Jdrama: Byakuyakou, episode 2 overview & picspam
Episode two opens where episode 1 left off. It is the winter of 1998, and Ryoji and Sasagaki stand on opposite sides of a crosswalk - seeing Sasagaki again like that after seven years brings up all of Ryoji's childhood anxiety and terror.
So much has changed in seven years: Yukiho has been adopted by a very nice older woman and taken on a new name, Karasawa Yukiho.
Meanwhile, Ryoji's life has changed a great deal: around the time he graduated from middle school, the pawn shop business failed because his mother's boyfriend, Matsuura, embezzled from it. Ryoji now lives with Matsuura who uses him in a male prostitution scheme. Also, during the seven years, the economy improved so the partially-finished building (where Ryoji used to play, and where his father died) is finally finished, and because of the murder, Ryoji's mother is able to cheaply obtain the space where the murder took place. She sets up a snack shop in that room.
Sasagaki, on the other hand, has never let the old case go - he keeps worrying at it like he would a sore tooth because troubling details still stick out in his mind. For example, he remembers that the door to the room where Ryoji's father was killed swung inwards, and yet the report reads that there were construction materials piled up against it, which of course leaves the air duct as the only other exit from the room - which was only large enough for a child. Ryoji discovers his mistake when he pays a rare visit to his mother in the snack shop, and she explains that Sasagaki is still sniffing around the old case.
This spooks Ryoji who realizes that if Sasagaki starts poking around again, that will lead him to Kikuchi, the child who discovered the dead body, who will be sure to confirm that the construction materials had completely blocked that door - which would lead suspicion right back to Yukiho. He goes back to Matsuura and explains that Sasagaki is still hanging around, so maybe they should quit the male prostitution scheme, but Matsuura retaliates violently, proving that Ryoji is completely under his control.
We also see how Ryoji has never been able to get over Yukiho. He still waits for her every day on the train platform, in hopes that she will get off, but she never does. And the librarian who had taken an interest in the children has watched Ryoji return to the library regularly over the last seven years, always hoping that Yukiho will return. The librarian tries to explain to Ryoji that a girl in Yukiho's situation most likely wouldn't come back - that society would not understand a friendship between the children of a murderer and the murderer's victim, and that Yukiho probably moved on.
Ryoji fervently hopes that the years have passed calmly for Yukiho, and that someday he might see her again.
Unfortunately, the years have not passed calmly for Yukiho, and we see that even though she has a new name and a new life, she continues to suffer for her past - in her school, a rumor is being spread that even though she is called Karasawa Yukiho, that she is really Nishimoto Yukiho, daughter of a murderer who committed suicide. It seems that despite her best efforts to leave the past behind, it keeps catching up with her, threatening her future with further shame and harassment.
And to make matters worse, Kikuchi, who was the boy who found the corpse of Ryoji's father, tries to blackmail Ryoji with an old photograph he found that shows Ryoji's father going into the old building with a young girl.
Things come to a head when Yukiho arrives home only to discover that her mother is receiving harassing phone calls; Yukiho realizes that someone has posted her home phone number in station bathrooms; she leaves to try and clean away the notices so the phone calls will stop. When she sees the filthy, disgusting things that her harasser has written on the walls, all pertaining to sex, of course, she becomes infuriated, because just like it has been practically her entire life, sex is once again wielded as a cruel weapon against her.
Meanwhile, Ryoji overhears Kikuchi tell Sasagaki that he remembers the door in the old building was blocked; Ryoji runs away in an agony of fear and loneliness - he falls into utter despair at having to suffer alone and he wanders around in the rain trying to think of a way out of the dangerous situation. That is, until he finds his way to the train station and sees a girl in a school uniform talking to the station manager who arouses his curiosity.
Ryoji follows her into the men's bathroom of the station and sees the words scribbled on the walls ("Nishimoto Yukiho is Karasawa Yukiho" as well as loads of filth), and realization dawns. Yukiho tries to put him off, though, by saying that her friend is being harassed, but Ryoji begins to tearfully ask her the questions he once asked her when they were both eleven until Yukiho breaks down into tears as well. The two embrace in a heartbreaking reunion, particularly as the circumstances that reunite that are far from pleasant.
Yukiho goes back to Ryoji's place to consider what to do on both fronts, but of course the immediate necessity is to somehow throw Sasagaki off the trail so that he will not follow his leads back to Yukiho. The scene is painful: Ryoji isn't thinking very clearly at all, as he babbles about giving himself up to the police (and again, he blames himself for her predicament - he thinks that if he'd given himself up in the beginning, then she wouldn't have become a murder, too), about just wanting them to have a peaceful life and about how killing Sasagaki, Kikuchi and himself would solve all their problems. Once again, Yukiho proves that she is the more clear-headed of the two of them - she reminds him that contrary to what he might think, that the seven years since they parted have not been happy for her at all - she's walked a hard path, and she's forced herself to stay away from him all those years even though she was desperate to be reunited with him, because it was too risky. She finally explains to him that she's waiting for the statute of limitations to run out in 2006 so that they can be together again. She's planning for their future - she's not willing to throw away all her suffering to go to prison if he gives himself up (because her previous testimony would prove he was lying anyway). So she hatches a terrible plan to both eliminate Kikuchi as a threat (both for his blackmail attempt, and for his testimony in the old case) and eliminate Yukiho's harassing classmate.
To say it's a terrible plan is an understatement - it's a dark, awful, twisted plan, and you know what? I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm just going to say that it's morally reprehensible, but it makes sense in a way - when Yukiho is backed into a corner and believes that her survival is at risk, she tends to lash out in the same way that she was brutalized - she takes revenge on others in exactly the manner that she herself was violated. Unfortunately, Ryoji becomes her accomplice, for he must carry out the worst of the plan, and it's his conscience that is crushed beneath the despicable deeds. Each time this pair enacts a plot to preserve their own freedom and ensure their survival, they lose themselves a little more.Ryoji: What irony...I now realize that I'm doing the same thing as my father.If there is somebody out there who knows the answers, I want them to tell me. Why were we born into this world? For what purpose were we born? Is it just to do this kind of thing over and over again? From now on, what should we live for? However, no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't find the answer.
The episode ends with Yukiho racing to find Ryoji, who is really like her other half, her dark twin, because she needs something, anything, to make her feel less alone. When she can't find him at his apartment, she goes to the library and begins rifling through the Gone With the Wind volumes until something falls out. It's a cutout, trademark Ryoji, of a boy and a girl holding hands, and there is a date: November 11, 2006, which is the date that the statute of limitations will expire, and they will be free.
