Dead Hours — Surprise Me, Page 2
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 2 of Surprise Me is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Four panels. Panel 1: the store's sliding doors open and the tall tracksuit regular — shaved head, grey tracksuit, a clear plastic bag of empty cans — steps in from the rain. Panel 2: behind the register Kaito straightens and reaches on reflex toward the shelf for the man's usual item. Kaito: "Evening. The usual—" Panel 3: the regular calmly raises a hand to stop him. Regular: "Not tonight." "Surprise me." Panel 4: Kaito freezes, eyes blank, hand still hovering; behind him Rin looks up, one eyebrow raised. Kaito (thinking): "...Surprise... him?"
Image description
The tracksuit regular enters from the rain and tells Kaito to surprise him instead of ringing up his usual.
About this chapter
3 A.M., rain on the dead-hours store. The tracksuit regular — the one customer who has bought the exact same single item every night for years, the one fixed star Kaito builds his whole sense of order around — walks in, sets nothing on the counter, and says two words he has never once said: 'Surprise me.' Kaito is thrown into existential free-fall: for the first time the one predictable person on Earth wants the unknown, and he must choose a single item to stand in for a stranger's whole inner life. He declares silent war on the decision, hunting the shelves on Kaito-logic and reading the man's usual order like scripture, and every candidate ends on the identical dead-eyed beat of Kaito holding a blank-wrapped item up at eye level and murmuring 'This one?', only to get the exact same tiny noncommittal shrug. A drunk salaryman lobs terrible advice, a cheerful jogger insists everyone secretly wants the same thing, and none of it can be verified. Rin quietly livestreams the whole vigil as 'Kaito Picks a Snack (6 Hours),' with one flicker of near-sincerity — that he's the only person alive who'd take a stranger's whim this seriously, and it's kind of beautiful — before raising her phone again. Near dawn, certain at last, Kaito turns to present the perfect choice with a beaming certainty that inverts the running beat — and the magazine corner is empty. The regular fell asleep hours ago and drifted out at four. Then the reveal Rin planted in the first minute pays off: she'd asked the man what he actually wanted the instant he walked in, and he'd said 'the usual — just wanted to watch the new kid sweat,' his usual item sitting on the counter an arm's length from Kaito the whole night. Unable to bear a gift with no one to receive it, Kaito rings up his perfect chosen item and buys it himself — and Rin immediately takes it and bites. 'Surprise Me — six hours' hits four hundred thousand viewers; Kaito gets nothing, not even the snack. Dawn light fills the spotless store exactly as the night began — and the doors ding, the regular is back, sets nothing down, and says 'Surprise me' again, Rin's phone already raised, already live.