Nanao Kills Hornet's Female Partner Aboard the Train

Nanao Kills Hornet's Female Partner Aboard the Train is known chiefly through Nanao's brief account to Maria after they leave the scene of Minegishi's stabbing at Morioka. Nanao says he encountered the woman associated with the Hornet selling concessions on the train and took her out; the exchange then opens a larger possibility that the Hornet was a pair, with separate attackers targeting Minegishi and his son. The account identifies Nanao's intervention but leaves its method and precise circumstances unstated.

Causes and Background

The conversation takes place as Nanao and Maria descend an escalator, leaving the commotion around Minegishi behind. Someone has noticed an object stuck in Minegishi's back, and another voice identifies it as a needle. The discovery makes the Hornet a plausible connection, but it does not, by itself, establish who attacked Minegishi or whether that person was the same attacker Nanao met aboard the train.

Nanao turns to Maria and asks whether she thinks it was the Hornet. Her question refers to the poisoner, not the insect; Maria makes that distinction explicit. The exchange links the needle at Minegishi's back to the possibility of a poisoner, while keeping the identification tentative. The pair are working from a clue and from what they know of the Hornet, not from a confirmed account of the stabbing.

Nanao's Account of the Encounter

Nanao tells Maria that he ran into the woman on the train while she was selling concessions, and that he took her out. His voice is described as low and distant. The phrasing establishes that Nanao acted against her, but the conversation gives no further description of what he did, where on the train the encounter occurred, or how it ended. The canonical event identifies her as the Hornet's female partner and records the encounter as her death; Nanao's compressed report does not itself explain the mechanics.

As he speaks, an image comes into Nanao's head of a man in a double-breasted uniform confronting Minegishi. Nanao's immediate question about the conductor shifts the discussion from the woman he remembers to the man he has pictured. The transition matters: the possible second attacker enters the conversation as an image and a suspicion, rather than as a verified identity or a witnessed killing.

The Two-Attacker Possibility

Nanao recalls that the Hornet might have been two people. Maria agrees that the poisoner could have worked alone or as part of a duo. Nanao had been sure there was only one person; faced with the possibility of a conductor involved in the attack on Minegishi, he revises that assumption. He reasons that the pair may have been after both Minegishi and his son.

The proposed division of roles remains explicitly uncertain. Nanao suggests that the woman with the snack trolley may have been responsible for Minegishi's son, while the conductor may have dealt with Minegishi at Morioka. Neither he nor Maria establishes this as fact. The theory instead gives a possible structure to the two apparent attacks: one disguised among the train's concession service, the other associated with the conductor and the later discovery of a needle in Minegishi's back.

Significance and Limits of the Account

Maria connects the hypothesis to the Hornet's reputation: the poisoner became famous by taking out Terahara, and an attack on Minegishi might have offered another prominent target. Her reasoning makes the proposed attack legible as an effort to add to that reputation, but it does not prove the motive or confirm that two people were involved. The exchange ends with the pair at the bottom of the escalator and Maria suggesting that Nanao may be right.

The event's significance lies in the shift from Nanao's certainty that he encountered a lone Hornet to a tentative account of coordinated attacks. His intervention against the woman is clear in broad outline; the larger operation is not. The needle, the uniformed man in Nanao's mind, and the woman's concession-seller disguise supply clues, while the division of targets and the identity of the person who attacked Minegishi remain conjectural.