The Tenth Year of Silence —The Reason I Killed That Child—
In the seaside town of Kirigasaki, where an old shopping street and a new residential area sit side by side, the abduction of a girl ten years ago has faded into memory as something long finished. Chitose Yakumo, a quiet second-year high school student, cannot help but seek reasons behind unexplained events that once struck his own family. One day, Naoto Minazuki, the foster father of the abducted girl Mio Minazuki, whose body was later found, visits Chitose and bows his head, saying the police
The Tenth Year of Silence —The Reason I Killed That Child— - The Tenth Year's Fog Clears —The Night the Silence Is Broken
September 12th.
Since morning, the sky had been clear and boundless, without a trace of sea fog. It almost seemed as though the heavens themselves were celebrating this tenth-year anniversary.
Hamasaki Ginza Street greeted the morning as it always did. The sound of shutters rolling open, bicycle bells, neighborhood women chatting idly. The morning of an old shopping district, the kind found anywhere.
But Yagumo Chitose knew that something lurked beneath that surface.
Until evening, Chitose worked on final confirmations at Naoto's apartment. On the floor of the six-mat room, forty-seven notebooks were spread out like an archaeological dig site — orderly, yet overwhelmingly dense. Maps and photographs covered an entire wall. Red string. Sticky notes. Scraps of memo paper.
Chitose sat at the center of it all.
The bandage on the left wrist was already gone. The wound remained on the skin as a thin white line. Chitose gently traced it with the fingertips of the right hand.
(This isn't judgment.)
(I'm going to break the silence.)
Chitose told himself this.
On the laptop screen, the draft for the post waited quietly. No matter how far one scrolled, it never ended. Ten years of silence had accumulated there, turned into words.
"Chitose, tea."
Saya held out a teacup. Her bright brown curls swayed softly under the fluorescent light. On her right wrist was a faded blue bracelet. Mio's keepsake.
"Thank you."
Chitose accepted the cup. Warm. The scent of hojicha drifted through the nose.
Saya sat beside Chitose and opened her own laptop. Her job was checking the post for typos and doing a final verification of the facts. Digital data from school records, the old Hamasaki Second Elementary School contact notebooks, evacuation drill records. Things Saya had desperately gathered from library archives and school resource rooms.
"I'm going to cross-check this part against the original records one more time, okay?"
Saya's voice trembled slightly. She was nervous. Understandably so. Tonight, they were about to hurl ten years of lies at the world.
"Please do."
Chitose said quietly.
In the back of the room, Naoto had an old notebook open. His job was creating the timeline. He was matching the dates of the interviews recorded in the notebooks against the dates in the former reporter's memos that Chitose had found at the old Hamaki-so, one by one.
Naoto's fingers were thick and knotted. A former fisherman's hands. Those fingers turned the yellowed pages, one by one, slowly. Occasionally they stopped. As if remembering something. Then they resumed turning.
None of the three spoke.
The only sounds in the room were the tapping of keyboards and the rustle of paper.
The hands of the clock moved on.
Ten PM.
Ten-thirty.
Eleven.
Chitose looked up from the screen.
"...It's done."
Chitose's voice was surprisingly calm, even to himself.
Saya peered at Chitose's screen. Naoto stood behind Chitose.
The screen displayed the final confirmation page for the post.
The title was simple.
"The Minazuki Mio Kidnapping Case — A Tenth-Year Report"
Below it, text continued endlessly. The timeline from forty-seven notebooks. Copies of the former reporter's field notes. The results of cross-referencing the official records Kurahashi Seiichi had created during his time on the board of education against the original testimony, showing every discrepancy. The school records Saya had gathered. And the testimonies Chitose had personally collected — from Mimura Masayo, Chida Genzo, Matsumoto, and Kobayashi.
All of it was reconstructed in chronological order, as a single continuous thread.
"Is the timeline good like this?"
Naoto held out a sheet of paper. It was a handwritten timeline. Interview dates and the former reporter's memo dates were arranged in two columns, organized chronologically. Naoto's handwriting was hardly elegant. But every character carried force.
"Yes. It's perfect."
Chitose scanned the timeline.
Saya finished the final typo check.
"...It's fine. No mistakes."
Saya's voice was steady this time.
Chitose reached for the mouse.
The cursor hovered over the "Publish" button on the screen.
Then, Chitose gripped the left wrist tightly with the right hand. The old scar. A thumb traced slowly over it.
(This isn't judgment.)
(This is lifting the silence.)
Chitose repeated the words in his mind once more.
And clicked.
— Published.
The screen changed.
"Your post has been published."
The words appeared, matter-of-fact.
For a moment, the room fell utterly silent.
The three of them stared at the screen.
Nothing had happened yet.
Of course not. They had only posted.
But Chitose could feel it clearly.
From this moment, something had begun to move.
The invisible membrane that had covered this town for ten years had just now — just barely — been torn.
Through that tear, light was beginning to seep in.
He had that conviction.
Midnight.
Chitose sat at Naoto's apartment, staring intently at the computer screen.
One hour since the post.
The first change was small.
One "like."
Then another.
One repost.
Then another.
The numbers grew slowly, but steadily.
The first to react were the young people of the Hamasaki district. The generation that knew the case only from the news. They began reading Chitose's post with fascination, as though they'd discovered an old treasure map hidden in their own town.
"Wait, is this for real?"
"This is about our neighborhood!"
"Kurahashi? You mean that city councilman?"
