Ash (ASH:3-013) 

Interstellar Year 25XX

During my travels, I happened upon a space colony junk shop where I found an old voice log. I’m the kind of person that finds charm in valuable antiques and old junk I don’t know how to use. The log itself wasn’t particularly unusual, but the contents had caught my interest.

〈／２３ＸＸ．１０:４９ＡＭ．Ｖｏｉｃｅ〉

“Um… Is this good? Ah- ah. Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please respond. Ah! I guess you can’t do that, can you? Haha… Well, let's do it again. 

Starting today, I’m going to record my diary. My name is ASH: 3-013, but everyone just calls me Ash. From now on, I’m going to be living on a space colony, where I can study until I grow up. It feels a bit lonely to leave my hometown behind, but… It’s reassuring knowing that my teacher will be with me.”

Ash sounded like a cheerful and lively girl. I didn’t know what she looked like, but the charm of her voice was infectious and lifted my spirits.

As the log progresses further, a faint voice calls out to her.

“A—, h—rry! Let’s —o!”

It seems like the distant sounds didn’t pick up very well.

“Yeah! I’m coming! Okay then, I’ll continue after we make it to the space colony. See you later!”

I found myself replying “yeah” to her—to the girl from a log that could have been from ages ago. Despite being embarrassed, I wondered how her school life had gone. I was excited to hear more.

“I wonder what kind of life this kid will live?” After muttering to myself, I decided to open the next voice log.

〈／２３ＸＸ．０９:２７ＡＭ．Ｖｏｉｃｅ〉

“Ah- ah, can you hear me? It’s Ash! I woke up from cryosleep, and I’ve finally made it to the space colony! It’s so big that it totally swallowed up the ship I’m on. Hehe, I feel like an exciting new life is about to begin!”

Despite having only just woken up from cryosleep, Ash is bursting with energy. The faint sound of her cutting through the air with a rhythmic vibration is a symbol of that. It was just a guess, but I figured she was recording while running around. I can’t make out the voices around her, but the area is filled with noise. Maybe they were students like Ash?

Unexpectedly, there's fluttering in the wind. It’s most likely the sound of the rustling leaves of the trees planted on the colony.

“Aah! I can see the school! The teachers and students are both wearing cute white uniforms. I can’t wait to get one and study with everyone else!”

A school with uniforms in all white… Out of curiosity, I entered the arbitrary collection of words, “uniform”, “colony”, and “school” into the Galaxy Communications Network and ran a wide search.

2,600,000 search results.

Er, well… I guess that was pretty obvious from the start. It was thoughtless to try and narrow it down with so little information. For starters, I didn’t even know what galaxy this was in.

Meanwhile, the voice log for this date was nearing the end.

“I think I’ll wrap it up for today. I’m excited to start school tomorrow~♪ I hope I can make lots of friends… I’ve been alone for a long time. I wonder what kind of person my first friend will be? Well, that’s all for now. See you later!”

That was the end of the day’s log.

Alone. Alone. A cheerful girl like that was alone? It was hard to imagine.

“...I hope it goes well.”

I prayed that her school life was smooth sailing.

〈／２３ＸＸ．０９:２７ＡＭ．Ｖｏｉｃｅ〉

“Ah, ah, can you hear me? Today, my teacher taught us about the history of life in the universe! And then–”

Something new had been added to my daily routine. Everyday after work, I listened to a single day of her voice logs. That was it.

Today was ●●. 

I played ●● today. 

Today I studied ●●.

I took ●●’s medicine again today.

A safe and peaceful everyday school life. It seemed that her life was a happy one.

“–The three of us walked home together. Me, ▲▲, and ■■. We talked about the distant ×× galaxy and speculated what kind of ecosystem it might have–”

She was awfully particular, wasn’t she? She seems to have the habit of talking about even the smallest of details. Maybe she was recording it to share with her parents back home? Whatever the reason, her lively voice always brings joy to my boring solitary life.

Come to think of it, the word “medicine” popping up in her logs here and there made me curious, so I did another search. Apparently this medicine is a drug that was popular in her era, intended to reduce the physical strain of life in space and regulate the body’s nutritional balance. These days, all of that tedious regulation is automated by machines.

The pioneering days of space exploration… All of this happened so long ago. Not even my parents or their great grandparents had even been born yet. A somber thought occurs to me, just going up into space itself must have been an incredibly difficult task?

