After he's expelled from regular housing for hiding a stray cat, Sorata Kanda ends up at Sakura Hall, the dorm where Suimei University of the Arts sends its problem students. There he's assigned to look after Mashiro Shiina, a transfer student whose prodigious talent as an artist comes wrapped in near-total helplessness at everyday life: she can't cook, can't do laundry, can't manage on her own. Sorata reluctantly takes the job, and the dorm's other misfit residents pull him further into their orbit.