A Bad Summer

In the sweltering summer heat that seems to go on forever, Mamoru Sasaki works as a conscientious young social worker who starts out with a sincere desire to help people, but increasingly finds himself caught between compassion, corruption, and crime. First, he is assigned to monitor a client suspected of fraudulently receiving disability benefits. His astute colleague Yuko urges him to uncover the fraud. At the same time, he becomes entangled in an even darker scandal: another colleague, Takano, blackmails a single mother, Aimi, into sexual favors. As Sasaki tries to protect Aimi and her child, he becomes more deeply entangled in a web of blackmail, exploitation, and organized crime spun by a brutal host club boss. Amid the scorching summer heat, we follow Sasaki as he descends from idealistic civil servant into an abyss of cold bureaucracy, ruthless power, and social despair.