For the eighteen-year-old Hatsue, love meant something primal and undeniable. "What was love if it wasn't the instinct she felt to be on the moss inside the cedar tree with this boy she had always known?" she pondered. He was intertwined with the essence of these woods and beaches, a boy who exuded the scent of the forest. To her, identity was crafted more by the land than lineage—should living in this place define one's true nature, then Ishmael was woven into her being as intimately as her Japanese heritage. She understood deeply that for both herself and Ishmael, "[W]e're trapped inside this tree."

Marked by the sting of racial prejudice, Hatsue discovered in her high school years that "the truth was a burden to carry in silence." Like every soul on the island, she mastered the art of "persisting in the pretense," threading her life with the unspoken truths that shadowed her existence.