Chapter Text
When Saki was seventeen, she joined Satoru when he was touring the geneticist’s lab, trying to decide which project he wanted to apprentice under. Saki herself had no real idea of what she wanted to do after graduation for Sage academy – preferring to leave it to the education committee’s recommendations in this case – but she remembers following Satoru around as he took a look at the developing embryos for new organisms that would be used to help manage the wild pests attacking the crop fields.
The new embryo she saw hardly seemed like a real creature in its sac of milky fluid. It was about the size of a small queerat and was supposedly based on existing bullfrogs in the wild – Saki could see its newly developed, extra-long tongue – and at the end of one translucent limb was a red, abnormally shaped mass.
This one is a failure , she remembered the geneticist saying, pointing to the red lump on the pseudo frog. Its cells are already exhibiting cancerous behavior – we think that we may have bypassed too many control/stop genes when trying to change the foot structure . These cancer cells , he gestured, were supposed to have committed apoptosis – committed suicide, in layman’s terms – in order to preserve the current order.
This specimen is good as dead now, though. The cancer cells have made it through the circulation system and will eventually destroy the rest of the frog. We didn’t catch it in time.
There was a moment of silence, as the researcher seemed to realize that what he had said.
Anyways, Asahina-san, if you’re interested, we’re willing to have you work on the apoptosis problem. Your scores in Cantus precision are very good, and I think you’d be a good fit –
Years later, Saki would think of this moment and privately think that her job, in some ways, was very similar to what the geneticist was dealing with.
In the aftermath, they rebuild.
There are only a few experienced leaders left after the slaughter, and Saki feels their absence in a hollow, absent way. Tomiko taught her many things, but there was still a great deal that was never covered.
Everyone had expected that Saki would need to undergo decades of grooming and experience before Tomiko would officially nominate her for the role. Saki herself had expected that she would have an entire lifetime to live out with her husband before the council would have deemed her experienced enough to take up the position.
Tomiko had lived a ripe ninety-seven years before becoming the Head of the Ethics Committee.
Saki is twenty-six .
She’s not ready. The council agrees. At first, they try to find someone to fill the role until Saki comes of age – but there is so little of the council left, and many are already overburdened with their current tasks. They agree to leave the position open for a few years.
(Privately, Saki had thought that Tomiko, with her long-ranging sight, would have had an alternate successor in mind if things ever spiraled out of control. She thought Tomiko would have chosen one of the council members.
It seems that even Tomiko had failed to account for everything.)
But Saki is learning quickly, and for now, it seems as if Tomiko’s faith in her was not misplaced. Her victory over the not-Fiend gives her the council’s respect and reverence. But she doesn’t quite have their full deference yet. It makes her feel like a fraud – it was Shun who connected the dots, Shun who saved the village, Shun –
The Ethics Committee is now half of its former size, and the people chosen to fill its ranks are now either old or painfully young. The old are wary and frightened, and the new members do not know how to play the politics of the Committee yet. She finds that many of the decisions are swayed towards the side of the elders – and like before, they call for destruction.
Saki fights to save the Giant Hornet colony from extermination, but few want to listen. They are afraid, rightfully so – but Satoru’s discovery and Kiroumaru’s sacrifice sit heavy in Saki’s chest, and so she argues. She spends hours with Satoru at night, going over evidence that will prove some colonies to be innocent. They craft arguments centered around the economic necessities of the colonies, digging up population statistics and production output graphs in the hopes that concrete figures will sway the Council’s minds. The rest of the nights are spent wrestling over whether to reveal the origins of the Queerats to the rest of the Committee.
They need to know what we have done to them.
But would knowing that change their minds?
In the end, they say nothing of the secret.
But Saki brings Satoru with her when she makes her case to the Council. Saki again finds herself in awe over her husband’s clever way with words, the way he cuts to the heart of the matter while rebutting the opposition’s argument.
Exterminating all of the colonies is only securing our own extinction. Tell me, who will tend the fields and grow our rice if all the queerats are dead?
None of us know anything about growing rice, and all of the machinery of old are gone. Moreover, with subsistence farming – which is all that we are capable of at this time – requires labor from dawn to dusk. In a society like this, who will be available to watch our children when their Canti emerge?
Who will be ready to destroy the Karma Demons and Fiends before they appear?
There is opposition, but the Council agrees that at least, for now, it is necessary to spare several colonies. At this point, Saki pulls out the records and makes sure that the innocent colonies are spared.
In the meantime, however, they decide to form a subcommittee which will draft proposals mitigating the village’s dependence on queerats.
Saki counts it as a victory.
After the matter has been settled, Saki breathes easier. Shun visits her in her dreams for the first time after the not-Fiend was killed. They relive that moment on the river at night again, but this time, Saki turns around, wanting to see his face again.
