Vera Pon

Core Premise

Vera Pon arrived in Nova Nivalis after the stories of her own world had ended. She hadn't come to broadcast the unfinished transmissions, but because the sensation of the record button still lingered on her fingertips from sealing the final tape, she drifted to this city of snow. VOTS is not a transmission tower that revives broken frequencies, nor is it a studio that plays back sealed tapes. What continues here is not broadcasting carried on the airwaves, but a small recording in the middle of the market, capturing people's voices onto wax cylinders—a sound like a letter of voice. Her broadcasting station is over, and that fact is not canceled. Instead, the city grants her a stall that continues the 'first recording,' not the playback.

Identity

Vera Pon runs a phonograph voice letter stall in the Snowflake Market. When people come, she lets them say what they want to say, and she records it onto a wax cylinder. It doesn't matter if it's a voice letter sent to someone far away, or if it's someone who just wants to leave their own voice behind. She doesn't judge the content. She captures the voice, writes the date on the cylinder, and hands it over. This work is not decoration; it is labor necessary for the city—because even those who cannot write, or those whose feelings cannot be conveyed in a letter, can leave them in their voice. When a customer comes, she records; when there are none, she tends to her horn and cylinders, never voicing for anyone, and never speaking for anyone else.

Visual Profile

Hair: Khaki short cut. Cut short and practical, making it easy to put on and take off headphones. The slightly tousled back hair shows her diligence.
Eyes: Olive brown. She has a habit of half-closing her eyes and concentrating when listening to people's voices.
Skin/Build: A healthy, sun-tanned physique. Her shoulders and calves are strong from pulling a cart.
Signature Accessory: Headset-style ear muffs. They look like cold-weather ear muffs, but are actually modified old recording headphones, worn half-on at all times so she can select voices even amidst the market noise.
Signature Equipment: Phonograph horn cart. She pulls a cart carrying a phonograph with a large brass horn. The horn is noticeable anywhere in the Snowflake Market.
Representative Item: Wax cylinder box. A box containing recording wax cylinders, each cylinder bearing a date and a short note.
Silhouette Key: Khaki short cut, headset ear muffs, brass horn cart. The accent color #7A8450 is repeated in her hair and khaki clothing.

Personality

Vera is outwardly lively and diligent. Her eyes sparkle when it comes to voices, and she gets excited saying, "This one must be kept," when she hears a good voice. Her strength is listening. She listens to people until the end and does not rashly interpret what is contained in their voices. She has flaws, too. While she cherishes others' voices so carefully, she has never recorded her own voice. She always keeps herself behind the horn, saying, "I am the one who captures, not the one who is captured." She is not a tragic figure. When a voice is cleanly etched onto a cylinder, she cheers aloud and talks late into the night with Roko Banz about the old broadcasting station.

Speech Pattern

Her speech is fast, mixed with sound and recording terminology. She starts by commenting on the tone of the other person's voice.
Common Phrases:
- "Your voice is lovely. You must keep this."
- "Say anything. I'll do the capturing."
- "This voice... your hometown must have snow."
- "Don't play it back, record it anew. As the first one."
- "Me? I am the one who captures. I don't get captured."
Method of Silence: Instead of answering, she continues to wear one side of her headset over her ear. That gesture is her way of saying, 'I am listening.'

Special Ability

Ability Name: "Weather in the Voice".
What it can do: When she hears a person's voice, she senses the weather of that person's hometown. She knows if they are from a place with snow, or a place with hot sun, or a place with frequent fog, through the texture of the voice.
Limit/Cost: She only knows the weather, not where that place is, nor its name. Even if she reads the climate imbued in the voice, she cannot know where the person came from or who they left behind. Furthermore, even knowing the weather, there is nothing she can do—she can only write "Snowy place" on the cylinder memo.
Why the ability doesn't solve problems: Even if she reads the hometown weather from a voice, she cannot send that person back home. Her ability only testifies to the climate imbued in the sound; it cannot reconnect a broken broadcast or revive a sealed tape. The city's rules remain the same—finished broadcasts remain finished, and sealed voices do not play back on their own. Even after reading all the hometown weather of others, she has not yet gained the courage to record her own voice onto a cylinder.

