The verdict was scheduled for nine o'clock on the morning of the second day of April, a date chosen, Mahiru suspected, for its symbolic weight. April was the month of renewal in Seiwa, when the cherry blossoms reached their peak and then began to fall, when the fiscal year began and new graduates started their first jobs, when the nation collectively turned its face toward the future. What better time to pass judgment on a past that had been buried for sixty years?
She arrived at the courthouse at seven-thirty, hoping to beat the crowds. The plaza in front of the High Court building was already filling, camera crews from every network in the country jostling for position, protesters holding signs that demanded the maximum sentence, and a smaller but no less passionate contingent of Sakuraba's remaining supporters who insisted that his long years of judicial service should count for something, that his guilty plea was proof of his essential integrity, that a seventy-seven-year-old man should not spend his final years in prison no matter what he had done.
Mahiru ignored them all. She had stopped reading the comments sections weeks ago. The public's opinion of Sakuraba was a churning sea, and she had no desire to drown in it.
The courtroom was nearly empty when she took her seat in the front row of the gallery. A few reporters were already there, hunched over their laptops, and a bailiff was arranging documents on the bench. The morning light slanted through the high windows, illuminating dust motes that drifted in the still air like tiny, suspended planets.
Samejima arrived at eight, his oxygen tank wheeling behind him on a small cart. He had grown visibly frailer over the weeks of the trial, his skin more translucent, his breathing more labored. But his eyes were still sharp, and when he sat down beside Mahiru, his voice was the same dry rasp she had come to rely on.
"Nogami called me last night," he said. "Sakuraba has requested permission to make a final statement before the verdict is read. The judge has agreed."
"What does he want to say?"
"I do not know. But I suspect it will be significant. A man in his position does not ask for the last word unless he has something to say that he has not said before."
The two Kazues entered together, Kazue Shimazaki in her black mourning kimono and Kazue Wada in a dark blue dress that looked new and stiff, the kind of garment bought for a single occasion and never worn again. They took their seats beside Emoto, who had arrived early and was already in place, his tall frame rigid with the tension of someone who had been waiting for this day for years and could not quite believe it had arrived.
At precisely nine o'clock, the judges entered. Presiding Judge Michio Takamura led the panel, his face as severe as ever, his black robes flowing behind him like folded wings. The courtroom rose, then sat, and the air grew thick with expectation.
"Bring in the defendant," Takamura ordered.
The side door opened, and Takataro Sakuraba walked into the courtroom.
He had changed in the weeks since the trial began. The prison uniform hung more loosely on his frame, and his face had grown thinner, the cheekbones sharp beneath the skin. But his posture was still straight, and his silver hair was still combed back, and his dark eyes still held the same intensity that had made him the most formidable legal mind of his generation. He looked, Mahiru thought, like a man who had already died and was simply waiting for his body to catch up.
Judge Takamura cleared his throat. "The defendant has requested permission to make a final statement before this court delivers its verdict. This is an unusual request, but this is an unusual case. The court has agreed. The defendant may speak."
Sakuraba rose slowly, his hands resting on the edge of the defendant's box. For a long moment, he did not speak. He looked out at the courtroom, at the reporters and the spectators and the two Kazues in the front row, and his expression was unreadable.
"Sixty years ago," he began, his voice clear and steady, "I killed a man named Tetsuya Shimazaki. I struck him with a stone in a burning building in a village the world has forgotten. I did not kill him because I hated him. I killed him because he threatened to expose a fraud, and I was afraid of what would happen to me if the fraud was exposed. That fear, that single moment of cowardice, has defined my entire life."
He paused, his hands tightening on the edge of the box. "Everything I have done since that night has been an attempt to escape that moment. I became a lawyer because I wanted to master the law that would have condemned me. I became a judge because I wanted to be the one who pronounced judgment rather than the one who received it. I cultivated a reputation for integrity because I knew, in the deepest part of myself, that I had none."
"Sakuraba-san," Judge Takamura interrupted gently, "you are not obligated to incriminate yourself further. The court has already heard your guilty plea."
"I know. But I am not speaking for the court. I am speaking for the record. And for the living." He turned to face the two Kazues directly, and his voice softened. "I killed your fathers. Both of them. Shimazaki died by my hand. Wada died because of the burden I placed on him, the secret I forced him to carry. He went to sea hoping to escape his guilt, and the sea took him. I am responsible for his death as surely as if I had drowned him myself."
Kazue Shimazaki's face was wet with tears, but she did not look away. Kazue Wada sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap, her expression fierce and still.
"I cannot give you back your fathers," Sakuraba continued. "I cannot give you back the sixty years you spent without them. All I can give you is the truth. My name was Jiro. I was an orphan of Hinagata, raised by no one, loved by no one, until the headman Goro Adachi gave me a purpose. That purpose was to enforce his will, and I enforced it without question. I was the one who struck Shimazaki. I was the one who poured the kerosene. I was the one who lit the match. And I was the one who, in the days that followed, threatened the other witnesses into silence."
He turned back to the judges. "The prosecutor has called me a monster. She is right. But I was not born a monster. I became one, choice by choice, lie by lie, murder by murder. I am not telling you this to ask for mercy. I am telling you this because the truth is the only thing I have left to give, and I want to give it fully."
The courtroom was utterly silent. Even the reporters had stopped typing.
