The library's dome cast a soft, simulated skylight, casting long shadows across the towering rows of bookshelves. The air was thick with the faint metallic scent of paper, ink, and the heat vents of e-readers, blending into a strange, intellectually tranquil atmosphere. Aiden huddled in a spacious reading chair in the corner, a book thick enough to be a weapon spread open on his lap: "The Evolution of Military Technology in the Universal Century: From the Gunpowder Age to Minovsky Physics." His brow furrowed as his fingertips traced the lines of cold lead type and the complex diagrams of energy weapon structures. His lips moved silently, as if in a desperate sacrificial ritual, trying to force the unfamiliar terms and formulas into his mind.

"Minovsky particles...completely paralyze radar and long-range guidance in their dispersed state...miniaturization of beam weapons becomes possible...epoch-making changes in the form of warfare..."

Each word struck like a cold hammer, hammering down on his taut nerves. This wasn't a book at all; it was an obituary from the future! He slammed the book shut, the dull thud standing out in the quiet reading area. A nearby boy with thick glasses and unkempt hair looked up. It was Amuro Ray. He pushed his glasses up, their way down his nose. A hint of annoyance at being interrupted, a mixture of habitual inquiry, crossed his eyes.

"Aiden?" Amuro's voice was low, a slight raspy edge, a touch of electronic gibberish. "That book... is hard to read?"

Aiden took a deep breath, suppressing the panic churning in his chest. He forced a slightly embarrassed smile, typical of a twelve-year-old boy. "Hmm... it's full of formulas and incomprehensible terminology. It's overwhelming." He patted the heavy cover. "Amuro, do you understand this? For example... the energy confinement ring structure of a beam weapon?" He tentatively asked.

Amuro's eyes behind his glasses lit up instantly, as if powered on. He walked over, picked up the book from Aiden's lap, and expertly flipped to a page with a complex mechanical cross-section diagram. "Oh, this," he said, his voice picking up speed, the intensity of someone lost in his own world. "The key lies in the instantaneous focusing stability of the superconducting magnetic field, and the design redundancy of the heat dissipation channel..." He pointed to several nodes on the diagram that Aiden couldn't understand, and began to dissect the pros and cons, as if it weren't a cold blueprint but a living mechanical creation. Aiden looked at his gleaming profile and his rapidly moving lips, and his heart sank. Amuro Ray, the legendary pilot who would, a year later, pilot the White Devil and unleash a bloodbath across space, was right before him, excited about the construction of a beam confinement ring. The gears of history turned coldly, and he, an intruder, stood in their path.

"Aiden! Amuro!"

A deliberately hushed call interrupted Amuro's technical explanation. Kai Sidon burst into the reading area like a cannonball, his face ablaze with excitement. In a few steps, he was in front of them and unceremoniously plopped down in the empty seat next to Aiden, making the chair creak.

"My dad came back from the port today!" Kai's voice was subdued, but his boastful tone was undeniable. "He said he saw a Salamis-class cruiser that had just been redeployed from Luna II! My goodness, the barrels were incredibly thick!" He gestured exaggeratedly with his hands. "I heard they're equipped with new railguns that can penetrate an asteroid with a single shot!"

Amuro's brow furrowed at the interruption, and he retorted bluntly, "The Salamis-class's main guns' range and recharge rate would be significantly reduced in a Mie particle environment, making their combat value questionable." His tone was flat, his statement precise and factual. Kai's face flushed instantly. "Hey! Nerd! What do you know? That's the Federation's most advanced warship! My dad saw it with his own eyes!"

Aiden's stomach tightened. The Salamis-class... in the face of the impending Mie particle storm, these steel behemoths would become floating coffins. He spoke almost instinctively, his voice a little dry: "Kai, did your dad tell me... what's going on with Zeon? Isn't Luna II under a lot of pressure?"

Kai paused for a moment, then waved his hand nonchalantly, as if to shoo away an annoying insect. "Zeon? Those monkeys vying for independence in the countryside of space? Tsk! My dad said the Federation could crush them with a single finger! Luna II's fleet is no mere decoration!" He pouted, his face reflecting the youthful contempt for distant threats and the blind confidence he possessed.

