Bullet Train

by Kotaro Isaka

  Walking through car six to the back of the train, he glances around. The man with the black glasses isn’t there. Up on the luggage rack there are large backpacks and paper bags and small suitcases. None are the same shape or colour as the one he saw before. He’s fairly certain that the black glasses man isn’t further up the train than car seven where he and Kimura have been sitting. He had been on the lookout and hadn’t seen the man come through. Which means that the man is further back on the train, somewhere between cars five and one.

  He exits car six, his mind working.

  No one in the gangway. There are two toilets. The closer one is locked. Someone else must be using the sink area because the curtain is pulled. The man with the black glasses might be hiding in the toilet with the bag, maybe planning to hole up in there until the train reaches Omiya. Wouldn’t be a bad idea. It’s possible someone could complain that the bathroom has been occupied for a long while, but the train isn’t that crowded so it probably wouldn’t turn into anything big. The man could very well be in there.

  The Prince decides to wait for a while and see. If whoever’s inside doesn’t come out soon he can ask the train staff to open it. He would just do his honours student routine, full of kindness and respect for the rules – oh, excuse me, the toilet has been in use for a while now, do you think there might be something wrong?

  The train attendant likely wouldn’t think twice before opening it up.

  As he’s thinking this the curtain by the sink snaps open, startling him. A woman emerges, who looks at him mildly and apologises. The Prince almost apologises back reflexively, but he holds it in. Apologies create obligation and hierarchy, so he never makes them when he doesn’t have to.

  He watches the woman walk away. She’s wearing a jacket over a dress, medium height and build, looks to be late twenties. He suddenly thinks of his class teacher from three years ago. Her name was Sakura or Sato, he can’t remember. Of course he knew her name at the time, but once he graduated he didn’t feel the need to hold on to it so he just let it go. Teachers are just that, a teacher at school, occupying a role. It’s like how baseball players wouldn’t bother learning the names of the other team’s fielders and just refer to them by position. He used to say, ‘The teacher’s name and personality don’t matter. Their beliefs and goals are all basically the same. When it comes to personalities and mindsets, at the end of the day there are really only a handful of patterns. The teachers are all looking for ways to get on our good side. We might as well have a chart: we do this and they move like that, we act like that and they react like this. They’re just like mechanical equipment. Equipment doesn’t need a proper noun.’

  When he would say that, most of his classmates would stare uncomprehendingly. At best they would agree, yeah, I guess the teachers’ names don’t matter. They should have been asking the Prince if he thought that they were just equipment too, or at least wondering, but no one did.

  That teacher always thought he was a smart, capable boy who could help her bridge the gap between teacher and students. She even once told him appreciatively, ‘If it weren’t for you, Satoshi, I would never have known there was bullying in the class.’

  He actually felt a little sorry for her for thinking he was her innocent little ally. One time he gave her a hint that he wasn’t what she thought. It was in a report he wrote about a book on the Rwandan genocide. The Prince preferred books on history and world affairs over novels.

  His teachers were surprised that he would read a book like that at his age.

  They were impressed, how precocious, they said. The Prince thought that if there was one thing he was especially gifted at it was reading. He would read a book, digest the contents, his vocabulary would improve, his knowledge would increase, and he would go on to read something more difficult. Reading helped him put words to human emotion and abstract concepts, enabled him to think objectively about complex subjects. From there it was an easy step to helping someone express their fears and anxieties and frustrations, which made them feel indebted to him, come to rely on him.

  He learned all sorts of things from the Rwandan genocide.

  In Rwanda there were two ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Physically they were more or less the same, and there was no shortage of marriages between people from the different groups. The distinction between Hutu and Tutsi was completely man-made and artificial.

  In 1994, when the Rwandan president’s plane was shot down, the Hutu began their genocide of the Tutsi. Over the next hundred days some eight hundred thousand people were killed, many of them cut down by machete-wielding neighbours who they had lived beside for many years. A rough breakdown of the numbers puts it at eight thousand people killed every day, which is five or six every minute.

  This unmitigated slaughter of man and woman, young and old, wasn’t some ancient happening divorced from any sense of reality, no, it happened less than twenty years ago, and this is what most fascinated the Prince.

  ‘It was hard to believe something so horrible could happen,’ he wrote in his book report, ‘and I thought that we can’t ever forget this tragedy. It was not just something that happened in a far-off country. I learned that we all have to face up to our weakness and fragility.’ He knew that it was the sort of vague but palatable statement that worked best for these reports. All surface, ultimately meaningless, sure to win the grown-ups’ approval. But he also hid some truth in the last sentence.

  He did learn something: just how easily people can be whipped up into a frenzy. He came to recognise the mechanism that makes atrocities difficult to stop once they’ve started, the mechanism that makes genocide possible.

  For example, America was reluctant to acknowledge that there was genocide taking place in Rwanda. That’s what the book said. Rather, they were frantically trying to find reasons why it wasn’t a genocide, without paying heed to the facts on the ground. Even though there was reporting on the ever increasing numbers of slain Tutsi, America took an evasive position, claiming that it was difficult to determine what exactly constitutes a genocide.

