Water Moon

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and substance use.

Twenty-one-year-old Hana wakes up with a hangover on the morning she’s supposed to take over her family’s pawnshop business. She and her father, Toshio, stayed up late drinking sake and talking about the future. She grew up in the pawnshop, which is located behind a ramen restaurant in Tokyo’s Taitō prefecture, and knew that she’d someday run the business.

Hana rolls over and studies a photograph of her late mother, Chiyo, feeling an inexplicable weight on her chest. She goes downstairs, calling for Toshio, but the house and shop are eerily quiet. The last time it was this quiet was the morning Chiyo died.

The day before, Toshio served his last client, Izumi. Like all pawnshop visitors, Izumi didn’t expect to enter the shop when she opened the door to the ramen restaurant. Everyone who arrives at the pawnshop does so because they unconsciously need to trade a past choice that they regret in order to free their mind. When they leave, they forget the shop but are free of their weighty memories forever.