s special, and so on. Then he makes the employees repeat after him a customer-service “pledge” and the most important phrases for handling customers. Afterward, Shihara disgustedly compares the store to “a religion.” Keiko thinks that “of course” it is, though she notes that Shihara doesn’t say his phrases with gusto.
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Keiko reminds Shihara to ask her if he doesn’t understand something. When Shihara snickers at the idea that he would have questions, Sugawara asks whether he’s worked at a similar store before. He admits he hasn’t. Sugawara mans the register while Keiko takes Shihara to the drink carton display and tells him how to arrange it. Then she goes to help at the register. After the morning rush, she finds the drink display a mess and Shihara reading the store’s manual. When she asks whether he's confused about something, he criticizes the quality of the manual.
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Annoyed, Keiko takes Shihara back to the drink display and demonstrates how to keep it neat. Shihara complains that the work is feminine, not masculine: women are gatherers, while men are hunters, just like in the “Stone Age.” Keiko reminds Shihara that it’s the 21st century—and they are convenience store workers, “not men and women.” She shows Shihara how to restock displays from the store’s walk-in refrigerator and returns to her own duties.
When Keiko passes Sugawara, Sugawara complains that “weird” Shihara was demanding that she let him place product orders even though it’s his first day. When Keiko doesn’t react, Sugawara smiles and praises Keiko for never getting upset. Keiko quickly changes her facial expression and tells Sugawara that she just doesn’t let her annoyance show. An elderly customer with a cane comes in and says, “This place never changes, does it?” Out loud, Keiko agrees—though she notes that employees and items are always being replaced. It’s the store that stays the same.
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On Friday, Keiko goes to visit her sister Mami for the first time since her sister’s son Yutaro was born. When Keiko mentions that she saw Miho, Mami jokes that Keiko should come visit her and Yutaro more. Keiko thinks—but doesn’t say—that Yutaro and Miho’s child seem the same. She asks Mami to help her brainstorm a better excuse than health issues for working part-time—she’s afraid that if Miho and the others think she isn’t “normal,” they’ll hassle her.
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Keiko finds other people’s intrusiveness so infuriating that she wants to hit them with shovels like she did to that boy as a child. Keiko doesn’t want to say that to Mami—Mami would get upset—so she changes the subject. Yutaro starts crying. As Mami tries to comfort him, Keiko notices a knife on the table and thinks there would be easier ways to quiet him.
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The next morning at the store, Keiko arrives to find a man in a ratty suit hassling other customers for dirtying the floor and moving items. Keiko rushes to the back room and changes into her uniform while watching on the security camera. Keiko knows she’s supposed to let “a senior employee” handle incidents like this, so she rushes to relieve the manager at the register and monitors his handling of the situation in case she needs to press the store alarm. Fortunately, the manager convinces the ratty man to leave. Keiko muses that the store is a “forcibly normalized environment” that rejects “foreign matter.”
The manager thanks Keiko. Mrs. Izumi, emerging from the back room, asks what happened. After the manager explains, Mrs. Izumi asks him to have a word with Shihara about his “shirking.” The manager and Mrs. Izumi complain about Shihara’s bad attitude and habitual lateness and bemoan that a man in his mid-30s would take a convenience store job. Hurriedly, Mrs. Izumi adds that cases like Keiko’s are different. The manager quickly agrees—and adds that men’s and women’s situations are different too.
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The manager complains that Shihara uses his cell phone at the register. Keiko expresses shock that Shihara would violate the store’s ban on employee cell phone use. The manager explains that he’s seen Shihara doing it on the security camera footage. When Keiko apologizes for not noticing, the manager praises her diligence—he’s never seen her slack off on the camera. Keiko, happy to be proven a “faithful disciple to the store,” bows and thanks him.
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Shihara slouches into the store. When the manager scolds him for coming late and using his cell phone at the register, Shihara asks whether Keiko was watching him. The manager explains about the security camera and repeats the rule against cell phones. Then the manager and Mrs. Izumi go arrange some displays.
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Once the manager leaves, Shihara suggests the man has a big ego for a “lowly convenience store manager.” Keiko knows that many people—including people who work in convenience stores—scorn convenience store workers. When people scorn her in this way, she always stares at them and thinks, “that’s what a human is.” Now, as Shihara continues insulting the manager and the store, Keiko judges him to be not deeply prejudiced but someone who thoughtlessly repeats the prejudices of others—who “utter[s] words that sounded human” without meaning them, a little like Keiko herself.
Keiko asks Shihara why he came to work in the store. To her surprise, he says that he was looking for a wife but that he hasn’t met a coworker or customer who would be suitable. When he begins talking about how all women are looking for the “strongest hunters,” just like in the Stone Age, Keiko tells him to change into his uniform to avoid being late. As he unwillingly complies, she thinks of the ratty man and asks Shihara whether he knows he’ll “be fixed.” When he responds with confusion, she thinks to herself that the “forcibly normalized environment” of the store will “fix” him.
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The next Monday, Shihara is gone. When Keiko asks why, the manager explains that Shihara was fired for stalking a female customer. He and Mrs. Izumi complain about Shihara’s behavior, but Keiko thinks they seem relieved, not angry. When Sugawara comes in, she happily mocks Shihara’s obsession with the Stone Age. Mrs. Izumi joins in. Later, walking to the cash register, Keiko stops and helps an elderly customer get jam from a low shelf. When the elderly woman mutters that the store never changes, Keiko thinks to herself that “someone was eliminated.”
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On Saturday, Keiko gets a call from her mother asking her to visit after Miho’s Sunday barbecue. When Keiko says she can’t—she needs to rest before work—her mother asks whether there’s anything new in her life. Keiko says no, and her mother seems “disappointed.” After the call, Keiko wonders what will happen to her if she gets too old or physically disabled to work at the store.
On Sunday, Keiko helps Miho set up the barbecue. The guests arrive and give updates about their lives. Keiko is saying that she works part-time when a woman interrupts, asking when Keiko got married. Keiko says she didn’t, and another woman asks why she’s only working part-time then. Keiko tries to explain about her ill health, but Yukari’s husband points out that her convenience-store job requires her to stand all day. Keiko tells him that she likes the job. He looks at her almost in outrage and tells her she should at least try “online marriage sites.”
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The guests all pressure Keiko to try to find a husband until Miho realizes that the meat is burning, ending the conversation. Keiko realizes that she has become “a foreign object” to the other guests and will be eliminated like Shihara. She realizes that her family wants to cure her to avoid her elimination.
Yearning for the store, Keiko stops in on her way back from the barbecue. When the manager asks why she came, she says she wanted to input some orders. She asks whether he has been able to hire enough employees for the night shift. He says he interviewed someone but didn’t hire the person, as after Shihara he only wants “someone we can use.” Internally, Keiko wonders whether she works because she “want[s] to be a useful tool.” When she asks what was wrong with the interviewee, the manager explains that he was old and had a bad back. Keiko concludes that as soon as her body gives out, she will no longer be a useful tool. The manager asks her to cover for Sugawara next Sunday afternoon; Keiko jumps at the chance.
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When Keiko leaves the store, she notices Shihara lurking in the shadow of a nearby building. She tells him that the store will call the police the next time they see him. Shihara says that if he wants a woman, he’ll “make her [his]”—as is traditional. Keiko points out that he told her only “the strongest men” do that. Shihara claims he’ll be able to get tons of women once he launches his business. Keiko suggests he start the business first, then. Shihara complains about how unfairly “Stone Age” society treats him and then starts crying. Keiko, worrying what would happen if customers saw him, leads him away.
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Keiko takes Shihara to a drink bar and buys him some jasmine tea. He complains that society treats him badly because he’s a “foreign object.” He compares the insults he has received from other men to rapes. Keiko, thinking of the woman he stalked, notes that he always thinks of himself as a victim, “never the perpetrator.” Shihara explains that he wants to get married so people won’t bother him and so that he can use his wife’s money for his business. Keiko agrees that if you can get people to stop bothering you by getting married, it would make sense to do so.
