Dramatic serialization of best-selling author Miyuki Miyabe’s latest addition to her “Saburo Sugimura Series”, the sequel to “Nameless Poison.” Sugimura is living a reverse Cinderella story having married the daughter of president to a major conglomerate, and now working as editor of the firm’s in-house gazette. A devoted husband and doting father, Sugimura aspires to an ordinary life but invariably has to unravel various company-related “incidents” at the request of his father-in-law. One day, Sugimura finds himself at the center of an armed bus jacking by an old man with gun. The perpetrator’s hidden motive speak to the core of Japan as a nation and to the difficulties of the human condition. While no one is above making the occasional “lie”, what does one do when a lie grows a life of its own and becomes irreversibly damaging to many. How does one begin to atone?

Shinya Ryuzaki plays a pivotal role in the national police force as liaison between the police, Diet politicians, bureaucrats and the mass media. When he learns about the murder of a violent gang member through the newspapers instead of the usual direct reporting to him by media outlets, he is perplexed and seeks answers from an old friend and colleague on the police force, Shuntaro Itami, who is now Chief of Criminal Investigations. A series of ensuing crimes pointing to the same perpetrators begins to uncover links to a major unsolved scandal from the past, stirring up shadowy forces of corruption inside the police department. Ryuzaki forces himself to cast aside protocols of rank and status in favor of taking a thoroughly rational approach to solving the crime, embroiling his friend, Itami, in a lonely battle for justice.

A police academy dormitory for young cadets in training means 10 months of constant surveillance, harsh abuse by drill sergeants, no off campus R&R, definitely no cell phones and absolutely no romance! It is a practically unthinkable setting in contemporary Japan. In this hellish boot camp, the only moral support the young cadets have comes from each other… or does it? Protagonists Teppei, Danji, Hiro belong to the Class S, which happens to be filled with the lowest achievers and last-minute replacements. The bar is set high for Teppei and his band of “underachievers,” but they’re determined to prove themselves worthy, or die trying.

A hot-blooded and meddlesome resident police officer, Ryo Shirase, is transferred to the southernmost manned island of Narumi-jima, where the Southern Cross can be seen. At first, it is thought that the peaceful island, in which people don’t even have to lock up their houses, does not need the resident police officer, but his personality and enthusiasm gradually change the minds of the islanders, who have been suffering from an aging population, a declining birthrate, and feeling of hopelessness…