I Want To Be In Love Episode 1

The story opens with Mika cleaning up a hotel room, noticing that the people who had been there had obviously been in love. She feels lonely and insecure.

She then goes to a shoe store to buy a special pair of shoes but finds out they have just been sold, so she then goes to Midorikawa's restaurant where the schoolteacher, Ryousuke is eating,

Also there is a high school student named Wataru-.

-along with a housewife and the store's owner.-

They are all eating peacefully when Shimura walks in and sits down. A few moments later Ai enters and the two begin arguing. This escalates and she throws water in his face and he slaps her. She falls to the floor and apparently grabs on to him. No one else in the restaurant moves to physically stop Shimura, and a couple of minutes later the girl dashes behind Ryosuke. He and Shimura argue, and they Sumura and the girl explain that it's all been an act and they leave.

Ryosuke starts to leave and forgets his bag. Mika gives it to him and then he tells her she can have it, that it is now useless to him. She opens the bag and it's the very shoes she wanted.

She runs out of the restaurant to find him (forgetting to pay), but she can't find him. Ryosuke gets home and calls his fiancee but only gets her answering machine. He asks why she has disappeared when it's only one week until they are due to be married.

Mika gets home; she lives with her mother.

At the housewife's (Kohda's) home, we find her, her husband, Yuko, (her daughter), and a younger son. There is a TV on in the background which is showing an interview with Shimura, an author. He also has a TV program himself on which he takes the side of women in various issues.

Ryosuke gets to school and we learn that the women he was supposed to marry is also a teacher there. Meanwhile, at a hotel, Mika finds a wedding ring belonging to a man (the housewife's husband) who is having a relationship with a woman who is not his wife.

(There is also a visual thing which happens over and over, where Ryosuke and Mika pass each other but neither one notices the other)

Ryosuke talks to the woman running his wedding reception but doesn't tell her that the wedding might be off.

Mika goes to the restaurant to pay the money she had forgotten to give Midorikawa previously. He obviously is interested in her. Ryosuke gets home and finds Ai, the girl who had been with Shimura in the restaurant on his apartment steps. She asks to stay overnight, that she has been jilted.Ryosuke lets the girl come up to his apartment (she's drunk), and she realizes that he has been jilted.

Mika eats at the restaurant and leaves, and moments later Ryosuke shows up to eat there. When she gets home Mika tells her mother that she has someone she's interested in (the teacher) even though she's never really spoken to him.

Ai and Ryosuke talk at his apartment about their failed romances. There are some short bedroom scenes where Shimura is sleeping with some other woman and Kohda is sleeping in bed with her husband. It turns out she has left a message on a dating service phone-line, claiming she's a 24-year-old stewardess, and Waturu, the high school boy, listens to it.

Midorikawa gets to his home and it's apparent that virtually every single person in the drama is lonely in one way or another.

Ai shows up at Ryosuke's classroom and tells him his fiancee called and is flying to Paris that day. He drives to the airport with Ai and calls to his fiancee but she totally ignores him. He and Ai then have a rather nasty argument.

Mika (wearing the shoes Ryosuke gave her )goes to the restaurant at night; she's still looking for Ryosuke who gave her the shoes. Ai, meanwhile, sees Shimura together with another woman. Mika sees Ryosuke drive by in a yellow car and chases after him in the pouring rain.

She finds where he lives and sees him standing outside.

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