A headmaster and a novelist, looking for inspiration, regard a strange natural phenomenon before sharing stories of their own.

Tatsuya Kawakami's mother becomes a member of a religious group after her husband commits suicide, and makes a large donation to the organization. Her three children are forced to live in poverty, and her eldest son, who is blind in one eye due to illness, takes his own life. Kawakami comes to believe that the religious group has ruined his life, so he creates a homemade gun and carries out an assassination plot against former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who has close ties to the religious group, which has been accused of siphoning off money from its members.