Bullet Train

by Kotaro Isaka

  ‘I’ll share with you one more passage I like. This one’s from The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It’s a quote about article 41 from a kid, about your age. He says, “It’s the symbol of the dreams adults have for us, while at the same time being the symbol that those dreams will never be fulfilled. Because they’re stupid enough to think that we can’t do anything, they gave us a glimpse of a single patch of blue sky, one fragment of perfect freedom.” I like it because of the faraway feel of the writing, but it also holds a clue to your question, about why it’s wrong to kill people. Saying it’s wrong to kill is an expression of an adult dream. Just a dream. A fantasy. Like Santa Claus. Something that doesn’t exist in the real world, a picture of a beautiful blue sky that someone in great distress painted, after which they hid under the covers with their picture, looking at that instead of at the real world. That’s how it is with most laws. They’re just symbols, designed to make people feel better.’

  The Prince still doesn’t understand why Tangerine started quoting from novels out of nowhere. But he loses some respect for him for having to rely on someone else’s words.

  Then he notices the gun.

  Two guns. Right in front of him.

  One of them is pressed up against his chest. The other one is in Tangerine’s open hand, held out to the Prince like a lifeline.

  What is this?

  ‘Listen to me. I’m more than just a little angry. Kids like you piss me off especially. But just shooting you when you’re defenceless, that doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t pick on the weak. So I’ll give you this gun. Then we’ll each have one, and it’ll be a question of who gets shot and who does the shooting.’

  The Prince doesn’t want to make a move. He can’t yet tell what his opponent is planning. ‘Hurry up and take it. I’ll teach you how to use it.’

  Watching Tangerine carefully, the Prince closes his fingers around the gun in the man’s hand. Then he retreats two steps.

  ‘Grab the slide here and pull it backwards. Hold on to the grip and lower that switch. That’s the safety. Then all you have to do is point it at me and pull the trigger.’ Tangerine’s face is expressionless and his manner is calm. Is he really even angry?

  The Prince is about to adjust his hold on the gun and perform the actions as instructed when it slips in his hand and drops to the floor. He feels a rush of panic, knows that Tangerine will seize this moment to attack. But the man just smiles faintly. ‘Calm down. Pick it up and try again. I won’t start until you’re ready.’

  It doesn’t feel like he’s lying. The Prince bends down to pick up the gun, but a thought flashes in his mind: Does it mean something that my hand would slip at such a crucial moment? For someone like him whose surplus of luck has always kept him safe, messing up like this feels unnatural. Which makes him realise: he was probably supposed to drop the gun. It was a necessary mess-up.

  ‘I don’t need the gun,’ the Prince says, holding it out for Tangerine to take back.

  A cloud passes over the man’s face and his brows draw together.

  ‘What’s wrong? You think surrendering will save you?’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ The Prince is confident now. ‘I think it was a trap.’

  Tangerine is quiet.

  I knew it. More than just feeling relieved, the Prince has a sense of accomplishment. My luck still works. He doesn’t know the technical specifics, but he can sense there’s something irregular about the gun. He can imagine that trying to shoot it would hurt him somehow.

  ‘I’m impressed you knew. If you pull the trigger on that thing, it explodes. I don’t think it would kill you, but it would injure you pretty badly.’

  My luck is a force field. The Prince is no longer afraid of Tangerine. At this point Tangerine might even be starting to fear me.

  At that moment the door behind Tangerine slides open and someone steps through.

  ‘Help me,’ shouts the Prince. ‘He’s gonna kill me!’ Shouting as pitifully as he can.

  ‘Help!’

  Not even a second goes by. Tangerine’s head swivels hard. It was facing directly to the front, and now it’s facing directly to the side. He topples over, the gun falling with him.

  The floor of the Shinkansen receives the body and bears it along, the juddering of the train like the ritual clamour of a funeral procession. Over the body stands Nanao.

  Nanao

  HE HAS NO SIGHS LEFT. Nanao stares down blankly at Tangerine’s broken-necked corpse.

  Why does this keep happening?

