Hornet

Hornet is a feared professional poisoner whose reputation links a six-year-old underworld assassination to the deaths of Minegishi and his son aboard the train. The name first circulates as a story about an elusive killer, then acquires a face when Nanao recognizes the snack-trolley attendant as Hornet. Yet the revelation does not settle the identity: rumors have long allowed for two people working under the same name, and later reasoning suggests that a conductor may have been the other half of the operation.

Identity and Reputation

Six years before the train journey, Hornet became notorious by entering the offices of Terahara, a powerful underworld figure, and killing him. The killing established Hornet’s professional reputation almost overnight. Accounts of the method describe a poison needle used to prick a victim on the neck or fingertip, leaving a small mark rather than an obvious wound. The lack of visible injury later becomes consequential when Nanao considers how Minegishi’s son may have died.

Hornet’s reputation is presented as a shifting body of professional lore, not a complete or reliably verified biography. Maria compares rankings of the most dangerous killers to award predictions: people make confident choices despite there being many candidates. She names the Pusher, said to stage deaths as accidents involving vehicles, and recalls that Hornet once occupied the same kind of talk. That fame, she suggests, has since faded. Her comparison of Hornet to a bee that gets only one good sting reduces a celebrated career to a single notorious success; the remark also makes the later return of the name feel like a possible attempt to repeat that success.

The stories about Hornet conflict on a basic point. Some say the assassin was one person; others say two people worked together. Maria initially treats such accounts as the tall tales surrounding older professionals, while the possibility remains useful once the train’s separate deaths are considered. The uncertainty is not resolved into a confirmed roster. Instead, it shapes what Nanao and Maria can infer about the attack.

The Suspected Train Operation

After Minegishi’s son is found dead without visible wounds, Nanao proposes that Hornet may have poisoned him. Tangerine explains the reported technique: the first needle prick supposedly primes the victim’s immune system, and a second triggers a fatal allergic reaction. This account gives the otherwise unexplained death a possible mechanism, but it remains a theory based on what is said about Hornet’s methods, rather than a complete demonstration of what happened to the boy.

The clue that brings the theory into the immediate scene is a photograph. Lemon recognizes the person in it as the snack-trolley girl, the attendant who has been moving through the train. Tangerine tells Nanao that she is Hornet; the recognition catches Nanao off guard. The trolley worker’s ordinary access to the cars matters: she can travel through the train without attracting the same attention as someone moving with no apparent public-facing role. The attendant’s disguise is therefore not simply a hidden identity but a means of being present across the train’s spaces.

The subsequent encounter confirms that the danger is active. The woman grips the trolley and advances with a needle in her hand. Nanao manages to turn one of her own poison needles against her, but he does not know how quickly the poison will take effect or what symptoms to expect. As he waits, she reaches for a pen-shaped injector and prepares to use it on herself. Nanao kills her before she can do so, takes the injector, and administers it to his own thigh, hoping it will act as an antidote. The sequence leaves his survival dependent on a device whose function he can only guess at in the moment; he has no time to establish whether he has used it correctly.

A Possible Second Hornet

The woman’s death appears to remove Hornet from the train, but the later discovery of a needle in Minegishi’s back reopens the question. As Nanao and Maria leave the area, Nanao asks whether Hornet was responsible. Maria initially mistakes his reference for the insect, then understands that he means the poisoner. Nanao explains that he encountered and killed the trolley attendant, but recalls that Hornet may have consisted of two people. The distinction between killing one operative and ending the operation becomes central: if the rumor is true, the woman’s death cannot by itself account for every attack.

Nanao and Maria consider a division of work. The trolley attendant may have targeted the son, while a conductor could have dealt with Minegishi at Morioka. This remains a possibility, not a confirmed account; neither the conductor’s participation nor the exact allocation of victims is established. Maria nevertheless sees a motive that fits the pattern of the old story. By killing Minegishi, the pair might have hoped to add another prominent target to a reputation first made through Terahara’s assassination. The theory makes the train’s apparent disorder look potentially coordinated, while preserving the uncertainty that has surrounded Hornet from the beginning.

The Suitcase Job and Narrative Significance

The suspicion expands from the killings to Nanao and Maria’s own assignment. Maria proposes that their job may not have come from Minegishi at all, but from Hornet’s operatives. On this reading, the request to steal the suitcase created a diversion, opening an opportunity to reach Minegishi’s son with a poison needle. The idea recasts the theft: what appeared to be the central task may have been useful to another party because it drew attention elsewhere.

Nanao reasons that whoever contacted him with the suitcase’s location after the train left Tokyo could have been either the trolley attendant or the conductor. Both could move through the cars and check what was happening without raising suspicion. They may also have contacted Minegishi during the journey, encouraging him to come to Morioka by suggesting that something was wrong. If that happened, the warning would have served not to protect Minegishi but to bring him within reach of the second suspected assassin. These are deductions developed by Nanao and Maria, not disclosures confirmed independently by the narrative.

Hornet consequently functions both as a character and as an unstable name for an operation. The book gives the name a documented past, a suspected method, and the immediate presence of the woman on the trolley, but leaves the possible partnership and the broader plan in the realm of inference. The contrast between the attendant’s routine passage through the train and the lethal professional identity attributed to her makes ordinary access part of the threat. Her death resolves Nanao’s direct confrontation with one assassin; it does not settle who killed Minegishi, whether the conductor was involved, or who arranged the suitcase job.