The train was due in three minutes. Nikola slowly walked to the front end of the platform just to have something to do. It wasn't worth it to take out a gift he had received from a friend at the office that day to study it in further detail, but still plenty of time for him to get bored.
He caught a short glimpse into a family life while he was standing there waiting, a mother and her little daughter playing some sort of a word game he had never come across before. He found himself watching with unexpected interest.
The train arrived, and for reasons Nikola didn't fully realise, he requested a seat opposite the charming mother and child. They acknowledged him with shiny smiles, and continued in their conversation. He could tell by their different accents that they were originally English, and suspected they came to the States after the war because there was nothing left for them at home. But the girl must have been very young when they had arrived, since her accent was leaning more towards the local one.
He remembered the book in his suitcase and took it out for further study. It was full of Japanese number puzzles he had yet been unfamiliar with, but the rules seemed straightforward enough, so he tried his luck right away.
He solved the first Sudoku, one from the section of the easiest one, in about a minute, which was quite disappointing. He flipped the pages to find the most difficult level, filled in a few more tables within two minutes and completely lost interest in this pastime.
"Here," he offered the book to the little girl opposite, "you try it."
The girl looked at her mother for approval, and when she got it, she accepted the sudden gift and stared at the puzzles, not sure what to do with them.
"What do you do with these?" she turned to Nikola for advice, and he gladly showed her, curious to see how she would do. She seemed intelligent enough and she looked like a child already in her school years.
He couldn't help watching her as she found the easiest puzzles and studied them intently to guess the missing numbers. After a while he realised that her mother was doing exactly the same thing and met her eyes and they smiled at each other.
"I'm Alice," she offered in an easy-going manner. "This is my daughter Rowena."
"I'm Nikola," he introduced himself as well. Rowena looked up from her puzzle and ventured: "Can I call you Nik?"
"Sure," Nikola smiled at her boldness in dealing with strangers. He could be charming, if he wanted to, and he did want to now. He found Alice and her daughter a very pleasant company.
He chatted with Alice for another quarter of an hour or so, during which time he found out that she came from a small English town called Letchworth, where she had worked in the Spirella Company. Her husband was an RAF pilot and didn't make it through the war. After it was all over, Alice had decided to leave her former nest of happiness behind and make a fresh start somewhere else.
She was just about to ask Nikola about his experience in the war when Rowena announced: "Done!" and shoved the book to Nikola's face proudly. He took the book from her hands carefully and looked at the result. There were no mistakes, but he hadn't even expected any. She was good, the little one.
"You're very clever," he gave her the praise she deserved, and she beamed at him and then at Alice.
"Can I try a more difficult one?" she asked, and received the book back immediately.
"Sure, it's yours," he said. "You can have all of them."
"Thank you, Nik," she chimed, and Alice echoed the words, obviously pleased that someone was treating her daughter as a father might, even if it was only for a short train ride.
"What do you do for a living, Nik?" Rowena inquired shamelessly. Having just been assured that the book was hers for the keeping, she felt in no hurry to solve all the puzzles she could until it was time to get off the train.
"I'm a scientist," he chose to say instead of inventor. "I work with electronics."
"You must be very clever, too, then," Rowena concluded matter-of-factly, and Nikola exchanged another smile with Alice; pleasantly surprised and amused at the same time. He loved the kid.
His smile abruptly froze on his lips when a terrifying sound of crashing metal tore through the train, and the carriage, derailed with massive momentum, was thrust off the elevated tracks, dragging the rest of the train down with it.
Instinctively, Nikola reached for his companions, trying to shield them from impact.
A few seconds of eerie silence, then nothing.