Penance

- Season 1

(2012)

Tragedy strikes as schoolgirl Emili is abducted and murdered by a stranger. Four friends - Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuka - are present at the scene of the crime, but none of them can remember his face, and the crime goes unsolved. Fifteen years later, the adult Sae has grown extremely wary of men, forever scarred by Emili's faceless abductor. When a timid suitor vows to protect her from the outside world and proposes marriage, she decides to accept. On their wedding day, she is paid a surprise visit by Asako...

Maki is now a teacher at a rigorous elementary school, and engages in self-defense training in an attempt to overcome her sense of helplessness. When an attack occurs at Maki's school, it brings back vivid memories of the heinous crime she witnessed 15 years earlier. This time, Maki takes action to confront the perpetrator, resulting in unforeseen consequences...

Akiko has withdrawn from society and lives a reclusive life at home. But things change when her brother Koji moves back home from Tokyo with his wife, Haruhana and 5-year-old step-daughter, Wakaba. As Akiko forges a close bond with her young niece, she begins to notice signs of a strange relationship between the girl and Koji.

When Yuka was a child, her mother always favored her sickly elder sister, Mayu. Now the successful proprietor of a flower shop with the help of Noguchi, a married man with whom she had relationship once. But she is still consumed by jealousy for her sister. When Mayu marries a kindly policeman, Keita, she concocts a vengeful plan to seduce him and gets pregnant from him.

Fifteen years since the murder of her daughter, Asako is still overtaken with grief and resentment. One day she receives a vital new clue as to the identity of Emili's killer and sets out to find him. As she closes in on the truth, Asako finds herself in an unexpected location from her past.