  ‘He was about to kill me,’ says the kid in a trembling voice.

  The irritation Nanao feels towards the kid is as paralysed as the rest of his emotions. ‘What was going on here?’

  ‘These people were shooting each other.’

  ‘These people?’ He doesn’t miss the plural. The boy points at the bathroom.

  ‘If you pull that copper wire up it’ll open.’

  Nanao follows instructions and sure enough the door unlocks.

  He looks inside and his eyes pop open. There’s a body at the base of the toilet. Two bodies. They’re just tossed in there, like junk, like discarded home appliances.

  ‘Oh no, that is it, I have had enough of this!’ Nanao whines in sheer frustration. ‘Enough already!’

  He knows that he can’t just leave Tangerine’s body there on the floor, so he moves it into the toilet, which was already fairly full. Corpse storage only, he thinks darkly.

  Searching Tangerine reveals his mobile phone, which Nanao takes, and a folded piece of paper. He unfolds it: a giveaway entry ticket. What’s this all about?

  ‘Something’s written on the back,’ says the kid.

  He flips it over. There’s a picture of a train in ballpoint pen. Underneath it says Arthur.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A drawing of a train.’ Nanao folds it back up and puts it in his own pocket.

  He finishes arranging things in the bathroom and steps back out to the gangway.

  ‘You saved me,’ says the schoolkid, pulling his backpack over his shoulders.

  Nanao thought he had seen something in the kid’s hand that looked like a gun, but there’s nothing now. Just my imagination. He closes the door and fumbles with the copper wire until he gets it locked.

  He replays in his mind what had just happened.

  After retrieving the suitcase from the crew room, he had come back to find Tangerine pointing a gun at the kid.

  The look on the kid’s face, the catch in his voice as he cried out, spurred Nanao into immediate action. Layered over this defenceless child pleading for help he saw the kidnapped boy he had long ago abandoned.

  His mind emptied out and he moved automatically, stepping up behind Tangerine and wrenching his head sideways. Something primal in Nanao’s body made him use deadly force, sensing that if he attacked Tangerine without finishing him off he’d be putting himself in danger.

  ‘Why was he trying to shoot you?’

  ‘I don’t know. He found the bodies in the toilet and just started going crazy.’

  So seeing his friend dead pushed him over the edge? It didn’t seem impossible.

  ‘I can’t even tell who killed who.’ Nanao manages to sigh again. He no longer cares about the details. He just wants to get off this ridiculous train. It feels like the Shinkansen is misfortune itself, hurtling along at two hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. The northbound Misfortune and Calamity, and Nanao is onboard.

  He debates for a moment what to do with the gun that Tangerine dropped. Then he throws it in the trash.

  ‘Oh –’ The schoolkid makes a little noise.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I bet we’d feel safer if you held on to it.’

  ‘Holding on to it will only lead to trouble, trust me.’ Nanao thinks keeping his distance from anything dangerous is the wisest choice given his luck. He tosses out Tangerine’s phone too. ‘Best to ju
st get rid of it.’ He takes the suitcase by the handle. ‘I’m done. I just want off.’

  The kid’s face stiffens and his eyes look moist. ‘You’re getting off the train?’

  ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Now that Tangerine and Lemon are gone, he can’t guess what Minegishi will do. But it seems likely that Minegishi’s wrath would have fallen on those two, not him. Nanao’s job was to steal the bag and get off the Shinkansen. If he disembarks at the next station with the bag in hand, there should be no problem. He might not get a perfect score, but his grade would still be a low A. At least he thinks so. That’s what he wants to think.

  The announcement sounds for Ichinoseki, the next station stop. Perfect timing.

  ‘Would – would you please stay with me until Morioka?’ The schoolkid looks like he’s about to burst into tears. ‘I’m scared.’

  Nanao wishes he could seal his ears shut. He has no interest whatsoever in any further entanglements. Nothing good could possibly come from him going all the way to Morioka. And he can think of more than a few bad things that might happen.

  ‘Because – because –’ The kid has something he can’t quite seem to get out of his mouth. A nasty premonition settles on Nanao. The sense that some inconvenient truth is about to come pouring out of this kid that he won’t be able to escape. The thought terrifies him. He even starts to bring his hands up to cover his ears. ‘– if I don’t get to Morioka, there’s a little boy who will be in danger.’

  Nanao’s hands stop millimetres from his ears. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Like a hostage situation. The son of someone I know, he’s only five or six, he’s in the hospital. And if I don’t get to Morioka, his life will be in danger.’

  ‘His life? What exactly is going on?’

  ‘I really don’t know for sure.’

  This is precisely the sort of thing Nanao didn’t want to hear. He feels a bloom of concern that this schoolkid reaches Morioka safely, but at the same time he wants to get off the Shinkansen as soon as he possibly can.

  ‘You’ll be fine. I doubt anything else will happen between here and Morioka.’ Nanao doesn’t believe the words he’s saying. They’re like a half-hearted prayer that he doubts will have any effect on anything. ‘Just go back to your seat and you’ll be okay.’

  ‘You promise nothing else will happen?’

  ‘I mean, I can’t say for absolute certain.’

  ‘I don’t know what will happen when I get to Morioka. I’m afraid.’

  ‘I doubt there’s anything I could –’

  The door from car seven opens and a man steps through. Nanao stops mid-sentence.

  Not wanting to seem suspicious, he freezes, which of course only makes him seem more suspicious.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ the man says.

  Nanao turns to look. It’s the exam-prep instructor. The man stands there looking unsubstantial, almost half transparent. Like you could pass your hand right through him. Like a ghost.

  The instructor scratches his head sheepishly. ‘I told my students I was travelling in the green car. I realised that if I don’t go and see what it’s like in there then I won’t be able to convince them that I really had a green car seat, so I was on my way to check it out.’ The man sounds genuine. He grins with embarrassment, having explained what he was doing there before Nanao could even ask.

  ‘Sounds tough, being a teacher,’ Nanao says with a half-smile.

  ‘Is this a friend of yours?’ asks the kid warily.

  This kid must think that everyone on board the train is some kind of dangerous character, Nanao realises. I doubt he ever expected to have a gun pulled on him or to discover dead bodies in a toilet. Kids should just stay in the playground.

  ‘Not exactly, we just ended up talking to each other a bit,’ explains Nanao to the boy. ‘He’s an instructor at an exam-prep school.’

  ‘My name’s Suzuki,’ says the man. He didn’t need to introduce himself, but he did anyway, which Nanao takes as a sign of his forthrightness.

  Then he gets an idea. ‘Mr Suzuki, how far are you going on the train?’

  ‘To Morioka. Why?’

  Nanao hasn’t thought it through. He just conveniently tells himself that there’s a reason they encountered Suzuki here and now. ‘Would you mind staying with this kid?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I need to get off at Ichinoseki. I was hoping you’d look after him.’

  Suzuki seems thrown off by Nanao’s sudden request, which makes sense, because it’s more of a demand than a request. The kid looks just as upset. He stares at Nanao like he’s being abandoned.

  Finally Suzuki speaks. ‘Is he lost?’

  Nanao cocks his head. ‘No, not lost. He’s just scared of riding to Morioka by himself.’

  ‘I need to stay with you –’ The kid is clearly not happy with this change of plans. His face is a mixture of insubordination and anxiety.

  ‘I need to take this,’ Nanao says, lifting up the suitcase, ‘and get off at the next station.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I don’t mind travelling with the young man, but it doesn’t seem like that will settle his fears.’ Suzuki looks flummoxed.

  Nanao heaves a sigh.

  The Shinkansen sheds speed as they approach Ichinoseki. Nanao watches the flowing landscape outside the window, then steals a glance at the schoolkid, who is also looking out the window. He notices in that moment that the kid is surprisingly calm. That’s not right. Isn’t he a little too collected after a train ride full of guns and corpses? And what about me? I snapped Tangerine’s neck right in front of him. And it wasn’t an accident either, I meant to do it, and I did it like I knew exactly what I was doing. Shouldn’t he be more afraid of me, or at least ask some questions about what’s going on here? Why does he want to travel to Morioka with a killer?

  And then the answer comes to Nanao. It’s all been too much for him. He doesn’t know how to process it so he’s shut down. It makes perfect sense, after the kid was nearly shot. Poor little guy.

  Kimura

  SHIGERU KIMURA STOPS RUMMAGING AROUND in the closet and turns to his wife. ‘Did you move it again?’

  ‘Oh, weren’t you going to take a nap?’ Akiko nibbles a cracker. ‘I thought you were getting out the futon.’

  ‘Have you been listening to anything I said? It’s not time for a nap!’

  ‘But you don’t even know what’s going on,’ chides Akiko, picking up the small chair from the living room and carrying it over to the closet. She shoos Shigeru out of the way and positions the chair, then climbs up on top of it. She stretches up and opens the storage cabinet above the closet.

  ‘Oh, it’s up there?’

  ‘You never put things where they ought to go.’ She pulls out a bundle wrapped in a furoshiki. ‘This is what you’re looking for, isn’t it?’

  Shigeru takes it and sets it on the floor.

  ‘Is this really what you want to do?’ Akiko clambers down from the chair with a pout. ‘I can’t shake this feeling.’

  ‘What feeling is that?’

  ‘More like a smell.’ His face is grave. ‘One I haven’t smelled in a long time.’

  ‘And what smell is that?’ She glances at the kitchen, muttering that she hasn’t cooked anything especially pungent.

  ‘Bad intent. I could smell it through the phone. It stank.’

  ‘Oh, that takes me back. You used to say that all the time, dear. I smell bad intent. It’s like you’re haunted by the spirit of bad intent.’ Akiko folds her knees under her and sits up straight in front of the contents of the furoshiki.

  ‘Do you know why I wanted to quit our old line of work?’

  ‘Because Yuichi was born. That’s what you said. You wanted to be around to watch your son grow up and thought we should change careers. And I was happy to hear it, because I had wanted a change for a long time.’

  ‘That wasn’t my only reason. Thirty years ago, I got fed up with all of it. Everyone around m
e stank.’

  ‘Like the spirit of bad intent?’

  ‘People who like to hurt others, who like to humiliate others, who above all else want to advance their own position. They reek of it.’

  ‘You honestly sound ridiculous.’

  ‘Everyone around me stank of bad intent, and I became disgusted. So I made a change. The supermarket’s been hard work, but I’ve never once got a whiff there of bad intent.’

  Then Shigeru Kimura’s mouth forms a bitter smile at the thought that his son took up the same type of work that he himself had left behind. When he first heard the rumour from a friend, that his son was starting to help out on rough jobs, Shigeru was so worried that he even thought about tailing his son to keep an eye on him.

  ‘Why are we talking about this again?’

  ‘Because whoever just called had that old stench. Oh, did you check the Shinkansen times?’

  When Yuichi had said on the phone earlier that he was on the Shinkansen, Shigeru thought something felt off, though he had nothing to go on but his instinct, and the ever-so-slightly rancid whiff that came off the other person he spoke to. After the call ended he had said to Akiko, ‘Yuichi says he’ll be arriving at Sendai in twenty minutes. Check and see if there’s a northbound Shinkansen with that schedule.’ Akiko complained mildly as she trundled over to the shelf beside the TV and started flipping through the timetable booklet.

  Now she nods to him. ‘Yes I did, and there is a train on that schedule. Arriving at Sendai at eleven o’clock sharp. Ichinoseki at eleven twenty-five, Mizusawa-Esashi eleven thirty-five. Did you know you don’t have to search through all these pages any more, you can look all this up on the Internet one-two-three. Remember when we used to do jobs together, oh, I researched so many timetables and wrote down so many phone numbers, I used to have a notepad this thick, do you remember that?’ She demonstrates the thickness with forefinger and thumb. ‘We wouldn’t need that nowadays, would we?’