10 Meters From the Truth | Contents | Koigusa Lovers’ Suicide
Table of Contents
1
It felt like the announcement was made before the splattered blood hit the floor.
“Due to a recent passenger accident, train service is currently suspended.”
Generally speaking, is there any other way of dying in this world that causes such a nuisance to others? If you jump down from a great height other people can get dragged into that mess, and if you jump into the sea the surrounding residents can be made to do a search. But dying and stopping the train is on another magnitude of being a nuisance. Having no choice but to end your life this way must be, no doubt, due to a bad upbringing.
The train ran over a person just as it reached the middle of the platform, and continued moving for another ten meters or so. The car probably got thick streaks of blood splattered onto it, so money will have to be spent for cleaning. Then again, depending on how you look at it, that expense can be considered a worthwhile investment. That is because a person who cannot control their own behavior has been removed from society early on.
The platform of Kichijōji Station was filled with a low murmur as it welcomed the evening rush. Not one scream was heard from the passengers of Platform 4 who had seen someone die with their own eyes, and they instead sluggishly trudged down the stairs, looking for an alternative route. Passenger accidents are not rare in this city. Everyone is used to something like this. But even while they’re used to it, everyone frowns uniformly in frustration. People like the one crushed on the tracks right now have probably been constantly annoying decent folk. At least this is the last day for that individual.
“…We are currently unable to determine when train service will resume. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused…”
Why are humans split into those that annoy others and those that get annoyed? The problem of education is a big one, but I don’t think that is all. The child of a frog is still a frog. Indecent parents bring up indecent children, and those indecent children also eventually have indecent offspring. As such, these indecent people eat away at the social infrastructure, and no matter how you think about it, it is ridiculous that respectable citizens who have gone through proper education are expected to bear this burden. Bad money drives out good money. We cannot rely on others to break this chain. Each and every one of us should take ownership of the situation, deeply understand what we can do, and improve the world from the ground up. At the very least, I possess the awareness and initiative to put what I can do into action.
The first station attendant to run over went off somewhere, probably to call for backup. A group of curious onlookers were peeking at the narrow gap between the train and platform. The corpse had slid under the train, so perhaps they were trying to see if an arm or some other body part had fallen into that gap. It is a crass act, but I cannot say that such morbid curiosity is harmful. They are simply used to people jumping onto the train tracks. Before long, these people will experience being in a lead car as it runs over a thoughtless cretin, and they will find themselves getting annoyed by that act of selfishness rather than pray for the deceased’s soul. I could hear voices of people used to this sight here and there, talking on the phone and complaining that their plans got thrown into disarray.
“…Service on the Chūō Line is currently suspended. Please wait for a moment…”
Amid the bustle of Platform 4, I suddenly came across a sight that made me feel nauseous.
Even as most people were trying to leave the platform, a woman was crouching at the very edge, reaching into a bag by her feet. The woman’s cheeks were red, and a smile was forming on her lips. I felt a chill run down my spine at the sheer baseness that was so vividly on display. I immediately understood that she wasn’t just an onlooker. That woman was happy. Perfect! Hooray! I stumbled upon a great opportunity! The obscene look on her face told me that she was having these thoughts.
From her bag, the woman first pulled out a small notebook. She also retrieved a pen and wrote something with frightening speed. In the blink of an eye, page after page was turned. While glancing at her hands, the train, and her wristwatch, she continued jotting down some notes.
After that, she held up her mobile phone. She leaned out, seemingly trying to capture a photo of the area underneath the stopped train. The carefree electronic beep that signals to those around that the shutter has been released could be faintly heard multiple times, mingling with the buzzing of the crowd. Did she manage to see a part of the body, like a hand?
The woman inched closer to the train car that had made an emergency stop, until she was just a few centimeters away. The car was packed with passengers. Due to the passenger accident, the doors remained closed, so passengers in the train were unable to alight. They stared at the platform, some with unease, and some with frustration. It was the same for those who remained on the platform waiting for resumption of the train service, though it was unclear when that would be. Even on the platform covered with harsh looks from all directions, the woman paid no heed to what other people would think about her, and continued working her phone. It was as if she was saying, Only I’m allowed to do this.
