by Kanae Minato
Both teachers’ real names and photos were made public. When I saw that one of them was Maki I was shocked. But it also made me happy.
Ah, I thought, so she’s living an ordinary life—in fact had worked hard to carve out her own life. Becoming a teacher and protecting young children was not something she could have done if she were still seized with fear over the murder. I concluded that Sae was indeed the exception, a basically weak-willed person, and that it wasn’t all my fault.
But that feeling of relief was short-lived. As I searched for more news on the incident one day, I ran across a weird item.
Maki was a murderer, it said.
On the TV news it said that the intruder died because he stabbed his own leg and fell into the pool, but in this Internet report it said that when the intruder tried to climb out of the pool Maki kicked him repeatedly and thus killed him.
I know you can’t believe everything you read online, but I couldn’t totally ignore it, and I decided to phone Maki’s elementary school. They must have had plenty of prank calls, for the first thing they did was ask my name and affiliation, which threw me a little. But I was determined to learn the facts, so I went ahead and gave them my name, and since I had no title I gave my husband’s company and position and said I was the mother of one of Maki’s friends. They told me Maki was on campus and they’d pass along my message.
I was the one who had called, yet the whole thing had me flustered for a moment. There was so much I wanted to ask, but where to start?
As I was pondering this, Maki came on the line.
“We’re holding an unscheduled PTA meeting the day after tomorrow,” she said. “I have something I’d like you to hear, so I hope you’ll attend.”
She hung up right after this, but I was relieved to hear how calm she sounded. A person who’d kicked an intruder to death wouldn’t be that calm, and the fact that she’d answered the phone meant she hadn’t been arrested. Those online reports must be nonsense, I decided.
I took the Shinkansen train all the way to her town to attend because I wanted to ask her about Sae. I knew Maki was going through a lot, but I felt that someone like her, who’d lived a decent, upright life, would listen.
But what Maki said at the meeting threw me even deeper into a pit of shame and guilt.
I was startled from the very beginning. She said that right after the murder she remembered the murderer’s face. If that’s true, why didn’t you ever say anything? You’d gone home before any of the other children, but none of the adults would have blamed you for that. Instead, I wish you had told what the murderer looked like. If you had, I’m sure I would never have been able to thank you enough. And I might not have subjected you, or the other girls as well, to those words I said, three years after Emily was killed.…
But as I listened to Maki now, I couldn’t blame her. I knew that she, too, was held captive by Emily’s murder, and by my words, in a way that went beyond fear.
If I hadn’t said what I did, and hadn’t forwarded Sae’s letter, Maki would still have protected her children. But she might not have delivered the final blow to finish off the intruder.
As I sat there in the last row in the gym, I was stricken by the series of crimes that had occurred, and I wanted to dash out of there. But I couldn’t even stand up. For I had just heard an unbelievable name.
As Maki kicked the intruder, she remembered a person resembling the murderer from fifteen years ago. I found it incredible that his name would come up. And, she added, somewhat ambiguously, there’s someone who resembles him even more.
I think this is what she wanted to say:
“The murderer looked a lot like Emily.”
I can only hope this was some misunderstanding on her part.
Maybe when she kicked that intruder, she remembered Emily’s face, and that gave her the illusion that she remembered the murderer’s.
And then the face of a famous man who resembled Emily came to her. That makes sense. She might have forced herself to have that impression.
But there was something I had to do before thinking about the murderer.
I had to put a stop to this series of crimes.
I decided to summarize what Maki had said at the meeting, and this time add my own message to it. That same night all of what Maki had said was on the website of a sleazy weekly magazine. My name was given as Ms. A, the mystery adviser, as they put it.
I had an acquaintance delete that, but before that I made two copies of the article and put them in envelopes.
I’ve forgiven all of you.
That’s the message I appended to it. So don’t do anything dreadful. Killing a different man in place of the murderer is not a form of penance. I could only hope that the rest of the girls would hear my prayer.
And yet next Akiko killed someone. And that, too, was in the same town, and almost unimaginably, the victim was her own brother.…
This wasn’t the time to write letters anymore.
I set off for that town.
Akiko killed her brother in order to protect a little girl.
What I should apologize to Akiko for is not those words I told her three years after Emily’s murder, but what happened immediately afterward. The instant I heard that Emily had been killed, I may well have shoved Akiko aside. Everything went blank before me at that moment and I honestly can’t recall. But I want you to know this: I didn’t push Akiko down because I hated her. And of course I never thought Akiko deserved to be treated that way.
But it was me, I think, who drove her to do what she did.
She never read either of the two letters. She thought the letters were reminders of the promise she’d made. Maybe that’s why her little niece and Emily overlapped in her mind.
Then what should I have done?
Fortunately, when I got in touch with Yuka’s family from the hospital where Akiko was hospitalized, I learned that Yuka’s apartment was only three stops away by train, so I decided to go see her directly. Yuka’s mother hadn’t heard my voice in over ten years and at first didn’t realize it was me, but once I told her my name she seemed to make the connection.
