Section 1: Kitchen

The first half of the story starts with Mikage's praise for kitchens of all kinds, clean or dirty, large or small. This becomes a description of her situation: with the death of her grandmother "the other day," Mikage is alone in the world. That situation, however, lasts only briefly, for the first plot twist appears a few pages into the novella, with the appearance of Yuichi Tanabe at her front door. Mikage does not know Yuichi, but she remembers having seen him at her grandmother's funeral, and she later remembers her grandmother having mentioned him as the nice boy who worked in the flower shop she went to every day. "I just stopped by to ask you something," he explains. "I was talking to my mother, and we were thinking that you ought to come to our house for a while." Mikage agrees to come for...