Mastore 93 - Dumpster

Magic Realm Convenience Store – Ch. 93

Fast-track promotion, i'll give it a shot (2)

Black market. It's a word I heard a long time ago, but I remember it clearly.

From this black market came those Magical-illegal wallets and passports that I cracked open, and this officer caught me doing it...

And that incident led to me getting my license. The thought process was, even if I got into trouble again, it’s better to cause trouble with a license than without one.

Anyway, my takeaway then was that getting involved in these things twice was more than enough.

If you translate it directly, it means ‘Black market’. The phrase itself reeks of bad news. What reason would a model citizen like me, who hasn't exchanged a single word with police in 29 years, have to get tangled up in something like this?

That’s why I didn’t like this situation one bit. On top of that, I wasn’t even sure I should be hearing this at all. I went ahead and asked.

"Um, Officer."

“Yes.”

“Are you sure I’m supposed to be hearing what you’re about to say?”

I know nothing about police work, but I do know this one thing: police officers aren’t supposed to casually disclose investigation details to outsiders.

Isn't that what you're about to do? After I asked, the officer hesitated for a moment before responding.

"During investigations, police have an obligation to notify the involved persons of investigation progress within seven days."

“Huh....”

“In this context, ‘the involved’ refers to complainants, accusers, and victims.”

So, since I reported those suspicious people looking for the money bag, I count as a complainant, and the police are obligated to notify me within seven days. Might as well kill two birds with one stone by doing it now. When she put it that way, I guess it made sense….

"Of course, there are exceptions. One being if the complainants don't wish to be notified."

“Hooh....”

“If you don’t want to, I’ll stop here.”

It sounded like she said, if you don’t want to listen, I’ll handle it myself and spare you the details. After saying this, she looked at me with her dark-circled eyes, so I subtly avoided her gaze by looking up at the ceiling.

Honestly, I don't want to get involved.

I’m just a convenience store clerk. I don’t know the first thing about criminal investigations, and I don’t see how hearing about this would change anything, and I'm worried hearing this might cause unnecessary trouble...

“…Please go ahead, Officer.”

Still, this is my workplace. I’m the manager and the person in charge here.

Manager hired me to be responsible for the store during the 12-hour night shift, and I have a duty to take responsibility for what happens in the store during my shift.

That means finding out what this damned money bag is, where it came from, and what happens with it is part of my job. I need to pass that information on properly so Manager can have peace of mind too….

I might actually feel a bit more confident now. As soon as I said that, the officer spoke up.

"The current situation is this. Four completely different people came to the store at different times, saying they'd come to find their lost money bag. Do you agree?"

“Yes.”

“Then, do you think there’s a possibility that the bags of money they’re looking for are all different?”

Probably not. Losing a money bag isn't exactly a common occurrence. I can’t bring myself to believe that it happened four times at the same place in a single day.

"Since I think the same, I'll exclude this possibility. Assuming the bag of money they’re looking for is the same, what kind of relationship do you think exists between these four individuals? A cooperative one?”

"...No. I don't think that's the case."

If they were working together, as soon as the first person heard me say there was no money bag, they would’ve contacted the other three immediately. Something like, 'That convenience store doesn't have the money bag.'

That way, the remaining three wouldn’t have wasted their time coming here. So either they’re not on good terms, or they don’t even know about each other’s existence.

“Let’s assume they’re not cooperating, yet all four are saying the exact same thing—that they lost a bag of money at this store. I’ve only heard it once myself.”

"They did say the same thing. The tone was slightly different, but..."

“You don’t need to worry about that. In any case, how do you think all four of them managed to say the exact same thing?”

Unless there’s some kind of hive mind in this world, there’s only one explanation. Someone told them to say it, and they followed the instructions.

But you know what? There's one thing I don't get.

I get that they were told to come look for the money bag. But why go about it in such an inefficient way?

Listening to the rest of the story, it was a matter of investigation.

“It’s to cause confusion during the investigation. This is just a hunch, but I doubt the three people I didn’t see personally had any noticeable connection to transporting the money bag either.”

Office worker salamander, well-dressed harpy, hunched amphibian grandmother. I too thought these three were normal civilian customers. Until they opened their mouths.

“They probably have proper jobs, and acquaintances who can vouch for what they were doing at this time. The black market uses people like this as couriers. Even if their identity is revealed, that identity itself isn’t significant.”

“So… where and how do they recruit these people?”

"On the internet, offering handling fees. They probably used illegal gambling sites for transactions... sigh..."

She trailed off mid-sentence, letting out a deep sigh. It seemed like she had been through quite a lot to gain this kind of experience.

Thanks to that brief pause, I organized the situation briefly in my head.

An online black market hires at least four civilians with clear alibis for short-term work, instructing them to retrieve the bag of money. The money bag's location happened to be this convenience store where I work.