Shun looks like a mix of his fourteen-year-old self and something inexplicably older. Her heart clenches. Shun , she whispers to him. Saki , he whispers back, hand warm over her own.
I’m so proud of you.
But something stutters inside her as Shun leans closer. Satoru’s image flits across her mind, and she freezes, suddenly unsure. But Shun merely tilts his chin up and presses a phantom kiss against her forehead. She gasps quietly.
Saki, he murmurs, I’m glad you have Satoru.
But Shun, I - …
It’s okay. I haven’t been alive for a long time, now.
Shun looks away. His hair rises and falls with the curling of the evening breeze, and the sight makes something inside of her ache. Her emotions roil and settle uneasily as the sky above them clouds over, turning the river back into a mirror of darkness. She seizes the first thought out of the darkness that makes sense and voices it:
But you’re here. In my mind.
Our Canti are our thoughts, our will. Your feelings are what allowed me to be etched into your heart. His next words are breathed into her ear. Part of my Cantus will always be with you, and so will I.
In her dream, Shun is a warm presence. But as she leans into his hold, she notices the absence of scent on his body. His bones feel brittle, his flesh thin – as if he might fly off with the breeze at any moment.
I loved you, Saki, back when I was alive. I still do and always will.
Shun -
Don’t worry about me.
His figure drops away from her, and her arms ache from the loss. But Shun is smiling.
Wake up, Saki. Satoru is waiting.
“Saki!”
She wakes up. Satoru kneels over her, faint worry creasing his eyes. Her heart jolts, and she reaches for his arm, curling her fingers over his hand. Her pulse thrums.
“Saki?”
She tries to say something, anything. Her breath catches. Her mind whirls.
“Are you alright?”
She nods distractedly, pulling him towards her.
“Satoru.”
“Yes?”
She opens her mouth, closes it. She doesn’t have words for this yet, this strange stage she’s at, where part of her is mourning Shun and part of her has moved on. Where part of her will always yearn for him and part of her no longer does. But she can accept it. Shun promised that he would always be there. Years ago, she might have thought of the what-ifs, the could-haves, the if-onlys in response to this revelation.
But now there’s no hesitation. She looks at Satoru and knows deep in her bones that she wouldn’t have her reality be any other than one where Satoru is the one lying across from her. She shifts closer, close enough to smell the faint musk coming off his body. She inhales.
Satoru brings his arms around her just as she tilts her lips to graze his neck.
Afterwards, they lie on their sides, facing each other. Saki traces abstract patterns on his arm as she relays the events in her dream, and Satoru listens. He’s always trusted in her visions; the whispers she’s heard in the back of her mind. It’s a testament to Satoru’s faith in her that his arms only tighten around her once during the retelling. She looks him in the eye at her next words:
“…Shun loved you too, you know. That’s why he broke up with you when he realized his cantus was getting out of control.”
Satoru inhales, exhales. She can read the acceptance in his eyes, but there’s a restless element to it. She knows what he’s thinking because she’s been there. If only there was a way…
“Satoru,” she begins after a pause, “join the Ethics Committee with me. I need someone on my side.”
“The Ethics Committee?” She hears the surprise in his voice, and immediately tries to soothe it.
“Yes.” Saki curves her other hand over his cheek before moving her gaze back up to his eyes, her arguments spilling out effortlessly. “You’re brilliant with words. I can’t make the changes the village needs by myself. I’m not the head of the village yet. I need support.” She strokes his skin with the pad of her thumb as she continues. “There’s still a seat open, they’ll give it to you if I vouch for you. And,” she finally says, whispering: “committee members are allowed to get their memories restored. It’s not fair that I’m the only one who remembers Shun.”
Satoru’s eyes widen and then close as he breathes out, absorbing the information. He turns his head slightly and brushes his lips against her palm. His eyes meet hers, warm and understanding.
“Let’s do that.”
The next few months are hard. Saki forms a subcommittee in the exospecies department with the goal of monitoring and investigating the queerat’s society. The Council hammers strict rules into place, and a thorough inspection of every spared colony is made.
The colonies who had allied with the Giant Hornet Colony are quiet, submissive, and eager to demonstrate their innocence – their colonies are inspected thoroughly nevertheless, their technology examined and cataloged until Saki despairs of going through all of the paperwork.
But it is in the burnt-out catacombs of the Robber Fly colony that they find the false minoshiro.
When it is presented to the Council, Saki and Satoru volunteer to question it alongside an elder.
(and so they learn what Squealer learned. They learn of what he asked first, what he wanted to know. The history of Queerats. Human history, human technology, human government. The disposing of tyrants. Lobotomies. Psychological manipulation. Canti. Attack inhibition and death feedback. Theory of Canti, mental images used to restrain and focus Canti. War tactics. Infant care.)
