A-Mien, a kind, loving 50-year-old woman, runs a grocery store in a remote mountain village. In her store she keeps a notebook, her "conscience accounting book," to keep a tally of how much money customers owe her, as she very often excuses elementary-school students from paying, telling them: "Don't worry about it. Just pay me next time!" One day, a mysterious wanderer, Jimmy, appears in the small village and Midori the postman mistakes him for a priest. Since he looks like a foreigner, A-Mien assumes that he knows English and asks him to give her and Yabi, an orphan, English classes; why she's interested in learning English is unknown. Meanwhile, Midori feels anxious because A-Mien is spending so much time away from her store. With the start of the English classes, a sense of change goes throughout the village, stirring up much curiosity among the fellow villagers. As the story unfolds, it turns out that A-Mien, Midori, Jimmy, and Yabi have been carrying loads of bottled-up guilt and regret for much too long. On Christmas Eve, A-Mien enters the church to finally confront her guilt. She hesitates, then begins in her broken English: "God, I have a sin..."