Chapter 47: In One's Youth

"I wish to die while I am young, with neither love nor worry, falling like a golden star, rising like an un-fading flower..."
"I hope that those who have long suffered from hostility will find joy with me upon my tombstone."
"Please bury me far away from the bustling road, where the weeping willows bend to tease the ripples, and the unharvested, leafless beans turn golden."
"May the slumbering poppies bloom, may the wind blow over my head."
"I look not back upon the paths I've walked, nor upon the vanished days of madness. When the final hymn is sung, I shall fall asleep without a care."
"Yet please do not let the flame completely extinguish, please do not forget that woman who once awakened everyone's heart."
"I wish to die while I am young..." (1)

A rhythmic knock sounded from outside the door. At Chiba's verbal permission, Elu pushed the door open.
"Ms. Chiba, did you ask for me?"

Chiba turned down the volume of the record player, turned around, and handed two signed and stamped documents to Elu.
"Yes, go to the Core City. Leave tonight."

Elu took them and looked them over, truly surprised. "...You want to sell off all the Tanyi municipal bonds we currently hold?"
"Yes, the sooner the better. It is best not to exceed half a month. Deposit the cashed-out funds into Greyscale Bank for now and leave them untouched. Wait for further news."

"Please allow me to ask why," Elu frowned slightly. "Two years ago, you said these bonds should be held for at least ten years, because Tanyi is the most suitable city for the middle class to retire in the entire Third District. Over the past two years, people have continuously moved out of the Core City to settle in Tanyi. This shows your initial judgment was correct. If we sell now, our returns will only reach sixteen percent of the expected amount... no, perhaps even less than ten percent."

"That is naturally because the situation has changed," Chiba took off her glasses. "Selling in advance will at least fetch a reasonable price; waiting any longer will only lead to losses."
Elu was puzzled: "What made you change your mind?"

"It is suitable for retirement because the AHgAs rookie base is here," Chiba answered unhurriedly. "Everyone believes that apart from the Core City, no place in the entire Third District is safer than this."
Elu drew a breath with profound implication: "...Then, is this place about to become unsafe?"

"Who knows?" Chiba pinched the back of her neck. "People's thoughts are always changing, and sometimes that doesn't depend on what the facts actually are."
Elu put the documents away.

"Understood, I will set off tonight."
...

Perhaps because she had reminisced about too many things from the past tonight, Hesta once again dreamed of everything in Short-Whistle Alley.
In a dilapidated little wooden shack, her mother, wearing a vertical-striped apron, was tasting a newly boiled soup.

After so many years, she saw her mother again.
Her mother at that time was very young.
Young and slender.

Her appearance remained just as it was before she parted ways with Hesta: a dark green velvet ribbon tied her shoulder-length soft hair into a bundle, which draped down her right shoulder along her slender neck.
Her shoulders were as thin as a bird's.

Her mother's hair at this moment was dark brown—and so was Hesta's. These were artificially dyed hair colors, though a fiery, bright reddish tint was still faintly visible at the roots. After all, to safely hide in a sea of people, one had to undertake necessary disguises. No matter where, red hair like theirs was simply too eye-catching.

Looking around, she found herself sitting on a small green wooden stool. She remembered picking this up from scrap yard number 16 near Short-Whistle Alley. Old Charlie had helped her repair a stool leg that had been rotted by rainwater and had even scrounged up half a small bucket of paint.
She had painted the small wooden stool green with her own hands before giving it to her mother.

The table in their home consisted of an empty wine barrel and a semi-circular wooden board, which they fixed together with a hammer and nails. Her mother laid a tablecloth over it, making it truly look like a small tea table.
Underneath the tea table was a thick layer of slightly frayed flannel carpeting. Her mother had deliberately sewn together a dozen light green fabric scraps of different textures—they came from bed sheets, old coats, canvas bags, or skirts of various lengths. The patterns of the materials themselves presented a vibrant vitality through this patchwork.

On the table surface, a paper flower folded from wire and cardstock was stuck into a sponge pad. The small silver key related to Boheng lay right beside it, along with a tattered copy of "Edgar's Book of Dark Tales, Volume I".
This must be a dream.
Hesta quickly realized this.

But please, do not wake up just yet.
She reached out and gently touched the sponge flower stand her mother had made with her own hands.
Fortunately, all the important things were still there.

In Short-Whistle Alley, Hesta often heard her mother talk about her life in the Fourteenth District in the past. Her mother felt a deep nostalgia for everything in the past—even though the climate in the northern part of the Fourteenth District was far less pleasant than the one here.

She had heard that winters there were extremely long, with heavy snow refusing to melt from October of that year until April of the next. Yet winter was a time for sitting around the hearth, chatting, and reading, so life was not lonely.
Her mother often spoke of having a room in her childhood that was decorated entirely according to the descriptions in Edgar's novels: a wooden tea table, dark green cast-iron chairs, a green polka-dot rug, and white curtains hanging vertically to the floor...

And her mother's mother would often sit beside the same tea table on winter afternoons to read with her.
These scenes of the past were like her mother's "anchor," holding her firmly so that she would always remember who she was and where she came from.

Regrettably, almost no paper books could be obtained in Short-Whistle Alley. In their leisure time, the mother and daughter could only sit by the tea table and read old newspapers—until one day, such a coincidence truly occurred, and they obtained a copy of "Edgar's Book of Dark Tales, Volume I" from Old Charlie.
Her mother traded two months of her meager wages with Old Charlie for this book, and Old Charlie readily agreed.

This copy of "Dark Tales" was a translation from the Fourteenth District. The characters upon it were square and upright, completely different from any text visible in Short-Whistle Alley.
For many nights and days, her mother and she sat huddled around the small tea table, using this book as Hesta's literacy primer. Sometimes she listened as her mother read stories and explained vocabulary, and sometimes she copied beautifully underlined literary phrases.
...

In the dream, Hesta lowered her head once more, resting her cheek against the table surface.
She gripped the edges of the table with both hands—whenever she slumped down like this, her line of sight always happened to fall right in front of the stove.
The steam rising from the stove was misty and hazy.
Her mother was humming a tune.

Hesta swung her feet. Beneath her feet, the patchwork rug her mother had sewn with her own hands brushed warmly against the soles of her feet.
It would be best to have a glass bell jar, Hesta thought, otherwise something would always be missing.

—
(1) Excerpted from Mira Rohovitskaya's poem "I Wish to Die While I Am Young"