View source for Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 4

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It was 5:45 PM.

Takamura stepped onto his home station’s platform with his uniform jacket draped over his arm.

He had just barely made it onto the train home, so he had boarded a car in the middle.

His home station was a small one with just the one ticket gate toward the front end of the train, so he could not leave the station right away unless he boarded the front car.

When he disembarked with his headphones in his ears, he found himself at the back of the line to leave the station.

He looked up in the sky after seeing the students in school uniforms, office workers in suits, and middle-aged women with plastic shopping bags clogging up the ticket gate.

The western sky had grown a dark blue and the rest of the sky was already black.

There were stars in the sky. He lived in an area where the stars were visible. He did not see that as living out in the sticks. He thought it was a good thing.

But he was not in the mood for stargazing right now. The piano music from his headphones sounded terribly distant.

His failure in the arcade was sticking with him.

So was his memory of running away.

He sighed and spoke aloud.

“I can’t believe this.”

Some space opened up in front of him, so he walked toward the ticket gate. He did not have a special case for his train pass. He simply kept it in his wallet and that was in his back pocket, not the pocket of the jacket over his arm.

He weakly pulled out his wallet and showed his pass to the worker at the ticket gate.

Once through there, he reached a T-intersection with railroad crossings on either side. There was a bicycle parking area past those.

He always used the left one because it was a larger and there was a convenient fence he could chain lock his mountain bike to.

After descending the short stairway from the ticket gate, he started to cross the left railroad crossing.

A girl on a bicycle rode by in front of him.

Her bike had straight handlebars, which seemed courageous for a girl.

He looked at her.

A lot of things crossing his path today had left him speechless.

When something did leave his mouth, it was his nickname for the girl.

“Iwa.”

It was Iwata who passed by in front of him.