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Shihara complains about how hard men have it, saying nothing has changed since the Stone Age. Internally, Keiko concedes he might have a point, comparing society to the store cycling through employees. Then Shihara verbally attacks her, saying that as a man he can still make something of himself whereas she’s too old. Keiko notes his inconsistency—he complains about society and then attacks her as society would—but suggests that he marry her as a matter of convenience anyway.
When Shihara splutters and claims he could never get an erection with Keiko, she says she’s not talking about erections. Just like you need to be a convenience store worker to remain in the store, so you need to follow society’s rules to remain in society. Ergo, she and Shihara should act the part of “ordinary people.” When Shihara protests that acting ordinary pains him, Keiko points out that he was just complaining about the pains of ostracism. And she doesn’t mind submitting to society’s demands if it’s about something she doesn’t “really care about.” Thinking about how many times people have asked her about her marital status recently, Keiko acknowledges internally that she wants a change.
Shihara admits that his roommate is about to kick him out of their apartment for not paying rent. Ordinarily, he would go live with his parents and brother, but since his brother married, his sister-in-law has prevented them from sheltering him or giving him money. While Shihara rants about his “bitch” sister-in-law, Keiko asks Shihara whether he’s coming to her place or not.
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Inside the apartment, Keiko realizes that Shihara smells bad and makes him take a bath. While he bathes, she calls her sister Mami and says a man is in her apartment. Mami asks a rapid series of questions and congratulates Keiko. When Keiko, surprised at Mami’s enthusiasm for a man she knows nothing about, questions the congratulations, Mami says that it’s the first time she’s heard Keiko talk about a man and asks whether they might get married. As Mami rambles on, Keiko thinks that there really is a manual for being normal—and wishes Mami had given her “clear instructions before.”
Shihara is standing around in a towel when Keiko ends her call. Keiko gives him an old unisex store uniform top and some shorts. While Shihara fidgets, Keiko says that when she called her sister (Mami), her sister was happy for her, jumping to conclusions because there was a man in the apartment—so Shihara’s presence might be useful to Keiko. When Shihara suggests that Keiko calling her sister was “pushy” and that he’s “being coerced,” Keiko tells him to go if he wants—she just thought he didn’t have an apartment. Shihara says he’ll stay if she “insist[s].” Keiko tells him to stay or go, but she’s going to sleep.
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When Keiko wakes up the next morning, Shihara is asleep in her apartment. He’s still there when she returns from work that evening. She informs him that her sister (Mami) has been emailing her excitedly all day. He says it’s no shock: people who don’t conform to social norms utterly forfeit “their right to privacy,” and Keiko, a post-fertile part-time female worker is “the dregs of society.” Keiko says while she’s tried jobs other than convenience store worker, it’s the only “mask” that works for her—so if people aren’t satisfied with it, she doesn’t know what to do. Shihara launches into another rant about society, with its “birthrate in decline,” becoming more like the Stone Age, getting rid of anyone who doesn’t serve society.
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While Keiko wonders whether Shihara is angrier at her or society, Shihara admits that her cohabitation of convenience idea may have merit—though he doesn’t want to marry her, as she can’t invest in his business and he doesn’t want sex with her, his presence will make society accept her more. Keiko asks how the arrangement would help Shihara, and he quietly admits that he wants Keiko “to keep [him] hidden from society” so that it can no longer make economic or sexual demands on him.
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Though Shihara’s new enthusiasm for the deal makes Keiko suspicious, she remembers Mami’s excitement and decides to do it. She agrees to house Shihara and provide his “feed.” When he questions the word “feed,” she explains that his presence “feels like having a pet.” Then they eat, while Shihara complains about the food’s quality.
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Keiko soon realizes that Shihara is useful. The next time she goes to a party at Miho’s, she mentions that a man is living with her—and everyone is so happy they seem like lunatics to Keiko. When the guests ask what Keiko’s man does, she says he’s unemployed, and the guests give her unsolicited anecdotes and advice about dating unemployed men. They all seem much happier now that she’s not celibate and they feel they can understand her better. She realizes, uncomfortably, that they once thought of her as a pariah but are now welcoming her into their circle.
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Because buying food for Shihara increases Keiko’s expenditures, she asks for shifts on Fridays and Sundays. The manager praises her work ethic but tells her it’s illegal to have her work seven days a week. After he hands her her pay slip, he mumbles that he needs to figure out how to give Shihara his last pay slip and the things he left in his locker—but Shihara hasn’t answered his phone. Keiko offers to bring Shihara his things. The manager, surprised, asks whether Keiko has kept in contact with Shihara. Keiko realizes that she made a mistake: Shihara asked her not to talk about him to anyone at the store because he wants to hide. Nevertheless, she nods.
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On the security camera monitor, Keiko sees customers enter the store. As she rushes to help new employee Tuan at the register, the manager tells her she “can’t get away that easily.” Keiko points out that Tuan needs help. After Keiko helps Tuan through a rush at the register, she notices the day’s promotion item—chicken skewers—hasn’t yet been prepared. As she runs to the back freezer to get some, Mrs. Izumi and the manager waylay her to ask about Shihara. Though Keiko tries to tell them that the important thing is the skewers, they become very excited when they realize Shihara is living at Keiko’s. Eventually, Keiko leaves the conversation to attend to the skewers, disgusted that her coworkers would prioritize gossip over work.
Tuan notices Keiko’s frenzied activities with boxes of chicken skewers and comes to help. As Keiko explains to him how important the chicken-skewer sale is to the store, she tears up. While Tuan prepares the skewers, Keiko sets up an ad for them in a display case and wonders why the manager and Mrs. Izumi aren’t committed to the sale. As customers enter the store, Tuan and Keiko promote the skewers to them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Izumi is laughing in the back room.
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After work, Keiko returns home to find Shihara sitting in the bathtub using his tablet. When she asks why he’s in the tub, he explains that there are no insects in the tub. Keiko says that she came home later than usual because Mrs. Izumi and the manager buttonholed her after work about Shihara. When Shihara is angry that she mentioned him, she apologizes. Shihara scolds her, predicting that Mrs. Izumi and the manager will lecture her about his joblessness, her part-time work, and marriage. Keiko protests that her coworkers never lecture her like that. Shihara retorts that that’s only because they thought she was too weird to lecture—but they’ll start now.
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Shihara, gloating, predicts that Keiko won’t be able to get rid of him now because normal people will criticize her even more if she breaks up with him. He resolves to “be a parasite” on her just like women who have social sanction to be parasites on men. Baffled by his talk, Keiko brings his dinner in the tub and goes to eat alone. Her own chewing sounds bizarrely loud, so she closes her eyes and recalls the sounds of the convenience store, which touch her “like music.”
At work, Keiko is horrified by the attempts of the manager—whom she used to respect—to gossip about Shihara rather than talking about the store. Meanwhile, Sugawara seconds the manager’s insistence that Keiko should bring Shihara out drinking with them, even though Sugawara always loathed Shihara. Keiko, suspecting that they all want to lecture Shihara, understands why he is so determined to hide. One time, the manager and Mrs. Izumi even pull out Shihara’s CV and criticize his education and qualifications. To Keiko, her coworkers are turning the store’s music into a “cacophony.”
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Keiko is horrified by the transformation of Tuan: he is beginning to act like his coworkers, which wouldn’t have been a problem before, but now he’s picking up their new tendency to gossip, asking Keiko about Shihara and babies. As her coworkers cease to be good workers, Keiko can only rely on the customers to want her to be a convenience store worker.
