The narrator learns that a woman he had a brief college affair with has been killed by a passing truck.

The narrator's girlfriend, while falling asleep, predicts he will soon receive an important phone call about sheep.

The narrator's advertising partner urgently summons him to the office to meet the envoy of a powerful and mysterious figure.

A limousine delivers the narrator to a grand rambling mansion, where the Boss's black-suited secretary receives him in eerie silence.

The secretary threatens to destroy the narrator's agency unless he tracks down a special star-marked sheep within one month.

The secretary explains that a magical sheep invaded the Boss's mind long ago, transforming him into a figure of immense power.

The narrator tells his girlfriend about the sheep quest, and she enthusiastically agrees to join him on the journey.

The narrator and his girlfriend fly north, arriving in Sapporo to begin their hunt for the mysterious sheep.

At the run-down Dolphin Hotel, the desk clerk reveals that his estranged father is known as the Sheep Professor.

The Sheep Professor tells the narrator he was once spiritually invaded by the star-marked sheep, which later abandoned him entirely.

A local shepherd confirms that a young man matching the Rat's description has been living secretly at the mountain farmhouse.

The shepherd drops the narrator and his girlfriend at a treacherous mountain bend, and they walk the rest of the way to the farmhouse.

The narrator wakes in the middle of the night to find his girlfriend has silently vanished from the farmhouse.

The Rat appears in total darkness and confirms to the narrator that he is already dead, having hanged himself.

The secretary meets the narrator at the mountain bend, admits he knew the location all along, and hands him a large check.

A Tokyo advertising copywriter is thrust into an impossible mission when a powerful man's secretary demands he locate a magical sheep within one month or lose his livelihood. Armed with only a photograph sent by his vanished friend the Rat, the narrator and his girlfriend travel north into rural Hokkaido to begin their search. A chance encounter at a run-down hotel leads them to the Sheep Professor, an old man whose life was once shattered by the same sheep, who points them toward a remote mountain farmhouse. After arriving, the narrator's girlfriend mysteriously disappears, leaving him alone in deep isolation until his old friend the Rat finally appears in total darkness. The Rat reveals he has already died by his own hand in order to destroy the sheep that had possessed him — completing the quest in the most unexpected way. The narrator descends the mountain, receives a check from the secretary who admits he knew the location all along, and returns, changed, to the world he left behind.

The core quest for the magical star-marked sheep.

The narrator attends the funeral of a woman from his college past and briefly exchanges silent bows with her grieving father.

The narrator returns home drunk to find his soon-to-be ex-wife sitting at the kitchen table, collecting her remaining belongings.

After spotting a remarkable pair of ears in an advertisement, the narrator tracks down the ear model and invites her to dinner.

The narrator's partner recounts how the strange visitor's stillness made the entire office feel as though everything were nailed to the floor.

Alone in his apartment, the narrator counts the sheep in the photograph and is puzzled to arrive at first 32, then 33.

The narrator's partner fills him in on the Boss's history as a war criminal turned shadowy right-wing media magnate.

The Rat's second letter arrives, announcing he has reached a remote final destination and asking the narrator to deliver his farewells to two people.

The narrator visits J's bar to deliver the Rat's letter, then takes a solitary walk along the river to a jetty.

The narrator and his girlfriend search Sapporo fruitlessly for sheep records, and their newspaper advertisement yields only a series of strange phone calls.

On the train heading north, the narrator reads a history of the remote Junitaki Township and its Ainu settlers.

A town livestock officer drives the narrator out to a local shepherd's farm, lamenting along the way that the entire region is slowly dying.

Alone in the mountain farmhouse, the narrator spends several solitary days cooking elaborate meals as the first heavy snow falls outside.

The narrator finds the Boss's name listed in a book on Pan-Asianism and realizes the secretary must have known the meadow's location all along.

After the Rat's visit, the narrator endures a feverish night in which voices from his past speak of time, change, and identity.

