On behalf of "oppressed bugs everywhere," an inventive ant named Flik hires a troupe of warrior bugs to defend his bustling colony from a horde of freeloading grasshoppers led by the evil-minded Hopper.
After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.
A disturbed, aging Southern belle moves in with her sister for solace — but being face-to-face with her brutish brother-in-law accelerates her downward spiral.
Respectable schoolmaster returns from work on the eve of a wedding anniversary holiday to find a strange man dead in their bathroom and his wife missing.
A group of boys playing near the seashore in Tokyo find a goat, kill it in a tug of war for ownership, bury it with ceremony, and, except for one boy, run off in heedless laughter ready for more games.
Thomas Crimmins is a new warder, or guard, in an Irish prison. He is young, naive, and idealistic, determined to serve his country by his part in meting out justice to criminals.
Jean Wells believes she kills a man during a hit-and-run one evening. A man named Joe appears and, in exchange for keeping silent about the murder, blackmails Wells.
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual.
Raja, the son of a rich man who was cheated of his wealth by Jambu, grows up in an orphanage. He becomes a famous poet in the city with the help of Jambu's family, unaware of his past.
Five short stories.
(1) “Czas przybliża, czas oddala” – Edward recalls his unfulfilled love for Anna and, years later, writes to her sister Zofia, mistaking her for Anna.