The school board member's name was Kozo Nishimura, and he had been dying for seven years. The illness had begun as a tremor in his right hand, a small betrayal of the flesh that he had attributed to age and overwork. By the time the diagnosis came—Parkinson's disease, advanced, complicated by a heart condition that left him breathless after climbing a single flight of stairs—he had already lost the ability to write his own name legibly. He was eighty-one years old, and the power he had once wielded over Sakurazawa's education system had long since passed to younger men and women who remembered him, if they remembered him at all, as a portrait on a wall in the school board's conference room.
But the subpoena that arrived at his care facility on the morning of the trial's fourth day did not care about his frailty. It commanded him to appear before the Sakurazawa District Court and testify under oath about his knowledge of the events at Sakurazawa First Municipal High School during the 1996 and 1997 academic years. The subpoena had been issued at Kirino's request, and it had been served by a court bailiff who had waited politely in the facility's lobby while the old man read the document with trembling hands.
He arrived at the courthouse in a wheelchair pushed by a private nurse, a thin, grey man wrapped in a wool coat despite the warmth of the courtroom. His face, which had once been broad and commanding, had collapsed into folds of loose skin. His eyes, however, were still sharp—the eyes of a man who had spent his life reading people and had not yet lost the habit.
The public gallery murmured as he was wheeled to the witness stand. The father of the bully. The man who had sat on the school board while his son tormented a classmate to death. The man whose smile, according to Tanaka's diary, had been "small, almost private, as though he was proud of his son for being so enterprising." He was a living artifact of the cover-up, and the crowd studied him with the particular hunger of people who had been waiting to see the face of institutional evil.
Kirino rose to begin her examination. She had prepared for this moment for weeks, but standing before Kozo Nishimura, she felt the weight of the question she was about to ask. It was not a legal question. It was not a strategic question. It was the question that Tanaka had asked in his diary, the question that had been waiting twenty-eight years for an answer.
"Mr. Nishimura," she began, "you served on the Sakurazawa Board of Education from 1988 to 2002. Is that correct?"
The old man's voice was thin but clear. "It is."
"During the 1996 and 1997 academic years, your son Ken was a student at Sakurazawa First Municipal High School. He was in his second and third years."
"Yes."
"Were you aware, during that period, that your son was engaged in the systematic bullying of a classmate named Tokoro Tanaka?"
The courtroom held its breath. Kozo Nishimura looked at his son, seated at the counsel table across the room. Ken Nishimura did not look back. His gaze was fixed on the table before him, his hands clasped so tightly that his knuckles were white.
"I was aware that there were conflicts among the students," the old man said carefully. "Boys will be boys. I did not consider it serious."
"You did not consider it serious." Kirino picked up a copy of Tanaka's diary from the counsel table. "I am going to read an entry from the diary of Tokoro Tanaka, dated June 11, 1997. 'Nishimura-kun's father visited the school today. He is on the school board. He walked through the corridor with Principal Yamashita, touring the new facilities. I was kneeling by the lockers. Nishimura-kun's father looked at me. He smiled—a small smile, almost private, as though he was proud of his son for being so enterprising. Then he walked on.'" She set down the diary. "Do you remember that day, Mr. Nishimura?"
The old man's face did not change, but his hands, resting on the arms of his wheelchair, tightened. "I do not recall."
"You do not recall seeing a seventeen-year-old boy kneeling in the corridor while your son stood over him?"
"I do not recall."
"Your son has confessed, in his written statement to this court, to the bullying. He has described making Tanaka kneel in the corridor. He has described forcing Tanaka to eat his lunch in restrooms. He has described stripping Tanaka and photographing him with a camera phone. He has confessed to all of this, Mr. Nishimura. And yet you expect this court to believe that you, his father, a member of the school board, visiting the school where your son was a student, saw nothing?"
The old man was silent.
"Let me ask you a different question," Kirino said. "Were you aware of the faculty meeting that Principal Yamashita convened in September 1996, in which he instructed the teachers not to record any disciplinary incidents in preparation for the school's accreditation review?"
"I was aware that the school was preparing for the review. I was not aware of any specific instructions given to faculty."
"Were you aware that Tanaka died on December 15, 1997, after jumping from the roof of the school gymnasium?"
"I was aware."
"Were you aware that the school classified his death as an accident and conducted no formal investigation?"
"I was aware of the school's official determination."
"Did you, as a member of the school board, take any steps to verify that determination? To investigate whether the bullying your son has now confessed to played any role in Tanaka's death?"
The silence that followed was the longest of the trial. Kozo Nishimura stared at Kirino with his sharp, old eyes, and for a moment she saw something flicker in them—not guilt, not remorse, but something colder. Calculation. The old man was still calculating, still weighing his words, still trying to protect whatever remained of the reputation he had spent his life building.
"I trusted the school administration to handle the matter appropriately," he said finally. "If mistakes were made, I was not informed of them."
"You were not informed." Kirino's voice hardened. "Your son was the ringleader of the bullying. You visited the school and saw the victim kneeling in the corridor. You were a member of the board that oversaw the school's administration. And your defense is that you were not informed."
"I am an old man, Attorney Kirino. My memory is not what it was."
"Your memory," Kirino said, "seems remarkably selective. You remember your years on the school board. You remember the accreditation review. You remember the official determination of Tanaka's death. But you do not remember seeing a boy kneeling at your son's feet. You do not remember asking your son what he was doing. You do not remember taking any action to protect the children under your board's care. Is that your testimony?"
The old man did not answer. He did not need to. The silence was answer enough.
The cross-examination by Minato & Partners was brief and perfunctory. The lead lawyer asked a few questions about the board's procedures, established that Kozo Nishimura had retired from public life many years ago, and sat down. It was clear, Kirino thought, that Aoyama's lawyers had no interest in defending the father any more than they had to. Their client's revenge was directed at Ken Nishimura, not at the old man in the wheelchair. But the public gallery did not make that distinction. The crowd watched Kozo Nishimura with the cold, hard stare of people who had already rendered their verdict.
When the testimony concluded, Judge Matsumoto recessed the court for lunch. Kirino gathered her papers and walked out into the corridor, where the reporters were clustered in a buzzing knot around the press room door. She ignored their shouted questions and walked to a small consultation room on the third floor, the same room where she had prepared Nishimura for the settlement conference that now seemed a lifetime ago.
Nishimura was already there, sitting at the table with his head in his hands. He looked up when she entered, and his face was the face of a man who had been hollowed out by something he could not name.
"My father," he said. "I have not spoken to my father in six years. He never approved of me. The failed restaurants. The failed marriage. The debts. He saw me as a disappointment long before any of this came out. And now—" He stopped. "Now he will die knowing that the whole country sees him as the man who smiled while a boy knelt at his son's feet."
"Is that what you wanted?"
"I don't know what I wanted. I wanted him to see me. To really see me, for the first time in my life. Not the version of me he wanted—the athlete, the success, the heir to the family name. The real me. The me that was always there, underneath. The bully. The coward. The liar. I wanted him to see what he created."
"And now that he has?"
Nishimura was silent for a long time. "Now I wish I had never been born," he said quietly. "Not because of what I did—I deserve whatever comes. But because of what I am. What I have always been. My father smiled at Tanaka because he was proud of me. He was proud that his son was powerful enough to make another boy kneel. That is the family I come from. That is the blood in my veins. And I have spent my whole life trying not to be that person, and failing, and failing, and failing."
Kirino sat down across from him. "You are not your father," she said. "And you are not the seventeen-year-old boy who tormented Tanaka. You are the forty-five-year-old man who confessed, in open court, to everything. Who chose to tell the truth when the truth could only destroy him. That is not nothing."
"It is not enough either."
"No. It is not enough. But it is what you have." She paused. "The trial will continue. The teachers will testify. The school board records will be examined. The principal's instructions will be exposed. Your father's role will be made clear. And by the end of it, the whole story will be told. That is the only thing you can give Tanaka now. The story. The truth. The memory. It is not justice—justice would require Tanaka to be alive, and that is not within your power. But it is what remains."
Nishimura looked at her, and for the first time since she had met him, his eyes were not the eyes of a man running from something. They were the eyes of a man who had stopped running and was simply standing, facing what he had done, waiting for whatever came next.
"I used to dream about Tanaka," he said. "For years after he died, I dreamed about him. He would be standing at the foot of my bed, wearing his school uniform, holding his indoor slippers. He never spoke. He just looked at me. And every time I woke up, I told myself it was just a dream. But it wasn't. It was my conscience, trying to tell me something I wasn't ready to hear. I think—I think I'm finally ready to hear it now."
The afternoon session brought the former vice principal, Kenji Takeda, to the witness stand. He was a small, round man in his late seventies, with a hearing aid and a nervous manner that made him look like a mouse who had wandered into a room full of cats. He had been located in a retirement village in the northern mountains, living quietly under a name that no one in his new community connected to the scandal that was now consuming the nation. The subpoena had found him anyway.