Just then, a gentle voice interrupted, a hint of worried rebuke: "Kai, this is the library, don't be so loud." Frau Bo had also arrived at some point, clutching several botanical illustrations. Her gaze fell on Aiden's slightly pale face, and her delicate brows furrowed slightly. "Aiden, you don't look well? Is it still hurting from that fall? Or are you tired from reading too much?" She reached out her hand naturally, as if to touch Aiden's forehead.

The fingertips, carrying the uniquely gentle warmth of a young girl, approached, but Aiden jerked back as if burned, the movement so large that even he startled himself. Frau's hand froze in mid-air, a flicker of surprise and hurt crossing her face.

"No, it's okay!" Aiden hurriedly tried to make amends, forcing a smile as natural as possible, his heart pounding in his chest. "Just... I'm a little dizzy from reading. It's really okay, Frau." He avoided Frau's concerned gaze, lowering his head and pretending to adjust the pages of his open book, his fingertips trembling slightly. Frau Bo, this girl as gentle as the sun, her future, Gai's future, Amuro's future, and the futures of countless ordinary people across Side 7... all lay shrouded in the bloody cloud known as the One Year War. And he, a lonely soul with a foreboding premonition, couldn't even utter a single true warning. The overwhelming, suffocating feeling of loneliness and powerlessness gripped him once again.

"Aiden?" Frau's voice was still tinged with worry.

"It's really okay!" Aiden abruptly stood up, so fast he knocked over a chair, then fumbled to steady himself. He grabbed the heavy volume "The Evolution of Military Technology in the Universal Century" and shoved it carelessly into his backpack. Inside an inconspicuous inner pocket, his fingers touched a cold, hard rectangular object—the scratched blue data card his father had left behind. Like a block of ice, it instantly froze the blood in his fingertips. "Um... I remembered something at home! Aunt Sally asked me to go home early!" Aiden spoke rapidly, barely daring to meet his companions' eyes. "I'm leaving now! See you tomorrow... tomorrow at school!" He practically fled, shoulders hunched, his steps hurried through the silent rows of bookshelves, leaving behind Amuro's questioning gaze, Gai's puzzled muttering, and Frau's worried gaze.

Outside the library's vast arched glass windows, simulated dusk light streamed slowly, painting the colony's crisscrossing metal structures, the suspended orbits, and the densely packed residential units in the distance a false, tranquil golden-red. Aiden leaned against a cold metal column, his chest heaving violently. He fished out the blue data card again, the metal edges gleaming coldly in the twilight. His fingertips traced the fine scratches on the card's surface, and a blurry image of a man in a white research coat flashed through his chaotic memory, along with an equally vague place name: "Von Braun City." Father… What exactly is locked within this card? Why are the memories of his father so sparse and fragmented in the original owner, Aiden? An inexplicable intuition told him that this card might be the only variable.

At this moment, the massive public screen hanging in the library's central lounge area, previously playing soothing background music and landscape images, suddenly switched without warning.

A cold, metallic, electronic sound suddenly blared, like an alarm, instantly shattering the tranquility of the reading area. A deep, almost ink-drenched cosmic backdrop appeared on the screen. The cold, massive, angular golden emblem of the Principality of Zeon, like the single eye of a behemoth, slowly emerged from the darkness, carrying a silent, oppressive feeling. The background music shifted to a low, heavy, and aggressive march, the drumbeats akin to beating against the heart.

The few students and elderly men reading newspapers in front of the screen were startled by the sudden change and looked up.

The scene switched. A middle-aged man, dressed in a crisp, dark green Zeon officer's uniform, his hair meticulously combed, his eyes sharp as a hawk, appeared at the center of the camera. His shoulder straps and medals gleamed glaringly under the studio's bright lights. He stood behind a podium adorned with a massive Zeon flag, his hands resting on the surface, his body leaning slightly forward, as if channeling an invisible pressure through the screen.

"Citizens of the Earth Federation!" His voice, amplified by the speakers, was resounding, cold, and imbued with unquestionable authority. It echoed through the quiet library with eerie clarity. "Open your eyes, blinded by the false peace!"

