Malice

6 THE PAST (PART ONE) ^{KYOICHIRO KAGA’S NOTES}

May 14

Today, I visited the middle school where Nonoguchi taught until recently. Classes had just let out, and the front gates were thronged with students on their way home. Out on the sports field, a few kids were raking the track.

I checked in at the front office and asked if I could speak with any instructors who’d been close to Mr. Nonoguchi. The woman in the office went to talk to another teacher before both of them went back to the teacher’s office. The wait was annoying, but I remembered that this was the way things typically worked at public schools. After a wait of almost twenty minutes, they finally brought me to a meeting room.

I met with the school headmaster, a man named Eto, and another man, Fujiwara, who taught composition. I assumed that the headmaster was there to make sure that Fujiwara toed the school-board party line.

I first asked the two men whether they’d heard about Kunihiko Hidaka’s murder. They had and, in fact, knew quite a bit of detail. They told me that they knew Nonoguchi had been Hidaka’s ghostwriter and had heard that his resentment over this was Nonoguchi’s motive for killing him. I got the distinct impression they were eager to hear even more gritty details from me.

I asked if they’d ever noticed anything out of the ordinary during the time that Nonoguchi had been working as a ghostwriter.

After a moment’s hesitation, Fujiwara said, “I knew he was writing novels. I’d even read some of his stuff in a children’s magazine. But, no, I had no idea he was a ghostwriter. Especially not for a famous author like Hidaka.”

“Did you ever witness Mr. Nonoguchi writing anything?”

“No. He kept to his teaching duties while he was at school, so I think he was writing at home, after work, or on the weekends.”

“Would you say his teaching load was light enough for him to be able to do that?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that his load at school was particularly light. But he was very clever at getting out of any extracurricular activities at school, and he did go home early every day. Particularly beginning in the fall of last year. It was, well, that he was in poor health, though we never found out exactly what the problem was. I think everyone let him coast on that a bit. Evidently, he was using that extra time to write Kunihiko Hidaka’s novels! Pretty impressive, isn’t it?”

“You mentioned that he started going home particularly early starting in the fall of last year. Do you have any physical record of this?”

“We don’t use time cards or anything here, so no. But I’m pretty sure that’s when it started. The composition teachers have a meeting to touch base every two weeks. Around that time he stopped showing up to those.”

“But he participated normally until that time?”

“Well, he wasn’t the most active of participants, but he was there.”

Regarding Osamu Nonoguchi’s character:

“He kept to himself, so you’d never really know what he was thinking. I caught him staring out the window more than once. Of course, he must’ve been really struggling. I don’t think he was a bad person, deep down. I think I can understand how, after taking it for years, he just snapped. Not that I’m condoning murder, mind you.” Fujiwara smiled. “I’ve always enjoyed Hidaka’s novels—I read quite a few of them. But knowing that it was really Mr. Nonoguchi who wrote them changes how I think of them.”

I thanked both of the men and left the school. On my way home, I passed by a large stationery shop. I went inside, showed the woman at the register a photograph of Osamu Nonoguchi, and asked whether he’d come in at all over the last year. She said she thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember.

May 15

Today, I went to interview Rie Hidaka. For the past week, she’s been staying in an apartment in Yokohama. Presumably she moved to get away from what’s been happening. She sounded miserable over the phone, and I suspect that, if I’d been a journalist, she would’ve refused to see me.

We arranged to meet in a café in a shopping center near her apartment. She told me she didn’t want to meet me at her apartment or for me to even come by the building. She was afraid somebody would notice.

The café was right next to a boutique holding an annual bargain sale, but it was set off from the main shopping center thoroughfare in such a way that patrons couldn’t be seen from the outside. Inside, the café was cluttered with displays and dividers. All of this made it a good place to talk without being seen or overheard. We sat across from each other at a table in the far back.

I first asked her how she was doing.

She gave me a wry smile. “I’ve been better. Honestly, I can’t wait for this circus to end.”

“Whenever there’s an investigation it takes a while for things to quiet down.”

She shook her head and said, irritated, “I wonder if anyone out there understands that we’re the victims here? They’re treating this like some kind of celebrity scandal, and the way they talk about it, it’s as though my husband was the bad guy.”

It was true. The entertainment news shows on television and the weekly magazines were talking more about Kunihiko Hidaka’s plagiarism than his murder. With his former wife’s adultery added into the mix, tabloids that didn’t normally bother with novelists had jumped all over the story.

