"Extenuating Circumstances"
Shinji woke to a familiar ceiling. The apartment was cool, something of an oddity given the abundance of sun the area received. Glancing briefly at his alarm clock (7:58), he stretched out and clicked the alarm off. His body had grown so accustomed to the daily routine that he always seemed to wake minutes before the alarm. He lay there for a while, fighting the sudden urge to break with tradition and sleep in until midday. It was already a week into the Easter break and he'd yet to actually take a break – not that he had anything approaching a social life, of course. Sync tests, weapons drills, combat training… Nerv never took any notice of breaks or holidays.
"Not that you can blame them," he mused out loud. "Saving the world must be a real pain when it comes to scheduling. No wonder father gets so grump-ee!"
Damn, squeaked again.
Certain changes had been taking place in his body for a while now, Shinji knew, and his throat's sporadic squeals and yelps had been a recent source of embarrassment. Touji and Kensuke in particular had taken every opportunity to make fun of these trill utterances, at least until one of Touji's own chortles had abruptly ended in a shrill screech, and then it was Shinji's turn to dish out insults.
There had been a shameful incident during the last sync test, in which he'd squeaked a "Yes, s-ee-r!", prompting snorts of laughter across the com channel from Asuka and the bridge team, which had embarrassed Shinji so much he'd developed hiccups, of which every other one was a mortifying "hic-uuup!" By the end of the test, even the male techs were wiping the tears from their eyes and Shinji's sync ratio – which had started off not so far from Asuka's lofty record – had crumpled to a miserable 20. Ritsuko, clearly struggling to maintain her professional decorum, had excused him from the test in view of the "ex-extenuating circumstances! ahahmph!" Aoba and Shigeru had taken a few moments after the test to reassure him, which had helped a bit. At least they as guys knew what it was like to be going through. Asuka could be unforgiving given even the smallest opportunity. Asuka.
"Geht hier."
The words sounded faintly through the thin wall adjoining their rooms, startling him slightly. The house had rarely been quiet since the moody redhead had moved in – to his old room no less – but it was a rare thing to hear her up so early.
His train of thought changing course abruptly, Shinji settled back into a familiar position with one ear pressed lightly against the soft plywood of the wall behind him. Sure enough, Asuka was awake and engaged in some form of clamorous activity, interspersed every now and then with a word of undecipherable German. Pressing his ear closer to the wall, Shinji realised she was counting.
"Vierzehn!" - "funfzehn!" –huff- "sechzehn!" - "siebzehn!" –hah- "achtzehn!" – "neunzehn!" – "zwaaanzig! Hah, es sein rüber!"
"Yoga?" Shinji questioned aloud, a little too loudly. For a moment, the house descended into silence. Then, without warning, the sudden crash of an object colliding heavily with the other side of the wall section beside his ear send the dark-haired boy reeling back across the length of his bed in alarm. A low snicker sounded through the wall, shortly followed a familiar haughty tone.
"And the moral of this story iiiis! Don't listen in to things that don't concern you!"
Shinji almost let slip a characteristic "sorry," before settling for a marginally better "Yes, Asuka." A chortle in response, and the counting resumed again. Well, have to be more careful next time: that was the moral of that story. "Hic – hicuuup!"
Not again.
It was going to be one of those troublesome days, he could tell. But a troublesome day still beat monotony, beat routine. It wasn't quite living, but it'd do fine for now. The heat had crept up on him, and masking his hiccups with one hand, he slid out of bed and then out of the room, headed for the energising powers of a cooling shower. Over the continuous sounds of movement and counting from Asuka's room, a low groan from room adjacent simultaneously signalled both Misato's presence in the apartment, and her desire for a morning coffee.
A smile tugged at the corners of Shinji's mouth, prompting an especially loud "Hiiiiic!"
Author's note:
It's funny – I wrote this as a reply to DartzIRL's "one-shot in an hour" challenge, with the express intention of tackling Shinji's worries about what life would be like after Eva (obviously without foreknowledge of the whole getting reduced to LCL bit) and ending on the rather cheesy (if ironic) line:
"Face it, Shinji - the future's bright lights. The future's orange goo. It's Eva or nothing."
But as I wrote toward it, the story changed course into a slice of life piece about the awkwardness of adolescence. I'm satisfied with how it ended up, but I'll have to write another one at some point revolving around the original idea. /NA