“Well, Mr. Kirie has an associate here in Japan. A man by the name of Saeki.”
Keita Saeki. Another familiar name. Another person I knew.
<reference:thesis:id=stid749-60d-r2yrui6ronl>
<title>
“Concerning the Possibility of Homeostatic Health Monitoring with Medical Particle (Medicule) Swarms and Plasticized Pharmalogical Particles (Medibase).”
</title>
<author>Nuada Kirie, researcher</author>
<author>Keita Saeki, coresearcher</author>
</reference>
03
<recollection>
“So, why were you friends with Miach, Cian?”
We were on the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building, waiting for our insalata di caprese. Cian seemed surprised by my question at first. Then she was silent, a thoughtful look on her face. I decided to wait patiently for her answer. It took a while, but before too long she nodded as though she had come to some sort of decision.
“You know the thing with the drug, the one that cuts off nutrition. I was the one who ratted us out. I told my parents.”
Nothing. No anger. Our suicide pact felt like ancient history by that point, the act of three little girls thirteen years ago, bound together only by a shared hatred of the world. Years later, I could think about it pretty objectively, and I honestly couldn’t blame Cian for bailing.
“No kidding.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Come on, we were kids. It’d take way too much effort to be angry with you now.” I smiled and urged Cian to keep talking, not realizing at the time where that conversation would lead.
“Thanks.”
“I guess I should thank you. You saved my life.”
“No. I betrayed both of you. And I couldn’t save Miach.”
“You shouldn’t carry that one around with you. Don’t. I want to hear the rest of this story.”
Cian fell silent again. I figured she had a lot of pieces to put together before she could even talk about these things— things she’d probably never told a soul before now.
“See,” she said at last, “I stopped taking them, the pills. After only a day or two. I was scared. I felt myself getting thin and weak for the first time. I didn’t have WatchMe installed back then of course, none of us did, but my parents had a health consultant that put together a life plan for all of us. The medcare unit kept us in tip-top shape all the time. I mean, I’d never even had a headache at that point.”
“Same with me.”
“I guess I realized for the first time how much it could hurt to live. I could feel myself alive, and changing. I wasn’t eternal or permanent, you know? ‘This is life,’ I thought. ‘This pain is proof I’m alive.’ And when I thought that, I got so scared. I have a life, I am life.”
“I…think I know what you mean.”
“That’s why I stopped taking the pills. Of course I couldn’t tell you or Miach. Which meant I couldn’t tell anyone. By the time I realized I had to and went to my parents, it was already too late.”
Tears were forming in Cian’s eyes. Thirteen years. For thirteen years she’d held all of this inside. How hard that must have been. It wasn’t the kind of thing a session or two of therapy could make right.
“Hey, it’s not your fault, Cian.”
“I know that. I mean, I should know that. But I don’t.”
“Well, it should be enough to know that there’s at least one person who’s grateful you did what you did, and she’s sitting right here. Believe me, I’m glad I’m still alive.”
“Heh. Okay. Thanks.”
“Maybe we should talk about something else.”
I was starting to worry. Everything I’d said was the truth. I really was grateful to Cian. I was still alive thanks to her, and being alive meant I could still hurt myself with cigars and tobacco and alcohol. Not that I could say any of that in public.
“No, it’s okay. I want to talk about this.” Cian wiped away a stray tear and took a deep breath to steady herself. “Looking back on it now, I think I felt like I had to be with Miach. That’s why I hung out with her.”
“Had to be?”
“It’s like, I thought of myself as a counterbalance. I was having a tough time with the world back then too, just like you and Miach. I felt suffocated all the time, like I didn’t have a place to go. There was just too much, I don’t know, love in the world, and it was strangling me. They kept telling me what an important resource I was to society and I kept thinking ‘No, I’m not. How could that possibly be true?’”
“That’s what Miach always said, wasn’t it. ‘We aren’t resources! We have to prove we don’t have any value at all!’”
Cian nodded. “Yeah, and I agreed with her, I really did— but I didn’t think that meant we had to kill somebody or die ourselves. For all that Miach and I saw eye to eye, I couldn’t follow her all the way to that conclusion. But when I looked at Miach, I knew she could. I knew she’d go right up to the edge.”
“So you thought you would balance that. I get it.”
“That’s right. I thought if I was there with her, I could hold her back. I could keep Miach from going too far. I would just listen to everything she said, and nod, and agree, and it would be enough for her just to have an audience, you know? She wouldn’t actually have to do any of the things she always talked about. Of course, it didn’t work out like that. In the end I was just a coward, and Miach was dead.”
I felt like I had, for the first time, touched a little of the pain this woman must have carried inside her for the last thirteen years. I think I know what you mean, I’d told her. I didn’t know shit. The pain Cian had carried was deep, harsh, and she had carried it all alone for more than a decade.
Cian hadn’t been a hanger-on. I’d had her all wrong. She had been stronger than any of us, and more noble, and more alone. All alone.
Miach and I, we were little girls, but Cian Reikado had been an adult.
“That’s amazing, Cian. I could never have been that strong.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t strong. I was too scared to do anything else.”
Cian leaned back, the view from the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building stretching out behind her, as the waiter arrived carrying sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese on two white plates.
“Caprese’s here,” Cian said. “It’s been a long time since we ate together.”