The knife in Sakuraba's hand was small, a ceremonial blade of the kind that old men sometimes carried for cutting fruit or opening letters. But in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp, it looked as deadly as any weapon Mahiru had ever seen. His knuckles were white around the handle, and his dark eyes, once so calm and measured, were now the eyes of an animal that had been cornered and had nothing left but its teeth.
"You think you have won," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You think that because you have given your copies to the prosecutor, the truth is safe. But the truth is not a thing you can lock in a safe, Miss Yuzuki. The truth is what people believe. And I have spent sixty years teaching people what to believe about me."
"Then why are you holding a knife?" Mahiru asked, her voice steadier than she felt. "If you're so confident, why not let us go and fight it out in court?"
Sakuraba took a step toward her. Yuriko made a muffled sound behind him, a whimper that was swallowed by the cloth over her mouth. The kerosene lamp guttered, and for an instant, the shadows on the charred walls seemed to move like living things.
"Because I am old," Sakuraba said. "And I am tired. And I have spent sixty years fighting, and I do not wish to spend the last years of my life in a courtroom, watching lawyers pick apart my legacy like vultures on a carcass. If I am to be destroyed, I will destroy myself, on my own terms, in the place where it all began."
He gestured with the knife toward the pile of debris in the corner. "This is where Shimazaki died. He was young, like you. Earnest, like you. He believed that the truth mattered more than anything. He told me that, the night I killed him. He said the truth would come out eventually, that I could not hide forever. He was right. But he is still dead, and I am still alive, and the truth took sixty years to find its way to the surface."
"Killing me won't change anything. The prosecutor already has the evidence."
"No. But it will give me satisfaction." He took another step closer. "You came into my life like a storm, Miss Yuzuki. You took everything I built and tore it down. My reputation, my legacy, my name. All of it, gone. You owe me something in return."
"I owe you nothing."
"You owe me your fear. I want to see it in your eyes before I die. I want to know that I still have the power to make someone afraid."
Mahiru looked at the knife, at the old man's white knuckles, at the kerosene lamp that was the only source of light in the charred building. She thought about the stone in her bag, the one that had killed Shimazaki sixty years ago. She thought about the nameplate, still wrapped in cloth, bearing the name of a man who had died because he refused to be silent.
And then she did something that surprised her as much as it surprised Sakuraba. She laughed.
It was not a laugh of amusement. It was a laugh of release, of tension breaking, of fear transforming into something else. "You want me to be afraid?" she said. "I've been afraid for weeks. Afraid of you, afraid of what you might do, afraid of failing the people who trusted me. But standing here, in this place, looking at you with your little knife and your threats—I'm not afraid anymore. You're not a monster, Sakuraba. You're just a sad old man who made a terrible choice sixty years ago and has been making terrible choices ever since."
Sakuraba's face contorted. For sixty years, he had been treated with deference and respect. Judges bowed to him. Lawyers feared him. Politicians sought his approval. And now, in the charred ruins of the census office where he had committed his first murder, a journalist was laughing at him.
"You know nothing," he hissed.
"I know everything. I know about the orphan who was raised by the village and hated it. I know about the headman who paid you to do his dirty work. I know about the stone you used to strike Shimazaki, and the kerosene you poured, and the fire you lit. I know about the pact of silence you made with four other young men, and how you kept that pact for sixty years by killing anyone who threatened to break it. I know about Kibe, and Riku, and the fisherman Taro who talks to himself because no one else would listen. I know everything, Sakuraba. And so does the prosecutor."
The knife trembled in his hand. "Then you know that I have nothing left to lose."
"You have one thing left. Your life. Whatever remains of it. You can spend it in a courtroom, facing justice for what you've done. Or you can spend it in a prison cell, alone with your memories. Or you can end it here, in this place, the way you ended Shimazaki's life. But if you do that, you'll be proving that everything I wrote about you was true. You'll be giving me the ending to my story."
Sakuraba stared at her, his dark eyes flickering with something that might have been doubt. Behind him, Yuriko was crying silently, tears streaming down her cheeks and soaking into the cloth over her mouth.
"The police are on their way," Mahiru said, though this was not entirely true. She had told Samejima where she was going, but she had not called the police. She had promised to come alone, and she had kept that promise. But Sakuraba did not know that. "They'll be here soon. If you kill us, they'll find you here with our bodies and the evidence of your crimes. Is that how you want your story to end? With a knife and a kerosene lamp and two dead women in a burned-out building?"
The knife lowered, just slightly. "The police?"
