Chapter 8 — The Last Seed Keeper

At the age of seventeen, Khe Mien no longer needed Co Diem Ninh standing next to her to carry out most of the work of the Seed Warehouse. The old woman now spends most of her time sitting at the central desk, supervising with experience rather than with her more shaky hands, while Khe Mien does most of the actual work — checking seed shelves, adjusting humidity, handling small harvests to get new seeds.

That change happened so gradually that no one, including Khe Mien himself, can pinpoint the exact moment it began. But the morning she noticed small brown spots appearing on the leaves of a row of seedlings in the nursery area attached to the Seed Warehouse, she realized how accustomed she was to making her own decisions.

"Miss," she called, her voice a bit tense but not panicked, "I think there's a problem with the Cuu Tam rice seed tray."

Co Diem Ninh came to see, slowly because her knees were no longer as flexible as before, and looked at the brown spots on the young leaves. "What do you think this is?"

That's always the first question Co Diem Ninh asks, no matter what the situation is — not to test her knowledge, but to force Khe Mien to reason for herself before receiving the answer, a habit that has been ingrained in the way the two have worked together over the past eight years.

Khe Mien observed more closely, comparing the pattern of brown spots with what she remembered from the notes in her notebooks — not one, but three books filled with text, lined up neatly on her personal bookshelf. "It's not regular mold — mold usually spreads from the leaf edge inwards, but this spot appears sporadically, without a specific pattern. It could be a microscopic pest, or a reaction to something in the soil."

"What are you going to do?"

"I want to separate this tray from the other trays immediately, to avoid spreading it if this is an infectious disease. Then I will examine the soil sample under a microscope, and if necessary, I will try treating it with a diluted solution of neem essential oil — the kind we have used for mild pests in the past, but I will try it on a small tray first, not applying it on a large scale right away."

Co Diem Ninh nodded, didn't say anything else, just sat down in the chair and watched Khe Mien work - separating trays, preparing samples, adjusting the old but still accurate microscope of the Grain Warehouse. Under magnification, Khe Mien discovered tiny streaks of insect eggs clinging to the underside of leaves, small pests that she recognized from an old record by Co Diem Ninh herself about a similar outbreak more than twenty years ago.

Treatment with diluted neem solution is effective within five days, the number of brown spots stops spreading and gradually disappears on newly grown leaves. Khe Mien reported to Green Dome's Technical Council about the successful treatment, and the news spread quickly through the small community of agricultural workers — not because it was a huge event, but because it was the first clear evidence that Co Diem Ninh's disciples could handle a real problem on their own, without waiting for instructions.

That evening, when Khe Mien stopped by the greenhouse to get some extra neem solution, Dieu Lam — now an official technician of the Central Nursery care team — ran to pat her friend on the shoulder, grinning.

"The whole greenhouse is talking about you," Dieu Lam said, her voice filled with undisguised pride. "They say that the Grain Warehouse's disciples handled a pest attack on their own without needing to call anyone for help. Mrs. Tu from the irrigation team also said that you will definitely be the best seed keeper since Ms. Diem Ninh was young."

"They're exaggerating," Khe Mien replied, although she couldn't stop the smile from creeping up the corner of her mouth. "I just did exactly what Ms. Diem Ninh taught me, nothing special."

"You always say that," Dieu Lam shook her head, her expression both amused and impressed. "But I see it differently. Before, you used to ask Ms. Diem Ninh step by step. Now you make all the decisions yourself, just report the results. Do you realize that?"

Khe Mien paused for a moment at that statement, realizing that her friend was right in a way that she herself, because she was too busy with her daily work, had never stopped to acknowledge. The change has come slowly, silently, like water gradually seeping into the ground, to the point that insiders can hardly notice it until someone from the outside points it out.

"Maybe you're right," she admitted, her voice more thoughtful. "But I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be that way."

