Chapter 14 — The Last Seed Keeper

Two days after the Council approved the caravan, Khe Mien spent an entire evening in the Granary, alone, doing what she knew she had to do but had been putting off for days because she didn't want to face it: making a list of the bloodlines that were in danger of being lost forever if the situation didn't improve in time.

She walked along the rows of shelves, stopping at each box with a red mark, opened the lid, counted the remaining seeds, and compared them with the most recent germination rate records. She had done this job hundreds of times throughout her career, but tonight, each number she recorded carried a different weight — no longer abstract numbers in a routine report, but a sentence hanging over the heads of the plant life she had spent her life protecting.

The Red Bell variety—the strain she had successfully hand-pollinated at age twelve, the strain that had given her her first professional pride—had only thirty-one seeds left, the most recent germination rate measured at seventy-nine percent, down from eighty-seven percent the year before.

The Bach Diep bean line, the first seed that Co Diem Ninh placed in her palm when she was nine years old, was even better with sixty-two seeds, but the germination rate had also dropped to eighty-three percent.

And worst of all, the Cuu Tam rice variety—the variety that she had personally successfully dealt with the pest attack when she was seventeen, the variety located in the area closest to the pipeline from the Respiratory Station—only had nineteen seeds left, the germination rate had dropped to an alarming sixty-four percent.

Khe Mien sat down on Co Diem Ninh's old wooden chair, looked at the three boxes of seeds placed in front of her under the pale yellow light, and for the first time since the Root Rot Disease was discovered, she allowed herself to fully feel the fear that she had been trying to suppress for many days to keep her spirits up before the Council and the community.

If these lineages are lost, they will never come back. It's not like a failed crop can be sown again next year. It's not like a building that can be rebuilt from scratch. They were the last links of a genetic chain that had existed for thousands of years, through the Great Cataclysm, through nearly a hundred years inside the Green Dome, and once that last link was broken, no amount of technology or effort could recreate them from nothing.

She thought of Co Diem Ninh's words, ten years ago, when she first put the Bach Diep bean seed in her hand: *It is not a thing. It is a promise.* And now, that promise is in danger of being broken, not because Khe Mien broke the promise, but because a system bigger than her, older than her, is gradually weakening in a way that no single individual can fix on their own.

She took out her notebook and did not write her thoughts as usual, but wrote a decision.

The next morning, she found her father at the Respiratory Station, waiting until he finished his shift to talk privately.

"I want to lead the caravan," she said directly, without beating around the bush.

Vu Dinh Khoat stood still, and for a moment, Khe Mien clearly saw the naked fear that flashed across his face — the kind of fear that she knew had been ingrained in him since the day her mother died, the fear of someone who had lost the most important person in her life because of the system she believed in, and now had to face the possibility of losing another important person.

"No," he said, his voice unusually hard, something Khe Mien rarely heard from his father. "You can't go. You are the only Seed Keeper of the Green Dome. If you go and don't return, who will take care of the Seed Store? Who will make the decisions that only you know enough to make?"

"It's because you're the Seed Keeper that you're the one who needs to go," Khe Mien countered, her voice firm but not lacking in gentleness as she saw the pain in her father's eyes. "Who else in the Green Dome do you think can accurately identify which breeds are worth trading for, which breeds we really need to look for in the Sand Dome? Who else has the knowledge to evaluate the quality of new seeds before bringing them into the Seed Store, to make sure we don't bring in strains that are diseased or unsuitable for our conditions? This is not a job I can entrust to someone else, father. This is precisely a job only I can do."

“Then train someone,” Vu Dinh Khoat said, his voice almost pleading. "Dieu Lam, or someone else. You can stay and guide remotely via radio—"

"I know that's not realistic," Khe Mien interrupted, gently but firmly. "Training someone enough to replace you in this job takes years, not weeks before the group departs. And even if it were possible, evaluating seeds, negotiating exchanges, making decisions on the spot — that's not something that can be directed over the air when the decision-maker isn't around to see and touch what's being considered."

Her father was silent for a long moment, looking away, and Khe Mien could see his shoulders tremble slightly — not from anger, but from a pain he was trying to suppress.

“I lost your mother to this system,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. "I don't think I can bear to lose another child, to the same system, just in a different way."

Khe Mien walked over and hugged her father, feeling the trembling in his body that she had rarely seen since she was a child.

“I understand your fear,” she said, her voice choking as well. "But dad, if I stay because I'm afraid, while these lineages - what my mother, Ms. Diem Ninh, and so many previous generations have worked so hard to preserve - disappear forever just because I don't have the courage to do what needs to be done, then I think that's the thing I'll never be able to forgive myself. I'm not going because I'm not afraid, dad. I'm going because I'm afraid of something more than the fear of death - I'm afraid to live the rest of my life knowing that I had the chance to save what could never be replaced, but I chose safety over responsibility."

Vu Dinh Khoat hugged his daughter tighter, saying nothing for a long time, only letting the rare tears of a man who rarely showed emotions fall onto her shoulder.

"I won't stop you anymore," he said finally, his voice still shaking but there was an acceptance in it. "But you have to promise me one thing."

"What?"

"Promise me that I will not risk my life for a single seed, no matter how precious. Promise me that when I have to choose between returning safely and bringing back a little something more, I will always choose to return. Because I learned something painful from your mother's death, Khe Mien: no seed, no system, is worth more than the life of the person I love."

Khe Mien nodded and squeezed her father's hand. "I promise."

That afternoon, Khe Mien went to the greenhouse to inform Dieu Lam before the news spread throughout the Green Dome through unofficial routes. She found her friend bent over examining a tray of seedlings, her sleeves rolled up, a few streaks of dirt on her cheeks.

"I will lead the caravan to Vom Cat," Khe Mien said directly, without beating around the bush, knowing that beating around the bush would only make this more difficult for both of them.

Dieu Lam stood up straight, still holding the small shovel, and for a long moment, she said nothing, just looked at her friend as if trying to confirm that she heard correctly.

"Are you sure?" she finally asked, her voice much quieter than usual.

"I'm sure," Khe Mien replied. "No one else can do that job better than me, Dieu Lam. I've thought it over."

Dieu Lam put down the shovel, walked over and hugged her friend, squeezing so tightly that Khe Mien could barely breathe for a few seconds. "I hate this," she said, her voice choking. "I hate that you have to go, hate that Dong Tro exists, hate that we can't just live in peace like every year before. But I also know, if I were in your position, I would probably make the same decision, even though I would never be as brave as you."

"You're no less brave," Khe Mien said, patting his friend's back. "You stay, keep the Central Nursery running while I'm gone. That's also a kind of courage — the courage to continue with your daily routine, even when everything around you is uncertain."

"Do you promise to return?" Dieu Lam asked, taking a step back, looking straight into your eyes.

“I promise,” Khe Mien said, and for the second time that day, she repeated a promise she knew she would have to do her best to keep.

It was a promise she didn't know if she could keep, but that night, writing in her notebook, she wrote it down next to another promise she'd carried since she was nine years old, as if placing two vows side by side, to remind herself that responsibility for the irreplaceable should never come at the cost of the life of the person carrying it:

*Each seed is a promise. But I am also a promise, to my father, to those who remain. I will find a way to keep both.*