Prologue_From the Tree
Something that happened but couldn't happen
Something that cannot be proven but exists
Ordinary people
A perfect person
Epilogue_Cotton's Day

Author's Note

“I’m only looking at you, the one being.”
The Fate of the Three Generations of 'Saviors' and the 'Human Share'

At first there were two young trees that sprouted from seeds.
Knowing no lack, it grew vigorously, withstood natural disasters, and became a magnificent forest.
But then a rare species of humans who walk on two legs appear and the trees fall one after another.
A tree that has been destroyed by a person has destroyed someone on that spot.
Jang Mi-su and Shin Bok-il are united and give birth to Il-hwa, Wol-hwa, Geum-hwa, and twins Mok-hwa and Mok-su.
One day, Little Goldfinch and her twins head into the forest as if possessed.
A tree leans over Geumhwa's head as she climbs the mountain.
Cotton runs down the mountain to call the adults, and when it returns, the gold coin is nowhere to be found.
After the gold coin goes missing, the family lives in agony with guilt.


In the spring when Mokhwa turned sixteen, scenes of suicide unfolded before her eyes as if in a dream.
I witness the death and hear the voice.
Telling him to go and save him.
After hesitating, Cotton runs.
It settles down gently with the heat.
He survives with only minor injuries.
I was dumbfounded, but only after being 'summoned' back to that world did I realize that this was not a dream.
When she sees Cotton waking up and crying, her mother, Jang Mi-su, leaves an incomprehensible message.
I wish it was gold instead.
Jang Mi-su has been saving people since she was fifteen.
For Jang Mi-soo, the only person she could save was 'barely' compared to the countless deaths she could not save.


Unlike Jang Mi-su, who cursed God in defeat and helplessness, Grandmother Im Cheon-ja finds meaning in the fact that she can save even just one person.
From the first summoning, Cotton feels the presence of the “tree that was two and became one.”
There were doubts, rebellions, and trials, but he embodies the identity of a 'broker', a being who "takes a single leaf's worth of time from a life of silence and revives a dying human being."
I work in a woodworking shop because I want to know the tree that summons me.


In the meantime, he prevents the suicide of Luna, the daughter of Ilhwa, and is surprised by Luna's words that she saw cotton during the mediation, so he decides to go find the 'only people' he has ever saved.
By observing the ordinary lives of those who have survived, we stop judging the lives and deaths of others.
And voluntarily “spreading blessings and wishes with all one’s heart.”
“We pray for the future of the dying and the living.”
After the peaceful death of Imcheonja, Mokhwa found the meaning of saving just one person.
We realize that we are a single being living this one day, a life that will never come again, and that this is something that neither gods nor trees can surpass, and that it belongs only to humans.


But life is both suffering and joy.
If humanity is a downpour, then each person is a raindrop, a snowflake in a heavy snowfall, a grain of sand on the beach.
The one thing that no one calls snow or rain, that is invisible but clearly exists, dries up or melts away in an instant.
It disappears in an instant.
Maybe he just wanted to let you know.
I'm watching you.
I am looking not at the whole of life, not at the species called humanity, but at only one being called you._From the text


“I wrote this novel to love you and me forever, even though we will disappear one day.”
The beautiful way a novelist addresses the world

The author says that the tree of immense age has seen “human folly, evil deeds, weakness, purity, helping and caring for one another, and the fleeting moments of life that love and pray and then suddenly disappear one day” (from the author’s note).
From the perspective of a tree, humans are merely beings who live for the moment.
It seems that he also wanted to talk about how, in the midst of the overwhelming scale of nature, humans are insignificant, but each and every one of those 'single people' is by no means insignificant.
It is a scene where Cotton wakes up from the mediation and goes to find the last resting place of the dead by inferring the location.


