Sonia tapped her Space Ring and took out a glowing white Music Card. Ash had a vague impression of it; it seemed like an item that had appeared in Daedalus's classic shadow drama Actually I Mind, though that had already been an urban light comedy from ten years ago.
She pinched open the two sides of the card and rubbed it lightly, and it swelled into two earphones. She hooked one over Ash's ear and one over her own, then pressed the buttons on the card and selected a song through the lcd screen on it—this was actually a multimedia player that combined storage, charging, music playback, and other functions.
Daedalus's young, slightly Starry Sky-accented singing voice drifted melodiously from the earphones, carrying a trace of helpless indulgence amid its plaintive sorrow:
"I like you despite a hundred flaws." "No one with you can ever compare."
"You never learned to appreciate me."
"I've done so much for you, loyal to only one." "I don't know if I owed you in my previous life." "I never learned to figure you out."
"For you, I realized my past mistakes and swallowed my anger."
"My pride, because I loved you too deeply, was willing to lower itself."
It was the theme song of Actually I Mind. Originally, it should have been a duet between a man and a woman, but this was Daedalus's special solo version. Sonia listened while humming softly along. Her voice was ethereal and full of youthful vitality, completely at odds with the mood of the song; instead, she sounded like an innocent little girl singing along simply because she liked the song.
Thinking about it carefully, children's worlds really were simple. If a song sounded good, they sang it; if a color looked nice, they liked it; if they