Their world is a village with four gigantic gods overseeing them from each direction. They are forbidden from going out at night, and they believe that when they reach the end of their lives at age fifty, they travel to the “beyond” that exists past the mountains. When this land is ravaged by famine, a man named Sutekichi is ordered to sacrifice one of his twin daughters to appease the gods. Left with no choice, he takes one of them—cursed with an “evil countenance,” according to the priests—and abandons her in the mountains. But what will happen ten years later when An, the surviving twin, begins to grow more curious about how this world works?