Emi is sitting behind the cash register at the little corner store where she works. She's not actually sure what the place is called—they've rebranded twice recently, and she'd have to go outside and look at the sign to actually remember which name is the current one.

She's a bit tired, and a bit bored, and the fact that there haven't been any customers in the past hour isn't exactly helping.

At the moment, she's listening to an audiobook. They aren't "supposed" to listen to anything at work "in case they get distracted" (which is corpo bullshit for "in case you don't look maximally attentive at all times"), but their cameras can't tell if she's wearing her bluetooth earbuds—which she always is, because the world is loud and painful and annoying.

The walls of the store are lined with chips and pop and other snacks, the wall behind her showcases all the vapes and cigarettes she isn't supposed to sell to anyone without ID, and the plastic counter in front of her covers rows-upon-rows of lottery tickets. She's so glad she isn't addicted to any of that—ok, fine, she likes the snacks, but the best ones are the meat ones, and she feels weird about eating those, so she mostly doesn't.

The next chapter of her audiobook starts, and she pauses it to look out the window in silence. The night is quite pretty.