"Samejima knows where I am. He knows about the meeting. He gave me an hour to return. If I don't call him by midnight, he'll send the police. It's almost midnight now."
This was a gamble. Mahiru did not know if Samejima had actually called the police. She did not know if anyone was coming. But the uncertainty in Sakuraba's eyes told her that the gamble was working. He was a man who had survived for sixty years by being careful, by anticipating every move, by never taking a risk he did not have to take. The thought of armed police surrounding the building was the one thing he had not prepared for.
"You are lying," he said, but his voice was less certain now.
"Maybe. But can you afford to take that chance?"
Sakuraba looked at the knife in his hand, then at Mahiru, then at Yuriko cowering on the floor. The kerosene lamp flickered again, and for a moment, his face was illuminated in a way that made him look less like a monster and more like what he really was: a very old man who had made a very terrible choice and had been running from it ever since.
"You would have liked Shimazaki," he said quietly. "He was like you. He refused to be afraid. Even when I struck him, even when he was bleeding on the floor, he looked at me with those eyes and said, 'This will not save you.' He was right."
"Put down the knife, Sakuraba. It's over."
The old man stood motionless for a long moment, the knife glinting in the lamplight. Outside, the wind had died down, and the forest was silent. Then, very slowly, he lowered the knife to his side.
"I have one condition," he said.
"What?"
"Let me go to the shrine. The old shrine at the edge of the village. I used to pray there, when I was a boy. Before any of this happened. Before I became the person I am." His voice cracked, just slightly. "Give me an hour. Then you can call whoever you want. I will not run. Where would I run? I am seventy-seven years old, and my world has ended."
Mahiru looked at him, trying to read the truth in his dark eyes. He seemed sincere, but he had also spent sixty years perfecting the art of deception. He had lied to judges, to politicians, to journalists, to everyone who had ever trusted him. He had killed three people and tried to kill more. There was no reason to believe him now.
But there was also no reason to push him further. He was old, and he was broken, and he was standing in the ruins of the place where he had committed his first murder. If he wanted an hour to pray, she could give him that.
"One hour," she said. "Then I call the police."
Sakuraba nodded slowly. He set the knife down on the charred floor, and the sound it made was like a door closing. Then he turned and walked out of the census office, his kimono rustling against the broken floorboards, his silver hair catching the lamplight before he vanished into the darkness beyond the door.
Mahiru waited until his footsteps had faded entirely. Then she rushed to Yuriko and untied the ropes binding her hands.
"Are you all right?" she asked, pulling the cloth from the young woman's mouth.
Yuriko was shaking uncontrollably, her face streaked with tears. "He came to my apartment this morning. He said if I did not come with him quietly, he would hurt my mother. He said he knew where she lived. He knew everything."
"He won't hurt anyone anymore. It's over."
"Is it? He has an hour. What if he comes back?"
Mahiru looked at the knife on the floor. She picked it up and slipped it into her coat pocket. "He won't come back. I think he meant what he said. He wants to end this on his own terms."
She helped Yuriko to her feet and led her out of the census office. The night air was cold and clean, scented with pine and the faint smoke of the kerosene lamp. The village was dark, but the lights of the inn were still on, a single yellow window glowing in the blackness.
"Go to the inn," Mahiru said. "Tell the innkeeper what happened. She will help you. I need to make sure Sakuraba does what he said he would do."
"You're going to follow him?"
"I'm going to make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else."
Yuriko gripped her arm. "Be careful. He is still dangerous."
"I know."
Mahiru walked through the dark village, past the empty houses and the shuttered shops, past the shrine with its weathered torii gate. The path to the old shrine wound upward through the cedars, and she followed it slowly, her footsteps muffled by the carpet of fallen needles.
The shrine was a small wooden building at the edge of the forest, its roof covered with moss, its walls darkened by decades of rain and snow. A single lantern hung from the eaves, its flame flickering in the cold air. And in front of the shrine, kneeling on the stone steps, was Takataro Sakuraba.
He was not praying. He was sitting very still, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes fixed on the dark mountains beyond the valley. When Mahiru approached, he did not turn.
"I knew you would follow me," he said. "You do not trust me. That is wise."
"I wanted to make sure you were all right."
"All right?" He let out a sound that might have been a laugh. "I have not been all right since the night I killed Shimazaki. I have been pretending to be all right for sixty years. Do you know what that is like? To wake up every morning and put on a mask, and wear it all day, and take it off only when you are alone and the darkness hides your face? It is exhausting. It is a kind of death."
"Then why did you do it? Why did you keep doing it?"
