Mikako Nagamine and Noboru Terao are middle-school classmates on the edge of confessing when Mikako is chosen to crew a mecha in humanity's war against the alien Tarsians. Her ship pushes farther and farther from Earth, and the cell-phone messages that are the only thing left between them take months, then years, to arrive. This manga retells Makoto Shinkai's short film, drawn by Mizu Sahara.