  Why?

  Because if they recognised a genocide, the UN would call on them to take some sort of action.

  And the UN acted the same way. They basically did nothing.

  It wasn’t just the Rwandans who expected the Americans to act a certain way. Most Japanese people think that if there’s ever a major problem, America or the UN will deal with it. A feeling like the police are on the job and will take care of everything. When in reality, the US and UN determine their course of action based not on any sense of mission or moral obligation, but on a calculation of profit and loss.

  The Prince knew instinctively that none of this was unique to the story of a small African country. It could easily be transplanted into his school.

  If a problem occurs among the student body, say, an epidemic of violent bullying, then that stands in for the genocide, and the teachers are the US and the UN.

  In the same way that the Americans resisted the notion of genocide, the teachers don’t want to recognise the bullying problem. Once they do, they’ll have to take action, which would lead to all sorts of mental and logistical strain for them.

  He thought it would be interesting to try to turn this around on the teachers, to make them recognise that there was bullying but not treat it as a problem worth addressing. He got the idea from a section in the book about a mass killing that took place in a Rwandan technical school. When he first read about the episode, his body trembled with excitement.

  UN peacekeeping troops were stationed at the school, and people started to say that the UN would keep people safe from the genocide. Some two thousand Tutsi took refuge in the school, believing they’d be protected. Unfortunately for them, the UN troops didn’t have orders to protect the Tutsi, but rather to help foreigners in Rwanda evacuate. By extension, the troops were being told that they had no obligation to save the Tutsi.

  This came as a great relief to the UN troops. They didn�
�t have to get involved. If they tried to protect the Tutsi, chances were that they themselves would face mortal danger. When the Hutu surrounded the school, the UN troops claimed that their mission didn’t include direct engagement, and they retreated.

  The two thousand Tutsi in the school were immediately butchered.

  The presence of a peacekeeping force had led to even more victims.

  Utterly fascinating.

  Regardless of how the students acted on the surface, somewhere deep down they all believed that the teacher would maintain order in the classroom. Their parents thought the same thing. They trusted the teachers, invested them with responsibility, and so they felt secure. The Prince knew that if he could control the teacher he could make life miserable for the rest of the students.

  He devised a plan.

  First he tried to sow the seeds of anxiety about what would happen if the teachers took action against bullying. He gave his class teacher reason to fear that she herself could be in danger. Then she started to form justifications for her decisions, telling herself that she was doing what was best for the students even though she wasn’t taking direct action.

  He addressed this in his book report too, touching on the foolishness and self-serving logic of the US and the UN. He thought that the teacher might realise what he was doing, that he was really writing about her, that he was a dangerous boy. He gave her clues.

  But of course she didn’t pick up on them. ‘You really read this hard book, Satoshi? That’s so impressive,’ she fawned. ‘Tragedies like this really are terrible. It’s hard to believe that human beings could do this to one another, isn’t it?’ The Prince was disappointed.

  It was easy for the Prince to understand how a genocide could occur. It was because people make decisions based on feeling. But those feelings are extremely susceptible to outside influence.

  He read in a different book about a famous experiment. Groups of people were gathered and given problems to solve, questions with easy answers. They answered one by one, and everyone heard how everyone else answered. But actually, there was only one real test subject in each group, and everyone else was instructed to give the wrong answers on purpose. Amazingly, the individual answering according to their own free will chose the incorrect answer that everyone else was giving one out of three times. In total, seventy-five per cent of test subjects gave at least one answer that they knew to be wrong.

  Human beings are creatures of conformity.

  There have been other similar experiments. One of them isolated the optimum pattern for conformist behaviour: when the stakes are high but the question is difficult and the right answer isn’t obvious.

  When this happens, people are much more likely to adopt someone else’s opinion as their own.

  When the question is easy to answer people tend to have more faith in their own decision.

  It’s also relatively easy as long as the stakes are low. People feel no hesitation with giving their own answer.

  The Prince understood it like this: when people have a difficult decision to make, one that may go against their code of ethics, they conform to the group, and even come to believe that the answer is correct.

  When he thought about it in those terms, it became easy to see the mechanism by which the genocide not only was difficult to stop but by which it fuelled itself. The people doing the killing didn’t trust their own judgement, but rather went along with the group, believing that was right.

  He hears a noise in the bathroom, the sound of the toilet flushing. The door opens, but the person who comes out is a middle-aged man in a suit, who heads over to the sink. The Prince swiftly opens the door and pokes his head inside. Just a drab toilet, nothing else.

  Nowhere the suitcase might be hidden. Next he checks the other bathroom. It’s a ladies’ room, but that doesn’t stop him.

  No suitcase.

  He cocks his head. Where could it be?

  It’s too big to fit under any of the seats in the train. It isn’t on any of the luggage racks, nor is it in the bathrooms.

  He doesn’t have any particular reason for drifting over towards the trash receptacles, other than that he’s checked everywhere else. He inspects the openings for bottles and cans and the slot for disposing of magazines, bringing his face closer, even though he knows there’s no way the bag would fit inside. He peers in the hole – all he can see are discarded containers.

  Then he notices the little protrusion.

  There, right next to the slot for paper waste. I wonder. He pushes it and a handle clicks out. He twists it without hesitation. The panel swings open before him, making his heart flutter in his chest. He had no idea there was a panel there. Inside is a shelf, with the garbage bag on the bottom, and a suitcase on top. No doubt about it – it’s the suitcase he saw when he met the man with the black glasses.

  I found it. He closes the panel and resets the handle. Then he exhales slowly. There’s no need to be hasty. The man with the black glasses isn’t likely to move the bag any time soon. He probably thinks he can leave it here until he gets where he’s going, and no one will find it.

  How can I make this even more interesting?

  Relishing the sense of accomplishment from finding the suitcase, he starts back towards car number seven. I really am lucky.

  Kimura

  KIMURA CAN’T STOP GOING THROUGH all the memories he has related to the Prince.

  The first time he met him in the mall, he thought he’d never see this schoolkid again.

  But within two weeks he found himself involved with the Prince once more, as if there was an invisible force pulling him in.

  That time, too, Wataru was with him. It was on the way back from seeing his parents off at the train station.

  They had come to Tokyo a day earlier for a class reunion and stayed at a small hotel near Kimura’s apartment. After Wataru was back from kindergarten for the day, they took him to a toy shop, offering to buy him whatever he wanted. It wasn’t like Wataru to ask for things, and he was clearly a little overwhelmed by his grandfather urging him to pick something, pick something. He seemed satisfied enough with the balloon that the shopkeeper gave him. Kimura found himself on the receiving end of another overblown scolding from his father: ‘He’s afraid to ask for something because you never buy him anything! Poor kid, oh, poor little guy.’

  ‘Wataru’s always been that way,’ Kimura explained, but his father wouldn’t listen.

  Instead he brought up Kimura’s ex-wife.

  ‘When she was around the boy was more interested in toys, like a little kid should be,’ he said unkindly. ‘She left because you’re such a mess.’

  ‘That’s not true. I told you. She racked up a ton of debt and ran off.’

  ‘She just couldn’t stand living with you and your drinking.’

  ‘I wasn’t drinking so much then.’ It wasn’t a lie. He had always been on the lazy side, but when his wife was still around he could live without alcohol just fine. If he had been drinking as much back then there’s no way he would have got custody of Wataru.

  ‘Well, now all you do is drink.’

  ‘You’re just saying that, you don’t know.’

  At which his father’s face grew hard. ‘I can tell by looking at you. I can tell by smelling you.’ It had been his line since Kimura was a boy. He would puff up and declare that you can tell just by looking at someone, the bad parts always show. Kimura had never liked it, wrote it off as the prejudices of the old. His father’s old friend Shigeru once laughed and said, ‘Mr Kimura’s always saying, this guy stinks, that guy stinks.’

  To which Kimura’s mother responded, ‘But he’s always the one farting!’

  After they found a toy for Wataru they went to a park with a large playground. Kimura sat on a bench watching his mother scramble breathlessly after Wataru as the little boy ran for the tall slide. He was glad for a moment’s break from being his son’s main playmate. He reached into his pocket for his flask, but his father grabbed his han
d. He hadn’t even noticed his old man sit down next to him.

  ‘The hell you think you’re doing?’ Kimura said, his voice thick with anger, but his father was unmoved. Despite the white hair, the old man was still solid and strong. He tightened his grip until it hurt. Kimura let go and his father took the flask.

  ‘Do you know what the definition of alcoholism is?’

  ‘You’re gonna say it’s me and my life, right?’

  ‘You’re still on the cusp, but if you continue like you are then you’ll be a full alcoholic, no doubt about it. I’m asking, do you know what alcoholism actually means?’ He handed back the flask, which Kimura snatched up.

  ‘It means you like drinking and you drink a lot.’

  ‘That’s putting it roughly, yes, but it means addiction, which means it’s a disease. It’s different from someone who appreciates a drink or who can hold their alcohol. It means that if you take one sip, you just keep drinking. Then it’s no longer a question of resilience or restraint. Alcoholism means you can’t stop. It has to do with your physiology. When someone like that takes a drink, it’s all over.’

  ‘It’s hereditary, so I’d guess you’re the same as me. Or maybe I got it from Mum?’

  ‘Neither one of us drinks. And why is that? Because we both know that there’s no recovery from being an alcoholic.’

  ‘Of course you can recover.’

  ‘There’s a cluster of nerve cells in the brain, the A10 cluster.’

  Oh God, Dad, a science lecture? Kimura started rooting around in his ear to show his lack of interest.

  ‘They did an experiment, with a machine, and if you pushed a lever it would stimulate the A10 cells. And what do you think happened?’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘People kept on pushing the lever.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘When the A10 cluster is stimulated, the brain releases pleasure signals. If someone pushes the lever, they get an easy buzz. So they keep doing it, over and over. Like how monkeys won’t stop masturbating, same idea. Apparently this good feeling is similar to the one we get from eating something delicious, or from completing a job well done.’