She looked to be in her twenties, but not a student. The cynical atmosphere she gave off seemed fundamentally at odds with being a student. She was wearing a T-shirt covered with wrinkles, and a pair of worn-out jeans ripped at the knees, suggesting that she didn’t pay attention to her clothes. People who cannot put on a proper outfit generally have no common sense. The bag at her feet was made of black nylon, and looked to be a cheap product. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face became increasingly flushed as she peeked at the crushed body.
That was the face of a person who knows no shame.
The next item she produced from her bag was a small voice recorder. Facing the chaotic platform, she raised her voice and said, “Incident record.” That was the only thing she said in a loud voice, and following that she started speaking in a murmur. With that, I figured out what she was: a reporter. She must be thinking that she could use this passenger accident that occurred right before her eyes as a news story.
Slipping past the waves of people in suits and blazers, I quietly moved closer to that woman. I wanted to know the words she was recording. Was she someone from a publishing company, newspaper company, or television company? Or was she an indie journalist? While it was common, this was the scene of a passenger accident, meaning that someone died here, yet this woman was recording her voice so gleefully. I wanted to hear the tone she was speaking in. But I was more curious in her words. She’d used “incident” instead of “accident”.
Still crouching, the woman took one more step in her dingy sneakers and got closer to the train. At that moment, the announcer, who had been reporting on the train service status, said something different.
“For your safety, please do not stand too close to the edge of the platform. Thank you.”
I could only imagine that it was to stop the woman’s actions. However, she only took one short glance upward, then continued moving towards the train, not paying heed to that announcement. While leaning halfway out over the tracks, she continued speaking into her voice recorder. Just what was she saying?
I snuck behind the woman. Her voice was not as small as the impression I had when I saw her from far away. No, it was a loud, insolent voice, as if the thought that someone else might be listening had never crossed her mind.
Her black hair was hanging down from the platform. Another announcement was made.
“For your safety, please step away from the train!”
This time, it was clearly a warning directed at the woman. Even she wasn’t oblivious to that and raised her head, but after looking at her surroundings with a frown on her face, she turned towards the platform filled to the brim with all kinds of people and raised her mobile phone high in the air, probably at a station attendant somewhere in the crowd. It was as if she thought that the mere act of filming served as a free pass for everything.
She clicked her tongue so loud that even I could hear it. She was obviously annoyed by the announcement for her to stop, which I found to be quite funny. This woman was clearly on the side of people who annoy others, rather than those who get annoyed. With her selfish actions, she’d definitely annoyed countless others. It was frighteningly arrogant of her to get annoyed by the train attendant’s warning, which was a very natural one to make. Why are there so many such human beings who only think about themselves and don’t take responsibility for their own actions? If these people think that only they have special privileges, then something has gone fundamentally wrong.
After taking a half-hearted step back, the woman resumed her recording. I could finally hear her voice.
“The incident occurred at 6:42 in the evening. The victim died immediately. It was at Platform 4, near the stopping position for Car 6. After 45 minutes, the police haven’t arrived. The scene is not particularly chaotic. It’s only because of the evening rush that there is some significant impact.”
She spoke in a raspy voice.
It was still impossible to know if the victim died immediately. Of course, they still died in the end, but it was quite a haphazard thing to make that claim without an official announcement from the police. Saying that it was an incident rather than accident must have also been a baseless claim.
What an unpleasant sight.
The announcements continued.
“…We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused. Due to a passenger accident at this station, train service on the Chūō Line is currently suspended…”
With a start, the woman looked at her mobile phone. There was no ringtone, so it was probably in silent mode. She should be commended for at least upholding the minimum level of manners. The man involved in the passenger accident had been continually shouting dirty words into his phone before boarding, no, even after boarding the train.
The woman quickly opened up her phone and brought it to her ear. That excited expression was still on her face as she was about to give a triumphant report to the person on the other end of the call. Was she really that happy about a passenger accident?
