AFTERGLOW

Higuchi Kiyotaka has hit rock bottom. Once a rising star in the field of cardiovascular surgery, a traumatic incident derailed his career and sent him spiraling. Now transferred to a remote town in rural Kyushu, he spends his days practicing general medicine—struggling to understand the thick local dialect of his elderly patients and to suppress the crushing guilt that haunts him. Each night, he drowns his sorrows in alcohol, but one particularly miserable evening, he’s approached by a mysterious man who calls himself Tenju: a yakuza who offers him a night of escape. Swept into a haze of unfamiliar pleasure, Higuchi begins to feel something stir beneath the numbness. And as the afterglow of the night refuses to fade, one question gnaws at him: Who is this man—and what does he really want from me?