Ren Ishida is nearly finished with graduate school when he receives news of his sister, Keiko's, sudden death. She was viciously stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Soon Ren finds himself picking up where Keiko left off, accepting both her teaching position at a local school and the bizarre arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician's mansion in exchange for reading to the man's catatonic wife. A mysterious murder in small-town Japan.