Mansaku Takada

In summer, Nagisa and Natsuo meet by the sea. Their vacant gazes reflect each other as they exchange awkward words and wade into the rain-drenched ocean. In winter, Li, a screenwriter, travels to a snow-covered village. There, she finds a guesthouse run by Benzo.

Satoko is a 15-year-old junior high school student. After a brief encounter with herclassmate Hayase at the ENT clinic, she begins to write a story sparked by herfeelings for him. Satoko is a 35-year-old working at a film publicity company. After being stabbed bythe wife of her married lover and hospitalized, she starts writing a story. Satoko is a 55-year-old housewife. On the last day of making lunchboxes for herthree sons, she remembers her childhood dream of becoming a writer and beginsto write.

Nishi, a former delinquent and an ex-convict, runs a countryside rehabilitation facility for juvenile delinquents where they grow vegetables and do community work. Kaito, a junior high school delinquent who hangs out with criminals, is sent to Nishi's facility after vandalizing his school. Nishi tries his best to straighten out Kaito, but his old-fashioned and violent methods eventually cause his troubled past to get media attention.

Taciturn Yuki is our prickly protagonist. An 18-year-old who served time at a juvenile reformatory, after returning to the care of his father,his longing for a mother he barely knew and his frustrations push him to leave home and retrace his memories to a mountain forest where his aunt Noriko lives at a mountain campsite. It was there, as a child, that Yuki witnessed a creature he couldn’t identify amidst the trees at dawn, something which left him sensitive to the various presences in the world. It is there he hopes that reconnecting with his past may bring a sense of peace. Meanwhile, Noriko and the other adults around him become increasingly frustrated trying to understand what Yuki is thinking.

This sweeping saga chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive.