'Suguru killed his parents, ' Satoru remember saying. The words had felt so, so wrong on his lips. Consonants and vowels that aren 't meant to belong together in the same sentence.

'So he did, ' Shoko replied, gazing off to the distance. She sounds as she usually does. Her expression did not change, it did not fluster, and it certainly did not waver.

It 's the same expression she carried the day they met, it 's the same expression she carried in their every day lives as student, it 's the same expression she carried the day Suguru 's defection was announced.