Sakuraba was silent for a long moment. The lantern creaked in the wind. The mountains were black against a sky that was just beginning to lighten in the east.
"Because I was afraid," he said finally. "I was an orphan. I had nothing. The village gave me nothing but contempt. Adachi, the headman, was the first person who ever treated me as though I mattered. He gave me tasks, and I completed them. He gave me money, and I spent it. He told me to make sure the census official stayed silent, and I did. I did not mean to kill him. But when he refused to be silent, when he said he would report the fraud and see Adachi arrested, I panicked. I picked up the stone. I struck him. And after that, there was no going back."
"You could have confessed. You could have faced justice."
"Confess? To what? To murdering a government official in a village that the world had forgotten? They would have hanged me. Or worse, they would have sent me to prison for the rest of my life, and I would have died in a cage, alone and forgotten, just as I was born. I could not bear that. So I made a different choice. I chose to become someone else. Someone who mattered. Someone who was respected. Someone who could never be touched by the past."
"But the past touched you anyway."
"Yes. It always does." He turned to look at her, and his face was different now. The mask was gone. What remained was an old man who had carried a terrible weight for sixty years and was finally, in the shadow of the shrine where he had prayed as a boy, setting it down. "You asked me once why I became a judge. I told you it was because I wanted justice. That was a lie. I became a judge because I wanted power. I wanted to be the one who decided what was true and what was false. I wanted to be the one who pronounced judgment, rather than the one who received it. And for forty years, I was."
"And now?"
"Now I am the one receiving judgment. And the judge is a journalist who refused to be afraid." He turned back to the mountains. "There is a certain poetry in that, I suppose."
Mahiru stood beside him, looking out at the valley. The first light of dawn was beginning to touch the peaks, turning them from black to deep purple. Somewhere in the village, a rooster crowed, and a dog answered it.
"What will you do now?" she asked.
"I will wait here. When the sun rises, I will walk down to the village and turn myself in to the police. I will confess to everything. The murder of Shimazaki, the murders of Kibe and Riku, the obstruction of justice, the corruption. All of it. I am tired of running. I am tired of the mask. I am ready to be done."
"And if the police don't believe you?"
"They will believe me. Because you will be there to tell them what happened. And you have the evidence. The stone, the confession, the notebook. All of it. Even if I wanted to recant, I could not."
Mahiru looked at him, this old man who had killed at least three people and built a reputation on a foundation of ash, this man who had been her adversary and her quarry and was now, in the grey light of a winter dawn, simply a tired old man waiting for the end.
"I will be there," she said. "I will write the story. All of it. Including the part where you surrendered."
"I do not deserve that."
"No. But the truth deserves it. The whole truth. Not just the parts that make you a villain."
Sakuraba nodded slowly. "Shimazaki's daughter. Kazue. Tell her I am sorry. It is not enough. It will never be enough. But tell her anyway."
"I will."
The sun rose over the mountains, spilling golden light into the valley. The snow on the peaks turned pink, then white, then brilliant gold. The cedars emerged from the darkness, their branches heavy with frost. And in front of the old shrine, an old man and a young woman stood together, watching the dawn break over a village that had kept its secrets for sixty years and was finally, on this cold winter morning, letting them go.
Mahiru pulled out her phone. She had a signal now, barely. She called Samejima.
"It's over," she said. "He's surrendering. Call the police. Tell them to come to Hinagata. The old shrine at the edge of the village."
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Samejima spoke, and his voice was thick with something that might have been relief. "You are alive."
"Yes."
"And the maid?"
"She's safe. She's at the inn."
"Stay where you are. I will make the call. The police will be there within the hour."
Mahiru hung up and put the phone back in her pocket. Sakuraba had not moved. He was still staring at the mountains, his face peaceful in a way she had never seen before.
"Was it worth it?" she asked. "The sixty years? The reputation? The power? Was it worth what you had to do to keep it?"
Sakuraba did not answer for a long time. The sun climbed higher, and the shadows retreated, and the village below them began to stir with the sounds of morning.
"No," he said finally. "It was not worth it. But by the time I realized that, it was too late to go back." He turned to her, and his eyes were clear. "Do not make the same mistake, Miss Yuzuki. Whatever you do with your life, do not build it on a lie. The truth always comes. It may take sixty years, but it always comes."
Mahiru heard the sound of sirens in the distance, faint but growing louder. The police were coming. The story was ending. And somewhere in Meikyo, the two Kazues were waking to a morning in which their fathers' names would finally be cleared.
She stood beside the old man and waited for the sirens to arrive.
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