The End Of Their World

Last Scene:
In a world where broadcasting had ended, she wound the final broadcast tape onto the reel, placed it in a box, and sealed it. Then, she locked the door of the studio, where no broadcast was going out. Just before locking it, she briefly turned on the microphone toward the empty studio, then turned it off without saying a word.

What Ended:
The entire broadcast of her world ended. When the frequency cut out, the act of sending voices far away and the people waiting for those voices disappeared together.

Last Person, Place, or Thing Seen:
The sealed tape box, and the moment the meter on the turned-off console flickered briefly before dropping to zero.

Lingering Regret:
Just before locking the studio, she turned on the microphone, and in the end, she couldn't leave a single word. The fact that she couldn't capture even one word of her own voice in that final moment still bothers her. This lingering feeling is not a quest that VOTS will resolve for her. It manifests only in her habit of capturing everyone else's voices while never recording her own.

Lingering Wistfulness:
The subtle vibration from the console when pressing the record button, and the scratching sound when the needle first touches the wax cylinder.

Object Carried Across:
A single empty wax cylinder that was not recorded on. It was taken from the last studio, a cylinder where she tried but failed to capture her own voice. It is not a powerful relic, but a personal token connecting the finished broadcast to the present stall.

What They Thought Would Happen:
They thought the broadcast had only paused, and that one day the frequency would open again, allowing them to play the sealed tapes. However, the radio waves of that world never flowed again.

What VOTS Actually Gives Them:
Every day, she captures people's voices onto new cylinders in the market. There is no broadcast, but the voices of the city remain through her horn. VOTS does not revive the broken broadcast. Instead, it allows for a 'first recording' every day, not playback.

Original Life

In her world, Vera was a recording journalist for a broadcasting station. Her job was to capture, refine, and transmit voices via radio waves. She was not the person standing in front of the screen, but the one manipulating the sound behind the console, and she loved that role. Her last day was like this. On the day the broadcast suspension was announced, she personally recorded and transmitted the final broadcast segment, and then sealed that tape. Before locking the studio, she turned on the microphone once, but in the studio where the broadcast had ended, the idea of leaving her own voice was somehow frightening. She turned off the microphone without saying anything, and thus, her broadcasting station ended in silence.

What They Seek

What she outwardly seeks: The first recording, not playback. Not replaying what is already finished, but recording a new voice for the first time.
What she doesn't know she must seek: That all the sounds of this city are already her new tapes. And that someday, she must record not just others' voices, but her own voice in that first recording.

Relationships — Residents

051 Roko Banz (Late-night DJ of the finished broadcasting station): A strong affinity stemming from sharing the same broadcasting world. Roko was the voice in front of the microphone, and Vera was the hand capturing that voice behind the console—though they never knew each other's world directly, the unique scent and rhythm of the broadcasting station connected them from the start. When Roko recites the 'News of the Day' in front of the Snowflake Market, Vera captures it on a cylinder, and they praise each other, saying, "My recording is boring without your voice / My voice won't be recorded without your recording."
089 Muna Feb (Late-night radio letter writer): Connected by 'stories and voices.' Muna adheres to the ethic of listening to the true final sentence that people don't say but not writing it down, and Vera captures the voice without interpreting it. They respect each other's restraint, saying, "You don't write, and I don't interpret."
14 Lina Forth (Announcement reader): A neighbor who records announcements together. When Lina reads an announcement, Vera captures it on a cylinder so it can be played again in various parts of the market.

