Cherry Tomatoes
"Whoaaa..."
The Bora standing before me today looked nothing like the one I remembered. The slightly work-worn figure of an office worker was gone. In her place was a Bora with a slim, sleek body, and if I had once placed her somewhere in her mid-twenties despite how young she looked for her age, the woman in front of me now could have passed for a freshman who had only just started college. Knowing she was in her late twenties, a change like that was almost impossible to come by.
"Hana."
She said it as she gathered me up into her arms. She smelled wonderful, too. Just being beside her felt like standing in a field where some lovely floral scent drifted on the breeze.
"Yeah?"
"Can you make that fruit from yesterday again?"
She was probably asking whether I could grow another of the apples I had made yesterday. I had no idea when the next one would come, either. All I knew for certain was that they would bloom again. It just took a long time.
"I think it's going to take a while..."
I ducked my head as I said it, feeling oddly guilty. I still wasn't sure exactly what my apples did, but it seemed to be something remarkable. Of course it was. Fruit that came from my own body was bound to be exceptional.
"Is that so?"
Bora stroked my hair as she spoke. She didn't look particularly attached to the fruit.
"Is that a problem?"
"No. No problem. If fruit set every single day, that would have been a real issue. Showing up at irregular intervals isn't much of one."
She said it with a smile, and it didn't seem like a big deal after all. I leaned into her arms and slipped back into sleep. Whatever fragrance rose from her worked on me exactly like a sleeping draught.
"I asked Hana. She says they don't grow every day."
"They don't?"
Only two slices of apple remained, and those had been set aside for research—not to be eaten, but to be broken down in a component analysis. The amount that actually produced an effect was a single slice. Eating more than that did not make anyone any younger. Even so, turning the clock back by even a few years was something no fortune on earth could buy.
The trouble was that apples with that effect were truly limited in number. The fortunate side of it was that the yield was so miserably small there was no prospect of commercializing them. And if someone already ill ate one, it did very little.
All the same, the thinking was that it would be better to analyze the apple's effects and spread the benefit to as many people as possible. If a drug modeled on the apple's contents were ever brought to market, wouldn't it do society some good?
Had the apple been the sort that could turn a person in their fifties or sixties back into someone in their twenties, war or kidnapping might well have followed. Fortunately, Hana's apple did not restore youth to that degree. If it had been capable of true rejuvenation, the world would have been turned upside down. The powerful of every nation might have gone to war just to get their hands on Hana by any means necessary.
Wars had been started over far smaller things. To obtain an apple that lengthened their lives, those in power would not have hesitated to fight. Youth was something the powerful longed for with a desperate ache. They already possessed money and honor both, but youth was the one thing that could not be bought at any price.
"Wow!"
I watered the pot. The plant that had come from my tooth was a cherry tomato. It didn't feel as if much time had passed, and already it was bearing fruit. Weren't you supposed to need insects to carry the pollen before fruit would set? I didn't know much about plants, so I had no idea how it had fruited this fast.
Growing dozens of times faster than an ordinary plant, the cherry tomato was bowed under so much fruit that its branches bent. Looking at it, I felt as if I were raising my own child. Wasn't this exactly how a parent felt, watching their child grow up well?
Unable to hide my pride, I ran to the office to feed Haru one of them. She would never in a million years imagine that a cherry tomato had grown from my tooth. If you stopped someone on the street and told them tomatoes grew from teeth, nine out of ten would treat you like a lunatic. It made no sense at all—except that, for me, it did.
Quitting time had already come and gone, and Haru was the only one left in the office. She looked bored, yawning as she worked at her computer, and a little tired.
"Haru, these cherry tomatoes are delicious—try one!"
I held out a tomato so glossy it seemed to shine. Haru took it and looked at me, puzzled.
"Hm? Hana, what's with the cherry tomato?"
"Try it! Try it!"
I kept at her with my eyes until she made a reluctant face and popped it into her mouth. Her reaction was immediate. A this-is-delicious face? Or a not-quite-sure face? Either way, it was comical. Haru pinched the little stem and spoke.
"Hana, this... where did it come from? You didn't buy it at a convenience store, did you?"
She seemed to have mistaken this precious cherry tomato for something ordinary from a corner store. I answered, looking immensely pleased with myself.
"No! It's fruit that grew from my tooth last time!"
"What!?"
Haru's face went pale with shock. A moment later she scooped me up and ran for my room. When she got there and saw the pot where the cherry tomatoes had grown, she stared at it in disbelief.
"This can't be real. Fruit in a week?"
To be fair, I hadn't known it would grow like this in a week either. I had only thought my tooth was special. Haru, apparently, thought otherwise. She flicked me on the head with her knuckle.
"Ow!"
I had given her something good, and she had given me pain. Tears beading in my eyes, I looked up at her. Had I done something wrong? Nothing came to mind.
"Haru! Why'd you hit me!"
I said it while clutching the aching spot where the flick had landed.
"Hana, from now on you have to tell me exactly where it came from before you let me eat it."
"Why?"
"What if someone else ate your fruit and got a stomachache?"
Mm... a stomachache, I had to admit, was fair. I had meant well, but someone could definitely get sick if it didn't agree with them.
"Mind if I borrow this for a bit?"
"Okay! You absolutely can't throw it away!"
"Of course not."
Haru carried off the pot heavy with cherry tomatoes. She would probably have it studied in the lab. She had said she was only borrowing it, so I lent it to her without a second thought. Surely she wouldn't take it and never give it back.
"This is... the cherry tomato that came from Hana's tooth, isn't it?"
One of the lead researchers said it in a voice that made plain he didn't believe a word. Cherry tomatoes growing from a person's tooth—absurd enough to make a passing dog laugh. But the result was right here, so there was no choice but to believe it.
Bora plucked one tomato clean off the branch and set it on the desk.
"This cherry tomato... it isn't normal. We checked the nutrients and the calories, and none of it makes sense."
"How so?"
"It'll be faster if you look at the data."
Bora handed the lead researcher the component analysis for the cherry tomato that had come from Hana's body. He had been reading the papers with a blank expression; now he looked at Bora as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"This is... really accurate?"
"Yes. These are the values we got, at least."
"Not only does it contain the basic nutrients of a cherry tomato—it has all sorts of components you'd only ever find in a supplement..."
Carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins A, B, and C, and more—nutrients you would expect from a multivitamin were all packed into this one tiny cherry tomato. Could you even call it a cherry tomato? It looked and tasted similar, but it might as well have been an entirely different plant.
"And the calories are no joke either."
"A cherry tomato this small has a thousand calories?"
It was no bigger than a quarter, and yet it held about as many calories as a full meal. Depending on how you looked at it, that was both a good thing and a bad thing.
"Cherry tomatoes grown in experimental cultivation had the exact same properties."
Hana's apple had no seeds, so they had been unable to cultivate it, but this cherry tomato could be grown on its own. Hana had come looking for it in tears, saying she didn't have the pot, so the original plant had gone back into her arms. The tomatoes here now were the second generation—offspring grown from Hana's cherry tomato. They were the spitting image of the original, from the speed of their growth to the way they set fruit in abundance.