Ryosuke, a teacher, harbored a certain suspicion regarding his wife, Satomi. Over their ten years of marriage, Satomi had proven to be an exemplary wife—managing the household with steady competence and supplementing their income by teaching *ikebana* (Japanese flower arranging) at home, a skill in which she was highly gifted. Yet, while she was an ideal "wife," Satomi had recently begun to neglect her "feminine side"—to the point where intimacy with her husband had become a source of distress. Plagued by an endless stream of unsettling speculations, Ryosuke found himself deeply troubled. Meanwhile, Satomi, for her part, had begun to harbor her own suspicions about Ryosuke…
