Higashino Keigo Mysteries - Ep 8 Summary/Thoughts

I'm not really following this series, but I mainly want to watch this episode because Miura Haruma is in it. I also watched episode 7, starring with Toda Erika. This is an episodic series, so I guess it doesn't matter what order to watch this, since each mystery story is different. However, you may have heard or not heard of Keigo Higashino, who is a famous Japanese mystery writer. His novels have been adapted into several TV dramas and movies. The only Keigo adaptations I've seen so far are Galileo and Ryusei no Kizuna. But this drama series is based on his 11 short stories.

Anyway, here we have Miura, who once again plays the role of a high school student.
 

The story starts off with Nakaoka Ryo (Miura) narrates about his two childhood friends, Saeki Yoko (Haru) and her boyfriend, Yukihara Tatsuya (Ohno Takuro).  They have always been together. But that’s all going to change when he finds Tatsuya’s dead body lying on the school ground.

Ryo later finds out that Tatsuya has committed suicide by jumping off from the school’s roof top. However, Ryo doesn’t believe that his friend would commit suicide. Tatsuya is the captain of the school’s soccer team and he is the most popular guy at school. He’s not the type of person who would end his own life. But Ryo begins to wonder what his friend was doing on the roof top in the first place. He thinks that his friend would never go onto the rooftop without any reason, unless there was someone with him. So, Ryo begins his own investigation to find out who killed his best friend.

While on his investigation, he starts to suspect a student named Kasai Miyoko (Miyoshi Ayaka), who might know of something about Tatsuya’s death. Later on, Kasai confesses to Ryo and Yoko that she was the one who killed their best friend. While she was in the art room, she saw Tatsyuya walking along the edge of the school’s rooftop alone. She wanted to get his attention. So, she gets the mirror and starts to aim the reflection of light towards his face. He gets blinded by the light, which causes him to miss his footing along the edge of the rooftop, and he fell over.  

Ryo and Yoko don’t blame her for the incident because it was all just an accident. But Ryo and Yoko promised each other that they would never speak of this again. Two weeks later, Kasai was transferred to a different school without saying anything about it.

One year later, Ryo returns to school to pay respects of his best friend, the place where his dead body was found. And, there he meets Yoko. But Ryo begins to recall the past where Kasai confessed to them. He heard Yoko say that it wasn’t her fault. Ryo asks her what she meant by this and wonder if she was the one who was on the rooftop with Tetsyuya. She does admit that she did kill him and she was on the rooftop with him.

On that day, Tetsyuya called on her to discuss about his future plans. He decided to go to the same University as her.  But Yoko was not too thrilled hearing about this. After high school, she plans to separate from him and be free of him.  He gets disappointed by her reaction. So, he stands close to the rooftop’s edge and says to her that he might as well die, if he cannot be with her. He started to beg to her to stay with him. She was afraid that she would never be free from him.  However, at that moment, she sees a light coming from across the school’s window and points out to it for him to look at. He looks and he fell off.  But she confessed to Ryo that the main reason why she wanted to leave Tetsyuya was because she started to have feeling for Ryo. She regrets not having to tell Tetsyuya this. With that, she apologizes to Ryo, leaving him to cry out loud alone.   

Thoughts: It was a tragic story, but the mystery itself wasn’t that thrilling or suspenseful. The twist wasn’t even that surprising. Comparing this to Episode 7, I thought that Episode 7 had a more interesting mystery and it really had a good twist and Toda Erika was awesome in that one. Anyway, I guess that this series there will be some episodes that are either going to be good or bad. I don’t have much to say about this episode.  Again, I am mostly watching this because Miura was in it. Miura did a decent job. Even though he is in his 20s, he can still pull off as being a high school student.