Takano, a 25-year-old official at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, is busy with work and struggling between ideals and reality. He sees a young man of his own age on a list of "committed suicides due to irregular employment" and begins to investigate the cause of his death. Tsui is a paper-cutting artist in her thirties who feels uncomfortable with her relationship with her husband, even though she also wants to have children. A second-year junior high school class monitor is bullied after helping a friend, and he keeps the secret alone so as not to worry his single mother. When the lives of the three intersect, the power of language transcends time, and a glimmer of hope flashes in the cloudy sky. This film is adapted from the tanka collection of the same name by the waka poet Shinichiro Hagiwara, who died young.