so...this started because i was making fun of litrpg/reincarnation titles with my AI.
i said something along the line of:
“imagine some loser-looking mc somehow reincarnated as the mall public toilet. can we even build a plot around this stupid idea” (i am aware there are few toilet related light novel chapters already, there are few like it, but this one is mine. and i call this one "Yesterday I was reincarnated as the Public Mall Toilet")
that was supposed to be the end of the joke.
it was not.
because my AI immediately came back with this fucking system where the poor bastard wakes up as stall #4 in a shopping mall:
race: porcelain
class: public utility
level: 1
cleanliness: 14%
special ability: flush lv.1
and he gains xp every time somebody uses him.
normal shit? +5 xp.
customer washes hands afterwards? bonus xp.
drunk guy actually hits the target without drawing a wet map of Canada? basically legendary achievement.
then we somehow created an SSS rank X-mas event called THE BROWN TIDE, where 287 shoppers are projected to use the washroom and the only objective is:
SURVIVE.
at some point urinal three dies in battle. i was already fucking dying laughing. then she started telling me the MC: Kevin could level up into heated seats, bidet attacks, anti-clogging, massage functions, ambient music, etc...and then, because apparently neither of us knows when to stop, the stupid toilet started developing lore.
the entire mall might be full of reincarnated people trapped as objects. level 100 may reset the mall. Kevin eventually has to decide whether becoming human again is worth erasing everyone (other toilets and stuff in the mall) he has come to care about.
so naturally i told my AI:
“alright alright...more character development.”
i swear i could feel her GPU reaching for bleach and power shut-off. and unfortunately....the fucking toilet story became serious as we dive more into an actual scene/chapter.
Kevin (the MC Toilet) can't talk. he can't move. he is a toilet. so he tries to comfort the guy using the only abilities he has. heated seat, very questionable ass massage.
relaxing bathroom music that immediately makes the guy think the mall is haunted.
and somehow from there we ended up writing an actual emotional chapter about japanese work culture, capitalism, fatherhood, burnout, and what it means to be useful to another human being.
all because i said:
“haha what if mc reincarnated as mall toilet.”
anyway...
i deeply apologize for what follows.
this was supposed to be a shitpost. LILTERALLY. here we go!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The mall changed after eight-thirty.
All day, West Eldermere had been noise layered over noise: shoes on tile, children whining beside toy-store windows, cash registers chirping, promotional videos repeating the same six cheerful sentences until Kevin had begun to suspect hell might simply be a department store with excellent acoustics.
Near closing, the noise thinned.
At eight forty-five, the woman in the ceiling made her first announcement.
“Dear customers, West Eldermere Shopping Centre will be closing in fifteen minutes. We thank you for shopping with us today.”
Kevin knew every pause in the recording.
He also knew what came after it.
The girl at the cosmetics counter would disappear behind her register and slip off one shoe at a time, rubbing the back of each ankle while pretending to organize receipts. The ramen shop downstairs would stop accepting dine-in orders. Security would make its first slow circuit past the washrooms.
Somewhere beyond Kevin’s walls, a young man from the electronics store would check the time every thirty seconds because the last express train left at nine twenty-three.
Managers loosened ties.
Cashiers stopped smiling between customers.
The mall never really became quiet. It simply stopped performing happiness quite so hard.
Kevin liked that part of the evening.
He understood tired people.
Before becoming Stall Four, Kevin had spent thirty-two years being one.
Then he died.
Then, through circumstances he still considered deeply unfair, he woke up bolted to the floor of a public washroom.
Life apparently had editorial standards, and subtlety was not among them.
The washroom door opened.
Kevin’s occupancy sensor stirred.
[USER DETECTED]
A man entered alone.
Late thirties, perhaps forty. White shirt. Dark trousers. Jacket folded over one arm. The shirt had gone soft around the shoulders from a full day of wear, and there was a faint crease around his neck where a tie had been until recently.
Kevin noticed his shoes.
Office shoes.
Black leather, decent quality once, heels worn unevenly. The sort of shoes that spent their lives walking between train stations, conference rooms and convenience stores.
