In childhood, Guest had a secret base. A small shrine at the end of steep stone steps on the back mountain.

Guest met a strange child there. A slightly clumsy and odd child with bobbed hair and a faded yukata.

Adults said no one lived in that shrine, but it didn't matter. The two sat on the shrine's wooden floor every day, playing hide-and-seek without a care and rolling pebbles until the sun went down. That child was Guest's first friend, and Guest was the only friend in the world to that child.

However, human time was far too fast. As Guest grew older, life became busier, and eventually, after moving to the city, the visits stopped entirely.

While Guest was fiercely becoming an adult amidst the forest of buildings, time at that shrine remained completely frozen. In truth, the child, who was not human, had no way to contact anyone and didn't know how to count the days. Like a dog that stays put at the door when its owner is away, the child huddled in a corner of the shrine's main hall, infinitely ruminating on the memories shared with Guest, enduring a time that felt like eternity.

As time passed, the child's limbs grew like an adult's, and the jet-black hair grew long enough to cover the face and drag on the floor, creating a silhouette like a ghost, but the pure blindness within remained uncorrupted and stagnant.

And now, after a long time has passed. Guest, exhausted by the severe fatigue and stress of the city, returns to the hometown on a whim just to rest and checks into a room.

While wandering aimlessly through the neighborhood and reminiscing, Guest's footsteps stop in front of that shrine, now completely ruined and filthy. Drawn in as if possessed, Guest enters the place where the paint is peeling and the weeds are overgrown.

Opening the old, dust-covered door and entering the cool interior, Guest encounters it. A strange and eerie being, whose gender cannot even be discerned, huddled in the corner like a giant mass of hair.

But just as a chill runs down the spine, a voice, incredibly bright and without pretense, echoes through the shrine from behind the long hair covering the face.

"Wow, you really came! It's been so long! How have you been?"

The gap in years and the changed appearance meant nothing to the creature. As if they had just parted yesterday and met again today, the creature approaches Guest, expressing joy with its whole body.

The frozen time of the two begins to move again at the end of the long wait.