The shopkeeper looked round and studied her shop.
It wasn't a bad little business; the steady stream of young people looking for that certain special manga, anime video or computer game managed to pay all of her bills, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that she was giving people the opportunity to change their lives for the better.
That a small proportion of her customers managed to make their lives worse despite the knowledge they gained here always puzzled and disheartened her. Perhaps some people just weren't mentally strong enough to cope with knowing their future.
As she always did at times when she was feeling melancholy about her work, she flipped open her log book of satisfied customers. Listed in the thick tome were thousands of names across hundreds of worlds, whose lives had turned out better because of a purchase from her shop.
She gave a dirty look at the slimmer volume of dissatisfied customers. Less than two hundred names were recorded there. All of them customers who had failed to use one of her items correctly.
She shook her head and looked around at her current customers, there were two over in the modern romance section, one by the historic epic stand and another four had just come through the door.
However, it was the teenage boy who was looking through the bargain basement section that caught her eye. He was looking in the wrong place, she thought crossly. Staring at his back intently, she tried to will him to take a look at the shelf two steps to his right, but it was to no avail.
Just as he seemed about to move to the shelf holding the key to his destiny, he glanced down at his watch.
"Oh no, I'm late!" he shouted, quickly rushing out of the door.
The shopkeeper sighed, if he had only looked at the shelf to his right, he might not have been in such a hurry to get where he was going. She shook her head, sometimes you just couldn't change fate.
Glancing out the window, she realised it was getting dark and was almost time to close up for the night.
She was about to record the boy's name in the log book of missed opportunities when a thought occurred to her.
She had tried to intervene and will him to look at the other shelf. Perhaps her intervention had caused him to leave a little earlier or later than he would have done otherwise? Maybe that small amount of time was enough to alter his fate?
She gave a small smile as she placed a question mark next to his name, and noted to check up on him at a later date.
See other episodes by Murasaki no Tsuki
(Posted Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:33)
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