KUMAMOTO – Following a powerful earthquake last week, variety store operator Habita said Monday that two employees who had originally evacuated were sent back on the company’s orders into a shopping mall that then collapsed in an explosion in Kashima, Kumamoto Prefecture.

After the quake, which registered shindo 7, the highest level on Japan’s seismic intensity scale, an explosion occurred at the Aeon Mall Kumamoto building at around 5:50 p.m., killing several people, including the two employees.

The two had initially evacuated to a parking lot outside the facility after guiding customers to safety. As they reentered the building at around 5:35 p.m., an Aeon Mall employee familiar to them who was near the entrance reportedly told them, “Be careful.”

Koji Yuse, sales manager at Kumamoto-based Habita, told reporters on Monday afternoon that he had instructed the store manager to have the two employees reenter the building and move the day’s sales proceeds from the store on the second floor to a safe on the first floor. The sales manager added that he also ordered the employees to obtain permission from the mall operator before returning to the building.

At a wake held Sunday evening for Kurumi Otake, 22, one of the two Habita employees who died in the incident, her bereaved family members told Habita President Keima Ueno, who attended the event, that they would “never forgive” the company, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Yuse said: “If I had not brought up the issue of the sales proceeds, this would never have happened. I have nothing but regret for not anticipating the consequences.”

After Otake’s funeral was held in Kumamoto on Monday, a woman in her 20s who had played on the same junior high school volleyball team as Otake said she attended the service to express her gratitude to Otake.

“She was cheerful and a very reliable team captain,” the woman said.