Although this man is too young to be the murderer, he possesses a significant and startling clue, and Sae comes to realize that he has a very good – and very creepy – reason for staying silent. Not long after she’s hired by a firm in Tokyo, however, she’s presented with an offer of marriage she can’t refuse from a young man from her hometown. Of the four girls who survived, she’s been the most afraid that the killer will return, so she’s been determined to remain in the immature body of a child while keeping to herself and never dating. The first narrator, Sae, is the girl who discovered Emily’s body, and the horror of what she saw has never been far from her mind. The first four of Penance‘s five chapters are narrated from the perspectives of Emily’s friends, each of whom is haunted by the trauma of the incident. Is it possible that one of the surviving girls, now young women, holds a clue to solving the murder? If the murderer’s identity is revealed, will these women find peace, or is the cycle of violence impossible to halt? The statute of limitations on the murder is about to run out, yet its lingering effects have not yet faded.

Emily’s mother, driven half-crazy with grief, accused the four girls of being responsible for her daughter’s death, and they have all carried this burden with them into their adult lives. Although four of her friends saw the face of the man who tricked her into going off alone with him, he was never caught. Publication Year: 2012 (Japan) 2017 (United States)įifteen years ago, in an unnamed rural town, a girl named Emily was raped and murdered.

Penance japanese novel