Bullet Train

by Kotaro Isaka

  ‘You could be right. I wouldn’t guess that either.’

  ‘Right. So, there you go, he’ll never know the difference.’

  ‘But if for some reason he suspects something, he might get on the train.’

  ‘The train only stops at Omiya for like a minute. He won’t have time to make a leisurely inspection.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Tangerine tries to imagine what sort of orders he would give if he were Minegishi. ‘I bet the guy is supposed to stay on the platform, check up on us through the window, and if he thinks something’s up he’ll give Minegishi a call.’

  ‘Boss, your boy looked like shit. Passed out, must have got pretty drunk. Huh. And then what do you think’ll happen?’

  ‘Minegishi would work out that his son isn’t drunk and start to wonder if something funny was going on.’

  ‘You think he’d figure that out?’

  ‘Big shots like him have a sixth sense with these kinds of things. Then I guess he’d have a whole gang of his men waiting for us when we make the next stop at Sendai. They’d have no problem piling on the train and nabbing us.’

  ‘What if we steal the phone from the guy who’s supposed to call in to report? If he doesn’t get in touch with Minegishi then Minegishi won’t be angry with us. This kid isn’t dead until it gets out that he is.’

  ‘Someone like Minegishi will have more ways to get in touch with his men than just a phone.’

  ‘Like foot messengers?’ For some reason Lemon seems taken with the idea and repeats it a few times, yeah, he’ll have foot messengers, he’s gotta have those.

  ‘Like you know those digital billboards? Maybe his guy could write a message on one of those. It could say, Your son has been killed.’

  Lemon blinks several times at Tangerine. ‘You serious?’

  ‘I’m joking.’

  ‘Your jokes are dumb.’ But he seems pretty excited by the idea. ‘We should try that though – next time we finish a job let’s use the big screen at a baseball stadium to make our report to the client, Job Done, Great Success!’

  ‘I don’t see why we would ever do that.’

  ‘Because it’d be funny!’ Lemon grins like a little kid. Then he pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and starts to write on it with a pen that he’s produced from somewhere. ‘Here, take this.’ He holds it out to Tangerine, who takes it.

  It’s the supermarket giveaway ticket. ‘No, look at the back,’ says Lemon, so Tangerine flips it over to find a drawing of a train with a round face. It’s hard to say whether the picture is well done or not.

  ‘What the hell’s this?’

  ‘It’s Arthur. I mean, I wrote his name down too. A shy maroon-coloured train. Very diligent in his work, he’s proud of the fact that he’s never had a single accident. You know, zero accidents, perfect record. He’s trying hard to keep it up. I didn’t have a sticker of him, so I drew him for you.’

  ‘And why are you giving me this?’

  ‘Because he’s never had an accident! It’ll be like a good-luck charm.’

  Not even a child would put their faith in something so flimsy, but Tangerine is too exasperated to fight about it, so he just folds it in half and shoves it into his rear pocket.

  ‘Although, eventually Thomas tricks Arthur and he does have an accident.’

  ‘Then what good is he?’

  ‘But Thomas says something smart.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Records are made to be broken!’

  ‘Not a very nice thing to say to someone whose personal record you’ve just broken. Thomas sounds like a real jerk.’

  Nanao

  NANAO IS BACK IN THE first row of car four. According to what Maria told him, the owner of the bag is in car three. He didn’t like being so close, but he felt that anywhere on the train was too close, so the simplest thing to do would be to sit in his ticketed seat.

  He thinks about Lemon and Tangerine.

  Are they the ones looking for the bag? He has a feeling of his seat sinking into the floor and the ceiling collapsing down on him. The two of them are cold and ruthless, violent in both outlook and method. He remembers the portly go-between telling him that.

  He had considered moving the suitcase somewhere closer to his seat, like to the trash receptacle panel in the gangway between cars four and three, but decided against it. If he were to move it there was a good chance someone might spot him. It seemed best to keep it where it was. It’ll be all right, it’ll work out fine. He keeps telling himself this. No more unforeseen developments. Oh really? the other self inside him whispers tauntingly. Whenever you do anything, there are always twists and turns you never imagined, it says. Hasn’t it always been that way, your whole life? Ever since you were kidnapped on the way home from junior school.

