"You should know this Shinji, it's easy," Asuka chided, "those two resistors are in parallel, so you combine them together with that one formula."

"Wait, they are?" Shinji looked back at the homework problem, more confused than before. "I thought that resistor was parallel with the one over here, though."

"Well, ya thought wrong," Asuka replied.

Shinji rolled her eyes. Doing schoolwork with Asuka was a trial and a half. The two had spent the afternoon studying for a physics test... or rather, Shinji was trying to study, and Asuka was smugly correcting her whenever she made a mistake. She sighed heavily and erased her calculations for the third time.

"By the way," Asuka said, "what's this kanji say again?"

"Uh..." Shinji leaned over to look at her housemate's textbook. "It says 'negligible.' 'Assume negligible resistance in the wires.'" Some small, petty part of Shinji's subconscious was endlessly entertained by Asuka's near-illiteracy.

"Right, okay," Asuka replied. A moment later, she added, "At least you're good for something, Shinji."

"I try."

Their study session was interrupted by the sound of Misato opening the front door. Shinji felt her stomach leap into her throat. Tonight was the night she and Misato had planned to talk to Asuka about her experimenting, and she was fucking dreading it. If Asuka laid into her about not being man enough constantly already, what would she do when she heard this?

"Hey guys," Misato called from the hallway, "I brought back some WcDonalds shit for dinner." She planted a large and exceptionally greasy paper bag on the table and went to grab a beer out of the fridge.

"You're home early," Asuka remarked. She dug through the bag and fished out a burger named after an American city that hadn't existed for about a decade.

"Yeah." Misato took a seat at the table. "Ritsuko came in around noon and was like 'I need a drink. Wanna knock off for the day?' And I was like 'sure.' It sounded like there was some kinda hardware fuckup in Unit Zero's armor repairs and they were gonna be stuck until they got replacement parts from America? I can never understand anything she says though, honestly." She grabbed her own dinner out of the bag and handed the remaining sandwich to Shinji. "How was class today?"

"Fine." Shinji said.

"Oh you wouldn't believe it, Misato!" Asuka began, gesticulating with her partially-eaten burger, "We were in english class, and Miss Tanizaki was writing out a passage on the board to make one of us read, and she wrote the wrong 'to,' so naturally, being the good and helpful student that I am, I raised my hand and corrected her. But for some reason, she gave me the stinkeye and made some snide comment about how maybe I'd rather be teaching the class instead-"

As Asuka continued her rant, Misato nudged Shinji's foot under the table and mouthed "Ready?"

Shinji nodded, hesitantly. She most certainly was not ready, but if she waited around until she was, she'd never say anything.

Misato waved her hand and mouthed "It'll be fine."

"-And then she sent me to the principal's office! Can you believe that?" Asuka finished, playing up her exasperation.

"Yeah, man. Ridiculous," Misato said, "Although you might've crossed a line bringing up her divorce." She took a sip of beer. "Anyway, I think Shinji has an announcement to make."

"Oh? The mysterious third child speaks?" Asuka said.

"Uh, yeah." Shinji felt flushed, and she stared down at the sandwich in her hands. "I uh, I guess I was thinking that, y'know, maybe, uh, maybe I," She stammered, struggling to find the words, "I want to try being a girl." Finally getting that off her chest felt liberating, although that sensation was followed immediately by feeling so anxious she wanted to die.

Asuka looked at her like she had three heads. "You WHAT?"

Shinji flinched. Great, she thought to herself, Now I'm fucked.

"...Asuka," Misato warned.

"Don't 'Asuka' me, Misato!" Asuka shouted. She turned back towards Shinji. "What's that mean, you wanna try being a girl? How- What does that even mean?"

"I-I dunno... maybe..." Shinji trailed off. If she could disappear back into the bowels of Unit One right then, she probably would.

"We were planning on going shopping for girl clothes for her after the sync test on Friday, for starters." Misato cut in.

"For starters? Then what happens, huh?" Asuka leaned in towards Shinji as she continued her interrogation. "Is this just you giving up, Shinji? Being a man was too hard for you, so you thought you'd try something a little more your speed? Are you gonna elope with Kensuke to some fairytale castle high atop Mount Tunte with his seven thousand toy guns and watch anime together until the angels kill us all?"

Something in Shinji snapped. "Oh fuck off, Asuka!" She stood up abruptly and knocked her chair over. "If I was giving up, I wouldn't be here telling you about it! I sat on this for ages and tried to bury it. That was me giving up. This is me standing up for myself. I want this. I want this because I think it might help me be happy, not because I'm settling or some bullshit."

"I- What?" Asuka was dumbstruck by Shinji's outburst.

"Hey, that's enough!" Misato interjected. "You two need to cool it. Asuka, I don't know what your problem is, but you gotta lay the fuck off her."

"Fine, jeez," Asuka folded her arms and withdrew into herself. "What are you, my mom?"

"Nope! I'm your commanding officer!" Misato said, "Now quit it."

Asuka leaned back in her chair and sulked.

Shinji fidgeted with her hand. This was about as much conflict as she could take in one evening. "I'm... I'm gonna go out for a while," she said, adding quickly, "I'll be back later, probably."

Misato sighed heavily. "Yeah, okay. Stay safe out there." she took a long drink of beer.

Shinji went to her room to grab her backpack. Maybe this whole sojourn was a mistake after all. She still wanted to believe that being a girl would make her happy, but man, she wasn't cut out for this whole talking to other people about it thing. She wished there was some way to just retroactively have always been a girl, or maybe some bizarre accident would turn her into one and she at least wouldn't have to go through the trouble of explaining her feelings to people. Maybe the next angel would have some kinda beam that would just turn her into a girl on the spot. Weirder things had already happened; she'd been entirely dissolved in LCL only a couple weeks ago, after all.

What was she going to do for the rest of the night, anyway? Loiter around in a record store? Blow some change at the arcade? Listen to music on the train and hope some weirdo didn't try to strike up conversation? To be honest, none of those things really struck her as particularly inspiring. In the moment, nothing really did. But fuck me if I'm gonna spend another minute in this shitshow, she thought.

Misato languidly waved goodbye as she left, and Asuka pretended to ignore her.