I bawled my eyes out then, right in his car.

Please forgive me, I sobbed, for being such an awful mother. I’ve been so awful, yet you still come to see me when I ask you to, and you never act angry. And you call me Mom, despite what I did to you. It’s so hard on me to meet you like this. I’m the only one at fault here, so I wouldn’t blame you if you hate me. I realize this is the cross I have to bear.

I kept on crying and crying. I didn’t even notice we’d pulled up in front of my building. It’s just that…

I finally stopped crying in the car and was about to get out when Yuichi suddenly said, “Mom, can you lend me some money?” For a moment I couldn’t believe my ears. This was a boy who’d always refused to accept any allowance I gave him, even a thousand yen. I was startled, but I opened my wallet right away and handed him five thousand or ten thousand, whatever I had. Through my tears, I asked him what he was going to use it for and he said, “What does it matter?” and shot me this scary look.

After that day, every time I saw him, he asked me to give him some spending money or lend him some cash. At first I gave it to him, to sort of atone for my sins, but I was scraping by on ¥120,000 or ¥130,000 a month. I didn’t have any spare cash. All he wanted when we met was money, and more money, so I didn’t call him as often anymore. But then he began dropping in on me unannounced, telling me it wasn’t payday yet and he was broke. He’d grab whatever I had, one thousand, two thousand yen, and leave.

Of course, part of the blame for why he committed this murder lies with me. But if you ask me, I’ve been punished enough. Think about it. How a parent feels when their child forces them to give them what little money they have. It’s a terrible feeling. You feel totally hopeless. Some days he looked like the devil to me. I almost hate him now.

“Ouch! That hurts!” Mitsuyo screamed. She was sitting on the sleeping bag, her legs spread out in front of her, and Yuichi was giving her a foot massage.

“If this spot here hurts, that means your neck’s weak, Mitsuyo.”

He couldn’t tell if it really hurt her or whether she was laughing, but he found it amusing nonetheless, and continued to press down hard with the base of his thumb.

“Ow! Wait! Wait a second!” She tried as hard as she could to wriggle away, but Yuichi’s large hands wouldn’t let her go.

“I get it. I’ll stop… But let me ask you, does it hurt here, too?”

“Ow!”

“And here?”

“Do I look like I’m not in pain?”

“If it hurts here, that means you’re not getting enough sleep.”

“I know that! How do you expect me to sleep on top of a sheet of plywood?”

“But you were snoring last night.”

“I don’t snore. But I talk in my sleep sometimes.”

As if to persuade her to stay put, Yuichi began gently massaging her calves.

Until a short time before, they’d been enjoying the sun at the base of the lighthouse. Cold wind whipped up from the cliff, but Yuichi had lit a fire in a small metal drum he’d found and they sat beside it, eating some of the bread they’d stocked up on. The dried branches crackling in the flames made them forget the previous night’s cold weather.

“If we bought some rice cakes at the convenience store, do you think we could roast them on that drum?” Mitsuyo asked as she was getting her calves massaged.

“If we had something we could use for a grill, we could,” Yuichi replied.

“How do you usually spend New Year’s?” she asked, as Yuichi put on one of her socks for her.

“New Year’s? I go over to my uncle’s house on New Year’s Eve and drink with the guys from work. Then in the middle of the night we pay our first visit of the year to the shrine. And on the third I go for a drive, I guess.”

“By yourself?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes with Hifumi, a friend of mine. How about you?”

“We always have the big New Year’s sale on the second. I know it’s kind of weird, considering where we are and all, but it’s been ages since I’ve had such a relaxing New Year’s.”

Mitsuyo tugged on the other sock herself. A relaxing New Year’s-she knew it was a silly thing to say, but the words just slipped out.

What was I doing last New Year’s? she thought.

Mitsuyo pulled on her shoes and walked outside, leaving Yuichi sprawled on the sleeping bag. This was the western edge of Kyushu, but even here the sun went down early in the winter. It had been high above her, making the surface of the sea glitter, but now it was a faint red, fading into the horizon.

Mitsuyo walked over to the base of the lighthouse, leaned over the chain handrail, and gazed down at the cliff far below. Waves crashed against the base, eroding the rocks.

Last New Year’s Eve it was past six-thirty when she’d finished work. It was the last day of their end-of-year sale and they’d closed up early, but being on her feet all day left her exhausted.

She spent every New Year’s Eve back at her parents’ house, but last year she rode her bike back to her apartment first. Tamayo had left a few days before on a group trip to Hokkaido, leaving behind a forgotten copy of her itinerary on the table. Thinking she’d spend the hours before she went back to her parents’ home doing a thorough year-end cleaning, Mitsuyo began by washing the windows. She wet a cloth in cold water and leaned out the window, completely absorbed in the task.

The next morning, New Year’s Day, she and her family gathered around to eat the special dishes her mother had prepared. Then they went for a first visit to the local shrine, but when they got back there was nothing else left to do. Her younger brother and his wife and son went home by car, and her mother started watching the New Year’s specials on TV, her father snoring away beside her.

With time on her hands, Mitsuyo rode her bike over to a shopping center that was open all year round. The huge parking lot next to the road was full, and many of the customers inside the shopping center were dressed in their New Year’s best.

She wasn’t shopping for anything in particular, but she stopped first in the bookstore. At the front of the store was a shelf of bestsellers and she picked up one, a love story that had been made into a movie, but just thinking about work the next day made her put it down again. She left the bookstore and went to the CD store. She picked up a copy of Yuji Fukuyama’s song “Sakurazaka,” which she heard a lot on the background music at work, but after toying with the idea of buying it, she put it back.

From the window of the CD store, she could see outside. Her bike was parked there, and somebody had thrown an empty juice can into her basket. For a moment everything looked blurry, and that’s when she realized she was crying. Mitsuyo ran out of the store, looked for a restroom, and dashed inside. She had no idea why she was crying. It wasn’t because somebody had thrown an empty can in the basket of her bike…

There were no books or CDs she wanted. A new year had just begun, but there was no place she wanted to go, no one she wanted to meet.

She went into a stall and couldn’t stand it anymore. Tears gushed out and she realized she was bawling.

Now Mitsuyo gazed at the sea, unconcerned about the freezing wind blowing up from the cliff. The sky, clear during the day, was suddenly covered with thick clouds. If the temperature dropped any more, she thought, tonight might be the first snowfall of the year.

She sensed something behind her. Turning around, she saw Yuichi, hunched up against the cold.

“You’d better go to the convenience store before it gets dark.”

Yuichi came over and stood beside her, leaning out and looking down at the cliff. She saw his prominent Adam’s apple in the faint evening sun shining through the clouds.

“Yuichi, if I hadn’t asked you to run away with me, would you have gone to the police?”