Synopsis
The ‘Château de la reine’, ‘the Queen’s Palace’, is an extremely luxurious hotel, one of the best in Paris. Booked into suites there are four Japanese on a very expensive tour. Ukyo Kitashirakawa is an extremely popular novelist, several of whose works have been filmed. With them is Reiko, the president of the travel company, who will act as their tour guide.
Arriving on the same day is another group from Japan. Booked through the same travel company, there are five of them, with Togawa as their guide. Their tour is much, much cheaper than that of Ukyo and the others.
The two groups, however, are not going to meet; indeed, they must not meet. Reiko’s company is in dire financial straits, and as a desperate measure to stave off bankruptcy she has even managed to involve the hotel in a scheme to double-book the tour.
Her audacious plan is to book the two tours simultaneously into the same set of rooms. The tourists, of course, will not know this; one group will be in the rooms during the day and another at night. Reiko and Togawa are secretly in touch by cell phone, and being very careful not to let the two groups encounter one another. If all goes well, and they get paid the double fee, the company will manage to survive. One would never expect the Château de la reine to be complicit in the tightrope-walking coordination that chicanery of this kind will require, but for some reason the hotel is going along.
As the days go by, however, the tightrope begins to fray. The tourists find things that don’t belong to them, and after an incident involving an attic room the members of the cheap tour begin to have doubts. Togawa becomes friendly with his charges, his conscience begins to bother him, and he begs Reiko to abandon the scheme.
Ukyo finds inspiration amid the excitement, and begins to write. The editors Katori and Hayami in the cheaper tour group discover his manuscript. As it turns out, they have heard rumors that Ukyo is beginning a new book and have come to Paris to find him...and now they open a drawer to find his actual manuscript. They begin to read...
Soon after Ukyo returns to his room, learns the whole story, and murmurs, ‘Truth is stranger than fiction. I’m the witness to that.’
And now everything falls apart. They all return to their hotel. Toyama bows deeply in apology, while Reiko reacts to her customers’ fury with a defiant anger of her own. It is Ukyo who calms her down, and under his gentlemanly influence the others forget their anger as well.
And now the gods of literature descend again. How will their encounter with him change the destinies of all the others?