He watched her where she stood with the warm, oily water lapping against her calves. She was strangely still, her back stiff and erect, shoulders spread with that endless confidence she always seemed to have. Her expression did not change as she unblinkingly took in the scenery before her, and he wondered if she too could see the subtle shape of a nose, an eye, a mouth against the distant slope.
Unsure whether to approach her, he found himself flexing his hand out of habit against a remembered resistance. He stopped when he noticed the discolored blotches on her neck. They were already fading to yellow at the edges, and soon they would be all too obvious. All at once he could not look at her, and he turned away, the stillness broken at last by the sudden splash of his shoes in the water.
"Hey, stupid Shinji…"
He turned, startled. She hadn't moved, and her voice was strangely calm. Slowly, her one remaining eye shifted, taking him in as piercingly as it had their bizarre surroundings. For an endless moment he stared back, unable to move, unable to blink, immobilized by the weight of all that was now between them.
At last she shook her head, letting out a familiar, exasperated sigh, and sloshed away from him toward the opposite shore.
"What are you, stupid? It's this way."