Dead Hours — The 3:12, Page 7
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 7 of The 3:12 is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Panel 1: Kaito at the front glass again, the same framing as before, hand on the window, the kerb still empty. Kaito: ...not tonight. Panel 2: Rin at the counter is caught also glancing at the front window, then snaps her eyes back to her phone, flatly defensive. Rin: I'm looking at the rain.
Image description
Two panels: Kaito again at the window saying 'not tonight'; Rin at the counter is caught glancing at the window too and claims she's just looking at the rain.
About this chapter
The night after Kaito turned down the empty-bus ride, the 3:12 bus doesn't stop and the kerb outside stays dark. Convinced he has broken something, Kaito sets out to reconstruct exactly how his nightly ritual with Amano Yuki, the night-bus driver, began — so he can locate the precise moment he ruined it. Between checking the empty window, he replays it in three memories: the first 3:12, when a woman in a transit uniform refilled her dented steel thermos from the free hot water and bought nothing; the long run of nights he held item after item across the counter — "On the house?" — and got the same small headshake every time; and the night he stopped offering, brewed a pot for himself, and she finally asked for one cup, paid in exact coins, and said "Same time tomorrow" on her way out. The store's night regulars deliver flatly contradictory, unverifiable verdicts on whether a refusal can ever be taken back, and none of them agree. Rin films the spiral while quietly checking the kerb herself. Near dawn the bus finally stops — and Yuki, refilling her thermos, explains it was only roadworks and a detour; she never took his "I couldn't" as anything more than a man who couldn't. The entire six-hour catastrophe happened only inside Kaito's head. She says "Same time tomorrow," drives off into the greying daylight, and Kaito is left with the correct answer and nothing else.