These characters feel like people you actually know, not anime types designed to fill a role. The dialogue moves the way real conversations do, with natural pauses and interruptions that make even small moments feel honest. Five episodes is cruel, but what's here is pure, no filler, no forced drama, just the specific weight of being seventeen and noticing someone for the first time.

Two separate stories unfold across different high schools, each offering a slice of what it means to be young. At an all-boys school, Joji Ema passes the dull days by counting cute things he spots, and his eccentric classmate Miyoshi Hayashi is the rare exception there. After an accident at the sports festival, Hayashi starts trailing Ema and asking whether he finds him cute, and Ema is puzzled yet pulled in by his candid, unusual ways. Meanwhile, at a coeducational school, Yuichi Medaka ends up seated near Akira Nikaido, a gloomy boy rumored to curse anyone who crosses him. Medaka keeps trying to befriend him, and just as he is ready to give up, he starts to suspect Nikaido is not the bad omen everyone believes.