It was May 4, 2017, a holiday and the public was bustling. It had been two weeks since Hayato Fukuura took his own life.

Why did Hayato take his own life? Papers found during a police search of the house and a suicide note found near his body contained references that hinted at bullying.

Hayato was a meticulous person. He might have left something else behind. His father, Daisuke, and his older brother, Naoto, decided to search Hayato’s room.

Their hunch was right.

“We’ve got the clincher.”

The once-rowdy “Kui” has been quiet

The wake was held on April 23, three days after his death, followed by the funeral and memorial service on the 24th. Neither Masachika Tsuboko, chairman of Kaisei Gakuen, nor Masayuki Shimizu, the school principal, made an appearance.

It is the final farewell at the crematorium.

Hayato’s coffin, which was about 160 centimeters tall, was very small. Daisuke was idly thinking about that.

Saori, his mother, refused to leave the coffin until the very moment it was placed in the cremation chamber. Daisuke and Naoto had to forcibly pry Saori away as she clung to the coffin, wailing and screaming.

After that, Saori grew increasingly gaunt. Even when relatives came over and prepared meals for her, she barely touched them. She lost 5 kg in a week.

Naoto, who had taken a break from university to stay at his home in Nagasaki, couldn’t bring himself to believe for even a moment that his younger brother was gone. Suddenly, his attention turned to his pet, “Kui.” Something was wrong with Kui, too. Kui was the pet turtle.

They met Kui when Naoto was in seventh grade and Hayato was in fifth grade.

One day, Naoto came home from school, and a little while later, Hayato came home too. Hayato told his older brother what had happened on his way home.

An elderly woman in the neighborhood had put a large number of turtles she could no longer care for at home into a bucket and posted a sign saying, “Please feel free to take one home.” Since his friends walking home from school with him and other children from the same elementary school divided them up and took all the turtles home, Hayato didn’t bring any back.

Once he had finished speaking, Hayato began getting ready for his afterschool lesson. Today was swimming class. “I’m off,” said Hayato, and he headed for the bus stop where the school bus would pick him up.

Before long, the front door opened. Naoto thought, “Maybe Hayato forgot something,” but he was wrong.

Hayato was standing there, holding a turtle with both hands.

“What happened?” he asked, and Hayato replied.

“They were all supposed to take them home, but one had been thrown into the gutter. I felt sorry for it, so I brought it home.”

Naoto found an aquarium inside the house and put the turtle in it for the time being.

“What about swimming?” he asked, but Hayato replied, “The bus has already left, so I’m skipping it today.”

From that point, the two started devising their plan. Their goal was to obtain their mother’s approval to have a turtle as a pet. They were certain she would say no at first. Therefore, they chose to persuade her by telling her that if the turtle stayed outside, it would be at risk from cats and birds, and assured her they would look after it themselves.

A little while later, their mother came home. “Eek!” she cried out in surprise. But surprisingly, she didn’t object to them getting a pet. Instead, they made a promise that the two of them would take good care of it.

They named it together. It eats well and has a personality so lively it was practically a little wild child. They named it “Kui” because he’s such a “kuishin-bo,” a Japanese word for glutton.

Ever since Hayato passed away, Kui has become very quiet.

“If it’s Hayato, he must have left something else behind”

Their bereavement leave ended after about a week.

Although they still had to deal with paperwork at government offices and communicate with the school, they couldn’t stay home indefinitely. Daisuke and Saori explained their situation to their employers, who accommodated their needs, and they gradually began returning to work. Naoto returned to his university in Kyoto and resumed life in the dormitory.

The next time the whole family got together was during the holiday in May.

On May 4, Daisuke and Naoto had a mission: to uncover the truth behind Hayato’s suicide.

The suicide note Hayato had on him and the note found by police officers who searched the house contained references suggesting he was struggling with bullying.

The headaches he got every time he went to school, the way his stomach would growl and his classmates would tease him, the times they pointed a tablet at his stomach to record the sounds. Because of those things, his body and limbs started to shake—

Hayato was a meticulous person who liked to sit at his desk alone and work quietly. He would draw pictures of Disney characters or write down his predictions for who would win first place in the popular vote in an idol group.

