Free 1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Local by Ryohgo Narita Page B

disappear, so I’m going to see the conductor!”
    “Aah?”
    Saying something incomprehensible, Jacuzzi took off, heading for the back of the train.
    A moment later, Nice came running up.
    “Ah, excellent timing. Jacuzzi’s gone to the conductor’s room; I’m on my way to bring him back, and I’ll check on the freight room while I’m at it. Donny and Jack, you come with me. Nick, you take care of the dining car!”
    Even as they exchanged glances over her words, Donny and the man she’d called Jack ran after Nice.
    Meanwhile, the man called Nick had drastically misunderstood.
    “What was that, Miz Nice…? What am I supposed to do with the dining car?”
    Nice had meant
Keep an eye on people
, but Nick was used to robberies, and unfortunately, he came to an entirely different conclusion.
    “Oh. In other words, I bet she wants me to make sure the guys in the dining car stay quiet during the ‘job’… Yeah, that’s gotta be it. Well, sure. We can’t have them spotting us, kicking up a fuss and stopping the train.”
    While he was thinking, a guy in a white suit went into the dining car. Even as he hesitated, the number of people in the dining car might continue to grow.
    On that simple thought, Nick took out his trusty knife.
    Then, carefully, he began walking forward.
    Toward the target he’d been given: the dining car.

    “Weeeeell now, well now, well now, well now? Our show’s about to begin! And their show’s about to end!”
    In a second-class compartment, Ladd was hugging a pillow and rolling around on the floor.
    “Whoops! It’s the time we settled on already!
Man
, this is fun,
man
, am I happy! I’m so worked up I bet I won’t sleep tonight!”
    The man rolled around and around and around and around the small passenger compartment. The others watched him, Lua with a cold expression, his other friends cackling with laughter.
    “…If you’re looking forward to it so much, you should have gone yourself…,” Lua muttered in a scarcely audible voice, to which Ladd was quick to reply:
    “Weeeeell, there wasn’t any help for it, was there? We drew lots, and I lost! Aah, dammit, that rat Vicky, I’m jealous, jealous,
jealous
!”
    Ladd’s group’s first act had been to gain control over the passengers gathered in the dining car. They’d drawn lots to determine who would go, and as a result, the man named Vicky had been handed a gun.
    “Aaah, man oh man. There is no God in this world. I bet Vicky himself killed him a while back!”
    As he grumbled, Ladd began to do a headstand in his suit. Lua murmured again, quietly:
    “…You could go check on him, you know…”
    “That’s
it
!”
    Springing up from his upside-down position, he smacked Lua’s cheeks lightly and frolicked around.
    “You’re right! I can just go look! I’m an idiot! I don’t have to wait around in the room! Since I lost the draw, I thought I’d just have to sit on my hands here! Great, I’ll get right over there, then.”
    After yowling some terribly self-centered things, Ladd leaped right out into the corridor…
    …where he crashed into somebody.
    “Whoa, watch where you’re going, you little bra—”
    As he was on the point of bawling him out, Ladd stopped.
    “Aaaaah, aah, I-I-I’m sorry! Excuse me! The train’s in trouble! S-s-so, um, I have to hurry and get to the conductors’ room…um… A-a-a-anyway, I’m sorry!”
    The young man dashed off toward the rear of the train.
    “That guy… Wasn’t that…?”
    There was no way he could have mistaken that tattoo on his face. It was the kid from the wanted poster his uncle had handed around a few days earlier.
    “Hmm? What’s that about? Hey! Lua!”
    Sticking his head into the passenger compartment, he recruited his beloved for a small job.
    “Could you take somebody and go see what’s up in the conductors’ room for a sec? If a kid with a tattooed face is in there, grab him for me.”
    Lua nodded silently, then took one of their companions and