Hooked

Eriko Shimura is a 30-year-old saleswoman at Nakamaru, Japan's largest trading company, where her father once held a senior position. She lives with her parents in a Setagaya apartment in Tokyo and arrives at the office each morning at six to work in solitude. Polished, ambitious, and deeply lonely, Eriko has never sustained a friendship with another woman. Her one comfort is a blog called The Diary of Hallie B, The World's Worst Wife, written by an anonymous homemaker whose frank, unpretentious tone soothes her relentlessly self-improving mind. Her colleague Yasuyuki Sugishita warns her that gleaning the blogger's approximate address from clues in the posts borders on stalking, but Eriko dismisses his concern. She has recently taken charge of importing Nile perch, a large carnivorous freshwater fish introduced by humans into Africa's Lake Victoria, where it devastated the ecosystem. The parallel fascinates her: a creature that never would have discovered its own ferocity had it not been placed in an alien environment.

The blogger is Shōko Maruo, also 30, who lives nearby with her husband Kensuke, a supermarket manager. When Satoko Hanai, an editor at the publisher Shūmeisha, approaches Shōko about turning the blog into a book, Shōko feels ambivalent. After the meeting, Eriko introduces herself at a café as a devoted reader and charms Shōko. Shōko mentions receiving creepy messages on her blog from someone claiming to know where she lives, though she is eager for a local friend. The two meet at a Denny's near their homes, and the evening feels magical to Eriko. They bond over shared difficulty with female friendships, and Shōko gives Eriko a ride home on her bicycle. For Eriko, the experience is transcendent, a taste of casual closeness she never had as a teenager.

Outside her apartment, Eriko encounters Keiko Ogasawara, a childhood friend who still lives in the same complex. Keiko remarks that she is surprised Eriko has made a friend, given Eriko's history of being incapable of giving people space. Their relationship is scarred by a traumatic incident from when they were 15.

When Shōko stops updating her blog for four days after visiting her father's neglected house in the countryside, Eriko panics. Recalling the threatening messages Shōko mentioned, she sends 10 unanswered texts, then uses clues from the blog to track down Shōko's apartment. She is examining the mailbox when Shōko and Kensuke arrive home. Eriko insists she came out of concern, but her intensity alarms the couple. She recognizes on their faces the same terror she provoked in Keiko 15 years earlier.

The two attempt to recover over dinner, but the evening is strained. Privately, Shōko admits her claims about threatening messages were fabricated, a fantasy to elicit sympathy. Neither woman is satisfied, yet neither will break the connection. Eriko's behavior soon escalates: She sends over 20 messages in two days, uses patterns from the blog to ambush Shōko at Denny's, and erupts in accusations of laziness and self-delusion. Shōko, in tears, tells Eriko they have met only five times and orders her never to make contact again. That night, Eriko reverts to a childhood compulsion of pulling out her own hair.

The full story of Eriko's past emerges when Shōko encounters Keiko at Eriko's building. At 15, Keiko had begun pulling away from Eriko for new friends. When Eriko pursued her relentlessly, Keiko lied about having an older boyfriend to create distance. Eriko reported to the school that Keiko was engaged in compensated dating, a practice involving older men paying for the company of schoolgirls. The school investigated, Keiko's father beat her, and though the misunderstanding was resolved, both girls were permanently damaged.

Eriko travels to Tanzania for Nile perch trade negotiations. On the plane, she watches a group of women traveling together whose effortless warmth fills her with anguish. She works with Naomi Akagi, a local coordinator, and finds she can converse warmly only because the relationship has a professional framework.

While Eriko is abroad, Shōko befriends Nori, a popular blogger, and begins seeing Hashimoto, a young café waiter, telling herself the outings are innocent. Her renewed ambition strains her marriage. When Eriko returns, she learns that Sugishita and Maori Takasugi, a company temp, are getting married. Feeling left behind, she begins spending nights at the office and trolling Shōko's blog anonymously. Maori catches her and delivers a savage assessment: Nobody envies Eriko, and everyone finds her desperate need for friends painful to watch. In an escalating confrontation, Maori demands absurd penance, and Eriko, broken, clings to the demand as a mission that might give her directionless life structure.

She lures her division manager to a love hotel, but he refuses her advances and tells her everything about her is "front," that she has never trusted anyone. He sends her home, and Eriko's mother confines her to the apartment.

When Shōko posts aquarium photos featuring a Nile perch, Eriko deduces her location and rushes there. She photographs Shōko kissing Hashimoto and issues an ultimatum: Shōko must be her permanent best friend, or Eriko will release the photos. Shōko, terrified, submits. Eriko extracts Shōko's blog password and begins writing entries as Hallie B, though the blog drops in the rankings. Eriko forces a two-day trip to Hakone, where she delivers an impassioned speech about women uniting against societal forces, but Shōko cannot grasp Eriko's outstretched hand.

At their final meeting, Shōko announces she wants to quit the blog. Afterward, Shōko gives Eriko a bicycle ride, but Eriko, now much heavier, falls off. She catches sight of herself in a shop window and does not recognize the stocky, frizzy-haired woman reflected back. She understands the friendship is beyond repair, deletes the photos, and walks away.

Buoyed by freedom, Shōko impulsively tells Kensuke everything about Hashimoto and the blackmail. Devastated, he tells her he can no longer live with her. She travels to her father's house, finds him collapsed from a stroke, and calls an ambulance. In the hospital, his entitled behavior toward nurses confirms what she has always sensed about him. When Satoko calls to say Shōko's desperate messages have frightened Nori, Shōko realizes she has replicated Eriko's stalking behavior exactly, triggering a painful new empathy for the woman she once feared.

Kensuke visits and tells Shōko he understands her infidelity was about wanting possibilities to remain open, but he is not ready to reconcile. She leaves him a voicemail saying she wants to start over; days later, he texts a mundane question about frozen udon noodles, which she receives with quiet joy. In the hospital, Shōko files the hardened skin from her father's feet, a tactile act of care that lets her speak honestly. She tells him she will sell the house, find him a care facility, and get a job, resolving to seek a middle path between rejection and self-sacrifice.

Eriko returns to work briefly, but Maori tells her to resign, saying her presence makes everyone uncomfortable. On a walk with her mother, Eriko learns that her mother always felt like a servant to Eriko and her father. "Friends aren't like family," her mother tells her (372). Eriko begins to understand she never tried to imagine how anyone else was feeling.

Late one night, Eriko discovers the blog has been taken down. She walks to the Denny's where Keiko now works the night shift. Keiko tells her the value of friendship lies not in permanence but in what it leaves behind. Eriko deletes Shōko's contact information from her phone. She senses she will soon leave this neighborhood but does not yet know where she will go. As dawn breaks, she reaches for the breakfast menu.