“I understand exactly how much you want them to arrest the murderer before the statute of limitations runs out,” Yuka’s mother said. “But Yuka is going to have a baby very soon. It’s a critical time for her. I’d prefer that you leave her alone.” She was pretty upset.
With what happened with Sae, and Maki and Akiko both wary of men ever since the murder, it really surprised me to hear that Yuka was pregnant.
Then Yuka’s okay, I decided. I knew very well how women got stronger when they got pregnant. If you have another life growing inside you, you can put up with painful things that, on your own, you couldn’t. The child inside your womb is more important than yourself, and as long as that maternal instinct arose I was sure she wouldn’t be taking any rash actions.
Still, I couldn’t just go back to Tokyo.
I had a photograph I had to have her look at. “It’s just one photo I’d like her to take a look at,” I told Yuka’s mother, and somehow persuaded her to give me the address of Yuka’s apartment and her cell phone number.
I’d brought the photo with me. I was hoping that Maki was mistaken, but the name she gave was a name connected with something I deeply regretted in my past, and I just had to know.
Naturally, I planned to show it to Akiko, too. There was a possibility that though she said she didn’t remember the man’s face, in fact she did. But she told me that not only didn’t she remember his face, she couldn’t recall any other details about him. So showing the photo to her would be pointless, which actually made me feel a little relieved. Even so, she mentioned the same name.
She said that on the day of the murder her cousin and his girlfriend, who were visiting town, saw a man who resembled him at the station. The cousin said the man was his girlfriend’s teacher back in elementary school.
I was afraid to be alone. The reason I went to see Yuka wasn’t
so she would tell me he wasn’t the murderer, but more to have someone hear about the sin I had committed in my own past. But it wasn’t the time or place, and I didn’t talk about it.
That’s why I’m writing about it here.
After I started going out with him, Akie and I grew apart. Not that we quarreled or didn’t get along anymore, but as seniors we were in different seminars and I didn’t go to school as often as before.
He was in his second year of teaching at an elementary school and I started spending all my time at his place, as if I were his wife. While he was at work I did the cleaning and prepared meals, totally absorbed in the kind of housework I’d never done before. I mentioned wanting to get married and living together.
“After you graduate I’d like to formally go to visit your family,” he said, and I was overjoyed. His words alone should have been enough for me, but I was impatient and said I couldn’t rely on a verbal promise alone. So he used his meager bonus from work to buy me a ring. An engagement ring with my birthstone, a ruby. I couldn’t have been happier, and while he was out I’d try the ring on over and over, then take it off and polish it.
And then one day my hand slipped and the ring fell beneath the desk. And that’s when I spotted a notebook I’d never seen before protruding from a drawer. It had been pushed to the very back and stuck out all the more. A secret notebook, it looked like.
Maybe it’s just some study notes, I thought, and I pulled it out and opened it. Because I wanted to know everything about him. But I soon regretted opening it. The notebook was his diary. If it had been an ordinary diary I would have enjoyed going ahead and reading it, feeling a twinge of guilt perhaps. If he’d written about me, that would have made me happy to read it.
But the diary was full of his longing for another woman, someone he couldn’t let go of.
Is the promise we made then not forever?
Why did your feelings change so suddenly? Why didn’t you say anything?
I know you betrayed me, but I can’t help thinking of you every single night.
I knew right away this you he wrote about wasn’t me. Because I was there, with him every day. The dates in the diary overlapped with when he started seeing me, and I felt horribly betrayed. I left his apartment, went back home, and shut myself away in my room. I really did start to feel sick and took to my bed.
I had no appetite and felt feverish, as if I were on a rolling boat and seasick. I’d never imagined that finding out he loved someone other than me would cause this much hurt. Am I this weak a woman? I wondered. I’d run out after reading halfway, but maybe I should have read the diary to the very end. Then at least I might discover the name of this other woman. Find out who she is, and if I felt she was no match for me, it would be okay, wouldn’t it, since he’d promised to marry me?
Maybe Akie knows who it is. I can ask her if, back when they worked together at the restaurant, there was any other woman who came to see him.
I phoned her right away. Quite a while before, she’d told me that things hadn’t worked out with one of the boyfriends I’d arranged for her to date, so I figured she’d understand how I feel and kindly hear me out.
Akie was at home in the apartment she lived in alone. I’d visited her only once and remembered it as a dim, spare, lonely little place. She said she was writing up her résumé so she could find a job after school.
“Asako, you’re not going to go out for job interviews? Oh, right—you don’t need to. You can use your family’s connections to get in wherever you want. I envy you. So, why are you calling?”
I hadn’t heard my friend’s voice in some time, but it sounded cold, as if she was trying to reject me. Her search for a job probably wasn’t going well, and she was on edge, but still it angered me that she would use this tone with me when I was feeling so down. That’s why I went ahead and said what I did.