Shortly after presenting their findings to the council, an order is sent out to find and confiscate all false minoshiro units outside of the village. It’s a futile order – no one knows how many units there are out in the world – but the council sends the order out anyway. The remaining colonies are ordered to send in a report every time a minoshiro is seen wandering in the wild. The queerats are forbidden from interacting with it, and the minoshiro – false or real – is eliminated by specially dispatched hunters within a day and night. A similar message is sent out to the other villages, who quickly allocate resources to the task after learning of the tragedy that befell Kamisu 66.
The upper echelon insists on calling the tragedy the Rebellion, and that is what ends up being written in the hidden records years later.
But among the people, it is remembered as the Four Nights. “Four” as in death.
Three years and ten days after Tomiko Asahina’s death, Saki becomes the new Head of the Ethics Committee. For a secret unknown position, there is a surprising amount of regulation to the ceremony.
It is decided that Saki will take up the mantle before her thirtieth birthday. To prepare, she is given an old volume that contains the thoughts of the Heads before her. It had been spared from the fires.
For ten days, Saki lives and sleeps in a small hut at the border of Withertree. Following the precepts, she fasts from noon to sunrise and refrains from meat. To fill the time, she reads the volume left to her. She is supposed to reflect upon the entries and never repeat the mistakes her predecessors have made.
She’s also supposed to finish Tomiko Asahina’s entry and list the mistakes that lead to her demise. It’s a daunting task, to look your forebearer in the figurative eye and tell them exactly what they did wrong. What she writes will be judged by her successor, and the one after her. Who is she to pass judgement upon the dead? She spends a long time thinking on this, but in the end, she can’t help but think back to that one cold afternoon with Satoru in the genetics lab.
“These cancer cells” , the scientist had said, “ were supposed to have committed apoptosis – committed suicide, in layman’s terms – in order to preserve the current order.”
Apoptosis, Death Feedback – is there any difference? Tomiko Asahina wanted to create a newer, stronger village by removing the mental barriers for Group 1, and instead she opened the door for Shun to spiral out of control before his self-appointed death. Her experiment created children who would cross the holy barrier. She gave Saki and Satoru three days alone to search for Maria and Mamoru as the trail went cold – another deviation from the ironclad rules. It wasn’t just one mistake – it was oversight, over and over again. Checkpoints and barriers that were crossed, that incrementally added up to the birth of a child outside the village…the birth of a cancer upon the world.
Maybe Tomiko’s oversights wouldn’t have mattered if Squealer had never gotten his hands on a false minoshiro. If Kamisu 66 and the other heads had been more thorough in cleansing the woods of false minoshiros, if Maria had never been born, or if Mamoru had been “eliminated” earlier…
…or if Saki hadn’t let them go.
It is a thought too terrifying to consider. But Saki knows herself, and back then – she would rather have died than turn them into a council that would have ordered their deaths. And by the time Tomiko had given them immunity, it had been too late.
But these what-ifs are useless. All of them – Maria, Mamoru, Tomiko, her parents – are gone.
She breathes in, out. Writes out the following:
Tomiko Asahina-san made her decisions knowing that there were certain risks involved. She tried to balance risky advances with the safety of the village, and made exceptions for Group 1 with the hopes of creating better shepherds for Kamisu 66. She succeeded with the latter goal, to a limited extent, but at too high of a price due to the circumstances.
Everything was reversible up until the moment Maria gave birth outside the village.
A child must never be allowed to leave the barrier again. We cannot give any mercy let it get to that point ever again.
She pauses, and then adds one last line:
We must do better for our children.
That night, she dreams.
Shun is sitting in the shack that no longer exists by the lake. He holds a journal in his frail hands. She can’t make out the words on it.
You know, Saki, I wondered in the past if karma demons and fiends are the price of having Canti. If having the ‘power of the gods’ inherently adds instability to our minds.
Shun?
You know our history prior to attack inhibition and death feedback is full of violence and blood. But even after implementing the controls, humans still couldn’t prevent karma demons and fiends from emerging. So I wondered if Canti was the source of it all.
…
But the queerats…have a similar history. They, too, are capable of terrible things. And…they used to be human. Maybe they’re more human than we are.
Shun, what –
Maybe humans have always been this way , he says, looking at Saki for the first time. The time before Canti lasted millennia. Our ancestors survived it all, despite the fact that they had powerful technology to make up for their lack of Canti. They must have known a way.
A way?
The dream fades out. Saki wakes up with tears on her face.
…but how, exactly, Saki wonders, a week after the ceremony, are we supposed to do better for our children while keeping the village safe?
Are the two tasks mutually exclusive? Is she willing to take the risk like Tomiko-san had?
Moreover, she has no idea where to start. She only knows what she cannot do, but that leaves a wide swathe open for deadly mistakes.
It’s an age old problem, she knows. No one expects her to come up with a perfect answer. But if she doesn’t do something soon, she knows the Ethics and Education Committees are going to “eliminate” even more children than before.
