Somebody please explain why this is heart breaking.
Hopefully I'm remembering correctly, as far as I recall Suzuran's infection was caused by a teddy bear "gift" that was trapped with Originium, and it was gifted to her by another mafia family. So ever since she was really young she's been sick and fated to a shorter life because of this cruel act.
Somebody please explain why this is heart breaking.
She just got an incurable cancer in a failed assassination attempt from her mother's rival organization.
Suzuran catches sight of two tense Medic operators, one wearing a hazmat suit, the other carrying a refuse bag, both at the door to the playroom waiting to strike. The chain of events isn't complicated: a damaged doll, an agitated child, a failed casting attempt, and now a toy meant to be fixed by Arts is instead skewered by a sinister Originium crystal. Suzuran passes by to see the boy hugging it, wailing, forbidding anyone from taking it away. "It just grew some rocks! It didn't do anything bad! It's not dangerous!" Suzuran once had a doll too, but a much daintier one, in a little blue coat and stuffed with fluffy musbeast fur. It, too, grew a crystal like his—and she'd just nodded off holding it when a stabbing pain pulled her violently from dreamland. "I saved it from the rubbish bin, I saved it! You can't throw it away again!" Suzuran doesn't remember that night too well, but she does remember nestling in the faint warmth of her mother's arm, and the doctor's soft, gentle voice. Nothing taken for processing, nothing thrown away. The next morning, an identical doll sat on her bed, no hint of damage. "Mum and Dad were like this when they got taken away! Everything gets taken away, and just buried... Why are you scared of me? Why are you scared of our stuff?!" Suzuran has just as little idea why. That's not how things happened in her life. But, she thinks, maybe she can get things to change to the way she recognizes. So, ignoring the Medic operators trying to stop her, Suzuran walks up to the boy, and tells him a story.
"H-Hello... I don't think this doll's actually dangerous at all..." "Really? You think so too?" "Yeah. These stones are amber from another land—look, you can even see through them. The people with stones on them, in the end they bury inside those stones to sleep, just like bugs do in amber. And then when they wake up, they journey to the other land." "I knew those meanies were lying to me! They didn't say anything except 'they're dead', and nobody explained. They just kept on going on about 'dead means dead,' so I think they just didn't know either!" "Er, I... I don't know if they know or not, but the other land is real... When people grow stones and then disappear, that means they've journeyed over there. Right now they're lying in golden lakes, basking in the nicest, warmest sunlight." "Then are we going too one day?" "We are, but you have to go to sleep properly, because that's how the journey succeeds. See, the doll can't fall asleep right now, because it's too noisy in here. So, can you let it rest in peace?"
Thereafter, in the rec room there sits a doll in a glass case, with a wrinkled note stuck on the outside: On a journey, do not disturb.
