Her pupils killed her daughter. Now, she will have her revenge.
Confessions (告白, Kokuhaku), is a 2008 thriller/mystery/horror novel, written by Kanae Minato. It was adapted into a movie in 2010.
Shortly after the death of her four-year-old daughter Manami, teacher Yuko Moriguchi resigns from her post. On her last day at school she gathers her class to make a terrible confession - kickstarting a chain of events after which none of her students will ever be the same again.
This novel contains examples of:
- Attention Whore: Shuya participated in Manami's murder in order to gain infamy as an underaged killer and so that his mother would finally pay attention to him.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason why Mizuki likes Naoki is because he was the only one who didn't tease her with the nickname of Mizuho.
- Bittersweet Ending: Naoki has gone insane after he killed his mother, Mizuki, who didn't do anything wrong, was murdered by Shuya and Sakuranomi has succumbed to his illness. However, Moriguchi was able to get her revenge on the murderers of her daughter and is now able to find closure and start a new life.
- Book Ends: The novel begins and ends with Moriguchi giving a chilling "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the ones responsible for her daughter's death, at the end of which she reveals that she's already taken revenge in the most cruel way imaginable.
- The Chessmaster: Moriguchi turns out to be far more dangerously intelligent and calculated than she initially let on.Not only does she manage to infect the murderers of her daughter with HIV, without them even realizing it at first, but she also predicted almost precisely how Shuya would react to continually being denied his infamy and tricked him into killing his own mother, completing her revenge nearly without lifting a finger. Oh, and she didn't actually infect him and Naoki with AIDS.
- Death of a Child: Moriguchi's daughter Manami dies by drowning in the school's pool. While the public believes it was a tragic accident, Moriguchi herself figures out pretty quickly that it was murder, with the culprits being two of her own students.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Naoki's reason for killing Moriguchi's daughter Manami is to get back at the former for caring more about her own child than her students.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Mizuho for Mizuki.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Shuya is coldly indifferent to anyone but his mother, whom he admires for her intellect. Deconstructed, as it's his love for her that drives him to kill Manami, as a desperate try to get her attention. Moriguchi mocks him for this, referring to his manifesto he wrote on his website as his love letter to her.
- Foreshadowing:
- At the beginning of her chapter, Moriguchi tells her students about how her engagement to Sakuranomi fell apart, due to him being diagnosed with AIDS and points out how much prejuidice people with AIDS are still subjected to in Japan. At the end of the chapter, she confesses to having tainted Shuya's and Naoki's milk cartons with Sakuranomi's blood.
- In her own chapter, Mizuki mentions having tested the allegedly tainted milk with some of her own chemicals at home, but conspicuously dismisses any question as to why she'd have such chemicals in the first place. Shuya's chapter reveals that she identifies unhealthily with the underaged killer Lunacy, who experimented on and eventually killed her family with different chemicals and potassium cyanide.
- Kids Are Cruel: Exploited by Moriguchi. She admits in the final chapter that although she did try putting her husband's HIV-infected blood in the killers' milk cartons, the goal wasn't to infect them but to turn them into pariahs for the rest of the class. She knew that the students disliked HIV based on their reactions while reading a book in class, that adults are bound by rules to protect Naoki and Shuya despite their evil while the students aren't, and when Werther comes to her for advice on how to stop the students from bullying Shuya, she gives him instructions that were meant to intensify the attacks against him.
- Of course, the two killers themselves are even more cruel than the example above; one of them tried to kill Manami by electrocuting her using his homemade machine for the infamy it would bring him and to finally get his mother's attention, though unbeknownst to him his machine failed to actually do its job, while the other finished the job by throwing her into the school's pool, and though initially it was just to disguise his own involvement with the plan, he still went ahead with it after she woke up in his arms, so he would succeed when the other had failed.