A month after Shihara moves into Keiko’s apartment, Mami comes over. When Mami discovers that Shihara lives in the bathroom, Keiko explains that it’s the most convenient room to keep him in and that their arrangement is working—everyone has stopped surveilling her so much now that they think she has a man. Mami, crying, says she didn’t realize this was the situation. She asks whether Keiko will “ever be cured” and how long she’ll have to “put up with this.” Keiko, surprised, says that if Mami has been “putting up with” her, she didn’t need to visit. Mami begs Keiko to see a counselor. Keiko says that she already went to a counselor as a child. When Mami yells that the store has made Keiko “weirder,” Keiko asks for “specific” instructions in being normal. Mami cries harder.
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Shihara emerges from the bathroom and tells Mami that Keiko shut him in there because they’d had a fight about Shihara getting drinks with his ex-girlfriend. Mami, suddenly happier, scolds Shihara for his joblessness and infidelity. Keiko realizes that Mami prefers a “normal,” troubled sister to an abnormal, untroubled one. Shihara tells Mami that he’s looking for a job and that he and Keiko are talking about marriage. Keiko realizes that her sister will want her to quit the convenience store.
After work the next day, Keiko discovers a young woman confronting Shihara in her apartment. The woman introduces herself as Shihara’s sister-in-law, explains that she just paid Shihara’s debts to his old roommate, and demands that Shihara pay her back. When Shihara asks how the sister-in-law found him, she laughs scornfully and explains that she knew Shihara would pull a stunt like this, so she convinced his brother to install a tracking app on Shihara’s phone. When she demands to know who Keiko is, Shihara claims that he and Keiko are planning to get married and that she works while he tends house.
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Shihara’s sister-in-law asks what Keiko’s job is. When Keiko says that she works in a convenience store, the woman gapes and asks why she doesn’t get a real job. Keiko explains that the convenience store job is the only one that really suits her. The sister-in-law mumbles that Keiko and Shihara “suit each other” but that they should really get married and get good jobs. She lectures Keiko about poverty, health insurance, and so forth. Keiko thinks she’s kinder than Shihara described.
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Shihara interjects that he and Keiko have decided that he’ll set up his online business from home until they have children. When his sister-in-law pressures him to look for a “real job,” he claims—to Keiko’s surprise—that Keiko plans to quit the convenience store and look for a good job herself. Unwillingly, the sister-in-law concedes that Shihara getting a girlfriend is a good sign, but she tells him that she plans to inform his mother exactly how much money she’s lent him—and she expects it back. Then she leaves.
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Exultantly, Shihara tells Keiko that he’s “got[ten] away” because there’s no chance of them having children. Meanwhile, if Keiko marries him, she’ll benefit from everyone’s assumption that she’s normal and “sexually active.” Keiko, tired and bored with Shihara’s rambling, asks to use her shower. After Shihara removes his things from the tub, Keiko showers while Shihara rambles at her from outside the bathroom door. Keiko isn’t listening. The water seems to have washed out the convenience store’s sounds from her ears. For the first time in years, she perceives silence “like music [she’d] never heard before”—though it is quickly broken by Shihara.
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On Keiko’s last day at the convenience store, she arrives at 6 a.m. and watches Tuan on the security camera footage. She recalls how the manager reacted when she gave notice two weeks prior in the back room: he happily suggested that Shihara was “acting like a man,” even though it has always annoyed the manager in the past when employees quit. Then she saw a new employee on the security camera footage and thought that she herself would never appear on it again.
At the end of Keiko’s last day, Mrs. Izumi and Sugawara give her “his-and-hers chopsticks” as a wedding gift while Keiko internally laments that the convenience store will replace her, while she’ll never do the job she knows so well again. She thanks her coworkers and leaves, unsure what her future holds.
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When Keiko returns home, she has no idea what to do now that she doesn’t need to maintain her body in service to the store. Meanwhile, Shihara is enjoying himself job-hunting online on Keiko’s behalf. Keiko can only hear silence now that the convenience store’s sounds have ceased to fill her, and she feels “cut off from the world.” When Shihara babbles at her about how society will blame him as the man for not working if they’re poor but will leave them alone if she has a good job, Keiko tells him she’s tired, hands him money, and asks him to get his own food.
