The seventh episode of the Sunday Theatre drama " Mikami Sensei " (TBS, Sunday 9pm) starring Tori Matsuzaka was broadcast on March 2nd. The scene in which Haruno Shiiba, a student in class 2, 3rd year at Rintoku Gakuin, played by Sakura Kiryu, appealed to her classmates in tears became a hot topic on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers
It was discovered that Shiiba had shoplifted sanitary products from a drugstore and was working multiple part-time jobs, which were prohibited by school rules. One of them was working as a "shill for a dating site." As there was a possibility that she could be charged with fraud, the school expelled her once.
Shiiba returns to the classroom of class 3-2. Mikami (Matsuzaka) invites him and asks if he has anything he wants to talk about, and gives him some time. Shiiba confesses that he lost his parents in a traffic accident when he was in kindergarten, and that his grandparents raised him without any hardships.
"My grandfather developed dementia this year. He couldn't continue the (Japanese sweets) shop, and I was busy every day," she said. She admitted to the whole class that she was expelled after working as a fake profile for a dating app.
When asked by the emperor, "Why were they sanitary products?", Shiiba gave a frank explanation.
Shiiba grew up believing that "menstruation is a good thing" because of the local culture of celebrating the first menstrual period of a female relative with red rice made by her family's Japanese sweets shop. However, she continued, "It was after what happened at home that something that was important to me became just painful. I couldn't move forward with anything unless I thought about everything myself. Money is what scares me the most."
Shiiba recalled that there was a mountain of things he had to think about, but when he tried to think, his head became a mess and his body got harder and harder. His friend, Haruka Chigira (Akari Takaishi), burst into tears, saying, "I'm sorry I didn't notice."
Responding to her friend's tears, Shiiba said, "Don't apologize. I know you were very worried about me. But when you're really, really in trouble, you have to dull something inside of you, or it becomes impossible to go on living. You stop realizing that there are people you can talk to. And yet your period comes."
"It made me realize that I'm alive. I'm here bleeding, and no one notices. It was painful. I realized that I wanted people to notice that I was here," she replied, tears filling her eyes.
On social media, comments such as, "I cried during the scene where Shiiba was talking," "This episode with Shiiba was crazy. I cried so much. The line that said that when you're really suffering and don't know what to do, you need to dull something inside of you in order to go on, really hit home," "The line, 'I'm bleeding here and no one notices,' really hit home. I've thought that so many times when I was having a hard time with my period," "The scene where Shiiba mustered up the courage to talk about her period in front of everyone was really moving," and "Sakura Kiryu Sakura's acting as Shiiba was amazing! I could really feel the painful inner conflict she is going through."
