Satoshi Mitsu

Watarai seems like a respectable science teacher at a cram school in a decent apartment complex but he has the hidden habit he dare not reveal. That of peeping in on people’s private lives. This veritable watcher in the attic has a peephole surveillance system set up to watch his downstairs neighbours, Taro and Hanae Magara, a couple who are university lecturers. They appear perfect from the outside but the husband hides a secret that Watarai discovers ahead of Hanae and he finds himself sucked from the role of an observer into that of a participant in the fracturing of their relationship and worse…

I can no longer recall my first love. Yet one thing lingers: I was always chasing the fleeting shadow of his back. In that moment, I longed for 1 PM to never come. The ship sails away, and with it, a farewell—like a dream that never truly existed.

Set in 2020 in the Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo, the story revolves around Hachi, a boy who fled to the Japanese capital from his hometown of Fukushima and now lives away from society as an illegal drug dealer.