Two in the morning and my footsteps echoed ominously down the empty streets, the lonesome streetlights flickering above me as I strode towards the little corner shop that was open twenty-four-seven. I usually only visited the shop in the grey hours of the morning before work, grabbing something simple for lunch, or in the darkening hours of the evening when I snatched anything essential from the shelves before going home. I hadn't left the apartment after midnight in way too long and the total silence of the darkness was eerie. Even more unsettling was the sense of abandonment that cloaked everything, especially when I stepped inside the shop, the annoying bell sounding above me to notify anyone who was even awake of my arrival, and the usual generic pop music wasn't playing.

I glanced at the counter, further unnerved when the shop assistant wasn't sitting behind it.

Whatever. I took one of the cheap plastic baskets from the stack beside the door and propelled myself down the aisles, shoving one hand into the deep pocket of my joggers in search of the list Sasha had thrown at me before I left.

Painkillers. I turned down a different aisle to look for the first thing on the list and then the second, then the third. The fourth item was…I screwed up my face, peering at the messy scrawl that barely passed as writing. What the heck is that supposed to be?

"Are you okay there?"

I jumped, teeth quickly clamping down in an attempt to disguise the startled squeak that I felt rising in my throat. I spun around to find a short blonde girl standing beside me, stupid angelic smile on her lips as she pulled nervously at the blue shirt of her uniform. The shop assistant – she actually exists.

"Miss?" the girl asked, blue eyes flicking back and forth between the contents of my basket and the list clenched up into a ball in my hand.

I cleared my throat, allowing myself to ease back on my heels to try and not look like I'd just nearly had a heart attack. "I'm fine, thanks," I told her.

Her smile grew more confident. "What's on your list?"

I raised an eyebrow. Usually shop assistants scuttled away after customers said they didn't need them, if they even offered help in the first place. I studied the girl for a moment longer, taking in the ironed uniform, the stiff collar, the perfectly combed hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. Her make-up looked like she'd put on a mask, some artist painting on the ideal image before the girl went out to work. There was no point in looking so decent for a night shift in some dusty old corner shop in this rundown town.

I straightened out the crumpled list with my thumb, peering at the mysterious fourth and final item. "That's what I'd like to know," I mumbled, not really meaning to answer the girl, but there was something in her hopeful yet unsure gaze that made me want to actually engage with a real life human being for once.

The shop assistant reached out a hand. "May I?"

I pressed the wrinkled paper into her small palm. It was then that I noticed that she was shaking – the girl was clearly scared. I frowned as she squinted at the list. "Is this your first night shift?"

She hummed, distracted as she struggled with Sasha's crude handwriting, and then blinked. She met my gaze, seemingly surprised that I'd asked her a question. "Ah, um." She laughed once, weakly. "This is actually my first shift ever."

My initial thought was 'oh, another rich girl who hasn't had to work for a single thing', but then I saw her still shaking hands and the way her throat moved as she gulped down her fear and nerves.

"You won't get many people at this time of night," I told her, feeling my lips move to give the girl a reassuring smile.

She nodded, not looking too convinced. She was probably imagining a pack of muscular teens charging in and robbing the place while she cowered in a corner somewhere. The image of this town's teenage boys actually doing that almost made me laugh. I worked as the groundskeeper at the school – the only actual job I could find that paid me to do hard graft and let me not have to speak to too many people. Sure, the kids gave me weird looks or whispered crude remarks behind my back, and God knows what the teachers said about the tall mess of a woman who did a man's job, but it was the only thing that this town had that would allow me to work in some form of solitude. But even as the unsocial groundskeeper, I knew what the kids were like in this town – and none of those 'muscular teens' were going to tear into this place and threaten a woman into giving up a bag of crisps and the loose change from the cash register.

"Chicken soup."

I blinked a few times. "Excuse me?"

The girl waved the list at me with a small smile. "It's chicken soup."

Of course it was. What else would Sasha ask for while she hibernated in a pile of snotty tissues? "Thanks," I said, taking the list back and shoving it in my pocket.

"Tinned soups are aisle five," the shop assistant told me, pointing a trembling finger over my shoulder.

"Cheers…" I angled my head to the side, spotting the name badge pinned on the girl's chest. "Cheers, Krista."

She looked thrown for a moment, and as I turned away I nearly missed the smile she gave me in return. I paused as the brightest smile I'd ever had the honour of witnessing spread across the girl's face. All I did was say her name…

I coughed lightly and continued on to aisle five.

I dropped three of the largest tins of the cheapest and most disgusting chicken soup available into the basket, picking up a more pleasant tin of beef stew for myself, before walking over to the counter.

Krista was already there, perched on the ill-balanced stool with her hands on the counter, her eyes lifting from the cash register to meet mine…and she smiled again.

