Righteous Citizen (Part 1) | Contents
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.
Righteous Citizen (Part 1) | Contents
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Editors (Tier 2): Dedavond, Pearl H Nettle
Assistants (Tier 1) : Rolando Sanchez, Lilliam, Yousef, Maria C
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