Sudden confrontation leaves him trembling, but not from the ground shaking.

Because of how prone to earthquakes Japan is, the Japan Meteorological Agency sends out a warning to mobile phones when major seismic activity occurs. The idea is to give people farther from the epicenter even a few seconds to brace for the shaking that’s about to come. The Early Earthquake Warning is also accompanied by a text message alerting people to where the earthquake was centered, how strong it was, and whether there’s a chance of a subsequent tsunami. You can hear a sample in the video below, though if you’re watching it while in Japan, it’s probably a good idea to keep the volume low, so that no one in earshot thinks there’s an actual quake occurring.

Recently, Japanese Twitter user @MeinerLacrima was on the train home when the alarm went off, causing everyone onboard to pull out their phones and check the written warning.

https://twitter.com/MeinerLacrima/status/1047508433107210240

Thankfully, the earthquake ended up posing no danger to @MeinerLacrima and his fellow passengers. However, as everyone else was breathing a sigh of relief, one man, who was standing on the train with a woman who appeared to be his girlfriend, was panicking, since the sound of the alarms had revealed that he’d been secretly carrying two smartphones.

“What? Why do you have two phones?” the woman demanded. “You never told me you had a second phone. What’s going on?”

Of course, by this point everyone within earshot of the sudden interrogation had already arrived at the same conclusion: the man had two smartphones because he was using one to keep in contact with another woman he was cheating on his girlfriend with.

Online reactions to the sudden exposure of infidelity included:

“He should have kept his cool and just said the second one was his work phone.”
“Or that it’s his dedicated phone for playing Pokémon GO.”
“How about ‘This is a special phone I only use for talking to my mom?”
“I’d have gone with, ‘Whoa, the earthquake caused a dimensional rift, and this cell phone was transported here from some other point in spacetime. The me in that alternate dimension must be in a real pinch without his phone. I wonder how I can get it back to him…”

▼ “Oh no! My phone has an evil twin!” would also get high marks for creativity, if not credibility.

However, all of these excuses are either unbelievable, or the sort of thing you don’t need to keep a secret, and the plausible explanations shouldn’t make you panic even if you had forgotten to tell your girlfriend about it. Then there were those who said that if they’d been in the man’s shoes, they’d simply have jumped off at the next station and ran for it, but @MeinerLacrima then explained that this was the last train of the night, with the next not scheduled to come until several hours later, so the man was stuck onbord, being peppered with accusing questions as an awkward silence descended over the rest of the passengers.

This is the second case in recent memory of smartphones and trains exposing a cheater, and no doubt the woman was shocked. However, as one commenter pointed out, there’s no way to tell whether the two-phoned man was on the train with his primary girlfriend, or whether he was treating the woman as a fling while already being in a serious relationship with someone else, so it’s probably for the best that once they finally got to their stops, she’d never have to see him again.

Source: Twitter/@MeinerLacrima via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso