Confessions (22 page)

Thanks to your love letter to Momma, I was able to learn a good bit about your unhappy childhood. I even began to think that things might—and I emphasize
might
—have turned out differently had I been more supportive when you brought me your purse. I almost felt sorry for what I’d said. Almost. Fortunately, I came to my senses and realized that was all a lot of nonsense. You said it yourself: The wallet was meant as a trap. You wanted to shock someone; that’s why you made it. Why should I have been supportive of that? The notion that you wanted my attention and praise is just the delusion of a spoiled child. What you wanted was the chance to show off. You ignored the opportunity to make something worthwhile and chose instead to create a useless toy to impress people. Who would find that praiseworthy? You should have been content to play with the purse yourself.

You refuse to see value in any human being except your mother, and you’ll have to live with the person that has made you. You can’t blame your crimes on someone else; they’re your own responsibility. But if fault is to found elsewhere, the only other person to blame would be your mother, a woman who raised her hand against a child who couldn’t meet her expectations, who denied that child a place in her heart, and who ran off to fulfill her own dreams, leaving behind a boy with an unrequited love. In that sense, in your tremendous egotism, you and your mother truly are alike.

So you planted the bomb to take revenge on your mother. You were going to get back at her by killing lots of innocent people. It was the same with Manami. You have no feelings for anyone but your mother, yet you hurt everyone except her.

If there’s no one else in your little world but you and your mother, then I encourage you to kill her and leave the rest of us alone. But you won’t. You’re too much of a coward. Which is why I can’t allow you to go on talking big and hurting innocent people.

The police will be arriving at school soon, and they’ll find Kitahara-san’s body before long. Once you’ve been arrested and they make the connection between you and Shitamura, the truth about Manami’s death will come out. Still, I worry the punishment you receive may not be sufficient. Then too, a bright boy like you will be able to convince them you’ve reformed, and you might soon be back in society, your past expunged, ready to embark on a glittering future.

But before all that, I have just one more thing to tell you.

After I read your love letter and disarmed the bomb, I went to see someone. I suppose I was feeling a certain amount of sympathy for you, and it could be that I wanted one more chance to think about what Sakuranomi had told me. You might even say that I realized that some part of the responsibility for Manami’s death lay with me.

At any rate, I went looking for the person you have been longing to see for all these years—and it turned out to be the simplest thing to find her. First, I showed her your website, your sweet love letter. Then I told her about Shitamura and what the two of you had done to Manami.

Do you want to know what she said?

Sorry, I couldn’t make that out. It’s a bit noisy. Can you hear the sirens and all the shouting?

You see, I didn’t just disarm your bomb, I reset it somewhere else. Then I prayed you wouldn’t press the switch to detonate it. But of course you did. It wasn’t a dud, you know. I’m not sure how big an explosion you thought you would cause, but I can tell you it was impressive—enough to blow away the better part of a reinforced concrete building. Fortunately, I had every faith in your ability and was waiting at a safe distance. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here to make this call.

The bomb went off in Laboratory Three in the Electrical Engineering Department at K University. Your bomb, detonated by your own hand.

Funny—I think I’ve finally had my fill of revenge now. And with luck, I’ve at last started you out on the road to your own recovery.

Kanae Minato is a former home economics teacher and housewife who wrote
Confessions,
her first novel, between household chores.
The book
has sold more than three million copies in Japan, where it won several literary awards, including the Radio Drama Award, the Detective Novel Prize for New Writers, and the National Booksellers’ Award, and was adapted into an Oscar short-listed film directed by Tetsuya Nakashima. Minato lives in Japan.

“
Confessions
is a dark, disturbing tale that twists and turns on itself like an Escher print. Just when you think you know where this thriller is going, Kanae Minato throws back the curtain to reveal another face to the mystery. A
Lord of the Flies
for the modern world,
Confessions
mines the dark specter of youth, while simultaneously demonstrating some of the deeper perils of our global culture.”

—Jenny Milchman, Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of
Cover of Snow

“Kanae Minato is a brilliant storyteller, and
Confessions
is a superb and haunting work. As Minato expertly shifts the perspective from one character to the next, each change in perspective lends a startling new dimension to a gripping and profoundly unsettling tale. It’s a novel I’ll think about for a very long time.”

—Emily St. John Mandel, author of 
The Lola Quartet
and
The Singer’s Gun

“A dark, dystopic portrait of Japanese adolescence gone wrong. If Albert Camus had written 
Heathers,
 it would have looked a lot like this.”

—Alex Marwood, 
Edgar Award–winning author of 
The Wicked Girls

“Brilliantly original and chilling.”

—David Morrell, 
New York Times
bestselling author of
Murder as a Fine Art

“It’s time to unretire all of those back-of-the-book words that lost their meaning over the years—
unputdownable, riveting, searing
.
Confessions
is some uncanny kind of tour de force, and everyone should read it.”

—Charles Finch, Agatha Award–nominated author of
The September Society
and
The Last Enchantments

“Don’t be fooled by the hypnotic beauty of Kanae Minato’s prose. As the characters in
Confessions
are stripped of their secrets, the novel reveals its audacious dark heart. A pitch-perfect, riveting read.”

—Hilary Davidson, Anthony Award–winning author of
The Damage Done
and
Evil in All Its Disguises

“Taut, unsettling, and relentlessly engaging,
Confessions
is a book with claws, in more sense than one. I defy any fans of smart, unconventional crime writing to set this novel aside once they’ve started it.”

—Simon Lelic, CWA John
Creasey Dagger Award–shortlisted author of
A Thousand Cuts
and
The Child Who

“I read this riveting tale of murder, revenge, and madness in one sitting, and it took my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like it.
Confessions
will grab you from the first chapter and won’t let go until its stunning conclusion. Pick up this book when you have a few hours to read, because you won’t be able to put it down.”

—Wendy Webb, author of
The Vanishing
and
The Tale of Halcyon Crane

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