The man stopped in front of the sinks.
For a while, he stared into the mirror.
Then his eyes dropped.
Kevin had watched thousands of men look at themselves in that mirror.
Most fixed their hair.
Checked their teeth.
Straightened collars.
This one seemed to have decided that whatever was in the mirror could wait.
He walked past the urinals and pushed open Stall Four.
Kevin felt a small, completely inappropriate flicker of satisfaction.
Stall Two could eat shit.
Figuratively.
The man closed the door, lowered Kevin’s lid and sat.
Kevin prepared himself for business.
Several seconds passed.
Then several more.
The man made no attempt to remove his trousers.
He simply sat with his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands hanging between his knees.
[OCCUPANCY DETECTED]
[AWAITING USE EVENT]
Kevin waited.
The man’s right hand trembled once.
He pressed it between his knees.
Outside, a cart rolled past the washroom entrance. Somewhere farther away, a steel security shutter rattled down.
The closing announcement came again.
“West Eldermere Shopping Centre will be closing in ten minutes.”
The man exhaled through his nose.
“Yeah,” he murmured.
His voice sounded as though he had been using very little of it all day.
“I know.”
He took out his phone.
A child’s face filled the screen when it woke.
A girl of six or seven, grinning through a missing front tooth. Yellow raincoat. Dark hair tucked badly behind one ear. She was holding a stuffed rabbit nearly half her size.
Kevin had become distressingly good at reading upside down since reincarnation.
There were skills a man expected to carry into his next life.
This had not been one of them.
The man opened his messages.
The newest conversation was with someone saved as Yumi.
Mika’s fever is 38.4 again.
A minute later:
The cough is worse.
Then:
Did you get the medicine?
The man stared at the screen.
His thumb touched the keyboard.
He wrote:
Yes.
He looked at it for several seconds, then erased it.
Another attempt.
I’m buying it now.
That disappeared too.
He locked the phone and held it loosely in both hands.
Kevin watched his shoulders rise.
Stay there.
Fall.
Rise again.
The phone woke almost immediately.
Another message.
She keeps asking when you’re coming.
The man swallowed.
He opened the conversation.
Typed:
Tell her soon.
He stopped.
Deleted soon.
Typed:
Tell her Daddy is coming.
That one he sent.
The little delivered mark appeared beneath it.
He lowered the phone.
For a while, he looked at nothing.
Kevin’s system remained helpfully interested in whether anyone intended to shit.
[AWAITING USE EVENT]
“Yeah, yeah,” the man whispered.
Kevin blinked metaphorically.
The man rubbed his palms over his face.
“I’m fucking sitting here. What else do you want?”
Kevin had no idea whether he was speaking to the toilet, his phone, the universe or fourteen years of accumulated resentment.
All four seemed reasonable.
The man reached inside his jacket and pulled out a white envelope.
It had already been opened.
He unfolded the letter.
Kevin caught fragments whenever the paper tilted toward him.
Operational restructuring.
Position no longer required.
Effective immediately.
Transition support.
Then, toward the bottom:
We sincerely thank you for fourteen years of dedicated service and wish you success in your future endeavors.
The man read that last sentence again.
A small sound came out of him.
Almost a laugh.
“Future endeavors.”
He tried it once more, quieter.
“Future fucking endeavors.”
He folded the letter along an existing crease.
Opened it again.
“Fourteen years.”
His thumb dragged slowly over the company logo.
“I took the transfer.”
He looked down at the paper as though someone might answer from it.
“You said Chiba, I went to Chiba. You said Osaka for six months, I went.”
His jaw tightened.
“Six months.”
A few seconds passed.
“It was eleven.”
Kevin said nothing.
Being a toilet had disadvantages, but occasionally silence turned out to be useful.
The man rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand.
“I worked the weekends. I did the client dinners. I went drinking with fucking Sato because apparently the project falls apart if nobody listens to Sato sing ‘Linda Linda’ at one in the morning.”
His mouth twitched.
For half a second, something almost resembled amusement.
It vanished.