…Ah, I see. I remembered how she’d said she was alone. Perhaps when she was younger, she was too ill to go outside. If that was the case, it would make sense that she was so energetic now.

Oh, right… Speaking of medicine. I guessed the approximate era and searched for the drug’s manufacturer using terms I got this time.

…

……

Search results: “Orbital Life Foundation.”

Alongside the search result was the foundation’s logo, a flower blooming at the center of a circular orbiting satellite. It sounded familiar, I’m sure I must have seen it—probably while investigating a particular fleet for work. It must have been a well established organization with a place in the history of space exploration.

I ran another search on the network. It took quite some time due to the amount of results, but I came across the following,

…Disbanded in the year 24XX.

Looks like they vanished a long time ago. At least I would be able to narrow down my search now that I had more distinct terms. There were many organizations with similar names, but this was the only one that manufactured medicine that also ran colonies and schools. Surprisingly, the colony where Ash went to school wasn’t too far from the galaxy I was in.

I couldn’t help but feel like there was something fated about this coincidence. If that colony still exists, I might be able to follow Ash’s trail.

〈／２３ＸＸ．０８:３１ＰＭ．Ｖｏｉｃｅ〉

“Ah, ah, can you hear me?”

Ash’s voice log begins with the same line as always. I was expecting her to start off in a cheerful voice, but she sounds a bit tired in this log. Considering she’s still young, and how long she’s been recording despite just starting school, she’s probably just sleepy.

“I’m recording so late because I’ve been feeling kind of off since this morning… I couldn’t move my arms [–rustle] or my legs [–rustle] the way I wanted. Oh, but don’t worry. I’m feeling better after getting some sleep. I’ll be okay at school tomorrow–”

Huh…? I think I heard something strange. I go back through the log and replay that part again.

[–Rustle][–Rustle]

I can definitely hear it. It sounded like the rustling of clothes, but also like leaves in the wind. I listen again and again, but I can’t come up with any other ideas. The device Ash was using didn’t pick up much of the surrounding noise, but this sounded close. Maybe she was taking a night walk to relax, and the AC was rustling the leaves–

[–Creak]

My thoughts are dashed at the sound of a bed creaking. She was lying down in her bedroom.

“...I wonder what kind of pajamas they wore?”

Wait. No. Why am I thinking about that? Deep breaths. I need to focus. 

[–Thud]

There’s a horrible dull noise. I turn the volume on the log up to the maximum to hear what was going on. Ash’s labored breathing mixed with the sound of an alarm. In the distance, I can hear a door open, followed by the sound of footsteps and someone calling her name.

“Haa… haa… I wonder why… Even though I took my medicine today…”

Even now, she continues to record the voice log. What in the world drove her to do that? I couldn’t imagine. 

The log ended there, likely cut off by whoever had rushed over.

She had been having such a good time with school. Why did she have to experience hardship like this…? Before I knew it, I could no longer think of this as the problem of a stranger. It was haunting me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I decided to break my self-imposed routine and open the log for the next day. At the same time, I have a sudden thought. I want to see this colony with my own eyes. What happened to it? What’s the state of the school she lived in? I felt like I would never be myself again if I didn’t investigate properly.

I needed to know if she was okay.

As I headed towards the colony, I continued to play the voice log over from the beginning, wondering if there was anything new I could learn or if there was something I had missed.

Ash hadn’t recovered from her sudden collapse in the previous log.

〈／２３ＸＸ．０６:３８ＰＭ．Ｖｏｉｃｅ〉

“Ah… Ah… Can you… hear me?”

The energetic girl she once was had completely disappeared. The once faint sounds in the background are now often louder than her voice. When she speaks, it’s mixed with the rustles and creaks.

“Today, I… want to tell you about my dreams.” She speaks haltingly, telling me about the galaxies she wanted to visit in the future. The places she spoke of were far—hundreds of millions of lightyears away. Even in cryosleep, her body wouldn’t be able to reach these places in its current state.

I interpreted it as her motivation. She was fighting against the illness closing in on her by continuing to hope and dream.

“Ah… Just one more thing.” Ash’s voice is cut off. There’s a cough, followed by her log continuing. “I… hope…. beautiful flowers bloom…. That’s right…. I have to… take my medicine…”

Her log ended there. No matter how many times I touched the icon to play the next log, all I got was static. It seems like that’s the end.

