This addictive book pulls the reader into the everyday adventures, or misadventures, of two thirty-something men shadowed by their past who find themselves living under the same roof. Tada is a taciturn, solitary man who runs an honest odd-job business in front of Mahoro Station on the very edge of Tokyo. His life takes a turn for the strange when his highly eccentric classmate from senior high school, Gyoten, suddenly moves in with him. Tada can’t bring himself to throw him out, in part because he still feels guilty about an incident back at school when Gyoten’s little finger was severed by a paper cutter and stitched back together. Not quite friends, but not quite able to leave each other be, the duo starts taking on odd jobs together (though Gyoten is mostly useless). Over the course of one year, their relationship evolves; Tada comes to terms with his past, and Gyoten finds a place he can think of as home for the first time in his life. With an ensemble of quirky characters, the novel blends slice-of-life episodes with offbeat comedy, gritty human drama, and a bit of crime-solving.

The book consists of seven chapters; the shorter ones (Chapters 0 and 4.5) each contain a prophecy by Granny Soneda. In Chapter 1, Tada encounters Gyoten at a bus stop one night. Tada has been dog-sitting, but when he goes to return the chihuahua, he finds that the family has fled from loansharks. With Gyoten, he tracks down their new address, and the daughter asks them to find a kind owner for the dog. In Chapter 2, thanks to Gyoten’s rash method of looking for a new owner, Tada and Gyoten become acquainted with Lulu and her housemate Hicee, who both work as prostitutes in the brothel behind the station. While fixing a door in their apartment, they get into a scuffle with Lulu’s druggy boyfriend, Shin, and Gyoten kicks him out, warning him to stay away. Gyoten lets the women adopt the chihuahua as long as they cut ties with Shin. In Chapter 3, Tada is asked to drive home a schoolboy, Yura, from cram school. By chance, Tada discovers that Yura is involved in a cunning drug dealing scheme run by Hoshi, a young up-and-comer in Mahoro’s underworld. Though their lives are threatened, Gyoten bullies Shin into coughing up Hoshi’s number, and Tada manages to negotiate with Hoshi to let Yura go. In Chapter 4, the events of one long day unfold in parallel. Out at work, Tada stumbles across Nagiko, who turns out to be Gyoten’s ex-wife, and their daughter Haru, conceived by artificial insemination. Gyoten had entered into a fake marriage with Nagiko to help her and her female partner. Meanwhile, Gyoten is at Lulu and Hicee’s for another job. He deliberately provokes Hicee’s malicious stalker to free her. When Tada gets wind of the conflict, he rushes out to get Gyoten. Tada finds him crumpled in a pool of blood, a knife piercing his stomach. In Chapter 5, Gyoten is discharged from the hospital. Tada gets a job from Hoshi to shelter a high schooler, Kiyomi, whose best friend has disappeared after murdering her abusive parents. Kiyomi stays with them until her friend comes back to turn herself in. For the first time, Tada divulges the indirect part he played in Gyoten’s finger injury to Kiyomi. From her, Gyoten finds out that Tada is still pained by this, and laughs it off. In Chapter 6, the nightmares and fleeting flashbacks that have been weighing on Tada throughout the narrative come to a head. When the elderly Kimuras hire him to clean out the storage shed, they are approached by Kitamura, who suspects that he is actually the Kimuras’ biological son, accidentally switched at birth. Strangely rattled by Kitamura’s request, Tada refuses to cooperate. Gyoten finds hints in Mrs. Kimura’s old notebook that she might have suspected the same thing about her own son, but Tada forbids him to show it to Kitamura. When they clash over it, Tada confesses how his ex-wife had cheated on him and got pregnant soon after; how he had believed he was the biological father, but let the newborn baby die purely by accident. Scared of his past, he asks Gyoten to leave. Gyoten is gone before dawn. Tada confronts his fears and meets Kitamura, who says the parents who raised him would always be his true family, even though they’re not related by blood. No one knows where Gyoten is. But one night, Tada finds him sitting at the same bus stop where they met a year ago. Tada just says, “Let’s go home.” Though they still carry a void within them, Tada sees a glimmer of hope for the future.