Dead Hours — The Run, Page 15

About this chapter

3 A.M., rain on the dead-hours store. For no reason anyone can name, every single customer tonight walks in and buys bananas — nothing else, just bananas. Kaito, who lives for the sacred quiet of the dead hours, is instead thrown into a demand he cannot explain: the banana crate empties as fast as he can restock it, and he becomes obsessed not with the shortage but with WHY — a trend, a shortage, an omen, a sign? He restocks feverishly, interrogates the tracksuit regular (who just wanted a banana), rings up a whole surging crowd, and even phones head office to ask if there is 'a banana thing,' each empty crate landing on the identical dead-eyed beat of Kaito holding up the bare crate and muttering '...we're out.' Rin livestreams the whole spiral, dropping hints he never catches — 'saw it online,' 'you'd be surprised what people show up for' — and has one flicker of near-sincerity, that he's the only person alive who'd need to know WHY, before raising her phone again. Near dawn Kaito gives up understanding and builds a triumphant mountain of bananas so he'll never be caught empty again, then springs up eager with a full crate when the doors ding — the running beat inverted — only for the customer to wave it off and ask for a coffee: the demand has simply stopped. Then Rin turns her phone around: she posted a video the moment they clocked in — 'best bananas at 3 A.M.' — that hit four hundred thousand viewers and sent the whole city's night-owls to the store. The cause he hunted for six hours was sitting beside him all night. One banana is left on the counter; Kaito reaches to finally hold the thing that ruined his shift, and Rin plucks it and bites it on camera. Kaito gets nothing, not even the banana. Dawn light fills the spotless store exactly as the night began — and a fresh delivery crate of bananas is set down as a new customer heads straight for it, Rin's phone already raised, already live.