The fifth episode of the drama series "Good Things and Bad Things" (NTV, Saturdays at 9 PM), starring actors Mamiya Shotaro and Araki Yuko, aired on November 8th. Towards the end of the episode, Otani (Akama Mariko), the former homeroom teacher of Class 6-1 where Takagi (Mamiya) and his classmates are, and now the school principal, is shown crying as she speaks to someone on the phone, which caused a stir on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers.
In episode 5, Takagi, Koyama (Shintaro Morimoto), and Hatachi (Mori Yusaku), the three surviving members of the six serial killer targets, begin a strategy meeting in Takagi's garage. Among the former class 6-1 students, there is someone other than Sonoko (Araki) who holds a grudge against them... who could it be? As they look through photos of their classmates, searching for someone they might know, Hatachi says, "Huh? There's one other person who knows us." It's Otani, their former homeroom teacher, who is now the school principal.
To meet Otani, Takagi and his friends visit their alma mater with Sonoko. Sonoko stops beside Koyama, who is feeling nostalgic for the school building she hasn't seen in a long time. Flashbacks come to Sonoko's mind of those painful days 22 years ago: when Takagi and his friends locked her in the storage room, when she was forced to apologize in front of everyone, when she was on the stairs where her school bag was stolen and she was ridiculed. Takagi's heart aches when he sees Sonoko like that, and on his way to the principal's office he witnesses his daughter Kanon (played by Miyazaki Ririsa), a fourth-grader, fighting with a boy.
After hearing the story from Takagi and the others, Otani smiles and says that there had been no notable troubles among the former 6th grade class 1, and that he had no idea that Sonoko had been treated so badly. However, in the principal's office, Takagi and the others find a clue that only their yearbook is missing.
Afterwards, Takagi and Sonoko visit their alma mater again to talk to Otani. Takagi and the others point out that their yearbook is missing, and also reveal that the video of students holding "pictures of their dreams for the future" was not included in the time capsule, but Otani insists that he knows nothing about it...
In this episode, after Takagi and the others leave, Otani rewatches a video of the students holding up "pictures of their dreams for the future" that he had secretly kept. Seeing Sonoko in the video, Otani repeatedly mutters, "I'm sorry..." as he sheds tears, then calls someone and asks, "Would you like to stop?" Otani continues, crying, "I've been lying to myself and turning a blind eye all this time. I dug up the time capsule as you told me to... but I never thought those kids would die," and begs the caller, "I can't take it anymore, please. Please stop." After that, Otani hangs up the phone, saying, "Okay, I'll be on my way," and heads to a parking lot somewhere. When a car belonging to someone he's supposed to be meeting appears, Otani nods to the person inside and gets in the car.
The contents of the phone call raised the possibility that Otani may be connected to the series of crimes, causing a stir on social media. Comments such as "Was the teacher helping...?", "An accomplice!" and "There must be someone behind the scenes after all" were posted. There were also speculative comments such as "He's definitely being used by the culprit," "His daughter is being held hostage, so it's possible that he's doing what the culprit tells him to do," "He's probably being threatened by the culprit holding his grandson and his mother hostage," "From the way he was speaking, I don't think the person he was talking to was one of his students," and "He was nodding to someone in the back seat, so it seems likely that there were multiple perpetrators."
