The postman visits his doctor and is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, given at most six months to live.

The postman returns home and is greeted by a cheerful doppelganger who introduces himself as the Devil.

The postman agrees to the Devil's deal: one object disappears from the world each day in exchange for one extra day of life.

Aloha announces phones will be the first thing to disappear, allowing the postman one final phone call.

Phones disappear; the postman reunites with his ex-girlfriend under the clock tower and tells her he is dying.

The ex-girlfriend offers to privately screen one final movie of the postman's choice at her theater.

The postman visits his old friend Tsutaya's video rental store, tells him he is dying, and they say tearful goodbyes.

The postman spends two hours staring at a blank illuminated screen, imagining what movie his life would be.

Aloha makes movies disappear; the postman carelessly agrees to the next sacrifice without listening to what it is.

The postman wakes on Thursday to find all clocks have vanished and Cabbage has been granted the ability to speak.

Aloha proposes that cats should be the next thing to disappear from the world.

The postman wakes to find Cabbage gone, panics, and runs weeping through the streets searching for the cat.

The postman finds Cabbage alive at his ex-girlfriend's movie theater and receives his mother's final letter.

The postman reads his mother's letter, which lists ten beautiful things she loved about him.

The postman refuses to make cats disappear and accepts that he will die rather than steal from others to survive.

A young Japanese postman receives a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and returns home to find the Devil — a cheerful doppelganger he nicknames Aloha — waiting with a bargain: sacrifice one object from the world each day in exchange for one extra day of life. The postman agrees, and phones, then movies, then clocks are erased from existence, each loss forcing him to reconnect with the people he has drifted away from. He reunites with his first love, says a tearful goodbye to his childhood friend, and spends a day walking and talking with his cat Cabbage, who has been granted the power of speech. When Aloha proposes that cats be the next thing to disappear, the postman is thrown into panic and grief, running through the streets to find Cabbage and ultimately receiving a final letter from his deceased mother. Moved by his mother's love and the thought of what cats mean to people everywhere, the postman refuses to continue the bargain and accepts that he will die, choosing meaning over survival.

The postman's deal with the Devil, from diagnosis to final refusal.

The postman writes a deeply unsatisfying bucket list of ten things he wants to do before dying.

The postman and Aloha go skydiving together that same afternoon, but the postman is left completely unmoved.

Aloha considers making chocolate disappear but changes his mind after tasting a biscuit and enjoying it.

The postman's mother finds an abandoned kitten she names Lettuce and keeps him despite her severe cat allergy.

Lettuce dies of a tumor; the postman's mother is inconsolable until the day she finds and rescues another abandoned kitten, Cabbage.

On the tram to meet his ex-girlfriend, the postman notices that no one around him is on a phone.

The ex-girlfriend lists the postman's many negative qualities bluntly during their coffee shop reunion.

The postman and his ex-girlfriend discuss the trip to Buenos Aires where their friend Tom died in a bus accident.

Outside her movie theater, the postman cannot immediately remember his ex-girlfriend's favorite place in the world.

Cabbage nags the postman through his morning routine in a formal, refined voice and insists on going for a walk.

The postman teaches Cabbage the names of wildflowers, and Cabbage asks the same questions the postman once asked his own mother.

The postman shows Cabbage photo albums, and discovers the cat has no memory of the mother who raised him.

Cabbage cannot identify anything clearly in the old photographs except a feeling of happiness in one image from a family holiday.

Aloha accepts the postman's refusal to sacrifice cats and hints that God has once again won a bet between them.

The postman seals his letter with a sleeping-cat stamp and decides to deliver it to his father in person rather than post it.

Before the week of the Devil's bargain begins, the postman's world is shaped by the lives and deaths of two cats and the quiet grief of a devoted mother. As the bargain unfolds, the postman goes skydiving and is underwhelmed, watches Aloha almost sacrifice chocolate, and rides a tram through a city strangely free of phones. His reunion with his ex-girlfriend involves harsh truths, laughter about their past in Buenos Aires, and a moment of embarrassing forgetfulness about her favorite place in the world. When clocks disappear, the postman's newly talkative cat Cabbage nags him into a walk, receives a lesson in wildflowers, and fails to recognize any photographs of the mother who raised him — except for one. The novel closes with Aloha conceding defeat and the postman choosing to deliver his letter in person, pressing a sleeping-cat stamp onto the envelope as a final act of meaning.

The smaller moments, memories, and encounters that give the main events their meaning.

Choosing who to call with his final phone call, the postman realizes he has never once called his estranged father in four years.

The postman's mother's allergy to Lettuce abruptly disappears, and she declares that nothing can be gained without losing something else.

The ex-girlfriend reveals that the postman was always far more expressive and verbose over the phone than when they were face to face.

Tom's death in Buenos Aires leaves the postman and his girlfriend silent on their entire return flight; they both understand their relationship is over.

The postman collapses outside the movie theater after his two-hour blank screen experience.

Aloha reveals he carried the collapsed postman home and used magic to grant Cabbage the power of speech to cheer him up.

Gazing at a family photograph, the postman realizes his dying mother organized the hot springs trip hoping father and son would reconcile.

In a flashback, the postman's mother has a final seizure in hospital, shaking and confused, and apologizes for leaving her son alone.

The postman's father arrives at the hospital with his wife's still-unrepaired wristwatch in hand, only to find she has already died.

Cabbage speaks to the postman and urges him to allow cats to disappear so the postman can go on living.

Cabbage reminds the postman of his mother's secret magic trick — closing his eyes and forcing a smile — and the postman tries it and feels warmth.

The postman says thank you aloud to his mother and to Cabbage, saying the words he was never able to say while she was alive.

Aloha reveals that his form as the postman's double reflects the version of the postman that could have been but never was.

While clearing his apartment, the postman rediscovers his childhood stamp collection, gifted by his father, and understands the man through it.

The postman dresses in his postal worker uniform, places Cabbage in his bicycle basket, and cycles toward his father's house.

The postman's journey toward acceptance is built from a series of small but devastating realizations: that he has never called his father, that he could only truly express himself over the phone, and that the silence between him and his girlfriend on a return flight from Buenos Aires meant their relationship was finished. Each object that disappears peels back another layer of denial, and the collapse of the postman outside the movie theater marks the moment the bargain begins to cost him more than he anticipated. The chapters devoted to the disappearance of cats force the most painful reckoning, as the postman relives his mother's final days and his father's too-late arrival at the hospital. Cabbage's urging and his mother's soothing magic trick give the postman the courage to say thank you aloud to the dead. With Aloha's revelation that his double-form reflects the postman's own unrealized potential, and the rediscovery of a childhood stamp collection, the postman finds his way to his father — cycling toward reconciliation in the novel's final hopeful image.

The discoveries, confrontations, and emotional shifts that drive the postman toward acceptance.