May 3rd
Saturday
[5:00]PM
Kenichi walked into the train station his head hung low as he walked, the words his grandfather said weighing him down.
'MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER!' The word repeated itself; he couldn't deny it, but he could numb it. He popped in a pair of earbuds and so while the train whizzed its way across the track he watched a movie on his phone. It made him forget, even for just a while, that he was who he was. It numbed the pain.
The train continued for a while before it stopped at another station and right before it took off three kids rushed into the train car. Two boys and one girl.
The girl had straight brown hair that was kept in place with a white headband. Her two friends were polar opposites, one was lengthy and skinny the other taller than both of them and fat. The three of them looked around for a seat but found none available. So Kenichi who was sitting down stood up and silently offered them his seat.
The girl noticed and silently thanked him with a bow and Kenichi continued watching his show.
"Hey Mitsuhiko." The fat boy whispered to his freckled face friend.
"What is it, Genta?"
"Do you see that guy?" He gently nodded toward Kenichi, hoping to stay inconspicuous.
"Yeah, what about him?" Mitsuhiko seemed uncaring about what Genta was asking; he seemed more preoccupied with another thought.
"Look at him. Didn't Conan say to be on the lookout for anyone suspicious? Well, doesn't he look suspicious?" Kenich was wearing a black suit and had headphones in his ears, something that he could be using to talk to someone else. And his knees had dust from the ground on them. Something he could have gotten by leaning over to place a bomb.
"Genta don't be rude, he looks perfectly normal to me." The girl who was named Ayumi interjected Genta's theory. After all, the man was nice enough to get up from his seat for them.
"Ayumi's right Genta, he might just like wearing black."
"Yeah but what if he's related to the," He looked around, checking to make sure no one could hear him, "B-O-M-E"
"What?"
"The bomb." He whispered through his shut teeth.
"I doubt he does, what would a bomber, who's being pursued by police, be doing on a train showing his face. If he was the bomber he would probably still be wearing that disguise." Mitushiko calmly analyzed the situation, giving his friend a little bit of relief, though it didn't last long as an announcement came over the train's loudspeaker.
[ATTENTION ALL PASSENGERS DUE TO A MINOR EMERGENCY WE WILL BE BYPASSING BEIKIA STATION. I REPEAT WE WILL BE BYPASSING BEIKA STATION. THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING.]
"Whats going on?" A passenger asked to no one in particular but still an answer came
"Thats what I'm saying the bombs could be anywhere not only inside the cars but outside as well!" The static voice of a commanding man breached the ears of a few passengers, as for where this voice came from, well it came off a decorative yellow and green badge that one of the kids was wearing.
"A bomb!" Genta shrieked, his words turning a few heads, one of them belonging to a high school boy who got filled with fear at the word 'bomb.' He looked over at Genta and walked over.
"Hey kid, what did you just say?" He said loudly, not thinking about the fact that he could be heard by other passengers.
"Uh, oh I was talking about Bakugan!" Genta yelled hoping that the similar pronunciation would throw him off.
(A.N: Bomb in japanese is said as Bakudan which is why I'm making the joke. Also I know that like ten seconds ago he made a joke in English. Don't expect me to be super consistent with that.)
"Bakugan?" The high school boy asked confused, "Like the little transforming ball toys?" He thought of the cheap plastic balls that were featured in a kids TV show and were also a line of toys targeted towards kids.
"Yep. That is what I said and what I was talking about. I mentioned nothing about a bomb." Genta said sticking a little too much to his story.
"I never said anything about a bomb." The high school boy grew pale as his worst fear seemed to be coming true, there was a bomb on board this train.
"You didn't?" Genta asked, a cold sweat running down his back as he recalled something his very intelligent friend had once told him,
'No matter what, don't let people panic. Panic just leads to a chance to dispose of clues or worse someone could get hurt.' Genta tried to follow these words, but he was weak. If the high school boy pressed him any further he wouldn't be able to keep up the lie.
"Stop antagonizing the kid, Shinpei." Kenichi said, laying his wired earbuds across his shoulders and placing his phone in his chest pocket.
"Huh? Kenichi Saruyama, what are you doing here?" Shinpei Sakamoto asked, while he adjusted his glasses to look at Kenichi.
"Am I not allowed to be on the train?" Kenichi asked, obviously just antagonizing him.
