"What are you doing here?" Yidan was both happy and angry to see her daughter. She tossed the chisel to her feet and strode over. "Didn't I tell you? You are not to come near the contamination zone, no matter what!"
Then, she suddenly grew worried. "Did something happen at home?"
"No, nothing bad! In fact, something good happened." In her mother's presence, Milady seemed ten years younger. She handed the mechanism in her arms to her, smiling. "Look, I won this today. I finally have my own mechanism! I wanted to show you right away… Besides, I want to help you out sometimes, too."
"Really? You won it? What happened?"
Yidan stroked the square-shaped mechanism. Her translucent green eyes, identical to Milady's, seemed almost transparent in the bright sunlight, shining with a clear, incredulous light.
But she wasn't one to be easily distracted. Yidan shoved the mechanism back into Milady's arms. "I'm not listening now. Tell me tonight. I told you not to come, and you still dared to. Just wait until I deal with you at home. Clearing this filth isn't your job. Get yourself home, now."
No matter how stern her expression, she couldn't hide the smile in her eyes. Milady leaned against her arm and said in a soft, wheedling voice, "Not gonna."
"Go home!" Yidan's brows shot up, her feigned anger starting to become real. "You haven't taken any Anti-Crystallization Medicine, don't you know that? What if you touch a crystal and get infected?"
Seeing Milady at a loss for words, she softened her tone to comfort her. "I've taken the medicine, haven't I? How many times have I explained this to you? If you come to help, we each get one dose, and neither of us is safe. If you don't come, I take a double dose of the Anti-Crystallization Medicine, and I'm much safer. You're a smart girl. Can't you do the math?"
...Anti-Crystallization Medicine.
Milady was as grateful to the Clan Leader as she was repulsed by him.
'It sounded illogical, and she was reluctant to be swayed by such a small kindness. But since the decontamination work was an unchangeable reality, at least her mother didn't have to face the crystals completely unprotected—right? At the very least, the Anti-Crystallization Medicine provided by the Clan Leader protected Yidan. At least the Clan Leader hadn't completely abandoned his responsibilities, providing a bit of safety and comfort for their small family of two.'
This was also why she never openly opposed the Clan Leader's authority, even though she always refused to cooperate with his family's orders and was unwilling to participate in clan affairs.
"No medicine is one hundred percent effective… There have been people from the Tower family who've contracted the crystal sickness, you know. And haven't you been coughing a lot lately, and getting short of breath?" Milady argued softly. "If we took turns clearing the contamination, the person on duty could take a double dose. That would cut each of our risks in half…"
"I'm the one who taught you about probability, you think I don't know that?" Yidan feigned anger. "But you're forgetting that the medicine needs to accumulate in the body over a long, continuous period. Taking it one day and skipping the next won't work. Look, among the others responsible for this work, many of them got sick within two or three years. I've been doing this for four years now. Do you see any crystals on me? Even my hair and nails are perfectly fine. The cough is just an itchy throat. It has nothing to do with the crystal sickness."
'That was true.'
Milady knew she couldn't win an argument against her mom. After a bit more back-and-forth, Yidan grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and pushed her onto the man-made path. "Go on, get back. I want fish soup for dinner tonight."
Milady felt a little more at ease than when she had arrived.
Chipping at the crystals was physical labor, so her mother's breathing sounded a bit shallower and more labored than usual. But other than that, Yidan was the same as always, her skin and hair healthy and lustrous. Seeing her mother like this with her own eyes put her mind at ease.
The heavy, dull thud of a body hitting the ground reached her when she was a dozen or so meters away.
At first, she didn't realize what that faint, dull sound meant. She only stopped in a vague, creeping dread because the sound of the chisel striking the crystal, again and again, had stopped.
When Milady turned, the mechanism dropped to the ground.
She had never run so fast in her life.
Yidan lay motionless on the path, her face a deathly pale. Her arm was outstretched, as if she had been about to call out to her daughter.