This is the story of a Swiss exchange student who drifts into Kyoto, meets a blind young woman named Kyoko through volunteer reading, and falls in love with her. Through the freshness of a foreigner's gaze on Kyoto and the delicacy of language, it becomes a vivid romance worthy of the 20th Shosetsu Subaru Literary Award.

In Kyoto, the distance between two people narrows little by little through words and reading aloud.