Aoi Miyazaki (EUREKA) plays Sachiko, a thirteen year-old girl living with her depressed mother (ryo, DISTANCE). The film starts by showing her mother's suicide attempt, a scene that pretty much sets the tone, both content-wise and stylistically. Director Akihiko Shiota is brutally honest in showing what happens, but never exploitive or dramatic. When in the next scene both of them are at the breakfast table the next morning, things aren't as they seem.

While going through the parenting motions, mother is wearing a bandage around her wrist. And even though Sachiko is wearing her school uniform, she has long since dropped out of school.

Sachiko is a sad and lonely girl, trapped in a mature world. Alienated from her classmates and even her own mother who is never there for her, she has closed herself up from everybody. And there's the rumor about an affair with her math teacher. Even though the film to me makes clear nothing sexual happened between them, the teacher still left town to go work somewhere else. They correspond through letters, and it's obvious she still depends on him a lot.