[SPOILERS] The Narrative Twist Behind the Narrative Twist Behind the Narrative Twist: An Exclusive Analysis of the Hidden Truth of Hotaru

This article contains major plot spoilers.

The narrative twist behind the narrative twist behind the narrative twist: the real killer in Hotaru isn’t Nagasaki at all, but Matsuura Masayuki; Wenzhi never existed in the first place—she is actually Matsuura Chizuru

If my theory is right, then almost the entire “truth” revealed to us in the final few dozen pages of Hotaru is fake.

Nagasaki was not the killer who murdered Sasebo and Isahaya.

Matsuura Chizuru never joined this Hotaru Pavilion training camp at all.

The person who has been living with everyone these past few days, and whom readers took to be “Matsuura, a woman disguised as a man,” was actually a real man from beginning to end—her younger brother, Matsuura Masayuki. This is a narrative twist built on top of a narrative twist about Matsuura’s gender.

The real Matsuura Chizuru had already fallen into the hands of “George” Sasebo. To investigate George, she approached Sasebo under the alias “Wenzhi,” perhaps even posing as a nurse, only to be imprisoned in the basement of Hotaru Pavilion.

The woman Omura heard on the first night was Chizuru.

Late that night, Sasebo tortured Chizuru to death in the basement.

After discovering that his sister had been murdered, Masayuki killed Sasebo, placed the short sword in his sister’s hand, and staged it as though she had killed Sasebo in a final act of resistance.

Sasebo’s accomplice, Isahaya, later found the scene and mistakenly assumed that Sasebo and the woman had died together. He removed Sasebo’s body, disposed of Chizuru’s, and created the illusion that a mysterious female criminal named “Wenzhi” had escaped Hotaru Pavilion.

Masayuki later figured out that Isahaya was Sasebo’s accomplice, so he killed Isahaya too, avenging his sister.

That is why Isahaya’s blood ended up on “Matsuura’s” cuff.

The alleged “chloroform attack on Matsuura” was simply something Masayuki staged himself.

Then the novel’s most ingenious frame-up began:

Nagasaki was made to look like the real murderer.

Sasebo—killed by Nagasaki.

Isahaya—killed by Nagasaki.

The attack on Matsuura in the bathroom—Nagasaki did it.

Finally, Nagasaki even went and tried to “kill Matsuura” himself, only to be caught red-handed by Shimabara. That neatly explained why Isahaya’s blood was on Matsuura’s cuff as well.

A few minutes later, the landslide occurred.

Nearly everyone who could have overturned this story died.

In the end, only one college student survived.

I believe that survivor was:

Matsuura Masayuki.

So the final layer of Hotaru’s narrative twist may not be “guess the killer,” or even “guess the gender.”

It may be:

The case’s final truth, as presented by the entire novel, is itself a story constructed to let the only surviving real murderer escape conviction.

The theory above can suddenly explain a huge number of things in Hotaru that otherwise make no sense.

Check Point 1: The Most Abrupt Character, “Wenzhi,” Never Existed

This is where everything starts.

When we first read Hotaru, it’s easy to take one fact for granted:

Besides the seven people at Hotaru Pavilion, there was also a woman named Wenzhi hiding there.

But when we recheck the evidence, we discover something astonishing:

The novel never once proves that the woman in the basement was named Wenzhi.

Where did the name “Wenzhi” come from?

There is only one source:

The woman’s pendant that fell off when Omura was attacked.

“Wenzhi” was engraved on the back of the pendant.

So Hirado immediately announced:

At last, we know that woman’s name was Wenzhi.

But the novel later tells us that the entire crime scene from Omura’s attack was fabricated.

The dress, pendant, button, short sword, car, high heels…

They were all meant to create:

“The illusion that a female outsider had killed Sasebo and fled Hotaru Pavilion.”

This illusion.

That immediately raises the question:

The only object proving that the name “Wenzhi” exists is itself false evidence.

Although a photograph of an unfamiliar woman is later found in the basement, the novel only says it is:

“A photograph of a young nurse with a hospital in the background.”