It happened right after that.
The woman closed her mouth. The glee disappeared from her face, and in its place, a cold sharpness appeared. I could feel the surrounding temperature drop. She was still crouching, and wasn’t moving a muscle, with her phone by her ear.
Eventually, she turned around, looked slightly around at her surroundings, then met my gaze.
She stood up, a light grin forming on her lips. It was an unnatural smile, one of a person not used to smiling but has no choice but to put one on.
She spoke.
“Good evening. I am a reporter. Please let me know what you think.”
She was getting closer to me, little by little. Even in this station filled with hundreds, thousands of murmuring voices, I could somehow hear her small, low voice.
“What do you think of pushing someone onto the tracks?”
At that moment, two hands from behind grabbed my shoulders.
2
After being questioned by the police for almost an hour, we left the train station office to find that service had resumed for the Chūō Line. However, since quite a good number of people were remaining at the station, it was a little suffocating, but there was nothing that could be done about it. Thus we decided to leave the station for now.
Other people would probably think of us as a very mismatched pair. I was wearing a stiffly starched shirt and a pinstripe jacket, as well as a navy blue tie, which you would describe as too safe rather than plain. The other person with me was clad in a grungy T-shirt and worn-out jeans. The nylon bag slung over her shoulder was strictly functional, and had a rough-hewn look. She probably only had sunscreen on her face. We looked towards the taxi stand, but after seeing the snaking queue, we exchanged glances and shook our heads.
We found and entered a nearby cafe. I ordered a coffee, while she ordered a roast beef sandwich set. After receiving a warm hand towel, she held it up like a tube and let out a sigh.
“I want to go home…”
“It’s rare to hear you whine, Sendou.”
Sendou was the high school nickname of the owman I was with, Tachiarai Machi. It was because she would often nod off while leaning on her elbows soon after enrolment, and it looked like she was rowing a boat, so I would call her a boatman, or Sendou. Now, ten years or so after that, I would never use that nickname except to tease her.
Tachiarai placed her elbows on the white table.
“It was a bit tough this time. I managed to doze off for about an hour on the train back today, though.”
“How long did you sleep before that?”
“About two in the past 72 hours.”
I also let out a sigh.
“You’re overworking yourself again. No wonder your face looks so tired. We won’t stay young forever. It’ll be all for nothing if your body breaks down.”
“…You’re right. Thanks. But there are some things I have to do even if it destroys my body.”
The two of us had crossed paths before, but now we were living our separate lives. We didn’t shun each other, but we weren’t on the kind of terms where we would meet up just for the sake of it. She’d only come to my apartment today because of work. My current work was useful to her, so we met in our free time for me to pass her some materials. That was all. I never thought that we would run into this kind of incident after that, though.
A coffee, salad and sandwich were now arranged on the table. She picked up a fork, but it seemed that she had no appetite. With slow, fumbling movements, she speared a piece of lettuce.
I also brought the coffee to my mouth, before asking a question.
“That man just now didn’t put up much resistance, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“Did you do something to threaten him?”
Tachiarai tilted her head.
“Who knows? I definitely didn’t mean to do that.”
After the “passenger accident” at Kichijōji Station, the young adult that Tachiarai had started talking to reeled over for an instant, then tried to turn around. However, before he could blend into the crowd, a station attendant and railway cop ran over, grabbed him by the shoulders, and frogmarched him to the office.
Right after a person fell onto the tracks with a scream that was so faint it hardly counted as one, and was subsequently crushed by an orange train car of the Chūō Line, Tachiarai said to me, “That wasn’t a suicide. It was either an accident or a murder. Help me with this.”
She had three requests. The first was to call a station attendant. Another was to observe if there was anyone focusing on and trying to get closer to her, and if so, I was to take a picture of their face with a digital camera. The third was to call her after the other two requests were complete.
She then crouched on the platform and took things out of her bag. When she brought out her phone and started acting as if she was recording a video, I was bewildered, even when I was used to her antics. Would there really be someone approaching her?
