Dead Hours — The Fly, Page 4
By Suha · Published
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Transcript
Four panels. First, Rin holds her phone toward the camera, speaking deadpan. RIN: Six years, no customers on time. One fly, instant purpose. Second, the sliding doors open and the tracksuit regular walks in — tall, shaved head, grey zip-up tracksuit, a clear plastic bag of empty cans in his hand. Third, the tracksuit regular mimes lowering a cup over something. Kaito listens intently at the counter. REGULAR: Cup over it. Slide a card under. Easy. Fourth, Kaito grips a blank plastic cup in one hand and a flat card in the other, nodding seriously, as Rin films. KAITO: Cup. Card. Understood. RIN: He has a plan now. Terrible.
Image description
Rin talks to her phone; the tall shaved-head tracksuit regular enters with a bag of cans and mimes a cup, and Kaito takes up a cup and card.
About this chapter
3 A.M. and the Dead Hours store is spotless — until Kaito spots a single housefly. He decides on the spot that it must be gone by morning, alive: no death on the record on his shift. Rin starts filming "Man vs Fly." The night's regulars each hand him a different, confidently useless folk method — trap it under a cup and a card, approach from behind because flies supposedly can't fly backwards, just wait because it'll die within a day anyway, clap above it because they jump upward to take off, or open a window — and none of them agree. Three times Kaito freezes mid-air, whispers "There," and swipes at nothing. Rin, in a rare unguarded moment, quietly slides the door open a hand's width to let it out, then denies doing it. At last Kaito clamps a cup over the fly in triumph — and lifts it to find nothing underneath; the fly was sitting on the outside of the cup the whole time. At dawn the delivery doors open and the fly drifts out on its own, entirely indifferent to six hours of war — and a second fly drifts in as it goes. Kaito gets his answer and nothing else; Rin got her whole video. The final panel mirrors page one from the same angle, in grey dawn light, the new fly circling under the ceiling speaker.