In an alternate 1984 Tokyo, two lonely people — a fitness instructor who secretly kills men who abuse women and a math teacher who becomes embroiled in literary and criminal intrigue after rewriting a strange manuscript by a mysterious girl — find themselves drawn into a subtly altered reality marked by a second moon and inhabited by enigmatic supernatural entities known as the Little People; as cult power, bureaucratic sleuths, and past traumas close in, their separate journeys to locate one another become a haunting meditation on fate, memory, and the human need for connection.

An ordinary Tokyo man’s life is upended when his wife vanishes, launching him into a strange, dreamlike search that brings him into contact with psychic mediums, a menacing politician, and a cast of enigmatic figures; as he descends into a dry well and into other people’s memories, wartime violence and buried secrets surface. The story blends domestic mystery, surreal episodes, and haunting historical flashbacks to blur the line between reality and the unconscious, probing themes of loss, alienation, and the hidden forces that shape personal and national histories.

A linked set of short stories probes the emotional aftershocks of a devastating earthquake through the lives of disparate characters whose routines are ruptured by grief, guilt and sudden dislocation. Blending spare, melancholic realism with surreal intrusions—a talking giant frog, strange apparitions and uncanny coincidences—the tales explore loneliness, the longing for connection, and the fragile ways people try to rebuild meaning after catastrophe, turning small domestic moments into potent metaphors for trauma and quiet possibility.