Chapter 168 – Past Crime
“Yes, but only if you’re ready to talk.”
“I’m fine. I wanted to tell you for a long time. I was just… too cowardly, like always.”
“Don’t say that. I think you’re an amazing woman. See how you handled the stall by yourself when I wasn’t here?”
“Hmm… That’s not what the people who know about me think.”
“Who cares about others? How much is their opinion worth compared to mine, the great Tila?”
“Hehe, you’re so silly. Stop with the jokes, I’m talking seriously.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She paused for a moment before continuing.
“It’s about this place. You know, this land, and this house, they don’t really belong to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Strictly speaking, they’re the properties of my mothers.”
“Your mothers… You never talked about them before.”
“The truth is, I also don’t know much about them. In fact, I never even met them.”
“Huh? How’s that possible?”
“My mothers, they…. Wait, let me tell you from the start. Keep in mind that everything I’m going to say now are things I heard from others.”
She took a deep breath before resuming her story.
“My mothers’ names are Madin and Acoten. They were initially from very different backgrounds. Madin was the daughter of a high-level member of the water association in dome 3 while Acoten was the daughter of a poor family. Still, they ended up going to school together and fell in love after some time. When this became known, Madin’s family firmly opposed any union between them, so they escaped here, to dome 82.”
So far, it was a very standard story. There were tales like this one by the dozens in my world.
“Madin still had a lot of money since her family was rich and they bought this land and house. For a short time, they were happy, and everything went fine. They were deeply in love, to the point that inhabitants around here still remember it. But soon, they heard that people from Madin’s family were searching for them. And that’s when they committed a grave mistake.”
Even though she claimed not to have known them, Suuru still seemed affected by her story, looking sad as she narrated it to me.
“Maybe because they were in a rush, or maybe because they were scared, or in too much stress, they decided to make their union an irrefutable fact. And the solution they chose to do that was… to have a baby.”
Suuru looked down again while biting her lips.
“But there was a problem. Couples who want to have a child need to wait for a long time on a waiting list to be allocated a spot in the baby field. Unfortunately, they had no such leisure and, in their hurry, they decided to build their own baby field and have a baby illegally.”
“Is it something very bad?”
“Yes. Inside the domes, it’s one of the most terrible crimes. Population control is extremely critical because our resources are so limited. Having a baby illegally is the same as killing someone else or hindering another couple from having a baby. It’s the same as taking another person’s life. Of course, a single child isn’t a problem in itself. The issue is that if one does it, others will want to do the same, and then the situation will grow out of control.”
She sighed.
“And of course, they got caught in the act. The neighbors who smiled at their love previously all turned against them for breaking such a taboo. 82’s government called for very severe punishment, maybe even taking a life for a life, but Madin’s family intervened before it could come to that. In the end, they compensated the dome with a large amount of money and took my mothers with them to dome 3”
“What about you, then?”
“All of this happened before I was born. When I came out of the field, I was handed to an orphanage and that’s where I spent all my childhood. But the people around me never liked me. I was considered a sinful child, one who was born from a taboo, by taking away someone else’s opportunity to live. That’s why the people who know me stare at me like this. When I was little, I thought this was only normal since this was how I was treated all my life. But when I grew up, I realized that wasn’t the case, and other children received far better consideration than me. That’s when I asked about my mothers and how they told me everything about it.”
“Isn’t it too much? It’s not like any of this is your fault.”
She smiled sadly.
“That’s how people here think. Because it takes so long to have a baby, people think each life is precious. And probably, they thought the way I was born was very unfair.”
I initially believed the way of growing children in fields was nonsensical but maybe this was the reason for it. It was a sort of enormous birth control method, where every child was accounted for, and cheating wasn’t possible. Well, unless someone old enough paid 10,000 lods to a corrupt official to get an ID, of course.
“I’m so sorry for you, Suuru. You don’t deserve any of this.”
I held her stronger into my arms and she fidgeted to take on a more comfortable position, only to relax soon after again.
“I’m fine. I’m happy now. I never thought I could be so happy in my life but every day has been amazing since you came here, Tila. Finding you collapsed behind the house might have been the best thing that happened to me.”
“I might get shy if you praise me so much.”
“That word is incompatible with you.”
“That’s true. Anyway, did you ever get any news about your mothers?”
“Nothing. I’ve also been forbidden from looking for them.”
“How harsh.”
“I can’t say I’m not curious but I don’t know what I would feel meeting them. I’m afraid they would only feel like strangers. And… I might resent them for what my life turned out to be. Maybe it’s better never to meet, after all.”
Read 30 more chapters here: https://subscribestar.adult/dictatelion or here: https://www.patreon.com/Dictatelion