When the novel opens, the young heroine, Sora, is sitting in the kitchen of the doria with her chicken doria. She's not sure whether or not she's really the same girl who used to cook at the lavender house. She wonders if the girl who saved her life when she was a child is the one who's now cooking at the Doria. Sora asks what's going on, and the narrator tells her that it's about the year 2005 and that the girl is there to shoot a web page. The narrator doesn't want to answer the question, so she tells Sora that she'd like to find her flan prince. She asks what the story is about, but the narrator won't tell her. She says that she heard that the director's mother died, and that people thought that she might have been lonely. She also tells the story of her promise to Sora when they were younger, when she promised to take her to the garden to look at the flowers blooming there. But the narrator says that the garden is too dangerous for her to go outside, so they can only go inside when her father is home.