Some died alone, leaning against the wall of the stairs at the entrance of a building, where the streetlights at dawn reached.
Some people died while sleeping in their cars parked on the side of the road late at night.
Some people wake up in the early morning and see the face of someone they have known for over half a century lying next to them, and their hearts stop beating in their peaceful sleep.
Mokhwa saw all the endings, including the tragic deaths that disappeared at accident scenes or in the midst of violence, and the deaths that lived a full life and did not need to be revived.
The author's affection for humans who are barely surviving can be confirmed in the footsteps of Cotton, who leans on the steps of the building for a moment as the dead man does and then leaves behind a jug of water.


And now, through this world created by the author, the reader is forced to think again.
How will I face my life and death, contained in one vessel?
How to love.
As just one person.


Cotton remembered their last and wished for a death like his.
Therefore, I will be sad without leaving anything behind.
I will miss you so much.
You will enjoy small joys.
I will love without regrets.
That's the life cotton wants.
Like a tree that was two and then became one, life and death were also inseparable._From the text

Author's Note

I've had a wooden friend since I was seventeen.
My first friend was a ginkgo tree, which had a thinner trunk and was shorter than other street trees.
Every time I waited for the bus to go to school, I would stand next to that tree and talk to it in my heart.
It was usually a trivial story, but sometimes it revealed secrets that could not be told to anyone.
I also brought some plant nutrients from home and stuck them into the base.
I hope that tree is doing well.
If people hadn't pulled it out or cut it down, it would probably have grown a lot taller.

There was a tree friend at school too.
The trees that could be seen from the classroom window and the hallway window respectively.
I spoke to them in my heart every day, even though they were quite far away.
The wind blowing and the leaves rustling against each other looked like clapping hands.
The things I said to them back then were usually sad or upsetting, and they applauded me with all their might.

Even after becoming an adult, I placed wooden friends on my frequent walking paths, at bus stops, and in places I visited regularly.
There was always a tree that caught my eye and I couldn't help but pour out my heart.
Because the tree is always there.
I felt bad for only talking about myself, so I asked sometimes.
How long have you been here? Do you see anyone here often? What's your favorite scenery? Of course, the tree didn't answer.
I've looked closely at the trunk and crown of a tree to see how old it is, but I haven't been able to find anything out.

Even after moving to Jeju, I went for a walk every evening.
I had no choice but to meet my friend.
At that time, there was a grove of pine trees (called 'boknang' or 'pongnang' in Jeju) on the walking path.
Near the trees there was a man-made sign with the age of the trees written on it.
The recipients are usually over 300 years old.
For 300 years the tree has been there… …it must have seen it all.
Human foolishness, evil deeds, weakness, purity, helping and caring for one another, loving and praying, and then one day, suddenly disappearing, a fleeting life.

Could we say that this novel began like that?
I hope the tree friends in Yeongju, Seoul, Daejeon, and Cheonan are doing well.


I wanted to learn more about trees, so I looked up various books and information on the Internet.
But I still don't know the tree.
Even while looking at the tree, I thought of people.
To be precise, I thought of 'me'.
The more I thought about it, the darker and more damp it became, and I wanted to quit.
It felt like I was constantly digging the ground.
I didn't want to be like a stem, like a leaf, rising high into the sky, basking in the sunlight.
But I didn't want to go any deeper like a root.
I wrote every day without even knowing what I wanted.

There are many questions that have been bothering me for over ten years.
There are sentences and words that are written repeatedly.
I wanted to find answers while writing the novel.
I couldn't find the answer.
I'm just now beginning to understand the question.
What I kept asking was something I didn't want to know.
Things I want to live without knowing.
I'm afraid I'll find out the answer.
I would like to leave this as an unresolved problem and move on to another question.

Another question.
Is that possible?
I am barely a human being.
The more I write, the more I realize it.
This is our one and only life, and this day will never come again.
By the time the novel reached its conclusion, summer was just beginning.
A sudden shower pouring down from the blue sky.
I wrote this novel to love you and me forever, even though we will disappear someday.

(…) And I convey my heart to you who is looking at this sentence.
Right now, in my mind, there is a vast sky, a wide sea, a bird riding the strong wind, and a tree that just sways in one place even in the wind and rain.
There is only one person, you.
I will keep this in mind and wait for your news to arrive someday.