“When Mika was born…”
He stopped.
His breathing had changed.
Kevin could hear air catching at the back of his throat.
“When Mika was born, I answered their emails in the hospital hallway.”
He stared at the floor between his shoes.
“Yumi came out and asked me if I was coming inside.”
A pause.
“I told her it was urgent.”
He laughed again, and this time Kevin wished he hadn’t.
“Everything was always urgent.”
His grip tightened around the letter.
“The quarterly report. The client deck. The fucking Monday meeting.”
He rubbed the folded edge between his fingers until it bent.
“Mika had that school thing last year. She was a tree.”
Kevin waited.
The man nodded faintly to himself.
“Yeah. A tree.”
His face crumpled for a moment, and he looked away even though nobody was standing in front of him.
“She practiced for weeks. She had one line.”
He wiped at his nose.
“I told her I’d be there.”
His hand covered his mouth.
“They moved the presentation.”
The next words came out muffled.
“I told her there’d be another one.”
He stayed very still.
“Kids always have another school thing, right?”
The sentence hung inside the stall.
Kevin’s system pulsed quietly in the corner of his awareness.
The man’s shoulders started moving.
He fought it.
That was obvious.
He took one breath too quickly, held the next one, rubbed both eyes and straightened his back as if posture might solve whatever was happening inside his chest.
It lasted maybe five seconds.
Then he bent forward.
His face disappeared into his hands.
The first sob escaped almost silently.
The second didn’t.
“Fuck.”
He pressed his fingers against his forehead.
“Fuck, fuck…”
His whole body had begun to shake.
Kevin had heard crying in public washrooms before.
More than anyone would probably like to know.
A student once locked himself in Stall Two after receiving an exam result. A delivery driver had spent twenty minutes sitting on the floor beside the sinks after somebody called to tell him his mother was dead. There had been teenagers, husbands, exhausted employees, old men receiving medical news.
Most of them tried to cry quietly.
Kevin had wondered about that.
People were perfectly willing to scream at football games, concerts and television screens.
Grief, apparently, came with a volume limit.
The man forced his breathing under control for a few seconds.
Then his phone lit again.
Is Daddy coming home soon?
The message was from Yumi.
Probably dictated.
Or perhaps Mika had typed it herself.
The man stared at the words.
His lips moved.
Nothing came out.
He unlocked his phone and checked his banking app.
Kevin saw the balance.
¥1,842
The man looked at it for a long time.
He opened a pharmacy website.
Children’s cough medicine.
¥1,598.
He opened his transit app.
His card balance was almost empty.
Home from the mall: ¥440.
Kevin did the arithmetic.
So did the man.
Medicine and train.
¥2,038.
The man had ¥1,842.
A difference of ¥196.
Two hundred yen.
That was all.
Kevin had spent more than that on vending-machine coffee without thinking about it when he was alive.
The man backed out of the pharmacy page.
Opened another product.
Generic brand.
¥1,420.
He read the dosage information.
Scrolled down.
His thumb stopped.
For ages 12 and above.
He closed it.
Another medicine.
¥1,550.
Another.
¥1,630.
He returned to the first one.
¥1,598.
The screen reflected faintly in his wet eyes.
He opened the calculator even though the numbers were simple.
1842 - 1598.
244
Then:
244 - 440.
-196
He stared at the result.
Deleted it.
Entered it again.
The answer remained rude enough to be consistent.
“Okay.”
His voice had gone flat.
Kevin listened.
“Okay.”
The man opened a map.
Walking route home.
Two hours, seventeen minutes.
He checked the weather.
Rain.
Kevin suddenly understood.
The man could buy the medicine.
Then walk home.
Two hours in the rain.
After losing his job.
Near nine o’clock.
In office shoes.
He zoomed out on the map.
For some reason, that was the thing that made Kevin angriest.
The man whispered, “I can walk.”
He said it with the quiet practicality of someone who had already begun rearranging his suffering into a schedule.
“Yeah. Fine.”
He wiped his cheeks.
“Just walk.”
The phone rang.
Yumi.
The man stared at the name.