Shinpei Sakamoto was a classmate of Kenichi's and one that Kenichi didn't like. It's not that he wasn't a decent person, he was just really annoying, and he reminded Kenichi of himself, he hated that.
"Fair enough." Shinpei looked Kenichi up and down, confused by the fact that he was seeing Saruyama Kenichi of all people in a suit with combed back hair. "What the hell are you wearing man?"
"Clothing." Kenichi responded immediately with a blank stare before he switched the topic back to the original reason he had interfered in the first place. "Anyway, don't antagonize the child. He knows just as much as you do. If he said something about a bomb it was the overactive imagination of a child. There was a report of a faulty firework going off earlier. The kids probably got explosions on the brain." Kenichi held out his phone, displayed on it was an article from a few hours earlier.
[Just over an hour ago an explosion occurred near Sainin city. The explosion was apparently the fault of a nearby firework shop that had accidentally set off a firework. Luckily a child noticed and ran it to a nearby riverfront. The only injury was the child. His name is being withheld due to his age.]
"See. Stop antagonizing the kid, Shinpei." Kenichi then returned his attention to the phone, he found whatever he was watching more entertaining than Shinpei's antics.
"Ugh, whatever." Shinpei walked away from the children returning to where he was before but his seat had now been overtaken by an old lady, so he begrudgingly stood up and held onto the railing.
Shinpei would have been much happier about the situation had the person that overtook his seat been an attractive woman with big boobs, like the gal from his class Yukana Yame. He would have been able to stand here and look at her boobs with no problem but alas he wasn't as lucky, he got stuck with an ugly old granny. His words not mine.
"Thank you mister." The boy named Genta thanked Kenichi first but his two friends followed quickly.
"No need to thank me, just watch what you say kid. Adults kinda take the fun out of everything." Kenichi smiled and again returned to his phone, really hoping to finish the movie he was watching since his train ride had been unexpectedly extended.
"Oh yes, will do. But there is a bomb somewhere." Genta said without having learned a lesson from the exact interaction they just had.
"Oh really? Well lucky for us I'm sure the police are already on the case and everything will be taken care of." Kenichi consoled what he believed to be a child's fantasy.
"Did you just say police?" One of the nosy passengers asked having overheard the later half of Kenichi's conversation
"Oh, Ma'mm I was just comforting this child, he has an overactive." He was attempting to talk to the girl but she had already run off either to cause havoc or who knows what. "And you're gone…great. Way to go Kenichi you screwed up again, just another day in your typical fucking life."
Kenichi has a habit of talking to himself under stress or whenever he was confused about something, it often drove people nuts and would more times than not cause him to say things he shouldn't in front of people. Say for example the word 'Fucking' in front of a group of 6 year olds.
"...He said a bad word." Ayumi whispered to Mitushiko and Genta. Kenichi stared at them blankly unsure of what to say now so he sat up away from their eye level and told them,
"Don't take after me." And he got up and walked away. This was how he dealt with things: he walked away from every problem he ever faced, ever since…nevermind, that's not my'n to say.
***
"Please stop the train, my child is sick and needs medicine!" A mother carrying a 4 year old boy in her arms screamed out as the trains whizzed by another station, the trains were going faster.
"Come on, stop the train!" More passengers from the train began to yell and scream attempting to get them to stop the train but the conductors wouldn't, they couldn't. They knew what was at stake so despite all the clamoring and the chaos they kept on going, hoping and praying that the police would solve this issue with the bombs.
"Mom! Mom!" A young boy screamed at his mom who had fallen in the chaos. Someone had pushed her intentionally or not. She was on the ground, but she was fine. She sat up, wiped away her child's tears and held him in her arms, telling her child that she was alright.
Kenichi had seen this and as he watched the screaming child call out to his mom a memory surfaced.
"Mom!" His voice was faint, drowned out by the pouring rain and the thunder. "MOM!" He yelled again louder, hoping that she would get up. "MOM!" He screamed at her, but she didn't move. "Mom…please." He begged but she didn't move, she couldn't move, she was dead.
***
Eventually just as Kenichi had told the kids the police handled everything and everyone was welcome to go home. The next day it was reported that an architect had threatened to blow up several places and was stopped thanks to the genius detective Kogoro Mori.