The letter arrived at the Seiwa Inquirer newsroom on a Tuesday morning, three weeks after the verdict, in a plain white envelope with no return address. Mahiru found it on her desk when she arrived at eight, tucked between a stack of press releases and a memo from the legal department about the new libel insurance policy the paper had taken out in the wake of the Sakuraba case.
The handwriting on the envelope was familiar: the same elegant, trembling script that had filled the pages of Kibe's notebook, the same hand that had written the sixty-year-old confession Sakuraba had read aloud in court. She opened it carefully, sliding her finger beneath the flap.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, and on it, a single paragraph.
"Miss Yuzuki. I am writing to you because you are the only person who might understand. I am dying. The doctors give me six months, perhaps less. I have requested permission to return to Hinagata before the end. I want to see the mountains one last time. I want to stand in the place where it all began and say goodbye to the boy I was. If you are willing, I would like you to be there. Not as a journalist. As a witness. I have no one else to ask. — Takataro Sakuraba."
Mahiru read the letter twice, then a third time. The news of Sakuraba's illness was not unexpected—there had been rumors during the trial, whispers about a diagnosis that had prompted his decision to plead guilty rather than drag out the proceedings—but the request itself was strange. He wanted her to witness his final return to the village where he had killed a man. He wanted her to be present at his farewell.
She called Samejima. The old lawyer listened without interruption, his oxygen tank hissing in the background.
"He is dying," Samejima said when she finished. "The pancreatic cancer was diagnosed six months ago. He kept it quiet during the trial because he did not want it to be seen as a plea for sympathy. Nogami confirmed it last week."
"Why would he want me there?"
"Because you are the one who brought him to justice. Because you are the one who faced him in the census office and did not back down. Because, in some strange way, you are the closest thing to a friend he has left. Everyone else has abandoned him. His colleagues, his clerks, his admirers. They have all fled. You are the only one who treated him as something other than a monster or an icon. You treated him as a man."
"He is a murderer."
"Yes. And he is also a dying old man who wants to say goodbye to the mountains. The two things are not mutually exclusive."
Mahiru stared at the letter on her desk. Outside, the cherry blossoms had finished falling, and the city was settling into the warm haze of early summer. The Sakuraba case had faded from the headlines, replaced by a corruption scandal in the Ministry of Trade and a diplomatic dispute with the neighboring state of Kankoku. The world had moved on, as the world always did.
But the letter was still in her hand, and the request was still unanswered.
The prison authorities granted Sakuraba's request on compassionate grounds. The journey to Hinagata was scheduled for the first day of June, when the mountain roads would be clear of snow and the village would be green with the first growth of summer. A police escort would accompany him, and a medical team, and the necessary officials from the Ministry of Justice.
Mahiru agreed to go.
She took the same train she had taken months before, the one that wound north through the mountains past valleys that grew narrower and wilder with each mile. But this time, she was not alone. Kazue Shimazaki had asked to come, and Kazue Wada, and Taro the fisherman. Even Emoto had requested a seat on the train, his tall frame folded into a window seat, his amber eyes watching the landscape pass.
"He asked for you specifically," Emoto said to Mahiru as the train climbed into the mountains. "Why?"
"I don't know. Maybe because I was the one who didn't look away."
"Will you write about this?"
"I don't know that either. Some things are not meant to be stories. Some things are just meant to be witnessed."
The village of Hinagata was different in summer than it had been in winter. The mountains were green instead of grey, and the cedars were heavy with new growth, and the single street was lined with wildflowers that had pushed up through the cracks in the pavement. The innkeeper, Hana Ishikawa, was waiting at the bus stop, her ancient face breaking into a smile when she saw Mahiru step down.
"You came back," she said. "I thought you might."
"I brought friends."
The innkeeper looked at the group—the two Kazues, Taro, Emoto—and nodded slowly. "The ones who were there. The ones who remember."
