An Autumn in Amber. A Zero-Second Journey

Plot

From the award-winning author of The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes and Wait For Me Yesterday in Spring comes a brand-new light novel about setting aside differences to solve the mystery of a world frozen in time.

Socially awkward loner Kayato has an intense fear of being touched and finds making friends extremely difficult. When he and his high school classmates visit Hakodate for a field trip, he suffers through some attempts to engage with the others, until…

Time stops for the entire world, but not for him.

All the hustle and bustle of the city fades into an eerie veil of silence, leaving him the only soul left in motion–until he finds another in Akira, a sharp-tongued local delinquent. Though she’s his total opposite, she begrudgingly agrees to help him solve the mystery. Their only lead is something Kayato’s uncle said just before he died about a “world plucked out of time,” as if preserved in amber. Hoping to find a clue among his late uncle’s possessions in Tokyo, the two teens must travel through the frozen world.