The novel opens with the narrator, who is now 14 years old. He tells us that he has been asked many times about his love life, but he has never been able to get the answer he wants. The narrator explains that the difference in the way men and women treat each other is not a sexual one, but rather a psychological one. He says that he is always the one to break up a romance between a man and a woman. He also says that if he were a girl, he would never be able to find a man of her own choosing. This is the first time the narrator has heard of the author of the novel, a young man named Akari. Akari tells the narrator that she has read his work and that she is glad to meet him. She asks him if he thinks she is strong enough to hold the man in her arms. He replies that he will be the one who holds him in his arms in the end. He asks her to either marry him or move out of the house.