Chapter 5 — The Last Seed Keeper

Three years passed in a way that Khe Mien would later remember as one long continuous season rather than a series of individual days — sowing, cultivating, harvesting, then sowing again, with each cycle she understood a little more deeply the work that Co Diem Ninh had entrusted to her. At the age of twelve, she was no longer a child who only knew how to take notes and observe. She was able to mix the soil in the right proportions for each variety, read the moisture readings on the Grain Warehouse control panel without being asked, and best of all, she started being assigned real tasks — no longer simulated exercises, but work with real consequences.

"Today you will do this on your own, without me by your side," Co Diem Ninh said, placing in front of Khe Mien a small tray containing several pots of young seedlings with delicate, light green leaves, each marked with a different colored cloth tape tied around the stem. "Red Bell tomato variety. Do you know this strain?"

"Ancient lines, there are less than fifty seeds left in the Warehouse," Khe Mien replied immediately, without thinking — she had memorized the list of rare lines a long time ago, partly because Co Diem Ninh asked, partly because she herself found memorizing it like keeping a dictionary alive in her head. "Does not self-pollinate well in greenhouse environments because of the lack of natural pollinating insects."

"Yes. So today you will do what bees once did for our ancestors, before bees almost disappeared from the Arches." Co Diem Ninh gave her a small brush with soft bristles and a wooden handle that was worn smooth from passing through the hands of many generations of previous seed keepers. "Hand pollination. You take pollen from the male flower, transfer it to the stigma of the female flower, at the right time when the flower blooms, neither early nor late. If you do it a little wrong, the flower will not bear fruit. Without fruit, this strain will not have any more seeds this season."

"What if I break it?" Khe Mien asked, holding the paintbrush in her hand but not daring to touch the tiny flower blooming in front of her.

"Then you'll learn something, and next season you'll do better — as long as you have the seed to try again." Co Diem Ninh looked at her, his eyes did not show any previous blame, only a calm trust that made Khe Mien feel both encouraged and pressured more than any stern warning. "But the Red Bells only have enough flowers left for you to try three times this season. Three times, no more. I'll be in the next room if you need to ask, but the job is yours."

On the first try, Khe Mien did it too quickly. She shook her hand as she put the tip of the brush into the middle of the male flower. The pollen stuck unevenly, part of it spilled onto the soil tray below instead of being fully transferred to the female flower. When she checked again three days later, the female flower was withered with no sign of fruit set.

She stood in front of the potted plant, the feeling of failure weighing more heavily than she expected, even though she knew clearly that this was only one of three allowed attempts. She didn't cry — Co Diem Ninh once taught that tears don't help seeds germinate faster — but she stood there for a long time, watching the flower wither, feeling something akin to shame, even though there was no one to witness it but herself.

"What did I do wrong? Do you know?" Co Diem Ninh asked when Khe Mien came to her, her voice had no intention of blaming.

"I was in a hurry," Khe Mien admitted. "I'm afraid that if I slow down, the flowers will bloom too long and then wither, so I do it quickly, but doing it too quickly makes me do it carelessly."

"So what will you do next time?"

"I'll... slow down. But not so slow that I'll miss the right time for the flowers to bloom." Khe Mien thought about it, then continued, her voice more certain. "I think the problem is not whether it's fast or slow, but that I don't really observe carefully before starting to do things. I'm looking and doing things at the same time, so my hands can't keep up with my eyes."

Co Diem Ninh nodded, a short nod, but Khe Mien knew her well enough to know that it was a sign of true satisfaction, not formal comfort for a child who had just failed.

On her second try, she went much slower — so slow, that by the time she finished transferring the pollen, the female flower was already beginning to show signs of being past its ideal time of pollination, its delicate petals curling slightly at the edges, a subtle sign that only a close observer would notice. Three days later, young fruits form, but are smaller than normal and grow sideways, a sign that pollination was not completely successful even if it occurred.

"Not bad," Co Diem Ninh commented when Khe Mien reported the results, her voice calm as usual. "But I have one more try. What do you think I'm missing this time?"

Khe Mien sat quietly for a long time in the Grain Warehouse, looking out the small window where the artificial light simulating afternoon was gradually changing color, thinking about the previous two attempts — one too hasty, one too slow. She thought of what her father had said about checking the filter core, about how every system has its own rhythm, not too fast, not too slow, but just in time.

"I think," she said finally, "I need to know exactly when the time is right, instead of trying to guess. Can you show me how to recognize the exact signs of a flower being ready for pollination? Not by estimating by feel, but by specific signs."

That was exactly the question Co Diem Ninh had been waiting for, even though she didn't say it out loud. She spent an entire afternoon showing Khe Mien the most subtle signs of a Red Bell tomato flower when it's ready — the tension of the petals, the color of the stigma changing from pale yellow to slightly green, the angle of the flower relative to the stem changing a few degrees as the time of maturity approaches.

On the third try, Khe Mien was not in a hurry, nor did he intentionally slow down forcefully. She sat and observed the potted plant for two days during her breaks, recording every single change in her notebook, and when the time came — early one morning, the artificial light had just switched from night mode to day mode — she knew, not guessing, but knowing with certainty, that this was the time.

Her movements this time were slow but decisive, the tip of the brush lightly touching the male flower, rotating exactly once to get enough pollen, then moving to the female flower with the precision of someone who had done this not once, but many times in her mind before actually doing it.

Five days later, a young fruit appeared, round, growing in the right position, without any unusual signs. Khe Mien stood looking at it for a long time, feeling not exactly victory, but a deep relief, as if she had just paid some invisible debt to the Red Bell family itself, to all the seed keepers who had protected it for generations before it came to her.

"Do you see the difference yet?" Co Diem Ninh asked, standing next to her, looking at the small young fruit with respect as if it were a great treasure, even though to anyone else, it was just an unripe tomato, smaller than a child's fist.

"I see," Khe Mien replied, "that failing the first two times is not a waste. If I succeeded the first time, maybe I would think it was just luck. But because I failed, and then understood why I failed, this time I succeed, I know for sure I did the right thing, not just luck."

"That," Co Diem Ninh said, her voice filled with a hint of pride that she rarely showed, "is the most important lesson of this profession, more important than hand pollination techniques or how to read humidity indicators. Patience is not passively waiting, little girl. Patience is continuing to observe, continuing to learn from each failure, until you understand deeply enough to do it right not because of luck, but because you truly understand why." it's right.""

That season, the Red Bell tomato variety produced a total of seven ripe tomatoes, each containing a few dozen new seeds — a small number compared to the yield of common crops grown on terraced fields, but enough to double the number of Red Bell seeds stored in the Seed Warehouse, enough for the red tape marking the danger level on the seed box to be changed to yellow — a safer level, though still far from ideal.

That night, Khe Mien wrote in her notebook, her handwriting was much more certain than three years ago:

*Today I understand why Ms. Diem Ninh is never in a hurry. Each failure is not a loss of time, but is time paid in advance for future success. You will remember this, not only in the Granary, but in everything you do after this.*