Ritsu Hayakawa, a college student lives in happiness together with his sweet family; younger brother, younger sister, and mother, Kyoko. Their smile and Mom’s rice omelet always make him happy. However, Kyoko has to be hospitalized for cancer. He goes back home in gloomy feeling and sees that his siblings, who don’t know about their mother’s disease, are excited about a pizza-to-go for dinner. Ritsu can’t stand to see them, so he runs away to kitchen, then he find a notebook that his mother wrote down her recipe. He notices how deeply Kyoko loves her family, and how important meals are, then he decides to prepare meal for them to maintain his family’s life. One day, Ritsu comes to know that he doesn’t related by blood with Kyoko. He is an adopted child. Ritsu goes to see his biological mother, Maya, then he sees Maya treating his biological brother, Ruka, cruelly. Then he becomes to want to help Ruka from his mother.
Akai Ito is Japanese television drama series based on a popular mobile phone novel written by Mei about two soulmates - junior high school students Mei and Atsushi - who must overcome drugs, rape and attempted suicide in order to be together. The love story was an online hit in 2006 and later published as a series of five books which sold 1.8 million copies.