Inside the Astral Express's Data Bank, as the pages of the travel log turned, everything the Astral Express Crew had experienced on Jarilo-VI slowly unfolded before Asta.
It contained not only the crew's perspective, but also interviews conducted afterward with other people in Belobog.
Asta's first encounter with Chu Mu had been their brief acquaintance on Deep Blue Star.
She had not known much about this friend of hers.
Back then, Chu Mu never spoke about his past, and Asta never asked.
To her, he had therefore been shrouded in mystery.
Now, this account from Belobog lifted that veil and laid Chu Mu's past before her.
Only then did Asta understand what Chu Mu had endured before coming to Deep Blue Star.
She began to understand why he had initially been so cold toward her, even faintly resistant.
As Chu Mu had said, they belonged to different worlds.
Asta's childhood had been comfortable and happy.
But what about Chu Mu's childhood? His years in Belobog had nothing to do with comfort. Underground, where daylight never reached, those tiny scraps of happiness had been all the more precious.
In the collapsed Mine Tunnel, every mining trip had been a brush with death.
All so he could save some money for his little sister.
A tiny, tiny sum of money, yet a fortune to him.
It was a life Asta had never experienced. Even imagining it felt suffocating.
Her parents had sheltered her well throughout her childhood. Although she later discovered that her seemingly harmonious family was rife with scheming and deceit, she had never worried about money, nor had she needed to sell her labor to earn it.
Her comfortable life had allowed her to pursue her dreams freely.
Without a doubt, Asta was fortunate. Statistically speaking, the odds of being