kscans

Chapter 16 - The Broken Seal

"Mom! Hey, Mom!"

Shaken awake by small hands, Tsukie opened her eyes. She must have fallen asleep on the sofa.

"Why are you crying?"

Mayu climbed onto her lap and wiped away the tears on Tsukie's cheeks with her little hands.

She had been having a long dream. It was the memory of a young girl, a memory she had sealed away in her heart as a child.

Tsukie could finally remember the rest of the dream she had been having off and on.

Perhaps losing her father had brought the reality of death closer, allowing her to remember that girl.

On that day, the train carrying the two girls had been running toward death.

Cradled by the pleasant rhythm of the hanging straps, carrying the smiles of two oblivious girls, it had been running toward death. It was a memory of an inescapable end. It had been so painful, so sad, that she had locked it deep within her heart all this time.

Akina, who had journeyed with her that day, had developed pneumonia which led to heart failure. She had passed away quietly while Tsukie was asleep.

Her mother had tried to explain Akina's illness and condition, but at the time, Tsukie could barely understand. All she knew for certain was that she had recklessly taken Akina from the hospital, and because of that, Akina had died. If she hadn't forced her to endure the blizzard, Akina might have lived, might have laughed, for a few more years, or even a few more months.

Trying to make Akina happy, thinking she could protect her—it was all the arrogant fantasy of a naive child. Because of the reckless adventure she had planned, Akina had learned a truth she never needed to know, and her heart had been torn to shreds. She might have even lost the will to live.

It was all her fault. She was the one who had shattered Akina's hope into pieces and killed her.

Akina's illness was a congenital chromosomal abnormality. Human cells have forty-six chromosomes, normally consisting of twenty-two pairs of autosomes and two sex chromosomes. A chromosomal abnormality occurs when there are too many or too few of a certain chromosome, or a part of one. This abnormality is often caused by an improper separation of chromosomes.

Normally, chromosomes form pairs of two. When there is only one, it's called monosomy; three is trisomy, four is tetrasomy, and five is pentasomy. A normal pair of two, by the way, is called disomy.

Most chromosomal abnormalities do not result in normal development and lead to miscarriage, but among those that result in live births, 21-trisomy (Down syndrome) is the most common, followed by 18-trisomy (Edwards syndrome) and 13-trisomy (Patau syndrome). However, individuals with 18-trisomy or 13-trisomy do not live for long.

Akina's case was 8 Trisomy Mosaic Syndrome (Warkany Syndrome), a condition said to affect one in fifty thousand people. It was a complex disorder in which 8-trisomy and 8-disomy cells coexisted within the same individual. It was a case that had only first been identified in 1971, when Akina was three, through chromosome banding techniques. It was said to occur when nondisjunction of chromosomes happens during the early cleavage of a fertilized egg, resulting in a mosaic.

A characteristic of 8 Trisomy Mosaic, unlike other chromosomal abnormalities, is that intellectual development can often be unaffected. Akina's IQ was also within the normal range. However, physical abnormalities were similar to those in other chromosomal disorders and were wide-ranging, including congenital heart diseases like ventricular septal defects, renal dysfunction, syndactyly, and malignant tumors.

Incidentally, Akina's eye condition was caused by a cancer called Retinoblastoma. She was also susceptible to developing conditions like Acute Myelogenous Leukemia and Myelodysplastic Syndromes. The reason her hospital discharge had been canceled was due to suspicion of these.

Life expectancy depends on the severity of accompanying congenital malformations, and it's not uncommon for patients to die early due to heart failure or infections.

"...I have to find the music box..."

Tsukie felt like she was drowning in the vivid phantoms of her past, which came rushing back like a tsunami. She hugged her daughter on her lap tightly. The solid warmth of that small being overlapped with the coldness of the girl she held in her memory, and her chest tightened.