"No one is ever completely ready for anything," Dieu Lam said, suddenly serious for a moment. "My father still says that. People just do it, then realize they've been ready without even realizing it."

That sentence sounded so familiar that Khe Mien burst out laughing — almost verbatim of what Co Diem Ninh had said to her many years ago. Perhaps, she thought, it was not a saying of one person, but something the whole Green Dome, over many generations, had learned together and passed on to each other in different ways.

"You did well," Co Diem Ninh said the next day, as the two sat resting after the treatment, a glass of mint tea steaming slightly on the table between them. "I think it's time you know, I'm not testing you anymore. I'm preparing you."

"Preparing for what?"

"For the day you do this alone, without me sitting here watching." Co Diem Ninh spoke, her voice gentle but straightforward in the way she always was. "I don't say this to worry you. I say it because it is the truth, and the seed keeper must not be afraid of the truth, no matter how heavy it is."

Khe Mien didn't answer right away, just took a sip of tea, letting the warmth spread in the palm of her hand holding the cup tightly. She had thought about this many times in recent months, every time she saw Co Diem Ninh more tired after a day of work, every time her cough — now a familiar if uncomfortable part of mornings in the Grain Warehouse — lasted a little longer than the last time.

A few days later, while periodically checking the germination rates of the seed lines in her warehouse — a routine Khe Mien does every month, planting a small number of seeds from each line to ensure the viability of the entire lot remains at a safe level — she noticed a small anomaly that she almost missed at first.

The Cuu Tam rice line — the same variety that just experienced the pest attack — had a slightly reduced germination rate compared to the previous test, from ninety-two percent to eighty-eight percent. A small decrease, well within the normal range of fluctuations, any experienced seed keeper knows can occur for many reasons — the age of the seed, slight seasonal variations in storage conditions, or simply the statistical error of a small sample.

But when Khe Mien checked two more strains stored near the same area — unrelated to the recent pest infestation — she saw a similarly small drop, though not significant enough to cause alarm: from ninety-five percent to ninety-one, from eighty-nine to eighty-six.

She wrote down the numbers in her notebook, considering whether to report it to Co Diem Ninh or not. Those are small numbers, maybe just random, maybe just a natural sign of seed lots aging over time like any other seed lot. Nothing in those numbers qualifies as an urgent problem.

But there was one thing that made her hesitant to completely dismiss them: all three strains were stored in the same area of the Seed Warehouse—the area closest to the air-conditioned ductwork from the Green Dome's central system, which was directly linked to the Respiratory Station.

She thought of her father, of the nights he stayed up late with technical drawings, of the saying about "filter element number three is louder than usual" from many years ago that she still remembered, even though she was only nine years old at the time and didn't fully understand its meaning.

In the end, she decided to make a note of the incident in the County Warehouse's routine file — not as a warning, just as an observation to follow up on the next checkup — and said nothing to Co Diem Ninh at that moment, partly because she didn't want to worry her unnecessarily when her health was already fragile enough, partly because she herself wasn't sure whether she was seeing something truly worrying, or just imagining a danger from the numbers. small to be meaningful.

It was a decision she would look back on years later, in much more difficult days, wondering whether if she had spoken up just a few years earlier, things would have been different — even though deep down, she knew that those small signs, at the time, really weren't enough for anyone, even the most experienced seed keeper, to see the big picture that was slowly forming.

That night, writing in her fourth notebook, Khe Mien recorded only the exact numbers she had observed, no comments, no predictions — a disciplined habit that Co Diem Ninh had taught her from the earliest days: record facts first, interpretations later, and never let fear write in place of evidence.

*Germination rate: Cuu Tam 88%, Bach Diep 91%, Vang Co 86%. Need to follow up for next checkup.*

Little did she know, as she closed the notebook and set it down on the table, that short, dry line would be one of the first pages of a story longer than she could have imagined — a story whose full significance she would only truly understand years later, when these small numbers had grown into a crisis that could no longer be ignored.