Hokuto Mitarai, nicknamed Toto, grows up in a rural Japanese town, forging a close childhood bond with Roma Kamogawa. Together, they found the group “Don Glees”—a name born from Toto’s youthful mishearing of “Don’t glee”—as a sanctuary from loneliness and their shared aversion to peer interaction. Pressured by his family, Toto moves to Tokyo for high school to pursue a medical career, straining his connection to Roma, who stays behind. When he returns the next summer, his demeanor is tense: he clutches a textbook during a high-stakes mountain expedition, masking inner turmoil over his predetermined path with academic rigidity.

During the trek—prompted by a lost drone and a quest to reclaim their group’s reputation—Toto’s studious discipline clashes with the chaotic adventure. Yet conversations with Roma and Drop spark self-reflection. In a decisive moment, he hurls his textbook into a campfire, signaling his rejection of external expectations and tentative steps toward self-authorship.

Drop’s death later propels Toto to Iceland to honor his friend’s final wish, a journey that cements his grasp of legacy and camaraderie. He adopts Drop’s physical traits, like longer hair, as quiet homage. Once governed by rules and societal mandates, Toto gradually embraces emotional authenticity, valuing bonds over conformity. His interactions with Roma oscillate between warmth and friction, mirroring the fragile intensity of teenage male friendships. A perpetual outsider—displaced in both countryside and city—Toto’s evolution reflects a nuanced reckoning with identity, belonging, and the unsteady bridge to adulthood, his guarded pragmatism often veiling vulnerabilities he learns, slowly, to confront.