The police convoy arrived an hour later. Three patrol cars and a prison transport van that looked out of place on the narrow mountain road. Sakuraba was helped out of the van by two guards, his movements slow and careful, his prison uniform replaced by a simple grey kimono that the authorities had allowed him for the occasion. He had grown thinner in the weeks since the trial, the skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, his eyes sunk deeper into their sockets. But his posture was still straight, and his silver hair was still combed back, and when he saw Mahiru waiting by the bus stop, he inclined his head in a gesture that was almost a bow.
"You came," he said.
"You asked."
"Yes. I did." He looked at the others—the two Kazues, Taro, Emoto—and his expression flickered. "You brought witnesses."
"They asked to come. They wanted to see this."
"Then they shall see it. There is nothing left to hide."
The walk to the old census office took twenty minutes. The road was the same road Mahiru had walked months before, past the empty houses and the shuttered shops, past the shrine with its weathered torii gate. But this time, the village was alive with summer, the air thick with the scent of wildflowers and the sound of insects humming in the cedars. Children watched from doorways, their faces curious and unafraid.
The census office was still standing, its charred walls black against the green forest. Sakuraba stopped at the edge of the clearing and stared at it for a long moment.
"This is where it began," he said. "This is where I became what I am."
He walked to the doorway and stood on the threshold, his hand resting on the charred frame. "I have not been inside since that night. I have dreamed of it, a thousand times. But I have not set foot in it."
"Why now?" Mahiru asked.
"Because I need to say goodbye. To this place. To the boy I was. To the man I became." He stepped inside, and the others followed.
The interior was as Mahiru remembered it: the fallen ceiling, the warped floorboards, the pile of debris where Shimazaki's desk had once stood. But someone had been there since her last visit. A small altar had been set up in the corner, with a photograph of Tetsuya Shimazaki and a stick of incense that had burned down to ash. The innkeeper, perhaps, or one of the other villagers who had learned the truth and wanted to pay their respects.
Sakuraba knelt before the altar. His movements were slow and painful, the movements of a man whose body was failing him, but he did not ask for help.
"Shimazaki-san," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I killed you. I struck you with a stone and I lit a fire and I left you to burn. I have no excuse. I have no justification. I can only say that I am sorry, and that I have been sorry every day of my life, and that I am ready now to face whatever judgment awaits me."
Kazue Shimazaki stepped forward. Her face was wet with tears, but her voice was steady. "My father was twenty-eight years old when you killed him. He had a wife who loved him. He had a daughter he never got to meet. He had a whole life ahead of him, and you took it. You took all of it."
Sakuraba did not look up. "I know."
"I have hated you for sixty years. I hated you before I even knew your name. I hated the man who killed my father and got away with it. And now I see you, kneeling here, and I do not know what I feel."
"You do not have to forgive me. I do not ask for forgiveness. I ask only for you to know that I am sorry. That I have always been sorry. That the man I became was built on a foundation of guilt that never stopped crushing me."
Kazue Wada stepped forward next. Her voice was harder, sharper, the voice of a woman who had carried her father's confession across decades and was finally ready to speak. "My father was Isamu Wada. He was the weakest of the five, you said. He carried your secret for fourteen years, and it destroyed him. He went to sea hoping to escape, and the sea took him. You did not strike him with a stone, but you killed him just as surely as you killed Shimazaki."
Sakuraba bowed his head lower. "I know. I have added his name to my prayers, every day, for forty years."
"And did your prayers bring him back?"
"No. Nothing can bring him back. Nothing can bring any of them back. All I can do is tell the truth. All I can do is die knowing that the truth is known."
Taro stepped forward last. The old fisherman had been silent throughout the journey, his clouded eyes taking in the mountains and the village and the charred building with an expression that Mahiru could not read. Now he knelt beside Sakuraba, his weathered hands resting on his knees.
