“I couldn’t leave you, Yuichi.”

Yuichi blew on her frozen, numb hands.

“I… I escaped. I couldn’t stand to say goodbye…”

Yuichi stroked her chilled body. Mitsuyo’s cheeks were so frozen even his own cold hands felt warm.

He put his arms around her and was leading her back into the shack when Mitsuyo saw the line of patrol cars heading up the logging road and stopped short. The red lights were getting closer to the lighthouse. Sirens echoed through the hills. Yuichi gave Mitsuyo a little shove.

Inside the shack, Yuichi took the sleeping bag from his bag and spread it out. He tried to get Mitsuyo to sit down, for she was clearly exhausted, but she clung to his neck. The sirens were nearer.

“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t help you. I’m so sorry,” Mitsuyo sobbed aloud as she clung to him. “I knew you were going to get arrested, and yet I begged you… to run away with me… If only I hadn’t been so selfish…”

Yuichi held her close as she sobbed.

“I couldn’t help you at all,” she cried, “but you stayed with me… I’m such a terrible woman, yet you’re still holding me… Don’t say anything, just hold me… It’s so hard-so hard when you’re kind to me like this. I hate myself-I never did anything for you. I’m terrible… terrible. I told you to go to the police then… And then I stopped you. God, I’m so awful.”

Yuichi listened. As her cries became louder, so did the sirens. The line of patrol cars was drawing nearer the lighthouse.

Yuichi finally had to peel Mitsuyo away from him. For a moment she stood there, trying to bury her face in his chest, but Yuichi refused to let her. He refused and stood staring right into her wet eyes.

A red light shone through the window of the caretaker’s shack, dyeing Mitsuyo’s wet face red. When she noticed the light, Mitsuyo tried again to cling to Yuichi. Footsteps drew nearer.

“I’m not… the kind of guy you think I am,” Yuichi said, and roughly pushed Mitsuyo away, and she fell to the plywood board.

Mitsuyo’s short cry echoed in the room. The policemen’s flashlights shone in from the far window, the beams crisscrossing each other. And right then, Yuichi straddled Mitsuyo and laid his cold hands on her neck.

Mitsuyo, wide-eyed, tried to shout. Yuichi closed his eyes and squeezed her neck hard. Behind him, the door slammed open and flashlights shone on the two of them.

Let me see, now, when was that? It was when I still looked forward to the homemade lunches he made for me, so it must have been not long after we met… We were eating the lunches in one of the private rooms and talking about something, I don’t remember what. Oh-yes I do. It was about our mothers.

I’d totally forgotten about that, but after he was arrested they had all those talk shows about him on TV. And that jogged my memory. His mother was on one of those shows and she nearly tore the head off the interviewer, she was so angry. “I’ve been punished enough!” she shouted. And when I saw that, I suddenly remembered what we talked about back then.

I was raised by my mom, just her and me, and it might sound strange considering what I do for a living, but the last thing I wanted to do was worry my mother. And when I told him that, he got all serious and said, “Don’t tell anybody else, but every time I see my mom I’m always pestering her for money.”

A pretty ordinary story, I thought, and gave some noncommittal response. But he looked so serious and probably felt bad, like he wanted to apologize or something. Really, though, it sounded like it was going to be a boring story.

Then he said something unexpected. “It hurts to pester her for money I don’t really need.”

So I went, “Then you shouldn’t do it.” I laughed but he thought for a while and then he said, “Yeah, but both of us have to be victims.”

At first I didn’t get it and was going to ask him what he meant, but right then our time was up and the phone rang.

That was it. He brought me lunches many times after that but never mentioned his mother again.

In the news they’ve been running stories about him and the confessions, I guess you’d call them, of that girl who was with him to the end, the one he nearly killed. Playing these stories up big, right? Every time I see these, it still gets me. His face when he said that. Yeah, but both of us have to be victims.

It makes me kind of want to meet that woman, the one from Saga he took with him. Something about the way he looked back then, I just can’t shake it.

I know meeting her isn’t going to change anything. Maybe if I send him a letter or something… On second thought, I shouldn’t get involved…

Maybe it’s like he said in his confession, that at the pass, and at the lighthouse, he was carried away by this sudden urge to kill. Maybe he really is that kind of person…

I finally opened my little diner, but had to close it last month. I guess luck wasn’t on my side. I got sick soon after we opened… So now I’m back at my old job. I used all my savings to open that shop, and after I closed it, I needed money to live on… It makes me kind of scared when I consider my age, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

It’s like I told you. I don’t have anything more to add, or anything I want to correct.

I get a kick from driving women into a corner. When I see women like that, scared and suffering, it turns me on. I never noticed it before, but I think I always had those feelings inside me. My first confession was what the reporters picked up on and ran with. But I did say those things. And I am that kind of man.

I didn’t chase after Yoshino Ishibashi because I was planning to kill her. We’d made a date, but then she told me she didn’t have time for me. And then she got into another guy’s car right in front of me. One word of apology from her, that’s all I wanted… So I followed her, and when I got to the pass she’d been kicked out of the other car… I tried to help her, but she refused, said she was going to the police, and before I knew what was happening I’d strangled her.

Maybe it was like that detective told me, that maybe when I was strangling her I realized for the first time I get sexually aroused by women who are suffering. And that’s why I didn’t turn myself in, but went looking for another girl. Mitsuyo Magome just happened to get in touch with me right then, so I made a date to meet up with her.

When they arrested her, Miss Magome apparently said she went with me of her own free will, but I think it’s because I intimidated her and psychologically backed her into a corner. I told her how I murdered Miss Ishibashi, and I think she understood what an evil person I am, that she couldn’t escape, and that made her submit to me.

In fact, Miss Magome did exactly what I told her, and since I didn’t have any money it worked out well to have her along.

She stood by me, apparently testifying that “I was never intimidated or treated roughly,” but I think that’s also like the detective said, that even after she was freed she couldn’t shake off her terror. You could turn that around and say it confirms what I said: that I used fear to control her.

The whole time we were together, she was jumpy. Everywhere we went-when I told her about how I killed Yoshino, when I forced her to go to a love hotel with me, when she sat in the passenger seat of my car, when we arrived at the lighthouse. She was nervous and scared, and that got me excited.

The detective told me how my grandfather died the morning after I was arrested. He did his best to raise me, and I feel awful about putting him through all this in his final hours.

I feel sorry for my grandma, too, for what I did. I heard how she went to visit both families-the Ishibashis and the Magomes-to apologize. And how they refused to see her…