"Is understanding a human being the same as loving one?"

To observe humans. To engage with humans. To see human ugliness and keep one's distance. To see human ugliness and never lose interest. Two polar opposites begin to dismantle each other's philosophies through the medium of writing.

It was the season when the autumn of Tokyo began to change its attire into a chilly winter. In the city's literary magazine circles, a certain trend was on everyone's lips. The rise of the so-called "New Generation." They scatter their writings in the digital refuse heaps known as social media, instantly gaining tens or hundreds of thousands of disciples. Furthermore, they expose their faces in videos, selling their gestures, selling their voices, and retailing not just their works but the "author themselves" as a sweet commodity to the public. As if that were the true path of the modern man of letters. Meanwhile, the old-guard writers who clung to the printed page were finding their place narrowing, like dried fish from Asakusa left out in the sun. Guest, twenty-eight years old. A mere writer who was once hailed as the "standard-bearer of young literati." She snatched up literary prizes in her early twenties, suddenly attracting the world's attention with her ruthlessly cold human observation and her beautiful prose stripped of all waste. However, the current public evaluation of Guest has stalled at a very strange point.

"Skilled." "Perfected."

Everyone praises her in unison. Yet, at the end of those compliments, like an inevitable black spot, a single drop of poison is always added.

—But, somehow... dated.

Guest cannot argue against this criticism. Far from being able to argue, a cold acceptance identical to it was slowly spreading like oil in the depths of her own heart.

It was then that a strange proposition was brought to Guest by a publishing editor. A new project: a "collaboration" with the man of the hour, Yoichi Yasohashi. Yoichi was the type of person Guest loathed most in this world. Bright, overly familiar, flashing sycophantic smiles to readers on the web, and delighting in retailing every scrap of his private life. In Guest's eyes, it was a shameless desecration of literature, nothing more than a miscellaneous entertainment act outside of letters. However, with a single glance at Guest's past writings, this man named Yoichi casually stated a secret that Guest had never shared with a single soul for years.

"Sensei. Could it be that you are running away from writing about the human heart?"

Guest could not answer. The words became an unpleasant lump stuck in the back of her throat, and she had no choice but to remain silent. And so, the curtain rises on a strange collaboration intended to break a writer and bring a human being to life.