She has no name.

No one recognizes her.

Isahaya even explicitly says that this woman is not among George’s publicly known victims.

Then Shimabara speculates that she may be the next victim, and everyone goes one step further:

“She’s Wenzhi.”

But that equation is completely unproven.

So the first lock is open:

The underground woman definitely existed.

But:

“The underground woman = Wenzhi” is only an interpretation of the character.

So who else could she be?

My answer is:

Matsuura Chizuru.

Check Point 2: The Nurse May Actually Have Been Chizuru

There is another line you would never notice on a first reading.

Before the courage test began on the first night, everyone worried that someone might get hurt. Sasebo suddenly said:

“If something really serious happens, we’ve got a nurse right here.”

Someone asked when he had become a nurse.

Sasebo laughed and said he had merely received first-aid training, then changed the subject.

Two days later.

A photograph really did appear on the basement wall:

A photograph of a young nurse.

If this is merely ordinary foreshadowing, we can of course understand it as Sasebo having brought a nurse to the pavilion long ago.

But what if that nurse was Chizuru?

The line instantly becomes an especially vicious piece of dark humor:

“We’ve got a nurse right here.”

Because she really was in the house.

She was just locked in the basement.

The line instantly becomes an especially vicious piece of dark humor:

My theory is:

While investigating George, Chizuru approached Sasebo under the name “Wenzhi,” posing as a nurse.

We can’t establish this with complete certainty, but it only has to exist as one puzzle piece to connect everything that follows.

Check Point 3: The Woman Omura Heard on the First Night Was Chizuru

During the courage test on the first night, Omura clearly heard a woman’s voice.

The standard solution later agrees that:

She was very likely the next victim Sasebo had chosen.

In other words, a living woman really was in the basement that first night.

The most natural timeline, then, is:

Chizuru was still alive at that point.

Sasebo already had her under his control and was keeping her in the basement.

Later that night, Sasebo began torturing her.

At that moment, someone entered the basement.

They discovered what was happening.

The standard solution says:

That person was Nagasaki.

My answer is:

That person was Chizuru’s younger brother—Matsuura Masayuki.

And Masayuki killed Sasebo.

That is what really happened in the first murder at Hotaru Pavilion.

Check Point 3: Why “Matsuura” at the Training Camp Was Actually His Younger Brother Masayuki

Because it is, ironically, the simplest explanation.

Why did everyone take Matsuura for a man?

Because:

He was a man.

Everyone had taken part in club activities with him for a long time.

They stayed together.

They bathed together.

They used the same bathroom.

There was physical contact.

No one suspected a thing.

The standard answer asks us to believe that:

A 20-year-old woman pretended to be her own younger brother for an extended period and fooled everyone around her.

The hidden answer only requires that:

Everything everyone saw was real.

They were dealing with Matsuura Masayuki.

The person truly deceived was not a character in the book.

It was:

The reader.

The names make things even more interesting.

The names of the main characters follow an almost obsessive pattern:

Sasebo Sanai = S.S.

Hirado Hisashi = H.H.

Omura Osamu = O.O.

Isahaya Ikuo = I.I.

Nagasaki Naoya = N.N.

Shimabara Shunsaku = S.S.

……

Almost everyone’s family name and given name begin with the same letter in romanization.

Except, conspicuously:

Matsuura Chizuru = M.C.

which breaks the pattern.

But if the “Matsuura” who attended the training camp was actually her younger brother:

Matsuura Masayuki = M.M.

then the anomaly disappears instantly.

Perhaps there is no “sole exception” in the entire book.

Because the person who attended the Hotaru Pavilion training camp from beginning to end was M.M.—Matsuura Masayuki.

And the one person whose name breaks the rule, M.C.—Matsuura Chizuru, was precisely not a member of the training camp.

She was underground.

Check Point 4: The “Chizuru” Chapter May Not Have Revealed Chizuru at All

This is one of the places where I think the novel is at its most devious.

