On the midday of Obon, when ancestral spirits return, a young boy named Kousuke and his companion encounter the ghost of a Japanese soldier who died 78 years ago. Multiple narrators pass a baton of words — from soldiers who perished in the Battle of Okinawa, to a war bride who once lived in America, to teenagers living today — weaving Okinawa's modern history through multiple voices. Winner of the 67th Gunzo New Writer Literary Award, this is the stunning debut of a 21-year-old university student.

Tsuki nu hawiya, uma nu hawiya — the words surge forth like gold speech (kuganikutuba), carved into our chests: nuchidu takara, life is the greatest treasure.

In a coffee shop somewhere in the Tohoku region, human beings find themselves in the company of mysterious "castaways" A through E, who have arrived from nowhere. Distorting the orderly flow of time and space, the story illuminates the liminal space between these presences. A literary novella that won the Excellence Award at the 67th Gunzo Prize for New Writers, featuring an experimental structure in which the presence of observers transforms the everyday into something extraordinary.

The mere presence of an observer transforms the everyday into something extraordinary