I Will Die for You, My Darling! - Chapter 26
Chapter 26
* * *
Arietta opened her eyes in the dream. Her body felt heavy, fatigued. Her head ached slightly. ‘Why am I so tired?’
She looked around. The stove was lit. It was nighttime, and she was home. She wasn’t lying in her bed but on a narrow couch. ‘Is that why I’m stiff?’ It felt like more than that.
As her heavy head began to clear, memories returned. Recently, the bed she and her mother had shared had become Seia’s alone. Arietta slept on an old couch from the Bio-Core plant, covered with a blanket.
The reason was simple: Seia was sick.
The exact diagnosis was unknown. Most illnesses that afflicted Downstream dwellers were like that. A multitude of symptoms were simply lumped together under the vague term “contamination mutation.”
The irony was that the cause of this incurable “contamination mutation” with its myriad symptoms was obvious. The name itself said it all: the contamination that festered like mold throughout Downstream. It was unavoidable, accumulating in the body through the air they breathed and the food they ate.
Contamination could be neutralized by purifiers extracted from the Bio-Core. Purifying food and water was essential, and about once a week, they had to inhale liquid purifier through a nebulizer to remove the contamination that infiltrated their respiratory systems. The more cautious, wealthy individuals even purified their bathing water.
But even with all these precautions, some unlucky people still fell ill from the contamination.
Seia was one of them.
The illness began to manifest a few weeks before Arietta’s sixteenth birthday. Seia, who had been experiencing frequent thirst, became ravenous for water. She complained of a burning sensation in her throat. She drank any water she could find, purified or otherwise. At first, she retained some semblance of reason, but starting on Arietta’s birthday, she completely lost control.
She didn’t just drink the water; she plunged her face into the water Arietta had saved.
Arietta couldn’t let her mother drown. She struggled all day, wrestling Seia away from the water container. It was the worst birthday ever.
“Don’t put your face in it, drink it. Drink it! That’s what it’s for.”
“It doesn’t help!”
“Mother, please! Do you want to die?”
After a relentless struggle, Arietta managed to pull Seia away from the water and put her to bed. Seia’s wet hair left strange streaks across the pillow.
Arietta was breathless. It was the first time she’d ever exerted herself physically. She carefully examined her mother’s body.
“….” Looking closely, she saw wounds on Seia’s neck. They didn’t look like scrapes. They were parallel, as if the flesh beneath had melted. Seeing those wounds, Arietta’s mind went blank. She cautiously brushed her fingertips over the split skin.
The next day, the doctor came. Isaac was with him. Uncharacteristically, Arietta didn’t even glance at Isaac. She hugged her arms around herself, waiting for the doctor’s diagnosis.
“Looks like a contamination mutation.” The doctor pointed to the wounds on Seia’s neck. It was an obvious statement. “Lesions like these appear on contaminated bodies.”
“Do they all manifest like this?”
“No, I’ve never seen this before. But the way lesions appear varies from person to person.”
“Why does she crave water?”
“She said her throat feels like it’s burning. If the lesions are visible on the outside, the inside must be far worse. That’s why.”
After a moment of silence, Arietta asked, “Is there any way to cure her?”
The doctor looked at Arietta, his expression heavy. Her face was unusually tired and impassive.
“Well, since it’s caused by the Downstream air… .”
“So, as long as she breathes here, she can’t be cured.”
Seia’s once bright eyes were now clouded, like fog. Even her enduring beauty couldn’t withstand the ravages of illness. Gazing at her mother’s deteriorating form, Arietta whispered, “Mother always said she would leave Downstream when I turned sixteen.”
Seia would leave Downstream the year Arietta turned sixteen, just as she’d wished. She would leave, carried by death, to the world above. Leaving Arietta, whom she’d promised to take with her, alone on the ground.