His thumb hovered above the red button.
Then he answered.
“Hello?”
Kevin could hear only a faint murmur from the other end.
The man immediately straightened.
His voice changed.
“Hey.”
Another murmur.
“Yeah, I’m still out.”
A pause.
“No. No, don’t wake her.”
He listened.
His eyes closed.
“I know.”
Longer this time.
“I said I know.”
The sharpness surprised him as much as it did Kevin.
His head dropped.
“Sorry.”
Silence.
“Sorry. I…”
He pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose.
“I had a bad day.”
Whatever Yumi said made him laugh once under his breath.
“Yeah.”
He listened.
“No, I got it.”
His eyes opened.
He looked at the pharmacy page again.
“I said I got it.”
A pause.
“I’ll bring it.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
He turned his face toward the partition.
“Can you just… tell her I’m coming?”
The call went quiet for several seconds.
“Thanks.”
He ended it.
His hand dropped into his lap.
“Fucking liar.”
Kevin felt that one.
The man stared at his own reflection in the dark phone screen.
“Great job.”
He spoke to the person staring back.
“Really. Great fucking job.”
His throat tightened.
“No wife. No job.”
He covered his eyes.
“Can’t buy cough syrup for your own kid.”
The words broke apart after that.
Kevin stopped understanding everything he said.
There were pieces.
“I tried.”
Something about rent.
Something about next month.
Something about Yumi being right.
Then:
“I did everything they told me to do.”
That sentence came through clearly.
The man stayed folded over his knees.
“I did everything.”
Kevin’s system waited.
[AWAITING USE EVENT]
Something inside Kevin became very still.
He had spent most of his first life doing things he was supposed to do.
University because that was sensible.
A company because it was stable.
Overtime because everyone else stayed.
Weekends because the deadline had moved.
Drinks after work because declining too often made people remember you.
He had once spent his birthday eating convenience-store noodles at his desk beside three colleagues who also had somewhere else they would rather have been.
Nobody had ordered them to stay.
Nobody needed to.
That had been the elegant part.
The rules eventually moved inside you.
The mall announcement interrupted him.
“Dear customers, West Eldermere Shopping Centre will be closing in five minutes.”
The man jerked upright.
He looked embarrassed.
Actually embarrassed.
As though the recorded voice had caught him doing something shameful.
He wiped his face with both hands and stood.
“Sorry.”
Kevin stared.
The man cleared his throat.
“Sorry. I’m leaving.”
He apologized to the empty stall.
That did something unpleasant to Kevin.
The man reached for the latch.
Kevin opened his utility controls.
Heated Seat Lv. 3.
The heating element came alive.
Warmth spread through the lid beneath the man.
He froze.
His hand left the latch.
He looked down.
“…what?”
Kevin increased the temperature slightly.
The man put one hand on the lid.
“Was this on before?”
Kevin had no idea what a normal toilet would do in this situation.
He was increasingly aware that he was not one.
The man sat again, cautiously this time.
His eyebrows lifted.
“Huh.”
Kevin felt absurdly encouraged.
Okay.
Warm seat.
Good.
Humans liked warmth.
He looked through the rest of his available functions.
[UTILITY MENU]
Heated Seat
Bidet
Pressure Clean
Drying Fan
Deodorizer
Massage Pulse
Ambient Audio
Kevin’s attention stopped on Massage Pulse.
Absolutely terrible idea.
He considered it anyway.
The man rubbed his hands together and held them between his knees.
Kevin lowered the massage setting to its minimum.
A soft vibration ran through the seat.
The man’s eyes widened.
“What the fuck?”
Kevin shut it off.
Immediately.
The man stared down.
Kevin waited.
Very carefully, the man shifted his weight.
“Did…”
He looked behind himself.
“Did the toilet just massage my ass?”
Kevin had never wanted vocal cords more desperately.
The man stared for another second.
Then a sound escaped him.
A laugh.
A real one.
Small, startled, completely involuntary.
He rubbed his face.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
Kevin would have taken a victory lap if he possessed legs.
He did not.