A bright girl, always full of hope for the future. Did she die without ever traveling into space? Surely the family that sent her there would be disheartened to know this–

…Huh?

Suddenly, I am filled with doubt. The thought had occurred to me vaguely in the beginning, but now it was a fat lump weighing on my chest. Just to make sure, I searched the logs from the beginning, but there isn’t anything that matches up. That was right, Ash had never once spoken about her family.

–Who exactly was she leaving this message for?

As I headed towards Ash’s colony, I played her voice log again from the beginning. After listening to it several times, I made a discovery. The voice stops, and the static begins to play.

[—Rustle, rustle]

[—Creak, creak]

The sounds Ash had been picking up since she arrived at school. There was a pattern to them, and I decided to analyze the sounds.

It seems that in the vast sea of stars, there were life forms that communicated not with words, but with light and sound. I couldn’t say for sure without seeing it with my own eyes, but the guys at the junk shop were conversing in a vocabulary only they could understand, so it wouldn’t be surprising if there was a species with its own special way of speaking.

Believing there was something more to this series of sounds, I decided to wait for the analysis results. In the meantime, I’ll investigate what happened at Ash’s colony.

――

――――

“―Ah… can you… hear me…?”

A few hours later, I jolt awake at the sound of Ash’s voice coming from the log. It seems that the analysis results had come in. I immediately check the date, seeing one I hadn’t heard before.

So… this analyzed voice… Does that mean all the sounds I thought were just ambient noise were actually Ash’s voice?

Suddenly, there’s a mechanical voice, converted by the analysis.

“This will probably be the last entry in the diary I have been keeping for so long.”

I clung tightly to the device, pressing my ear against it and concentrating so as not to miss a single sound—looking for any sort of clue.

Ash sounded somewhat sleepy, her voice fluffy and light as if it was floating in the air.

“I don’t know if all my dreams will come true, but one of them did. The flowers. The beautiful flowers bloomed. But in exchange, my eyes don’t see anything anymore.”

What did that mean? Why would a flower blooming make her go blind? At that moment, a very strange thought occurred to me. But was something like that even possible?

“And to you, who heard my diary. If you recognize my voice, please come and meet the new me. I’d be really happy if you did.”

Immediately afterwards, an alarm unlike anything I’ve ever heard sounds behind Ash. Screams and shouts echo from all around. Just what the hell was going on?

“Thank you for everything. See you later.”

With the sound of something snapping, and the log abruptly ends.

“New me”... Ash had said. What if what I’m imagining actually happened in that colony? What if this accident had led to the Foundation being dissolved?

I increase the ship’s speed. I’d find her—the girl that had been reborn.

The abandoned colony had a strange appearance. It was the very image of the cosmic flower that represented the Orbital Life Foundation, a solitary flower blooming in space. Perhaps the founders had dreamt of constructing a flower that would blossom for eternity. Looking on, I thought it was beautiful. At the same time, it felt painfully lonely—a beautiful flower forever drifting across the universe without ever being seen by anyone.

As expected, most of the colony was nonfunctional. However, the gate serving as the loading entrance remained operational. Perhaps it had been specially made. I hoped that maybe it meant that the internal power generator was still working, but that hope was completely wasted.

Despite having entered the colony a while ago, I haven’t encountered any signs of life. Well, at least it was easier to explore without anyone around. My only goal was to track down any traces of Ash. Relying on the internal headlamp built into my spacesuit, I ventured deeper into the colony.

“Investigation report. I am currently within the Orbital Life Foundation's space colony. While I don’t fully understand what happened here, I think there’s still a way to figure out what the Foundation was up to.” 

I took verbal notes as I wandered the colony, just as Ash had done. If something happened to me, I thought that maybe someone could use them to uncover the truth. Just as I was trying to do for Ash.

――

――――

The investigation progressed smoothly, and I was able to understand more about the structure of this place to an extent. Specifically, the purpose of its construction. The colony was named “Orbital Flower”, based on the Foundation’s logo, and the research they had conducted here was unsurprising.

It was a research facility where they modified the genes of the elderly with short life expectancy and children with congenital defects in hopes of extending their lifespan. They had the questionable goal of “eternal life” up on display, and amongst several other photos was a picture of a young girl.

Ah, so that’s it. You’re… Ash.

