Makoto Hara’s two suicide attempts

Makoto Hara’s two suicide attempts are disclosed through Daisuké Taniguchi’s recollection of meeting him, adding a second crisis to the fall from an apartment that Kido had already understood as a suicide attempt. The revelation makes the boundary between what Hara confessed and what Kido knew newly consequential: even as Kido investigated Hara’s life, he had not suspected that Hara had tried to die twice.

The Disclosure

Daisuké recounts that Hara told him about his earlier life, including his career as a boxer and two suicide attempts. Kido pauses over the number: he had known of the fall from Hara’s apartment, but had never suspected another attempt. Daisuké confirms that two was what Hara had said. The second attempt is thus presented not as a scene witnessed by Kido, but as a fact preserved in Hara’s conversation with Daisuké and recovered later through testimony.

The Fall and the Second Attempt

Kido had already come to understand Hara’s fall from the apartment as a suicide attempt. The new information does not replace that interpretation; it expands it. Hara had apparently come around to admitting that the fall was deliberate, while his account to Daisuké included a separate, earlier attempt. The passage establishes the existence of two attempts but does not describe how the second occurred or specify its timing, so their significance lies in the changed understanding of Hara’s past rather than in a detailed account of either crisis.

Hara’s Account of His Life

The revelation emerges within a conversation about the identities and histories that brought the two men together. Daisuké explains that Hara spoke of having been a boxer and of having attempted suicide twice. He also recalls Hara listening carefully to his own story and saying that he wanted to make the most of what remained of Daisuké’s life. Daisuké says he would give his life to someone like Hara: despite what Hara had been through, he saw a purity in his eyes and a powerful desire to change course before his time in the world ended. The account therefore places Hara’s despair alongside, not in place of, his capacity to listen and his wish to begin again.

Consequences for Kido’s Investigation

The added attempt unsettles Kido’s earlier picture of what he knew. Since taking Rié’s case more than a year before, he had worried that Hara might have killed Daisuké; now Daisuké speaks calmly about Hara and confirms that Hara had confided in him. That contrast links Kido’s suspicion to the incomplete information available to him, while showing that Hara had disclosed painful parts of his past to the man whose identity he would take on. The two attempts remain a brief but consequential piece of testimony: they make Hara’s history of despair larger than Kido had understood and reveal a private intimacy between Hara and Daisuké that the investigation alone could not supply.