The Prince’s manipulation and needle torture of Kimura turn a staged test of family loyalty into a contest over obedience, with Wataru’s safety used to constrain Kimura even when he resists. The scene exposes the Prince’s method: he scripts the choices available to another person, treats compliance as proof of his authority, and makes the threat of further harm reach beyond his immediate captive.

The call becomes a test

The episode begins when the Prince notices Kimura’s phone still buzzing and proposes a game. He tells Kimura to answer his father’s call and ask for help, but insists that Kimura must not mention Wataru. The distinction is central to the trap: Kimura is to present himself as a man being held, while the person whose safety matters most to him must remain unspoken. The Prince expects the grandfather to soften if he believes something has happened to Wataru, and therefore forbids Kimura from using that concern to make his appeal persuasive.

Kimura accepts the call under pressure. His father’s first question is about Wataru, and Kimura says that his son is fine before trying to explain that he needs help. The father does not readily believe him. He questions why anyone would hold Kimura on a train, wonders whether the story is true, and reasons that a genuine captor would not have let him answer the phone. His skepticism frustrates the appeal, but the exchange also shows that Kimura cannot simply disclose the danger without risking the consequence the Prince has threatened.

The Prince then takes over the conversation. Speaking politely, he identifies himself as sitting beside Kimura. The father responds by asking the Prince to keep an eye on Kimura and to stop him if he seems likely to drink. The request introduces a personal history between father and son without resolving it; within the scene, however, it gives the Prince a way to present himself as the reasonable person in the conversation. After ending the call, he declares that Kimura has lost the game. The rules were set by the Prince, and the outcome is made to appear as if Kimura’s failure rather than the rigged test has authorized what follows.

Pain as punishment and leverage

The Prince produces a sewing needle and frames its use as the penalty for losing. His explanation is not merely that pain will punish Kimura: he understands the imposed rules as a way of establishing their difference in status. A small object, easy to conceal compared with an electric shock, becomes an instrument for enforcing that arrangement in the confined setting of the train. The Prince proceeds with the punishment while telling Kimura to remain quiet, making silence another demand attached to the threat.

The danger extends beyond Kimura. When Kimura appears close to protesting, the Prince warns that Wataru will suffer if Kimura makes noise again, and says that he will make the call himself. Kimura’s anger gives way to restraint when he recalls that the Prince does not bluff. He clenches his jaw and braces himself rather than risk provoking retaliation against his son. The episode thus makes the threat effective before any further action against Wataru occurs: the Prince’s power lies partly in Kimura’s expectation that disobedience will be transferred onto someone he loves.

The Prince’s private reasoning clarifies how he reads this submission. Each order obeyed, he believes, pushes a person lower in a hierarchy, making later obedience easier and recovery of independence harder. That idea connects the private encounter to his broader rule over the schoolkids. Earlier, Kimura had recognized the students’ passivity through the concept of learned helplessness: repeated shocks and suffering had taught them to expect that resistance would not help. Their fear also made them distrust one another, as students turned suspicion and resentment toward people who might otherwise have been allies. The train scene applies a related logic directly to Kimura, though here the Prince uses the threat to Wataru to keep resistance costly.

Kimura breaks the script

Kimura eventually cannot endure the punishment in silence. He drives his knee and elbow into the Prince’s head, knocking the needle from his hand. The action is a sudden interruption of the game’s structure: Kimura stops following the Prince’s instructions and physically disrupts the procedure the Prince had presented as inevitable. His reaction combines triumph with horror at what he has done, suggesting that the blow is both a moment of resistance and a frightening escalation for him.

The Prince does not respond with an immediate loss of composure. He mocks Kimura’s reaction as evidence that the punishment hurt too much, then presents himself as patient and controlled. More pointedly, he says that someone less restrained might already have sent a killer after Wataru. The claim turns the Prince’s calmness into another form of intimidation: Kimura has interrupted the immediate assault, but the boy’s safety remains subject to the Prince’s decision. Kimura exhales and appears unsure what to do next, leaving the confrontation unresolved rather than converting his blow into a clear escape.

Power beyond the immediate encounter

The scene’s central reversal is limited but consequential. The Prince initially controls the call, the rules, and the penalty; Kimura’s strike breaks that sequence for a moment. Yet the Prince restores pressure by shifting attention from his own injury to the possible danger facing Wataru. The father’s skepticism has already deprived Kimura of the help he sought, while the Prince’s threat makes open resistance appear capable of endangering his son. The result is not a simple contest of physical strength but a struggle over who can define the consequences of each action.

Read beside Kimura’s earlier reflections on learned helplessness, the episode distinguishes visible force from the expectation of force. The schoolkids’ fear had become a shared condition that weakened trust and discouraged rebellion; Kimura, by contrast, does act, but the Prince’s leverage over Wataru immediately narrows what that action can achieve. The needle, the phone call, and the prohibition on mentioning Wataru all serve the same coercive design: to make Kimura experience each available choice as already governed by the Prince. Kimura’s strike exposes a limit to that control, while the threatened retaliation shows how quickly the Prince tries to reassert it.