The Prince's retaliation against Wataru

The Prince’s retaliation against Wataru turns a child’s fall and coma into an instrument of revenge against his father, Kimura. Its significance becomes clear only during a later confrontation aboard the Shinkansen: the Prince first offers an account that makes Wataru’s fall sound accidental, then acknowledges that he targeted Wataru to get at Kimura. He subsequently calls what happened a test, a label that exposes how he converts another person’s suffering into evidence of his own power.

The Earlier Conflict with Kimura

The retaliation grows out of an earlier encounter in a park. Kimura’s physical attack on the Prince’s classmates had overwhelmed the boy. The Prince remembers Kimura as strong, enraged, and unconstrained by the ordinary rules of conduct. Because he had relied on what he had learned from books to compensate for his limited experience, Kimura’s violence confronted him with a force he could neither manage nor explain away. The Prince experienced the scene as a revelation of human power, while feeling himself reduced to a prop.

He ran. At the time, he told himself that he was going after Tomoyasu and the dog, but the account of his thoughts identifies that explanation as a cover for his retreat. The fear did not last unchanged: the Prince soon restored his composure by dismissing Kimura as a loser who resorted to violence without considering consequences. Yet the encounter remained unresolved. What stayed with him was not merely that Kimura had beaten the students, but that Kimura had made him feel frightened and confused.

The Prince’s desire for retaliation developed from that remembered humiliation. He wanted to make Kimura experience terror in return and to bring him to his knees. He treated the challenge as a test of his own abilities; failing to master it would, in his view, mean reaching the limit of his power. The plot thus connects Wataru’s endangerment to a prior conflict between the two men: the child becomes the means by which the Prince can reach the father.

Wataru as the Target

During the later train encounter, Kimura asks why the Prince hurt Wataru. The Prince initially describes Wataru as having followed him and his friends onto a roof, where, according to his account, the boy fell after being warned of the danger. Presented alone, this version shifts attention from deliberate retaliation toward an accident. It does not, however, remain the Prince’s only explanation.

When Kimura presses him to explain why Wataru in particular was involved, the Prince says that it was, of course, to get at Kimura. His admission establishes the purpose behind the harm: Wataru was targeted because he was Kimura’s son. The Prince treats this revelation lightly, even making a conspiratorial gesture as though the motive were an amusing secret. The contrast between his casual manner and the consequence for Wataru makes the cruelty of the act especially stark.

The account does not supply a detailed reconstruction of the roof incident, and the Prince’s description of how Wataru fell sits uneasily beside his admission of retaliatory intent. What it does establish is that the Prince’s conduct toward Wataru was bound to his conflict with Kimura. Wataru is not presented as the source of the Prince’s grievance; he is the person through whom the Prince chooses to strike at his father.

The Train Confrontation

By the time the Prince explains himself, Kimura is tied up and being taken toward Morioka. The Prince removes the tape from Kimura’s wrists and ankles, but the apparent release does not make the situation safe. He counts on Kimura’s knowledge that a violent outburst could place Wataru in still greater danger. The Prince believes Kimura will not risk his son’s life and uses that constraint to make him cooperate.

Kimura asks what the Prince wants. The Prince directs him to go to a gangway farther back, where a suitcase is hidden in a trash bin set into the wall. The request places Kimura in a position of constrained assistance: he hates the Prince, but believes that doing what is asked may leave some possibility of protecting Wataru. The Prince’s control therefore rests not only on physical restraint but on Kimura’s hope that his son might still escape danger.

The Prince also attacks that hope verbally, saying that money cannot help Kimura’s son get better. Kimura’s anger shows in his reddening face, but he suppresses it rather than act impulsively. When he asks why the Prince is doing this, he eventually narrows the question to Wataru. The shift from a general demand for an explanation to the specific question about his son gives the retaliation its emotional center: Kimura is seeking to understand why the Prince chose Wataru, even as the Prince keeps trying to provoke him.

Revenge Recast as a Test

Kimura interprets the Prince’s actions as an attempt to punish him for having frightened the boy. The accusation unsettles the Prince because it identifies the fear he has worked to conceal. Internally, he recognizes that Kimura’s attack in the park had cowed him and that his flight was not the purposeful pursuit of Tomoyasu and the dog he had claimed to himself. He also remembers how the fear and confusion lingered, feeding his determination to terrorize Kimura in return.

Outwardly, the Prince denies having been afraid and describes what happened to Wataru as part of a test, like an aptitude test. The phrase converts revenge into a performance of detached assessment: instead of acknowledging the remembered humiliation, he frames the harm as proof of his skill. Kimura understands enough to see that the Prince is making light of his son’s comatose condition. His momentary confidence disappears, and the Prince registers that change as a return to the upper hand.

The scene ends with the Prince lifting the bag to his seat, resetting its combination to 0600, and opening it. The practical movement back to the suitcase follows the personal revelation without resolving the conflict between them. The Prince has exposed the motive for targeting Wataru, yet continues to control Kimura through the very danger he has created for the family. His retaliation is therefore both an act against Wataru and a calculated means of forcing Kimura to submit.