A husband is in the kitchen making pasta at 10:30 a.m. when his phone rings. He picks up thinking it could be a job offer, but finds he doesn’t recognize the woman’s voice on the other end of the line who asks for ten minutes of his time. He asks if she was trying to reach someone else and she replies no and that she would like them to come to an understanding about their feelings. When he tells her he’s cooking and needs to go, she says she’ll call back later. He tells her not to bother if she’s selling something, as he’s unemployed, and she says she knows. He tries to question her but she hangs up on him abruptly. 

After a stunned pause, the man returns to his pasta, which was overcooked thanks to the interruption, and as he eats he thinks about the stranger’s peculiar ten-minute request. His phone rings again at 11:30 a.m. right as he finishes his ironing and he picks up and finds it’s his wife calling to tell him about a job opportunity. The position is at a magazine company for young girls and he would brush up poetry submissions for publication. He tells her he’s waiting to hear back from several law firms, but that if that falls through he will consider the position. Then, she asks him to consider not taking a job after all, as her salary can support the both of them, and reminds him to look for their lost cat in the yard of the abandoned house at the end of the passage behind their house. 

When he hangs up, he begins to contemplate where he had gone wrong in his life. He had been a gifted young student who went on to a top law school and then carried on to a job at a firm he would eventually quit for no particular reason, leaving him unemployed. 

At 12:30 p.m., he goes grocery shopping and when he returns home to put the groceries away his phone rings for a third time. He answers and finds it’s the woman from earlier and he tells her he’s done with his spaghetti but now needs to look for a cat. She asks again for ten minutes of his time and he gives in. She tells him that she knows all about his life and asks him to guess what she looks like, based on her voice. He guesses that she’s a native Tokyoite in her late twenties in a troubled marriage. She tells him that she used to have a thing for him and that she’s currently naked in bed. She begins to tell him more and he protests before hanging up. Ten minutes later, the phone rings again, but he doesn’t pick up. 

Before 2 p.m., he climbs into the overgrown and neglected passage and wonders why his wife would have so much knowledge about the area. As he walks down the passage, he stares into the neighboring backyards he passes until he reaches the vacant house at the end of the path. The house is a new two-story structure that already shows signs of weathering and a stone statue of a bird sits in the otherwise weed-filled front yard. He smokes a cigarette and then turns when he hears a voice behind him to find a sixteen-year-old girl who asks for a cigarette. He tells her he’s looking for his cat and after hearing his description she tells him she’s seen his cat crossing into the vacant house’s yard. They enter the gate into the Suzuki family’s yard, which overlooks the vacant lot, and the girl tells him how the father is a professor who is on TV and how the Miyawaki family abandoned the house next door. 

The girl goes to get a cola from her house and when she returns she’s wearing a bikini. She tells him she’s sixteen and taking a break from school while her leg heals from a biking accident. He lies down in the grass and closes his eyes and thinks about the woman on the phone earlier and wonders if he had known her. The girl in the yard whispers in his ear and asks him what he thinks about death. He falls asleep and when he wakes up he’s alone and he walks home. 

Back at home, the phone rings at 5:30 p.m. while he’s preparing dinner, but he chooses not to pick up. His wife comes home at 7:30 p.m. and when he tells her he failed to find the cat she accuses him of killing it. When she begins to cry despite him maintaining he didn’t commit this crime, he goes to the kitchen and chugs a beer before writing a poem about the lost cat. The phone rings again and when he asks his wife to pick it up she refuses. After counting twenty-four rings, he loses track and decides he cannot keep counting forever.