“You have to just ignore it,” I said.

“I’ve been trying, believe me. If I didn’t, I’d lose my mind. Unfortunately, it’s not just the media that’s the problem.”

“Has something happened?”

“Not something, many things. There are the phone calls, and all the letters. Hostile, threatening ones from random people. I don’t know how they found their address and phone number, but they’re now calling and sending them to my parents’ house. I suppose they learned from the news that I’m not staying at our old house anymore.”

“Have you reported all this to the police?”

“I have. We all have. But it’s not something the police can do much about, is it?”

She was right, though I wasn’t inclined to admit it. “What are they saying—the letters, I mean?”

“Oh, lots of things. Some people want me to return all of the royalties his books have earned, and others are just mad, feeling that my husband betrayed them. We’ve had people send boxes filled with his novels. And there are a lot of letters demanding that we return all the awards he won.”

In my opinion, the majority of these people weren’t actually fans of her late husband’s or even lovers of literature. Many of them, I felt sure, hadn’t even heard the name Kunihiko Hidaka before news of his murder broke. I bet the people harassing her got their kicks off others’ unhappiness and always had their eyes out for an opportunity to make someone else miserable. It didn’t matter who Rie Hidaka was, let alone that she was the victim.

I told Rie this and she agreed.

“Ironically enough, my husband’s books still seem to be selling very well. I guess it’s mostly morbid curiosity at this point.”

I’d heard that Hidaka’s book sales were up. However, the only copies of his books on the market were the ones already on bookstore shelves. His various publishers had all issued statements that they wouldn’t reprint his books. I assumed the editor who had once refuted the ghostwriter theory had wisely decided to remain publicly silent on the matter.

Then Rie related a bit of surprising news, though she said it casually. “I also got a legal letter from Mr. Nonoguchi’s relatives.”

“What did it say?”

“They were demanding the profits from my husband’s books. They felt they had a right to at least the advances paid for any book based on Mr. Nonoguchi’s work. Their representative was Nonoguchi’s uncle.”

Mr. Nonoguchi was an only child, and both his parents had already died. His uncle was probably the closest living relative. Still, it was an astonishing request to make of the widow on behalf of the man who killed her husband. It really does take all kinds, I thought. “How did you reply?”

“I told them my lawyer would contact them.”

“Good move.”

“Honestly, I’m amazed by all of this. I’ve never heard of anyone demanding money from the estate of a murder victim!”

“It’s an unusual case, and I’m not clear on the legal intricacies myself. Though I’d be very surprised if you had to pay anything.”

“As would I. But the money isn’t the problem. I can’t stand it that everyone seems to think it was my husband’s own fault he was killed. And Mr. Nonoguchi’s uncle didn’t seem one bit sorry.”

Rie Hidaka bit her lip and her eyes flared. I was relieved to see she was more angry than sad. I didn’t want her breaking into tears in the café.

“I know I told you this before, Detective Kaga, but I still don’t believe my husband stole someone else’s work. When he would talk about a new book he was writing, his eyes would get so bright—like a child’s. I know he truly enjoyed creating stories.”

I nodded, understanding how she felt. However, I thought it would be inappropriate for me to tell her that I agreed. I think she understood because she stopped talking about it. Instead she asked me why I had wanted to see her.

I pulled some papers out of my jacket pocket and placed them on the table. “I was hoping you could take a look at this.”

“What is it?”

“Osamu Nonoguchi’s account of what happened.”

Rie Hidaka frowned, clearly displeased. “I’d rather not. I’m sure it’s just a long list of the horrible things my husband did to him. Besides, I’ve already read what was in the papers.”

“I believe you’re talking about the confession Mr. Nonoguchi wrote after he was arrested. This is different. This is a falsified account he wrote after the crime in order to throw the police off his trail.”

This she seemed to understand, though she still looked displeased. “Okay. But how can reading something that isn’t true help?”

“I understand your confusion, but I’d really appreciate it if you could just take a look. It’s not very long; you’ll be able to finish it in no time.”

“You want me to read it here?”

“If you would, yes.”

She shook her head, but said nothing more. She picked up the pages and started to read. Fifteen minutes later, she looked up. “Okay. Now what?”

“Of the events recorded in this account, Mr. Nonoguchi has admitted that the description of his conversation with Kunihiko Hidaka was fabricated. It wasn’t as easygoing as he suggests, but a rather heated argument.”

“So it seems.”

“In addition, the description of events when he left your house is different than what really happened. Though you only showed him to the door, he claims in this account that you showed him to the gate.”

