1,520 yen.
I counted it once more. A sharp, stabbing pain radiated from my stomach. I was so hungry.
This was my fourth day in Tokyo.
At six in the morning, on a sidewalk in the heart of Tokyo, I sat on a plastic street-side chair with my backpack at my feet. I pulled the bag onto my lap and unzipped the innermost pocket. My fingers reached inside, brushing against a thin stack of bills and a few coins. I didn't take them all out, counting them instead by the dim morning light: one 1,000-yen note, one 500-yen note, and two 10-yen coins. 1,520 yen. This was everything I had.
The morning streets were already filling with pedestrians. The rhythmic thrum of footsteps, the roar of passing cars, distant honking, and the scraping sound of shopfronts opening—these noises brought me a strange sense of peace. At least here, no one cared about my strangeness, where I came from, or what I was doing. Everyone was transparent.
I had always been bad at math. Remaining in a counting posture, I tallied the amount again with meticulous care. After a few minutes, my brain began to churn like a rusted machine: I had to find a job today. I had to.
The white light of the convenience store made my eyes ache. I stood before the shelves, my gaze drifting slowly across the price tags.
"Discount bread, 98 yen... Expiration date: Today." "Mineral water, 100 yen." "Rice ball, 108 yen..."
I ran the equations in my head, calculating the cheapest possible plan. I could skip lunch. But if I couldn't find a job, what would I do tonight? I bit my lip—it was dry and peeling, the sting of the bite sharp—and finally decided to be a little extravagant: one loaf of bread, one rice ball, and a bottle of water. That way, I'd have something for both the morning and the afternoon.
When it came time to pay, I pulled the 1,000-yen note from my inner pocket. The cashier was a girl around my age with bright nail polish; her fingers moved nimbly as she sorted the change. Watching her hands, I suddenly remembered the last time I went to the town convenience store before leaving the countryside. The middle-aged cashier had recognized me. While handing back my change, she had asked, "Xiao Xin, I heard you're going to Tokyo?"
I had only nodded then, taking the change and hurrying away. I hadn't dared to look her in the eye, afraid I'd see my own bewildered face reflected there.
Now, this Tokyo cashier didn't even look up. "Thank you for your patronage."
I tucked the 864 yen in change into my inner pocket separately, pressing my fingers against the fabric. This was today's bottom line. If I spent this and still didn't have a job, I would truly have nothing left.
A hiring sign was posted on the glass door of a family restaurant, printed neatly.
"Kitchen Assistant: 950 yen/hour."
I could read that much. A sliver of hope rose in my chest. I pushed the door open. The lunch rush hadn't started yet, and the restaurant was empty. A man wearing a tie was organizing receipts behind the counter.
"Um... the job..." My voice was tiny.
He looked up, sizing me up. "Applying for the kitchen?"
I nodded.
"Have you done it before?"
"...No. But I can learn. Quickly."
The manager pulled a piece of paper from under the counter and handed it over. "Kitchen safety regulations. Read the third item and confirm you understand it."
The paper was handwritten, the script messy. My eyes fell on the third line:
"When processing oil, check the fire (...) hydrant."
The kanji in the middle were a jumble of tangled strokes. I couldn't recognize them. What was the character next to "fire"? Fire... fire what?
The silence stretched out. The manager's fingers tapped lightly on the counter.
"When processing oil..." I stammered, then got stuck. That word. That damn word.
The manager waited a few seconds before reaching out to take the paper back. "Forget it," he said, his tone flat. "We need people who can read the safety manual. Sorry."
I stood there, my fingers ice-cold.
It was because of the words again. It was always the words.
I thought back to my Japanese language classes in junior high. The teacher would ask me to read a passage aloud. I would stand up, clutching the book, and those black characters would swim and warp across the page. The classroom would be silent—so silent I could hear my own heartbeat and the suppressed snickers of the students in the back row. The teacher would sigh.
"Sit down for now, Hong Xin."
I sat. I was never called on again.
At eleven in the morning, the sun came out, but it held no warmth. I sat on a roadside bench and took the 98-yen bread from my bag. The plastic wrapper crinkled loudly. I carefully tore open a corner, broke off a third, and meticulously wrapped the rest to put back in my bag.
