Yamagami is a small hamlet in Kyuushuu, the mountainous region in the south of Japan. Today, this village is inhabited only by old people still living in the rhythm of tradition and communion with nature. The return of one of the village youths, pursued by yakuza, will overturn life in this little world, spared until now from modernization. These sinister gangsters intend to seize this enchanted spot and trash it. Will Yamagami come to experience the harshness of the modern world?

Manga doesn't get much more noir than this. Benkei is just another expatriate Japanese arist living in the Big Apple. Or so it appears. As there "diabolical hard-boiled stories" show, surfaces aren't always what they seem. Flashbacks delve into sordid, secret past lives, and old scored, long festering, emerge without warning, asking to be settled.

And Benkei's secret? Maybe it's just that he's the only artist in town who isn't having fantasies of being a hitman-for-hire. He is one.