Chapter three

“…Where you headed to?...”

Dante was getting irritated by the significant lack of noise between him, Kat, and some mysterious man in an all black rider suit with a yellow cat helmet. Seriously, the helmet was bad enough. Earlier, he had left to the little boys’ bathroom only to find that Kat was already sitting with the rider. There was no way to make this work other than just sitting beside him, leaving the ryder smack dab in the middle of the two.

“Hey man,” he said, to initiate conversation. “Where you headed to?”

The rider didn’t answer. He just continued, “Seems to me like you broke your bike or something.”

Without a warning, the rider showed him a PDA and some notepad app saying [My bike’s fine but I’m in a very unlucky situation. I’m getting off at Shinjuku-ku.]

“The heck are you talking about?” he said. “There’s no Shinju-ma-whatever to where we’re going.”

The rider only shrugged and showed him the PDA again. [I’m not sure. This is my first time on the train.]

“So’s mine,” he said, crossing his arms. For some reason, talking to this guy was kind of soothing. “I never liked moving metal things… other than my trailer van. No one touches that babe, right Kat?”

Kat nodded slowly, not looking at the two. Something about her gesture seemed unnatural and stiff.

“You okay, Kat? The leg room on this thing’s fine, ya know.”

“Yes I am,” she turned slowly to the rider. “You can’t...talk?”

Dante frowned. “You don’t ask people those kinda stuff.”

The rider politely shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

[It’s alright.]

“Say, got a name, bub?” said Dante.

[You can call me Celty]

“Whoah!” Dante raised his arms up. “That’s a girl name. Now that you mention it, you do have them boobs.”

Kat snorted lightly. “Now, you don’t say that to girls, Dante.”

“What? Just because it’s there, doesn’t mean you can’t point it out.”

The rider typed something again. [You just don’t.]

Kat laughed and tried to hold it back on that one. She felt that having a painstakingly long train ride would be a bit more comfortable with Celty but something at the back of her head was nagging at her. Other than the promo rate, she felt like something else made this train ride special.