Yuichi Kishino

A girl wanders down a long road. When she comes to, she finds herself in a deserted new town. A middle-aged man calls out to her and puts her in his car. The man, who claims to be a probation officer, is in fact the caretaker of the housing estate, and makes it a routine to approach women with the intention of roughing them up.

A young Japanese woman named Eri is intelligent and promising, but remains mired in depression and alienation. She wanders life like a ghost, articulating her suffering perspectives in repetitive thoughts and journals. Everything changes when she decides to write a romance fantasy for the way she wished things would go, including an alter ego named Rie meeting a man named Fuyuki in love at first sight. Her debut novel "Soft Cream Love" is a huge hit, and Eri is catapulted to wealth and circles of admirers. Shy, she blows her chance to meet a cute guy and instead makes a pass at her clumsy unattractive agent named Hoshino, who walks away with his cynical attitudes born of romantic disappointment. When she pursues him into the street, she by chance meets a nice guy just as she hoped, but he never shows up at their first date because, unknown to her, he's hit by a car.

"Everyone around me is kind, but the world isn't going well...". Yumi Aotani, a ronin student who attends an art prep school, felt that way. She will start summer classes again this year. Aside from the days when she can't realize the future, the melancholy and happy summer slowly passes by...

A country girl visits a college in Tokyo in search of her high school band heartthrob. In the course of finding him, she runs into various odd inhabitants of the college campus--a constantly horny coed, a psychology professor in search of the theory of shame, and of course her Mr. Yoshioka who still sings but has become an elusive campus nobody. Other students also come in and out, engaged in a rather bored campus life-- flirting, having sex, joining campus group activities, running around posing as revolutionaries.