Asami is missing. The Tokyo police have their hands full with a serial killer, so two people set out to find her: her boyfriend, aspiring j-horror filmmaker Kotaro, and her new girlfriend, cosplayer Maiko. Trouble is, he thinks she's shallow, and she thinks he's a stuck-up bore. The grudging team-up is getting nowhere fast, but neither are Inspector Arakawa and his young protégé Ryohei with their case. Still, Arakawa's been through enough darkness in his own life to know the city sometimes discloses patterns linking the most disparate events in the unlikeliest of ways. Can he perceive the pattern in time?