In a settlement on Japan's northeastern coast, thirty-something Takeshi runs a temporary shop with his mother. Five years after a tsunami swept away both their store and home, only a few regulars visit. Watching customers who postpone payment and the familiar gestures of business that continue unchanged, Takeshi lives with the anxiety and repetition embedded in everyday life after the disaster.

From small exchanges repeated in a temporary shop, the novel portrays everyday life and silence after a disaster.

A secret development project conceived shortly after the war aims to connect Japan and Brazil with a straight tunnel through the earth. Kazuo Suzuki, a public-relations officer for a construction subsidiary, investigates why it exists and encounters spies, migrants, technical interns, and foreign dignitaries as he approaches the history embedded in the plan. Through this outlandish undertaking, the novel portrays postwar Japan's systems and the intentions of the people caught within them.

A salaryman investigating a tunnel between Japan and Brazil draws closer to a secret that has endured since the postwar years.