Kazunari Hoshino

Shanghai in the 1930s is a dangerous place. Foreign governments and Chinese factions have carved the city into different quarters, each with its own laws and government, and all rife with corruption. As the major powers vie for political control, the streets are left to local gangs. Life is cheap, and death is always near. In days past, one man walked these mean streets battling the forces of evil. He was known only as Yan Wang, "the King of Death." Few knew who he really was, but many knew that he was a master of Hokuto Shinken - Fist of the North Star - a lethal martial art. He disappeared years ago after dispatching the city's worst gangsters, and is now rumored to be in Japan. Various people have come to Japan in search of him, but who will find him first?

In another world, an ever-growing Sea of Snow has engulfed the planet surface. The people struggle to survive living around the routes of a massive Orbital Tree, whose branches spread into the Celestial Membrane high above the ground. Change comes to this dying world after Kaina, a boy from the Celestial Membrane, encounters a girl from the surface called Ririha.

Fifty-year-old Yuria has a quiet life teaching embroidery classes in her home, where she lives with her writer husband and his mother. Then one day her world is turned upside down when husband has a subarachnoid hemorrhage and upon arriving at the hospital, Yuria is met by a tearful young man who announces that he is her husband's lover.