Dead Hours — The Last Working Microwave, Page 4
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
The salaryman leaves with his warmed canned coffee, and the microwave sits open. Kaito steps forward with a fragile flicker of relief. Before he can use it, a young hoodie student darts in and shoves an enormous family-size gratin tray into the machine. No visible dialogue appears. The page repeats the near-miss and turns Kaito’s hunger into a running gag.
Image description
Just as the microwave becomes free, a hoodie student takes it over with a huge foil tray.
About this chapter
3 A.M. One of the store's two microwaves dies with a pop and a curl of smoke, leaving a single working unit — and a slowly forming queue of night-shift oddballs who each need to heat something, each taking longer than the last: a salaryman's coffee, a student's family-size gratin, an old man who keeps opening the door to check and restarting, and the tracksuit regular microwaving something frozen solid on max time. Kaito just wants to heat his own bento and watches his turn get pushed further and further back, holding the cold box in the same dead-eyed spot as the queue grows. At dawn the delivery guy fixes the 'dead' microwave in two seconds (it was unplugged) — but Kaito's shift is ending and Rin has already eaten his bento cold on camera, because it was never getting warm anyway. She wins, he gets nothing.