The story has 3 different parts, but they're all related.
The first part is about a young woman who loses her parents in a car accident. She suffers burn scars from the aftermath and her fiancee leaves her too. Her neighbour, a divorced man with a son, helps her and they become very close. Later on, she finds out she's pregnant with her ex-fiancee's child, but having this child would cost her life. By then, the man and her have feelings for each other, and he begs her not to have the baby. But she does so anyway...
The second and third part is about the woman's children.
As predicted, the mom passed away after giving birth to twin daughters. But one was kidnapped as a child, and the man, who is now hospitalized, harbours this regret until his eventual death, where he is reunited with the mom. The girl who's left behind is taken care of by her brother, the man's son.
The girl is a happy, mute girl starting out as a transfer student in middle school. She befriends these two other misfit students and they form a band together with her brother as the fourth member. Those two other students -- one who is a bullied stuttering boy and the other a delinquent girl who had an abusive father -- have their own grievances, but they are able to overcome it with the mute girl's warmth and love. They perform at the music festival, which was actually their last performance together as the stuttering boy is moving away and the delinquent girl will drop out to take care of her mother. Amidst this was when the father passed away, and so out of grief, the brother kissed the girl. He moves out in regret of breaking the trust between them.
The third part is about the lost twin, who was taken in to an orphanage by the director but was also sexually abused by him. She confesses about this to the other director lady (possibly the man's partner, or just a business partner) but was scolded off, and so she lived like this until the present day...
The director, in an odd moment of clarity, gives a knife to the girl and asks her to kill him. She stabs and kills him, and flees. She happens upon the brother who was singing a song that was written by his father and the girls' mother. Afterwards she is sitting alone in an alleyway, and coincidentally her mute twin was walking by and saw her. The mute girl brings the twin home for what should've been a happy reunion, but instead the twin had an angry outburst -- angry that the mute girl was much better off, angry that their mom gave birth to her. The mute girl gives her the comfort and love that she was missing this whole time, and they heal together.
The next day, the lost twin visits their old vacation home to see the message their mother left behind. She returns with a renewed sense of belonging and reassurance, but finds out that the mute twin went to visit her orphanage. The director lady, jealous and angry at the twin for taking and killing the director whom she had loved, stabs the mute girl thinking that was the twin. The mute girl conveys that she loves the twin, and the twin goes to hug the lady.
Thankfully the mute girl survives, and in the last chapter the misfit friends and brother are celebrating the twins' birthday.
I don't know if it's my summary that's all over the place, but the haphazard storyline is basically everything that happened. There are many plotholes or conveniences that don't make sense, but there is no doubt that this story really touched me. It's the resilience of the characters to continue on despite all the hardships that made me so emotional.
JH really has a way to draw and write about hardship and perseverance -- yet at the same time I hate how he loves to make his characters suffer. Give them a break!
(-12)