There is an entire chapter called:

Chizuru

Naturally, readers assume this is where her true identity will be revealed.

Matsuura calls Isahaya into a room and says:

He has known Tsugumi since elementary school.

He joined the Achilles Club specifically to investigate George.

He has been:

“Hiding his true identity.”

The problem is:

Look closely at the actual dialogue.

In this supposed “confession of identity,” he never clearly says:

I am a woman.

He never clearly says:

My name is Chizuru.

Nor does he clearly say:

Masayuki is my younger brother.

These most crucial facts are only relayed in the final solution chapter by Shimabara.

In other words:

The chapter Chizuru never actually proves that the person standing there is Chizuru.

Its title is simply Chizuru.

The reader automatically completes the equation.

That is almost exactly what happens in the chapter Wenzhi.

A pendant bears the name “Wenzhi.”

Everyone automatically completes it:

Mysterious woman = Wenzhi.

So perhaps the two chapters are performing the exact same narrative twist:

The name appears.

The reader welds the name to the body.

But both equations may be wrong.

The real correspondences are:

The “Chizuru” upstairs = Masayuki.

The “Wenzhi” underground = Chizuru.

Check Point 5: Masayuki Discovers His Sister Has Been Killed and Kills Sasebo

The fact that Masayuki killed Sasebo is actually fully supported by the physical evidence.

Shimabara judged that the direction of the stab wound from the short sword in Sasebo’s chest indicated a right-handed person, which rules out Isahaya, the only explicitly left-handed person.

Matsuura was not ruled out.

More importantly, there is that mysterious bloody fingerprint on the short sword.

None of the six college students’ fingerprints matched.

Neither did Sasebo’s own.

So another person must have been at the scene.

A woman.

The standard answer tells us:

That was Wenzhi.

I believe:

It was the real Chizuru.

After killing Sasebo, Masayuki placed the short sword in his already-dead sister’s hand.

Her bloody fingerprint was therefore left on the hilt.

That way:

All the genuine physical evidence in the Sasebo case still holds.

What proves that the killer had to be Nagasaki?

Nothing.

The only thing that ultimately confirms that “Nagasaki killed Sasebo” is:

Nagasaki himself saying that he did it.

Check Point 6: The Isahaya Case Is Even More Blatant—the Novel Has Already Written Out the Correct Answer

This is, in my opinion, the strongest evidence in the entire theory.

After Isahaya dies:

There is blood on Matsuura’s cuff.

Matsuura has no injuries.

There were no witnesses to the alleged chloroform attack either.

“Nagasaki” then thinks:

Maybe Matsuura’s alleged attack was completely fake.

What really happened was:

Matsuura killed Isahaya.

He staged it as a suicide in the bathroom.

Then he returned to the bathroom and pretended to collapse.

The blood on his cuff was left there when he killed Isahaya.

Then Oosamu Maya writes:

“This explanation is perfectly logical and entirely plausible.”

That sentence really deserves another look.

Because this is not just a casual suspicion.

It has:

A valid motive.

A valid opportunity.

Valid physical evidence.

A valid method of staging the scene.

In the most ordinary forensic sense:

Matsuura was already the prime suspect in the Isahaya case.

And if this person was not Chizuru but her younger brother Masayuki, the motive is even stronger than in the standard answer:

Isahaya helped Sasebo kill his sister.

So Masayuki killed him.

Very simple.

Check Point 7: Then the Entire Book Suddenly Starts Desperately Proving It Wasn’t Matsuura, but Nagasaki

This is what I find most terrifying.

Nagasaki has just reasoned out that “Matsuura killing Isahaya is entirely plausible,” and then suddenly makes an extremely bizarre decision:

He goes to kill Matsuura.

Why?

No idea.

He has chloroform.

He brings a short sword.

He sneaks into Matsuura’s room in the middle of the night.

Then Shimabara and Hirado catch him red-handed.

From that moment on, Nagasaki begins taking responsibility for every crime.

Sasebo:

I killed him.

Isahaya:

I killed him.