“Right, we talked about that before.”

“Is there anything else? Anything that differs from your memory of what happened?”

“Other than the sending off?” She looked confused for a moment, then scanned the account again. She shook her head. “No. I don’t see anything.”

“How about something Mr. Nonoguchi did or said on that day that isn’t written here? Do you remember anything? Even a slight detail might be helpful. Such as whether or not he went to the bathroom.”

“I don’t remember precisely, but, no, I don’t think he used the bathroom.”

“Did you see or hear him make any phone calls while he was there?”

“Well, he could’ve called someone from my husband’s office without me knowing.”

To Rie Hidaka, it had been just another ordinary day at the time Nonoguchi dropped in. Of course she wouldn’t remember every detail.

I was ready to give up when she suddenly looked up and said, “Actually, there was one thing.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sure this has nothing to do with the case, though.”

“Anything you can tell me might help.”

“Well, that day, when Mr. Nonoguchi was leaving, he gave me a bottle of champagne. He said it was a present.”

“Are you sure it happened that day?”

“Oh, absolutely sure.”

“You say he gave it to you as he was leaving. Do remember the details of the exchange?”

“Well, it was after he came out of the office, just as Ms. Fujio was going in. It was in a paper bag, like it had just come from the store. He said he’d gotten so absorbed in talking to my husband that he’d forgotten to give it to him. He suggested my husband and I might drink it later that night at the hotel.”

“And what did you do with it?”

“Well, I accepted it, of course, and brought it to the hotel. I left it in the hotel refrigerator. I never went back for it after what happened that night. The hotel even called me about it later, and I told them they could do whatever they wanted with it.”

“So you didn’t drink it?”

“By myself? No. I put it in there to chill so I could drink it with Kunihiko once he got to the hotel that night.”

“Had Mr. Nonoguchi ever brought alcohol as a gift before?”

“As far as I’m aware, that was the only time. Mr. Nonoguchi doesn’t drink.”

“I see.”

In his confession, Nonoguchi had written that he’d brought a bottle of scotch the first time he visited the Hidakas’, but of course Rie hadn’t been there at that time. I asked if she remembered anything else from the day that she couldn’t find in the account. She thought about it long and hard, but ultimately told me that there was nothing else. Then she asked me why I was asking her about all this now.

“There’s a lot of paperwork that needs to be done in order to close a case. This kind of fact-checking is just part of that process.”

I don’t think she doubted my explanation.

I concluded our interview, once again gave her my condolences, and left. Immediately after leaving the shopping center, I phoned the hotel where the Hidakas were supposed to have spent the night of his death and asked about the champagne. It took a while, but eventually they put me through to the manager who had been on duty at the time.

He spoke to me in the crisp, clear tones of a service-industry professional. “I believe it was a bottle of Dom Pérignon rosé. It was found in the room refrigerator. It’s an expensive bottle and was unopened, so I called to inform the guest. She told me we should dispose of it as we saw fit, so I did.”

I asked what he had done with the champagne, and after a bit of hesitation he told me that he’d taken it home. I then asked him whether he had drunk it.

He said that he had, two weeks earlier. He’d already thrown out the bottle. “Should I not have done that?”

“No, it’s not a problem at all. Was the champagne good?”

“Oh, very.”

I thanked him and hung up.

Back at home, I watched a copy, which I’d had forensics dupe for me, of the video of Osamu Nonoguchi sneaking into the Hidakas’ house. I rewound and watched it several times, but my only reward was having that monotonous scene burned into my retinas over and over.

May 16

At slightly after one in the afternoon I arrived at the Yokoda Real Estate branch in Ikebukuro. The small office had two desks behind a counter with windows facing the street.

Inside, I found Miyako Fujio working alone. She informed me that everyone else was out with clients and she couldn’t leave the office, so we sat at the table attached to the front counter and talked there. From the outside, it probably looked as though a shady-looking man had come in, hoping to find a cheap apartment.

I cut straight to the chase. “Are you familiar with the details of Nonoguchi’s confession?”

She nodded, her face drawn taut. “I read what was in the papers.”

“What did you think?”

“Well, nothing, except I was very surprised. I had no idea Forbidden Hunting Grounds was written by someone else.”

“According to what Nonoguchi told us, Kunihiko Hidaka hadn’t been able to talk to you about the novel in detail because it wasn’t his work. Does that jibe with your own experience talking to him?”