She had fair green hair and beautiful “flowers” blossoming over her eyes. Ivy and long, thin roots grew throughout her entire body. Her skin had spots of tawny discoloration, clearly resembling the bark of a tree. I couldn’t bring myself to dig into the data to see if this was congenital or acquired.

She had probably been asked to keep a detailed diary as part of the study.

There was one thing I knew for certain. She—Ash, was no longer human.

As I tried to suppress the swell of emotions, I continued to explore the colony. There was only one section left to explore, the upper residential floors that made up the “petals” of the Orbital Flower.

“Investigation report. I am currently within the Orbital Life Foundation's space colony. While I don’t fully understand what happened here, I think there’s still a way to figure out what the Foundation was–” 

“That thing is awfully old school… Seeing a visual log in this day and age…”

“Well, it just means the log is old.”

“I guess so.”

The man who had paused the log, seemingly the captain, and his companions were explorers hired by a space fleet to investigate a colony. Despite calling their work exploration, their methods were far from careful. When they had invaded the colony, they had simply blown up a random outer wall and forced themselves in.

“Captaaain, there’s no need to bother looking into that thing… We’re just gonna leave after we grab all the valuables, right?”

“You idiot, if we look into it, we might be able to figure out why this place is abandoned, won’t we?”

“You say that, but aren’t you just looking for a good drinking story?”

“Haha, that’s part of the joy of being an explorer.”

The men in spacesuits laughed, turning on their headlamps as they ventured into the dark, powerless corridor.

“Is there really anything here worth money?”

“Rumor has it that hundreds of years ago, there was a colony founded by a group looking for eternal life. Apparently they eventually came up with an elixir of immortality.”

“So that’s what this big dumb flower colony is? Sounds fishy no matter how you look at it.”

“It’s reliable information, you moron!”

“If it’s that old, it’s probably already been taken…”

“No problem. If that’s the case, I’ll just tear down this wall and palm it off on our employer or some junk shop.” 

The Captain yelled back at his comrades as they continued to interject. At the same time, his hand brushed against the log, starting the next one.

“It took awhile—— found colony—— I want—— to know what happened——”

The log went completely silent.

“Ah, damn it, I can’t hear the important parts with all the noise. That’s why these old logs are so…”

“As always, simple is best!”

“Shut up. Let’s get going.”

The captain discarded the log and hurried on.

“Anyway, there’s been an awful lot of overgrown tree roots, right? Looks like they keep going all the way ahead.”

“Probably no point in bringing back that wall, huh?”

“Shut up! It probably just grew out of control when the environmental system broke down. Anyway, we should be close to the residential– oh, here it is.”

The captain’s headlight shone across a panel marked “Residential Area.” If nothing had been disturbed, their objective would lay ahead. He places his hand on the half open door.

“W-What is this–”

Two gigantic trees towered in the center of the open air structure, transparent panels above them showcasing a panoramic view of space. The trees, large enough to fill the entire area, were nestled close together. Each one had large and colorful flowers blooming amidst their lush green leaves.

“There’s no way these big trees are the treasure, right?”

“We can’t bring this back!”

“Damn it! What a waste of fuel. We’re moving on to the next place!”

“Yes sir!”

The men left the colony without finding anything of interest.

――

――――

The log that had been discarded was buzzing and flashing repeatedly. Eventually, a clear image appeared on screen, a lone figure speaking calmly.

“I’ve found Ash. She’s become this gigantic tree and bloomed with beautiful flowers.”

They had determined the tree was Ash based on the bright white flowers blooming on the top, as well as a device embedded into the tree trunk that appeared to have been recording a voice log.

“I’m sorry.”

The person in the visual log suddenly plunges a knife into the tree. They scoop up the liquid that floats into the air with their hands, remove their helmet, and drink it all in one gulp. Sitting to lean against the tree, they record their final message.

“This is just a gamble. Something might happen. Something might not. But that doesn’t matter. I just want to stay by her side. Because—

It would be lonely living forever all by yourself.

With those words, the video cuts off abruptly.

Although the gender of the narrator is not specified directly, they use the honorific “boku”, written in katakana as ボク. While it can be used by women, boku is a traditionally masculine pronoun. The use of katakana in this instance over hiragana or kanji could imply that the narrator is young or childish, or it could also potentially imply the speaker is female. I believe it was left vague intentionally and up to interpretation, especially with the use of “boku” in quotes in the introduction portion of Ash’s JP Wiki character page.