The attack on Matsuura in the bathroom:

That was me too.

And then:

I was genuinely planning to kill Matsuura.

At last, the most dangerous evidence on his body—the blood of Isahaya—finally receives a perfect explanation.

After Nagasaki killed Isahaya, he attacked Matsuura, so Isahaya’s blood was transferred to Matsuura’s cuff.

From the real killer:

someone whose body bore the victim’s blood

to:

an innocent victim attacked by the killer

This is a cleanup so elegant it almost feels unfair.

Check Point 8: But why was Nagasaki so determined to kill Matsuura?

Why was Nagasaki so determined to kill Matsuura?

Even Nagasaki himself doesn’t know.

So Shimabara offers an almost metaphysical explanation.

The melody of Hotaru triggers the human urge to kill.

And Nagasaki suddenly gets it.

It wasn’t that I originally wanted to kill her.

This house drove me insane.

That answer is stunning on a first read.

But from the hidden solution, it serves a more practical purpose:

It supplies the motive missing from Nagasaki’s otherwise completely unmotivated murder.

Why did Nagasaki have to suddenly run off and kill Matsuura?

Because:

He had to be caught.

Only if he was caught,

could he begin his confession.

Only with his confession,

could the blood on Matsuura’s cuff be explained.

Only once that bloodstain was explained,

could the real killer be completely safe.

So the novel needed a reason to push Nagasaki into Matsuura’s room.

What if there was no normal reason?

The answer is:

The house drove him insane.

And with that, the final solution finally closes the loop.

Check Point 9: So is this entire ‘Nagasaki confesses’ story true?

This is the central question.

If we treat the novel’s main text as an omniscient God’s-eye recording, then of course it is true.

But Hotaru is very deliberately not that kind of novel.

This book has already lied to readers about the most basic question: ‘Who am I?’

It even calls its main narrator:

‘the objective recorder.’

Yet this supposedly objective recorder hides even his own identity from the reader.

More importantly:

Shimabara himself finally admits—

if Nagasaki had not attacked Matsuura again that night, they had originally planned to:

hide the blood on Matsuura’s cuff,

keep treating Isahaya’s death as a guilty suicide,

and make sure the police never found Nagasaki.

That sentence destroys, with the author’s own hands, the premise that detective work equals judicial truth.

Shimabara is perfectly willing to conceal the facts.

As long as he considers the ending morally acceptable.

So:

why must his final solution automatically be the truth?

Check Point 10: The bigger evidence is actually the novel’s sibling structure.

If Masayuki is the real killer, the whole novel’s structure suddenly becomes unnervingly neat.

Generation one:

Keiji Kaga and his younger sister Hotaru

The sister dies.

The brother cannot escape her.

In fact, Kaga’s original name was not Keiji at all, but:

Keiji Kaga.

His sister’s name was:

Hotaru Kaga.

After she died, he changed the ‘Kei’ in his own name into:

‘Hotaru.’

A man:

writes his dead sister’s name into his identity.

Then he finds Kyoko Komatsu.

Why does he love her?

Because:

Kyoko Komatsu looks like his sister.

She is only his sister’s substitute.

Generation two:

Sasebo and his sister

The sister dies.

Sasebo cannot escape her.

So he keeps looking for women who resemble his sister,

then imprisons, abuses, and kills them.

All the women victimized by George are, essentially:

his sister’s substitutes.

Then generation three suddenly appears:

Chizuru Matsuura and her younger brother Masayuki

If we accept the standard answer, what is this sibling relationship doing?

Apparently, just this:

the sister borrows her brother’s student ID to disguise herself as a man.

Compared with the first two groups, it is absurdly lightweight.

But if the hidden answer is:

Sister Chizuru dies.

Her brother Masayuki cannot accept it.

Her brother takes over her identity.

Her brother kills the person who caused her death.

then the three-generation structure fits perfectly.

Kaga:

sister dies → absorbs sister → kills.

Sasebo:

sister dies → searches for substitutes → kills.

