How To Feel Pain

In the fading glow of the Taisho era, where tradition clashes with modernity and shadows linger in every corner of grand estates, Seiichi Yoshii arrives at the Tanizaki household with little more than his meager belongings and a soul weighed down by unspoken trauma. Hired as a servant, he is immediately disheartened by the peculiar family he must now serve—a fiercely overprotective mother who hovers like a guardian hawk, and her son, Minoru, whose body is a patchwork of old scars and fresh wounds. Yet what unsettles Yoshii most is not the boy's battered appearance, but the unsettling truth behind it: Minoru feels no physical pain whatsoever, living in a world where injury carries no warning and danger leaves no sting. As days pass within the mansion's creaking corridors, Yoshii's initial wariness gives way to quiet observation. He begins to see past Minoru's grotesque marring to the gentle spirit beneath—a young man who, despite his peculiar affliction, extends kindness without expectation and endures his condition with an unnerving grace. Through shared silences and small acts of care, Yoshii finds himself drawn to his master's resilience, his own hardened heart slowly yielding to the boy's unassuming warmth. But while Minoru's flesh bears every cut and bruise visible to the eye, Yoshii carries his own wounds far deeper—invisible lacerations carved by a past he cannot escape. In this delicate dance between master and servant, a profound question takes root: can a boy who has never known the pang of a st믭 toe or the fire of a fresh wound teach a man to finally feel the ache of his own buried grief? As two fractured souls orbit one another, their bond becomes a fragile thread that may either mend what is broken or unravel them both entirely.