Bullet Train

by Kotaro Isaka

  ‘Ye-e-es, of course,’ Tangerine replies.

  ‘Then it’ll all be over quickly. All you have to do is show my son and the suitcase and you can get back on.’

  ‘Your son who’s still breathing, sir, understood.’

  After the automated station announcement, the conductor’s voice sounds over the PA, informing the passengers that they’d be at Sendai momentarily.

  ‘You stopped talking,’ Minegishi says at the other end of the line. ‘What happened?’

  ‘The station announcement was too loud. We’re pulling into Sendai.’

  ‘You’re in car number three, is that right? That’s where my men are waiting. When the train gets to Sendai you get off, is that clear?’

  ‘Oh, your son, right now he’s in the toilet.’ Tangerine speaks quickly without thinking, then winces. What a limp excuse. You’re smarter than that.

  ‘Once again, your instructions are to get off from car three and show the suitcase and my son to my men. That’s all.’

  ‘Actually, we had a disagreement with one of the conductors,’ Tangerine says hastily, ‘and we’ve moved to car nine. We won’t make it to car three in time.’

  ‘Then go to car six. It’s right between nine and three. You can make that in time, right? I’ll have my men wait outside six. Get off from car six. With my son.’

  ‘Just out of sheer curiosity, sir,’ Tangerine says, trying to make his voice casual, ‘what happens if your men think there’s something off about us? I don’t imagine they’ll just start shooting right away …?’

  ‘Is everything okay with my son and the suitcase? If it is, then you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘But your men might misunderstand. If we get into an argument and things get sour there on the train platform, it’ll be a big headache.’

  ‘For who?’

  Tangerine doesn’t know how best to answer. He knows he can’t exactly make a case for the innocent bystanders. ‘There are so many passengers on the train, they might panic if there’s gunfire.’

  ‘There aren’t that many people on board,’ Minegishi says flatly.

  ‘Actually, sir, it’s basically full.’ Tangerine lies without hesitation. He doesn’t think there’s any way Minegishi could now how many people are on the train.

  ‘It’s not full. I locked down most of the seats.’

  ‘You locked …?’

  ‘Once I knew which train you would be on with my son I bought all the available seats.’

  ‘All of them?’ Tangerine’s voice jumps at the unexpected news. Then his normal scepticism creeps back in. It isn’t impossible, but why would he need to do that?

  ‘I wanted to remove as many variables as I could. Reduce my risk. Who knows what could happen on the Shinkansen. The fewer passengers there are the easier it is for you two to keep my son safe. Am I wrong?’

  Dead wrong. As dead as your son, who got it right away. Tangerine fights down the urge to tell Minegishi. And among the few people on the train, several are professionals. Minegishi’s buyout strategy didn’t seem to do his son any good at all.

  ‘How much does something like that cost?’

  ‘Not too much. Each car seats a hundred, so that’s less than a thousand tickets.’

  Tangerine scowls. It isn’t surprising that Minegishi’s financial standards are on a different scale than his – most people who hire him and Lemon live on a different scale – but the way he’s using his money here seems silly. What actual good did it do? And did he ever consider that the conductors might think it strange that all the seats are purchased but so few people are actually on the train?

  A little girl’s peals of laughter can be heard on the phone. Minegishi’s daughter, most likely. The dissonance between the domestic scene he’s picturing and the fatal events aboard the Shinkansen doesn’t sit right with Tangerine. How can Minegishi be spending leisure time with his daughter while he knows his son and heir is out there in danger? The only explanation is that his values are completely different from the average person, that his psychological wiring is twisted.

  ‘Regardless, you told me that the train is full of people, which is a lie. That train’s not full. If I were you I’d quit it with the lies and exaggerations. I’ll always catch you. And when I do that’ll just make it worse for you. But hey, I want you to relax. As long as you don’t cause any trouble in Sendai, everything will be just fine.’

  The line goes dead.

  The Shinkansen is starting to drop speed, leaning into a gentle curve.

  No time to think. Tangerine passes through car nine and into eight.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asks Nanao uncertainly, following behind, but Tangerine doesn’t answer. He just stalks on, occasionally laying a hand on a headrest for support, careful to keep his balance against the shuddering of the slowing train.

  A handful of passengers are taking bags off the overhead rack, evidently planning to get off at Sendai. As Tangerine approaches the far door a kid comes through it and steps towards him. Out of my way, Tangerine tries to slip past, but the kid addresses him. ‘You’re Mr Tangerine, right? Mr Lemon was looking for you.’

  Oh, right. He had forgotten all about Lemon. But there’s no time now. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He said he had to take care of something and went towards the back of the train.’

  Tangerine takes a proper look at the kid. Shiny hair with no parting, large eyes like a cat’s, elegant nose. Another rich kid.

  No time. Tangerine steps through the door into the gangway. He can feel that the conductor has engaged the brakes.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing? Where are you going? What’s your plan?’ Nanao won’t shut up.

  A group of passengers stands in the gangway, waiting to get off. They shoot dubious looks at Tangerine and the other two as they come rushing in.

  Tangerine takes one look at the luggage rack and grabs the first black suitcase he sees, a sturdy oversized piece, much bigger than the one that he and Lemon had.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ Nanao wants to know.

  Stepping around the people waiting, Tangerine enters car seven. He blows past the passengers filing up the aisle to exit the train, who all look at him with annoyance.

  He enters the next gangway. There’s a line of people ready to get off. This is where he’s supposed to be, between cars seven and six. He stands at a slight remove from the line. Nanao comes up beside him. The kid is close behind.

  ‘Listen up.’ He turns to Nanao. ‘We need to get off for a minute at Sendai.’

  ‘Is that what Minegishi said?’

  ‘His men are waiting at the station. I need to go out to the platform with his son and his suitcase. His men will check that I have those two things.’

  ‘This,’ Nanao points, ‘is a different suitcase.’

  ‘That’s right. And you’re not Minegishi’s son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The only thing we can do is try to lie our way out of this. Both the suitcase and his son are fakes. You just keep quiet, you hear me, just stand there.’

  Nanao is already just standing there, unable to process what Tangerine’s telling him.

  ‘Me?’

  The Shinkansen slowing down tips them all forward, then backwards. Tangerine can’t keep his footing with his legs alone and he holds on to the wall for support.

  ‘You pretend you’re Minegishi’s son, got it?’

  The train keeps dropping speed, pulling into Sendai Station. ‘But –Nanao starts looking around nervously. ‘What should I –’

  ‘Just come with me.’

  The kid pipes up. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you just ignored your instructions? If you don’t get off, those men won’t be able to tell what’s going on with you, right? And as long as they don’t know what the situation is I don’t think they’d make any moves. You just play dumb and stay on the train until it leaves.’

  Is that something a kid would say? Tangerine doesn’t like it. The idea makes sense, bu
t he doesn’t want to change his plan at this point. ‘If we don’t get off, those men will get on. A whole lot of them. We don’t want that to happen.’

  The door opens. The line of passengers starts to file out of the train. Tangerine says to Nanao, ‘Let’s go.’

  Nanao

  THE DEPARTURE ANNOUNCEMENT ECHOES THROUGH Sendai Station and people with luggage start to board the Shinkansen. Nanao registers their movements out of the corner of his eye as he stands next to Tangerine on the platform. In front of them are three men in suits. Two of us, three of them, a voice cries inside of him. A couple of metres away is a tall man with a shaved head, and beyond him there are two muscular dudes who look like fighters. They’re all standing there looking at him and Tangerine.

  ‘This is like a football penalty kick. A line of guys forming a wall.’ Tangerine is completely calm. Or at least he looks that way. His words are measured and his breath even.

  ‘You must be Tangerine,’ says the middle suit. His eyebrows are plucked bald and his eyes are beady. ‘Heard a lot about you and your partner. We got an urgent call from Mr Minegishi, said we had to come check you out.’

  Despite what the suit is saying, his tone is polite.

