The 10-volume saga following a young boy in the aftermath of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack continues. Volume eight opens in 1950. Gen is now in middle school, where he meets both a progressive-minded schoolteacher at odds with his conservative superiors and a brilliant but cynical classmate who challenges the teacher's values at every turn. Gen also finds himself confronting the corrosive effects of post-war Hiroshima society and the drugs and arms industry.