Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon

In contemporary Tokyo, a figure known as the go-between can arrange meetings between the living and the dead. Each living person may request only one such meeting in their lifetime, and each deceased person may accept only one. The service is free, meetings take place on the night of a full moon, and the go-between acts strictly as an intermediary, arranging face-to-face encounters rather than channeling spirits. The novel follows four clients whose requests reveal hidden grief, guilt, and longing, while its final chapter uncovers the go-between's own story.

The first chapter introduces Manami Hirase, an office worker in her late twenties who meets the go-between, a teenage boy, at a hospital courtyard. She requests a meeting with Saori Mizushiro, a beloved TV personality who died of a heart attack at 38, though Manami is merely a fan. Her backstory reveals isolation: a dismissive family, exploitative coworkers, and a mental health crisis triggered when colleagues abandoned her after a night of forced drinking. As Manami hyperventilated on the sidewalk, a glamorous woman in a leopard-print coat stopped to help. Manami later recognized the woman's rose perfume as Saori's signature scent and began sending fan letters and homemade gifts. At the hotel meeting, Saori reveals that despite the public outpouring of grief after her death, Manami was the only person who requested a meeting; people Saori knew in the entertainment industry saved their one chance for closer loved ones. Saori then confronts Manami: She recognized suicidal thinking in Manami's letters and agreed to the meeting to warn her that the afterlife is "super dark" and to urge her to keep living. At dawn, Saori vanishes, and Manami resolves to believe Saori is now in a brighter place.

The second chapter follows Yasuhiko Hatada, a gruff construction company owner in his 50s from rural Japan. His mother, Tsuru, died of cancer two years earlier and had given him the go-between's phone number, instructing him to call only if he ran into trouble with the family business. Yasuhiko claims he needs to locate a missing deed, but his true question emerges at the hotel: He wants to know whether Tsuru knew about the cancer diagnosis the family hid from her. Her silent expression tells him everything. She reassures him about his mild-mannered younger brother Kunihiko, praises his son Taichi, a gentle 21-year-old whom Yasuhiko has criticized relentlessly, and refuses to explain why she visited her own dead husband through the go-between 20 years earlier. Years later, after Taichi has taken over the business and married, Yasuhiko finds the answer in Tsuru's diaries: She used her one opportunity to bring two-year-old Taichi to meet his grandfather, spending her single chance not on herself but on introducing the future head of the household to the patriarch who never met him. This also means Taichi's one meeting was used before he was old enough to remember.

The third chapter belongs to Misa Arashi, a high school student who confesses she believes she killed her best friend, Natsu Misono. The two met in drama club and became inseparable. When the club stages Yukio Mishima's play Rokumeikan, Misono unexpectedly auditions for the lead role Arashi considered hers. Arashi overhears Misono tell another student, "She doesn't stand a chance against me," and interprets the remark as mockery. Misono wins the role. Consumed by jealousy, one December evening Arashi turns on an outdoor faucet on a steep hill along their bike route, hoping the water will freeze overnight. The next morning, Misono's bike skids on the slope and she crashes into an oncoming car. She dies. Arashi contacts the go-between, terrified that Misono's dying words, "Why, Arashi?" mean she witnessed the tampering. The go-between proves to be Ayumi Shibuya, a boy from school whom Misono had a crush on. At the hotel, Misono greets Arashi warmly and makes no accusations. Arashi weeps and apologizes without explaining why. As they part, Misono tells Arashi to ask Ayumi if he has a message for her. In the lobby, Arashi does, and Ayumi relays four words Misono told him to deliver only if asked: "The street wasn't frozen." Arashi understands instantly: Misono saw her turn on the faucet, went back and shut it off, and knew the accident was caused by faulty brakes, not ice. By delivering this truth as a coded message rather than confronting Arashi directly, Misono denied her the chance to seek forgiveness. Arashi's guilt deepens when she learns Misono always said the opposite: "I don't stand a chance against her." Her jealousy may have been built on a misunderstanding.

The fourth chapter centers on Koichi Tsuchiya, a salaryman, or Japanese white-collar worker, whose fiancée, Kirari Himukai, vanished seven years earlier, days after he proposed. She was exuberant and secretly homeless; over two years they fell in love. After the proposal, she left for a supposed trip and never returned. The go-between reveals that Kirari's real name was Teruko Kuwamoto and that she died when a ferry sank seven years ago. On the night of the meeting, Koichi panics and flees the hotel. Ayumi searches for him in the rain for three hours and, breaking from his formal role, tells Koichi that Kirari agreed to meet because she wanted him to be free. Koichi returns. Kirari reveals she ran away from her family's print shop in Kumamoto, on the island of Kyushu, at 17 and invented her name. She was on the ferry to visit her parents and tell them about the engagement when it sank. She asks Koichi to find a cookie tin hidden in her closet and return it to her parents. Inside he finds her childhood treasures, her real student ID, and the folded popcorn container from their first movie date. He resolves to deliver the tin in person.

The final chapter shifts to Ayumi's perspective. He is 17, living with his uncle's family after losing both parents at age six. His grandmother Aiko, hospitalized for a heart condition, asks him to take over her role as go-between. The power passes down within the Akiyama family, fortune-tellers led by Aiko's brother, Sadayuki Akiyama. Ayumi's parents died under devastating circumstances: His grandmother found his mother strangled and his father dead in their home, and the case was ruled a murder-suicide. As Ayumi handles the novel's earlier cases, he witnesses his grandmother summon the dead using a small bronze mirror, the vessel of the go-between's power. She reveals the mirror's lethal rule: If anyone other than its contracted owner looks into it, both that person and the owner die. This unlocks everything. Ayumi deduces that his grandmother gave the power to his father years earlier and instructed him never to reveal the mirror to his wife. She confirms this, blaming herself. Ayumi offers a different interpretation: He believes his father trusted his mother enough to tell her. His mother, watching her husband grieve his own estranged father who had recently died, tried to use the mirror to summon the grandfather and reunite father and son, not understanding the lethal consequences. Ayumi's father was found holding his mother's hand. Ayumi tells his grandmother he chooses to believe his parents died not from betrayal but from an act of love gone wrong. He decides not to use his one chance to see either parent, instead saving his meeting for his grandmother, someday after he has passed the power on. If he still wants to see her when he is old, it will prove he lived a peaceful life. She protests but does not refuse. In the sunlit courtyard, she places the wrapped mirror on her palm and tells Ayumi to close his eyes. She asks if he is sure; he confirms. The novel ends with her voice: "Open your eyes."