Chapter 9 — The Last Seed Keeper

The succession ceremony of a seed keeper does not have a fixed date, and is not recorded on the general calendar of the Green Dome like Harvest Festival or other holidays. It took place when the previous seed keeper decided the time had come — a decision that belonged entirely to them, with no one, not even the Arch Council, having the right to interfere.

Co Diem Ninh chose a normal morning, without prior notice, without any special preparations other than closing the Grain Warehouse earlier than usual and requesting that no one else be allowed in during that afternoon.

"Do you know what day today is?" she asked, as the two sat across from each other at the old wooden table, where thousands of small decisions about the lives of hundreds of breeds had been made over the decades.

Khe Mien, nineteen years old, looked around the familiar room—the rows of shelves she had memorized every centimeter, the pale yellow biological light she was so used to that she could no longer tell the difference between it and the natural light she had never seen—and somehow, she knew.

“Today I will hand over the role to you,” she said, not a question.

"You are always more sensitive than I thought," Co Diem Ninh smiled, a rare but warm smile. "That's right. Ten years ago, I accepted you as a disciple with a Bach Diep bean seed in the palm of your hand. Today, I want to end those ten years in the same way."

She stood up and went to a special shelf near her desk — where she kept what she called the "foundation set," the Seed Warehouse's oldest and most stable seed lines, not the rarest in quantity, but the most symbolically important, for they were the first lines brought with them by the founders of Green Dome when they built the Filtration Roof nearly a century ago.

She took out a small box, opened the lid, and inside were a few rice seeds — not Cuu Tam, but another, older strain, whose name Khe Mien had only learned the name of in recent years: the rice variety known simply as "Original Varieties," the first rice strain successfully grown in the Green Dome after the Great Transformation, the direct ancestor of every other rice variety present in the Warehouse.

"Put out your hand," Co Diem Ninh said, and when Khe Mien did so, she placed a Root Seed in her palm, exactly like the gesture ten years ago, except this time the hand that received it was no longer the hand of a nine-year-old child.

"What do you think it is?" she asked, the same question as the first one ten years ago.

Khe Mien looked at the tiny seed in her hand, feeling its weight — physically still as light as any other seed, but now, ten years later, she understood its true weight was not in its mass.

“It's a promise,” she said, her voice firm and without hesitation. "That you keep it today, so it can keep those after you tomorrow. Not just you, but everyone who will still live in this Green Dome, whether you're still here or not."

Co Diem Ninh was silent for a long time, her eyes - eyes that had seen seventy-four seasons, taught countless disciples before finding the last person she trusted with everything - shone with something between pride and inseparable sadness.

"From today," she said, her voice more formal than usual, as if reciting an oath that had been passed down through generations of seed keepers before her, "you are the Seed Keeper of the Green Dome. Not a disciple. Not a future successor. Seed Keeper, from this very moment."

Khe Mien felt a vibration run down her spine, not because of fear, but because the weight of that name suddenly became so real that she could barely breathe for a few seconds.

"I will report to the Arch Council about this change tomorrow," Co Diem Ninh continued, her voice becoming more matter-of-fact again. "But I want you to know this first, just between the two of us, before it becomes an official announcement, a line in the Arch records. Because to me, it is not an administrative procedure. It is the most important thing I have ever done in my life, more important than saving the lives of any race."

They sat together late into the afternoon, not working, just talking — something that rarely happened between two people who were always busy with the actual work of the Grain Warehouse. Co Diem Ninh told stories Khe Mien had never heard before: about her early years as an apprentice, about mistakes she had made that she had never told anyone, about a line of cucumbers she had completely lost due to a small mistake when she was twenty-five years old - a loss she said haunted her for the rest of her life, not because the Council punished her, but because she knew she had lost something she could not get back.

"I tell you this," she said, "not to make you afraid of making mistakes. But to let you know that even the best seed keeper will sometimes be wrong. What matters is not never being wrong, but what you do after you make a mistake—do you continue to hide it inside like a wound that won't heal, or do you turn it into a lesson to teach those who come after you, so they don't have to pay the price of that same mistake."

Towards the end of the afternoon, when the artificial light began to gradually change to orange signaling the evening, Co Diem Ninh said something that Khe Mien felt was heavy in each word, completely different from her usual tone.

"There's one thing I've never told the Council, and I probably never will, because they wouldn't want to hear it, and I'm not sure I have enough evidence to say it with certainty." She looked out the small window of the Grain Warehouse, where she could see a small corner of terraced fields in the distance. "Our Green Dome has survived for nearly a hundred years by being self-contained, self-sufficient, not depending on anyone but ourselves. It is a philosophy that has saved us through many difficulties. But I worry, Khe Mien — I worry that one day, that self-containedness will no longer be our strength, but become our fatal weakness. A community that never looks outside itself will never know when what it has is gone. enough."

"Do you think that will happen?"

"I don't know when. I only know that nothing lasts forever without change, even a system as carefully designed as the Green Dome." Co Diem Ninh turned to look at Khe Mien, her eyes were more serious than at any time during the afternoon. "I'm not telling you what to do with this right now. I just want you to keep it in mind, like you keep everything else—a tiny seed of doubt, which may never sprout into anything, but if one day it does, you'll be ready to recognize that moment, instead of being caught by surprise by it."

Khe Mien nodded, took out her newest notebook - the fifth one, the leather cover had been replaced but still kept the same size and style as the first one Co Diem Ninh gave her ten years ago - and wrote down what she had just heard, not as an order, but as a warning that she knew she would need in the future, even though she didn't know exactly when.

That evening, when he returned home and told his father about that private succession ceremony, Vu Dinh Khoat hugged his daughter, a hug that was longer than usual, and in that moment, Khe Mien felt something that was both a father's pride and the worry of someone who had lost the most important person in his life and now understood that his daughter was stepping into a greater responsibility than anything he could protect her from. out.

"Your mother would be so proud of you," he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. "You have become exactly what we both hoped you would become."

The next day, when the news of the succession was officially announced to the Arch Council, Dieu Lam was the first person to come to congratulate and hug his friend right in the middle of a crowded public walkway, not paying attention to the curious eyes of the people around him.

"The Keeper of the Vu Khe Mien Seed," Dieu Lam said, deliberately lengthening each word with a fake solemnity that made them both laugh. "Sounds good. Do you feel any difference, from yesterday to now?"

Khe Mien thought about it for a moment before answering. "Yes, but not in the way I thought. I thought I would feel more scared. But instead, I just feel... relieved. Like I've been carrying something for years without knowing its name, and now it finally has a name."

"That sounds a lot like you," Dieu Lam smiled, taking her friend's arm as the two continued walking. "Miss Diem Ninh chose the right person."

That evening, as she sat alone in the Grain Warehouse after work — now, even though Co Diem Ninh still came every day, it was Khe Mien who locked the door last, who was ultimately responsible for everything inside — she looked around the room again, trying to remember the feeling of this first evening, knowing that it would never be repeated the same way.

That night, Khe Mien wrote in her notebook the longest line she had ever written since the first day:

*Today I am officially the Seed Keeper of the Green Dome. I don't know what the road ahead will be like, but I know one thing: I will not let the promise I made ten years ago become boring, as Ms. Diem Ninh warned me from day one. And I won't forget what you said last — about looking beyond the Green Dome, before it's too late to look.*