The Boy and the Heron

Masamune, a third-year middle school student, lives in a town where all the exits have been sealed off due to a sudden explosion at a steel mill, causing time to stand still. Residents are forbidden from making any changes and spend their suffocating days in the hopes of returning to normalcy someday. One day, Masamune's mysterious classmate Mutsumi guides him to the fifth furnace of the steel mill, where they encounter a girl who cannot speak and resembles a wild wolf. The meeting between the two girls and Masamune disrupts the balance of the world, and the unstoppable "impulse of love" from boys and girls tired of their daily lives begins to destroy the world.

Kokoro is a junior high school student who doesn’t fit in at school and has secluded herself in her room. One day, the mirror in her room begins to suddenly shine and she is sucked inside. There, she finds a fairy tale castle and six unknown junior high students. Then a girl wearing a wolf mask appears and tells the seven of them that they have been chosen to have any one wish they want granted. Why were they chosen? What do the seven of them have in common? What is the wish that they each hold but can’t tell anyone about? When all is revealed, a miracle beyond their wildest dreams awaits.

The story centers on a boy named Kazuki Tsukigase, who transfers to a high school on a remote island to get away from anyone who knows him. Kazuki finds out that there is an inlet on the island where people are rumored to disappear. Exploring the inlet, he encounters an unconscious girl. When she comes to after Kazuki takes her to the clinic, she is unable to give out anything about her identity except that she is named Nao, is 16 years old, and whispers the year "1974."

Koyomi Hidaka and Shiori Sato meet at his father’s research center and begin to fall in love, but so do their parents, who eventually marry. To avoid becoming stepsiblings, they decide to run away to a parallel universe. Traveling between dimensions is common in their world, but not without repercussions. Does a universe exist for the young couple, and what will it cost them to find it?