“Honestly, I can’t say. It’s true that Mr. Hidaka always brushed me off without getting very deep into specifics, but that hardly proves anything.”

“Does anything you might have discussed with Mr. Hidaka seem odd to you in retrospect?”

“Nothing that I can recall. But it’s hard to say. I never imagined Mr. Hidaka wasn’t the real author, so there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

I couldn’t blame her for that. “How about anything that makes more sense now that you know Osamu Nonoguchi was the author?”

“Again, it’s hard to say. Mr. Nonoguchi also went to the same school as my brother, so it’s certainly possible that he wrote that novel. It’s not like I knew Mr. Hidaka all that well, for that matter.”

I was on the verge of giving up hope of any new information from Ms. Fujio when she said, “Just, if it’s true that Mr. Hidaka didn’t write that novel… I don’t know, I might have to read it again before I say anymore. You see, I’d been convinced that one of the characters in the book was modeled on Mr. Hidaka himself.”

“How so? Can you describe the character to me?”

“Have you read the book?”

“I haven’t, though I did look at an outline. One of the other detectives read it and wrote up a summary for the rest of us.”

“Well, part of the book details the main character’s middle-school days. The main character’s very violent, pressuring his friends to join in his antics, and attacking anyone who doesn’t toe the line. They’d call it bullying, nowadays. Anyway, his favorite victim is a classmate of his, a boy named Hamaoka. I always thought that boy was a stand-in for Mr. Hidaka.”

“Why did you think that student was Mr. Hidaka?”

“Well, the book is written as if it were Hamaoka’s own recollections. And since it’s really more of a roman à clef than a work of pure fiction, it made sense that the narrator was actually the author—thus, Mr. Hidaka.”

I nodded.

“Also,” Miyako Fujio said, after a moment’s hesitation, “it occurred to me that Mr. Hidaka wrote that novel for a specific reason.”

I looked up at her. “What reason is that?”

“In the book, Hamaoka’s hatred for the main character is obvious. You can feel it practically emanating from every page. Though it’s never said outright in the book, you get the sense that it’s this hatred that moves Hamaoka to investigate the eventual death of the man who bullied him in school. If Hamaoka’s hatred was the author’s hatred, well, it would make sense for Mr. Hidaka to have written his book as a way to get revenge on my brother. That’s how I interpreted it, at least.”

I stared at her. The idea of writing a book for revenge hadn’t even occurred to me until she’d mentioned it. In fact, our investigative team hadn’t paid much attention to Forbidden Hunting Grounds at all.

“So Nonoguchi’s confession throws off your theory,” I said.

“It does. But really, it doesn’t matter whether it was Mr. Hidaka or Mr. Nonoguchi who wrote it. As long as the author was the model for that boy, it’s all the same. Just… I’ve had the image of Hamaoka being Kunihiko Hidaka in my head for so long that it’s hard for me to picture someone else in his place. Sort of like when your favorite book gets made into a TV show and the actor doesn’t match your image of the character.”

“So does Kunihiko Hidaka match the character of Hamaoka in your mind?”

“I think so… but that might just be because when I first read it, I assumed that character was him.”

I asked her what she would do now that the author of Forbidden Hunting Grounds was Osamu Nonoguchi.

She thought for a moment, then said, her voice cold, “I’ll wait until I hear the results of Mr. Nonoguchi’s trial. Then I’ll decide on an appropriate response.”

When I got back to the precinct, the chief of detectives was waiting to speak to me. He called me into his office and wanted to know why I hadn’t wrapped up this case and forwarded everything to the prosecutor’s office. He wasn’t too pleased when I told him I was still investigating the murder of Kunihiko Hidaka. I can hardly blame him for questioning the need to continue sniffing around when the murderer had already confessed in full, provided a compelling motive for his actions, which was backed by sufficient evidence, and even wrote his own confession.

“So, what doesn’t fit?” he asked, his irritation plain. “From where I’m sitting, this looks pretty cut-and-dried.”

I had no real basis to deny any of the evidence—the most vital pieces of which I had uncovered myself. Until recently, I, too, had felt that nothing was left to know about the murder of the bestselling author. I’d succeeded in breaking down Nonoguchi’s false alibi and uncovering the truth behind his relationship with Hidaka. I was rather proud of what I’d accomplished.

But doubt had crept in around the edges of my assurance. It happened while I was writing up a report after questioning Nonoguchi in his hospital bed. My eyes strayed to his hand, down to his fingertips, and a sudden disturbing thought occurred to me. At the time, I decided to ignore it. It was too far-fetched, too unrealistic.

