"Life is like a waiting room, except people don't leave in the order they enter."

Japan in the 1970s. Before the first hospices were established in the country.
A boy grows up helping the family business, a senior citizen's home.
Regularly skipping school to help at home, he gets left behind a year in school.
One day, he meets a girl that had also been left back, and they become friends.

This is a story about two kids growing up.
About the wall between those leaving, and those left behind.
It is about the origins of the Seventh Floor hospice.
And finally, the origins of "the rules".