After apprenticing for ten years under the great Yakumo Yurakutei VIII, Yotaro has finally become a shin''uchi and taken the name Sukeroku, a lineage with its own fraught history. But the newly-minted Sukeroku III cannot rest on his laurels for long, as ghosts from his own past come to haunt him in the wake of his achievement. With his family and his art on the line, can he find his way forward? Or will he be doomed to mediocrity as the rakugo tradition languishes? The story of the next generation begins here.