Prince's First Fatal Accident

The Prince’s first fatal accident begins with an ordinary trip home and ends with a discovery that unsettles him less than the death itself: he feels no guilt. Recounted to Kimura as the first of the experiences he means to explain, the crossing becomes the point at which the Prince connects his own careless action with another person’s death—and recognizes that the consequences have stirred his curiosity rather than his remorse.

The ride home

Back when he was in school, the Prince rode his bicycle to a large bookstore after class to buy a book he wanted. On his way home, he reached a main road and stopped at the crossing to wait for the signal. The setting appeared uneventful: no other pedestrians were nearby, traffic was sparse, and a man standing next to him wore headphones and watched his phone.

The Prince does not describe setting out to harm anyone. He began pedalling because the wait seemed long and the road looked clear; rather than wait for the light to change, he rode into the road against the signal. That small decision is the event’s hinge. The Prince acts for his own convenience, but the man beside him reads the movement as a cue and follows.

The collision

A black minivan appeared as the Prince crossed. The sequence of sounds alerted him to the collision behind him; when he turned, he saw the van stopped in the road and its bearded driver getting out. The man who had been standing beside the Prince lay on the ground, and his phone was broken. The man had been struck and was dead.

The Prince quickly constructed an explanation for how the man came to cross. Because the man had headphones on and was absorbed in his phone, the Prince thought he may have noticed the bicycle moving and followed automatically, assuming the signal had changed. This is the Prince’s reconstruction, not an account of a conversation or an intention the man stated. The road had seemed so quiet that the arriving van surprised the Prince; the pedestrian’s death, once he understood it, did not produce the same surprise.

What the Prince learns

The Prince later tells Kimura that the episode taught him two things. First, he believed that a person could cause a death and still escape notice if the circumstances made it appear to be an ordinary traffic accident. He recalls that the incident was treated as a typical accident and that no one paid attention to him. The Prince does not describe a deliberate plan to kill the man; instead, he dwells on the possibility that his own role went unseen.

His second discovery is personal: although he believed the death was his fault, he did not feel bad. The contrast between responsibility and feeling is central to the memory. The Prince presents the absence of remorse not as an emotion he overcame, but as a fact about himself that he noticed at the time. The accident therefore becomes more than a fatal consequence of crossing against a signal: in his telling, it is also the first evidence he finds about his own response to another person’s death.

The memory’s significance

The Prince identifies this moment as the beginning of his interest in killing. His curiosity turns toward what killing is like and how a person reacts while being killed. The recollection thus links an accidental death to a later, more deliberate fascination, while keeping a distinction between the original act and the interest that follows it. The crossing is not recounted as a planned experiment; it is the Prince’s first encounter with fatal consequences and with his own lack of remorse.

The event also shapes the exchange with Kimura. The Prince offers the accident as an explanation, while Kimura responds by treating questions about killing as a familiar form of teenage angst. The Prince’s question about why killing is wrong is not, as the narration makes clear, a cynical provocation or a joke: he wants an answer from an adult that he finds satisfying, and he does not expect Kimura to provide one. That unresolved question gives the memory an ending beyond the crossing itself. The accident has taught the Prince that a death can be treated as an accident and that he may feel no guilt; it has not given him a convincing reason to regard killing as wrong.