Toshiyuki Kazama is suddenly killed by a dancer of the Takayanagi Ballet, Saito Haruko, who claims to be justified in self-defense, but the evidence is insufficient, what is the truth? Do the closed ballet troupes, who dedicate themselves to ballet, really look as simple as they seem? The truth of the first murder is unknown, and the ballet has a second murder, who is the murderer? Can Kyoichiro Kaga and his colleagues find the killer?
Keigo Higashino's novel The Sleeping Forest is more of a fable in which the dancers are obsessed with ballet and ready to complete a performance called Sleeping Beauty. Dancers live a monotonous and hard life in order to dance, rehearsing hard every day and strictly controlling their body shape. Some female dancers even have a sick psychology in order to lose weight. Is ballet really a pure land?
In the process of investigating the case, Kyoichiro Kaga and the dancer Asaoka Yuki have intersected. With the deepening of the interaction, Kaga developed different feelings for WeiXu. Asaoka is a woman obsessed with ballet and is obsessed with ballet. In her world, there is nothing but ballet. For her beloved ballet career, she rehearsed hard for years and strictly maintained her body shape. She cared nothing about anything but ballet and knew nothing about it. Is this simple-looking woman really as kind as she seems on the surface? What was sleeping in her inner forest?
Careful and perceptive, Kaga eventually discovers that it was Asaoka Yuki, not Saito Haruko, who really killed Kazama. It turned out that Yashiko Takayanagi, the chief dancer of the protection ballet, smashed a vase to kill the strange man Who was arguing with Yashiko, Toshiyuki Kazema. Riyuki Kazama broke into Takayanagi Ballet because she wanted to take Takayanagi to New York to meet her boyfriend Kazuhiro Aoki, whom she abandoned four years earlier.
Saito Haruko volunteers to help Minoru after a serious sudden tinnitus after the car accident caused by her previous car accident so that she can complete her beloved performance. In order to be able to successfully complete the performance, Wei Xu chose silence. Yasuko Morii has always admired the artistic director of the dance troupe, Yasunari Kajita, and desperately lost weight for him, trying to turn herself into takayanagi Yakiko second, but she did not expect that she was just used by Kajita, and in anger designed to kill Kajita. The careful unprepared to understand the truth of the matter, but did not report it to the police, but asked the murderer to keep it a secret for the time being before the performance. Afraid that the truth of the matter would be revealed, Yasuko chose to commit suicide, and although she was sad, she still chose to remain silent.
In Asaoka's mind, a perfect performance is more important than anything else. This excessive obsession has distorted her psychology and made her unable to distinguish between black and white, which is very sad to say. As his friendship with Kaga deepens, Heu slowly discovers the world outside of ballet, and his heart begins to produce contradictions and pain. However, she did not choose to confess immediately. She couldn't continue balleting because of her tinnitus, and Sleeping Beauty was her last performance. In order to keep her most beautiful dance on the stage, she chose to turn a blind eye to everything else.
As Kyoichiro Kaga said, the ballet company is actually a sleeping forest, and the dancers are like sleeping beauties, who can't see anything but ballet. Can't fall in love, can't get married, can't even have other entertainment. Everyone's life is like a pool of stagnant water, and their colorful world has been engulfed by ballet. They are like ghosts, living outside the world. Ballet devours everything and turns the possibilities of their lives into the impossible.
Yashiko gives up love for dancing, Yasuko sacrifices her health for dancing, Mitsuru ignores justice in order to dance, and Kajita arbitrarily interferes with the happiness of others and even takes advantage of Yasuko for the sake of ballet. Everyone's psychology is more or less distorted, and the forest inside them is dark. Where is the vitality where the sun can't penetrate? Blind love for the cause is actually the destruction of the self, but also the cruelty to others.
How can sinful hearts be redeemed? Distorted revenge is nothing more than harming others and harming oneself, and Yasuko's end is the best illustration. What can really redeem a person's soul is always the love that comes from the depths of a person's heart, the sincerity that does not ask for anything in return. The reason why Wei Xu chose to confess to Kaga was because of Kaga's sincere love for her. A person's sincerity cannot be ignored, and a person's true love is the easiest to impress people.