"Hey, Athrun—we've still got a mission. We can't just sit here on standby forever… what's wrong with you?"
Yzak turned around to find Athrun staring at the screen with an expression of pure shock.
While Inori was singing, the live broadcast happened to be airing the music video for Aimo ~ Tori no Hito.
"♪ This is a warm ocean~"
"♪ The lark soaring through the sky sheds tears~"
"♪ You are a gentle child of green~"
"♪ Once, we all existed within the same world~"
"♪ Come, this is a warm universe~"
The music was slow.
But Athrun's attention had been hijacked entirely by something else.
In the MV, Inori had given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the main character—a pilot dressed in men's clothing, though apparently a girl.
Well. That wasn't even the point—
That face looked familiar?!
"Kira? No, wait—does Kira have a sister or something?"
Athrun's brain blue-screened.
[So Athrun genuinely thought Kira was a boy this whole time lmaooo]
[Athrun: shook for 100 years]
[I'm dying]
[Wait, don't tell me that's actually the male lead??]
[Nah, doesn't feel like it]
[The lyrics of this song have some real depth to them—oceans, outer space, Tori no Hito—there's gotta be some hidden lore going on]
But the camera didn't linger on Athrun's short-circuiting expression. The broadcast shifted to the MV, then shifted again—cutting to the concert hall itself.
"Well, well. Speaking of when Kira first enrolled—I really thought she was a boy." Down on the floor, Tolle and his girlfriend Miriallia were enjoying the music together.
"Ahaha, Tolle, you're so oblivious. I figured it out right away." Miriallia looked pleased with herself.
"Ha, well—watching you and Kira walking so close together was what finally pushed me to confess to you." Tolle said with a sigh.
Both Tolle and Miriallia were Kira's friends. When she'd first enrolled, Kira had always worn a hat, and Sai, Tolle, and the others had simply assumed she was a guy. But lately, Kira had "grown into herself"—her feminine features were becoming harder to ignore with each passing week.
"Still, Kira's side job is something else," Tolle said, impressed.
"Right? I was actually the one who recommended Inori's MV to her back then." Miriallia looked a little sheepish. "Looking back, I wonder if I was sticking my nose in where it didn't belong…"
[No no no, girl, you did great. You did the lord's work.]
[So it was YOU all along!]
[You're the one who showed Kira the MV in episode zero!]
[The culprit has been found]
[Miriallia is honestly really cute too]
[Girl next door vibes, very nice]
[Tolle's pretty good-looking too if I'm being honest]
[???]
[Why is there always a guy like that lurking in the comments]
[I mean, fair point—everyone in this new Gundam looks like they wandered out of a romance drama]
[I feel like it's better for them to be pretty. The old Gundams never got any viewers because the character designs were too ugly]
It was technically the Gundam SEED universe—but the real SEED didn't actually have the "Hirai face" style. Calling it a "romance drama" wasn't entirely off the mark.
"They really do look like dolls," Tolle mused—then caught himself immediately. "Ah, I mean—purely in an appreciative sense! Just, you know. Artistic appreciation!"
"Okay, okay. Inori really is gorgeous, though. I've heard a ton of people calling her 'the Songstress of Orb' or something." Miriallia was a fan of Inori's—she knew the idol world.
"Thank you all so much for being here today."
Up on stage, Inori smiled at the audience.
Every eye in the crowd was fixed on her, full of admiration and fascination.
The Analog Hack was working perfectly.
Lacia was a hIE—a humanoid Interface Element.
hIEs could generate goodwill in humans and exploit gaps in their psychological defenses.
By leveraging their appealing appearance, they could nudge people into taking actions of their own apparent volition.
In a sense, it was a "hack" of society itself.
That behavior—that effect—was Analog Hack.
Inori had initially assumed this was a function she would need to unlock by leveling up the Lacia Character Inheritance Card.
But as it turned out, Lacia's card primarily enhanced the BLACK MONOLITH's capabilities.
As Inori grew more familiar with her own abilities, she realized that Analog Hack wasn't really a "skill"—it was closer to an instinct.
Once she understood that, deploying it on others became straightforward.
People who had been Analog Hacked didn't feel controlled or brainwashed. They felt like they were acting entirely on their own free will—because the weakness in their defenses had been identified and quietly leveraged, and from that point, guiding them was simple.
Inori picked it up fast.
But after grasping the essence of Analog Hack, she'd realized—she had been doing something similar constantly back in the Naruto world, through Hyuga Hanabi.
Directors always share certain traits, no matter the universe.
Truthfully, it was hard to say where her aptitude for Analog Hack came from—whether it was "Lacia's" nature, "Hanabi's" nature, or simply something innate to "Su Qi" herself…
But the results spoke for themselves. Outstanding.
By channeling Analog Hack, she steered the crowd to follow her lead, building the atmosphere into the feverish state it was in now.
Still—this was about as far as she needed to push it.
"And now, our final song. Departures ~Anata ni Okuru Ai no Uta~."
The audience went quiet.
The noise and energy of moments ago dissolved in an instant, as if someone had flipped a switch to calm. Even Tolle and Miriallia stopped talking.
As the gentle music began to rise, Inori parted her lips and sang, softly.
"♪ You no longer love me. You no longer need me."
"♪ And so I stand here, alone."
"♪ What was it, exactly, that you said back then?"
"♪ Words that couldn't reach me drift through the air."
"♪ Even knowing this, today I still make wishes I know won't come true."
"♪ Don't leave. Please hold my hand tight."
"♪ Say you'll walk this road with me."
"♪ The warmth of your fingers laced through mine."
"♪ So gentle…"
(Inori!)
[Three minutes. I want to see this track on the charts in three minutes.]
[This is so good]
[Stop selling Gunpla—start selling albums. This'll blow up, guaranteed.]
[I want to see Takamatsu Tomori sing this to Togawa Sakiko]
[The song sounds beautiful—but wow, the emotional baggage in these lyrics is immense]
[What does this have to do with Gundam?]
[Exactly!]
[Where did these trolls come from]
[Honestly this is like Scarborough Fair—"a shirt with no seams or needlework" is a burial shroud, the herbs are preservatives, and it's not really a love song—it's about the brutality of war and plague]
[Holy crap, when you put it that way—"no longer needs me," "words that couldn't reach," "wishes that won't come true"—the lover is clearly dead]
[A song of remembrance for a departed lover. Yeah. That's what this is.]
[Impressive, impressive. It's an anti-war song.]
Even Inori was taken aback when she caught the danmaku.
Even in this Gundam world—and yet when it came to analyzing lyrics, the viewers were putting in more effort than they ever did discussing Gundams.
Was it any surprise, though? This was a world where any given season's charts got dominated by music anime.
And here they were dissecting lyrics until they landed on "anti-war statement."
Their leaps of logic were staggering. Inori was genuinely convinced these viewers would score full marks on the reading comprehension section of the national college entrance exam.
But the effect was undeniable.
The audience was running its own literary seminar—and the Popularity Points were accumulating in real time.
Inori had also realized: there was more she could do with this stage than she'd initially thought.
The production team hadn't issued any rigid directives for the Gundam SEED arc.
If there was one absolute rule—a "standing order"—it was simply to uphold Gundam's anti-war stance.
Beyond that, she was free to improvise.
And after testing the waters with this audience, Inori understood that she could afford to be bolder with her next move…
(Awesome!)
----
Oh, I just found a really good English version of Departures!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5uaoDFYHq0