  The snack trolley rolls by and he signals to the attendant. ‘I’d like an orange juice.’

  ‘Sold out. We usually have it, but just now we ran out.’

  Nanao is impassive. I should have guessed, he almost says to her. He’s used to this kind of low-grade bad luck. Every time he goes to buy shoes they’re always sold out of his size in the colour he likes. When he gets in line to pay, the next line over always moves much faster.

  When he kindly lets an elderly person get on a lift before him, he steps on and then the overweight alarm goes off. It’s part of his daily routine.

  He asks for a sparkling water and pays.

  ‘You’re always so jumpy and paranoid, it’s like you bring bad luck on yourself,’ Maria once said to him. ‘You need to relax. When you think you might get worked up, have some tea, take some deep breaths, practise tracing Chinese characters with your finger on your palm. Do something to calm yourself down.’

  ‘I’m not jumpy because I have a nervous nature or because I get stuck in my own head or anything. It’s purely from experience. I’ve had rotten luck my whole life,’ he replied.

  He opens the can of sparkling water and takes a gulp. The tingling bite shoots through his mouth, making him swallow quickly and sending the fluid down the wrong pipe.

  I hid the bag. We’ll be at Omiya soon. If I just keep calm it’ll be done soon, and basically according to plan, other than the fact that I’ll have got off at Omiya instead of Ueno. I’ll meet up with Maria, complain to her about how the job turned out not to be so simple, and that’ll be that.

  The more he tells himself this, the more anxious he becomes.

  Nanao reclines his seat and tries to relax. He takes a breath, opens his left hand and starts to practise tracing Chinese characters with his right finger. But it’s unexpectedly ticklish, and his hand reflexively jerks away.

  Which knocks his can of sparkling water over. The can rolls with a cheerful clatter across the floor to the other end of the car, propelled by the movement of the train. Nanao springs up and chases after it.

  He wasn’t so optimistic as to hope that the can would come to a stop, but even he is surprised by how it skitters erratically left and right. He scrambles around, bending over to grab at it, apologising to the other passengers, generally making a scene.

  It finally slows down, and Nanao swoops in and seizes it. Sighing, he starts to stand when he feels a sharp pain in his ribs. A groan escapes his lips. That’s it, they got me. Probably the owner of the bag. A cold sweat wells up, but then he hears an old woman’s voice, ‘Pardon me, young man,’ and he knows it’s not an assassin. Just a diminutive granny. It looks like she was trying to get up and thrust out her cane for support, not noticing Nanao crouched down in front of her and catching him in the ribs with the end. It must have hit a particularly vulnerable spot because it’s surprisingly painful.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she says, making a mighty effort to hoist herself into the aisle, paying very little attention to Nanao other than to make sure he knows she wants to get by. ‘If I could just pass.’ She hobbles off.

  He leans on a nearby seat for support, massaging his rib and trying to catch his breath.

  It hurts too
much for him to just push past it and he writhes uncomfortably. As he squirms he notices the man in the seat behind the one he’s holding. Same age as him, or maybe a little older, wearing a suit that makes Nanao think he’s a straight-laced company employee. He can imagine the guy being good at numbers, accounting or finance or something like that.

  ‘Are you all right?’ The man looks concerned.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Nanao tries to stand up straight to show that he is indeed fine, but a stabbing pain jolts him and he crumples over, crashing down into the seat next to the man. ‘I guess it hurts a little. I had a little collision with that woman. Was trying to get this can.’

  ‘That was bad luck.’

  ‘Well, I’m used to bad luck.’

  ‘You always have bad luck?’

  Nanao glances at the book the man’s holding. Must be a travel guide, since there are lots of pictures of hotels and food.

  The pain finally starts to subside and Nanao is about to get up when he has the urge to talk more. ‘For example,’ he says to the man, ‘when I was eight I was kidnapped.’