  Nanao looks up slightly and notices a conductor standing further back on the platform. The man is clearly looking their way questioningly, which makes sense to Nanao – it’s not a typical gathering of men. Certainly not lovers parting ways, and it doesn’t have the feel of seeing off friends. But the conductor somehow seems to sense that it’s safest for him to keep his distance.

  Fooling Minegishi’s men with the suitcase should be fairly simple. Tangerine just has to insist that it’s the right one and they’ll probably believe him. The problem is me, thinks Nanao, lowering his face, staring at the ground in front of his shoes. Pretend you’re Minegishi’s son, Tangerine said, but Nanao has no idea how to do that. How could he?

  ‘Do you mind opening the bag?’

  ‘It won’t open,’ replies Tangerine. ‘We don’t know how to open it. Do you guys know what’s inside? I should ask you to open it for me.’

  The suit with no eyebrows says nothing, but reaches out to the suitcase. He crouches down for a closer look, and his hand goes to the handle. There’s a combination lock. He examines it like a collector looking at a rare vase, but as far as Nanao can tell the man hasn’t figured out that it’s a fake.

  ‘What are these initials?’ He looks up at Tangerine.

  On the bottom of the suitcase are two English letter stickers that read MM. They’re hot pink and glossy. It looks like something a teenage girl would use.

  ‘Probably M for Minegishi.’ Tangerine’s voice is steady.

  ‘Why are there two Ms? Mr Minegishi’s first name is Yoshio.’

  ‘Like I said, M for Minegishi.’

  ‘I’m talking about the second M.’

  ‘That one’s for Minegishi too. Haha, hey, the name Yoshio means nice man. That’s got to be a joke, right? Anyway, I didn’t put the stickers on there. Don’t ask me what they mean. The Shinkansen’s leaving soon. Can we get back on?’

  There are no more people getting off the train. No one else getting on either. The only other people left on the platform are waiting for the next train.

  The suit gets back up, then stands directly in front of Nanao. ‘Did he always wear glasses?’ Nanao almost jumps out of his skin. He wants to tear his glasses off. He resists the urge.

  ‘I made him wear them,’ answers Tangerine. ‘I don’t know how much you heard, but Little Minegishi here,’ at which the suit’s eyebrow-less face stiffens slightly, ‘I mean Mr Minegishi’s son,’ Tangerine corrects himself, ‘he was being held by some dangerous characters. That means he’s a target. There could very well be someone on the Shinkansen trying to hit him. I figured he needed a disguise.’

  ‘And glasses?’

  ‘Sure, and other little things too. He looks different from usual, right?’ Tangerine seems totally unruffled.

  ‘I suppose so,’ the suit replies mildly. But then he pulls out his phone. ‘He sent me a picture of his son.’ There’s a face on the screen. The suit moves to hold it up to Nanao’s face.

  ‘Hey, come on, the train’s leaving.’ Tangerine gives an exasperated sigh.

  ‘Doesn’t really look like the photo.’

  ‘Of course he doesn’t. We fixed him up so that no one would be able to tell. Hair, glasses. Okay, we’ll be going now. You can tell Mr Minegishi everything’s fine.’ Tangerine lays one hand on Nanao’s shoulder and motions towards the train. Nanao nods. I can’t wait for this roleplay to be done. He tries his best to give off a self-important air to keep his relief from showing.

  Then no-eyebrows says an unfamiliar name. Nanao almost ignores it, until it dawns on him that it might be Minegishi’s son’s name, so he looks up at the man. It seems his hunch is right. ‘Guess your dad’s the only one who can open this, huh?’

  Nanao makes a goofy face and nods. ‘I’ve got no idea.’ But then he feels like he should do something besides just stand there. Uneasiness steals back in. Without really thinking about it, he reaches for the suitcase and starts to flip the numbers on the combination lock. ‘I mean it would be great if all you had to do was play with the numbers …’ The dials click as he spins them. Somehow he feels like the demonstration makes his ignorance more believable. It’s a classic case of someone acting awkwardly when they want to seem casual.

  He doesn’t think there’s any chance that his fumbling with the lock could produce the correct combination. No one would get it right, and me least of all, with my luck. But he’s forgotten about Murphy’s Law: trying random combinations won’t unlock the lock, except when you don’t want the lock unlocked.

