Dead Hours — Track Seven, Page 15
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: Kaito looks up at the ceiling speaker, hearing his own humming come out of it, horror dawning across his face. KAITO: Turn it off. Panel 2: Rin does not move at all, phone flat on the counter, one earbud in, half-lidded. RIN: Can't. RIN: It's looping. Panel 3: Extreme close-up of Rin's half-lidded, bored eyes. RIN: Four hundred thousand people are listening to you mop. Panel 4: Outside the front window in the dawn light, the same tall shaved-head man in the grey zip-up tracksuit with his clear bag of empty cans walks past, head bobbing, humming. TRACKSUIT MAN: Hm hm hm-hmmm. Panel 5: Kaito watches him go through the glass, completely dead-eyed, arms hanging. Panel 6: Rin lifts her phone to film Kaito's ruined face, the faintest smirk. RIN: You're track seven now.
Image description
Six panels. Kaito's own humming loops over the store speakers to four hundred thousand listeners. The tracksuit man walks past humming it. Rin films his face.
About this chapter
The store's 47-minute music loop has run unchanged for six years, and Kaito can name every track by its first note. Tonight, at 3:14 A.M., track seven — sixty-eight seconds of whistling, a xylophone, and a woman saying 'have a nice day' — simply does not play. The loop goes six, then eight. Kaito spends the entire shift trying to prove a song he has heard eleven thousand times ever existed: he waits out four full cycles, interrogates the tracksuit regular, hears track seven playing as head office's hold music, and is told it was pulled from every store back in April. Rin films all of it. At dawn track seven returns — except it isn't whistling, it's Kaito's own humming, looped, because Rin has secretly been the store's music since the real player died in April, and tonight she cut the whistle out because it was ruining her audio. He gets nothing. She gets four hundred thousand listeners.