The bread was dry, turning into a pasty lump in my mouth. I chewed in small bites, washing it down with water. My stomach had something in it now, but the hunger didn't vanish; it just retreated slightly, like a beast waiting in the shadows.
Not far away was a supermarket with a recruitment flyer: "Shelf Stocking: 900 yen/hour."
I walked over. This time it wasn't handwritten; it was a printed form. The requirements column read: "Someone good at detailed work." I understood that. I could do that.
I found the service desk where a middle-aged woman was organizing flyers. I told her I wanted to apply for the stocking position. She glanced at me and pulled a sheet of paper and a pen from a drawer.
"Let's do a small test first. This is a list of today's special items. Put them back in their correct shelf positions."
The paper listed a dozen items followed by alphanumeric codes: "A-12-3," "B-7-1," "C-5-9"...
I took the paper, my palms beginning to sweat.
The aisles were long, and the fluorescent lights hummed. I pushed a cart, checking the list for the first item: discount soy sauce. Code A-12-3.
Zone A, row 12, third shelf. I crouched down and placed the soy sauce bottle there. Then the second: instant curry. B-7-1.
Zone B, row 7, first shelf. Done.
The third: canned mackerel. The list said C-5-9.
I went to Zone C and found row 5. But the ninth shelf was too high; I couldn't reach it even on my tiptoes. I looked around, but there was no step stool. I jumped, my fingers barely brushing the edge of the can. It wobbled, nearly falling.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
A supervisor hurried over, a man wearing glasses. He looked at the list in my hand, then at the shelf, his brow furrowing.
"You put it in the wrong place." He pointed at the can. "Is this C-5-9? Look closely. This is C-5-7. The ninth shelf is over there."
I looked where he was pointing. Sure enough, the small tag on the side of the shelf read: 7. I hadn't seen it clearly.
"I-I'm sorry..."
"Give me the list." The supervisor took the paper, scanned it, and then looked at the other items in my cart. "This one, this one—the positions are all wrong. Can't you tell the numbers apart?"
I wanted to explain: it wasn't that I couldn't tell the numbers apart, it was that the letters and numbers were crowded together, spinning before my eyes. It was that the light in the aisles was too dim, the tags were too small. It was that I was in too much of a hurry.
But all that came out was: "The words... I can't see them very clearly..."
The supervisor sighed. "We don't have time for training. Sorry, you're not a fit."
He took back the pen and paper and turned away.
I stood there with a cart half-full of unstocked goods. On the nearby shelves, rows of cans stood in perfect formation, the words on their labels crystal clear. Those words recognized me, but I didn't recognize them.
At two in the afternoon, I reached the edge of an industrial zone. It was different from the commercial streets; the pavement was cracked, and the walls were covered in graffiti. Outside a makeshift shack, a few men sat smoking. Beside them stood a whiteboard with red marker writing: "Hiring Loaders Today: 8,000 yen/day."
No complex kanji. 8,000 yen. It was the highest number I had seen all day.
As I approached, the men's gazes drifted toward me. Some were calculating, some curious; there was no malice, but no kindness either.
"Um... are you hiring?" I asked.
A man who looked like the foreman stood up. He wore work pants and had a towel draped around his neck. "Moving cargo? You?"
I nodded.
"Ever done it?"
"...No. But I have strength."
The foreman didn't speak. He walked over to a stack of cardboard boxes and patted one. "Standard unit, fifteen kilograms. Pick it up and walk a few steps for me."
The box was sealed tight with tape, the sides printed with English I couldn't read. I crouched, wrapped my arms around it, and heaved—
It was heavier than I'd imagined. I grit my teeth and lifted the box off the ground, wobbling as I stood. The box pressed against my chest, heavy and solid; I could feel my own heartbeat thumping through the cardboard.
I took two steps. Three steps. My arms began to tremble.
A young male worker nearby scoffed. "Kid, don't come here to make trouble."
The foreman waved him off and looked at me. "Put it down."
