It was the year nineteen-sixty eight. An asocial yet intelligent boy named Albert McLaren still relived symptoms of his mysterious childhood illness. Moreover, a reaction from ingesting a poisonous slug at seven-years old, followed by excruciating pain and mucus excreting from his pores and navel. These would occur at unexpected moments. He falls for a fellow classmate, Elma-Rosanne Glennwich, as she does him, but tenses at the consideration that his "secret deformity" will act as a hinder between them.