MMB Chapter 229 The Weight of the Ending
Chapter 229 The Weight of the Ending
Chapter 229 The Weight of the Ending (2/71)
The case in the final episode is actually not that complicated.
The body of a homeless man was found in the warehouse of a convenience store within the jurisdiction of the Wangan Police Station. The cause of death was long-term malnutrition combined with the low temperature that night. Strictly speaking, it could not be considered murder. However, during his investigation of the surrounding area, Toshisaku Aoshima followed a thin, almost broken thread and uncovered a habitual offender who had been wandering in the area for nearly three years, making a living through petty fraud and theft.
This man wasn't some heinous criminal. He only swindled small amounts of money and stole nothing more than bread and canned goods from convenience stores. But on the night the homeless man died, he was nearby, and he had a utility knife he'd taken from a construction site.
Qingdao Junzuo believes that he is directly related to the death and wants to open a case to investigate.
The criminal investigation chief rejected the application.
The reason is that the cause of death was determined to be accidental, so a case cannot be filed. If this matter is to be pursued in a criminal direction, a re-examination application process needs to be completed first, then submitted to the headquarters for review, and then approval is required, which will take at least three weeks.
Aoshima Shunsaku went to see Muroi Shinji.
Shinji Muroi read through all the materials he brought, remained silent for a long time, and then said, "There's nothing wrong with the procedure."
"But that person..."
"There's nothing wrong with the program," Shinji Muroi repeated, his tone unchanged.
As Aoshima Shunsaku stood there, looking at Muroi Shinji's perpetually tense face, he suddenly realized something—Muroi Shinji wasn't unaware of what he was saying; on the contrary, Muroi Shinji knew the ins and outs of the matter better than he did, and he also knew the real reason for the homeless man's death better than he did.
But Shinji Muroi also knew that in this system, some things couldn't be solved simply by understanding them.
The last habitual offender turned himself in to the Wangan Police Station.
No one knew why he turned himself in, and he himself offered no explanation. In the interrogation room, Aoshima Shunsaku sat opposite him and asked why he had come. He simply lowered his head and said, "I wanted to find a warm place to sleep."
The case is closed.
The murderer was arrested, the case was filed, and everything was completed smoothly and cleanly.
But when Aoshima Shunsaku walked out of the Bayfront Office, he sat on the steps, lit a cigarette, and stared blankly at Tokyo Bay.
That bureaucratic barrier is still there, untouched.
The moment the end credits started playing, no one spoke in Oshima Bento Shop.
On the screen, Shunsaku Aoshima sits on the steps of the Bayfront Office, lights a cigarette, and stares blankly at Tokyo Bay. The camera remains fixed there, without music or dialogue, only the faint sound of the sea breeze in the distance and the ringing of a telephone coming from inside the office.
That cigarette burned for a long time.
When the end credits finally started, someone in the bento shop let out a soft sigh, as if they had been holding their breath for a long time before finally relaxing.
The old man by the window held his long-cold teacup, stared at the screen for a while, then put down the cup and said in a surprisingly calm tone, "He didn't win. But he'll still go to work tomorrow."
After those words were spoken, the entire store remained quiet for a long time.
No one answered, but no one moved.
Kenichi Oshima stood behind the cashier, watching his usual customers, who were always laughing and joking and bickering, now sit silently, lost in thought. He suddenly realized that the show had accomplished something he couldn't quite put his finger on—it reminded these people of certain things about themselves, things that weren't things to get excited about, but rather things that happened every day, were suppressed every day, but had never really disappeared.
Sachiko came out of the kitchen, wiped her hands, glanced at the scrolling end credits on the TV, then looked at the expressions on the faces of the people in the restaurant, said nothing, and turned to clean up the pots on the stove.
After the end credits finished, the screen switched back to the Fuji TV logo.
Only then did some people move; some went to pay the bill, and some started putting on their coats. But they all left a little slowly, not as briskly as usual, as if they were reluctant to leave just like that.
Ijuin Toru watched the final episode alone in his dormitory.
My roommate had class that day, so he sat alone on the floor, leaning against the edge of the bed, and watched the last episode from beginning to end.
When he saw the final shot, he didn't turn off the TV immediately. He just let the image freeze there and stared at the air for a while.
He has seen many movies and all sorts of endings. Some directors like to use extremely precise composition and lighting to tell the audience "there is a deeper meaning here", while others like to use music to push the emotions to the highest point and then cut them off abruptly, creating an aftershock.
Kitahara Shin did nothing at the end.
It's a scene of a person sitting on the steps smoking, and then the end credits roll.
But as Ijuin Toru sat there, he found himself constantly thinking about one thing—what would happen to Aoshima Shunsaku tomorrow?
It's not about tomorrow in this drama, but about what would happen to this person tomorrow if they actually existed.
He would arrive at the Wangan District Office around 7 a.m., swipe his attendance card, find new documents piled up on his desk, pour himself a cup of hot water, sit down, and start filling out forms.
That's it.
Ijuin Toru put down the remote control and sat on the floor for a long time.
The shipping confirmation card, number 0732, was still tucked between the discs on his bookshelf. He glanced at it, then turned back to the television screen, which had switched back to the channel logo.
He suddenly realized something—what Kitahara Shin said about "accompanying this drama to the end" was not just a polite phrase in a marketing copy.