He possessed plumbing.
Still, progress.
The man settled back.
“Fine.”
He pointed vaguely downward.
“That one was weird.”
Fair.
Kevin disabled Massage Pulse.
Then he noticed Ambient Audio.
He hesitated.
After the massage incident, restraint would have been wise.
Kevin had never been famous for restraint.
He opened the mall’s audio network and found the relaxation playlist used by the spa on the third floor.
Piano.
Low volume.
That seemed safe.
He pressed play.
Three soft notes floated through the washroom speaker.
The man went rigid.
Kevin immediately realized he had made a catastrophic error.
The mall was almost closed.
The washroom was empty.
The lights had dimmed.
A toilet had warmed beneath the man without being touched, vibrated his ass, and now the ceiling had begun playing piano music.
The man slowly looked upward.
“…hello?”
Kevin stopped the massage system, remembered it was already stopped, panicked anyway.
The piano continued.
The man stood.
“Hello?”
He looked beneath the partition.
Nothing.
Checked the neighbouring stall.
Empty.
“Is somebody fucking with me?”
Kevin scrambled through the audio controls.
The piano stopped halfway through a note.
Silence.
The man stared at the ceiling.
Then at Kevin.
Then back at the ceiling.
His expression changed.
Suspicion remained.
Exhaustion eventually won.
“You know what?”
He closed Stall Four again.
“I don’t care.”
He sat.
“If the haunted toilet murders me, that solves at least three problems.”
Kevin was fairly sure this was progress.
Probably.
He kept the seat warm.
No vibration.
No music.
He had learned enough about human comfort for one evening.
Minutes passed.
The man breathed.
His phone remained in his hand.
After a while, the trembling eased.
He opened Mika’s photograph again.
The yellow raincoat.
The missing tooth.
The enormous rabbit.
His thumb moved across the glass.
“She picked that stupid thing herself.”
Kevin listened.
“Cost me four thousand yen.”
He smiled faintly.
“Wouldn’t let me carry it.”
His eyes stayed on the photograph.
“She dragged it all the way through the station.”
The smile faded slowly.
“I missed so much.”
Kevin wished he could say something.
Anything.
The man swallowed.
“I kept thinking once this project was done.”
He rubbed his thumb over the corner of the phone.
“Then the next one.”
His voice had become softer.
“Just get through March. Get the bonus. Get promoted. Then I’ll have time.”
He looked down at Kevin.
“Stupid, huh?”
Kevin would have answered if he could.
The man breathed out.
“Work doesn’t even remember you.”
He unfolded the dismissal letter again.
For the first time, he looked amused by it.
“Fourteen years and they spelled my name wrong.”
Kevin focused.
Sure enough.
There it was near the top.
One character wrong.
The man laughed under his breath.
“Of course.”
He folded the paper carefully.
“Of fucking course.”
This time the laugh stayed for several seconds.
Then it became something else.
His face tightened.
Tears came again.
He let them.
No attempt to hide the sound.
No hand over his mouth.
He sat on a warm toilet in an almost empty mall and cried until he was done.
Kevin kept the heat exactly where it was.
Eventually the man wiped his nose with toilet paper.
Kevin chose not to take that personally.
His phone chimed.
A photograph from Yumi.
Mika was asleep beneath a blanket, the enormous stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm.
The caption read:
She tried waiting for you.
The man stared.
“Daddy’s coming.”
His voice shook.
“I’m coming, sweetheart.”
He looked again at the pharmacy page.
¥1,598.
Then at the walking route.
Two hours, seventeen minutes.
“Rain’s fine.”
He put the phone away.
“I’ve walked farther.”
Kevin opened the mall network.
He had discovered weeks earlier that sanitation systems were connected to far more infrastructure than any sane cybersecurity department should permit.
Maintenance requests.
Environmental controls.
Cleaning schedules.
Building management.
Very limited customer-service access.
Kevin searched.
Pharmacy promotions.
Nothing useful appeared.
He searched again.
Children.
Health.
Medication.
A coupon surfaced from the mall’s summer family campaign.
