Just a few days into the new school year, my mother Beth Manning started pressuring me again. “Emily, have you found a man yet? Our family has to fulfill our duty in just one month. That’s your own little brother we’re talking about—how can you bear to watch him die?” Handing over my brother David Manning would be like signing his death warrant. There were over eighty women of childbearing age in the village. David had been frail since childhood—if he were assigned to impregnate them, he definitely wouldn’t survive. But I had absolutely no idea where to find a man.
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