Episode 2: Separation
Kaoru, who is visiting Yukawa at the university, shows him a photograph of a drawing. This drawing may be evidence of an alibi for a murder case. However, Kaoru cannot simply believe in this drawing because it is a rendering of the landscape a 8-year-old boy had seen when he had an out-of-body experience. The case had happened in a studio apartment within the precinct’s jurisdiction. The decomposed body of a 28-year-old office lady who lived there had been discovered. According to Sakurako, the medical coroner, the cause was death from suffocation due to strangulation four weeks ago.
From the estimated time of death, Kaoru and Yuge question insurance agent, Kurita, who was thought to be visiting the victim at the time the incident occurred because his name card had be found in the victim’s apartment. However, Kurita claims that he had called on her the day before, and that he had stopped his car by the riverside to sleep at the time the victim was thought to have been killed. By some chance, Kamimura, who knows about the case, mails a drawing his son Tadahiro had done of a red car parked beside a river.
Kaoru pays Kamimura a visit. Only a factory can be seen from Kamimura’s apartment; the view of the river that lies ahead cannot be seen. It seems that when Tadahiro was sick in bed with a fever, he had an out-of-body experience in which he had gone out through his apartment window, and seen a red car from a place higher than the factory. At first he didn’t believe Tadahiro’s words but when he heard that the police was investigating a red car that had been parked alongside the river, he sent the drawing in, Kamimura said.
Hearing the outline of the case from Kaoru, Yukawa indicates his interest in the boy’s out-of-body experience and they go to meet Tadahiro. Kamimura attests that Tadahiro, can foretell the future. He had made the prediction that Yukie, who runs a yakiniku shop in the neighbourhood, would come and visit just before she did. Yukie had come to Kamimura’s house to drop off food for father and son. Yukawa tells Kaoru that he doesn’t believe that a soul can emerge from a body and begins to investigate this together with his lab students.
Kaoru and Yuge go to a ramen shop one day. Yuge says he completely doubts Tadahiro’s statement. At that moment, Kamimura appears on the television screen in the shop. He is seen telling a television variety show host that the police disregard his son’s testimony. TV station variety shows jump at the story of Tadahiro’s out-of-body experience and reporters descend on Kaizuka Kita Police Precinct.
Yukawa, together with Kaoru, goes to meet father and son again. The two of them are having their meal at Yukie’s shop. Kamimura is in good spirits over the fees from his television appearances. He receives a call from a TV station and when he goes outside to take it, Yukawa talks to Tadahiro. During his childhood, he had been crazy about a youth with supernatural powers who had bent spoons when he appeared on television but was disappointed when the youth confessed that it had been a trick. Continuing on, Yukawa tells Tadahiro that it is alright to speak of strange wonders but if that is mixed with lies, it becomes a crime. Yukawa asks Tadahiro if he had really flown in the sky. Tadahiro, who had cast his eyes downward all this while, gazes at Yukawa and says that he had truly seen the car. Soon, Kamimura returns. Tadahiro behaves as if nothing had happened and smiles at his father.
Yukawa tells Kaoru that it is true that Tadahiro had seen the car otherwise they can’t explain the existence of the picture.
The next day, Kaoru visits Sakurako to review the autopsy report. According to Sakurako, the criminal had clambered over the victim and strangled her. Kaoru realises that Kurita, a small-sized man, can’t be the criminal when she considers the fact that the murdered office lady had been a decorated judo champion. On the other hand, Yukawa visits the glass factory built in front of Kamimura’s apartment. As he goes over the waste materials on its grounds, he finds a boot with a fracture across its surface and a broken part belonging to the boot. The next moment, something flashes through Yukawa’s mind.
Some days later, Yukawa calls Kamimura, Tadahiro and Yukie to come to his lab. Shining a laser beam through a tank filled with sugar solution, he reproduced the refraction of light as it passed from a dilute to a dense medium, for them to see. By the same principle, the natural phenomenon that occurred was a mirage. At that moment, a call from Yuge comes in on Kaoru’s hand phone. At Yukawa’s request, Kaoru had asked Yuge to check the glass factory. As Yukawa had expected, the factory had an accident in which liquid nitrogen had leaked on the day the case occurred. The floor inside the factory cooled drastically, and boots that came in contact with the liquid nitrogen froze. In a fluster, the factory manager had opened the big doors facing the apartment and the river to ventilate the factory. As a result, hot air from outside flowed into the factory and there was a layer as gasses of different density mixed. That was the moment when Tadahiro had seen the silhouette of the red car through the open doors of the factory.
Kamimura rejects Yukawa’s words and persists in claiming that it was an out-of-body experience. However, when Yukawa points out that he was the one who mentioned the concept of out-of-body experience to his son, he is lost for words. At that moment, a small voice pipes up, “I really flew in the sky.” Kamimura stops Tadahiro and leaves the lab. The boy gazes at Yukawa for a while, bows his head slightly then runs after his father. Yukie is left behind. Yukawa tells her to hurry after father and son for Tadahiro’s sake. Yukie makes up her mind, runs out of the lab and leaves with Kamimura and Tadahiro.
Kurita is released after his alibi is proven. The victim’s relationship with a man comes to light. That man had promised to marry the victim although he had a wife and children. When they had an argument over the matter, he had killed her by strangling her.
Kaoru visits Yukawa and informs him about the developments of the case. She also tells him that Yukie prepares meals for Tadahiro even on the days that he doesn’t go to school.
Related Post:
All text copyright © jdramas.wordpress.com.
Jdrama Weblog 