And it seems these four individuals didn’t receive detailed information about the bag’s appearance or the exact amount of money inside. If they knew, they would have added that to their description when talking about the lost item.

As for why the person who gave the orders didn’t tell them those details… two possibilities come to mind.

Either it looks so obviously like a money bag that even a regular convenience store clerk would think 'Ah, could that be the money bag?' or they didn't feel any need to explain it at all...

As the officer said, it could be that all this is meant to cause confusion during the investigation. But, you see, all of these are missing one premise.

"Officer. Sorry to interrupt your train of thought, but..."

"Not at all. Please continue."

“That middle-aged elf I cursed at earlier said something, didn’t he? ‘No, I’m sure it’s here.’ Officer mentioned it too.”

"Yes. I did."

"But it really isn't here?”

I mean, they can only find the money bag here if it actually exists here to be found.

But it doesn't. I could bet my studio apartment deposit and health insurance on it not being here. How on earth are they planning to find something that doesn’t exist?

"Our store runs on two shifts. Manager-nim and me. We each work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. There’s no room for any gaps in information.”

"That's a violation of labor standards law..."

“You’re not exactly living in compliance with labor laws yourself, Officer. This was mutually agreed upon, and that's not what I'm trying to get at anyway, so."

The point is, I can't not know if something appears or disappears in this store. Manager tells me everything.

And yet these people keep coming here, insisting they lost a bag of money I’ve never even heard of, let alone seen. Why are they acting like this?

"...Hmm..."

Officer seemed to have no immediate insights on this point either, as he lightly clenched his fist and started tapping his head. Must be his fallback when he doesn't have his police baton.

After a while, she mumbled, sounding a bit unsure.

“…I just learned about this convenience store’s shift structure. Thanks to that, I also understand why you're certain there's no money bag in this store."

“Well, yeah, I only just told you…”

"Besides this, I think there might be more information that only the owner would know and could tell us. Can you think of anything?"

If there was, I would have said something a long time ago. I’m just as frustrated.

I just made it sound grand talking about information gaps and such, but it's really not that special. The only thing I can come up with right now is that this whole money bag issue cropped up today.

Because nobody came looking for a money bag yesterday. Other than that, I only received one handover from Manager, and what I received was...

[I see it. But that's not the waste disposal area, is it?]

[Yeah. Around 3 PM, I noticed it had suddenly appeared.]

.......

Is that it?

“Boss?”

"...Officer. This might be a bit off-topic, but."

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Let’s say you made plans to meet someone at a convenience store in a little while. In that situation, where do you think you would stand while waiting?”

She tilted his head slightly, perhaps finding the question odd, but then straightened up and answered.

"I... would probably stand right in front of the convenience store. Entering without buying anything and loitering would be... a bit..."

Her voice trailed off, slowing as she spoke. Eventually, she stopped talking altogether and just looked at me. I responded.

“Exactly the same for me. I can’t do that either. Feels awkward.”

"...Yes. And, that front area is still part of the convenience store."

What counts as the ‘area’ of a convenience store? For me, it’s anything within a 5-meter radius of the front entrance.

Why? Because if you don't clean within this radius, people think: This convenience store doesn't clean properly, do they?

This seems to be one of those situations. The person who gave the order and the person following it must have different ideas about what constitutes the convenience store’s ‘area’, which led to a misunderstanding.

Of course, since a money bag is involved, the person giving orders wouldn't have said this thoughtlessly. They must have had at least some confidence.

To them, it’s probably something like, ‘No matter how you look at it, this spot is definitely part of the convenience store’. But the location in question isn’t actually inside the store. By this standard, we don't need to go as far as 5m radius, and there's no need to.

One meter from the front door, under the utility pole. A garbage bag.

I briefly exchanged glances with the elf officer, and without a word, we both stepped outside and crouched by the trash bag. The officer picked up the tied part and turned it this way and that.

“The contents are just ordinary trash. It doesn’t seem to be a bag from another area either. But…”

"Seems there's magic on it. Something like a disguise spell."

"Yes. We'll need to request the investigation department to determine exactly how the magic works—"

"Officer. Let me see that for a moment."

How does the magic work? Doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care.

The officer handed me the trash bag without hesitation. As I took it, I had one thought in mind: Whoever dumped this here, I hope they screw up every single thing they ever try and spend their life in total misery.

It looked exactly like something straight out of a spy movie. After waving it away with my hand, the garbage bag had vanished without a trace, leaving only an angular black bag.

It looked exactly like something out of a spy movie. I tried to hand it back to the officer, but she wouldn't accept it and just stared at my face.

What's her problem now? Thinking about it, something occurred to me, and I immediately checked my pockets.

"Officer, I'm not unlicensed for this. I got my license."



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