"We were boys together," Taro said. "We swam in the river and climbed the mountains and dreamed of escaping this village. I never thought you would escape by killing a man. I never thought you would escape by becoming someone else entirely."
"I did what I did," Sakuraba said. "I cannot undo it."
"No. But you can die with a clean heart. That is more than most men get."
Sakuraba looked at Taro, and for the first time, something like a smile crossed his face. It was a small thing, fragile and fleeting, but it was there. "You were always the kindest of us," he said. "The one who talked to himself because no one else would listen. I am sorry I drugged you on the island. I am sorry I threatened you into silence. You deserved better."
"Yes," Taro said. "I did. But I am here now. And I am listening."
They stayed in the census office for an hour, the five of them—the two Kazues, Taro, Mahiru, and the dying man who had once been Jiro. The incense on the altar burned down, and the sun climbed higher, and the light through the empty windows shifted from grey to gold.
When Sakuraba finally rose, his strength was nearly gone. The guards had to help him to his feet, and the medical team stepped forward with a wheelchair that he waved away with a trembling hand.
"Not yet," he said. "There is one more place I need to go."
The old shrine was exactly as Mahiru remembered it: the moss-covered roof, the stone lantern, the red torii gate that framed the mountains like a painting. Sakuraba walked to the stone steps where he had knelt on the morning of his arrest and lowered himself down with a groan of pain.
"I used to come here as a boy," he said. "Before Adachi, before the fire, before everything. I would sit on these steps and look at the mountains and dream of becoming someone important. Someone who mattered. Someone who would be remembered." He let out a breath that might have been a laugh. "I got what I wanted. I became important. I mattered. I will be remembered. But not in the way I imagined."
Mahiru sat down beside him. The view was the same as it had been on that winter morning: the five peaks, the green valley, the river winding through it like a silver ribbon. But the world around it had changed. The truth was out. The lies were buried. And an old man was dying on the steps of a shrine, saying goodbye to the mountains of his childhood.
"Was it worth it?" she asked, the same question she had asked him before.
Sakuraba was silent for a long time. The wind blew through the cedars, and a hawk circled overhead, and somewhere in the village, a child was laughing.
"No," he said. "It was not worth it. But I did not know that when I was eighteen. I did not know that a life built on a lie would become a prison worse than any cell. I did not know that the truth would hunt me for sixty years and catch me in the end. If I had known—" He stopped, his voice catching. "If I had known, I would have done everything differently. But we cannot go back. We can only go forward. And I am going forward now, to whatever comes next."
He turned to look at her, and his dark eyes were clear and calm. "You have a life ahead of you, Miss Yuzuki. A long life, I hope. Do not waste it on lies. Do not waste it on fear. Tell the truth, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard. That is the only thing I have learned that is worth passing on."
"I will," Mahiru said.
Sakuraba nodded, and then he turned back to the mountains, and his expression grew peaceful. The hawk circled once more and then flew away, its shadow passing over the shrine like a blessing.
An hour later, the guards helped him back to the transport van. The medical team checked his vitals, adjusted his oxygen, prepared him for the long journey back to Meikyo. But before the doors closed, Sakuraba looked at Mahiru one last time.
"Will you write about this?" he asked.
"I don't know yet."
"If you do, tell the truth. All of it. The crime and the punishment. The lie and the confession. The boy who killed and the man who died." He paused, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "And tell them that I was sorry. Even if they do not believe it. Even if they do not care. Tell them that I was sorry."
"I will," Mahiru said.
The doors closed. The convoy pulled away, the patrol cars and the transport van winding down the mountain road, their lights flashing in the green shadows of the cedars. And Mahiru stood alone at the edge of the village, watching them go, the letter still folded in her pocket, the mountains still standing in their ancient silence.
Behind her, in the census office, the incense had burned down to ash. And in the shrine, the stone lantern was waiting for the night.
The truth always comes. It had taken sixty years, but it had come at last.
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