1,300 people live in Sotoba, a town encircled by thick woodlands. Some of the young residents find the tranquil lifestyle to be uncomfortable. The only unique aspect of the community is a grotesquely inappropriate European-style castle that the village's as-yet unidentified future residents had erected on a hill. Everyone knows and greets one another.
A extremely eccentric-looking wealthy family, along with staff members who seldom ever appear, move into the castle one night as the sound of a moving truck rumbles through the valley. Naturally, the locals are instantly highly interested in the visitors, but they soon turn their focus to something else entirely. It seems that some type of anemia is the origin of the mystery illness that is killing more and more villagers, young and old, within days, but for which there is no known cause. While the local hospital director Ozaki Toshio and the temple priest Murio Senshin work feverishly to identify the origin of this "epidemic," 15-year-old Natsuno Yuuki is growing increasingly concerned that something is amiss and that the deaths may be caused by something other than a straightforward disease.
