Akamatsu Tokuro, the president of Akamatsu Transportation, a small transportation company, is subject to a relentless criminal probe led by detective Takahata Shinji when the tire of one of his company’s trailers comes off in Yokohama and results in the death of a female pedestrian, Yuki Saeko, and injury of her son. The trailer had been travelling around a bend at a regular speed when the tire had suddenly come off and flown into the sky. Hope Motors, the manufacturer of the trailer, is asked by the police to examine the vehicle, which belongs to a model of trailers called Dreamer. The verdict identifies poor maintenance as the cause of the accident. Furthermore, it also comes to the knowledge of the police that the same trailer may have sustained damage to the hub of a wheel in an accident three months earlier.
Faced with the police probe, Akamatsu loses confidence. However, the trailer’s maintenance records kept by Akamatsu Transportation prove otherwise. With the encouragement of his wife, Shie, and his managing director, Miyashiro Naokichi, as well as the belief that his employees have done proper maintenance, Akamatsu decides to ask Hope Motors to reexamine the trailer.
Akamatsu’s request causes Sawada Yuuta, Manager of Customer Strategy at Hope Motors, to learn about the existence of “T meeting”, a secret internal meeting headed by Kano Takeshi, the Managing Director, and involving senior executives from the Quality Assurance and Research Divisions to discuss their vehicle recall cover up. Six months ago, the driver of a Dreamer trailer was seriously injured when his vehicle hit a side wall after the tire came off in Takasaki. There had also been other accidents. Sawada finds out that the Quality Assurance Division has the clout to arbitrarily assign lower ratings to accident vehicles and consequently cover up the severity of manufacturing problems even though a recall of the Dreamer trailers may have been warranted.
Meanwhile, at Hope Bank, which is Hope Motors’ main bank and an affiliate company, the assistant loan officer, Izaki Kazuaki, agonises over the decision to finance the poorly managed Hope Motors. Because the bank’s managing director, Makita Saburo, is an old friend of Kano and his fiancee Sasaki Kaori is also Kano’s niece, Izaki is under untold pressure. But Izaki learns from his friend from university days, Enomoto Kiwako, who is now a reporter, that something suspicious is going on within Hope Motors and is unable to reach a conclusion. Kiwako also goes to interview Akamatsu and tells him about the incident at Takasaki involving a Dreamer trailer. The verdict by Hope Motors had also identified poor maintenance as the cause of the accident. There are too many similarities in the two cases …
Armed with the information, Akamatsu confronts Sawada who denies any problems with the examination of the trailers and flatly refuses to review Akamatsu’s case. Sawada realises that he has underestimated Akamatsu. He resolves to get evidence of the vehicle recall cover up before Akamatsu does and deal with the problem internally before word leaks out.
Meanwhile, Akamatsu Transportation, which has been facing difficulties ever since the accident occurred, receives a call from another major client to suspend business transactions …
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