The third episode of the drama series "The Hot Spot" (Nippon TV, Sunday 10:30 pm), starring actress Ichikawa Mikako, was broadcast on January 26th. At the end of the episode, a scene was shown at the home of Ayano (Kinami Haruka), a classmate of Kiyomi (Ichikawa), where Ayano's husband, Okada Shinichi (Tamura Kentaro), made an appearance. Shinichi also appeared in the scene in the family restaurant where Kiyomi and the "alien" Takahashi (Kadota Akihiro) gathered in the first episode, which attracted a lot of attention on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers.
In the third episode, Kiyomi, Hazuki (Suzuki Anne), and Minami (Hiraiwa Kami) are off work and invite Takahashi to meet up at a local restaurant. By chance, Ayano, a classmate of Kiyomi's, comes to the restaurant. Kiyomi and her friends end up sitting at a table with Ayano, who has brought her 5-year-old daughter Ritsuko (Hara Haruna). They try to get through the situation while trying to ignore the awkwardness of Takahashi being at a childhood friend's gathering.
However, unexpected events occur one after another, such as the smartphone nearly falling to the floor or the car's tires getting stuck in a groove in the parking lot, and each time, Takahashi uses his power in front of Ayano. Furthermore, when a taxi passes in front of him with its "SOS lamp" on, Takahashi, judging it to be an emergency, uses his power to chase the taxi at high speed, which Ritsu witnesses. In the final scene, Ritsu is shown asleep in bed, and a picture of Takahashi moving at high speed, presumably drawn by Ritsu, is shown on screen...
At the end of the episode, Shinichi appears at Ayano's house after taking a bath. He is shown placing a picture of Takahashi that Ritsu had drawn next to Ritsu's pillow. In fact, Shinichi also appeared in the first episode as a customer sitting diagonally behind Takahashi in a family restaurant when he leaves to prove his abilities to Kiyomi and the others, so many people on social media speculated that this was a hint for future developments. Comments such as "Wasn't Ayanyan's husband at the family restaurant in episode 1?", "Wasn't he the man sitting diagonally behind him at the family restaurant? I wonder if there'll be some connection between them...", "He was with someone so I think something is going to happen", and "I wonder how he'll get involved from here" were posted.
Also, in the same family restaurant scene, when Takahashi tries to use his ability to listen in on Kiyomi and the others' conversation from a distance, he hears a voice saying, "Today, at Umemoto-san's instructions...", and some have pointed out a connection to the fact that at the beginning of episode 3, a campaign car was driving by with the message "I'm Umemoto Masako, running for mayor of Fuji Asada City" written on it. Comments like "I wonder if there's a connection since the campaign car was Umemoto" and "Umemoto Masako passing by in a campaign car, there's something about that too" were lined up, attracting attention.
