On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, beside which lies a gun. From the moment Nishikawa decides to take the gun, the weapon brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life. But in this 2003 debut by the author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist The Thief, Nishikawa's personal entanglements become unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women while his biological father, whom he's never met, lies dying in a hospital. Through it all, he can't stop thinking about the gun and the four bullets loaded in its chamber. As he spirals into obsession, possessing the gun is no longer enough—he must fire it.