Pathology

"Hey, the bandages over your eyes are off?" A familiar female voice came from the end of the corridor. Hesta glanced sideways and saw a very tall young woman.

This was the first time Hesta had seen Chiba Masaki since removing the bandages from her eyes.

She wore men's khaki overalls over a simple grayish-white cotton shirt, with what seemed to be a lightweight black turtleneck underneath. A pair of rimless glasses rested on Chiba's nose, their lenses pale yellow pentagons. Behind them, her gray eyes looked strikingly sharp.

Her black hair was tied into a high, short ponytail. A mouse-gray coat was draped over her arm, and she wore a pair of black knee-high boots.

This was twenty-year-old Chiba Masaki.

Hesta rose to her feet. "Miss Chiba?"

"Nice to meet you for the first time." Chiba held out her hand to Hesta. Hesta gave it a light shake and found that Chiba's hand felt remarkably unusual.

"Come on, I'll show you around the monastery." Chiba jingled the car keys in her hand. "I just picked up a new car today."

Chiba's new car was a burgundy vintage fastback. She had already modified the console inside; she loved brass toggle switches, so she had replaced the controls for the windows, air conditioning, and radio with them.

The car smelled of tobacco. In the gap between the window and the console, Hesta spotted a half-smoked pack of women's cigarettes.

"You smoke?"

"Do you mind?" Chiba started the car. "I can avoid doing it in front of you."

"I don't care."

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive. It was not until they neared the borders of Severn Mountain that a group of people in white protective suits stopped them.

They wore the badges of the District 3 security force and had set up barricades across the main road. Chiba showed them her credentials, and only then did they let the two women pass.

"Has the road already been sealed off?" Hesta asked.

"Yeah. There haven't been any new cases of Chelation Disease in District 3's Habitable Zone for almost ten years, so the higher-ups are taking this very seriously," Chiba replied. "This whole area around Severn Mountain will probably be designated a new quarantine zone. Entry and exit will be prohibited unless necessary."

Hesta gazed out the window. The scenery gradually shifted from unfamiliar to familiar, and her eyes began to burn. This car was carrying her back to the place where she had lived for more than three years—a place now destined to fall into desolation.

"We're here."

The car stopped near the mountaintop, and Chiba and Hesta got out together.

From a distance, Hesta could already see the church's stone roof, blackened by fire.

They walked side by side when Chiba spoke first. "The twenty-some children from the monastery have already been sent to a public orphanage. Someone will take care of them."

Hesta heard her, but said nothing.

She followed the stone colonnade, passed through the collapsed church, and headed toward the confinement rooms—the old two-story building had been charred black from top to bottom, but its basic structure still remained.

When she returned to the confinement room, its wooden door had long since burned to ash. Only a month had passed, yet grass had already sprouted from the cracks in the walls.

Hesta stepped over the stone threshold and saw three or four bizarre iron cages before her—their steel bars had melted in the blaze.

Silently, Hesta walked to the cage where Boheng had once been held. She knelt on the ground and reached beneath it.

Amid the ashes, she found the asbestos cloth wrapped around Boheng's scrapbook. Rain from the past few days clung to its surface, leaving it slightly damp.

In an instant, Hesta's limbs stiffened—if Boheng had escaped on his own, there was no reason he would have left this notebook behind.

"What is th—" Chiba had just begun to ask when she saw several tears fall one after another onto the asbestos cloth. Hesta still had her back to her and did not turn around.

The girl opened the asbestos cloth. The scrapbook inside still retained its original shape, but the entire book had carbonized. Neither the District 14 news Boheng had carefully clipped out nor the words he had left inside could be made out anymore.

Chiba did not ask further. "...I'm going down to have a cigarette."

"Wait, Miss Chiba." Hesta turned around, her eyes red. "Do you know what caused it? This infection..."

"The detailed report isn't out yet. We'll have to wait until next week." Chiba frowned slightly. "But I have a guess. Do you want to hear it?"

"Mm."

"We detected some Chelating Fungus spores in the forests around Severn Mountain. The concentration was very low, and inhaling them wouldn't cause illness... but it at least proves that Chelated Beings had already been active in this area before Director Elma fell ill. Did your director have much contact with wild animals?"

Hesta froze for a moment. She lowered her head and took a long time before answering, "Sometimes there would be injured animals... baby birds and the like. If the director came across them... she would take care of them."

"It wouldn't have been birds. Chelated Disease only occurs in mammals," Chiba said. "My guess would be squirrels, rats, things like that—there are quite a lot of them around here."

Hesta looked at Chiba. "If Director Elma had contracted Chelation Disease, she would have noticed it herself... right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"I don't understand..." Hesta murmured. "Then why did she... not say anything?"

"Ha." Chiba raised a hand and scratched her head. "That's not something I can explain in just a few words..."

Those words fell on Hesta's ears, and for a moment, she felt as though fate had folded over itself.

She was quiet for a while. "Then would Miss Chiba be willing to explain it to me in detail?"

"Well... of course." Chiba pointed outside. "But let's talk in the car. It looks like it might rain again."

"Okay."

It was from Chiba that Hesta first learned the full story behind Chelation Disease.

This terrifying infectious disease originated from a fungus that grew in the deep sea—Many-toothed Coordination Fungus. Its terrestrial variant was Chelating Fungus.

Deep-sea Many-toothed Coordination Fungus resembled jellyfish. It usually lay dormant at depths below two hundred meters, surfacing into shallow waters only during its breeding season.

The mycelium of Many-toothed Coordination Fungus generally measured no more than five millimeters, and 99.3 percent of its body was water. It had originally been an unremarkable species among countless fungal organisms on the seafloor. Yet in the dark, high-pressure world beneath the sea, it began a lengthy endosymbiosis with certain dinoflagellates, eventually evolving a parasitic kind of vesicle worm.

These vesicle worms could not survive independently of Many-toothed Coordination Fungus. Their survival and reproduction depended entirely on those tiny fungi, like grains of sand.

Through the vesicle worms, these deep-sea fungi suddenly became ferocious. Gradually, Many-toothed Coordination Fungus gained the ability to control mammals hundreds or even thousands of times larger than itself—once marine mammals were infected, their bodies became breeding grounds for Many-toothed Coordination Fungus. During this period, the animals would actively approach their own kind and release pathogenic spores at them. Once the animals had been devoured from within, their remains would swell like balloons and explode, launching Many-toothed Coordination Fungus into even more distant waters one last time.

For a long time, this was merely a problem that troubled some marine scientists and animal protection organizations, until 4412, when the first case of an infected human fisherman appeared near the Cook Islands in the Longtail Ocean.

At first, the patient experienced persistent depression, lethargy, an unwillingness to do anything, and avoidance of social contact, along with severe insomnia—classic symptoms of depression. So after seeking treatment, he was quickly diagnosed with depression and began taking medication, but it had no effect.

These symptoms continued for about a month before the patient's mood suddenly returned to normal. More than that, he became outgoing and lively. But people soon noticed something was wrong—the first victims were his wife and child. The patient split open his family's skulls with an axe and hid their bodies in a wardrobe.

As if possessed by a demon, he began extending his claws toward his neighbors. His crimes were discovered when he tried to forcibly take away a neighbor's child.

After he was exposed, enraged residents bound and captured him. When they removed his gloves, they discovered that his arms below the elbows had become as thick as thighs and turned a horrifying bright red. At the same time, his index, middle, ring, and little fingers had fused tightly together. He could only perform simple grasping motions with the help of his thumb—the sight was exactly like a lobster's claw.

That was how "Chelated Disease" got its name.