  The suitcase bursts open.

  He had been fiddling roughly with the lock and the momentum of its release causes the lid of the suitcase to spring loose, spilling out an avalanche of women’s underwear.

  No-eyebrows freezes, as do the other suits, and the man with the shaved head and the two muscle dudes. The unexpected sight clearly does not compute.

  But one thing they know for sure is that this suitcase full of underwear doesn’t belong to Minegishi.

  Even Tangerine looks flabbergasted. The calmest person there is Nanao. He’s used to this kind of sudden stroke of misfortune. Slightly surprised, but mostly feeling something along the lines of Again? Or more like, I should have known. He kicks off the platform and leaps into the train, Tangerine swept along in his wake. Just as they enter the gangway the door slides shut behind them and the Shinkansen starts to move.

  Out the window, the suit with no eyebrows is bringing his phone up to his ear.

  ‘Well then,’ Nanao says, looking at Tangerine, who is exhaling mightily. ‘What happens now?’ The Shinkansen picks up steady speed, paying no mind to their agitated state.

  ‘Why did you open the bag?’ Tangerine eyes him severely. He might be thinking Nanao had some scheme in mind, but his face is hard to read, cold and cadaverous.

  ‘It just seemed like it would be more convincing if I tried the lock.’

  ‘You thought that was convincing?’

  ‘If I couldn’t get the combination then they’d believe me.’

  ‘But you did get the combination.’

  ‘Guess I’m just lucky.’ Nanao laughs at his little joke. ‘Well, I imagine now they think something’s up. At the very least that the bag was a fake.’

  ‘That’s for sure. Our stock was falling by the time we left Omiya. Now it’s plummeting.’

  ‘But the train doesn’t stop until Morioka, so we’re safe for now,’ Nanao points out. He’s casting around for a silver lining, and even though he knows it’s just an illusion, he clings to it.

  ‘Lemon would say the same damn thing.’ As soon as the words leave Tangerine’s mouth he wonders out loud, ‘Where is Lemon, anyway?’ He looks left and right. ‘Hey, you, you said Lemon went to the back of the train.’ He’s pointing at the schoolkid. He’s
still here? thinks Nanao. The kid has been listening to him and Tangerine, and witnessed what just happened on the platform at Sendai. He must know that something dangerous is going on, but he isn’t running away, isn’t reporting anything to anyone. He seems to just be hanging out around them. Where are his parents? He looks like a clean-cut, well-behaved student, but maybe he has some teen angst that makes him feel drawn to the irregular. Nanao tries to picture it. Or maybe the kid just wants to brag to his friends about the crazy stuff he saw go down on the Shinkansen.

  ‘Yes,’ the kid nods, ‘your friend hurried off in that direction,’ pointing towards car six, ‘like there was something he forgot to do.’

  ‘Maybe he got off at Sendai,’ says Nanao as the thought occurs to him. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe he got fed up with all of this and bailed on the job?’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that,’ Tangerine responds quietly. ‘He wants to be a useful train.’

  ‘The man I was with is missing too,’ says the schoolkid, looking back and forth between Nanao and Tangerine. ‘What is going on here?’ He has the air of a class president or team captain gauging the mood of the group before delegating responsibilities. ‘Oh, and.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘About what you were saying a minute ago, the next stop isn’t Morioka.’

  ‘What?’ Nanao fairly shouts at the unexpected information.

  ‘What’s the next stop?’

  ‘Ichinoseki. We’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Then Mizusawa-Esashi then Shin-Hanamaki, and then Morioka.’

  ‘I thought the Hayate goes straight from Sendai to Morioka.’

  ‘Not all of them. This is one of the ones that doesn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’ Tangerine seems to have been under the same impression as Nanao. Nanao’s phone rings and he pulls it out of his pocket. Tangerine says immediately, ‘Answer it. Probably your Maria.’

  There’s no reason not to take the call.

  ‘I assume you didn’t get off at Sendai,’ comes Maria’s accusation.

  ‘How did you know?’