Sayonara, My Sweet

Lea O’Harra
Works of: Fiction
Publisher(s): Black Rose Writing

In the summer of 1988, beautiful young Kaori Hirakata meets Hiroki Sato. She’s from a wealthy, respected family living in a small town in Kyushu while he’s a local boy from the wrong side of the tracks, but they fall in love, and she decides to run away with him.

Is it a case of love being blind? When Hiroki admits he once belonged to a yakuza gang in Tokyo, Kaori is horrified. She considers breaking up with him but changes her mind after he apologizes and brings her a box of chocolates.

Eavesdropping, her younger brother, Aki, hears the sister he adores begin to cough violently. Hiroki disappears before an ambulance arrives, but it’s too late, and Kaori dies, poisoned by the chocolates he brought her. Unable to find the main suspect, the police cannot solve the case, and Kaori’s grief-stricken family moves away.

Twelve years later, Aki returns, determined to find out who killed his sister. Putting himself in danger, he pursues various leads, questioning Kaori’s friends and the local yakuza. But will stirring up the past cause only more pain? Or is there hope amid the ruins?