Yet I was unable to ignore the thought. It proved persistent, refusing eviction from the back corners of my mind. I should mention that, even when I first arrested Nonoguchi, I was apprehensive, afraid that I might have taken a wrong turn. Now that apprehension was becoming even more pointed.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that my doubt is a delusion, more indicative of my shortcomings as a detective and a person than of any great undiscovered truth. Yet I’m unwilling to bring closure to this case while that doubt still lingers.

For what must’ve been the dozenth time, I carefully reread Osamu Nonoguchi’s confession. As I did, I asked myself several questions that hadn’t previously occurred to me:

1. If Kunihiko Hidaka was using Osamu Nonoguchi’s murder attempt to blackmail him into being his ghostwriter, then, what would have happened if Nonoguchi decided to turn himself in and let the chips fall where they may? It would have done considerable damage to Hidaka as well. It might even have ruined his writing career. Why wasn’t Hidaka afraid of this? According to Nonoguchi, he didn’t turn himself in because he didn’t want to involve Hatsumi, but Hidaka couldn’t have known with any certainty Nonoguchi would react this way.

2. Why didn’t Nonoguchi start to resist Hidaka’s blackmail after Hatsumi’s death? His account asserts that he’d grown tired of the constant psychological warfare. But, if that was the case, wouldn’t that have made turning himself in an even more appealing option?

3. Would the videotape and the knife really have been sufficient evidence for an attempted murder charge? The only thing caught on tape was Nonoguchi going in through Hidaka’s office window, and no traces of blood were on the knife. Moreover, the only person at the scene other than the would-be murderer and intended victim was Hatsumi, a conspirator to murder. Depending on her testimony, it seemed to me that chances were good Nonoguchi would be found innocent if he was even brought to trial in the first place.

4. In his confession, Nonoguchi writes that his relationship with Hidaka became that of a genuine collaborator. Considering all that had passed before then, was that really possible?

I questioned Nonoguchi on these four points. He had one answer for all of them:

“You might think it’s strange, but I can’t change what happened just to suit you. I can’t tell you why I did what I did when I did it. All I can say is, I wasn’t in my right mind. Not for several years.”

This left me with little to go on. If there were something concrete, a contradiction I could wave in his face, I might get somewhere. But my doubts were ethereal, psychological questions rather than cold, hard facts.

However, there was another reason for my misgivings, one that overshadowed all four of these points.

It comes down to character. I know the man Osamu Nonoguchi far better than the chief or any of the other investigators who worked on the case. And what I know about his character and what he claims in his confession just don’t match up.

I have grown increasingly unwilling to abandon an alternative theory of mine, one that has arisen out of these doubts. A theory that, if correct, would explain everything.

I had a clear purpose in going to see Rie Hidaka. I was sure that, if my conjecture was correct, then Osamu Nonoguchi’s first account of the discovery of her husband had an entirely different purpose from what I’d initially assumed.

I was, however, unable to elicit any useful information. The only new piece of information that I’d gleaned from her was that Nonoguchi had brought the Hidakas a bottle of champagne. Nonoguchi might simply have forgotten to mention this in his account. Or perhaps he left it out for some reason. It seemed meaningful, since he did not typically bring alcohol when he visited—though it might’ve simply been a send-off present for the couple’s imminent move. If there was some other, deeper meaning, I didn’t uncover it. Still, I filed the bottle of champagne away in my mind for possible future use.

I believe it’s necessary to completely reassess the relationship between Osamu Nonoguchi and Kunihiko Hidaka. If I have indeed taken a wrong turn somewhere, then I need to go back to the beginning and start over.

To this end, it was useful meeting with Miyako Fujio. When I was talking with her, I realized what I needed to do next. To clarify the relationship between the two men, I’d have to go back to their days together in middle school. In researching this, the novel-cum-documentary Forbidden Hunting Grounds should prove an excellent resource.

After meeting with Ms. Fujio, I went straight to a bookstore and bought a copy of the book, which I started reading on the train home. It was a quick read, partly because I already knew how the story went. As usual, however, I am no judge of the novel’s literary worth.

As Miyako Fujio had said, the book was written from the viewpoint of the character Hamaoka. The story begins with Hamaoka, an employee at a nondescript company, reading in the morning paper about the stabbing death of a woodblock artist. Hamaoka recalls that this woodblock artist, Kazuya Nishina, was the ringleader of a group of bullies who used to torment Hamaoka in middle school. The book then slides into an account of the bullying he endured.