- Madness Mantra: Naoki slips into a bunch of these: he repeats in his mind the phrase "A = murderer, B = victim" when trying to convince himself Manami's death was all Shuya's fault, the word "die" when he realizes he's been infected with HIV by his teacher, a number of phrases related to death and fear when he wakes up and realizes his mother cut his hair while he was sleeping, removing his evidence to himself that he's still alive, and the word "fail" when his mother says she's sorry she failed him, which leads to him killing her out of rage.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Naoki's mother completely refuses to believe that her son could have done a heinous crime like murder, shifting the blame first onto Shuya as the one who pressured Naoki into participating in his scheme, then Moriguchi for lying to cover up her own negligent care that led to Manami's drowning.
- Momma's Boy: Naoki is completely under his mother's thumb. Although he dislikes her overprotectiveness and feels rightfully embarrassed by her continued letters to his school on his behalf, he still comes to her whenever he's in the slightest bit of trouble and freaks out at the thought of her not having his back. He goes completely off the deep end after murdering her, with his last words before his complete dissociation being a desperate plea for her not to leave him all alone.
- No Sympathy: Moriguchi freely admits to Shuya that she doesn't feel sorry for what happened to Naoki or his mother, stating that they both had it coming in a way. Neither does she feel remorse for just having tricked him into killing his own mother. She does, however, admit that Mizuki's death was pointless and that she regrets that Mizuki was caught in the crossfire.
- Offing the Offspring: Combined with Taking You with Me when Naoki's mother attempts to kill her son and herself together, but he ends up killing her instead when she accidentally triggers Naoki's Berserk Button by saying the word "fail".
- Pay Evil unto Evil:
- Moriguchi's whole plan of infecting the two students who killed her daughter with HIV. And when that doesn't work, drive one to insanity and trick the other into blowing up his birth-mother with a bomb.
- Deconstructed in Mizuki's chapter. After Moriguchi more or less outs him as one of the students responsible for Manami's death, Shuya is subjected to relentless bullying from his classmates, who justify their actions with his crime. Mizuki is extremely uncomfortable with it and questions what right anyone has to declare themselves judge and jury over somebody else.
- Revenge: A Central Theme of the book. The plot gets kicked off by Moriguchi taking revenge on two of her students for killing her daughter.
- Sanity Slippage: Naoki suffers a slow but intense mental breakdown, after Moriguchi reveals to the class that she infected him and Shuya with HIV. He becomes a shut-in, doing little more than reading manga online and obsessively cleaning his room while waiting for the illness to take him. He eventually snaps when his mother tries to kill him and kills her when she inadvertently presses his Berserk Button while berating herself, which causes him to completely dissociate. It's implied he's been institutionalized, with the last paragraph written from his point of view being him continually staring at the walls of his cell and reliving the events that lead him to where he is, unable to recognize himself in those memories, or his older sister who is desperately trying to reach him.
- Smug Snake: Shuya thinks himself superior due to his high intellect, dismissing everyone up to and including his own father as drooling idiots. However, for all his genuine genius and skills in electrical engineering, at the end of the day he's still just an arrogant middle-schooler in a backwater town, whose greatest claim to fame is winning third place at a science competition.
- The Sociopath: Shuya has no empathy or love for the people around him his mother being the only human he ever loved. He also shows no remorse for killing Manami, even looking forward to the infamy the murder of a small child will bring him.
- Unishment: Moriguchi's initial revenge of infecting the killers with HIV almost becomes this for Shuya when it turns out he wants to get sick, as he views it as another chance to be reunited with this mother. However, he's disappointed when it's revealed there actually wasn't any blood in the milk he drank, but not because of Moriguchi.
- Would Hurt a Child:
- Both Shuya and Naoki show no hesitance to or remorse for hurting Manami. Even worse for Shuya, since he actually wanted to kill her while Naoki "only" wanted to make her cry through a painful electric shock to get back at her mother.
- Moriguchi herself displays a disturbing willingness and eagerness to hurt Shuya and Naoki, despite the two being underage and her students. Then again, since the two of them killed her daughter for nothing but petty vengeance, it might be a slightly more justified example on her part.
