An old man Woon-hak visits a pine tree forest where his wife is buried and runs into his former young master, who died 60 years ago. After sending off his pregnant lover to another man, the young master marches on to join the group of guerillas but is soon ambushed and killed. Woon-hak, who takes in the pregnant woman as his wife, has lived his whole life in unrequited love. Through a dreamlike dialogue between the young master and aged Woon-hak, the author shows how one can respect one another even though they can’t completely understand each other, and that the three have actually survived “together,” leaping over the crossroad of life and death.

The author sheds light on the beings that sway in between decline and extinction, the ones who cherish even the “life that barely continues.” However, the author does not look down on the lowest moment of our lives, but becomes a part of it, as parents who adore their vegetative state son, a mid-aged daughters growing old along with their aged mother, a friend to old ladies in their eighties. She asks “For what have you been living your life?” The author extracts human dignity from the lives at their worst and finds the eternal flame of hope.