Words like these began appearing, scattered across social media timelines.
One AM.
Local community accounts began compiling Chitose's post as secondary information.
"The darkness in Kirigasaki runs deep."
"New documents in the Minazuki Mio case?"
"This needs to be spread."
The post spread at an accelerating rate.
Chitose calmly analyzed the spread.
All witness names attached to the post had been anonymized. Care had been taken so individuals couldn't be identified. The cross-referencing results for the tampered sections were attached as images. The discrepancies between official records and original testimony were clearly marked with red lines. The contradictions between the dates in the old Hamaki-so field notes and the board of education records were diagrammed for visual clarity.
That was what accelerated the spread.
"Chitose, this is blowing up."
Saya raised her voice, smartphone in hand.
"It's only just begun."
Chitose answered quietly.
"But it's definitely spreading. My friends are sharing it too."
Saya's voice was a mix of excitement and anxiety.
Naoto stood behind Chitose in silence, watching the screen.
Three AM.
Kirigasaki City's local news flash picked up Chitose's post as "new documents related to the Minazuki Mio kidnapping case."
"New documents related to the Minazuki Mio kidnapping case have been published online, causing ripples. The documents contain descriptions suggesting that a board of education official at the time may have tampered with testimony..."
Chitose read the news flash quietly.
(Here it comes.)
Chitose murmured inwardly.
Six AM.
As the shutters of Hamasaki Ginza Street began to open.
Residents on their way to work were stopping, looking at their smartphones.
Some stood still in the middle of the sidewalk. Some leaned against utility poles, staring at their screens. Some peered at their phones with neighbors, whispering.
The air of the town had clearly changed.
Chitose stayed at Naoto's apartment, not sleeping a wink, tracking the spread.
Saya hadn't slept either. Neither had Naoto.
The three of them greeted the dawn in silence.
Nine AM.
Kirigasaki City Hall.
A dozen or so reporters had gathered in the press room.
Kurahashi Seiichi stood before the microphone, his narrow eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses smiling as always. His receding hair was neatly combed back. The luxury watch on his left wrist flashed under the fluorescent lights.
"Thank you all for gathering here today despite your busy schedules."
Kurahashi's voice was courteous and composed.
"Since last night, inaccurate information about me has been circulating on the internet. This is deeply regrettable, and I sincerely apologize for the great inconvenience caused to the citizens."
Kurahashi bowed deeply.
"There is absolutely no truth to the claim that I tampered with records related to the Minazuki Mio case during my time on the board of education. That is misleading, inaccurate information."
Kurahashi raised his head and looked at each reporter in turn.
"I have devoted myself wholeheartedly to this community. As an educator and as a city council member, I have always put the citizens first. I state unequivocally that this matter is a malicious fabrication designed to unjustly discredit my life's work."
Kurahashi's voice did not waver in the slightest.
One of the reporters raised a hand.
"Councilman Kurahashi. The documents published online include an audio recording in which you state at a meeting of officials at the time that 'testimony was organized out of educational consideration.' What is your response to this recording?"
The smile vanished from Kurahashi's face for an instant.
But he immediately plastered it back on.
"A recording? Does such a thing actually exist? I have no recollection of it."
Kurahashi's voice was slightly higher-pitched.
"Then allow me to play it for you."
The reporter held a smartphone close to the microphone.
A noisy, old recording began to play in the room.
"...Now then, regarding this matter, I would like to compile the board of education's position."
It was Kurahashi's voice. Younger, but unmistakably Kurahashi's.
"The matter of Mio... I mean, Minazuki-san, is an extremely delicate issue involving child safety. To avoid causing confusion at the school level, I believe testimony should be organized and disclosed out of educational consideration."
The room stirred.
Kurahashi's face went visibly pale.
"Councilman Kurahashi! That voice just now was yours, wasn't it!?"
"What specifically do you mean by 'educational consideration'!?"
"If testimony was 'organized,' doesn't that mean there was tampering!?"
Questions rained down on Kurahashi like a storm.
Kurahashi stood frozen, gripping the microphone.
"...Th-this was done in accordance with proper procedures. There is no problem whatsoever—"
Kurahashi's voice was shaking.
The recording was still playing.
"...And one more thing. If this matter grows, it could have no small impact on the bayside redevelopment project currently underway. I would ask that you handle this with consideration so that doesn't happen."
Redevelopment.
The word echoed through the room.
All color drained completely from Kurahashi's face.
"Councilman Kurahashi! What do you mean by 'consideration for the redevelopment'!?"
"Is there a connection between the case and the redevelopment!?"
"Was the testimony organized to protect the redevelopment!?"
Kurahashi opened his mouth.
But no words came out.
Only his lips trembled.
"...I-I... that is not..."
Kurahashi could say nothing more.
The press conference had, for all practical purposes, collapsed.
That afternoon.
The men who had been involved with the old fishing cooperative began responding to reporters' inquiries, one after another.
"That meeting? Never heard of it."
"I didn't see anything."
"Land deals? Was there something like that?"
Every one of their explanations was riddled with contradictions.
One got the date of the meeting wrong.
One was vague about the details of the land transaction.
One repeated "I don't know" and "I forgot."
Their testimony no longer reached anyone's ears as truth.
Rather, the more they talked, the more credible Chitose's post became.
Evening.
The Kirigasaki South Police Station issued a statement.
"In response to the publication of new documents related to the Minazuki Mio kidnapping case, our station will carefully examine these materials. Additionally, th
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