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Keiko goes to bed but can’t get to sleep, so eventually she gets up. Now that she doesn’t need to be well-rested for the convenience store, she doesn’t know what her motive to sleep is. She goes onto the balcony and absently touches her own body, noting the nails she clips in accordance with store policy and the burn on her hand from frying fast food. Though it’s cold, she stays outside and looks vacantly at the sky.
Keiko wakes up, checks her cell phone, and realizes that it’s 2 p.m. two weeks after she quit the convenience store. Since quitting, she has slept and eaten in haphazard fashion; her only activity is filling out the applications that Shihara gives her. She used to feel that eating, sleeping, and staying fit were all part of her job: now that she lacks the job, she doesn’t know how to live. Hair has begun to grow on her fingers, arms, and upper lip, but she no longer bothers to shave it. She only showers every few days because Shihara demands it. She has completely forgotten how to live without the rules of the convenience store.
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Shihara’s cell phone, left on the floor, rings. When Keiko answers it, Shihara’s sister-in-law starts yelling. Keiko identifies herself and explains that Shihara isn’t there. The sister-in-law asks Keiko to tell Shihara that his loan repayments are totally inadequate and that she’ll take legal action if necessary. On the other end of the line, Keiko hears a baby crying. Struck by the possibility that she could use “animal instinct” rather than the convenience store manual to guide her behavior, she asks whether having a baby is good for humankind—whether she and Shihara should reproduce. After a pause, the sister-in-law tells Keiko that she and Shihara can aid humankind by letting their genes die with them. Keiko admires this clear, rational advice.
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After the sister-in-law hangs up, Keiko reflects happily on not having to reproduce with Shihara—the prospect of sex disgusts Keiko. Yet while the sister-in-law has given Keiko an end-goal—to die without reproducing—Keiko isn’t sure how she should occupy herself before dying. Then Shihara walks in with food, which he has started buying since Keiko stopped tending to necessities like food and sleep. As they eat, Keiko muses that she has no idea why she’s eating.
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About a month after Keiko quits the convenience store, she has her first job interview. It’s with a temping agency. Shihara insists on walking her to the interview. They arrive at the agency more than an hour early. Shihara says he’ll use the bathroom in the meantime and enters a nearby convenience store. Keiko tells herself that she should use the bathroom too and sprints after him. When she enters the store, its “music” enters her, and she intuits exactly what it needs. She moves discounted pasta items to a more prominent location and relocates a limited-edition flavor of chocolates from a low shelf to a high one. Soon customers are flocking to the chocolates.
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Keiko moves through the store, rearranging items according to “the store’s voice.” The girl who was manning the register sprints over to Keiko, praises the work Keiko has done, and explains that a part-timer no-showed that day. Keiko tells the girl that she’s done a good job at the register and advises her to refill the cold drinks cabinet and put out some ice cream, since it’s a hot day. The girl immediately agrees.
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Keiko is further instructing the girl on how to improve the store when Shihara grabs Keiko’s arm, drags her from the store, and asks whether she’s insane. Keiko tells him that she was “born to hear” the convenience store’s “voice”: she is a convenience store worker before she is a human being—even if that makes her weird and poor. Shihara insists that society will never allow her to exist like that—she should work to support him instead, which will keep society happy. Keiko refuses, saying that while her human aspect might need Shihara, her true self is a convenience store worker.
Keiko wants to start getting back in shape so she can work at a convenience store again. When Shihara tells her scornfully that she’s inhuman, she thinks that she’s been trying to communicate as much. She yanks her wrist from his grip. Shihara predicts she’ll regret her choice, but he leaves. Keiko takes out her cell phone to cancel her interview with the temp agency, planning to find a new convenience store to employ her immediately afterward. Seeing herself reflected in the convenience store window, Keiko feels that “meaning” has returned to her life and feels her body resonating with the convenience store’s “music.”
