Futaba meets her first crush again three years after he disappeared from her school life. Kou now uses a different surname and seems colder than the boy she remembers. Their reunion asks whether affection for someone in the past can survive discovering the person he has become.
Futaba has also changed the way she presents herself around other people. The reunion therefore concerns two lives that continued during their separation, rather than a romance waiting untouched for its next chapter. New friends and family circumstances give their old connection a different setting.
Kou challenges the way Futaba keeps her school friendships on the surface. He knew her before she adopted that approach, giving their new conversations a history other classmates do not share. That history matters even when an encounter puts their faces almost together: the reasons each has changed still have to be understood.