Arthur Raffle Ticket

The Arthur Raffle Ticket is a small giveaway entry ticket that Nanao takes from Tangerine on the Shinkansen and later uses for a lottery play. Its folded paper and amateur train drawing connect the train’s violent aftermath to an ordinary errand much later; for Nanao, the ticket becomes an unlikely prompt to consider whether his run of bad luck might finally be changing.

Discovery and Description

After moving Tangerine’s body into the already crowded toilet, Nanao searches him and finds a mobile phone and a folded piece of paper. The paper proves to be a giveaway entry ticket. When Nanao turns it over, he finds a train drawn in ballpoint pen, with the word “Arthur” written beneath it. The image is simple and handmade, not an official train illustration or a message whose meaning is explained at the time.

A schoolkid asks what it is. Nanao answers that it is a drawing of a train, folds the ticket again, and puts it in his own pocket. This is a small but deliberate act of keeping: he has no stated plan for the paper, and its significance is not yet clear to him. The ticket leaves the immediate scene with Nanao, while Tangerine’s phone and body remain among the other consequences of the encounter.

From the Shinkansen to Nanao’s Wallet

The ticket remains with Nanao after the terrible Shinkansen trip. He later finds it while doing laundry, a mundane discovery that unexpectedly brings the journey back to mind. Faced with this remnant of what happened, he considers throwing it away so he can rid himself of reminders of the whole mess. Yet he cannot quite make himself discard it. The story gives no precise reason for that hesitation; the paper matters first as something retained without a clear purpose.

Nanao eventually puts the ticket in his wallet. Near the exit of a supermarket, he takes it out and recalls that it had been in Tangerine’s pocket on the train and that he had picked it up without quite knowing why. He also remembers noticing that the supermarket was at a station he had never visited. That detail helps turn a vague prospect into an action: he decides to go there and see whether the ticket has won anything. The object’s route from a dead man’s pocket, through Nanao’s laundry and wallet, ends not in disposal but in an attempt to use it.

A Test of Changing Fortune

At the supermarket, the ticket gives Nanao a concrete occasion to measure his hopes against the ordinary frustrations of the day. Looking at the prize board, he says he would feel let down if all his bad luck had been so that he could win a travel voucher. He also admits that he feels he might win. Surviving the Shinkansen journey alive has made him think that he may at last have some good luck, and because he found the ticket on that trip, he hopes it could mark a change in his fortunes. He says that hope is why he came all the way to the supermarket.

The scene immediately qualifies his optimism without settling the question. Nanao’s line at the register is still the slowest, as Suzuki gently points out. A woman ahead of him accidentally spills the coins from her purse; as she and the people behind her bend to collect them, one coin spins near Nanao’s feet, and he repeatedly fails to grab it. Meanwhile, the neighboring lines move quickly. These small delays echo Nanao’s familiar sense of bad luck, but they do not erase his counterargument: he has also run into Suzuki, which he treats as a possible piece of good fortune. The ticket is thus caught between two readings of the same day, neither yet conclusive.

The Lottery Play

When the cashier waves him forward, Nanao hands over the train-drawing ticket and chooses one play. As Suzuki watches, Nanao grips the handle of the lottery cage and turns it; through the handle, he feels the balls ricocheting inside. The cage releases a bright yellow ball. Almost immediately, the staff member rings a bell grandly, and Nanao looks over at Suzuki in surprise.

The scene ends on the bell and Nanao’s reaction. The supplied passage does not identify the prize, so the ticket’s exact result cannot be stated here. What it does establish is the completed passage from keepsake to wager: Nanao first carried the paper away from the Shinkansen for reasons he could not name, nearly threw it out, and finally gave it one play as a test of whether survival and coincidence might signal a turn in his luck.