The One Chosen to Die Chapter 09

The One Chosen to Die Chapter 09

“I can see you.”

When those words came out of Mary’s mouth, I thought I had heard wrong.

She was standing at the doorway of the old house, holding the urn containing my ashes. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead at me, floating in midair.

There was no fear in her cloudy, old eyes, nor was there shock, only a kind of heartbreak I couldn’t describe.

My tears fell.

So someone could see me. From the moment I died, Mary had been able to see me.

Mary placed the urn on the table and reached out her hand.

She extended it into the empty air, stopping right where my lingering soul was. Her fingers trembled slightly, as if she were testing something.

“You’ve suffered,” her voice choked.

She opened her arms to gesture a hug.

I drifted closer and stopped in her embrace.

Of course, she couldn’t hold me.

Her arms wrapped around nothing. When her fingers closed, there was nothing there to grasp.

However, she didn’t let go. She just stayed like that, holding the empty shape, as if she were truly holding

“Grandma is here,” her voice was soft, like soothing a pup. “Don’t be afraid, Clara.”

So she really was here. She really could see me.

I cried hard, but no tears fell.

Mary’s hand gently patted my back, touching only air and making faint sounds.

The two of us, one alive, one a soul, held each other like that and cried for a long time.

Later, Mary let go and walked to the cabinet.

From the deepest shelf, she pulled out a cloth bundle. Inside was a red fruit.

It was well preserved, its skin still full and smooth, its color red like blood.

Mary placed it in front of the urn and said, “This is the sweetest fruit from the mountains. I picked it and

never ate it. Try it.”

When I was alive, I had never eaten a whole fruit.

Whenever we had them at home, Linda would cut them in half. The bigger half always went to my sister

The smaller half would be diced and mixed into water for the whole family.

What I got was just a few tiny bits, and they were always lost in the water before I could even taste them.

I looked at the red fruit and wanted to say I couldn’t eat it since I was already dead.

However, I didn’t say it.

Mary knew. She just wanted to do it, the way I would have wanted her to.

That night, Mary sat beside the urn and told many stories from my puphood.

“I still remember when you were three,” she said, her voice rough like sandpaper.

“You fell into a mud pit. When you climbed out, you were covered head to toe in mud. Only your eyes were

moving.

“Your sister was laughing so hard she couldn’t stop, and you were laughing too, like two little mud

monkeys.

“There was another time when you tried to learn how to howl like a wolf. You couldn’t do it and got so

frustrated that you kept stomping your feet.

“Later, you figured out a way, humming through your nose. Your sister said you scared all the dogs in the

village.”

As I listened, I started to smile.

I didn’t remember any of these things.

In my memory, puphood had always been a dull gray, filled only with everything I never received.

Mary remembered, though.

She remembered how I laughed, how I acted up, how I wasn’t born into suffering.

Mary stopped and looked out the window at the sky. She stayed silent for a long time.

Then she said, “Clara, are you leaving?”

I looked at my own fading soul. It had already become very thin.

I nodded.

“That’s good,” she said softly. “No more suffering.”

She stretched out her hand again, making that same hugging gesture. This time she held it tightly, as if using all her strength.

“In the next life,” her lips pressed against the empty air, her voice breaking apart. “I hope you’re born somewhere good. Don’t come back to this family.”

I took one last look at Mary, then turned around and drifted toward where the moonlight was fading

Morning light caught up from behind, slowly dissolving my lingering soul.

Within the light, I grew fainter and lighter, like a drop of water merging into a river.