Bullet train

Nanao can't escape this thought: if it happened once, it can happen again, and if it happened twice, it can happen three times, and if three times, then four, so we might as well say that if something happens once, it'll keep happening forever. Like a domino effect.

Five years ago, on his first job, things got way hairier than he expected, and he had mused to himself, If this happened once, it could happen again. There must have been some kind of binding power in his idle thought, because his second job was a disaster too, and his third. Always a total mess.

'You're overthinking it,' Maria had said on multiple occasions. Nanao gets his jobs from Maria. She describes herself as basically just an agent, but Nanao doesn't think that's all there is to Maria. Words floated through his mind like epigrams, I prepare the food and you eat of it, You command and I obey. Once he asked, 'Maria, why don't you do any jobs?'


'I've got a job.'

'I mean a job. You know, like in the field. That kind of job.'

Translated from Japanese by Sam Malissa