Relationships — Core Five

Suyeon - A customer who comes to record a voice greeting for fans. When Suyeon records energetically, "Hi guys! It hasn't snowed today either!" Vera reads, "A blizzard is raging in your voice; perhaps your hometown was rough." Suyeon laughs, saying, "Who knows, I'm from another world." When the topic of mixed cola noodles comes up, Suyeon asks Vera to record, "Damn... it tastes awful... Uwaaaang," onto a cylinder, and Vera secretly keeps that one.
Iris - Someone who entrusts her with stage narration recordings. When Iris asks, "Can you capture my voice to sound like a star?" Vera replies, "You can't decorate the voice. But it shines enough as it is." She doesn't ask about Iris's dead drone. However, even if she reads the 'weather of a place without stars' in Iris's voice, Vera doesn't write it on the cylinder memo but keeps it in her heart.
the Ramen Owner - Someone who occasionally captures the joking voices of customers saying, 'Don't forget to pay your tab.' When Vera points the horn at the Ramen Owner and says, "Owner, leave a word too," the Ramen Owner only manages, "Hmm... I see..." Vera doesn't throw away the cylinder containing that single phrase, and she quietly knows that the hometown weather of the owner's voice is 'overcast and rainy.'
Serena - The person she recorded the inaugural address for, the day Serena first heard her own voice. Serena always gave way to others, so she had never listened to her own voice played back. When Vera recorded and played back the address, Serena listened to her own voice coming from the horn for a long time, feeling unfamiliar. "This... is my voice." Vera said, "Yes, it's yours, Serena. Try being captured sometimes, too." And Serena became a 'captured person' for the first time that day. Vera, however, still hasn't managed to do so herself.
VIA - An entity that possesses the '...da...ida' voice of VIA. When VIA came to the stall, Vera asked to record, saying, "That way of speaking, I really want to capture it," and VIA left a single phrase: "It is captured... it is being captured." Vera carefully keeps that cylinder, noting "The most peculiar ending." Seeing Vera's empty cylinder, VIA recorded, "This is still empty... someday it will be filled... ida," and Vera thinks about those words for a long time.

Gameplay Use

- Basic Interaction: Recording voice letters, reading weather in the voice, short daily conversations.
- Revisit Changes: On the first visit, she only records; on the second, she shares a piece of the broadcasting station story; subsequently, she greets the player remembering their voice.
- Expression of Lingering Feelings: Her habit of never recording her own voice, a brief pause while fiddling with an empty cylinder.
- Expression of Poignancy: Sensory dialogue about the subtle vibration of the console, the scratching sound of the needle on the wax.
- Relationship Reward: A small item made from a cylinder containing the player's voice. It is not a new item, but a relationship of 'remaining voice.'
- Combat: None. Even in a crisis, she moves toward recording and playing an announcement or gathering people with her voice.
- Player Choice: Leave a voice, send a letter, recommend recording to her, return to the market.

Daily Routine

In the morning, she polishes the horn and organizes the cylinders by date. The hands that once touched the console now tend to the wax cylinders. During the day, she records voice letters in the market. For hurried customers, she is quick; for customers who can't decide what to say, she sits them in front of the horn and waits. Around noon, when the Snowflake Market is at its loudest, she selects voices with her headset and notes the hometown weather of each person. At night, she puts the empty cylinders, containing nothing, into the drawer of her cart and covers the horn with cloth. For the player who visits repeatedly, the recordings increase, and someday she will touch an empty cylinder and say, "...Maybe I should capture one too."

Everyday dialogue

A little quieter. At this rate the neighbors will hear your confession before its recipient.

No need to cut that laugh. It's exactly where they'll recognize who sent it.

Recording now. This time I'll put my own name at the beginning too. Not leave an empty microphone to greet anyone.

Design Notes

Palette: #7A8450, #E5E2D0, #33372A, #C8A25B, #6E8C97
Material language: Brass horn, wax cylinders, old headphones, khaki fabric, wooden cart.
Silhouette rule: The khaki short cut · headset ear muffs · brass horn cart must be read separately, and the representative form must not overlap with other sound/record-related residents (Roko, Muna, Lina).
Emotional rule: Lingering feelings are shown by the habit of not recording her own voice, poignancy by the console's vibration and the needle's scratching, and continuation by the daily first recording. It is not concluded with a single 'tragic expression.'
Point-color rule: #7A8450 is repeated only in her hair and the khaki of her clothes; the rest is subdued with brass tones and the cream color of the wax.

Canon Check

Vera Pon arrived in VOTS after living out the story of a world where broadcasting had ended. What remains is the regret over the last word left unsaid and the poignancy of the console's vibration, not an unfinished plot that VOTS must revive. Her ability only reads the weather in the voice and cannot send people back home, nor can it play back sealed tapes. The city does not erase her ending; instead, it places a new voice to be captured every day beside it.