Chapter 10 — The Last Seed Keeper

The late Diem Ninh died on a simulated winter morning, when the Green Dome's lighting system had just switched to a shorter day mode to simulate the natural crop cycle, but no one in the Dome could clearly remember its true appearance.

She did not die in the Grain Warehouse, as Khe Mien sometimes imagined in her vague dreams of the future — there was no scene of her collapsing among the shelves, no panic or belated emergency treatment. She died in her sleep, in the small apartment where she had lived alone for decades since her partner — a Respiratory Station technician whom Khe Mien only knew through a few old photos — passed away long before Khe Mien was born.

The neighbor discovered that when he brought breakfast as usual, he saw Co Diem Ninh lying quietly in bed, her face so peaceful that at first he thought she was just sleeping deeper than usual.

Khe Mien received the news while in the middle of a routine check in the Seed Warehouse, and in that moment, she clearly remembered how long she stood motionless, still holding a tray of seeds that had not yet been put down, before her body began to react — not with tears right away, but with a cold feeling that spread from her chest to all over her body, as if she had just stepped to the edge of the Filtration Roof again, directly facing a void that could not be filled.

"I knew this was coming," she told her father that night, her voice still shaking, "but I didn't think it would come so quickly. Just a few months after you officially handed over the mantle."

"Perhaps," Vu Dinh Khoat said, holding his daughter tightly in his arms in a way he hadn't done since she was a child, "it was because she knew time was running out that she chose to give it back so early, so that you would have enough time to stand before having to stand completely alone."

Green Dome's funeral was unlike what Khe Mien had read about funeral rites before the Great Change in old history books — there was no large cemetery, no coffins buried deep in the ground, because Green Dome's land, though seemingly spacious with long rows of terraced fields, was actually too precious a resource to dedicate to the deceased in that way.

Instead, each person who died in the Green Dome was cremated, and their ashes were carefully mixed into the soil of a special plant — not a food plant, but a memorial plant planted specifically at the edge of the highest terraced field, closer to the Filter Roof than any other cultivated area, where the light filtering through was the clearest. The Green Dome people called that area the Garden of Ashes, and each tree in that garden bore the name of a deceased person, growing from their remains.

The ceremony took place in the afternoon, when the lights simulating sunset were extended as on the most solemn occasions. Almost the entire Green Dome community was present — not because everyone was close to Co Diem Ninh, but because for more than forty years, there was hardly a family in the Green Dome who had not benefited, directly or indirectly, from her quiet work in the Grain Warehouse.

Bien Ba Uy delivered a short eulogy, emphasizing Co Diem Ninh's contributions to maintaining and expanding the biodiversity of Kho Hao over many decades. Su Dinh Lam, standing in the front row, kept a quiet and solemn expression throughout the ceremony — Khe Mien, even though she was immersed in her own pain, still noticed that he stood there longer than many others after the ceremony officially ended, as if he was calculating something heavy in his mind that he did not share with anyone.

Khe Mien, in turn, walked up to the prepared small tree grave, where a sapling — a small tree with white flowers, folk name Bach Lan Vom, chosen specifically for the Ash Garden because of its ability to grow slowly but steadfastly, living longer than most other plants in the Green Arch — was ready to be planted, its roots wrapped in a special layer of soil that had been ritually mixed with Co Diem Ninh's ashes.

Khe Mien's hands trembled slightly as she took the sapling from the hand of the person in charge of the ceremony, placed it in the pre-dug soil hole, and then slowly covered it with soil - a job she had done hundreds, thousands of times with other seedlings during the ten years of her apprenticeship, but had never carried such a weight as this.

"I promise to take care of him," she whispered, low enough for only her to hear, "like I took care of you."

Before everyone dispersed, Dieu Lam held Khe Mien's hand tightly for a long time, saying nothing, just standing next to her friend as a quiet fulcrum in the gradually thinning crowd. That's what Khe Mien appreciates most about her best friend - Dieu Lam doesn't try to find flowery words of comfort, doesn't try to fill the silence with empty words, is simply there, and sometimes, that's all a person needs.

Su Dinh Lam was one of the last people to leave Ash Garden. Before leaving, he stopped in front of Khe Mien and nodded in a formal way he rarely showed.

"Co Diem Ninh once told me, many years ago, that she had found someone worthy to hand over to the Nut Store," he said, his voice dry but not without sincerity. "I'm not one to believe compliments easily, you know. But over the years, I've seen enough to believe she's right."

"Thank you," Khe Mien replied, a bit surprised by the rare warmth in her voice.

"Don't thank me yet," Su Dinh Lam said, a bit of sternness returning to his eyes. "I will still be the one asking the hard questions every time you need more water, more energy for the Grain Warehouse. That's not because I don't believe in you. It's because the Green Dome needs both those who believe and those who always ask 'at what cost'. Co Diem Ninh understands that. I hope you will understand too, with time." He nodded one last time and walked away, leaving Khe Mien standing there, contemplating the words he had just heard amidst the still fresh pain.

After the ceremony, when most people had returned home, Khe Mien was left alone by the sapling tree, sitting on the cool ground of the Ash Garden, looking out over the panoramic terraces stretching below, the green strips cascading up to near Roof Filter, where the artificial light was gradually turning purple at night.

She thought about the past ten years — about the first Bach Diep bean seed in the palm of her nine-year-old hand, about the first time she stood in front of the glass looking out at Dong Tro, about the three times she tried to pollinate the Red Bell variety, about the unfinished story about the Original Seed Store and the name Thien Ho that she still didn't fully understand the meaning of, about yesterday afternoon when Co Diem Ninh gave her the Original Seed and said her last words about looking outside the Green Dome before it was too late.

Now, all that responsibility falls entirely on her shoulders, there is no one left to ask "what do you think this is" every time she encounters a new problem. She is the final answer now.

On the way back from Vuon Tro, passing by the lower strip of terraced fields — the rice growing area close to the pipeline system from the Respiratory Station — Khe Mien suddenly stopped walking. Something in the corner of her eye registered, even though her mind was still drowning in pain and thoughts of the past, making her turn her head to take a closer look.

A small row of rice, not too prominent among a large strip of green fields, has an unusual slightly yellow leaf color at the base, completely different from the healthy green color of the surrounding rows of rice. Not the yellow of ripe rice—it was too early in the season for the rice to be ripe—but a pale shade of yellow, like a sign of malnutrition, or perhaps something else she didn't have enough data to determine yet.

On a normal day, Khe Mien might have stopped immediately, knelt down to examine more closely, taken notes in a notebook, and maybe taken a soil sample for analysis that night. But today, amidst the still too fresh pain of losing the teacher who had taught her for ten years, she just stood there for a moment, looking at that unusual yellow row of rice, remembering it in her mind as something to check tomorrow, then continued walking, leaving it behind in the gradually falling darkness of the evening, not knowing that it was the first sign, small and quiet, of something that would completely change her life in the years to come.

That night, writing in her notebook, Khe Mien did not write about work, did not write about seeds or germination rates, for the first time since she started taking notes ten years ago.

*She's gone. But I still hear your voice every time I walk into the Granary. I think that's the true meaning of giving back a promise — it never really leaves the person who gave it, it just finds a new pair of hands to continue living.*

*Tomorrow I will check the rice rows in the low fields. Probably nothing. But she always taught her children: never ignore a small sign, no matter how hard the day is.*