I carefully returned the box to its spot. When I straightened up, my arm muscles were still twitching.
"Little girl, a pretty face won't put food on the table here," the foreman said flatly. "Go on. This isn't the place for you."
As I turned to leave, I heard a worker call out from a distance, "Why isn't a brat like you in school? Where are your parents?"
I didn't look back. I ran, but that sentence floated in the heavy afternoon air like a stinging needle.
At dusk, I sat on a park bench, counting my remaining money.
Morning fare: 180 yen. An extra bottle of water at noon: 100 yen. Now, in my pocket: 584 yen.
584 yen. Not enough for a hostel, not enough for a decent meal. I took out the half-loaf of bread from the morning; the plastic was warm from my body heat. I ate slowly, taking tiny sips of the last of my water.
Nearby, children were playing on a slide while their mother watched from a bench. Their laughter was bright and clear. I looked away.
In the place I had left behind, my father loved to drink and spent most of his time out. My mother couldn't find work. There were too many people in the house; my siblings were a crowded mass, fighting for everything: clothes, shoes, food on the table, and the attention of adults. There, no one taught me anything. They just looked at me with a "do as you wish" kind of gaze. Whether I was in the room or not, whether there was one more pair of chopsticks at the table or one less, no one cared. The only thing I learned there was how to keep from being an eyesore, how to quietly occupy a corner, and how to accept that being "present but irrelevant" was the default state of life.
Then one day, perhaps because she could no longer stand the atmosphere, or perhaps because a person's patience always has a limit, my mother left.
My father didn't seem surprised at all. He just started drinking more. He'd bring food home at night and focus all his attention on the smartest child—my older sister. Often, when he was drunk, he would mutter to himself about how she had to get into a university. In our already tiny house, he carved out a small room to use as a study for her. He'd sit at the door drinking, occasionally walking in to watch her write. Sometimes, I would hear the sound of skin being lashed from inside.
A gust of cold wind jolted me awake. The sun had set.
The park at night was ten times colder than during the day.
I chose a bench near the play area; a slide nearby blocked some of the wind. I took everything out of my bag: two thin long-sleeved shirts. I laid one on the bench and used the other as a blanket. I tucked my notebook and pen into the inner pocket of my jacket, pressing them against my chest. I filled my plastic bottle at the tap and placed it under the bench.
When I lay down, the iron bars of the bench dug into my back through my clothes. I curled up, knees to chest, arms wrapped around my shins. This was the warmest position I knew, like returning to the womb.
Distant headlights swept by. The sound of an engine approached and faded. Further off, the Tokyo night sky was a murky orange-red; no stars were visible.
I remembered the night sky in the countryside. It was a pure black, filled with stars. On summer nights, I would sit on the veranda and stare into the void. Inside, there would be the sound of the TV, the clatter of dishes, the sound of conversation. Those sounds were close, yet separated by a thin layer of paper sliding doors—as far away as another world.
No one would ever slide that door open and say: "Come inside." No one would ever ask: "What are you thinking about?"
Over time, even I got used to it. So used to it that I thought this was just what life was: you were the quietest part of the background noise, the faintest stroke of color in the landscape. You existed, but you were an existence that didn't need to be acknowledged.
But what was the difference between that kind of existence and disappearing entirely?
I yearned for Tokyo, for that colorful world I saw on TV. I thought that coming here would make life different. This city was so big, with so many people coming and going—surely one of them would care about me.
Around four in the morning, I was woken by the cold.
My body was shaking uncontrollably, my teeth chattering with a tiny clicking sound. I sat up and rubbed my arms; my skin was ice-cold. The edges of the shirt covering me were damp with dew.
A flashlight beam danced in the distance.
I immediately shrank into the shadow of the slide, holding my breath. The light swept over the bench, lingered for a few seconds, and then moved on. The footsteps receded.
I lay back down, but I couldn't sleep anymore. The horizon turned a grayish-white, and a fine, dense drizzle began to fall.
At five-fifty, the sky grew light, and the rain picked up.
Footsteps approached again. This time, there was no hesitation; they came straight for my bench. It was a younger administrator wearing a raincoat.
