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The flashing red light periodically illuminates the forlorn face of an astronaut. Blaring warnings fill the spaceship with ruckus and chaos, adding onto the cacophony of imminent disaster. Sparks from exposed electrical wiring whiz on the floor, their short lifespans ending with brilliant white glows.
At the center of it all sits Hoshino Ichika in the pilot seat, unmoving as if the frigid universe finally had frozen one of its many targets on its quest towards negentropy. The captain of the spaceship, in all her years of traversing through the fabrics of existence, meets the final test of fate, one she is sure to fail.
Where did it all go wrong?
It had been a mere mining expedition, like any that the veteran excavator had gone on before. Hoshino Ichika examines the map before her in disbelief. No…she had gone on the same route…how is she 200 lightyears away from the headquarters? System scans show that, yes, the terminal really isn’t malfunctioning.
Reality has not put its full weight on Ichika’s mind. The grip of icy horror did not permeate her bones just yet. She is blanking out. She needs to snap out of it. She needs to focus. She needs to snap out of it. She-
Her grasp on her seat’s armrest tightens to a painful extent, the edges digging into the thin silicon of her gloves. Deep breaths in, deep breaths out. Ichika reaches into her pockets, and a photo comes back out. The captain traces the faces of the girls in the photo, as the Earthian sun shines in the background, as the lush flora known to that planet hug around the children. How long has it been since she's felt sunlight on her skin? How long has it been since the last contact of any kind with… Shiho…or Honami and…and…
No one is there to witness the finger lingering a little longer on the face of the blonde girl with pink tips at the ends of her hair.
Ichika looks down at the faded memory in her hand, creased with age even though hints of careful handling still remain intact. A time capsule from her distant joyous years. She purposefully skips the faces of two, memories that are long buried under the betrayal and loneliness Ichika had felt. Her eyes continue to drift towards a picture of her best friend, adorned with a smile so full of hope, so wide like the sky.
How that smile slowly became hopeless, as the girl sits on the bed.
How the sound of laughter is replaced with the sound of ragged breathing, of the ping of the heart monitor.
How the flowers spill onto the floor, as the future space voyager cries for her love to wake up, just so her feelings do not become lost to another world.
Life was never a kind being...
Warning: Critical oxygen levels - 4% —— Warning: Critical oxygen levels - 4% —— Warning: Critical oxygen levels - 4%
The robotic voice shakes Ichika out of her reverie, and she screws her eyes shut. She must survive…she must live on in order to travel to places Saki should have gone to also. She must return— she has not fulfilled her own promise to reconcile with Shiho and Honami…wherever they are.
The foreboding expanse that lies around Ichika seems to grow brighter. It is as if the stars are reaching towards the lost astronaut in space. It is as if…the stars are trying to comfort her, holding out their rays to grasp her own hands, whispering, “It’ll all be alright. It’ll all be okay. Don’t be afraid.”
It is…nostalgic. It is familiar…as if someone she knows is telling her these reassurances.
Is it her? Is it—
“Saki?” Ichika couldn’t help but mumble her outrageous suspicions to herself. But she knows. The dead will stay dead; it is one of the lessons she had learnt painfully throughout her lifetime. One that will end here, billions of miles and millions of millennia away from the nearest outpost of sentient life.
The stars continue to flicker innocuously in the astral backdrop, not hinting at the secrets they are hiding. The repeated advisories from the dashboard fade away. All that is left is a monotonous hum that falls deaf on inattentive ears.
The robotic voices of the ship’s speakers turn into whispers of nostalgic summer evenings. Whispers that should not be heard by the ears of the living.
“It’s okay, Icchan. You should rest.” The voice of Saki is a mere hallucination, Ichika knows. It is one that her mind has evilly constructed in her last dying breaths. She grasps onto the chance to finally speak to her lost love, no matter if it is fake or real.
“But I haven’t— I haven’t “
The voice of her childhood love slowly breaks down Ichika’s resolve. Saki means no harm, the star had witnessed the grief, the helplessness, the exhaustion that batters the broken soul of Hoshino Ichika.
“Don’t worry, Icchan, “ Saki gently runs her nonexistent hands through the dark hair, “We can travel together to places we wanna go to. You don’t need to make up with Shiho-chan and Hona-chan, ok? They will walk their own paths…paths that you don’t have to follow.”
Ichika really shouldn’t be crying right now, what with the dwindling supply of oxygen onboard and in the spacesuit, expending this many resources cannot be good.
But she sobs. And then another. She breaks down in the intangible arms of her past, and soon to be her future. She lets out all the dark and heavy baggage she had buried in her heart. She thinks, mulls over the decision, and chooses .
The ethereal warmth from Saki’s cosmic body had faded moments before. The somber expression on the captain’s face soon turned into a determined one.
Ichika will try to live. She will try to escape and return home. She will right her wrongs, and dedicate her time to clear out the grievances she has with Shiho and Honami.
But if she fails…she knows she has a new home to go to. One that she will eventually arrive at, whether it is now, or decades later.
A new sense of purpose breathes new life into Ichika. No matter how long it lasts, she intends to make good use of it.
She calls out to the starry abyss, “I love you Saki. Wait for me. We will be reunited eventually.”
Ichika recalls an artifact that is meticulously safeguarded in another compartment of her spacesuit. One that contains a message she has memorized within her heart.
"Look up to the sky if you miss me!"
It was scrawled messily on a piece of paper. A makeshift form of a will, so to speak.
Ichika mouths the words as she traces them again and again.
There is no salvation for her, she knows. The pod is equipped with oxygen suits in case an emergency happens, like this one…but there is no use.
The warp drive crucial to spearheading through the murky underdepths of spacetime has malfunctioned. Systematic failures topple over one after another. It becomes evident that the traversal system had already lost its course correction operation...thus she ended up here. Ichika doesn’t trust it to take her back home accurately, what with the alerts popping up all over her screen of overheating and whatnot.
Losing all strength to remain standing, Ichika collapses back onto the pilot seat with a defeated groan. She closes her eyes…and comes to the final conclusion.
If these are the last minutes of life for her, she will spend it to her own whims. She feels lightheaded, presumably due to a lack of oxygen. Her lifeline that is quickly escaping from the various patches and holes the ship had suffered from the failed warp.
In the spur of the moment, she reaches for the pod's hatch. With tremendous effort, Ichika throws it open, exposing the twinkling namesakes dotting the foreboding expanse.
She can feel herself blacking out, as she slow dances with her hope and joy. She can feel herself floating away, as the universe continues to expand around this moment of space and time. The stars melt into blobs of luminescence, and she is reminded of the sun that had shone over the play of four children all those years ago.
Ichika remembers how radiant her love had looked as she smiled, reaching towards the blue sky— her namesake, and wishes to become one with it.
Hoshino Ichika can feel herself becoming one with the stars. She has finally reunited with her sky.