"A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure. Asakawa, a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan Tokyo teeming with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a volcanic island, and a countryside...

Lito Macaraeg, a former chauffeur for Philippine president Corazon Aquino, reaches out to his estranged journalist son from his nursing home in Manila, offering him a scoop about a secret meeting between Imelda Marcos and Aquino, whose husband was allegedly murdered by Marcos and her husband.