Housing Complex C

In the seaside town of Kurosaki, where the summer air smells of salt, seaweed and stagnant heat, stands an old municipal building: Housing Complex C. It is not a place for big hopes. The walls are peeling, the corridors are cramped, and in the courtyard the old-timers have known one another for decades, so a stranger's footsteps always sound a little too loud. Here lives nine-year-old Kimi Shirokado, a strange, sunny, ever-cheerful girl whom the elderly residents seem to treat as the whole building's shared child. She races up and down the stairs, talks to everyone without fear, and never seems to notice that trouble happens around her far too often. One day the Koshide family moves into the complex from Tokyo: the level-headed Seiichi, his wife Keiko and their ten-year-old daughter Yuri. Along with them, foreign trainees hired to work in the fishing industry arrive in Kurosaki, and the building's familiar, closed-off world begins to come apart at the seams. For Kimi, the new neighbor becomes a friend, almost an older sister; for Yuri, however, the place feels strange from the very first days, sticky and full of stares that linger just a moment longer than they should.