The bullying comes to a peak during Hamaoka’s last year in middle school, when he gets beaten up several times—thrashed within an inch of his life. On one occasion he is stripped, wrapped in cellophane, and abandoned in a corner of the gymnasium. On another he’s walking beneath a window and a cup of hydrochloric acid is emptied on his head. He gets beaten up in more “traditional” ways as well. Verbal abuse and mean-spirited pranks are part of his daily life.

The account was meticulously detailed, the descriptions designed for maximum impact. I could understand why Miyako Fujio called it more journalism than fiction.

But why Hamaoka becomes the target of so much abuse is never made clear. He claims it just started one day, as though he had “stepped on the wrong grave and angered an evil spirit.” In this account, I saw similarities to other bullying incidents that I was aware from my time as a teacher. At first, the target tries to keep his head up, but he eventually succumbs to fear and depression.

“What was most frightening was not the violence itself, but the negative energy emitted by those other boys who hated him. He had never imagined that such malice existed in the world.”

I feel this line from Forbidden Hunting Grounds is an honest portrayal of the victim’s feelings. When I was a teacher, I found that victims of bullying were often bewildered at what seemed like the sheer arbitrariness of the attacks.

Fortunately for Hamaoka, the bullying stopped when the ringleader suddenly transferred to another school. No one knew where Nishina had gone, but it was rumored that he’d been sent away because he attacked a girl.

The story then moves beyond Hamaoka’s middle-school days. After a few twists and turns in the plot (which seemed unrelated to the case at hand), Hamaoka begins trying to follow Kazuya Nishina’s trail.

The remainder of the book is divided between Hamaoka’s recollections and the results of his investigation. The first thing the reader learns is the truth behind Nishina’s departure from Hamaoka’s school. The girl he attacked was a student at a nearby all-girls Catholic middle school. Nishina had his cronies hold her down, raped her in plain sight, and filmed the whole thing. He’d intended to sell the film to a local gang, who would distribute it. None of this made it into the papers because the parents of the girl were well connected and wanted to keep the incident under wraps.

This revelation concludes the first half of the book, which is largely concerned with Kazuya Nishina’s cruelty. The second half of the book talks about the sudden change in his life after he develops an interest in woodblock printing and decides to become an artist. The story ends when, just before his first gallery show, a prostitute approaches him on the street and stabs him to death. It’s common knowledge that the stabbing was based on fact.

I could see how Miyako Fujio would assume that Hamaoka was a fictional stand-in for the author. If this were a typical novel, that would be a foolish assumption. In the case of a work so closely based on actual events, it seemed the most likely explanation.

Her theory that the author had written the book to get revenge on his tormentor also had merit. As she asserted, the portrayal of Kazuya Nishina was anything but favorable throughout the book. One could imagine a gentler telling of the story of a troubled youth who becomes an artist, one that didn’t go into such emphatic detail about the man’s ugliness and moral weakness. This was probably the reasoning behind Miyako Fujio’s claim that her family name was being dragged through the mud.

Yet if we assumed Hamaoka was a stand-in for Osamu Nonoguchi, something was missing: Where was Kunihiko Hidaka in the story? (Or, if Hidaka was the author, we’d have to ask, where was Nonoguchi?)

The book is ostensibly a work of fiction. Characters may have been written out. But that wasn’t what bugged me. If, as the novel suggested, Osamu Nonoguchi had been bullied during middle school, I wondered what Kunihiko Hidaka had done about it at the time. Was he sitting by silently, letting it all happen?

I persist in this line of inquiry for one reason: in his account of the events surrounding the murder, Nonoguchi repeatedly refers to Kunihiko Hidaka as his “friend.”

It is unfortunate, but true, that parental guidance and the intervention of teachers often has little effect in bullying cases. Friendship is a child’s greatest ally. Yet if the character of Hamaoka had any friends, they didn’t get involved.

And a friend who lets his friend get bullied isn’t a friend at all.

The same contradiction was apparent in Osamu Nonoguchi’s confession. Friends don’t steal friends’ wives. Friends don’t conspire with said wives to kill their friends. And friends don’t blackmail friends into becoming their ghostwriters.

So why did Nonoguchi ever consider Kunihiko Hidaka his friend?

It was all explained by the new theory I was working on—the theory that came to me the moment I saw the pen callus on the side of Osamu Nonoguchi’s middle finger.