When thirty-seven-year-old Kakeru Nishizawa returns to the Tokyo apartment he shares with his fiancée, Mami Sakaniwa, he finds it empty. She has vanished without a word, leaving behind only her engagement ring and a mysterious note. What begins as a desperate search for a missing person soon forces Kakeru to confront uncomfortable truths about their relationship, the carefully curated image Mami presented to him, and his own shallow reasons for wanting to get married in the first place. The story unfolds in two distinct halves: Kakerus dogged investigation into Mami’s past, followed by Mami’s own account of the events leading to her disappearance.

Kakeru is a handsome and successful entrepreneur in Tokyo who has never struggled to attract women, yet he finds himself nearing forty and still single. He turns to konkatsu, the formalized search for a marriage partner, as a last resort. Mami, in contrast, grew up in Gunma Prefecture as the quieter, more passive daughter of overprotective parents who micromanaged her life. After attending an all-girls school and university, she drifted through work at the prefectural office before finally moving to Tokyo, where she began her own desperate konkatsu journey. The two meet through a matching app and begin a relationship, but their connection is built on unspoken expectations and hidden vulnerabilities.

The central conflict emerges when a stalker begins terrorizing Mami, leading her to move in with Kakeru and eventually accept his marriage proposal. But just as they begin planning their wedding, Mami disappears. In his search for her, Kakeru travels to her hometown, interviews her family members, and reconnects with her former konkatsu prospects. Through this process, he learns that Mami had fabricated the stalker story to pressure him into commitment, a revelation that forces both characters to reexamine their motivations. A marriage counselor named Onozato provides the novels philosophical core, explaining that modern konkatsu often fails because participants suffer from a combination of arrogance and virtue—they overestimate their own worth while passively following societys scripts for what a spouse should be.

The narrative is divided into three collected volumes of the manga adaptation, illustrated by Kaori Tsurutani. The first volume establishes the mystery of Mami’s disappearance and follows Kakeru’s investigation. The second volume delves deeper into Mami’s psychology and her time in hiding. The third volume brings resolution as Mami, now living independently in Sendai and working in mapmaking, gradually rebuilds her sense of self before a chance reunion with Kakeru forces them both to decide whether they can love each other honestly. The story explores how the pressure to marry in Japanese society, particularly on women approaching their thirties, can lead people to prioritize appearances over genuine connection. It examines the difficulty of distinguishing authentic desires from unconscious imitations of what parents, peers, and media suggest one should want. The manga adaptation, serialized on the web TRIPPER platform beginning in June 2024, captures the novels intense interiority through expressive character art and subtle visual storytelling, bringing to life Tsujimura’s sharp observations about modern love and self-deception.