Masayuki:

sister dies → becomes sister’s substitute → kills.

Check Point 11: So what Hotaru may really be writing over and over is not incest, but ‘substitution.’

‘Substitution’ is Hotaru’s core keyword.

Kyoko Komatsu:

Hotaru’s substitute.

George’s female victims:

substitutes for Sasebo’s sister.

Masayuki:

becomes Chizuru’s substitute.

The real Chizuru:

is replaced again by the name ‘Wenzhi.’

Finally:

Nagasaki becomes Masayuki’s substitute.

Even:

the identity of ‘murderer’ can be transferred.

Thus, from character relationships to narrative structure, all of Hotaru is doing the same thing:

put A into B’s position.

Make you believe:

B is A.

while the real A has already been hidden.

Check Point 12: Even the final body count lines up perfectly.

Suppose Masayuki is the sole survivor.

The seven people at Ryuka-kan were:

Sasebo, Hirado, Omura, Isahaya, Nagasaki, Masayuki, and Shimabara.

Masayuki survives.

That leaves:

6 contemporary corpses.

Underground there is also Komatsu Kyoko’s wax corpse from ten years ago.

So at the scene:

7 corpses.

Which is exactly the number given in the Japanese epilogue.

Among them is also:

one woman whose identity is unknown.

She could perfectly well be Komatsu Kyoko, who disappeared ten years ago.

Then where is the real Chizuru?

Shimabara’s own reasoning prepared the answer long ago.

To preserve the illusion that ‘the female criminal has escaped,’ Isahaya would move the woman’s corpse in the direction opposite the river:

burying it in the primeval forest.

So the real Chizuru never appeared at the landslide scene.

Perfect.

Check Point 13: Finally, who has the right to tell the police the ‘truth’?

The novel never announces that Nagasaki is the killer.

It never confirms Wenzhi’s identity.

There is no police reconstruction.

There is not even an interrogation.

It only says, at the end:

multiple victims bearing obvious signs of murder were found at the scene.

Then:

The police are waiting for the body of the only college student who survived the accident to recover before questioning him.

If this line exists merely to leave us wondering who survived, that is already plenty of fun.

But if Masayuki is the real killer—

it becomes the most terrifying sentence in the entire book.

Because everyone who could contradict Masayuki:

Sasebo,

Isahaya,

Nagasaki,

Shimabara,

Hirado,

Omura,

is dead.

The real Chizuru is dead too.

There is only one person left in the world who can tell the police:

who killed Sasebo,

who killed Isahaya,

who that woman was,

what Nagasaki said,

what Shimabara deduced,

and what really happened at Ryuka-kan.

That person is:

Masayuki Matsuura.

So now I think the three layers of narrative twist that may really exist in Hotaru are not:

Layer one: guessing the wrong narrator.

Layer two: guessing the wrong gender.

And that’s it.

They are:

Layer one:

You think ‘I’ is Isahaya.

Wrong.

It’s Nagasaki.

Layer two:

The characters think Matsuura is a man.

Wrong.

The novel tells you:

she is actually Chizuru Matsuura.

At this point, the reader gets an incredibly powerful thrill:

Oh. So that’s it.

I have finally stood beside the author and seen the real answer.

Then the third layer truly begins:

Why do you believe this final answer?

Maybe they got it right at first glance.

Matsuura is a man.

He is Masayuki Matsuura.

The real Chizuru Matsuura has been underground all along.

She is the so-called ‘Wenzhi.’

And the so-called ‘real killer Nagasaki’ is merely another identity substitution.

The person who really killed Sasebo and Isahaya has been sitting beside the final solution from beginning to end, quietly watching someone else confess everything on his behalf.

Then the mountain collapsed.

He survived.

Everyone who could expose the story died.

The police are waiting for him to wake up.

All that remains is for him to tell the world, in his own voice:

What exactly happened inside Ryuka-kan?

This is the real—

the narrative twist behind the narrative twist behind the narrative twist.

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The original article was published on Douban, reviewing Hotaru.