I swallowed and lifted the basket up onto the counter so she take one item at a time and scan the barcodes. I licked my fingers and peeled open one of the thin plastic carrier bags, shoving everything Krista passed me into it.

"That's ten-"

I pushed a note under her nose before she could finish. I just needed the receipt to give to Sasha – she was paying me back for this, I didn't care how much it was right now.

As she cashed it up and waited for the receipt to print, Krista's eyes moved to the carrier bag hanging from my clenched fist. "Have you got a cold?" she asked, with the edge of someone trying to make awkward conversation in her voice.

I shook my head, tiredly taking the receipt from her and folding it up next to the screwed up list in my pocket. "My roommate is sick, so she sent me out at this Godforsaken hour."

Krista's smile seemed to relax. "That's nice of you." When I looked blankly at her, she added, "To do that for her. Not everyone would."

I sniffed, shrugging one shoulder as I looked towards the shop door. "She'd only keep me awake with her whining otherwise."

"Still. It's nice."

There was something peculiar to her voice, something that made me turn back to look at the small blonde girl sat behind the shop counter. She was a woman, maybe only a few years younger than me, and yet she looked like she'd dropped out of school years too early so to be chained up in a shop window at night. She looked vulnerable and alone. She looked terrified of the night and of the danger of being alone, and yet I sensed she had chosen to take the night shift of her own free will.

"People, huh?" I said, my tone oddly low and gruff. My voice sounded just like it did when I first woke up, and I gritted my teeth as Krista turned my own blank expression back on me.

And then she smiled again. "Yeah," she replied, simply.

And I felt myself smile back. "Goodnight, Krista."

"Goodnight…." She opened her mouth and closed it with a questioning frown.

"Ymir," I told her, bowing much too dramatically in front of the counter. "I'm Ymir."

She laughed and it echoed weirdly in my ears, and one day that very sound would pull at my heart and make me smile every single time.

"Goodnight, Ymir," she said for the first time.

"Goodnight, Krista," I called over my shoulder as I left the shop, little knowing that I'd be back there again for many nights to come.

And Sasha never did question the countless tins of soup that I kept buying, not even when they stopped appearing in the kitchen cupboards and Krista moved in with us in our apartment.

I sometimes think back to that first night in that rundown corner shop that was open twenty-four-seven in that faraway town. I sometimes think of how we slowly learnt things about each other every night in those silent aisles. I sometimes think of those times when I popped in for a box of cereal that I could have got hours before but didn't, and ended up staying and talking with her for so much longer than I had ever thought possible.

I remember everything and sometimes I think back to those thousands of little amazing moments we shared, from the first time I waited for her shift to end and I bought her breakfast, to the first time she asked me out on a date.

But there are some things I don't have to remember, because I see them every day. Like how she smiles, or how her face lights up when something good happens, or when she laughs too loudly.

Everything she's done and does, I remember and if I forget, she's always there to remind me.

I remember everything, from the first time I said her name, right to the very moment when I said, "I take Krista Lenz as my lawfully wedded wife."

I remember the good mornings and the bad ones.

I remember the sound of her laughter when we went back to that little town and found the place we met. It had been knocked down and replaced with a block of posh offices, a horde of men in black suits spilling out onto the street around us as we laughed and laughed and laughed until she started crying and wouldn't stop until I held her so tight that I was scared I would break her.

We went home, back to our home, and laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling, waiting for it to fall in on top of us.

It didn't, not for a long, long time.

I remember all the holidays we went on, the hours of travel and the days we spent in the sun and in the snow and on the sand and on the seas, everywhere and nowhere. It never mattered where we went, it was perfect and I remember every moment as if it was yesterday.

Sometimes, though, yesterday is a painful memory.

Some yesterdays weren't as good as the others.

Because I remember the first and the last "Goodnight, Ymir" she said to me.

Many long years, from a two o'clock visit to a dusty old corner shop, to the noon of the day the ceiling finally collapsed.

"Goodnight, Ymir," she said.

"Goodnight, Ymir," she told me.

"Goodnight, Ymir," she whispered in my ear.

"Goodnight, Krista," I replied as the ceiling turned to dust and her eyes closed for the last time. "I love you."

I have never regretted being the nice person that went out in the middle of the night with a hastily scribbled list written by an ailing roommate. I have never regretted spending those hours by her side. I have never regretted loving the shop assistant who had an early end to her story.

"Are you okay there?" she had asked me.

"Yes," I whispered. "Yes." I kissed her eyelids, ignoring the tears on my cheeks and instead focusing on the smile frozen on her paling lips.

I will remember everything about Krista, even when she can't remind me about the things I forget anymore.

"Goodnight, Krista," I said for the final time.

And now I wait for the day the ceiling sees fit to rain down on me.