1:37 AM — The Hour When Shadows Sell Better Than Coffee
The Konbini smelled of burnt chocolate and new plastic. Miyu, installed in a plastic chair from the staff room next to the vending machine, blew on her cup of hot chocolate as if trying to extinguish an invisible fire. She was wearing a hoodie with cat ears that didn't even try to match her "professional ghost hunter" cloak. After coming so many nights in a row, at this point, she was more of a fixture than a customer.
Aoi, as always, was sitting on the counter, this time wearing a dog-eared cap she'd found in the lost and found. She swung it like a weapon while singing:
~If life gives you fear~
~Watch a movie of the dead~
~Blood, guts, screams~
~All fake, how boring~!
"Seriously, don't you ever get tired of that voice?" I asked, organizing a pile of horror DVDs with covers promising "The most realistic blood ever filmed."
"It's my new anti-boredom technique~," she replied, tossing the cap at me, which landed on the head of a man buying a pack of cigarettes. The man didn't even flinch.
The ding of the entrance sounded. A guy in his twenties, in a black hoodie with caffeine-injected eyes, dropped a DVD on the counter: Massacre at the Hospital: The Living Autopsy. The cover showed a smiling nurse holding a bloody scalpel.
"Irrashaimaseeeen~!" Aoi jumped off the counter, approaching the customer with a shark smile. "Hey, did you know this movie has a medical error?"
"Huh?" The guy blinked, confused.
"The scalpel~," she pointed at the cover. "In real life, it'd cut a cake better than a liver. But who cares! The important thing is that it splatters, right?"
The customer muttered something about "practical effects" and paid quickly, avoiding eye contact. Aoi returned to the counter, waving a DVD like a tacky flag.
"See, Hiroto-kun? This is the entertainment that sells now: the more fake blood, the better."
"Entertaining would be putting brains into the empty heads of the screenwriters," I said, cleaning a chocolate stain Miyu had spilled on her fourth cup.
"Not all of them are bad!" protested Miyu from her corner, hugging her cup like a shield. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari uses shadows to create psychological fear. And Ringu scares without showing a single drop of blood!"
Aoi leaned toward her, resting her elbows on the counter.
"Ah, Miyu-chan..." she whispered with false tenderness. "Do you know why they don't make those movies anymore? Because selling real fear takes work. It's easier to throw latex guts and use screams from sexualized actresses."
"But gore... gore can be catharsis if used well..." insisted Miyu, blushing. "Like when you cry at a tragic movie, but with fear."
"Catharsis?" Aoi laughed, pointing at the Massacre at the Hospital DVD. "This is like putting chili in your eyes and calling it a 'culinary experience'."
"She has a point," I said, though it was hard to admit. "People watch this," I shook another DVD, Cheerleaders from Blood, "to feel something, even if it's disgust."
"Exactly!" Miyu stood up, spilling chocolate on her hoodie. "Fear makes us feel alive. Like a roller coaster."
"Yeah, a roller coaster..." Aoi jumped into the snack aisle, imitating a TV presenter. "With tension climbs, dignity drops, and bad acting crashes! Isn't it exciting?"
Miyu crossed her arms, puffing out her cheeks.
"And you? Have you never seen a good horror movie?"
Aoi went still. For a second, her smile wavered.
"Kid..." she finally said, with a smile showing her little shark teeth. "I once watched a found footage movie about a shark at a beach. Ten minutes of screams and ketchup blood. I felt like I was watching a cooking show."
The silence settled in like an awkward customer. Even the buzz of the lights seemed to hush.
"The problem isn't fear," I said, breaking the ice with a softer tone than usual. "It's selling trauma like popcorn. Do you know how many of these..." I held up Trauma High: The Anatomy Class. "...use rape or abuse as a plot device?"
Miyu lowered her gaze.
"Some... exaggerate," she murmured.
"Exaggerate," I repeated, pointing at the cover where a bloodied student clutched her torn uniform. "As if pain were just cheap entertainment."
Aoi, who had been quiet, slid a Pocky toward me. I caught it mid-air and tossed it back. She bit it with a snap.
"Look, Miyu-chan," she said with unusual seriousness. "Real terror isn't on the screens. It's paying rent, being alone, looking in the mirror and hating what you see. But that doesn't sell, right? Better to put 'Based on true events' and cry about it on social media."
Miyu looked at her cold chocolate, then at Aoi.
"So... do you hate all horror movies?"
"Not at all!" Aoi recovered her teasing tone. "I love low-budget zombie movies they show on weekends. They're the only ones that don't ask you to pretend to be scared."
The ding of the entrance interrupted the conversation. A regular customer walked in, looking for his nightly beer. Aoi jumped off the counter with her most exaggerated irrashaimaseeeen, leaving Miyu in thought.
"Do you think I'm right?" I asked Miyu while Aoi distracted the customer with a chat about beers.
"Not all of them are like that," she whispered, toying with her cup. "Some... help you face fears. Like nightmares."
"Or ghosts?" I asked, pointing at her cloak.
She smiled, for the first time without nervousness.
"Ghosts are real..."
At 4 AM, while Miyu dozed in her chair, Aoi rearranged the horror DVDs in order "from bloodiest to most pathetic." I approached her with a fresh hot chocolate.
"For the critic of fear," I said, leaving it on the counter.
"Without cyanide?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Just sugar and cynicism."
She took a sip and wrinkled her nose.
"I hate chocolate."
"I know."
We stood there, watching Miyu snoring softly, her cloak turned into a blanket. The Konbini kept breathing, the lights buzzing, the horror DVDs gathering dust.
And somewhere, between the gore and the fake smiles, I understood that maybe the real scare was believing we could escape our own horror movies.
But for now, the credits still hadn't rolled.