Chapter 31

Chapter 31 is the thirty-first chapter of the Astra Lost in Space manga. It is the fifth chapter of the Icriss arc and, in the compiled volumes, the third chapter of the fourth volume.

Synopsis
Having gathered everyone in the lounge area, Kanata announces that, with Polina's and Zack's help, the Astra has been fully repaired and is ready for flight. As the crew celebrates the news with yells of joy and tears, Polina, watching from her chair, thinks of the struggles the group of children before her must have been through. She credits their survival to their individual talents and their optimistic attitude, smiling as she considers it.

Returning their attention to their situation, Kanata reminds the crew that they are still in need of supplies, as well as the fate that befell the crew of the Ark VI. With that in mind, Charce, who has conducted an analysis of the plant life on Icriss with Ulgar begrudgingly protecting him, tells the crew that the organisms have characteristics of both animals and plants. They are able to move themselves, albeit slowly, across the surface to find food, and they also have circulatory systems centered around hearts; at the same time, they are capable of photosynthesizing. Charce theorizes that the organisms were forced to evolve such biology in response to their world's lack of movement, which prompted them to move instead in order to survive. He also points out that organisms they are already familiar with, such as single-celled organisms, exhibit the same non-binary biological behaviors.

Explaining further, Charce informs the crew that there are much larger plant-like organisms on Icriss, but that they live closer to the warm side of the habitable zone, placing them away from the Astra. He has also found trees that are much smaller closer to them, but he has found that they enter a dormant state when they are separated from the light of the sun and unable to photosynthesize, making them harmless. He tells the crew to throw dark tarps over them if they encounter one while out searching for food, several sources of which he has also identified. When Charce finishes with a prediction that they can fill their food supply in seven days, Kanata sets a departure goal for that time span and decides that they will forage in groups of two.

Soon after, Quitterie and Zack depart on a foraging run. Predictably, Quitterie is less than fond of the small carnivorous plants; when she approaches one, it opens its oral aperture and hisses at her, leading her to scream and throw a black tarp over it, as Charce instructed, causing it to calm and go silent. She wraps her arms around it and uproots it, only to scream again in disgust when she sees its short, writhing root feelers. Realizing the noise is a potential risk, Zack intervenes and tells her to focus on finding horsetail moths, which are less dangerous, instead. She seems slightly put out by this until Zack also decides to take a break, opening a container of mushroom tea and biscuits and offering her some.

As they sit next to each other, Quitterie softly rests her head on his shoulder, leading him to clarify that she is making it harder for him to eat. Ignoring him, she asks him what he meant earlier when he told her they would live together on Icriss, and he clarifies that he spoke of them all as a group, crushing her romantically-tinged view of his words. She lavishes him with insults before turning her face away from him in anger. Moving on, she voices happiness being able to continue their journey toward home, having had her hopes of living a normal life restored. He mentions her dream of becoming a doctor, and she vaguely mentions that there is more to her dream than that, countering by asking Zack if his dream is still to be a scientist in a field other than that of his father.

What follows is a brief explanation of their parents' occupations. Once famous for his pioneering work in the field of memory transference, Zack's father Jed encountered a sudden obstacle that he could not move past, causing his work to fail and his fame to fade, though he has persisted in his research anyway. Quitterie's mother, Olive, a doctor who runs a hospital, often worked on projects with Jed, which led to their children being shunned and ignored by them. In response to a remark by Quitterie about how he feels about his father, he responds that he neither hates not loves him and that he would prefer simply to be someone unlike him.

Zack cites a memory of his from when he was a child, in which he gave Jed a crudely drawn portrait of him he had made in school. In response, Jed stared at him with eyes devoid of any sort of emotion whatsoever and praised his work; later that night, Zack entered his father's empty study to find Jed had crumpled up and discarded his drawing. Zack believes that Jed's research has fundamentally changed him and become a desperate obsession for him, something Zack wishes to avoid by choosing a different field. He states that his desire to follow something else has been piqued further and strengthened by their journey through space and reveals Kanata's offer to be the pilot of his ship to Quitterie.

While astonished by his declaration of resolve, she soon becomes despondent, wondering how he has failed to notice her own affection for him and voicing to him her own belief that her own dream may not be realized. She refuses to tell him what it is when he presses her to tell him but admonishes her not to give up on it, frustrating her further. Jumping to her feet, she yells down furiously and reasserts herself boldly, decrying his constant talk about his own future plans with no regard for her own and declaring openly to him that she wants to be his wife.

In the moment of silence that follows her confession, she realizes what she has done and is horrified by it. Zack makes the moment both worse and better by casually stating that they had already agreed to be married; utterly bewildered by this, she demands to know what he is talking about, and he readily cites a conversation they had eleven years before when they were six years old. Slightly more understanding but still put-off by his acute memory, she insists that they have to love each other to be married, leading Zack to state clearly that he has always loved her.

While he does so with the same expressionless demeanor that he criticized his father for having toward him, his confession of love overwhelms Quitterie, who has no idea how to cope with the onslaught of emotions his words have unwittingly unleashed within her. Seeing her agitated state, he asks if he has said something wrong; as she berates him for having his father's bland demeanor, Aries writes in her diary that Quitterie and Zack have become engaged.