Your Friend

While researching a story on a school for problem children, Nakahara meets Emi, a college volunteer with a compelling tale of her own. After overcoming her initial reluctance to open up to the writer, Emi talks about her busted leg and her childhood friendship with the chronically ill Yuka. Hiroki steps away from the mature material he's best known for (Vibrator), but focuses the same empathetic gaze on a group of people who don't conform in a perfection-obsessed society and the bonds formed in it.