The narrator visits the Sheep Professor at the Dolphin Hotel to announce the quest is over, leaving the old man bereft of purpose.

Before the sheep quest begins, the narrator moves through a lonely Tokyo existence marked by a stranger's funeral, a failed marriage, and a new girlfriend discovered through an advertisement. The mechanics of the threat are laid out through conversations with his partner — the strange visitor's unsettling aura, the Boss's dark history, and the hidden significance of a sheep photograph. Letters from the long-missing Rat eventually pull the narrator back to his hometown and then deep into rural Japan, where a dying town and its crumbling history mirror his own restlessness. Arriving in Junitaki, he consults local officials and a gruff shepherd before climbing toward the farmhouse that has been at the centre of the mystery all along. Days of solitary domesticity in the mountain house — cooking, walking, reading — are broken by a chilling discovery that exposes the extent of the secretary's manipulation. The quest closes not with triumph but with a quiet act of generosity and a farewell to an old man whose entire life's purpose has just been rendered obsolete.

The narrator's fragmented world before and during the quest.

On their first dinner date, the narrator's girlfriend reveals her unblocked ears, and he experiences something close to religious transcendence.

The narrator rides to the Boss's mansion in a limousine and notices a sheep emblem stamped on a pack of cigarettes inside the car.

The narrator meets the Rat's former girlfriend, who reveals that Rat vanished without a goodbye five years earlier and that she recognized the narrator immediately.

The secretary hands the narrator a magnifying glass, revealing a strange star-shaped mark on one sheep's back in the photograph.

The secretary tracks the narrator down at a hotel bar and cuts his deadline to one month due to the Boss's sudden deterioration.

The hotel owner removes a lobby painting that displays the exact same pastoral landscape as the sheep photograph sent by the Rat.

The Sheep Professor reveals that a young man matching the Rat's description visited him earlier, asking questions about the same mountain pasture.

The narrator realizes that the Rat's father was the wealthy man who purchased the Sheep Professor's former mountain homestead after the war.

Entering the mountain farmhouse, the narrator finds signs of recent habitation — a stocked refrigerator, a freshly wound clock, and an indentation in a pillow.

The Sheep Man appears uninvited at the farmhouse, demands a drink, and accuses the narrator of having driven his girlfriend away from the house.

While fetching a beer in the kitchen, the narrator glances at the mirror and sees that the Sheep Man casts no reflection.

The narrator calmly informs the Sheep Man that he will see the Rat that very evening, forcing the evasive spirit to withdraw.

The Rat reveals he sent the sheep photograph as a coded message and confesses that the Sheep Man was also himself in another form.

The narrator gives the secretary's check to J and declares that he and the Rat will be silent partners in J's new bar.

The narrator walks to what remains of his hometown beach and weeps alone, for the first time in the novel.

From the moment the narrator's girlfriend reveals her extraordinary unblocked ears and predicts a sheep adventure, the novel builds toward a series of revelations that continually shift the ground beneath the narrator's feet. The secretary's manipulation becomes apparent in stages — first through the magnifying glass that exposes the star-marked sheep, then through a shortened deadline the secretary delivers by tracking the narrator to a bar, and finally through a book that proves the secretary knew the meadow's location from the start. At the Dolphin Hotel, a matching lobby painting and the Sheep Professor's account of the Rat's earlier visit confirm that the narrator has been guided, not searching freely. The arrival at the farmhouse delivers fresh shocks: unmistakable signs of the Rat's presence, the girlfriend's overnight disappearance, and the realization that the eerily familiar Sheep Man throws no reflection in the mirror. The narrator's confrontation with the Sheep Man forces the climactic encounter with the Rat's ghost, who lays bare the coded logic behind the photograph, the quest, and his own death. The novel closes with the narrator converting his reward into an act of loyalty and then weeping alone on the shore — the first honest grief he has permitted himself.