Joshiochi gathered the items over weeks. The mirror shard was found in his grandmother’s attic, the river breath collected with the help of his friend , a shy girl who loved to sketch koi fish, and the final ingredient, the heartfelt word, was the hardest. He stared at his reflection, at the empty seat at his family’s dinner table where his older brother, lost in an accident three years before, would have been.

Kazuki, a university student, hears a scream. He looks up to see his mysterious neighbor—a silver-haired girl who always ignores him—tumble out of her second-story window. He catches her (or cushions her fall). In her arms is a bag of doujinshi (self-published manga).

An ordinary male college student or a young apartment manager living on the first floor of a mixed-use building. Below the second floor is the girls’ dormitory (or an all-female floor).