Kochan's grandmother takes him to her sickroom as an infant, separating him from his parents and other children.

At age four, Kochan nearly dies from autointoxication; his family prepares a funeral before he unexpectedly revives.

Kochan discovers a painting of a mounted knight and develops intense fantasies about the knight's heroic death.

Kochan learns the knight in the painting is Joan of Arc and feels profoundly betrayed by the revelation.

Kochan finds a painting of Saint Sebastian in a hidden art book and masturbates to it for the first time.

Kochan develops an obsessive crush on an older delinquent named Omi after enrolling in middle school.

Kochan watches Omi perform shirtless on a horizontal bar and experiences an erection for the first time around another person.

Kochan returns to school and discovers that Omi has been expelled, losing his first love to disgrace.

Kochan receives a military draft notice but lies to the examining doctor and is declared unfit for service.

Kochan visits Kusano's family home and formally meets Kusano's younger sister Sonoko for the first time.

Kochan and Sonoko ride the train together to visit Kusano, flirting cautiously within the bounds of etiquette.

Kochan visits Sonoko intending to confirm his love with a kiss, but the kiss reveals his total lack of attraction.

After Kusano asks Kochan to commit to Sonoko or end things, Kochan breaks off their relationship entirely.

Kochan visits a brothel hoping to prove his attraction to women but is unable to have sex with the prostitute.

At a dance hall with Sonoko, Kochan becomes fixated on a tattooed young man and fantasizes about his violent death.

Kochan's story begins with his isolation under his controlling grandmother and a childhood scarred by near-death illness. His fascination with death crystallizes around a knight painting whose revealed gender shatters his fantasies, and at puberty a nude painting of Saint Sebastian triggers his sexual awakening. His obsessive love for a school delinquent named Omi establishes the template of his desires, and when Omi disappears, that longing turns inward. In early adulthood, Kochan avoids military service through deception and pursues a doomed relationship with Sonoko, his friend's sister, hoping it will prove his normalcy to himself and to others. A failed kiss and an escalating romantic crisis force him to end things, after which an attempt to resolve his desires at a brothel ends in shame and silence. The novel closes with Kochan sitting beside Sonoko in a dance hall, mentally absent and fantasizing about a stranger's violent death, as trapped inside himself as ever.

The headline moments driving Kochan from birth to the novel's final scene.

As an infant, Kochan falls down the stairs, marking the beginning of a childhood filled with near-death experiences.

As a small child, Kochan sees a young night-soil man and experiences his earliest tormenting fascination with tragic men.

Kochan borrows his mother's kimono to imitate a theater performer, but his mother turns away in shame at the sight.

During the Summer Festival, young men carrying a shrine trample and destroy the family's garden as Kochan watches helplessly.

After his first sexual experience, Kochan writes a prose poem about Saint Sebastian's martyrdom, included in the novel's text.

Kochan joins classmates in the middle school game Dirty but stops participating out of fear of getting too close to Omi.

Omi grabs Kochan's cheeks with his leather gloves to show how they feel, and Kochan falls in love at the touch.

Kochan sits alone at the beach thinking of Omi and Saint Sebastian, then masturbates into a crashing wave.

After hearing classmates criticize Omi's character following his expulsion, Kochan privately envisions Omi dying like Saint Sebastian.

Kochan begins making crude sexual remarks about women to convince classmates that he experiences the same normal attraction they do.

On a visit to Kusano's home, Kochan hears Sonoko playing piano in the background before they are formally introduced.

Sonoko gives Kochan a letter before leaving for the country; he expects a love letter but receives a polite thank-you.

The war ends and Kochan is struck by a new terror — that he must now survive and live an ordinary civilian life.

Kochan's sister dies and Sonoko marries another man, leaving Kochan isolated and adrift in postwar Japan.

Sonoko reveals to Kochan that their private meetings fill her with guilt, as she thinks of him instead of her husband.

Beneath the headline events of Kochan's life lies a series of formative experiences that show how his mask was constructed piece by piece. His earliest memories — a fall down the stairs, his entrancement with a night-soil man on the street, his mother's silent shame at his cross-dressing — establish the emotional vocabulary he carries into adulthood. At middle school, seemingly small rituals like a grabbing game between classmates and a single touch of Omi's leather gloves quietly define the shape of his desires. The years of letter-writing with Sonoko during wartime create an illusion of normalcy that distance makes easy to sustain, while the war's end strips away even that refuge. The deaths of loved ones and Sonoko's marriage leave him completely adrift, and a conversation in which Sonoko confesses that thinking of him makes her feel guilty toward her husband reveals how thoroughly their unresolved connection has entangled them both in quiet suffering.

The supporting moments and quieter revelations behind Kochan's carefully maintained mask.

After his mother's shame at his cross-dressing, Kochan begins secretly dressing as Cleopatra with his siblings' help.

As a child, Kochan covers part of a fairy tale with his hand to read a version where the prince dies violently.

Kochan watches Omi write his name in the snow with his footsteps, then impulsively sprints toward him at full speed.

Omi plays king of the hill on a swinging log; Kochan climbs up and they share a charged glance before both fall.

Kochan develops anemia and grows paranoid that the examining doctor can tell masturbation is the true cause of his illness.

Kochan indulges in a detailed cannibalistic fantasy about a handsome classmate swimmer, imagining kissing him before stabbing his heart.

A classmate misinterprets Kochan's words as flirtatious toward women, and Kochan realizes he must now consciously perform heterosexual normalcy.

A recently widowed relative named Chieko kisses Kochan repeatedly, but he feels nothing and convinces himself it is because he loves Sonoko.

As a school monitor, Kochan orders the younger student Yakumo to strip to the waist for gymnastics, hiding his excitement.

While separated from Sonoko, Kochan's letters grow increasingly affectionate and he convinces himself that distance has granted him normalcy.

After his kiss with Sonoko fails to awaken any attraction, Kochan contemplates suicide but ultimately decides against it.

An acquaintance named T calls Proust a sodomite in conversation, causing Kochan to panic and later sob uncontrollably in private.

At a party, Kochan stares at a woman's accidentally exposed thighs with no desire and feels horrified by his own indifference.

Kochan mistakes a stranger on a train for Sonoko and experiences, briefly, a genuine and unexpected will to live.

Kochan goes to Kusano's home when Sonoko is visiting and confronts her about why they never married, begging to meet privately.

Kochan's inner life is defined less by what others witness than by the private revelations he barely survives. As a child, small acts of rebellion — dressing as Cleopatra in secret, mentally rewriting fairy tales so the prince dies — reveal the growing gap between who he is and what the world expects of him. His relationship with Omi produces its own hidden turning points: an impulsive sprint across a snowy schoolyard, a shared glance on a swinging log, and a growing anemia he fears exposes his secret desires to the doctor. As a young adult, his efforts to perform normalcy collapse one by one, through a misread flirtation, a joyless kiss from a widowed relative, and a scene at a brothel that ends all pretense of heterosexual desire. The novel's final turning points are quiet rather than dramatic: a stranger mistaken for Sonoko on a train, a panic provoked by a casual literary remark, and a painful confrontation with Sonoko that resolves nothing and offers no relief.

The secret discoveries, internal crises, and emotional turning points that shape Kochan's hidden self.