“Um… Excuse me.” Asking permission anyway, Seiji was about to pull out a random chair when Mao spoke up.
“If you don’t mind, could I sit across from you, Mr. Saijou? I don’t know dining etiquette at all, so if you’re all right with it, I’d like to imitate you.”
That was the reason she gave, anyway. But she’d gone red all the way to her ears… Hmm.
“I think you may have a shot with her,” Seiji whispered to Shiroshi, grinning.
“Heh-heh-heh. I wonder. Though I’ve resolved not to play around until I’m a bit older.”
“Meaning you do intend to play around.”
“……”
“……”
“Well, why don’t we sit down? You take the window seat, Seiji, and Miss Unoki and I will sit on the aisle.”
He dodged!
Shiroshi had immediately opted to run, but just as Seiji was about to launch a follow-up attack, someone spoke to them out of nowhere.
“Are you two friends with that Takamura guy?”
It was Tosu.
“Wh-what makes you think that?” Seiji asked, flustered.
“No reason. I just wondered.” The young guy promptly turned away. It made zero sense.
What the heck…? No, never mind that; his voice is more mature than I expected.
Seiji had thought the guy was in college, but he might be Seiji’s own age—or maybe even older.
Then he heard Mao’s excited voice again; she was taking photos with her phone. “Ooh, the tables over there are amazing, too. All those flowers…! It looks like they’re going to spill onto the floor!”
When Seiji looked, he saw two small tables on the other side of the aisle. The one toward the front of the train held an arrangement of white lilies, while the other displayed a rack stocked with bottles of red wine.
“My, is that a record player?” asked Shiroshi.
“Oh, hey, yeah.” On closer inspection, there was an acrylic case in the middle of the lilies; a black record spun inside it. The needle that traced the record’s grooves was playing subdued music. Something classical.
“Hmph! Funeral flowers. Lousy taste,” someone spat.
Startled, Seiji turned. The azukiarai—or rather, the scowling man who seemed like a professor—was right behind him. His name badge read Fumitake Ishizuka.
Hm, yes, he had the “patently sarcastic geezer” persona nailed. In suspense dramas, his type tended to get impulsively bludgeoned with nearby blunt instruments.
Still, he’s right…white and black… That thought sent a chill down Seiji’s spine. The colors of mourning flowers and a coffin.
Once dinner began, it proved to be a full-course French meal.
Seiji had a few coughing fits from time to time, but he wasn’t too nervous to eat. In his role as crew member, Takamura waited on them, and every dish was exquisite. If Seiji had gnawed on the plates, he suspected they would’ve been tasty, too.
However…
“Come to think of it, is it okay to just eat the food?” he asked, suddenly realizing it might not be.
“…It is very like you to think of that only after you’ve polished off the appetizer, Seiji.” Shiroshi shot him a tepid look.
S-sorry about that.
“Since the agreement is that we are not allowed to harm each other directly, I don’t think they’ll poison us. However, we can’t be certain about the other passengers.”
Wh-what?!
Seiji’s trepidation aside, dinner continued without a hitch.
Thank goodness. It looks as if there won’t be any trouble.
Cups of after-dinner coffee were sitting on the tables, sending up pale wisps of steam, and various circles of small talk had formed. Tosu was still one with his earbuds, but Shiroshi and Mao had been having fun talking about their pets for the past few minutes.
…Not that Seiji had the foggiest idea what kind of pet Shiroshi had.
“Ah-ha-ha! Oh, I know. Even when you know something’s bad for them, it’s so hard to say no when they beg.”
“Yes, I understand that it’s poison, but I just can’t help it. I’d like to reduce the amount, at least…”
Mao probably meant dog treats, while Shiroshi was referring to a certain someone’s cigarette habit. They were discussing entirely different things, but for some reason, the two ideas meshed perfectly. How terrifying.
Mao had set her phone down on the table, and there was a photo on its screen.
