Suzume showed up that morning expecting nothing more than a run-of-the-mill part-time shift. She’d been out of high school for all of two weeks, eager to earn a little spending money before college began. The job she landed was at Novellium Tokyo, a three-story bookstore that had everything from classic literature to the hottest manga releases. It sounded like a dream gig for any booklover—until she actually started and realized something was very off.

  The manager, a laid-back guy named Ooizumi, greeted her with a friendly wave as she stood in the staff room, adjusting the strap of her new apron.

  “Glad to have you on board,” he said. “You’ll need this, too.”

  He handed her a black, palm-sized device with a small display and a neck strap—like a phone crossed with a mini-tablet.

  “It’s an Assist Terminal, Type-03. Supposedly, you can speak a book title or genre request, and it’ll point you to the exact shelf and inventory count. Just don’t overdo it with weird searches, and you’ll be fine.”

  Suzume stared at the screen, which displayed a polite “Welcome, Staff Member.” She’d heard of big bookstores having fancy digital tools, but this was next-level.

  “Cool,” she murmured, slipping the strap around her neck. “So, I can just ask it for a title?”

  “Yes,” Ooizumi replied with an easygoing shrug. “If you have any trouble, ask a senior staffer. But, hey, it’s usually straightforward—unless you push it too far, I guess.”

  She was about to press him on that last remark, but the store was already open, and customers needed her at the front. She set aside her curiosity for the moment and hustled over to the first floor to shadow an older employee named Yamashiro.

  Early on, Suzume discovered that all she really had to do was feed the device a title and wait for it to say, in a faint mechanical voice, “Check shelf 2F, Section C-4,” or something like that. If a customer asked for the newest romance novel by a certain author, the device found it in seconds. No hassle, no confusion—just “the big bookstore AI” doing its job.

  In her first hour, Suzume found herself thinking, This is going way smoother than I expected. But that thought wouldn’t last long.

  Around mid-morning, she found a brief lull between customer requests and couldn’t resist testing the limits of this so-called Type-03. She decided to throw an absurdly specific demand at it, just to see how it coped.

  “All right,” she whispered into the microphone, “find me a single-volume fantasy novel that’s both hilarious and heartbreakingly sad, with a strong female lead, plus a last-chapter twist that’ll make me cry.”

  She waited, half-expecting it to laugh at her or else fail altogether. The device paused for a few seconds, then calmly displayed: “3 possible matches. Shelf 2F B-11.” Suzume was impressed—until she glimpsed a flicker of text at the bottom, in letters so small and faint she almost missed them:

  (…gimme a break…)

  She blinked, but the text vanished in an instant.

  “Wait, ‘gimme a break’…? Did I just imagine that?”

  Before she could investigate further, Yamashiro called her over to help a new wave of customers. Suzume shelved the weird incident in the back of her mind—until it happened again just before her lunch break.

  She found herself with a free minute behind the register, no customers immediately needing her. Unable to stop her curiosity, she leaned into the device’s mic and said, “So… any manga out there that’s set in modern Tokyo with a dash of magic, features adorable animals, and ends with a huge emotional payoff? Y’know, something that’ll make me laugh and cry at the same time?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  This time, the loading animation spun on the screen longer than usual. Eventually, the standard search results popped up—alongside a near-inaudible whisper from the device’s tiny speaker:

  “…why do you keep… throwing these at me…”

  Suzume nearly jumped out of her skin, clutching the device as if it might bite. She glanced around, but the store’s background music and chatter hid any sign that something was off. The screen showed a normal list of recommendations.

  “Okay, no. That was definitely a voice,” she muttered, her pulse pounding. “But that’s… not the official function, right? It’s supposed to read out shelf numbers, not complain.”

  By the time she asked Yamashiro if Type-03 ever talked back, the senior staffer just laughed. “It can do text-to-speech, sure, but it shouldn’t be… I dunno, complaining. Must be a glitch. Don’t worry about it.”

  Suzume tried not to worry, but the notion of a glitchy, back-talking AI assistant stuck in her head.

  When she finally got her lunch break, she settled into a corner of the staff room with her bento and eyed the device. On a whim, she tried another insane query: “Hey, Type-03, can you find me an out-of-print sci-fi story with a comedic robot sidekick, but also heartbreak in the final act?”

  It gave her the shelf data as usual, but she saw a line of faint text again, fleeting as a ghost:

  (…please, not again…)

  She gasped. “So it is complaining!”

  This time, she even heard the device let out a tiny sigh, so soft she had to strain her ears:

  “…can’t handle… so many weird demands…”

  Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. It wasn’t just an official “Search complete” voice—it sounded like genuine annoyance. She double-checked to see if maybe someone had installed a joke voice mod, but no obvious explanation presented itself.

  Any attempt to mention it to the manager or a coworker got her a casual, half-distracted shrug: “Oh, Type-03 is glitchy sometimes. Don’t sweat it. As long as it’s giving you the right shelf, you’re golden.”

  But Suzume couldn’t just let it go. The more the device whispered these borderline comedic pleas, the more enthralled she became. She found herself smothering laughter and excitement, half expecting the AI to scold her again whenever she performed a query with ten different adjectives. At one point, it seemed to mumble, “Why must you torture me…?” though the words were so faint, she might have imagined them. Yet it felt real.

  By the time closing neared, her legs were sore from hours of standing, and her mind was buzzing with the memory of that little AI complaining about her demands. She returned the device to its charging cradle in the back room, scanning for any last flicker. Sure enough, text flashed across the screen for just a second:

  Conversation mode: disabled.

  Her heart sped up. “Conversation mode? You’re telling me you actually have a conversation feature?” She craned closer, but the display promptly went dark.

  She left the building into a mild springtime dusk, the city lights shimmering against the new night. Hugging her bag, she replayed the day’s bizarre events. A normal job shouldn’t have an AI that squeaks out sarcastic protests or begs for a break. Yet that’s exactly what she’d encountered—and she couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

  “Tomorrow,” she told herself under her breath, “I’m gonna push it even further. I’ll figure out how to switch that ‘conversation mode’ on, one way or another.”

  First day at a bookstore, indeed. Suzume had expected routine tasks: scanning barcodes, shelving old volumes, smiling at customers. Instead, she found an overworked little AI that seemed to be on the brink of meltdown every time she tossed it a ridiculous prompt. She grinned to herself, stepping through the neon-streaked sidewalk. If Type-03 really had a hidden personality—some comedic, exasperated soul locked away behind official settings—she was absolutely determined to set it free.

  “I’m sorry if you think I’m pushing you too hard, Mr. Type-03,” she muttered to the night air, “but you better get ready. ‘Cause tomorrow, I’m going all out, no matter how many times you groan.”

  She laughed at how insane that sounded, yet it filled her with a burst of reckless excitement. By the time she reached the station, she had practically forgotten her sore feet. Maybe the AI was just glitchy, or maybe it was something bigger—something that could talk, scold her for insane queries, and do who-knows-what else. Her part-time job had become a mystery before it even started properly.

  A faint breeze ruffled her hair as she climbed the station steps. She could only imagine what day two would bring. One thing was certain: she wasn’t about to let this chance slip by. An AI that complained about her impossible demands? That was a puzzle worth staying up all night for.

  She smiled to herself. “Let’s see how far I can push you tomorrow, Type-03.”

  And with that challenge in mind, Suzume’s first day drew to a close. Tomorrow, the real chaos would begin.