Fumiya Ogata has just graduated college in Tokyo. he manages to get a job by the skin of his teeth, but the company exploits its works. After barely a month, he quits and is existing somewhat numbly beside himself when he gets a phone call from someone he doesn't know. Apparently, his estranged father has had a heart attack and died unexpectedly.
Following their parents' divorce, Fumiya and his sister Hiromi lived with their father Yoshio. Fumiya clashed with Yoshio during his thrid year of high school. The Monotony of the salaryman life Yoshio lived didn't appeal to Fumiya. As he was preparing for entrnce exams, Yoshio asked him what he wanted to do after finishing colleage, to which he snapped in reply, "At least I know I don't want my life to be like yours!" After that, he moved out and had hardly spoken to his father since then.
To his two children, Yoshio left a house on a hilltop in a seaside town with a view of the water. Soon after turining 50, he had abruptly quite the company he'd been working at for so many years and moved to this little town. Did he die alone? What was his life like? Was he working? Did he have friends? Astonished by how little he knows about his father, Fumiya moves into the house to get it ready to sell. He's never lived by the sea before. Tracing the footsteps of his estranged father, he encounters an unexpected truth. Through summertime life in Minamiboso, Chiba Prefacture, where a wealth of nature still remains, this bestseller with over 300,000 cumulative series copies in print quietly asks, "What is happiness?"