“You’re right. I mean, I’m going to get married to him. After I graduate we’re going to officially announce it to my parents, and he gave me an engagement ring, too. I told him not to go to the trouble since it’s so expensive, but he insisted I accept it. I haven’t told this to anyone else yet, but I think I’m pregnant. So we might not wait until I graduate to get married. I’m so happy, Akie, and it’s all because of you, since you’re the one who introduced us.”
I’m not sure myself why I said I was pregnant then, just because I’d been feeling a little under the weather. I might have been trying to reassure myself. Akie remained silent. So I went ahead and babbled on and on about the things I did to take care of him, movies we’d seen together recently, and so on. And finally Akie spoke up.
“If it’s okay, why don’t you come over right now? I want to hear it all from you directly, not over the phone. And you can show me your engagement ring, too. It must be gorgeous.”
I looked at the clock and saw it was after nine. Going out this late was a bother, but all this talking about my love had perked me up and I thought it was worth going there, if only to show off my ring. “After I get ready I’ll be right over,” I told her, and hung up.
It was only about thirty minutes to her apartment by taxi, but with the weekend and the crowded roads it took nearly an hour to get there. I knocked at the door of her place but there was no answer. Thinking maybe she hadn’t heard, I tried the doorknob, and the door wasn’t locked so I went in. Beyond the tiny entrance there was just one six-mat room and I saw her immediately.
She was collapsed on the bed, which was covered in blood. She’d cut her wrists. It didn’t occur to me to call an ambulance. I was terrified and instead used her phone to call him.
“Come over right now,” I said. He said he’d gone out drinking with a colleague and was exhausted. Could we make it tomorrow?
“You need to come right this minute. Come to Akie’s apartment. She—she killed herself.”
He hung up almost before I’d gotten the words out. He’s coming, I thought vacantly as I sat beside Akie. That’s when I noticed an unopened letter on top of her desk.
Addressed to me, maybe? I mean, Akie was the one who’d asked me over. I opened it to find a single sheet of stationery.
Hiroaki, I love you forever.
What is this? Akie loved him? Could he have also loved her? Did Akie kill herself to spite me? But had she really planned to die? If I hadn’t been caught in a traffic jam and gotten here earlier, maybe she would have failed in her attempt.…What should I do? He’ll be here soon.…
I stuck the letter in my bag and ran out of the apartment. A resident of another unit was just coming home and I had them call an ambulance, but Akie was beyond saving. And he never came.
Maybe unable to find a taxi, maybe wanting to get over to Akie’s as fast as he could, he had borrowed a car from a colleague in the same apartment building and driven toward Akie’s place. But on the way he got in an accident.
It was a minor accident, a fender bender, and though no one was hurt he’d been drinking beforehand. And naïve me had no idea of the consequences.
If a teacher was arrested for DUI he would be dismissed in disgrace from his position and lose his job.
All that had suddenly befallen us frightened me, and I ran away from him.
As I walked to Yuka’s apartment he was all I thought about. Did he kill Emily? But why, ten years later, and in that town? I had kept Akie’s letter all those years. People around her at the time were sure that Akie had done it because she’d been turned down for all the companies she applied for. Employment neurosis, they called it. Don’t misunderstand me. She was an earnest, outstanding young woman. If she were alive today I’m sure she’d be hired by a large corporation and become a top career woman. But back then, society didn’t accept women like her. Someone like her from the back of nowhere, with no connections, wouldn’t be able to even get a job doing clerical work, let alone with any prospects of promotion. They would have tossed her résumé in the reject file with barely a glance, before she even took the written exam or had an intervi
ew.
But truly she was more intelligent than any woman I’ve ever known. It was no wonder he fell in love with her. One of them should have told me about it. If they had, I wouldn’t have done anything to stop them. I had no interest in any man who was in love with some other woman.
Somehow he must have found out what I’d done. Tearing them apart, driving the woman he loved to suicide, then running away. Now that I think of it, isn’t there a town near here with the same name as the one Akie said she came from?…
As these thoughts were vacantly whirling around in my head, I walked from the station and arrived at Yuka’s apartment. With that fixed stare of hers behind her glasses, maybe she did remember what the murderer looked like. I was picturing showing her, at this late date, a photo of him, and her saying “No, I don’t think it’s him,” and was about to start up the stairs when I heard a man and a woman arguing. What awful timing I have, I thought, and hid in the shadows of the bushes and saw them appear on the stairs above me.
It was Yuka and a man. And Yuka looked about to be knocked over.
I quickly pulled out my cell phone and punched in Yuka’s number, which I had in my contacts list. The theme song for a detective drama I was familiar with rang out and the man fell down the stairs. It was dark so I couldn’t really see how he happened to fall. When I saw how calm she was when she called for the ambulance, I decided not to show myself. If she had fallen apart and collapsed in tears, I probably would have come out to her right away. But I couldn’t bring myself to when she was that calm.
After she climbed aboard the ambulance, I hailed a taxi.
After I had been in the taxi a while and had calmed down, this thought hit me: The last girl has finally done it. If only I hadn’t hidden, hadn’t called her on the phone but had confronted her and told her “Stop it!” I felt regret, but I knew all too well that remorse after the fact was pointless.