Silent Poor

Young Satomi Ryo works as a CSW (Community Service Worker) for her local Social Welfare Agency. Her job is to seek out those in her community who are calling out for help for the problems they face but who aren't able to make themselves known. Along with the rookie Miwa Minaka at her side, she'll help out anyone in trouble right to the end, even if it means battling her own Agency to do so. But Ryo's reason for not letting go of the hand she holds out to those silent poor may be due to a secret from her past.

Ryo works with a new CSW worker to try and help a family who is been suffering from multiple, overlapping problems. While Ryo struggles to help the family with their issues and keep them together, those issues nevertheless threaten to pull them apart. But if Ryo and new worker Hara can only get the family's son to come out of the room he has shut himself away in, there may be some hope for all of them.

Ryo comes to the aid of a homeless man who is caught breaking into the apartment he had lived in at one time. The man rebuffs her efforts to help, but Ryo is nothing but determined in her efforts; particularly when she finds out the man may have some relatives. In the course of helping that man out however, she also comes to learn a shocking secret from Section Chief Yamakura.

Ryo's friend and Welfare Officer Keiko's mother is experiencing premature dementia, frustrating Keiko, especially since she still has bitter memories of her mother abandoning her as a child. Now her mother has suddenly wandered off with Keiko's daughter, and the search for them brings those old memories back once more. In the meantime, the other CSW workers try to persuade Eta-san from being taken in by a corrupt contractor.

Ryo and the other CSW workers have started a cafe salon to give those who have withdrawn from society a chance to talk together. This surprisingly brings in the otherwise irritable Neighborhood Council Chief Sonomura, who it turns out has a request for Ryo. Seems his son has been just like one of those men at the salon for nearly 30 years now.

Ryo comes into contact with a young boy sitting in the streets at night. Turns out his mother is a Filipino immigrant who works most of the day. The boy soon begins turning to Ryo though when he has trouble at home. Before long Ryo is discovering the boy's mother may not be in Japan legally.