Shall We Take a Bite?
The place Bora led me by the hand was the laboratory I saw all the time. I went there for the occasional health check, so it was thoroughly familiar—familiar enough that I rummaged through the desk drawers and helped myself to the candy inside as if I'd come home.
Nom, nom.
Sweetness spread across my tongue, and a happy smile rose to my face. Something sweet tasted good no matter when or where I ate it. If I had my way I would have lived on candy instead of meals, but Bora had warned me that too much would rot my teeth, so I was holding myself back as I ate.
"Huh?"
I'd been so lost in the candy that I hadn't noticed the apple perched on the crown of my head drop with a soft plop. The timing was kind enough that I caught it in my hands. If it had hit the floor it might have been damaged, so that was a relief.
"Bora! The apple on my head fell off!"
"Mm. I saw."
I held out the apple that had fallen from my crown. It had come from my own body, so it had to have some incredible effect, right? I was confident it was a heavenly apple, the sort of flavor that could bring the dead back to life.
Whether that was the truth or a lie, I had no idea. Still—if it came from my body, it had to be good, didn't it?
"Bora, try it!"
I tried to feed her the first apple my body had ever produced. When I held it out, she took it with an awkward smile.
"Hana... just a second..."
With that, she walked off somewhere without taking a bite. I'd wanted her to eat it, but apparently she had other ideas.
She handed the apple off to someone and came back empty-handed, then led me by the hand toward another room—the machine they'd used to scan my body last time.
The apple was gone, but a branch still sprouted from the crown of my head. Part of me wanted to just yank it out, yet if its roots ran down into my skull, the result would be a truly disgusting scene.
So I chose the safe route: an MRI, and no reckless pulling. If it came to it, we could always take a saw to the thing and cut away as much of the branch as we could. The only real nuisance was that it got in the way whenever I tried to scratch my head.
I was killing time in a waiting-room chair, playing on my phone, when the scan results came in. Bora and I went to look at them together.
The images of the inside of my head were fascinating. In the pictures, the branch had put down roots and was living in my skull. Yank it out by hand and the inside of my head would be a complete mess—that much was obvious. Maybe, given time, it would vanish on its own?
There was no point forcing it out. It had appeared naturally, so it would probably disappear the same way. With nothing much to show for the visit, I had no choice but to go back to my room. I'd spent the whole day in the lab, and by the time I headed upstairs the sun was already going down outside.
Winter made the sunset come quickly. I ate a simple dinner and sank into sleep. I'd wanted to play games, but tonight I just wasn't in the mood.
Fortunately, when I woke the next morning, the branch on my crown was gone without a trace. There had been no need to take a saw to it after all.
For the first time in a long while, the laboratory was bustling—all because of the apple that had come from Hana's crown.
Beautifully colored and glossy, it seemed to be tempting them to eat it at once. It was like coming across a gorgeous poisonous mushroom in the wild.
And yet no one reached for it. Or rather, people were lined up wanting to, but the mood held them back. Eating only after the proper safety procedures was a rule of the institute.
Bora pulled on a pair of spotless white gloves and began to peel the apple. For an ordinary apple, throwing the skin away would have been the right call, but right now it was research material. Not a scrap of it could be wasted.
She carefully stored the peel, then cut the fruit into eight neat pieces. Unfortunately, there were no seeds inside. If there had been, they would have tried to cultivate them...
The neatly cut apple was then fed to the animals the institute kept, because they had to test whether it would harm a human being. If it came from Hana's body, it ought to have been nothing but good for you, and yet...
Bora was dying to just pop a piece into her mouth, the way she had with the hair last time. After several rounds of testing, only half the apple remained. Watching it dwindle, she couldn't help the gloom that settled over her face.
When the hours of testing finally ended, the conclusion was that the apple from Hana's head did no harm. A lethal poison had never been likely in the first place.
Just looking at Hana was healing in itself, so Bora could say with confidence that the byproducts Hana produced carried only positive effects.
Perhaps because it had come from Hana, the apple was special. Common sense said that an apple left in the air for a few hours would turn brown.
This one seemed to be telling them to throw that common sense away. It remained exactly as it had been when first cut, gleaming dazzlingly under the laboratory lights as if urging them to eat it already.
"Wouldn't it be all right to try at least one?"
Among the researchers, the suggestion to taste it began to circulate. Looking at the apple, the sight was almost impossible to resist. Even so, perhaps because it was a byproduct of Hana, it was mostly the younger researchers who ate it. Those with more years behind them were a little reluctant.
Fortunately, Bora counted among the younger researchers, so she was allowed a taste. The unfortunate part was that she got only a single slice—but this wouldn't be the last of it. Once an apple had appeared, wouldn't they keep coming from Hana's crown?
She put the slice in her mouth and chewed. Her eyes went wide. No apple on earth, brought from anywhere, could possibly taste better than this. With every bite, juice gushed out in a flood.
Feeling her mouth fill with the scent of apple, Bora wished this one could last forever. But with every chew, the fruit in her mouth dwindled away.
The thought that she wouldn't be able to eat it again for a while nearly brought her to tears. The researchers who had eaten alongside her seemed to feel the same. One of them was actually sobbing outright while chewing. Watching that researcher, a few tears slipped from Bora's eyes as well.
"Ugh..."
Bora woke a little late today. She had worked overtime the night before, so coming in late was perfectly fine—one of the advantages of the flexible schedule at her company.
But something felt wrong the moment she woke. An indescribably foul stench hung thick in the air, and something sticky clung to her body. It was winter. There was no reason she should be sweating like this...
And the blanket was soaked through. Uneasy, Bora scrambled out of bed at once.
"So sticky, and it reeks..."
A sewer stench rose off her, so strong she could hardly believe it was her own body. What was seeping from her skin was a dark, grimy liquid that could not possibly be called sweat.
"Eek!"
She rushed for the bathroom, tore off the pajamas plastered with the dark, sticky fluid, turned on the shower, and started scrubbing. Even washing with body soap, the smell refused to leave easily.
The comparison was filthy, but it was like bathing after falling into sewage. Only when she scoured her whole body with a bath towel did the stench finally seem to fade. She washed her hair as well. The grease was absurd—hair that matted and oily looked like it hadn't been washed in a month, and it had appeared overnight.
Not understanding any of it, Bora fought a battle in the bathroom for a full hour.
"Haa..."
Only once she had more or less returned to her usual state did she sigh and step out. It had taken about three times as long as her normal shower. That was how vicious the smell of the liquid from her body had been, and how stubbornly it clung.
But when she looked in the mirror afterward, she realized her face and body had changed. Before, edging into her late twenties, she'd had wrinkles and a belly that stuck out. None of that was there now.
It was as if she had gone back to her early twenties.
"Oh my?"
Wasn't this exactly a martial artist from the murim tales, undergoing that legendary rebirth of bone and flesh? And yet among all the byproducts taken from monsters, not one restored youth.
Aging was an inescapable current for every living thing, and people were pouring astronomical sums into research just to turn it backward.
And yet a sample that might actually help that anti-aging research had just been born.
The researchers who had eaten the apple alongside Bora each looked younger—three to five years, depending on the person.