V4Ch1: Closing Distance and Wavering Feelings Part 3

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Translator: Soafp

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On the way home.

Sho's car drove smoothly through the streets of Nikko. Maybe because they were a little tired, both Sho and Haru were quiet.

(I don't know if I should ask…)

She didn't want to waste the time they had together. She wanted to know more about Sho, even a little. But if she pried too much, he might become guarded.

As an adult, Haru didn't know how to handle the sense of distance between people. She had spent most of her precious time avoiding contact with others.

(But if it ends like this… maybe he won't invite me out again.)

She didn't want the outing to just end with an awkward silence on the way home.

She wanted Sho to think, “That was fun.”

She wanted him to want to see her again.

From the day they met, Haru had already started to feel drawn to Sho.

She wanted a conversation that would lead to the next step.

After struggling with her thoughts, the question she finally chose was—

“…Ten years ago, did something happen? Like some meeting or parting that changed your life…?”

If she hadn't asked that question, perhaps Sho and Haru's lives would never have become so entangled.

For a brief moment, Sho showed a lonely expression. But he also felt that the distance between him and Haru had closed considerably that day, and seeing her as someone who also carried the dark reality of being tied to crime, he began to speak of his past.

“…If you're from this town, you probably know. The serial murders from ten years ago.”

“…What…?”

Haru's expression froze.

She hadn't expected those words to come from Sho's mouth.

At the same time, she realized—

This was something she shouldn't hear.

No, something she must not hear.

“…I had an older sister. She was killed in that case.”

“No… way.”

She had feared it.

But some part of her still prayed it wasn't true.

Yet the words pierced her ears mercilessly.

“The culprit was arrested, waiting for judgment. But for us, the case will never end. I still can't stop hating him. I want him to suffer the same fate. To lose his family, to die in despair… I still want that, even now.”

“Ah…”

Right there in front of her sat a bereaved victim of the case.

And of all people, it was the very one she had slowly opened her heart to—the one she had begun to fall for.

Sho still didn't know that the murderer was Haru's father.

Shold she keep silent? Or should she confess and apologize?

“…Do you hate the family of the murderer too?”

Haru braced herself and asked.

Perhaps realizing he'd gotten carried away, Sho took a deep breath.

“I don't feel hatred toward the family. The one who did it was the culprit. But still…”

It seemed Sho did have feelings about the murderer's family.

“After the arrest, when the case was closed… not once did the murderer's family come to our home. Even though it was their family who did it, they never came to apologize. I get that having your family arrested is hard. I think I understand that much. But even so… for the case to end with nobody from their side ever moving, ever saying anything—that, I couldn't forgive.”

After the arrest, the case had been sensationalized endlessly in the media. Crowds had swarmed the murderer's home, pranks and harassment had followed. But Sho never concerned himself with that.

He didn't need to know what the culprit's family went through.
No matter how hard their suffering, to him it was the natural consequence of the culprit's own crimes.

“I-I'm so—…”

Haru almost blurted out an apology, but quickly stopped herself.

If Sho found out she was the murderer's daughter…
He would surely turn that hatred on her.

Just imagining his eyes, his expression if that moment came, squeezed her chest painfully.

The truth was, there was a reason they hadn't gone to apologize.

The victims' lawyers and the police had stopped them.

At the time, both Haru and her mother had begged their lawyer and the police to let them visit the bereaved families and apologize.

But they had not been allowed.

Because of how serious the case was, if the murderer's family showed up to apologize, it would only fuel the flames.
It might even trigger new incidents.

In fact, there had been cases where enraged victims' families had taken the lives of perpetrators' families.

The possibility of the two sides coming to mutual understanding was, in reality, almost zero. Something so rare it could only be called a miracle.

Haru and her mother had reasons.

But they had never been able to speak them.

Because no matter how much sense their words made, no matter how just their claims, from the eyes of society they would always be dismissed as nonsense from a killer's family.

No matter how sincerely they tried, people would only see them through the lens of “They're just the relatives of a criminal.”

“…If the culprit's family came to your house now, what would you do?”

Haru asked fearfully.

How could she change her fate as the killer's daughter?

How could she stay friends with Sho?

She staked what little hope she had on this question.

“I'd want them not to come. Even if I knew they weren't guilty… it would just remind me of the case.”

But the words from Sho's mouth were not what Haru had hoped for.