Dead Hours — Say It, Page 17
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Two panels in pale dawn light, the rain stopped. Kaito (name tag KAITO) stands facing the now-empty doorway and finally says the rest of it, to no one. Beside him, Rin (name tag RIN) holds her phone low at her side, its screen dark, unusually sincere. KAITO: ...I'd have ridden the whole loop. RIN: ...not posting this one.
Image description
Two panels at dawn: Kaito faces the empty doorway and says he'd have ridden the whole loop; Rin, phone dark at her side, says she's not posting this one.
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.