It must have been taken at night: A Shiba Inu was curled up on a dog bed, giving a humongous yawn in front of a perfectly black window. There was a metal water dish near the edge of the picture, and although the reflected flash made it hard to read, Seiji could just make out the name Dumpling written on it in permanent marker.
Yes, name and nature were in agreement here: That dog was in definite need of a diet.
“Don’t you have any photos of yours, Mr. Shiroshi?”
“Hm, no. I’m afraid I don’t have a single one yet. Shall I try to get a picture now?”
Swiftly detecting danger, Seiji fled under the table. But…
“Ngh, koff, kaff……gah!”
…a bout of coughing made him whack his head solidly against the table’s underside, and the impact knocked two stick-shaped sugar packets off the top. His and Tosu’s. Hastily retrieving them, Seiji crawled out from under the table. “I-I’m sorry! I can have Takamura get you a new one.”
“Nah, that one’s fine,” Tosu said easily. Accepting the packet from Seiji, he promptly emptied it into his coffee. He was surprisingly broad-minded.
“U-um, do you want this one?”
When Seiji looked over, the makuragaeshi was offering him a sugar packet. No, it was the middle-aged woman in the business suit. Her name badge read Shiori Nomura.
“I’m not fond of sweet coffee, so please use it if you’d like.”
“Oh… I actually take my coffee black, too.”
“Huh? Oh, I-I’m sorry; that was pushy of me, wasn’t it?”
“N-no, um, I’m the one who should be, uh…”
For some reason, the conversation had turned into an apology battle.
It seemed this woman had the same sort of communication issues Seiji did. Feeling as if he’d spotted another F student at the makeup test site, he was mentally cheering her on when an angry yell from behind interrupted him.
“I told you, shut off that dreary music!”
Seiji turned around hastily. It was Ishizuka. He’d flagged down Takamura and was criticizing—or rather, filing a complaint.
He seems like the type you don’t want to mess with.
The man’s face was twisted irascibly, and one of his cheeks was twitching. His suit looked expensive at first glance, but it didn’t seem to have been properly cared for; it was stained here and there.
Come to think of it—he’d had an additional glass of whiskey in the lounge car, hadn’t he? The only one in the group. His voice was slightly hoarse from overindulging, too. There was a good possibility that he was a heavy drinker.
“I’m very sorry. I was instructed to play this album,” Takamura replied.
“Hmph. That’s the sort of by-the-book customer service you’d get at a family restaurant. And they call this a luxury hotel on wheels! Talk about false advertising.”
Just as Ishizuka was launching into a drunken rant, someone smoothly cut in.
“Now, now. Just let it be. Dinner’s almost over anyway.”
It was the pleasant young man who’d been the last to show up in the lounge car, the one who had appeared as an aburabouzu. His name badge read Kenji Godou.
“Still, since it’s an analog record, it’s funny that the music never trails off. When the final piece plays, it starts over at the beginning. The player must have a repeat function.”
“Ha! So you’re an expert, huh? Nobody cares. I’m saying the music ticks me off, that’s all.”
…What’s this?
The sight of Godou’s face gave Seiji an abrupt feeling of déjà vu. He blinked a few times.
He seems familiar… But where had he seen him before?
Seiji’s circle of associates was about as wide as that of a tadpole in a canal. He really only knew people from school and his various part-time jobs, but…
“Oh.”
That’s right; I remember. He was the manager at one of Seiji’s previous jobs. Yeah, and his name had been…
“Seiji Goshima!”
“Huh?”
“Um, didn’t you manage a casino bar called Jack in Ikebukuro, about three years ago? I worked there for—”
At that point, a sudden realization hit him. Wait, is this maybe…?
Was it the sort of memory it would have been safer to forget?
Three years ago…
Seiji had been slurping a bowl of plain udon noodles in the university cafeteria when a tough-looking upperclassman had come up to him out of nowhere.
“Hey, I hear you’re looking for part-time work,” he’d said, and had marched him to a shady casino bar.