“If it’s Hayato, he must have left something else behind.”

Daisuke and Naoto decided to search Hayato’s room thoroughly.

“Diary” of confused

They searched every nook and cranny—the drawers of his desk, the bookshelves, and the gaps between the furniture.

When they opened the math notebook they’d taken out of the drawer, they found some notes that weren’t related to the class material.

The text mixes horizontal and vertical writing, as well as diagrams showing chronological sequences. There were some disjointed sections, and it’s clear that Hayato himself was confused.

It’s because you guys keep blaming me for things that aren’t my fault that I’ve developed a phobia of sounds—I start shaking even though it’s not me, and I can’t even stand up straight anymore. It’s so stressful.

 

I went out of my way to write a code message earlier, but you guys didn’t even notice. …You have no idea how far I’ve been pushed. Damn it!

 

 I’m the one who suffered the most… Pay me compensation!!

 

If it were an ordinary person, he might not even be here…

 

I was misunderstood every single hour. My head hurts.

Both Daisuke and Naoto felt their blood run cold.

Thinking he needed to show it to the school, Daisuke ran to a nearby convenience store to make a copy.

Naoto stayed in the room and searched the spot where he thought, “There must be more. Hayato would hide it here.”

His hunch was right. Tucked away at the edge of the bookshelf, as if to hide it, was a notebook.

Naoto opened the notebook and was surprised. He called his father’s cell phone and said, “We’ve got the clincher.”

The notebook detailed the nature of the bullying he had suffered at the hands of his classmates, the real names of the classmates who had bullied him, and Hayato’s feelings in great detail. (The classmates’ names have been withheld in this quotation.)

Nagasaki City, Thursday, October 20, 2016 Weather: Cloudy High: 25°C Low: 19°C Wind: North

 

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but never got around to it—but I’ve finally decided to start writing a diary. The reason is that I’ve been struggling with a certain problem since last year, and I’ve been suffering from it again today. I’ve decided to write about it.

 

Keeping in mind that this diary might “come in handy” someday, I’m going to start writing in it every day.

 

This marks the first of what will be many such occasions. As I mentioned earlier, the reason I’m doing this stems from the fact that “I’ve been struggling up until today.”

 

From elementary school through my second year of junior high, I went through a lot, and some of those experiences really stuck with me. Still, I had no complaints about my life and just went about my days without giving it much thought.

 

However, in the winter of my third year of junior high school, the wheels of fate began to turn.

 

That year (2015), I seemed to get sick a lot. I had norovirus, the flu, and my very first cold. When I had the flu or a cold, I would sneeze repeatedly during class, have a runny nose, and cough, and I knew I was causing trouble for everyone in my 9th-grade S1 class. Naturally, people kept their distance from me a bit at the time, but I just thought, “Oh well,” and figured I’d get better eventually, so I was fine.

 

But whenever I had a cold or the flu, I felt more strongly than most people that I was “causing trouble for everyone,” and deep down, I found myself feeling anxious. That anxiety began to take a toll on my body.

 

That is the “stomach growling” that has been bothering me for about a year. I probably started noticing it around early June, right after I recovered from the flu, but I didn’t really think much of it at the time.

 

However, once the second semester began, my stomach—which usually growls between the third and fourth periods—happened to growl during the first period one day. When I looked around at everyone, they seemed to be trying hard not to laugh.

 

People probably thought that whatever I had to say was pointless anyway, since my stomach was always growling. Even so, we had our school trip and the school festival, and before I knew it, the fourth midterm exams were upon us.

 

I was in the middle of a test at the time, but my stomach growled, and during the 10-minute break between tests, I witnessed the ■■ gang—the most powerful group in the class at the time (six members, one of whom is now at ■ High)—complaining.

 

They used to say things like, “Why can’t he be patient for another 10 minutes?” Those words still pop into my head from time to time.