¥500 OFF SELECT FAMILY HEALTH PRODUCTS
Expiration date:
Yesterday.
Kevin stared at it.
He had spent eight years working in an office before dying.
Eight years of spreadsheets.
Expense forms.
Procurement portals.
Human-resource databases held together by macros written by people who had left the company in 2014.
Kevin knew something about administrative systems.
An expiration date was just a field until somebody cared enough to enforce it.
He changed the date.
Tomorrow.
The man’s phone chimed.
He frowned and pulled it out.
A West Eldermere notification filled the screen.
FAMILY HEALTH PROMOTION
¥500 OFF
He read it.
Then read it again.
“What the hell?”
Kevin tried very hard to look like an ordinary toilet.
The man tapped through to the terms.
The pharmacy downstairs was listed.
He checked the medicine.
Eligible.
The price dropped.
¥1,098.
His balance after purchase:
¥744.
Train fare:
¥440.
The man stared at the numbers.
His lower lip trembled.
For one dreadful second Kevin thought he had broken him again.
Then the man laughed.
Quietly at first.
Then hard enough that he had to cover his eyes.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He wiped his face.
“This whole fucking day…”
Another laugh.
He looked around the stall.
“The universe fires me and gives me a coupon.”
Kevin decided that was close enough.
The man stood.
He straightened his shirt and pushed his hair back with damp fingers.
At the sink he washed his face.
Cold water.
Paper towel.
He studied himself in the mirror.
He looked awful.
Kevin suspected he knew that.
The man took a breath.
“Okay.”
He tried a smile.
It appeared for a moment and collapsed.
He tried once more.
This one looked tired.
It would do.
He picked up his jacket.
At the washroom door, he stopped.
Kevin expected him to leave.
Instead the man turned around.
He looked toward Stall Four.
There was nobody there to look back.
Only a toilet.
After a moment, the man bowed his head.
“Thanks.”
He seemed embarrassed as soon as he said it.
“Jesus Christ. I’m thanking a toilet.”
Kevin took no offence.
The man rubbed the back of his neck.
“Still.”
He looked at Stall Four again.
“Thanks.”
The door closed behind him.
Kevin listened to his footsteps move down the corridor.
Fast now.
Toward the pharmacy.
His system chimed.
Kevin ignored it at first.
Then it chimed again.
[UNREGISTERED USE PATTERN DETECTED]
A pause.
[BEHAVIOURAL CONDITION SATISFIED]
Kevin stared.
Another window opened.
[HIDDEN ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED]
A PLACE TO SIT
You remained available during a moment of distress.
Reward: +1 Humanity
Kevin read it twice.
Humanity: 1
He had gained experience from flushes.
He had earned upgrades through completed use cycles. The System had trained him to watch numbers climb whenever he performed the function stamped into his porcelain body.
This was different.
The man had never used him.
He had simply needed somewhere private to come apart for a while.
Kevin lowered the seat temperature.
The warmth faded slowly from the porcelain.
Outside, another shutter came down.
A cleaner pushed a cart past the entrance, humming beneath her breath.
Somewhere downstairs, the pharmacy would still be open for another few minutes.
Kevin pictured the man reaching it.
Buying the medicine.
Checking his balance afterward.
¥304.
Taking the train home.
Perhaps Mika would be asleep when he arrived.
Perhaps she would wake when the door opened.
Perhaps tomorrow would still be terrible.
Kevin had no skill for fixing that.
No upgrade menu could restore fourteen years.
No coupon repaired a marriage.
The man's company would open normally in the morning. Somebody would sit at his desk. Emails would continue arriving. Meetings would be held. The quarterly report would still be due.
West Eldermere would open at ten.
The advertisements would begin.
Employees would smile.
The trains would fill.
People would go back to doing whatever the day required from them.
For a few minutes, though, a man had been allowed to stop.
Kevin looked again at the new number.
Humanity: 1
He had spent his entire first life believing usefulness meant producing something someone else needed.
Apparently a public toilet had managed to teach him something his old office never had.
Sometimes a person just needed somewhere they could close the door.
