The Three O'clock Passenger

Ch. 2: A Fashionable Stranger

"Jotaro's been over there for a while..." Koichi said quietly. This whole thing was taking much longer than any of the three had expected. They all figured the train would show up, Jotaro would grab the guy, introductions would be hurried through, and then they could all go enjoy the rest of their weekend without having to deal with Jotaro's personal affairs. Yet, after minutes piled up on each other and they had been standing there for more than half an hour since they arrived, the schoolboys became restless.

For the first time since arriving at the station, all three of them were silent for longer than five minutes. Koichi and Josuke watched Jotaro while Okuyasu busied himself by squatting down and tracing his fingers along the dirty brick ground. He used his index finger to draw swirls and dots on a particularly dirty section of the floor where a thin layer of the grit produced by poor janitorial work was thick enough to work as a canvas to draw on.

Suddenly, Josuke broke the silence. "Is it just me, or does he look a little nervous?"

"It's just you, bro," Okuyasu didn't even look up at Jotaro. "That guy's got no emotions. He's like a boulder--like Angelo!" Okuyasu didn't seem to realize that he had contradicted himself.

"Whatever," Josuke absently ran a hand over his hair. Suddenly, Jotaro's head turned and their eyes locked for a split second. Josuke watched as he then stepped away from the wall and walked out of the train station with the throng of departing passengers. "H-hey, where's he going?"

Okuyasu's attention left the dust smiley-face he had drawn on the ground and followed Josuke's gaze to see a glimpse of a white jacket before it disappeared around the corner. He jumped to his feet. "He's leaving us!"

"No, he isn't," Koichi said. "I'm sure he'll come back."

"But, what if he doesn't?" Okuyasu said. "Then we'd gotta wait even longer! We'll be stuck here for forever!"

"Nah, we could just leave and he'd never known 'cause he abandoned us for good."

"I don't know how much of a good idea that would be, Josuke," Koichi said.

"Sounds fine to me!"

"Yeah," Okuyasu said. "If Jotaro was gone for good, then it wouldn't matter if we went home!" His face suddenly brightened. "And then, if we left, we could play F-Mega at Josuke's house or eat some food somewhere or go pet your dog, Koichi!"

Koichi didn't even consider what Okuyasu was saying. He was used to convincing the two to be reasonable. "But what if Jotaro did come back? And he saw that we were gone?" No one said anything. Koichi continued. "He said not to leave until he came back for us, right? So leaving would go against the only direction he gave us! What do you think would happen then?"

Again, they were all silent, the station sounds filling the space between the trio as Koichi's argument sunk in. Okuyasu's face shifted with pouty apprehension. Josuke bit his bottom lip and looked away.

"I-I think he'd be kinda angry..." Okuyasu mumbled, suddenly very interested in the dirty drawings at his feet.

"Not kinda," Koichi said. "Very, very angry." Koichi's words left an imprint on them. It wasn't often when Jotaro got angry, but when he did, his wrath could make even the strongest people rethink every decision of their life that led up to that moment. Koichi could tell just by Josuke and Okuyasu's expressions that they too were thinking about the times he had cracked down on them and others. The memories were ones none of them would ever forget and ones they never wanted to relive.

"Maybe we should stay here, Josuke..." Okuyasu mumbled.

Josuke rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever... B-but if he doesn't come back in, like, twenty minutes or something, I'm just gonna leave!"