  The man raises his eyebrows in surprise at the sudden revelation, but he also smiles slightly. ‘Is your family rich?’

  ‘I wish.’ Nanao shakes his head. ‘We were about as far from rich as you can get. The only clothes my parents bought for me were my school uniform, and I was always jealous of the toys that my friends’ parents bought for them. I was so frustrated I would chew on my fingers. There was another kid in my class, a rich kid who had the exact opposite situation as me. He had all the toys, what seemed like an unlimited allowance, tons of manga and action figures. He was what you’d call a lucky guy. My lucky friend. One time my lucky friend said to me, your family’s poor, so you should try to be either a football star or a criminal.’

  ‘I see,’ the man murmurs. He looks like he’s really feeling sympathy for the young Nanao. ‘There are definitely kids for whom that’s true.’

  ‘I was one of them. Pretty limited range of options, become a pro footballer or choose a life of crime, but I was an obedient kid and I thought he was smart, so I did both.’

  ‘Both? Football, and …?’ The man raises his eyebrows again and cocks his head.

  ‘And crime. My first crime was stealing a football. I practised football and stealing all the time and got pretty good at both. It ended up shaping the course of my life, so in a way I owe that lucky friend a debt of gratitude.’ Nanao is surprised at himself for opening up to a stranger when he’s normally cagey, but there’s something about this man, kind-seeming but somehow inert, that makes him seem like he’d be a willing listener. ‘What was I going to tell you about?’ Nanao searches for a moment, then remembers. ‘That’s right, my kidnapping.’ Am I really going to talk about this?

  ‘Your lucky friend seems like a much more likely candidate for being kidnapped,’ says the man.

  ‘Yes!’ Nanao’s voice goes up in pitch. ‘That’s exactly right! They took me by accident. They thought I was him. I mean the kidnappers. I was walking home together with my rich friend. But I lost at rock-paper-scissors so I was carrying his bag for him. He had a different bag from the rest of us.’

  ‘A special bag?’

  ‘Yeah, something like that. Custom-made for rich folks.’ Nanao chuckles. ‘And I was carrying it, so they took me. What a mess. I kept telling them I wasn’t the rich one, they had the wrong kid, but they didn’t believe me.’

  ‘But eventually you were rescued?’

  ‘I escaped.’

  The kidnappers demanded a ransom from the parents of Nanao’s lucky friend, but the parents didn’t take it seriously. Which makes sense, because their son was safe at home with them. The kidnappers were furious, and started to treat Nanao more and more cruelly. He kept insisting he wasn’t the kid they were looking for, until they eventually listened to him. They called his parents, figuring that as long as they got at least some money it didn’t matter where it came from.

  ‘My father gave the kidnappers a piece of unassailable logic.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A man cannot give what he hasn’t got.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘That upset the kidnappers, they told my father he was a terrible parent, but I understood what he was saying. A man really can’t give what he hasn’t got. He may have wanted to save his son, but he didn’t have the money to do it. There was nothing he could do. I realised that I would have to save myself. So I escaped.’

  The compartments of the storage cabinet in his mind start swinging open, thwack, then closing again, thwack. The scenes from the past that he glimpses inside may have been covered in dust but they maintain a vividness, scenes from his childhood that nevertheless seem immediate and tangible. The carelessness of the kidnappers, his youthful energy and determination, the well-timed lowering of a railway crossing arm and arrival of a bus. He remembers feeling a wash of relief when the bus pulled away coupled with fear about not having any money to pay the fare. But he did it, he escaped all on his own, Nanao the eight-year-old.

  Thwack, thwack, more cabinet doors fly open inside his mind. By the time he warns himself that there may be memories he doesn’t want to dredge up, it’s too late, a door that should have stayed closed is already open. He catches sight of another little boy, eyes pleading, saying Help me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ The man in the suit picks up on the change in Nanao.

