When the last flower falls

In a town where an ancient tree holds memories rather than just sap, Lia is a painter who forgets everything every day — except the face of a man she never knew. When Noah, an outsider carrying that same face, arrives in the city, the two find themselves trapped in a cycle of love and oblivion controlled, in secret, by the enigmatic lady of the gallery — guardian who has been feeding on this cycle for centuries to continue existing (Part 1). Noah chooses to sacrifice himself to free Leah, and a new tree is born, free of debt. The city prospers; the guardian, now named Alba, finally grows old and learns to tell the truth — until she dies, revealing to Leah that there is an even older, hungry tree beyond the mountains, and that perhaps Noah hasn't disappeared completely (Part 2). Lia sets out in search of him, but the journey comes at a price: she finds Noah caught in a middle ground between life and death, and the two live out their time of happiness in haste, while a pneumonia contracted on the crossing silently advances. Lia dies in the winter — and the book ends not with tragedy, but with reunion: the two reunite whole, free from the tree, in what the story simply calls "the true beginning they both always deserved" (Part 3). It is, at its core, a story about the price of loving under a system that feeds on oblivion — and about two generations of people (Lia/Noah and, before them, Alba herself) choosing, each in their own way, to pay that price for love.