And such a person did appear. He continued staring at her with his lip curled, outwardly showing his disdain, and when she started talking into her voice recorder, he began gradually creeping up to her. I took a clear picture of him with a camera. He was thin and pale, and looked to be in his early thirties.
“There are a few things I want to ask, but…”
Tachiarai brought a tomato to her mouth with a look of distaste, and swallowed it down without first properly chewing it.
“Mm. What?”
“Why did that lure out the culprit?”
“…Right. Sorry, I asked you for help, but forgot to explain. Seems like I really am tired.”
Moving slowly but without stopping to eat, she explained.
“People commit suicide at the back. That’s where trains stopping at the station haven’t yet started to slow down so it would be a reliable way of achieving their goal, and most of the time there are few people so they don’t become a hindrance. They would never do it in the middle of the platform. So it would be an accident or murder, and if it’s the latter, it can’t be premeditated. Though no one looks at each other in a crowd, if you’re going to execute a murder, you would choose a better spot rather than do it in front of hundreds of people. There’s a high chance that it was a reckless, random attacker. I’ve written an article about a similar case before.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve read it.”
“Really? On purpose?”
“Sort of.”
She frowned, then her expression softened.
“…Thank you. By the way, what do you think of the victim?”
I was confused by the sudden change in subject. She was always like that – she would think that others could keep up with her leaps of logic. But there was only one thing I could say.
“I don’t even know who’s the victim.”
“You didn’t notice? The person who died was someone who was with us partway through on the Inokashira Line. It was because that person was the victim that I thought it more likely to be a murder than an accident.”
“Partway through?”
If it was someone who’d simply boarded the train partway, Tachiarai wouldn’t remember, no matter how good her memory was. In other words, that man must have given off a strong impression. There was only one such person I could think of.
“…That noisy man who got on at Meidaimei?”
She nodded.
I found that to be a little strange.
“How do you know? The person who died was under the train. We couldn’t see his face.”
Tachiarai averted her eyes.
“It was quite far away, but I could hear him continuing to talk on his phone on the Chūō Line. When I thought if he was still going on, I heard a shout like ‘Uwah!’ and then the train hit someone, so I immediately knew it was him.”
“I was beside you, but I didn’t hear it.”
“All sorts of voices and noises were mixed up in the crowded station, so I don’t blame you. I just happened to notice that voice.”
I couldn’t judge if it was actually a coincidence. It was possible that she was able to distinguish that voice because of the years she’d spent sharpening her ability to detect aberrant situations. Leaning on the back of my chair, I tried the recalling the man who had boarded on the Inokashira Line.
For a train line that ran through Tokyo, the Inokashira Line was not too bad in terms of the crowd. Even so, as evening approached, the train was almost full. The man who boarded the train at Meidaimei Station was in his 50s or 60s, somewhat short, and was of medium build. He didn’t exhibit any strange behavior at the start, but before long, he got a phone call, and immediately started hurling insults at the other person. Perhaps unsatisfied with that, he eventually started kicking the train doors as well, creating an unpleasant atmosphere in the car. A toddler was startled by his loud voice and started crying, and a woman that looked to be their mother weaved through the crowd and moved to the next car.
No one stopped that man. Neither did I. Part of it was because I didn’t want to get involved with that person if I didn’t know if he was a law-abiding citizen or not, and it was also because we would reach Kichijōji Station from Meidaimei Station in about ten minutes. But I could say this without any doubt.
“He was a real nuisance.”
“Yeah, I thought so too… And that explains why he was targeted by a random attacker, out of hundreds of other passengers.”
“Because he was a nuisance?”
“Yes. It’s entirely unstandable for other passengers to hate him after he acted like he owned the train. I was also annoyed at him.”
“So that’s why he was killed? That’s unreasonable.”
Tachiarai sipped some coffee, then prefaced with, “Just what I think, but…”
“It wasn’t that the victim was followed and killed after his disruptive behavior on the Inokashira Line, but he just happened to stand in front of the culprit on the Chūō Line platform. If so, the culprit did it knowingly, and thought that his actions were right. I wouldn’t say that it was definite, but I thought that there was a 50% chance that the culprit would remain and the crime scene and observe the results of his actions.”
It wasn’t an argument I couldn’t agree with. The emotion I felt towards the man who’d kept spewing abusive language and kicking the train door all the way from the moment he boarded to the end of the line was close to murderous, even if it was extremely faint.
However…
“What I wanted to ask is why you thought that pretending to report on the case would make the culprit approach you.”
She responded to that question with just a hint of a smile, and answered smoothly.
“To a righteous citizen who would push off someone who was a nuisance to everyone in the train, a journalist who reports on the case without considering the annoyance they cause to others would be even more unforgivable. I thought that they might come over to see my face.”
So Tachiarai was saying that she was offering herself up as prey to lure in the culprit.
She nonchalantly added.
“Also, I said, ‘Incident’ in a loud voice at the beginning because I was worried if the culprit noticed me at all.”
“…And what if he didn’t come?”
Tachiarai put down her cup of coffee and spoke with an unconcerned look on her face.
“It’d simply end with me feeling embarrassed. Just a swing and a miss. All part and parcel of the job.”
I handed Tachiarai the digital camera. It was the one I’d used to take a picture of the culprit’s side profile as he was being walked to the station office. She checked the photo.
“Thanks.”
While Tachiarai’s acting drew the culprit’s attention and held him up, I explained the situation to the station attendant, and got into position to apprehend the culprit. The photo that Tachiarai had asked me to take was just in case he managed to escape.
Even though it was ultimately successful, the culprit might have noticed Tachiarai’s trap if he was a little more observant. Because she was actually a journalist, she was right at home with the act, but for a person with a voice recorder in her bag, it was unnatural that she would record a video of the crime scene with a mobile phone rather than a camera. If he’d realized that she’d entrusted the camera she usually used to someone else, he might have noticed me stalking him as he stalked Tachiarai.
I looked at my watch. While the suspension of the train service and the police interview that followed made for a good excuse, I needed to leave soon. I had plans for dinner today.
“It’s a pretty good picture.”
On the digital camera’s screen was the other photo I’d taken, of the man creeping up to Tachiarai, a look of contempt on his face. She stared at the photo, and murmured quietly.
“Hey.”
“Hm?”
“Do you believe that I did that reporting to lure out the culprit?”
She certainly had a difficult personality, but I’d known her for over ten years, a period of time long enough for one to become able to vaguely guess at what someone else is feeling, no matter how complex they are. I nodded.
“That’s what I believe.”
However, the smile that appeared on her lips was one of resignation.
“But look at this.”
She pointed at her side profile in the photo, taken while she was pretending to report on the incident. Even on the small digital camera screen, you could tell that she was clearly delighted as she held the voice recorder.
“Don’t you think it’s a horrid look?”
“…You were making that face as part of the act, right?”
There was no reply.
But her silence spoke a great deal. This is what she was probably thinking.
– That was what I intended to do, but did I feel that way deep down? Can I say that I was not at all happy to have an incident happen in front of my eyes?
Since I knew that much, I had no words to say. I was always powerless when it came to her job and her work. That would likely continue to stay the same.
Tachiarai pressed some buttons on the camera and deleted the photos I’d taken.
“You’re deleting them?”
“Yes… I feel bad since you helped me take them, but since I was involved in the apprehension of the suspect, this photo can’t be used in an article.”
“Even so, there’s no need to delete them, right?”
It might be useful as evidence in the future. But Tachiarai shook her head.
“If this remains, I’ll always wonder if I can publish it somewhere. I don’t have the confidence that I’ll be always be able to resist the temptation. I don’t always get work.”
She then looked at her wristwatch.
“I have to go now. I’m glad we met.”
At the station, the chaos from the “passenger accident” had already disappeared.
10 Meters From the Truth | Contents | Koigusa Lovers’ Suicide
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Editors (Tier 2): Dedavond, Pearl H Nettle
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