My earliest memories of department stores were dragging my feet through a JCPenny while my family contemplated deals. The one thing I could think to do in order to alleviate the boredom was hiding inside the circular clothes racks until someone asked where I was and emerged like a hermit, unaware of how much time had passed. But these were the anchor stores that littered every Midwestern mall and existed almost entirely for back-to-school sales. And when reading a story like The Concierge at the Hokkyoku Department Store by Tsuchika Nishimura, we can see a different kind of department store instead.

Service work is strenuous. If a customer isn’t in a hostile mood immediately, we have to work to ensure they don’t slide into one. And on a first day in a new environment, the stress of it all only compounds. Akino is working her first shift in the Hokkyoku Department Store under the ever-present eye of the floor manager, Todo. And during her first shift, she must learn the ins and out of handling the store’s specialized clientele: the VIAs. These are the animals that need special care and attention as they have specific needs Akino needs to learn—either by reading the VIA manual or by simply failing and getting better for the next time. Told in ten vignettes, we get to see Akino’s journey from the stumbling newcomer to one of the best concierges the store has ever known, even if she struggles to remember which animal is which.

The intersection of animal and human interaction isn’t just to give the story a cute quirk to stand out as every animal featured is one that has been driven to extinction or endangerment by human intervention. The store itself, despite having the animals dress and act human, was made to give those extinct animals somewhere to experience mass consumerism—the most human of activities. In here, humans have to serve the animals they helped to kill off and give them the same kind of experience humans have grown accustomed to. It’s here that Nishimura doesn’t simply provide us with facts and stories about what happened to these animals—they show the animals in a way that makes them more familiar to their audience. In this way, we see ourselves in their wants and needs—the need to buy a gift for a relative, a friend, a potential partner, a colleague—and can connect to those little stories.

We may never see these animals alive again—despite absurd pseudo-science claims—but we can at least get a sense of them in some small, fantastical way. Sometimes all we want to be is a small mink going from stall to stall to find the perfect gift for our loved ones and it’s in The Concierge at the Hokkyoku Department Store that we can feel that carefree stress. We don’t have to worry about extinction here, just if we’re picking the right thing out. 

Get excited. Get shopping.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, & 651) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.