Dead Hours — The Last Egg, Page 18

About this chapter

3 A.M. in the Dead Hours store: the oden pot has simmered down to almost nothing, and floating in the last of the broth is a single lonely boiled egg that has been in there since the shift began. Kaito, unable to let good food be binned on his watch, resolves that the egg WILL be sold — to a real person, not thrown away — before dawn. Rin starts filming 'The Last Egg.' All night Kaito lifts the ladle to eye level with the egg balanced on it and offers it — '...the egg?' — and is declined, three times over, the identical beat repeating. A ladder of regulars hands him contradictory, unverifiable egg-lore: the tracksuit regular swears the last egg soaks up the whole night's broth and is the prize of the pot; the drunk salaryman insists you never take the last egg, it's bad luck; the cheerful jogger says an egg simmered that long is inedible rubber; head office puts him on hold. Rin has one flicker of near-sincerity — that he doesn't really want to sell the egg, he just can't bear the night to have wasted anything — before raising the phone again. Near dawn an elderly customer finally says the magic words, 'I'll take the egg,' and Kaito's face inverts from resignation to hope — but when he plunges the ladle into the pot, there is no egg: it came apart hours ago from over-simmering and dissolved into the broth long before anyone ever wanted it. He had been offering an egg that no longer existed. The customer buys a coffee and leaves; 'The Last Egg' clears six hundred thousand views; Rin admits she would have bought it at three if he had not been holding out for a real customer. Kaito gets the correct answer — the egg was gone — and nothing else. The final panel mirrors page one in grey dawn light: the pot drained and refilled, the day clerk dropping one fresh new egg into clean broth, Rin's phone already up.