"You can't stay here," he said.
I scrambled to sit up, the shirt covering me sliding to the ground.
"I'm sorry, I'm leaving right now..."
"Leave now." He stood there, watching me pack my things. My notebook fell from my pocket onto the damp ground. I grabbed it quickly, the corner of the pages already wet.
"Go to the ward office," the administrator said. "Or find a job."
"...I'm looking."
"Then go look." His voice held no anger, only flat indifference. "Just don't be here."
I shouldered my backpack and turned to leave. I heard his final words—not loud, but very clear:
"Little girl, Tokyo doesn't care for that sort of thing."
The rain didn't stop. I walked to a bus stop with a roof to find temporary shelter. I took the remaining bread from my bag; it had been soaked into a soggy mess. I mechanically stuffed it into my mouth and swallowed. It had no taste; it was just filler.
I started counting my money again: 312 yen.
What could 312 yen do? Not enough for a bus to the next commercial district, not enough for a proper meal—not enough for anything.
I wanted to go to a restroom to wash my face, but public restrooms charged a fee. I wanted to find a place to dry my wet clothes, but laundromats cost money too. Money. Money. Money. Tokyo was a series of doors that required coins to open, and the coins in my hand were too few.
When I stood up, my legs gave way. I grabbed an advertisement board to steady myself. It was fine. I could still walk.
But when I reached the mouth of an alley, I found my legs wouldn't obey me anymore. It wasn't pain, it wasn't an injury; it was something more absolute—my energy was spent. Like a toy with dead batteries, the command was sent, but the body didn't respond.
I leaned against the wall, panting. The edges of my vision began to blacken, and the void in my stomach turned into a dull ache. I thought: Just a rest. Five minutes.
But five minutes later, I didn't even have the strength to pull myself away from the wall.
A scent.
It was faint, but it was there. Like a thin thread floating through the damp, cold air. I looked up, following the smell.
Deep in the alley was a shop. A wooden sign: "Nidao Coffee." The warm yellow light box wasn't lit yet, sitting silent in the gray morning light.
It was here. I had seen the hiring sign when I passed by yesterday. It was handwritten, the script very neat: "Dishwasher. Hours negotiable. Meals included." I could read it. I recognized every single word.
I stared at that sign, at the dark tables and chairs through the window, at the "Closed" sign hanging on the door.
Go. Walk over. Knock. Ask.
My brain issued the command. My body didn't move.
My legs felt like they were filled with lead—no, like they had grown into the ground. I wanted to move my toes, but even that required summoning the strength of my entire body—and I had no strength left.
I slid down.
I didn't fall or faint. I just gave up on maintaining a standing posture. I slid down the damp wall and sat on the ground. My backpack slipped from my shoulder, but I didn't reach for it. I just let it lie there.
The drizzle fell on my face, cool and light.
I looked at the back door of the coffee shop a few steps away. A wooden door, painted deep green, with a small sign on the handle I couldn't read. A sliver of warm yellow light peeked out from under the door.
It was so close. But I couldn't walk there.
So, this was what the limit felt like. It wasn't a grand collapse or a dramatic fainting spell. It was just quietly realizing, in a morning alleyway, that you couldn't even manage the three words "walk over there."
A strange calm washed over me.
Let it be. If someone called the police, if they took me away, if they sent me back... fine. At least I wouldn't have to "try" anymore. Try to find a job, try to read, try to look like I wasn't a burden. Try to prove I was worthy of occupying a tiny bit of space.
In the countryside, I didn't need to try. Because no one expected me to. There, I could quietly and slowly disappear, like dust in a corner. After a while, no one would remember what had been there.
That was a way to die, too. A chronic, painless, unnoticed death.
I closed my eyes.
Click. The sound of a lock turning.
It was quiet, but in my hyper-still perception, it was as clear as a bell. I opened my eyes.
The back door of the coffee shop swung inward about halfway. A figure appeared in the doorway.
A deep brown apron. Black hair tied in a low ponytail. A black trash bag in her hand.
It was a girl.
She didn't see me at first, walking straight toward the sorting bins in the alley. Her movements were efficient, making no extra noise. She lifted the lid, put the bag in, and closed it. She turned around.
Then, her gaze swept the alley and met mine.
She paused.
For about a second. Her eyelid flickered, and then she spoke:
"Oi, little lady over there. You okay?"
Such a lively voice. It made my cold, dead body feel a flicker of warmth.
I opened my mouth. My throat was dry and painful.
"...Dishwasher," I heard my own voice, rasping like sandpaper. "Are you still hiring?"
The moment I asked, I wanted to laugh. Sitting on the ground, soaked to the bone like a fish washed ashore, yet asking for a job. Absurd.
She looked at her watch. A metal band with a tiny face.
"The manager gets here at eight," she said. "Can you wait until eight?"
Could I? I didn't know. My body didn't know. But I said, "Yes."
She was silent for two seconds. Her gaze swept over me again—the soaked jacket, the discarded backpack, the way I sat clutching my knees.
"Go out the alley and turn left," she said. "There's a public restroom. It's 100 yen for the dryer; it should take about ten minutes. Do you have the money?"
I nodded.
"Clean yourself up, then come to the shop," she added. "You look like you haven't eaten in days. I'll get you something."
With that, she turned and went back inside. She didn't close the door all the way, leaving a small crack.
Warm yellow light spilled from the gap, mingled with the scent of coffee and the faint sound of a radio—a news broadcast I couldn't quite hear.
I sat there, stunned.
My brain slowly processed the words: Public restroom. 100 yen. Dryer. Ten minutes. Eight o'clock. Front door. Decent.
I reached into my inner pocket. The coins were still there: 312 yen.
100 yen. For ten minutes of warm air. A chance to "look decent."
She treated me like someone who still had a choice to make.
I leaned against the wall and slowly stood up. My legs were still weak, but they moved. I picked up my backpack and brushed off the dirt. As I walked toward the mouth of the alley, I looked back once.
The door was still ajar, light streaming through to cut a small, warm trapezoid into the damp pavement.
I spent a hundred yen to buy ten minutes of warm air.
The public restroom was empty. I stuffed my wet jacket into the dryer, dropped the coin, and the machine whirred to life. Standing before the mirror, I looked at myself: pale face, dark circles, hair plastered to my forehead. I washed my face with cold water and combed my hair with my fingers.
The girl in the mirror was still a mess, but there was a glint of light in her eyes.
At five to eight, I stood before the front door of "Nidao Coffee." It was a dark wooden door with clean glass. I could see inside: a few tables, dark sofas, and shelves filled with jars behind the counter. There wasn't a single customer.
I placed my hand on the handle; the metal was ice-cold.
I took a deep breath. And pushed.
The bell above the door chimed. A crisp, clear sound.
Behind the counter, the girl with the dark brown hair looked up. She had taken off the apron and was wearing a simple shirt and shorts. She waved me over.
"All set? Come here. Have a bite first."
She pointed her thumb at a small slice of cake and a glass of milk on a table.
"The shop just opened. This is from yesterday."
I sat down, trembling, and began to eat ravenously. The girl sat across from me, propping her head up with her hand, watching me eat with an amused expression.
I felt my face flush, but I was simply too hungry. As she watched me, I stole a glance at her. She had deep green eyes and pale skin, with short black hair that fell past her nose.
She's so beautiful, I thought privately.
When I finished, she handed me a napkin and asked if I was full. Of course I wasn't—that cake was like a bucket of water thrown onto dry ground, leaving almost no trace—but I told her it was enough.
Then she turned and called toward the back room:
"Manager, someone's here for the job."
I put down the plate, my palms sweating. The aroma of coffee in the air was so rich it felt physical. Warm. Dry. Safe.
I didn't know her name yet.
I simply wiped my reddened eyes and stood up.
I wanted to apply for this dishwashing job. If possible, I also wanted to learn how to brew coffee and how to survive in this city. I might not be smart, and I might not know all the words, but I would work hard.
I would prove that I, too, could be a necessary color in this landscape.
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Chainsaw Man : The Chainsaw Man World Doesn't Need a Perfect Idol
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