"There is one more thing," Sakuraba said. "Something I have not told anyone, not even my lawyers. Something that I have been carrying for sixty years and can finally set down."
He reached into the pocket of his prison uniform and withdrew a folded piece of paper, yellowed with age. "This is a letter I wrote to myself on the night after the fire. I was eighteen years old, and I had just killed a man, and I did not know what to do with the knowledge of what I had done. I wrote this letter and I kept it, all these years, as a reminder of who I really was."
He unfolded the paper and began to read.
"'July 3, 1965. I killed him. I struck him with the stone and he fell, and I struck him again, and then I lit the fire. I told myself it was necessary. I told myself he would have destroyed me. But I know the truth. I killed him because I was afraid, and because I am a coward, and because I wanted to be someone else more than I wanted to be good. I will carry this secret until I die. I will build a new life on top of it, a life that no one can touch, a life that everyone will admire. But underneath that life, this will always be here. The stone. The fire. The blood. The truth.'"
Sakuraba lowered the paper. His hands were trembling, and his eyes were wet. "I wrote that when I was eighteen years old. I am seventy-seven now. I have spent fifty-nine years trying to bury that letter, and the truth it contains. But the truth does not stay buried. The truth always comes."
He folded the letter and set it on the edge of the defendant's box. "I ask the court to accept this letter into the record. It is the original confession, written before I had learned how to lie. I want it to be part of the story. I want it to be part of the truth."
Judge Takamura nodded slowly. "The court accepts the letter into the record. Does the defendant have anything else to say?"
Sakuraba looked out at the courtroom one last time. "Only this. I spent my entire career believing that justice was a thing that could be controlled, shaped, bent to the will of the powerful. I was wrong. Justice is not a tool. It is a force, like gravity, like time. It cannot be escaped. It can only be delayed. And for sixty years, I delayed it. But it has found me at last."
He sat down heavily, his strength seeming to leave him all at once. The letter lay on the edge of the box, a scrap of yellowed paper that contained the truth he had been running from for his entire life.
Judge Takamura cleared his throat again. "This court has considered the evidence, the guilty plea, and the defendant's statement. The crimes to which the defendant has confessed are grave. Three lives were taken. A census was falsified. The democratic process was corrupted. For sixty years, a lie was allowed to stand while the truth was buried in silence."
He paused, his eyes moving across the courtroom. "However, the court also notes that the defendant has cooperated fully with the investigation, has expressed remorse, and has waived his right to a contested trial, sparing the victims' families further trauma. These factors will be weighed in the sentencing determination."
Mahiru felt her heart clench. Weighed. The word was a door left slightly open, a possibility that Sakuraba might receive something less than the maximum sentence. She looked at the two Kazues, but their faces were unreadable.
"Takataro Sakuraba," Judge Takamura said, "this court sentences you to life imprisonment for the murders of Tetsuya Shimazaki, Osamu Kibe, and Riku. This court further sentences you to an additional twenty years for obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and the related charges. The sentences are to be served concurrently. You will spend the remainder of your natural life in the custody of the state."
The gavel struck, and the courtroom exploded.
Reporters shouted questions. Spectators gasped and cheered and wept. The two Kazues clutched each other, their faces wet with tears. Emoto rose to his feet, his tall frame swaying slightly, his amber eyes bright with something that might have been relief or might have been exhaustion.
And Sakuraba, the defendant, the murderer, the former conscience of the judiciary, sat motionless in the defendant's box. His eyes were closed. His hands were folded in his lap. His expression was peaceful, the peace of a man who had finally, after sixty years, stopped running.
The bailiffs moved to escort him from the courtroom. As he passed the front row of the gallery, he paused and looked at Mahiru.
"You were right," he said quietly. "The dead do need justice. I understand that now."
Then he was gone, led through the side door into the custody of the state that would hold him until he died.
Mahiru sat in the courtroom long after the others had left. The dust motes still drifted in the sunlight. The letter still sat on the edge of the defendant's box, waiting to be entered into the record. Outside, the cherry blossoms were falling, and the city was waking up to a world that was different from the one it had been.
Samejima placed a hand on her shoulder. "It is over," he said.
"Is it?"
"Legally, yes. Sakuraba will die in prison. The election maps will be redrawn. The truth is on the record. What else is there?"
Mahiru thought about the letter, the one Sakuraba had written to himself at eighteen, the one he had kept for fifty-nine years as a reminder of who he really was. He had carried it with him through law school and clerkships and judgeships, through decades of rulings and opinions and accolades. The stone and the fire and the blood and the truth, folded into a square of yellowed paper, hidden in a pocket close to his heart.
"He kept it," she said. "The whole time. He kept the proof of his own guilt."
"Yes."
"Why would he do that?"
Samejima was silent for a moment. "Perhaps because he knew the truth would come eventually, and he wanted to be ready when it did. Or perhaps because he could not bear to destroy the only honest thing he had ever written."
Mahiru stood slowly. The courtroom was empty now, the reporters gone to file their stories, the spectators returned to their ordinary lives. In a few hours, the news would be everywhere: the verdict, the sentence, the final confession of a man who had been running from himself for sixty years.
But for now, there was only the silence, and the dust motes, and the yellowed letter on the edge of the defendant's box.
She walked out of the courtroom and into the spring morning, the cherry blossoms falling around her like pink snow. The truth always comes, Sakuraba had said. He had been right. And now, at last, it had.
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