Dead Hours — Say It, Page 5
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Three panels. The tracksuit regular — tall, shaved head, grey zip-up tracksuit, holding a clear plastic bag of empty cans — delivers his verdict while Kaito leans in earnestly. Kaito (name tag KAITO) jots it on a blank pad; Rin (name tag RIN) watches, bored. KAITO: You. Her. Verdict? TRACKSUIT REGULAR: Nah. You just top up her hot water. That's not love, that's plumbing. KAITO: See. Plumbing. Objective. RIN: one guy with cans.
Image description
The tracksuit regular with a bag of cans gives his verdict: it's not love, it's plumbing. Kaito takes notes; Rin looks on.
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.