Keisuke and Shizuko grew up by the Kitakami river and came to fall in love before they knew it. Eighteen years ago, Shizuko was left an orphan and was taken in by Keisuke's parents, who had raised her as their own child. At the riverside when the cherry blossoms are falling, Keisuke, now enrolled in university, promises Shizuko that he will tell his parents about them at the start of the summer vacation. He then sets off for Tokyo...
Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In the last stage of her life, she meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her life.