Kimura's rescue of Tomoyasu and Takeshi

Kimura’s rescue of Tomoyasu and Takeshi is the park confrontation in which Kimura disrupts the Prince’s attempt to use a prototype defibrillator on a boy and his dog. The episode exposes the purpose behind the Prince’s supposed experiment: the device is a means of coercion, and the intended damage extends beyond physical danger to the bond between Tomoyasu and Takeshi. Kimura’s intervention frees the pair and turns the Prince’s own demonstration of control into a direct confrontation with an adult who refuses to follow his script.

Causes and Background

The events begin with a classmate whose father is a doctor and runs a private clinic. The clinic has a prototype device resembling an automated external defibrillator, or AED, intended to deliver a shock when a heart needs restarting. Unlike a typical automatic AED, this prototype is stronger and requires a user to apply electrode pads, consult the electrocardiogram data, and press a button to release the current. The Prince hears about it and decides the classmates should test its strength. He has the doctor’s child steal it, then brings the group to a wooded park at the edge of the neighborhood.

The Prince initially selects Tomoyasu as the test subject. The device could conceivably kill someone whose heart was still functioning, a danger the Prince understands but does not explain to the other children. Tomoyasu refuses, crying and pleading with him. The Prince then offers to spare Tomoyasu if he brings Takeshi instead. Tomoyasu’s attachment to the dog—his companion since childhood—makes the demand more than a change of test subject: it requires him to help endanger someone he loves in order to save himself.

Kimura later recognizes that the device’s medical purpose is secondary to the Prince’s interest. He sees the threatened experiment as a way to make Tomoyasu participate in sacrificing his dog and thereby break his spirit. The Prince’s own recollection confirms the distinction: he wanted to observe the effect of that choice on Tomoyasu, not simply learn what the defibrillator could do. The machine supplies the immediate threat; the intended leverage is Tomoyasu’s affection for Takeshi.

Kimura Arrives at the Park

A frightened schoolboy approaches Kimura for help, and the explanation draws him out to the neighborhood park. Kimura knows the place: a large residential park with a playground and sandpit beside a small wood. He leaves Wataru at home watching television and walks there with the boy. Although the Prince and his classmates are preparing a dangerous act, Kimura initially supposes the dog is the planned test subject and does not yet understand that Tomoyasu had been chosen first.

At the park, roughly ten students have gathered in a hollow among the trees. They have bound Tomoyasu and Takeshi together with duct tape. Tomoyasu clings to the dog and tries to soothe him, while another student has muzzled Takeshi with wrapped fabric. The classmates attach the defibrillator pads to the dog. Tomoyasu’s pleas for them to stop do not slow the preparations; instead, the group presses on. From behind a tree, Kimura watches long enough to understand that the threat is immediate.

Kimura is wearing sandals and briefly weighs whether to return for his gun, but he does not go back. He steps out and approaches the group, presenting himself as an older man who has come to rescue the dog. While the students hesitate, he removes the electrode pads and tears away the tape binding Takeshi to Tomoyasu. The adhesive pulls at the dog’s fur, but Kimura manages to separate them. This is the rescue’s decisive practical action: he interrupts the proposed use of the device and releases the two who had been tied together.

The Rescue Becomes a Confrontation

The Prince appears as Kimura is still addressing the students. Kimura’s manner has challenged the group’s assumption that he can be dismissed, and the Prince answers by throwing a rock that knocks him backward. He then directs the classmates to restrain Kimura. Several hold him, and the Prince invites the others to hit him before proposing that Kimura himself become the subject of an electric shock. The students’ compliance shows how readily the Prince converts the group from witnesses into instruments of his orders.

Kimura does not answer the threat with submission. When the students prepare to place the pads on him, he exploits their proximity and confusion to break free, striking or pushing away the boys holding him. He then faces the remaining classmates. The Prince gets them moving again by threatening that disobedient students, or even their siblings and parents, could be subjected to the device. Kimura beats back the group, including two boys carrying knives, and advances on the Prince. The confrontation has widened from protecting Tomoyasu and Takeshi to challenging the authority that made the rescue necessary.

Kimura grabs the Prince by the uniform and tears the fabric apart. He is poised to attach the electrode pads to the Prince’s exposed chest when the remembered scene shifts to Kimura’s later conversation aboard the Shinkansen. The supplied account establishes that Kimura freed Tomoyasu and Takeshi and turned the threatened experiment against its instigator, but does not establish whether he actually delivers a shock to the Prince. The rescue is therefore clear even as the exact final outcome of the confrontation remains unstated.

Consequences and Significance

The incident reveals that the Prince’s power rests not only on issuing commands but on manipulating what his classmates fear and value. His original choice of Tomoyasu, followed by the demand that Tomoyasu fetch Takeshi, turns a device into a test of loyalty and shame. The classmates’ actions around the bound pair, and their later obedience when the Prince threatens them in turn, show how his coercion spreads through the group. Kimura’s refusal to let that process continue makes the park a contest over who can direct the students’ actions.

The confrontation also provides the basis for Kimura’s later interpretation of the Prince’s hostility toward Wataru. Kimura tells the Prince that he believes the Prince came after his son because Kimura had frightened him at the park. That explanation is Kimura’s accusation, not an independently confirmed motive in the evidence presented here. Even so, the connection gives the rescue a consequence beyond the immediate release of Tomoyasu and Takeshi: Kimura understands the Prince’s later attack on his family as retaliation for having been confronted and challenged.

The park episode is recalled from two angles. Kimura’s account emphasizes the rescue and his decision to intervene despite being unprepared; the Prince’s recollection exposes the calculated purpose he had concealed from his classmates. Together, these perspectives change the meaning of the planned experiment. It was never merely a reckless attempt to see what a powerful medical device could do. It was an exercise in making a boy choose between his own safety and the dog he loved—and Kimura’s arrival broke that intended choice.