My name is Ryan Watson, I have always been an Otaku. At first, I refused to admit it. But eventually I figured it out. I had turned eighteen a few months ago and had passed all eleven of my GCSEs with a four or five a few years ago. Nothing too spectacular but not failing either. I been doing an Agriculture Course at a local college two days a week and worked night shifts at the local Tesco Express.

I stayed just under the 24 hours a week at work, which is the threshold for my parents to receive Child Tax Benefit that they could keep claiming until I was 21 as long as I stayed in college.

My family was made up of me, Dad, (51 – Human) Mum, (49 – Human) Sister Holly (15 – Anomaly) and Clive (19 – Dachshund).

Clive was an elderly rescue dog that couldn’t go upstairs and had bladder issues in the winter. He had been with us for four years but was meant to last only a few months. Somehow, he was still alive and playful though.

My parents are okay parents. I love them, but they have their own problems.  They had gotten screwed over by a business partner when they had just gotten married and ended up a couple of million in debt. My dad was a Land Surveyor, while mum is a Veterinary Doctor. Because of that we live comfortably but frugally.

Holly was an enigma. Until secondary school we had been inseparable. While they had their own friend groups, we were very close. Nowadays our friendship was mainly through playing games or watching anime on through a watch2gether function on the streaming website we used, it was debatable, the legality of the site, however.

She had the same golden-brown hair as I have but kept at shoulder length with a couple of poison red highlights in it, which I thought looked awesome. I myself had gone for a few blonde ones and easy to clean and dry style that could look okay with just running my hand through it. I used to have a few limes green highlights, but they had grown out and I didn’t really feel like having them done again.

Her face was heart shaped with concave cheeks, thin lips and sharply raised eyebrows. She also shared my blue eyes. My face on the other hand had a heavier brow with less cheekbone but otherwise looked the same. Most of our freckles even lined up.

She stood at 5’11 while I stood at 6’2. We were both kind of freakishly tall for this country. We towered over everyone else. I had a lean build with a few bits of muscle showing from my infrequent trips to the gym down the street. She had a lean but muscular frame with small breasts from her soccer games. She mostly wore hoodies like I did and varied sometime between leggings or jeans. I mostly wore the same but almost always tracksuits unless working then it was a pair of black jeans.

The reason for this was the fact that while we weren’t peak physical specimens, we both weren’t what you would call conventionally ugly either. This didn’t really matter much to us except for the fact that one time after we had gone to watch a movie, an older lady had called us a sweet couple.

We had later discussed how that had sent a shiver down both of our spines and we had mutually agreed to be less physical with each other so as not to give others the wrong idea.

Other than that, I had no real friends in my day-to-day life that I saw face to face, other than my fellow members at the Anime and Manga Club. I had a dozen or so friends I had met through joining Random Xbox Groups and I had even met them all in real life. As we had gone to a few Fairs and conventions together.

There was my best friend Tristan who if needed help, I would drop everything for. Tristan lived in America, and we had only met in person once. But that was one of the best weeks of my life as my family and there’s went all over Disneyworld together. Though some of the things Tristan did were weird, I just chalked them up to him being American.

I was walking along the road on my way to the corner store to buy some scratch cards for my neighbor. I never got gambling. It just seemed like a waste of money when you knew you weren’t going to win anything. Then again hope was a powerful thing.

The neighbor was a nice polish lady with a name I did want to butcher so I just called her auntie since his mum had said that was a way of showing respect to your elders in their culture. Last year she had turned a hundred and had received a letter from the Queen. It turned out it would be the last one that the Queen ever wrote, finally enough.

Anyway, as soon as she received her pension half of it would immediately go on lottery tickets. Ninety bloody quid. I walked into the corner shop that was run by a nice Iraqi man named Aban. He was actually a doctor back in Iraq and had fled to the UK with his family during the Iraq War. However, his medical degree had been termed as not valid in the UK and he had ended up buying this place with the last of his savings, since it was being shut down for health and safety reasons after the local couple that used to run it died and their daughter has taken over. Within two months it was shut down by an EHO.

It was run a lot better now and had even been my first job for about six months after I left secondary school. I walked in and the electronic buzzer rang. The front of the store was packed with sweets and other snacks from top to bottom on one side and on the other was a counter with Vapes, Magazines, Alcohol, and a myriad of different football cards behind it. It was only eight O’clock and I had only got to sleep after a shift at five.

But for some reason my body wanted tea, I woke up to find that the milk had gone off. So, here I was now. I immediately lowered the hood of my hoodie, after remembering the sign taped to the inside of the glass door.

‘No more than two schoolchildren in the shop at one time.

No hoodies or sunglasses covering head while in store.

Please be respectful of employees and store. Thank you.’

I then headed to the back of the store and grabbed milk from a glass fridge before doubling back to the snack section for Doritos. Guess what I now wanted to dunk in my tea. A uniquely British idea. Msg and Caffeine, what could go wrong. All the brits I talked to about this revolutionary palate idea seemed intrigued and willing to try it, but, my other friends seemed hesitant, and Tristan seemed appalled at the creation. Even my friend Aafiyat in Brunei seemed disgusted by the idea, and I’d seen her eat gummy bears in carbonara before. ‘I guess that only the British will ever understand true culinary excellence. We invented beans on toast after all.’ I thought to myself.

