The story follows Atono, an elderly woman living alone in Hiroshima, who carries memories of her mother, a dementia patient who disappeared without a trace. Through her days with a neighborhood walking group and nights caring for a friend, an eerie rumor spreads about a woman in a red vest. The novella cultivates a sense of unease through collective psychological tension among the elderly and the unreliable narration of its protagonist, artfully rendered in Hiroshima dialect.

She says there is a woman in a red vest at the house -- an unverifiable rumor circulating in the walking group casts an unsettling air over the town.

Xing Yao, a high school girl born in Hong Kong and raised in Japan by immigrant foster parents, struggles with questions about her identity: Is she Hongkonese? Chinese? Japanese? What is a homeland? What is a mother tongue? What is family? What are her feelings for her best friend? A raw and radiant debut novel by an 18-year-old author, racing through the tremors of identity at full speed.

"What am I, really," she thinks, wiping her reddened legs with a tissue, tears and words spilling out, impossible to stop.