This script wasn't the kind that would give you an adrenaline rush and then be quickly forgotten. Its way of staying is to make you suddenly remember Shunsaku Aoshima's unfinished cigarette on an ordinary morning.
He took the confirmation card from the bookshelf, held it in his hand for a moment, and then put it back.
The viewership data was released that afternoon.
Final episode: 17.8%.
This figure caused no stir within Fuji TV. The production director simply signed the document and moved on to the next report.
But when this figure falls into the hands of the media, the effect is completely different.
The following day, the reports appeared as expected in major entertainment sections, the wording not exactly malicious, but carrying an almost irrepressible...
The satisfaction of confirming a certain premonition.
Kitahara Shin's "Midday Experiment": Can 17.8% be considered a success?
"The Waterloo of the Best Actor? From Thirty Consecutive Wins to Seventeenth Best Actor"
Two parallel lines of reputation and ratings: The peculiar fate of the Great Investigation Line.
The latter title is the most accurate and also the most intriguing.
The article presents Kitahara Shin's resume in a comparative manner, which is quite ironic.
"Tokyo Love Story" had an average viewership rating of 32.3%, with the final episode reaching 36.7%, making it an absolute benchmark for urban romance dramas of that era; "Under One Roof" had an average viewership rating of 29.5%, generating phenomenal discussion from its very first episode.
"The White Tower" shattered the ratings ceiling for medical dramas with a live surgery broadcast that lasted an entire episode, with the final episode approaching 40%. "Legal High" goes without saying; Kensuke Komikado's mouth practically cursed the entire Japanese society, and the final episode's ratings exceeded 37%, becoming the absolute champion of that year's ratings record.
None of the four shows had a final episode with a score below 30.
"Bayside Shakedown" achieving a 17.8% rating would be considered a respectable ending for any midday drama without "Number One Kitahara" in its title. However, the mere presence of that name makes the 17.8% rating stand out conspicuously.
One columnist wrote an analysis on this, stating bluntly: If you removed Kitahara Shin from this drama and replaced him with an ordinary actor and screenwriter, this achievement would be discussed by the industry as an excellent example of a midday drama of the year. But precisely because it was him, this achievement becomes a question that needs to be explained.
The logic itself is quite accurate.
The article's final paragraph sparked widespread reposting: "Perhaps our expectations of Makoto Kitahara are inherently unfair. We've become so accustomed to him breaking records with every project that we've forgotten how incredibly difficult it is for a work to leave viewers speechless for so long afterward. 'Bayside Shakedown''s' 17.8% rating may be Kitahara's lowest to date, but it's also the one that kept viewers sitting in one place the longest after watching it. Can these two things be compared? I don't know. But I think this is a question worth considering."
This passage was later extracted by many people, written on letter paper, and sent to the Fuji TV viewer mailbox.
One of the letters came from a small town in Kanagawa Prefecture. The writer identified himself as an ordinary civil servant who had worked at the town government for two thousand three years.
In his letter, he said that he watched the final episode on TV at home, and then sat on the sofa for about forty minutes without doing anything.
He said that when Qingdao Junzuo smoked that cigarette, he was reminded of his first day at his workplace when he was 22 years old.
"Back then, I also thought I would change something."
He wrote at the end of the letter: "I don't know if Mr. Qingdao will continue, but I hope he will."
66
The number of letters received by Fuji TV's viewer mail department during the broadcast of "Daisy Detective" was nearly four times that of other daytime programs during the same period.
This is a rather strange phenomenon in itself.
The letter writers came from a very diverse background: housewives, retired workers, young people who had just started working, and middle-aged people who had spent their entire lives as grassroots civil servants in small towns. Their writings varied greatly; some wrote very short pieces, just one or two lines, while others wrote several pages, detailing exactly where they read the letter, who they read it with, and what they did afterward.
But in almost all the letters, one sentence appears repeatedly, with different wording but a very similar meaning: "I see myself in Shunsaku Aoshima."
One of the letters was written by a man who had worked as a warehouse manager in Osaka for fifteen years. In the letter, he said that he would turn on the TV every day at lunchtime. At first, he would just randomly flip through channels and stop when he found "Bayside Shakedown." Unexpectedly, he ended up watching it episode by episode. He said he didn't quite understand what a "good script" was, nor could he say which shots were well-done. He only knew that in one episode, when Shunsaku Aoshima was staring blankly at a stack of documents, he suddenly felt a lump in his throat, but he didn't know why.
"I'm just someone who manages the boxes in the warehouse, I have nothing to do with the police. But I just feel like I understand his feelings."
Another letter came from a high school girl. The handwriting was messy, and the paper was torn from an exercise book. In the letter, she said that her mother watched this show every day at noon. At first, she found it boring, but one day she came home early from school and sat down to watch an episode with her mother. After that, she never found it boring again.
"My mom laughed for a long time when she saw the episode where Mr. Qingdao was scolded by the section chief. I asked her what she was laughing at, and she said nothing. But I noticed that after she finished laughing, she didn't say anything for a while and looked away."
"I don't know what she's thinking. But I think she understands Mr. Qingdao."
These letters were never made public. They were neatly archived by Fuji TV's viewer mail department, packed into a small cardboard box, and placed in a corner of the warehouse.
But Kitahara Shin later learned about this when Ota mentioned it by chance.
He was silent for a while, then said something that Da Tian didn't pay much attention to at the time, but later realized that it was quite meaningful.
He said, "That's enough."
>