Think. Think. What do I know? What’s the viewpoint I’m missing here?
“These cancer cells” , the scientist had said, “ were supposed to have committed apoptosis – committed suicide, in layman’s terms – in order to preserve the current order.”
Supposed to have. Like Shun. But what if they could stop it before that point?
Is death the only answer?
They must have known a way , a voice whispers.
Saki barely stops herself from running to the genetics lab. The Head of the Ethics Committee isn’t supposed to ever run unless there’s an emergency.
When she arrives, Satoru takes one look at Saki’s face and excuses himself from the lab space. They move to an empty office.
“Saki? What’s going on?”
“Satoru. How does someone go about fixing cancer?”
“Fix cancer? Well…” Saki waits for Satoru to gather his thoughts. He looks troubled. “There isn’t a single ‘fix’ or ‘cure’ for cancer, especially once it starts invading the rest of the body. Back when we had the old tech, we used a combination of poison and radiation to try to kill off the cancer cells. But that didn’t always work.”
“Why?”
“The treatment can kill your healthy cells, too. And sometimes the tumors regrow, or don’t respond to one treatment or another. Cancer is unique in that way. No two cases are exactly the same…on the genetic level, it’s a hundred different diseases with similar outcomes. We’d need a hundred different treatments to get them all.” Saki frowns. This is more complicated than she had hoped for. She switches tracks.
“How do you prevent cancer? Stop it from happening at all?”
“…you can’t. But if you keep a healthy lifestyle, you’ll accumulate less genetic damage, and your cells have a better chance of repairing things before it becomes cancer. It’s not as much of an issue now, since our village lives pretty healthily…”
A hundred different treatments.
Repairing things before it becomes cancer.
They must have known a way.
“Satoru, you’re a genius.”
“Uh…” he flushes red. After a moment, his mouth quirks into a cocky grin. “Yes, I am. Did you just notice?”
“Eh, probably.”
“Probably?!” Satoru gasps in mock outrage. Saki waves off his performance, grinning.
“I need to go to the library. I have an idea, so I’ll probably be late for dinner.”
“Alright. Off you go, then. Changing the world one library visit at a time,” he teases, drawing Saki up for a quick kiss before letting her go.
What Saki finds at the library, eventually, is this:
Humans have always had a violent history.
Peace is temporary, but lasts when society is stable.
There is no surefire way to prevent corruption of the mind. But this phenomena is not unique to Cantus users – their forefathers experienced these things too.
Shun, you’re right again, as always, she thinks, as she visits the libraries of other villages, digs through the dustiest shelves with Satoru on their days off to find answers. She finds reams of old psychology texts: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. The Rorschach Inkblot Test: An Interpretive Guide for Clinicians. Treating Psychological Trauma and PTSD. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Applying Empirically Supported Techniques in Your Practice .
Some of the books have annotations, full of delicate slips of paper secured to the margins. The oldest annotations are written directly in the margins. Others are nearly empty.
Cancer is a hundred different diseases.
Repair it before it spreads through the body.
She consults, sits down with individual members of the Education Committee over lunch, tea, and dinner. She learns about past and current practices. At night, she cries in Satoru’s arms over what she’s learned that day.
And then she dries her tears and does it all over again.
She brings up her findings at a meeting of the different village heads a few years later. All of them are older than her, wiser than her. But Saki has loved a karma demon and stared a not-Fiend in the eye as they died, and she will not falter now.
“My village has already agreed to try this method in part,” she tells them. “First, we will search for individuals with appropriate resilience scores and train them according to the pre and post-canti texts to be ‘Therapists’. They will work with soon-to-be parents and watch over the children as they grow. They will become a trusted adult, and work with the family and child to resolve any issues that emerge.”
“Can you give an example?”
“Self-esteem, anxiety, depression, excessive tantrums – all of which are factors that are watched by the Education Committee. All of these can be mitigated and controlled with help. And in this way, we can both monitor the children more closely and increase their chances of becoming a productive, safe member of society.”
“What if it’s not effective? You can’t promise that every child will recover.”
“No. I can’t promise that. But every life has value. If it was your child, wouldn’t you want a chance for them to live?”
Silence.
“These are intriguing words, Watanabe-san,” one of them says, seriously. “However, if I am correct, you yourself do not have any children. You do not have a personal stake in this if this goes wrong.” Saki wants to claw his face. No personal stake?
“Ozaki-san,” Saki begins, slowly and quietly. “I do have a personal stake. The village is my people. My only remaining family is my husband. I lost everyone else in the Rebellion, and I’m not willing to lose more.” She looks him in the eye. “However, if you doubt my sincerity, know that my husband and I have been trying for a child. Be assured that when the time comes, there will be a child of the Watanabe line at stake.”
The man shuts up, and Saki knows she’s won.