  ‘Just some trauma,’ Nanao answers, using the word Maria had teased him with. ‘There was another boy who was kidnapped, too. He didn’t get out though.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I never knew.’ It was true. All he knew was that the other boy was being held with him. ‘It was like some sort of storehouse for kidnapped children.’

  The unfamiliar boy with the buzz cut realised Nanao was going to escape on his own. ‘Help me,’ he had said. But Nanao didn’t help him.

  ‘Thought he might slow you down?’

  ‘I don’t remember why I didn’t do it. Might have just been an instinctive thing. I don’t even think I thought about it.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘No idea,’ Nanao answers honestly. ‘He became my personal trauma. I don’t really want to think about it.’ I wonder why I did, he muses, closing the cabinet of memory. If he could, he would lock it shut and throw away the key.

  ‘What about the kidnappers?’

  ‘They were never caught. My father never even filed a report with the police. Said it would be more trouble than it was worth, and I didn’t particularly care. I was just proud that I escaped. That was how I learned I could do things for myself … What made me tell you this story in the first place?’ He finds it truly bizarre that he felt moved to talk on and on like this. Like a robot that had its talk button pushed. ‘Oh, ever since I was kidnapped, my whole life’s just been one mishap after another. When I was taking my high school entrance exam, even though I studied so hard, the kid in the next seat kept sneezing, and I ended up failing.’

  ‘He disturbed your concentration?’

  ‘No, no. On one huge sneeze a huge gob of his snot or phlegm or whatever came flying at me and landed on my answer sheet. I freaked out and tried to wipe it off, which smeared all the answers I had worked so hard to fill in. Even my name was illegible.’

  Nanao’s family couldn’t afford to pay for his school so he needed to get a good enough score to win a scholarship, but thanks to some random kid’s runny nose his chances were ruined. Nanao’s parents never got too emotional about anything, though, so they weren’t particularly angry or distraught.

  ‘You really do have bad luck.’

  ‘Wash your car and it rains. Except for when you wash your car in the hope of bringing rain.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘It’s that Murphy’s Law they used to talk about on TV. Story of my life.’

  ‘Oh, right, Murphy’s Law. I remember when the book came out.’

  ‘If you ever see me in line f
or a cash register, go to the next line over. Whichever one I’m not in will move much faster.’

  ‘I’ll remember that.’

  Nanao’s phone buzzes. He checks the caller ID: Maria. He has a mixed feeling of relief and irritation at the interruption to this unusual conversation.

  ‘That hit I took in the ribs feels a little better now. Thanks for listening.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything special,’ the man says politely. There’s nothing the least perturbed about his expression, but it’s not quite relaxed either. It’s as if the plug was pulled on a key emotional circuit.

  ‘I think you might just be good at getting people to talk,’ Nanao opines. ‘Anyone ever tell you that?’

  ‘But –’ The man seems to think he’s being criticised. ‘But I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Kind of like a priest who gets you talking just by being there. You’re like a walking confessional booth, or maybe a walking priest.’

  ‘I think most priests walk. Anyway, I’m just a plain old instructor at an exam-prep school.’

  The words follow Nanao as he walks off into the gangway. He puts the phone to his ear and immediately hears Maria snap, ‘Took you long enough to answer.’

  ‘I was in the toilet,’ he says loudly.

  ‘Well, aren’t you just having a grand old time. Although with your luck the toilet was probably out of paper or you got piss all over your hands.’

  ‘I won’t deny it. What’s up?’

  He hears what he thinks is Maria’s annoyed breathing, though it could also be the thrum of the Shinkansen. He stands atop the coupling that connects the cars. The layered plates move like the joint of a living creature.

  ‘Oh, What’s up, he says. You seem awfully relaxed. The train’s almost at Omiya. Make sure you get off this time. What’d you do with the big bad Wolf’s body?’

  ‘Don’t remind me about him.’ His legs sway with the train but he manages to keep his balance.

  ‘Well, even if the body’s discovered, I don’t imagine anyone could connect his death with you.’

  Exactly, thinks Nanao. Nobody knows much about the Wolf, including his real name. He guesses the police will have a tough time even identifying the body.