A Glass of Wine (Chapter 17)

The sun never really rose over Japan. The sun was a fixed point in the solar system. The planet rotated and Japan rotated with it. When the sun appeared beyond the window, Rei Ayanami woke up.

She pushed her bedsheet aside and stood up. She showered, brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and went to her closet. The planet was further along. More sunlight washed her room. The shadows lessened. She dressed. She thought about the day as she anticipated it. Tests with Dr. Akagi all day, then lunch with the commander.

She had seen him after every session in the tank for her entire life. It was a habit at this point—she got a day off school, a day off of work with the Eva, and afterwards they always ate lunch together. When she was younger, eating with the Commander was a common practice; they spent more time together back then, in the beginning. For the past few years, she always looked forward to these days. Their lunches were a renewal of an earlier time in their relationship.

But today, as she anticipated lunch, the sensation in her chest was something different—a taut nervousness in place of excitement that she had never felt before—yet she could not understand what had prompted the emotion.

She buttoned her blouse and fastened her skirt. She took her briefcase, her ID card, and slid her feet into her shoes. She wondered about what the classroom at school would be like today, her seat empty. She pictured Kensuke looking at that empty seat.

Then she headed out the door.

((()))

Tonkatsu, rice, bell peppers, and a hardboiled egg, all in a bento. Shinji flicked the latched closed and sat it next to his bag. Then he did the same to the second bento, packing, latching, and sliding it to the side. He cleaned up the kitchen quickly and methodically, rinsing dishes and sifting them into their proper slots in the dishwasher. It was early yet, and no one else was up.

Once, this had been a morning routine punctuated by Asuka's voice. Early on, she had teased and berated him. Then she grew to begrudgingly thank him, and eventually to help him as best she could. Now there was just silence.

He slid the dishwasher shut and grabbed his lunch. He looked at the second bento, sitting on the counter. Then he left for the day.

((()))

The tank had a hum like waves hitting a beach, lulling her to sleep. The sensation of sitting within it was similar to being in the entry plug in many ways, but she always felt more at home here. She closed her eyes, stilled her lungs, and let the tank do the breathing for her. It was in that sleep that the dreams found her.

Day to day, Rei Ayanami didn't dream. She knew that dreams existed for other people, but she had trouble imagining what they were. In her reading, she had come across the notion of the soul. In science, the soul was a solid construct that could be quantified, measured, and studied. But that was a relatively recent discovery. As a poetic concept, the soul was much older. In poetry, it seemed that the soul was an ephemeral construct at the core of the human experience—the answer to who a person was.

Science had found the soul, but didn't know what to do with it. Poetry described the soul, but could not find it. In the end, neither held sufficient answers for her. She had come to believe that the first step to ownership of a thing was the capacity to fathom it. If that was true, then her inability to fathom her soul, her dreams, was proof of their absence. She was unique; a soulless person.

Perhaps this tank was what completed her. Maybe here is where she found her soul, as part of something greater. She always felt incomplete for a few hours after leaving the tank, after all. Here she could sleep and feel dreams as only she knew them, the fingers of other hers reaching through her scalp, teasing at the strands of her memories, pulling them into the cold dark that surrounded the tank. Time washed away, and she was at peace.

"Rei."

She opened her eyes. Time had passed, though she was unsure how long. Beyond the glass, Dr. Akagi and the Commander stood, watching her.

"That's it for today," the Commander said. "Let's eat."

((()))

The cryogenic cabling snaking into Unit 02's crimson plating gave the cage an undeniable chill. Smoke like dry ice fumed from the connection vents, spilling across the broad red shoulders and across the oil slick. Fingers of the smoke lapped at the umbilical bridge, and Asuka pulled her jacket closer as she sat there, cross-legged. Under her jacket she wore her plugsuit. There was no chance that she would be called on to climb inside the frozen Evangelion, but while she was here at work, she would be in uniform.

Her bento sat in front of her, open for business. She stabbed at the bell peppers with her chopsticks, moving them around without really eating them.

She and Shinji still hadn't spoken, and he had given no further attempts to bridge the gap. No more knocks at her bedroom door. Her fault, probably. Still, he had he kept packing her lunches. Not only that, but he packed something she loved. Tonkatsu was the closest Japanese thing she'd had to an honest article of meat, and the bell peppers tasted great.