Takeda's testimony was a study in evasion. He remembered very little. The events of 1997 were a long time ago. He had been focused on administrative matters, curriculum development, budget planning. He had not been aware of any bullying. He had not been present at the faculty meeting where Principal Yamashita had instructed the teachers to suppress incident reports. He had not seen Tanaka kneeling in the corridor. He had not seen Nishimura's father smile. He had not, in short, seen anything at all.
Kirino let him talk. She let him weave his web of denials and deflections, let him retreat further and further into the fog of claimed forgetfulness. Then she picked up a document from the counsel table—a photocopy of the minutes from the faculty meeting of September 12, 1996.
"Mr. Takeda, I am showing you a copy of the minutes from the faculty meeting of September 12, 1996. These minutes were not in the school's official records. They were preserved by a former teacher who attended the meeting and kept his own copy. Do you recognize this document?"
Takeda adjusted his hearing aid with trembling fingers. "I—I would need to examine it more closely."
"Please do."
He studied the document for a long moment. The courtroom waited. "This appears to be minutes from the meeting," he said finally. "But I cannot verify their accuracy."
"Let me read from them, then. 'Principal Yamashita informed the faculty that the National Education Accreditation Board would be visiting in the spring of 1998. He emphasized that a perfect disciplinary record was essential for a successful review. He instructed faculty members not to file formal incident reports for any student conflicts, but to handle all such matters informally within their classrooms.'" She looked up. "Were those the principal's instructions, Mr. Takeda?"
"I—I don't recall—"
"The minutes also list the faculty members in attendance. Your name is on the list. Matsumoto's name is on the list. The names of thirty-six other teachers are on the list. Are you saying the minutes are fabricated?"
Takeda's face had gone pale. "No. I am not saying that. I am saying I cannot verify them from memory."
"Then let me ask you a question that does not require memory. As vice principal, you were the second-highest-ranking administrator in the school. If the principal gave an instruction that violated the school's legal obligation to report incidents of bullying, what was your responsibility?"
The silence that followed was broken only by the hum of the courtroom's ventilation system. Takeda's hands were shaking visibly now. "I should have reported it to the board," he said. "Or to the Ministry of Education."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because—" He stopped. Swallowed. "Because I was afraid. Because the principal was powerful. Because I had a family to support. Because I told myself that someone else would do it. Because—" He stopped again, and when he spoke next, his voice was barely audible. "Because I was a coward."
The word hung in the air. It was the same word Matsumoto had used. The same word Yuki Shimazaki had used. The same word Saburo Kato had used in his videotaped deposition. The word had become the unofficial theme of the trial—the confession that united everyone who had been there, everyone who had seen, everyone who had chosen silence over action.
"Mr. Takeda," Kirino said, and her voice was gentler now, "you have used a word that we have heard many times in these proceedings. Coward. It is an honest word, and I do not diminish it. But I want to ask you something. The cowardice of the teachers who looked away—was it only fear? Or was it also something else?"
"I don't understand."
"The school was preparing for an accreditation review. A successful review meant prestige, funding, career advancement for the administrators. Principal Yamashita was not just protecting the school's reputation. He was protecting his own career. And the careers of everyone who went along with him. The cover-up was not just about fear. It was about ambition. Wasn't it?"
Takeda looked at her for a long moment. Then, very slowly, he nodded. "Yes," he said. "We told ourselves we were protecting the school. But we were protecting ourselves. Our salaries. Our pensions. Our comfortable lives. We sacrificed a boy's life for our comfort. That is the truth. That is the truth I have been running from for twenty-eight years."
The courtroom was silent. Kirino turned to the judge. "No further questions, Your Honor."
She walked back to the counsel table and sat down. Beside her, Nishimura was staring at Takeda with an expression that was almost pity. Across the aisle, Aoyama's face was unreadable, but his hands, resting on the table, were clenched into fists.
The trial was not over. The principal's records were still to be examined. The other teachers were still to testify. The school board's investigation was only beginning. But something had shifted in the courtroom that afternoon. The wall of silence that had protected the adults of Sakurazawa First Municipal High School for twenty-eight years had cracked, and through that crack, the truth was pouring in.
And outside the courtroom, in the public gallery and the press room and the living rooms of a nation that was watching with bated breath, the question that had been building since the first day of the trial was becoming impossible to ignore: How many of us would have done the same?
It was the question Tanaka had asked in his diary, the question that had been waiting twenty-eight years for an answer. And the answer, Kirino suspected, was not one the nation was ready to hear.
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