Nanao’s attempt to make common cause with Lemon becomes a fight aboard the Shinkansen, and his victory over Lemon is only the beginning of an escape from Tangerine. The episode turns on Nanao’s ability to act under pressure: each improvised delay buys him a little time, but also leaves clues that his pursuer must interpret.

Background and Encounter

Nanao understands that Tangerine and Lemon were transporting the suitcase for Minegishi, who also hired Nanao to steal it. He reasons that both sides ultimately answer to the same client and hopes that telling Lemon this will make a temporary alliance possible. The proposal is not yet made when Nanao rises from his seat and finds Lemon standing directly in front of him. Lemon greets him as though they were old acquaintances, then attacks before Nanao can respond.

Nanao ducks and catches Lemon’s wrist, trying to keep the struggle contained. A public commotion could bring police or reporters into the matter and make it harder to conceal his failure from Minegishi; he also wants to preserve the possibility of cooperation with Tangerine and Lemon rather than turn them into enemies. Lemon avoids drawing attention as well, and slips out of Nanao’s hold. They sit across the empty middle seat and exchange blows in the cramped rows, neither accustomed to this kind of fight. The confined space makes a clean attack difficult, while the need to stay inconspicuous shapes Nanao’s choices from the outset.

The Fight and Its Reversal

Lemon slips out of Nanao’s hold, and they continue the struggle across the empty seat between them. The cramped arrangement makes it difficult to land a clean blow. When Lemon’s fist meets the lowered armrest instead of Nanao, Nanao briefly gains confidence, only to notice that Lemon has produced a small knife. Nanao uses a magazine as a makeshift shield; the blade cuts through its photographs, and when he fails to block the next strike in time, it slashes his arm.

Nanao grabs Lemon’s knife hand and knocks the weapon from his grip, then tries to press his advantage. Lemon draws a gun and holds it aimed at Nanao. A shot would attract attention, Nanao points out, but he gets his opening moments later: another Shinkansen rushes past the window, and Nanao casually wonders whether it might be Murdoch. Lemon turns to look without suspicion. Nanao forces the gun hand down and strikes him, knocking him unconscious.

Nanao moves Lemon to a window seat and considers killing him, but decides against it. After killing the Wolf, taking another life feels too risky, and he expects that killing Lemon would bring Tangerine’s anger down on him. Instead, he takes Lemon’s gun and phone, leaving the knife behind. The victory is therefore limited: Nanao has removed one pursuer from the immediate struggle, but Tangerine remains on the train, and Nanao still needs to avoid turning the pair into lasting enemies.

Improvised Delays and the Pursuit

With Lemon unconscious, Nanao has only a short lead. He takes Lemon’s gun and phone but leaves the knife, then tends to his own cut with first-aid cream. His arm aches from the struggle, and he knows Tangerine may return at any moment. The gun gives him a means of defense, but killing Lemon would risk turning Tangerine into a more determined enemy; Nanao’s immediate objective is to get away without making the conflict worse.

Instead of choosing a direction and simply running, Nanao seeds the train with possible delays. He sets two digital watches to alarm at maximum volume, ten minutes apart, and hides one beneath Lemon’s seat and the other on the luggage rack above him. He also finds a half-empty water bottle and mixes in water-soluble sleeping medicine, leaving it where Lemon might drink it. None of these measures is certain to work: Nanao cannot know whether the alarms will distract anyone or whether Lemon will take the bottle. They are attempts to create options while time is running out.

Before leaving car three, Nanao checks a motionless passenger and finds no pulse. He cannot identify the man, but the discovery adds another unexplained death to a carriage already marked by Little Minegishi’s body. Nanao nevertheless hurries toward car two. When Tangerine returns, he finds Lemon unconscious, confirms that he is alive, and begins searching for Nanao, reasoning that the younger man most likely went toward the rear of the train.

Tangerine’s search becomes a contest of inference. In car one he encounters an open umbrella on an empty row and spots a low cord tied across the aisle: Nanao has made a tripwire and used the umbrella as a decoy. A wigged passenger turns out to be another false lead. He explains that a young man in black glasses tried to take the wig, then paid him ten thousand yen after he objected. A nearby passenger confirms seeing someone in black glasses leave the umbrella and says he went back toward car two, complicating Tangerine’s belief that Nanao must be farther down the train.

Meanwhile, Nanao reaches the gangway between cars three and two and considers the trash bin where he had hidden the suitcase, but recognizes that a person cannot fit inside it. Panic narrows his attention and disrupts his thinking; within seconds, the rush passes, and he regains the ability to act without hesitation. He enters car two, picks up a bright red cowboy hat beside a sleeping passenger, and places it on the man’s head. Like the umbrella and the tripwire, the gesture is meant to give Tangerine something else to notice. Nanao cannot be sure any decoy will hold his pursuer’s attention, but each one might buy the time he needs to stay ahead.

Disguise and the Narrowed Search

Tangerine’s search is diverted not only by objects but by people who seem to belong to the ordinary life of the carriage. After a passenger points him back toward car two, the cross-dressed figure he had already stopped reappears from the bathroom and approaches him with disarming calm. The exchange buys Nanao another moment of uncertainty: Tangerine has correctly read the umbrella as a decoy and knows Nanao is somewhere nearby, yet his attention keeps being pulled toward apparent clues that lead nowhere. The scene’s shift between pursuer and fugitive makes the escape less a matter of vanishing than of controlling what Tangerine sees. Nanao cannot know which distraction will work, but his quick improvisations keep the search from becoming a direct confrontation.