“Inevitabilities rather than coincidences”

“Inevitabilities rather than coincidences” is Kaga’s way of reframing the case’s unnerving personal connections: not as a chain of chance events to be dismissed, but as a pattern whose causes still need to be understood.

The Case’s Personal Pattern

Kaga makes the distinction while speaking with Matsumiya. He acknowledges that the victim’s identity—Mutsuo Koshikawa, who turned out to be Shunichi Watabe—does not, by itself, strike him as extraordinary. A detective who has been a police officer for a long time may know someone who becomes a crime victim. What troubles him is that the suspect is also someone he knows. More than that, the routes by which he came to know or hear about the victim and the suspect were entirely different. The accumulation, rather than any single link, makes the case feel too closely bound to his own life.

From Suspicion to Interpretation

Matsumiya agrees that this is what happened, but argues that the apparent excess of coincidence is no reason to remove Hiromi Asai from the suspect list. Kaga clarifies that he is not proposing to do so. His point is interpretive: perhaps the connections are “inevitabilities rather than coincidences.” The phrase preserves the facts Matsumiya insists on while changing the question they pose. Instead of asking whether an unlikely coincidence should disqualify a suspect, Kaga asks whether the seeming accidents belong to a deeper chain of causes.

A Pause Before the Next Revelation

After saying this, Kaga turns and gazes into the distance. The gesture gives the formulation a suspended quality: it is not yet a solution or proof, but a way of orienting the investigation. The chapter then shifts to Hiromi Kadokura arriving at the Meijiza Theater office, where a staff member tells her that a gentleman is waiting to see her. That cut places Kaga’s abstract distinction beside the next scene involving Hiromi, sustaining the sense that the personal connections he has identified are about to acquire further significance.