Growing up in a small town called Asahikawa in Hokkaido, Banzai left her hometown in search of a life with a larger meaning. She finds herself stuck in a rut and constantly suffocated in a stifling and tiny country like Singapore - one even smaller than Asahikawa. As nothing goes according to plan, a message she receives sends her on a journey home, forcing her to search for closure from the fears she has been running from, with her days seemingly truly, endlessly numbered.
Nitobe and Sakamoto are childhood friends who now work at the front desk of a capsule hotel. Nitobe has a particular fondness for philosophy and crustaceans. Sakamoto, meanwhile, is fixated on suicide. The capsule hotel draws a variety of guests, including a Finnish mother who has lost her child, a fugitive woman, and a researcher studying Daphnia. None of their lives ever intersect. They exist, but never cross, like cells in a capsule hotel. The themes of life and death are explored through a fragmentary view of the characters’ lives.
