The man’s fingers dug into the fist I formed around his shirt collar. Everyone remembers the first time they heard a man beg. “Let go,” he said. I shook my head. In one of my ears a forgotten earphone played forgotten music. He pulled hard and I pulled harder. I saw our audience gathering closer around us on the train platform: concerned-looking men in their business suits, the approaching pair of police, the frightened girl he touched. I saw her frantic face. I told him just three words. Three words that made him as still as glass. “I saw you.”
J.R. Gaskin is a failed anthropologist who writes short fiction and haiku from his tiny family home in Fukushima, Japan. Find J.R. on Twitter @ItsJamesRG.
*In Japan a “chikan” is a person, usually a man, who rubs against or gropes others, usually women, in crowds, often in trains.