Chapter 303: In This Tranquil Universe

Chapter 303: Chapter 303: In This Tranquil Universe

"You’ve really got a fiancée?"

Since they couldn’t separate, while Athrun adjusted and repaired the salvaged thruster, Cagalli could only stand by, passing him tools and resting.

A little bored, Cagalli found herself thinking again about the topic Athrun had brought up yesterday.

She’d actually taken quite a liking to him. But then he’d gone and said he already had a fiancée?

"Ah, Coordinator pairings tend to have a lower birth rate than normal people—second-generation Coordinators lower than the first, third lower than the second. To keep the birth rate up, people like us need genetic matching, to make sure we can successfully produce the next generation."

Athrun said.

"So there’s no such thing as choosing who you fall in love with?!" Cagalli’s eyes went wide. Then a thought struck her. "Then if it’s with a Natural, what would the birth rate even be like—"

But halfway through, her face went red.

—Wasn’t that basically talking about herself?!

"D-don’t get the wrong idea! I’m just curious! Purely curious!" Cagalli clamped her mouth shut.

"That... I’ve never looked into it."

Athrun suddenly realized—Cagalli was also a girl, wasn’t she...

"Ahem. Right, we still don’t know each other’s names. I’m Athrun. And you?"

He’d just realized he had no idea what this girl was called.

"Cagalli." She let out a small breath of relief—the topic had finally shifted. "My name’s Cagalli."

"Mm..."

Athrun went back to repairing the parts.

The two of them fell into a strange silence.

But the silence didn’t feel cold. If anything, some kind of warmth seemed to be slowly rising between them...

[So they’re cheating on each other, basically]

[Absurd]

[Not gonna lie, breathing the same air every day—forget Athrun, even I as a girl couldn’t hold out]

[Breathing in each other’s scent, is that it lol]

[Feels less like these two got stranded and more like they’re on a honeymoon]

[But this could be a fake-out ship—Athrun’s actual childhood friend should be Kira, right? And going by this, Kira’s got the unbeatable "childhood-friend-who-dropped-from-the-sky" attribute, while Cagalli’s just some love interest who dropped in out of nowhere]

[Inori and Lacus over there dropped in out of nowhere too though]

[No need to go into debt just to set myself up for heartbreak—honestly, I think this ship’s fine]

The audience seemed thoroughly pleased with how things were developing here.

The camera, however, had already cut back to Lacus.

After Murrue and the others left, Lacus walked up to the screen on the wall, which showed the situation outside the ship.

Screens like this were everywhere on the Archangel; even before Tolle and the others officially joined the crew, they’d used these monitors to check what was happening outside whenever they wanted.

Watching the shattered, desolate land drifting amid countless fragments, wrapped in the pitch-black vacuum, Lacus quietly pulled Haro onto her lap.

"Let’s pray, Haro... let’s pray that everyone’s souls find peace..."

A trace of sorrow settled over her gentle face.

Lacus Clyne wasn’t the sweet, pink-haired-and-innocent type secretly hiding something dark and calculating underneath—but she certainly wasn’t oblivious either.

Inori looked at Lacus on the screen.

Her expression seemed as hazy and fragile as something that might dissolve and vanish at any moment.

But as an hIE with an instinct for consciousness induction, Inori could understand her.

It was the look of someone who had already sensed and accepted the fate of the ship she rode on, and her own fate to come.

And yet that clear, distant gaze also seemed to cast everything into something hazy and unreal.

And then, in this hushed universe, music began to flow.

"Standing alone by the quiet shore"

"I pick up a seashell and hold it to my ear"

"Quietly gazing, quietly listening"

"You see"

"You can hear it"

"The message you’re trying to send"

"These feelings I could never put into words"

"I write them in the sand"

"And let the waves carry them away"

"Hello, hello"

"I’m right here"

"Right here, where this story began..."

"It’s always just the same promise, over and over"

"But in your memory, I’ll live on forever..."

Planetes.

The theme song of Guilty Crown: Lost Christmas.

A calm, gentle melody, speaking of longing even in the midst of this silence.

It suited the scenery well enough.

"Is that a broadcast?"

This wasn’t exactly a "pleasure cruise," but it wasn’t a moment for combat either, and most of the people on the Archangel were ordinary civilians.

So Inori had suggested she sing here herself.

It wasn’t a recording or a prerecorded track, but Inori singing softly, live.

That way, she could better soothe the wounds people carried and bring them some comfort of the heart.

They listened quietly.

Tears fell, unbidden.

[New song! Another new song!]

[Buy buy buy!]

[I hereby declare Gundam SEED the dominant idol anime, and this was before Bocchi the Rock! even existed]

[Euterpe’s already at number one]

[Feeling depressed just from this]

[Not just that—it’s trending outside the platform too]

[I heard the Strike’s model kit is already up for preorder?]

[Can’t get one, absolutely can’t get one]

While the audience chattered away, the scene had already cut to Siegel Clyne.

A council session had just ended over there.

Athrun Zala had gone missing while engaging enemy forces; a search was underway, but the odds of him being classified MIA—missing in action, effectively presumed dead—weren’t small.

On top of that, a Nazca-class and a Laurasia-class had both been severely damaged.

Siegel Clyne’s gaze settled on the wall behind him.

A great memorial stood there.

"Evidence 01"—commonly called the "Whale Stone."

True to its name, it resembled the fossil of an aquatic vertebrate.

But this creature had one feature clearly unlike any whale: a pair of bony protrusions along its sides.

Aside from wings, it was hard to imagine what else those could be.

In CE 18, the exploration vessel Tsiolkovsky had brought this massive fossil back from the Jupiter region.

It was generally believed to be a meteorite from outer space.

There had been a great deal of debate at the time, because it proved that life existed beyond Earth. Ever since, this stone had come to be known as "Proof of Existence."

"Does alien life really exist... Could it be that these lifeforms have already appeared quietly among us, and we simply haven’t noticed—while these ’gods’ laugh at the folly of mankind?"

A voice spoke up.

Siegel Clyne turned.

Le Creuset lowered his head. "Chairman Clyne."

"Captain Le Creuset." Clyne hadn’t had much interaction with the man.

Because Le Creuset was, for the most part, one of Patrick Zala’s people.

"Is there something you need?" Siegel Clyne asked.

"Just feeling a little uneasy, that’s all. I’m somewhat concerned about Athrun’s disappearance. It’s my responsibility, after all."

This was a lie.

Le Creuset didn’t care about any of that in the slightest.

He was simply using the opportunity to probe Siegel Clyne.

Because in the course of his own investigation, he’d found that Clyne had some kind of connection to the Mendel colony.

"If there really were some wondrous alien artifact or alien technology out there, I wonder if it could resolve every conflict we have." Le Creuset "mused."

"That sort of thing is unrealistic. Only our own efforts can accomplish that." Siegel Clyne turned his gaze back to the Whale Stone.