Dead Hours — Track Seven, Page 7
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Panel 1: Kaito stands behind the counter with the store's beige corded phone receiver pressed to his ear, hunched forward, deadly serious. KAITO: Yes. Hello. I'm calling about track seven. Panel 2: Tight close-up on Kaito's mouth and the receiver. KAITO: The whistling one. Panel 3: Rin leans in from the side of frame, phone raised to film his face, one earbud in. RIN: You're on hold with a company at four in the morning. Panel 4: A silent beat panel. Kaito is frozen with the receiver at his ear, one index finger raised, eyes enormous, a single drop of sweat — the same frozen pose as before, now seated at the counter. Panel 5: He turns his head slowly toward Rin, receiver still up, his face full of terrible vindication. KAITO: It's the hold music. KAITO: They put track seven on hold. Panel 6: Close on Rin's half-lidded eyes, one eyebrow rising a millimetre. RIN: So it's alive. RIN: Sixty-eight seconds. Forever.
Image description
Six panels. Kaito calls head office at four in the morning, is put on hold, and hears the missing track seven playing as the hold music.
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.