Wataru Kimura

Wataru Kimura is the unconscious child at the center of the danger aboard the Shinkansen: his father, Yuichi Kimura, is held under the Prince’s control because the Prince threatens his life, while Wataru remains in hospital after a fall from a department-store roof. Though Wataru is absent from the train, his condition shapes his father’s thoughts, draws his grandparents into the crisis, and gives the story’s final news of safety and awakening its force.

Identity and Background

Wataru is Yuichi Kimura’s son and Shigeru and Akiko Kimura’s grandson. His fall from a department-store roof left him in a coma and under hospital care. The Prince remembers shoving him from the roof, establishing that the fall was not simply an accident but an act the Prince committed. Wataru’s own perspective and words are not presented in these scenes; the reader encounters his situation through the fear and care of the people around him.

The Coma and His Father’s Care

For a month and a half after Wataru entered the coma, Yuichi had barely left the hospital. Because Wataru did not respond, his father could not talk with him or encourage him in the ordinary sense, but he continued to care for him in practical ways, changing his clothes and moving him in bed. The work and the difficulty of sleeping in the hospital steadily wore Yuichi down. Wataru’s room could hold as many as six young patients, each with parents staying nearby. Those parents did not make small talk with Yuichi, but neither did they shun him: seeing him beside his son, speaking to the unresponsive boy, they recognized a struggle they shared. Yuichi, who generally expected others to be enemies or to keep their distance, gradually came to regard the parents as allies in the same battle.

The depth of that attachment becomes especially clear after Yuichi is bound aboard the moving train. Watching buildings and land vanish past the Shinkansen window, then entering a tunnel, he thinks of Wataru in the hospital and imagines the boy’s world as equally dark and uncertain. Yuichi hopes the Prince will encounter trouble while returning the suitcase, but the thought immediately turns against him: if the Prince is harmed, Wataru may pay for it. Yuichi wonders whether the threat is real or only a way to keep him compliant. Because he cannot rule out the danger, however, he forces himself to keep the Prince alive. His anger at this dependence is sharpened by the regret that he left Wataru alone.

The Prince’s Threat

The Prince makes Wataru a means of controlling his father. He claims that an accomplice is waiting near the hospital and has already called to ask when he may act. According to the Prince, a further call—or his failure to answer one—will be the signal to harm Wataru. He describes the possible outcome as the child’s death, using a grotesque environmental justification that treats Wataru’s life as disposable. The threat reaches beyond the train: it places a hospitalised, unresponsive boy within the Prince’s reach and leaves Yuichi unable to verify what is happening there.

The Prince reinforces that leverage when Yuichi resists him. During the needle torture, he warns that any further outcry will put Wataru in danger. Yuichi’s visible rage gives way to silence as he remembers that the Prince does not bluff. The episode shows how Wataru’s vulnerability extends the Prince’s control over his father even when the two are separated: Yuichi’s actions are constrained by the possibility that resistance could bring violence to the hospital.

His Grandparents and the Search for News

Shigeru and Akiko are also drawn into the uncertainty. When Shigeru tries to return a recent call, the phone he is calling has been switched off. The lack of specifics allows his imagination to run, and he admits that he is worried about Wataru. He does not know whether the boy is in danger, but he calls the hospital and wonders whether Yuichi boarded a Shinkansen to come north and see them. The grandparents’ concern makes Wataru’s crisis a family emergency, not merely a threat used to compel his father.

Later, a message on the train’s digital ticker reads, in effect, that Wataru is safe and an intruder is dead. The brief notice changes the meaning of the danger surrounding the hospital: the threat is no longer left suspended as an unanswered possibility. As the train approaches its final stop, Shigeru tells Yuichi that Wataru has really woken up. Yuichi responds with relief and gratitude, acknowledging that Shigeru saved the day after Yuichi had called without knowing for certain whether his son was in danger. Shigeru answers by recalling that Yuichi has helped him many times.

Awakening and Narrative Significance

Wataru’s awakening closes the immediate uncertainty that has governed Yuichi’s choices. For much of the train journey, his condition is known only through the coma, the Prince’s threat, and his father’s fear; the final report that he is awake supplies a concrete change rather than merely another promise of safety. The earlier ticker announcement and Shigeru’s later confirmation make the news arrive in stages, first establishing that Wataru is safe and then that he has regained consciousness.

Wataru has little direct presence in these events, yet the story repeatedly measures the consequences of the conflict against his life. His father’s hospital vigil shows care expressed through repetitive, practical attention; the Prince turns the same bond into a threat; and the grandparents’ intervention helps bring news to Yuichi. Wataru’s recovery therefore does more than end a period of suspense. It reverses the danger that has kept his father under the Prince’s control and restores the possibility of their reunion, without diminishing the long period of fear and uncertainty that preceded it.