Chapter 2: Divergence

Chapter 2: Divergence is the second chapter of Breathe Deeply. Sei is preparing to present his research, meanwhile Oishi is now employed at university.

Characters

 * Sei Inaba
 * Yuko Kazama (memory)
 * Chief
 * Oishi

Synopsis
Fifteen years later in Kobe, professor Sei Inaba gives a lecture in the engineering department. There are ethical concerns with using technology to grow organs.

Elsewhere in the tissue-engineering department, a human appearing ear has been grafted onto a mouse. The research is to lead to the end of incurable diseases. There are further tensions arising from research proposals by faculty staff.

Test tubes accidentally fall and break and within one is a small heart. Oishi is working there and is asked by a woman addressed as ‘Chief’ how he felt about dissection.

Sei is advised that is best to not provoke the medical school about their ES cell research with the press arriving tomorrow. He feels they have forgotten their humanity, yet humans amount to nothing more than highly evolved bacteria under the impression they can use life for their own purposes.

The heart of a frog vivisection is considered in imagining the use for growing organs, but it’s all up to the ethicists now. There is the view that as people are mere bacteria, ethics do not exist in the natural world and so all they can do is get smarter and evolve.

As Sei walks he remembers at time at the sea where Yuko cut her finger on a seashell. Oishi was present as well and he recalls the color of the sun.