Dead Hours — Say It, Page 12
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Four panels introducing Amano Yuki, the night-bus driver — dark navy transit jacket with rolled sleeves, short black hair tucked behind her ears, a dented steel thermos, white gloves in her chest pocket, a whistle on a lanyard. She comes in to refill her thermos with free hot water. Rin (name tag RIN) narrates her routine for the camera. Yuki eyes Kaito (name tag KAITO), who looks worn out. YUKI: Hot water's still free? YUKI: Thirteen minutes till my loop. Better make it count. RIN: the bus lady. shows up 3:12, gone by 3:31. YUKI: You look worse than usual. Busy night? KAITO: ...define busy.
Image description
Four panels: Yuki the bus driver enters with her thermos, mentions her thirteen-minute layover; Rin explains who she is; Yuki teases Kaito.
About this chapter
3-something A.M. A drunk regular announces to the whole store that Kaito and Amano Yuki — the night-bus driver who stops in on her 3:12 layover — are obviously in love. Unable to make himself deny a thing that happens to be true, Kaito treats the claim as a factual error to be corrected: he collects contradictory, unverifiable verdicts from the night regulars (a tracksuit can-collector, a nurse, a student, an old man) and even phones head office out of pure displacement, three times opening his mouth to deny it and three times failing. When Yuki arrives and is told what was said, she answers flatly — "Yes. Obviously. So?" — and Kaito finally agrees out loud. They stand there having admitted it with nothing whatsoever to do about it, because her layover is thirteen minutes and then she has to go drive a bus. She leaves at 3:31. At dawn Kaito says the rest of it to an empty doorway, and Rin — who filmed the whole confession — quietly decides not to post it. A self-contained deadpan Dead Hours comedy: Kaito gets the correct answer and nothing else.