“All the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters”

“All the trees of the world are like brothers and sisters” is Yeong-hye’s quiet expression of kinship with trees, spoken to In-hye during her psychiatric hospitalization. The line briefly turns Yeong-hye’s conviction that she belongs to a nonhuman, vegetal world into an offer of comfort to her sister, even as her refusal of food and the ward’s care make their encounter painful and precarious.

The Line and Its Scene

Yeong-hye speaks in a low, calm voice beside In-hye, who has not answered her. She addresses her as “Sister,” pauses, then repeats the address before saying that the trees of the world are like siblings. Her old black sweater smells faintly of mothballs; the scene’s plain detail keeps the declaration rooted in the ward rather than separating it from her vulnerable physical condition.

In-hye does not look at Yeong-hye. She looks instead toward early-winter sunlight splintering over larches that have not yet shed all their leaves. The trees are therefore both the subject of Yeong-hye’s words and a visible presence in the scene. Her broad claim of kinship meets In-hye’s guarded attention to the landscape, making the moment intimate without resolving the distance between them.

Context of the Hospitalization

The exchange takes place against an immediate medical crisis. Yeong-hye has stopped coming to the lobby for meals and will not eat even when food is brought to the ward. After four days without eating, she has begun to dehydrate. Staff report that attempts to insert an intravenous drip provoke violence, and the doctor doubts she has been taking her medication: tablets were found held beneath her tongue when a nurse checked her mouth with a flashlight.

The earlier ward conversation makes the cost of her refusal tangible. Yeong-hye lies with a drip needle inserted into the back of her hand, her face haggard and her uncombed hair matted. In-hye asks what she was doing in the dark woods, whether she was cold, and why she will not eat anything at all. Yeong-hye answers that she is thirsty, asks for water, and then asks whether In-hye has spoken to the doctor. The contrast between those practical needs and her later kinship with trees places the line within a continuing struggle over what her body requires and what she will accept.

Sisters, Trees, and In-hye’s Response

The word “Sister” frames the statement as more than an idea about nature: Yeong-hye directs it toward In-hye, apparently intending to comfort her. Yet In-hye’s silence and refusal to look at her make the comfort incomplete. Before Yeong-hye speaks, In-hye tells herself that she must not be weak and that Yeong-hye is a burden she cannot bear. The scene holds this private strain beside Yeong-hye’s tender address, without suggesting that either erases the other.

The trees suggest a form of belonging that does not depend on ordinary human family roles. By imagining them as brothers and sisters, Yeong-hye extends kinship beyond people and into the natural world; the larches outside the ward give that language a concrete counterpart. The line thus brings her vegetal orientation into contact with the sisters’ relationship, offering a brief bond at a time when illness, refusal, and care have made closeness difficult.