“Hi, Sia.” I said as I walked over to the till counter while she made her way to the behind it.

She then responded in a normal midlands accent, “Good morning, Ryan. Scratch Cards?”

I just nodded as this had become something that has happened every first of the month for the last five months since his birthday. I watched as she leaned over to grab the key set to unlock the card holder. She then accidentally dropped the keys. They went straight under the counter.

“Uhhh… I told da, to fix that bloody skirting board.” She then bent down to reach for the key. I averted my gaze but for a split second I got a clear view of her round ass cheeks as they were stretched from her bending over. The fabric of her white jeans strained under the load as they struggled to contain their precious cargo. The grey long sleeve t-shirt riding up slightly from being at a sloping angle. I saw a bit of her spine and back as the revealed patch of her olive skin glistened in the LED light. As hard as I tried, still the memory implanted itself before I could look away.

Her wide hips gave way to a waist a few inches slimmer than them but not enough to create an hourglass figure. Her back now transferring seamlessly to the backs of her legs at an almost perfect right angle. I had turned my head to look out the shop window so as to not tempt myself to look further.

As she came back up to the top, I could see her fixing her now messed up shoulder-blade length black hair in the corner of my eye. I had turned away from the window and snapped myself out of the thoughts racing through my mind as I fought with all of my willpower to not gain a boner from the gorgeous girl three years my senior.

As I turned back to her, I noticed her smiling at me waiting for me to tell her the numbers I needed.

“Oh, um.” I said as in my head I added up the combination to spend exactly the amount, I had given her a smile back as I also took in the features of Sia’s face. While her figure was ordinary, her face was brilliant. Her oval shaped face with that exotic shade of olive skin tone had a set of Almond shaped brown eyes. Her lips were full, with a straight nose and when combined with her full cheeks and arched eyebrows almost made me forget my calculations.

In fact, when she bothered to put on makeup she looked like a supermodel in selfies and had a few thousand followers on Instagram last time I heard. I had long ago disavowed any form of social media other than WhatsApp, Tumblr, and Discord.

“Umm, six ones, Six Twos, Five Threes, five sixes and Ten eights.” I said while closing one eye and looking up to the ceiling with the other as I double checked my calculations. A natural expression when I was trying to figure something out and double checking it.

Once she had grabbed the desired cards I asked, having nearly forgotten. “Could you grab a G&H, Sky Blue.” I remembered dad had said on the phone that he had run out on the trip to Yorkshire for a meeting with his bosses. He would be back soon and shattered.

“Sure.” She then turned and unlocked the tobacco box and grabbed a grey packet of cigarettes. She then locked it back up and turned back around towards Ryan. “143.65” she said in a cheerful tone of voice.

“Here, the rest on card please?” I said, handing the notes to her. She then counted them and separated the twenties out and popped them into a slot behind the till that was one way and could only be opened by a private company that came and collected the takings at the end of the week.

Seeing her do this sent a tingle down my spine as it reminded me of the time when a kid had come in with an airsoft rifle. Of course, I couldn’t that tell at the time, but he had emptied the register and it was the reason I had left the job. It had taken a few months for me to get used to going into the store again. The safe had been installed after the event.

The kid was seventeen-year-old who after trying to get away on a bike had pointed the Assault style airsoft rifle at a police car. I couldn’t even begin to tell which one it was since I was unfamiliar with guns. The armed police had been called but because of their restraint he had only gotten off with a bunch of bruises from being tackled. It had made national news, I think. If it had been America, the headline would have been. “Kid Gunned Down after Playing with a Toy” or something like that.

Sia then presented the card machine after slamming the till shut. I tapped it and after a few seconds it beeped. As I was about to turn away. I then noticed the Sausage rolls sitting to the side in the oven staying warm. They were from the local bakery and were the best Herefordshire (Hear-i-fud-Shear. For the American readers to pronounce it properly.)

She just reached in and bagged one. Inside where also pasties and rolls but the sausage roll was fine. I then repeated the process with my card. I then walked out, bag of stuff in one hand and Sausage Roll in the other. I then made my way across the street when out of nowhere a Lorry came hurtling down the road. It is a white Isuzu. It darts past me almost wiping out my sausage roll. But my instincts must have been boosted by the divine treat.

I then crossed the road. As I walked, I heard a slight creak as a claw hammer fall a foot in front of me from the scaffolding on the house above me. I look up to see a builder with an apologetic look. I just shake my head as I put the claw hammer on the windowsill for the guy to pick up.

It was then that tragedy struck, and the fate of the sausage roll was changed from being eaten to not being eaten by myself.

I then began to turn to cross the road. I checked there were no cars either way. Just as I was halfway across the street I slipped, and the sausage roll did a somersault in the air. In a foot of flexibility, I didn’t know I had I somehow managed to save it. Just as I caught it, I heard the rumble of an engine. It was the same white Isuzu. Time slowed as I realized I was on the ground and had no chance of escaping.

The driver looked to be Asian. No Japanese from the face. He had a bloodshot look in his eyes and a set of pearly whites on display from the demonic grin. In a split second of clarity, I glanced at the Sausage Roll in my hands and thought to myself. ‘Well, that’s a shame.’

In the last moment before I was flattened, I had two thoughts come to myself simultaneously. Would this sausage roll have tasted any different from the uncountable hundreds I had consumed before now and second. Please, for the love of God may this be painless.