Aibou TV Season 7 Episode 4 - The Woman Next Door(隣室の女)

Subtitle: The Woman Next Door(隣室の女)

 A pair of hikers find a skeletonized body of man along with his cellphone and a knife used to kill him. Akemi, who was carrying on an affair with Takahiko Komori(小森 孝彦) at the time he disappeared, is the primary suspect, but her fingerprints don't match the fingerprints lifted from the murder weapon. Who killed the man and why?

Locations

Kanagawa Ken(神奈川県) - Kanagawa Prefecture, location of Kawasaki City

Kawasaki Shi(川崎市) - Kawasaki City, where Tokio Yokoyama(横山 時雄) committed the murder.

Characters appearing/mentioned in the story

SPOILER ALERT - I had a hard time writing the following section without including this story's major plot twist, so I decided to include the twist in the following character descriptions.

Takahiko Komori(小森 孝彦) - The man who vanished 6 years ago on 9/13/2002. He was 33 years old at the time. He left his wife in Hokkaido and came to Tokyo for work, but carried on an affair with Akemi while in Tokyo. He last talked to Akemi before he disappeared. Keiko Yokoyama(横山 慶子)'s telephone number was not registered on his cellphone.

Akemi Kishi( 岸 あけみ) - She was a hostess who worked at Snack Passion. She didn't have any living blood relatives, nor friends. She found someone she could relate to with her next door neighbor Keiko Yokoyama(横山 慶子) and was nice to Keiko even after finding out that Keiko's brother had committed murder.

She carried on an affair out with Takahiko Komori(小森 孝彦), but killed him after getting into a lover's quarrel. A week later on on 9/20/2002, she committed suicide by drinking potassium cyanide .

She called her lover "Takahiko san" in an email she sent him.

The apartment she lived in was turned into a marriage agency called Partner Research Club(パートナーリサーチクラブ) (yes, the same one Sergeant Itami tries to call in Ura Aibou Episode 8).

Hiromichi Miura(三村 弘道) - Policeman who helped the Tokumeigakari pair at the Okusawa Police Station(奥沢警察署).

Keiko Yokoyama(横山 慶子) - Her parents died when she and her brother were in elementary school. She was a high school student living with her brother Tokio when Tokio committed the murder. As a result, her high school classmates made her life a living hell. Even after graduating and finding work, coworkers somehow caught wind of her brother's circumstances and kept her at a distance.

Even after being treated coldly by the people around her, she travelled the surviving family's residence to apologize every anniversary of Tokio's acquaintance's death, The acquaintance's family chased her away each time. She also did not spend money on luxury items, neither buying any expensive clothes nor taking trips during vacation so that she could send some of the money from all her paycheck to the bereaved family,

6 years ago when she lived in the room next to Akemi, she was a 22 year old temporary staff at a call center. When Akemi committed suicide, she moved Akemi's body into her room with Yōichi's help and made it look as if Keiko herself had committed suicide. Keiko hastily wrote and left behind a note addressed to her brother Tokio asking him to continue atoning for his sins, Keiko then pretended to be Akemi and called the police telling them that she found "Keiko's" body.

After Takahiko's skeletonized body was discovered, she is brought in for questioning by the Sōichi because Akemi was the last person to call him and because Akemi's emails indicating that they were in a relationship were discovered on Takahiko's cellphone. Keiko, not knowing details about Akemi's relation with called Takahiko "Takahiko" (without any honorifics) in the interrogation room. Sh also claims that she broke off their relationship shortly before Takahiko was killed.

Later, when asked why she was the first person to discover "Keiko's" body, she says that Takahiko had a relationship with both Akemi and Keiko, she thought that maybe "Keiko" would know where he was. When asked why she tried to contact Takahiko shortly after she broke up with him, she claimed that she had money problems and wanted to ask him for money. Oddly enough however, she had left her last paycheck from Snack Passion behind, which she explains away claiming that her mind was scattered because she was also moving out at the time.

Later, she "reveals" that she had planned to drink the potassium cyanide (that she took from the matron of Snack Passion Yōko) out of spite for Takahiko, but "Keiko" stole the potassium cyanide before before she could use it. She continues to explain that because she feared that she might be accused of killing "Keiko" she moved away from the apartment shortly afterwards. She hesitated to use the poison immediately after obtaining it because she realized that she was pregnant.

Tokio Yokoyama(横山 時雄) - Keiko's elder brother who murdered a friend/coworker with an ashtray at a building company on 7/8/1998 after the friend/coworker tried to default on a loan. He had been incarcerated for that murder when he heard that his sister had committed suicide.

He is now out on parole and works as a cleaning staff. He supposedly got rid of everything belonging to Keiko because they reminded him of Keiko and was too painful for him. Later he confirms that final words were written in his sister's handwriting and also that his sister had visited him a few days before "Keiko" committed suicide, mentioning that she was seeing someone new.

Yōichi Fukui(福井 陽一) - Keiko's former fiancee. His parents forced him to call off the engagement after Keiko's brother Tokio committed a murder. However, he continued the relationship even after he had called off the engagement. He was there when Akemi committed suicide (and Keiko switched identities) to take care of the cleanup. He provided "Keiko's" photograph taken on 8/12/2001 and hair clip to the Tokumeigakari pair. He also claims that he hadn't seen her for six months before "Keiko" committed suicide.

Yōko Hosokawa(細川 洋子) - Proprietress of Snack Bar Passion(スナック パッション), and Akemi 's boss when she worked here. She says that although Takahiko first spent money on Akemi, Akemi became infatuated with him and repeatedly asked him to divorce his wife so that they could get together.

Six years ago, Yōko was frustrated with her life, since she was mired in debt and the man she was seeing ran away. She considered taking her own life and she ordered potassium cyanide from an online site. Akemi was present when she received the vial of poison, and Akemi somehow convinced Yōko not to go through with her suicide and then took the potassium cyanide to dispose of it.

Akemi called Yōko one day to say that she is quitting from her job as a hostess because she became pregnant. "Akemi" moved away from her apartment shortly afterwards, forgetting to pick up her last paycheck.

Shunpei Yokoyama(横山 駿平) - Keiko's son.