Yumiko, however, disobeyed, sending him another letter in which she begged him to contact her when he got out of jail.
The day of his release finally arrived. He called Yumiko with considerable trepidation. He hadn’t heard her voice for a long time. She sounded well. As they chatted, they both became tearful.
Yumiko told him that she wanted to see him. He felt a hot surge in his chest. Unable to refuse, he agreed to meet her the very next day.
When he went to the agreed-upon place, he discovered that his baby sister, Yumiko, had grown into a woman. He couldn’t find the words, even though there was so much that he wanted to say. It didn’t matter. He was content just to look at the woman his sister had become.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Yumiko said.
A young man walked over to them. He was polite and sincere.
It was Seiji Motohashi — Yumiko’s boyfriend.
Masumura was taken aback. He thought that his sister had kept his existence a secret.
“I told him about you because I knew he would understand,” Yumiko said, looking at her boyfriend.
The two men started talking. Masumura learned that Motohashi’s father’s company was based in Adachi Ward and that Motohashi, who was then twenty-eight years old, would be moving back to the family firm in a few years’ time.
When Motohashi went on to make a formal bow and ask for permission to marry his sister, Masumura was flabbergasted. He had never expected anyone to care how he felt.
“I’m wholeheartedly in favor of the marriage. What about you, though? Are you okay having me in your family?”
“That is a problem.” Motohashi’s face was drawn.
What he went on to say was pragmatic and down-to-earth.
He was in love with Yumiko and he trusted her implicitly. If she felt respect and a sense of indebtedness toward Masumura, then, for his part, he was prepared to overlook the fact that he’d been in jail. From what Yumiko had told him, it sounded as though the episode was more a matter of extreme bad luck than anything else.
The trouble was that other people weren’t necessarily going to see it like that. He expected both his immediate and his extended family to oppose the marriage, Motohashi said.
That was why Motohashi wanted to keep Masumura’s existence a secret, at least for a while. Yumiko, who was listening in silence, looked increasingly uncomfortable.
“No. That’s not good enough,” Masumura said. Both Motohashi and Yumiko flinched. “A while is not good enough. It’s got to be permanent. You’ve got to keep me a secret permanently. If word gets out about me, Yumiko will be the one to suffer. Promise me that you’ll never tell anyone in your family about me. Unless you make that promise, I’ll withhold my consent. I won’t permit the marriage.”
Tears coursed down Yumiko’s cheeks. Seiji Motohashi bowed his head. There was a pained expression on his face.
And that was how the two of them got married. It was the autumn of Yumiko’s twenty-fourth year. Masumura gave her the family’s old photo album as a wedding present. He had never showed it to anybody else.
Although the newlyweds never breathed a word about Masumura to anyone, Yumiko didn’t break off contact with him. Brother and sister continued to meet, albeit at irregular intervals. Whenever they met, Yumiko would bring the baby Yuna with her. Since her husband was the only person who knew what she was doing, Masumura couldn’t object.
Once Yuna started becoming aware of her surroundings, Yumiko stopped bringing her along. It was too risky; she might mention Masumura to someone else. Masumura, who missed his niece, had to content himself with photographs. Every time he met his sister, his stock of pictures of Yuna grew. They were a treasure more valuable than life itself.
More than ten years passed in this way. Yuna was twelve years old when the calamity occurred. One day, she just vanished. In a frenzy of anxiety, Masumura went to see Yumiko.
She was haggard. An empty shell. Completely. He was terrified she might do something rash.
His sense of foreboding proved prescient. Yumiko jumped to her death from the roof of a nearby building one month after Yuna’s disappearance. In the suicide note she left behind, she apologized for being a bad mother.
Masumura wept inconsolably when he got the news from his brother-in-law.
His memory of the next few years was unclear. He lived in a daze, his life empty and devoid of purpose.
The discovery of Yuna’s body brought him back to earth with a jolt. He learned about it from a random newspaper article that happened to catch his eye. He had lost touch with Seiji Motohashi.
He thought he had steeled himself but having to confront the fact of her dead body being found was still a shock. The profound despair that overwhelmed him was reinforced by a second wave of grief at the loss of his sister.
Who could have committed such an atrocious act? he wondered. Several years had already passed and Masumura wasn’t hopeful that the killer would ever be found.
He turned out to be wrong. Soon after, the perpetrator was caught. A man by the name of Kanichi Hasunuma.
Masumura couldn’t help himself. Full of trepidation, he reached out to his brother-in-law.
When Seiji Motohashi answered the phone, he sounded utterly dejected. Was it because the arrest of the perpetrator would still not bring Yuna and Yumiko back to life?
No.
Motohashi explained that the arrested man was refusing to say anything. This was preventing the police from getting any closer to the truth of what had happened.
“That’s just a temporary thing. It won’t last,” Masumura said. “I’ve got firsthand experience, so I know what I’m talking about. Your brain shuts down when you’re arrested. Often, even if you want to say something, your mouth can’t get the words out. You’re terrified that you might say something stupid that you can’t ever take back. Don’t worry. Detectives know how to get people to talk; it’s their job. Just hang in there a little longer, the guy’s sure to confess.”
“I hope so...,” Motohashi muttered gloomily. The police had already briefed him, so he knew that Hasunuma was probably keeping quiet as part of a strategy to get maximum leverage from his right to silence.
Masumura was more optimistic. Now that the perpetrator had been arrested, he would have to go on trial at some point. The man hadn’t just murdered a child, he had also driven her mother to suicide. He deserved the death penalty.
Masumura was expecting the day the verdict was announced to be the day when the spirits of Yuna and Yumiko could finally attain their eternal rest. As the day approached, he started to think that perhaps it was time for him to make a fresh start in life, too.
The reality turned out very different. As he read about the trial verdict in the newspaper, he was incredulous. Was this even possible? Not guilty? He read and reread the article. Was the journalist talking about some other case? No, there was her name — Yuna Motohashi — in black and white.
Masumura immediately phoned Motohashi. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked, knowing the question was futile.
“It was a matter of... insufficient evidence. I don’t know what went wrong. All we can do is trust the prosecutor.”
The pain in Motohashi’s voice made Masumura acutely conscious of his own powerlessness. There was nothing he could do — and he despised himself for it.
All he could do was pray; pray they would win the appeal. If Hasunuma managed a second not-guilty verdict, he would know that there was no God.
But the second trial likewise failed to produce a guilty verdict. This time, Masumura saw it on the television news. His legs turned to water and he couldn’t stand up for several minutes. The whole thing seemed like a terrible dream.