Old-fashioned fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, their tubes emitting a buzzing electric hum. Dim, warm yellow light cast long shadows across the floor; wooden-framed shelves were set into the walls, holding old cassette tapes, yellowed research notes, and several electronic devices with dials.
Some of their casings still bore the logos of "Toshiba" and "Hitachi," clearly products of Earth's Japan from the eighties and nineties.
Yet compared to an idealized secret Mars base, Chie actually preferred this kind of environment.
Or rather,
"Familiar" was probably a more fitting description than "liked."
The doors lining both sides of the corridor were sliding wooden lattice doors. Some hung crookedly, revealing the scenes within:
Some rooms contained old-fashioned desks, with typewriters and abacuses sitting atop them, the characters on the keyboards already blurred.
Others were laboratories, their instruments fitted with thick wires and glass test tubes. Dark yellow liquid residue remained in the tubes, while complex formulas had been written in white chalk on the blackboards beside them, their handwriting already beginning to fade; at the end of the corridor, yellowed posters were pinned to a bulletin board, printed with Showa-era Japanese celebrities and scientific research slogans. Their corners had curled up, and several withered vines hung from them, as though they had grown from cracks in the walls.
There was even a group photo of Old Seren with several scientists Su Wen had never seen before.
Faced with this scene,
the girl merely gently placed her hand over that yellowed photograph, but separated by her Spacesuit, she could not truly touch it.
The air was filled with a faint scent of coal smoke, ink, and damp mold, blending into a unique atmosphere belonging to an old era.
Caroline, meanwhile, curiously picked up an old cassette tape from the shelf and examined