Which made it all the harder to eat. She pushed the peppers into the rice and rolled the egg around with the tips of her sticks. Her stepmother used to make fried chicken. Asuka let on that she liked it, once, when she was eight or so. From then on it was fried chicken as often as could be—once a week, usually. When Asuka realized it was on purpose, as an olive branch between them, she refused to eat it.

At first. It turned out that even she couldn't ignore the cravings of a growing stomach.

In the end, it became of the few things they had bonded over.

She pinched a pepper and a bit of rice between her sticks and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed, she had a brief want to call her stepmother. She hadn't talked to the woman in months—hadn't talked to her father for just as long, come to think of it. A part of her wondered if they were worried about her. They weren't bad people. They had tried to give her birthday parties and playdates and friends, all the things that normal children had.

She stabbed a chunk of the tokatsu. If she was being fair, she had to admit they did the best that they could. They couldn't be blamed for her growing up faster than other kids, for not needing playdates, friends, or some stupid stuffed toy.

That thought killed any urge to call her family, or call anyone for that matter. She'd made a promise a long time ago to never cry again and to never need anyone.

But she cried yesterday, in a watermelon patch. And hadn't she already told Shinji she loved him? If that wasn't needing someone, then what was?

Were childhood promises meant to be broken? Was she not as grown-up as she thought?

She took a sip of her canned coffee and looked up at Unit 02. It stared down at her, its four eyes dim but for the reflection of the fluorescents high overhead.

"What the hell are you looking at, anyway?" she said.

((()))

They ate in the Commander's office. They sat at his desk, he in his seat, a bowl of unagi don in front of him; her in a chair pulled up to the short edge, a plate of grilled tofu before her. The Commander ate slowly, keeping an eye on a stream of reports as they scrolled across his datapad. Rei pushed her food around on her plate. She ate sparingly, between glances cast at the man on her right.

The solace of the tank had left her as soon as she had dried and dressed herself, her thoughts returning to the strange tumult she had found herself in since the morning. She thought again of Kensuke and Shinji. But moreover, she thought of what her superior would think of her absentmindedness, and the relationships that were causing it.

Never in their shared history had she hidden anything from the Commander. She knew him better than she knew any other person, and she had always trusted him implicitly. While she did not think of him as her father—she had no parents, and did not seek anyone to fill that void—she could acknowledge that the Commander had filled the role of a father from time to time, as best as his position allowed him to.

She could not frame her worry in words, but some low, intuitive part of her assumed that the Commander would not approve of her newfound friendships. That part of her compared the act of friendship to disobeying an order, and it made her queasy.

The question came from nowhere. "Is something wrong with the food?"

Rei blinked. "No, sir."

"You've barely touched it."

She looked down at her tofu and quickly speared some of it into her mouth.

The Commander did not look at her. He turned his chopsticks in his bowl, looping rice and eel as he spoke. "How is school?"

"I am passing all subjects."

"That is good. How are your friends?"

He had never asked that before. She had lived around him for her entire life, but she could not recall a time where he asked her about her relationship to others. Rei glanced at him. Still no change in his posture or demeanor.

"They are well," she said.

"I see." The Commander took a bite, placed his chopsticks in the bowl, and chewed. When he finished, he carefully wiped his mouth with a napkin. Then he looked at her. "You have been nervous since I first saw you today."

Rei was silent.

"Please tell me why," he said.

Rei held his gaze as best she could. "I did not get enough sleep last night," she said, slowly.

The Commander nodded and went back to his food. Rei did the same, methodically picking and chewing.

"That's the first time you've ever lied to me," he said, after a moment.

Rei froze. She immediately regretted the lie and everything that had led to it. She had never in her life disobeyed an order or told anything but the blunt truth. Just doing so had already flushed her skin with blood and set her heart pumping. Now, having been caught, she felt ice cold, embarrassed, and ashamed.

"I am sorry, sir," she said.

The Commander looked at her and did the last thing she expected: he smiled. "It's alright, Rei," he said.

Rei was silent again.

"I understand why you felt you had to," he said. "Just know that I am not angry at you for having friends. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well."

