The story opens with a brief description of Tommo's side-story. Tommo is trying to build a sandbag wall along the Kishu River in order to protect his village from floods. He's worried that the river's flooding, so he's building sandbags instead. The river floods every year, so Tommo has to build more sandbags to keep the river from getting too high. The sandbag wall is going well, and Tommo and his men are getting ready to shred the sandbags.