Behind the Supermarket, Smoking with You.

At 45, salaryman Sasaki has his entire day held together by one thing: the smile of Yamada, the cashier at his local 24-hour supermarket. That's it. That's his lifeline. After getting chewed out by his boss for the hundredth time, he drags himself to the store, only to find her shift already ended. Defeated, he wanders out back looking for a spot to smoke and meets a woman named Tayama — blunt, relaxed, and nothing like the polite cashier he's used to seeing. Except she is the cashier. Yamada off the clock is a completely different person, and Sasaki has no idea. This TV series based on the seinen manga leans into something that doesn't get explored enough in anime: the gap between who people are at work and who they actually are. It's a quiet, grown-up romance between two adults who are both kind of stuck in life, and the smoking spot behind the supermarket becomes this weird little sanctuary where they can just be themselves. The pacing is slow and warm, not dramatic. If you liked the adult relationship dynamics in Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku or the gentle melancholy of Recovery of an MMO Junkie, this hits a similar frequency. It also shares some DNA with After the Rain in how it handles an age-gap setup with actual care instead of making it weird. Asahi Production is adapting it for 2026, and honestly, the premise alone earned its spot — the original webcomic won the 2022 Next Manga Award for good reason.