9:58 A.M.

9:58 A.M.

 

“Hunh? Oh…”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I turned around, I saw the girl I’d laughed at standing there, looking desperate. Apparently she didn’t even realize it was me.

“Um, did you see someone in a black hat go this way?” she asked.

“N-no. Shiro, did you?”

Shiro looked confused. “I didn’t, but…a black hat? Like…” he muttered.

But the second he said he didn’t, the girl was gone, pushing her way through the crowd.

“What the heck?” I said, baffled.

“………”

Shiro was lost in thought. “No, it couldn’t be… but…”

He seemed like he had an idea, so I asked, but he just shook his head.

“Oh, no…never mind.”

Given his reasons for being here, I didn’t feel comfortable digging further, so I just let it drop.

The Erik Satie playing over the speakers cut off, replaced abruptly with a much more upbeat number.

Dahhdadadan, dan da-dan! Funky rock with a catchy beat to it. I’d heard it before. This was Led Zeppelin’s “Custard Pie”. Wasn’t it mostly lifted from earlier songs, yet presented as original work? Half-plagiarized? Kind of a hacky song.

“Totally wrong for this place…!” I said, shaking my head at the music programmer’s taste.

The crowd around us paused, expecting some sort of announcement to follow the sudden change in music. A silence fell. I heard a mother nearby saying, “Makoto-kun, shush.”

And—an instant later, every single source of light in the building cut out, plunging us into darkness.