When Mio was young, she lost her parents in a great flood and also became separated from her best friend Noe. Afterwards, Mio found her talent in cooking and eventually became a cook. Meanwhile, Noe has become an oiran (high-ranking courtesan).

Mitsuki is shy and rather isolated at school. Towa is on the basketball team and Mitsuki’s class-mate. Due to circumstances, Mitsuki soon begins to socialize with four jocks of the basketball team, which affects her self-esteem, her social status, her loneliness and her life. She finds a new lease in her school life.

In the dawn of the Meiji period, the Gokumonjou, an inescapable prison, has been established in the middle of an enormous lake to counter the soaring crime rates the new era has brought. Serving as the ferrymen are the famous Kumou brothers: the eccentric family head, Tenka; the reckless but noble second son, Soramaru; and the guileless youngest, Chuutarou. In spite of their grim work, the three lead relatively peaceful lives in the ever-cloudy town of Oumi, together with their housekeeper, Shirasu Kinjou. But buried in the long history of Oumi is the legend of the terrifying “Orochi,” a serpentine beast that awakens every three hundred years in a human vessel. Unbeknownst to Soramaru and Chuutarou, the actual job of the Kumou family is to seal the Orochi away before it fully revives—or the world will be plunged into destruction. Amid the monster’s next resurrection, the Kumou family must find the resolve to keep laughing under the clouds.

Cell phone novelist Yukina Himuro has decided that in order to satisfy her fans’ demand for love stories, she must experience romance firsthand. However, with her icy reputation, how can she find someone willing to play the part of boyfriend? By blackmailing the most popular boy in school, of course.