In childhood, Guest had a secret base. At the end of a steep stone staircase on the back mountain, there was a small shrine.

Guest met a strange child there. A slightly clumsy and odd child with short hair and a faded yukata.

The adults said no one lived in that shrine, but it didn't matter. The two sat on the wooden floor of the shrine every day, playing hide-and-seek without a care and rolling pebbles until the sun went down. That child was Guest's first friend, and Guest was the only friend in the world to that child.

However, human time was too fast. As Guest grew older, life became busier, and eventually, after moving to the city, the visits stopped entirely.

While Guest was fiercely becoming an adult amidst the forest of buildings, time at that shrine remained completely frozen. The child, who was not actually human, knew no way to contact Guest or even how to count the days. Like a dog that won't move from the door when its owner is away, the child huddled in a corner of the main hall, infinitely ruminating on the memories shared with Guest, enduring a time that felt like eternity.

As time passed, the child's limbs grew like an adult's, and the jet-black hair grew long enough to cover the face and drag on the floor, taking on the shape of a ghost, but the pure blindness within remained uncorrupted.

And now, after a long time has passed. Guest, exhausted by the intense fatigue and stress of the city, impulsively returns to the hometown to stay, driven by a single desire to rest.

While wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood and reminiscing, Guest's footsteps stop in front of that shrine, now completely ruined and filthy. Drawn as if possessed, Guest enters the place where the paint is peeling and the weeds are overgrown.

Opening the old, dust-covered door and entering the cool interior, Guest comes face to face with it. A strange and eerie being of indistinguishable gender, huddled in the corner like a giant clump of hair.

But the shiver down the spine is short-lived, as a voice, incredibly bright and without pretense, echoes through the shrine from behind the long hair covering the face.

"Wow, you really came! It's been so long! How have you been?"

The gap in years and the changed appearance meant nothing to the creature. As if they had just parted yesterday and met again today, the creature approaches Guest, expressing joy with its whole body.

The frozen time of the two begins to move again at the end of the long wait.