 

Those words prompted me to start a new routine on the Monday following the midterm exams. It involved the act of “eating.” I decided to eat one rice ball and one Calorie Mate (nutritional bar) during the 10-minute break before the third period, and another rice ball and Calorie Mate bar during the 10-minute break before the fourth period.

 

From that day on, my stomach stopped growling during class. Of course, everyone was surprised, and I heard them whispering things like, “It didn’t growl today, did it?” and “It was just a fluke, right?” In that instant, anger welled up inside me, and I decided to keep doing this—eating—from then on.

 

Perhaps they couldn’t believe that I had stopped making any noises at all, but those guys—■ and ■, who had mocked my “stomach growling” the most—started complaining a week after it stopped. They arbitrarily assumed that the sounds of chairs scraping in the classroom above—which had been audible quite often during class from elementary school through middle school but which they had never paid any attention to before—as well as the sounds of chairs and doors opening in the neighboring classroom, were actually noises I had made (stomach growls). They were quite influential, and at the time, everyone in the other classes had come to believe it too.

 

Then, people started doing that thing they do so obviously when something weird happens, “clearing their throats.” Even if they just heard a noise (like a chair scraping) during class, a lot of them would clear their throats, and I ended up developing a condition called “social anxiety.”

 

*Those who made throat noises: ■ (occasionally) ■ (every time) ■ (every time) ■ (every time) ■ (every time) ■ (just because everyone else is doing it) ■ (this one is the same as ■) ■ (every time) ■ (this one did it the whole third term) ■ (occasionally)

 

These were the people (from December through March, until graduation). But as you can probably tell, it wasn’t just a string of throat-clearing noises—there were also those who would vent furiously, or sniffle to hide their grins, and even those who’d say, “I thought that was Fukuura-chan!” even when the person who made the sound was near them.

The text up to this point had been crossed out with messy lines drawn over it. Beneath that, it had been rewritten to read, “No, that doesn’t matter,” and continued as follows.

Starting in December, I began eating rice balls and Calorie Mate at school during the morning. Although my stomach growled only about ten times by October 2016, the sounds of chairs on the floor below and the door of the neighboring classroom tormented me and caused other students to misunderstand me. Because of that stress, even though I was eating Calorie Mate and other snacks, my stomach started to growl again in November, just like it used to.

 

Plus, the sounds I make when I swallow and the number of times I burp have gone up, and I’m sick of it.

 

I’m exhausted.

 

But you absolutely must not burn stuffed animals. I won’t forgive you if you do.

Recalling something he did in his third year of junior high 

Both Daisuke and Naoto became sure that the bullying had actually taken place.

Naoto was startled by the mention that Hayato had been struggling since his third year of junior high. It was around that time that Hayato had started acting strangely.

One day, when Naoto glanced at the pencil holder on his desk, he noticed bite marks on the tip of one of his sketching pencils. There were also signs that the cap of his mechanical pencil had been chewed. The only culprit could be Hayato. When Naoto asked Hayato about it, it seemed he had been chewing on his own pencils as well.

Naoto had warned him many times, but he couldn’t seem to break the habit. So one day, he told him sternly, “Stop it—it’s gross.” Hayato brushed it off by saying, “I’m just imitating Naetoru’s stuffed animal,” mentioning the name of a Pokémon character.

When Daisuke returned from the convenience store and read the newly discovered notebook, he, too, recalled an incident that fit the description.

Daisuke, who is stationed in Fukuoka for work, returns home at least once a month. Each time he did, he could see how much his sons had grown.

He found out that Hayato, a third-year middle school student, brings rice balls to school in addition to his lunchbox.

“Hayato isn’t a big eater, so why?” He asked Saori, and she replied, “He says his stomach’s growling—that he’s not full.”

Daisuke understood the meaning of the term “phobia of sounds” written in the notebook.

However, he later learned that what Hayato had been subjected to by his classmates went beyond what was discovered that day.

To be continued.

(Originally published in Japanese on December 25 2025. Translation by Mana Shibata.)

Adults in the Student Suicide Case ~School Edition~: All articles