The father, a long-waisted man with an olive complexion and a square jaw, didn’t make eye contact when speaking.
The book was a middle school graduation album. Haruki opened the thick volume to the page marked with a slip of blank notepaper. There were rows and columns of black-and-white photographs of students, all of them wearing uniforms—a few smiling, some showing teeth, with little variation overall. Right away he spotted Tetsuo, who had his mother’s long face and his father’s small mouth—a mild-looking boy with thin shoulders. There were a few handwritten messages over the faces of the photographs.
“Tetsuo—good luck in high school. Hiroshi Noda.”
“You draw well. Kayako Mitsuya.”
Haruki must have looked confused, because he didn’t notice anything unusual. Then the father prompted him to check the flyleaf.
“Die, you ugly Korean.”
“Stop collecting welfare. Koreans are ruining this country.”
“Poor people smell like farts.”
“If you kill yourself, our high school next year will have one less filthy Korean.”
“Nobody likes you.”
“Koreans are troublemakers and pigs. Get the hell out. Why are you here anyway?”
“You smell like garlic and garbage!!!”
“If I could, I’d cut your head off myself, but I don’t want to get my knife dirty!”
The handwriting was varied and inauthentic. Some letters slanted right or left; multiple authors had tried purposefully to shield their identities.
Haruki closed the book and laid it beside him on the clean floor. He took a sip of tea.
“Your son, he never mentioned that others were bothering him?”
“No,” the mother answered quickly. “He never complained. Never. He said he was never discriminated against.”
Haruki nodded.
“It was not because he was Korean. That sort of thing was from long ago. Things are better now. We know many kindhearted Japanese,” the mother said.
Even with the cover closed, Haruki could see the words in his mind. The electric fan on the floor circulated a constant flow of warm air.
“Did you speak with his teachers?” the mother asked.
The retired detective had. The teachers had said that the boy was a strong student but too quiet.
“He had top marks. The children were jealous of him because he was smarter than they were. My son learned to read when he was three,” the mother said.
The father sighed and laid his hand gently on his wife’s forearm, and she said no more.
The boy’s father said, “Last winter, Tetsuo asked if he could stop going to school and instead work in the vegetable store that his uncle owns. It’s a small shop near the little park down the street. My brother-in-law was looking for a boy to break down boxes and work as a cashier. Tetsuo said he wanted to work for him, but we said no. Neither of us finished high school, and we didn’t want him to quit. It didn’t make any sense for him to work in a job like that and to give up school when he’s such a good student. My brother-in-law is barely getting by himself, so my son would not have made much of a salary. My wife wanted him to get a good job in an electronics factory. If he had finished high school, then—”
The father covered his head with his large, rough hands, pressing down on his coarse hair. “Working in the basement of a grocery store. Counting inventory. That’s not an easy life for anyone, you know,” he said. “He was talented. He could remember any face and draw it perfectly. He could do many things we didn’t know how to do.”
The mother said calmly, “My son was hardworking and honest. He never hurt anyone. He helped his sisters do their homework—”
Her voice broke off.
Suddenly, the father turned to face Haruki.
“The boys who wrote that should be punished. I don’t mean go to jail, but they shouldn’t be allowed to write such things.” He shook his head.
“He should’ve quit school. It would’ve been better if he’d worked in a basement of a grocery store or peeling bags of onions in a yakiniku restaurant. I’d rather have my son than no son. My wife and I are treated badly here, but it’s because we’re poor. There are rich Koreans who are better off. We thought it could be different for our children.”
“You were born here?” Haruki asked. Their accent was no different than that of native Japanese speakers from Yokohama.
“Yes, of course. Our parents came from Ulsan.”
Ulsan was in what was now South Korea, but Haruki guessed that the family was affiliated with the North Korean government, as were many of the ethnic Koreans. Mindan was much less popular. The Kimuras probably lacked the tuition for the North Korean schools and sent them to the local Japanese school.
“You’re Chosenjin?”
“Yes, but what does that matter?” the father said.
“It doesn’t. It shouldn’t. Excuse me.” Haruki glanced at the album. “Does the school know? About this? There was nothing in the report about any other kids.”
“I took the afternoon off to show it to the principal. He said it was impossible to know who wrote those things,” the father said.