Hornets

The Hornets are a feared criminal organization associated with the killing of Terahara and suspected of targeting Minegishi and his son. Their importance in the novel lies partly in what remains uncertain: Nanao and Maria piece together a possible operation linking the train’s apparent suitcase theft to the deaths, but cannot confirm who ordered the job or whether one agent or two carried out the attacks. That uncertainty makes the Hornets both a threat within the criminal underworld and a source of the story’s shifting explanations.

Reputation and Criminal Connections

The Hornets are known as dangerous operators. A go-between who once worked in contract killings and other hazardous jobs offers Nanao a lucrative assignment, then identifies Tangerine and Lemon as the people he would have to face. He describes the pair as exceptionally reliable and violent, but Nanao refuses the work immediately. The offer establishes the scale of the danger in that line of business: even a highly paid job is not worth entering a conflict with operators whose reputation is framed in superlatives.

The same discussion places the Hornets within a wider network of commissions and intermediaries. Nanao’s work usually comes through Maria, but the go-between asks whether he would accept work from another source. Later, Nanao learns that his client is taking orders from a further client, making his own position that of a subcontractor to a subcontractor. The first account of the chain identifies Minegishi, a man in Morioka, as the main client who initiated the job. Maria subsequently reconsiders that account: she admits it was a guess, and proposes that the Hornets, rather than Minegishi, may have commissioned the theft. The distinction matters because the apparent route of payment and instructions may conceal who actually benefits from the assignment.

The Suspected Operation Against Minegishi

The possibility that the Hornets acted against Minegishi arises after Nanao sees a needle in Minegishi’s back at the station and leaves with Maria. He recalls that the poisoner he encountered on the train had been disguised as a concessions seller, and asks whether the Hornet might consist of two people. Maria says the possibility of a solo operator or a duo had been raised before. Nanao had assumed there was only one, but now considers whether two agents were aboard the train: one could have targeted Minegishi’s son, while the other dealt with Minegishi at Morioka.

Their proposed division of roles remains an inference, not a confirmed account. Nanao suggests that the woman pushing the snack trolley may have been responsible for the son, while a conductor could have confronted Minegishi at the station. Maria connects the theory to the Hornets’ earlier notoriety: they became famous by taking out Terahara, and might have sought another prominent killing by going after Minegishi. She also suggests that returning to a previous success could indicate a group short of new ideas. The conversation presents this as a possible explanation for the suspected attacks, not as established knowledge of the Hornets’ motives or internal planning.

The Suitcase as a Possible Diversion

Maria’s further theory revises the meaning of Nanao’s assignment. If the Hornets were targeting both Minegishi and his son, Tangerine and Lemon would have obstructed them. Commissioning a suitcase theft could have drawn the two men’s attention away and created an opening for an attack with a poison needle. On this reading, Nanao and Maria may have been hired not simply to steal a bag but to serve as a diversion in another group’s operation.

The theory also offers a possible explanation for how the theft information reached Maria after the Shinkansen had left Tokyo Station. Nanao had earlier realized that whoever supplied the bag’s location might still be aboard the train. He found the prospect heartening because the informant could be an ally in the theft. Later, he and Maria consider that the source could have been either the snack-trolley seller or the conductor, since both could move through the train without drawing suspicion. They further speculate that one of them might have contacted Minegishi during the journey, warning him that something was wrong and encouraging him to come to Morioka. If so, the warning itself could have helped bring him within reach of the suspected attackers. Each link is conjectural, but together they turn apparently useful information into a possible instrument of misdirection.

Information, Uncertainty, and Significance

The Hornets’ suspected operation unfolds through an information network rather than through direct knowledge of the group. Momo, who runs an adult bookstore in Tokyo, is also a central source of underworld intelligence: criminal operators come to her to buy and sell information. Tangerine and Lemon sometimes use her services, while Maria and Nanao rely on information passed through their own professional connections. In this environment, a report about a client, a suitcase, or a person aboard the train can connect distant actors while also obscuring who originated the plan.

The book does not resolve the questions raised by Nanao and Maria’s reconstruction. It leaves open whether the Hornets had one agent or two on the train, whether the presumed conductor and snack-trolley seller were involved, and whether the Hornets commissioned the theft. What the theory establishes for the characters is a new way to connect the assignment, the attempted attacks, and Minegishi’s arrival at the station. The Hornets’ influence is therefore felt not only through their reputation for lethal work, but through the possibility that the apparent job at the center of events was itself a screen for a second operation.