Satoru Takahashi is still learning the job his father left him: owner and live-in manager of Yoyogi Heights, a rental building that accepts only yokai. Rent collection, repairs, and keeping the peace are hard enough. Then there is Mifuyu Yukino, the snow woman on an upper floor. She is a widow, almost silent with strangers, and so beautiful that Satoru loses the thread of every conversation he starts.
A small, stupid error on his part turns her cold into real anger. Ice answers him. The distance he wanted to close becomes a wall. That night, in his father’s room, he finds a ring that should not be there. The note with it says the wearer can reach a yokai’s will if that yokai is in sight.
He uses it because he wants her to listen—not because he has thought through what “listen” might mean.
Mifuyu changes in front of him. The woman who would not meet his eyes comes closer. Her body, her voice, and the air in the room all shift. What begins as an apology becomes the first night the ring demands. Satoru learns that helping her and owning her are not the same act, and that Mifuyu may not be able to tell the difference while the metal is on his hand.
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