The massive screen behind him switched images in unison: displaying the magnificent industrial complex of Side 3, the vast space dock, and images of the neatly arrayed, powerful Zaku I mobile suit prototypes undergoing testing. A torrent of cold metal assaulted the vision. "Look!" The officer waved his hand, gesturing at the images, his voice rising sharply, brimming with inflammatory passion and anger. "Look at the great achievements of the Principality of Zeon under the wise leadership of the Zabi family! And then look at the Earth Federation's corruption, greed, and ruthless exploitation and discrimination against us space immigrants!"

"They suck the resources of space, yet treat us as second-class citizens! They maintain their shaky hegemony with lies and force!" The officer's face flushed slightly with emotion, his eyes burning with fervor. "The leader of the Principality, the great Gihren Zabi, has long declared—Zeon's independence is the only true path to survival for the inhabitants of space! We have the power! We have the resolve! We..."

"Puff—"

A sudden sneer interrupted the officer's inflammatory speech, like a sharp weapon piercing a taut drum.

It was Kai. He had wandered over to the rest area at some point, his arms folded, his face a look of undisguised, exaggerated disdain. He spoke in a voice neither too loud nor too soft, just loud enough for the few people around him to hear: "Ha! At it again! Independence? Just relying on those tin toys tinkered with in the corners? Hilarious!"

A middle-aged library administrator, dressed in a library uniform and tidying up the bookshelves nearby, also pushed his glasses and shook his head. His tone carried the superiority and disapproval typical of Federation citizens: "The Zabi family...it's the same every year. They shout slogans loudly, but in the end, they still have to negotiate with the Federation. They're just a bunch of clowns." His tone was flat, as if he were commenting on a boring farce.

"That's right!" another student who was watching the fun chimed in, his tone frivolous. "What else can these space bumpkins do besides their loud voices? If a real fight breaks out, the Federation fleet will teach them a lesson in no time!" Several suppressed chuckles, tinged with the same contempt, echoed from the surroundings. The Zeon officer on the screen continued to roar, denouncing the Federation's "tyranny" at the top of his lungs, proclaiming Zeon's "mandate" and "faith in victory." His fanatical, aggressive stance paled and... eerily against the Federation citizens' accustomed sense of superiority and utter contempt for distant threats.

Aiden leaned against the cold metal pillar, his body frozen. The warm air from the library's climate control system brushed his cheeks, but he felt no warmth at all, only a piercing chill that shot up his spine and up his head, freezing his limbs.

A clown?

A lesson in life?

They had no idea! They had no idea what kind of war machine, bloodthirsty to the very core, lay behind that screen! They had no idea that the "glory of Zeon" was forged from the wreckage of countless colonies and the wails of billions! They had no idea that the "tin toy" they had scoffed at, the Zaku, would become the Grim Reaper's scythe a year later, reaping the harvest of life! And Side 7, their peaceful and happy paradise, laughing at the distant threat, would be transformed into a purgatory by an unexpected attack!

His gaze was fixed on the roaring officer on the screen, that face twisted with fervor, but in Aiden's eyes, it strangely overlapped with another image—the man standing behind Dejin Zabi in a small photo of Zeon's high-ranking officials in a historical atlas in the corner of the library. Blonde hair, a cold, mask-like smile, codename—"Red Comet."

Char Aznable!

The blond figure covering Garma with a coat, the man whispering "Zabi House..." from the shadows! He's already moving! Like a silent, venomous snake, he's quietly tightening the noose around the Federation's neck!

A crushing fear, like an icy tide, instantly overwhelmed Aiden. His heart pounded wildly in his chest, each beat tugging at fragile nerves, bringing a suffocating pain. The edges of his vision began to darken, and a ringing in his ears drowned out the officer's roar on the screen and the scornful chatter around him.

He clutched the blue data card in his pocket tightly. The hard, cold edge dug deep into his palm, causing a sharp sting, the only anchor in his chaotic consciousness. Sweat seeped from his forehead and trickled down his temples, leaving a cold, sticky touch.

365 days.

The cold countdown, like a red-hot iron, seared fiercely into his retina and the depths of his soul.

Only 365 days remained until the full-scale outbreak of the war that would shatter the illusion of peace and plunge the entire universe into an abyss of blood and fire, until Char's reconnaissance mobile suit squad descended upon Side 7 like the Grim Reaper of Death!

Only he knew that this false tranquility, this lighthearted mockery of the distant threat that permeated the library's air, was but a final, expiring sigh before the storm arrived.