Chapter 22 DIY.
Fanbox link to raw chapter.
Folder for all fanbox DIY chapters.
This is still a dumb DIY scanlation. You need to subscribe to the fanbox and download the raws yourself, after which it shouldn't be too complicated running the .bat file and combining them. The readme instructions should cover everything.
Golden Poppy is bizarrely the most optimistic flower yet when the story is turning down its darkest avenue. So this set of chapters will likely end on a positive note even if it's setting up the tragedies to come.
Kind of a (necessary) recap chapter of the ground rules for Sylpheed and clashing our heroes' greatest flaws: Sara being suicidally selfless and reckless, masking it under a cheery egotistical persona, and Natalia's naivete and stubbornness in denial of the cruelty of her position. Both of them bound by responsibilities forced upon them.
I'm just assuming the manga will delve into Sara's self-loathing and truly suicidal desires; they've been hinted at so far but were key to her character in the original even if it hardly had time to expand on them. So this is a much more delicate approach. Natalia thoroughly misses it of course, mistaking Sara's bravado for actual conceitedness. Which is why Sara loses it at the end. She'd honestly be glad to die here. She said to Luis back when she received Sylpheed - when she did try to commit suicide - she wants to die. Natalia doesn't even consider Sara wanting that an option and says some of the worst things you can say to someone on the edge: that Sara's full of herself and not thinking it through when Sara has been thinking of nothing but this for months. But Sara can't exactly come out and tell her future wife "no yeah lol please kill me" so we're stuck in the mire of yummy yuri angst.
Very interested to see how it progresses given we're already locked out of some of the same events with what Sara and Natalia are aware of this time around. The final pages of the chapter are sort of a re-imagining of one of my favorite sections from the original: Natalia refusing to kill Sara and insisting she'll protect all her people, Sara included. I hope we manage to get that one again in its full glory at least.
Tania's ultimate thievery is stealing every page she's in.