Silence returned, but it settled poorly in Rei's mind. She tried to keep eating, but found it difficult. She fixated on the sudden stress of the past two minutes.

Then the Commander looked at her again, one eyebrow raised, almost comically. He made a show of looking at her plate. A twitch of a smile tugged at Rei's mouth as she realized what was about to happen. Then, with speed, the Commander reached out with his chopsticks and snatched a square of tofu and popped it into his mouth.

Rei smiled, fully.

The Commander returned to his meal and his datapad. "You'll always have my trust, Rei," he said, offhandedly, and with those words banished any doubt in her mind as to her duty. While she might have had new relationships in her life, but they were approved. Any friendship she had was compatible with her orders.

The tumult in her stomach subsided. Her priorities were clear again. She would neverdisobey an order, and she would never lie again.

"Thank you, sir," she said.

They ate the rest of their meal in comfortable silence.

((()))

Shinji was about to open his lunch at his desk when Class 2-B's teacher handed him a note without looking at him.

Ikari, Shinji. Transfer notice. Report to Class 2-A, homeroom.

"Oh," he said. "Should I go now?"

"Probably," said the teacher.

Shinji stood up, grabbed his lunch, and packed his laptop, books, and materials into his backpack. He wondered why he had been transferred back, and on whose authority. Surely he had been sent to 2-B at the behest of Nerv. Were they the ones sending him back? Misato could have made it happen, he reasoned, but if so, why wouldn't she tell him? Maybe it was his father, meddling again, or offering another wordless apology by way of action.

Maybe it was just the school realizing that Nerv had no authority over them. Could that be the case? How did that work, anyway?

Also, did it really matter? He had no say in where he went to school, or his schedule while he was there. The only choice he had was whether or not to be a pilot. From that one decision, everything else was decided for him. So long as he was here in Tokyo-3, he lived by others' rules.

That wasn't much of a change, really. He had always done what others wanted, suggested, or commanded him to do. He played the cello because he had been told to. He piloted the Eva because he'd been told to.

He imagined Asuka would find that sickening.

As he slung his pack over his shoulder, he took a look around the classroom, wondering if he should say goodbye to anyone. What he saw was only a gallery of faces, unlabeled in his mind. He knew none of them, so he left without comment.

When he got to 2-A, Hikari greeted him at the door. "Ikari, how have you been?"

"Well," he began, and then stopped as he realized that he didn't know how to explain being absorbed into a self-contained separate dimension, or the fact that he only lived in the real world again because his girlfriend's giant robot had come to life and torn a hole in that separate dimension, unintentionally causing a rainstorm of blood to wash most of downtown.

"I've been good," he said, instead.

Hikari's expression was unreadable. "How's Asuka?"

"Good," he said. "She's good."

Hikari let him go. He found his desk—unused in his absence, apparently—and set his things down. He had just begun opening his bento when he felt a thump on his back.

"Look who's back," said a voice to accompany the thump.

"Hey, Kensuke," Shinji said, turning to look at his friend.

"This doesn't mean the Red Devil is coming back, too, does it?"

"It doesn't seem that way."

"Awesome." Kensuke took a seat on the empty desk behind him. His friend's face suddenly changed. "I, uh, don't mean anything by that."

"I know," Shinji said.

"Cool," Kensuke said. It wasn't very convincing, so he repeated it. "Cool."

Shinji began to unpack his bento for the second time. "I talked to Rei last night after our tests. She's spending the day at Nerv."

"Oh. She didn't tell me."

Shinji wanted to tell him the whole story, about Rei forgetting to tell him, but he did not know how to say it without it becoming awkward. It was still difficult to picture Rei and Kensuke as anything but distant classmates; imagining them doing anything close to what he and Asuka had done—even just holding hands, for that matter—was almost impossible.

He decided he needed more details.

"So," he began, "you and Rei seem to get along really well."

"We do?" Kensuke said.

"I guess. I haven't really seen you two together except before school. Do you eat together most days?"

"Yeah."

"What, uh… What else do you do?"

Kensuke looked at him, his eyes narrowing behind his thick lenses. "What are you asking?"

"Nothing like that!" Shinji raised his hands. "Just, like, what do you do together? Do you only see her at school?"

Kensuke relaxed. "We go to the park sometimes. Sometimes we just walk around. We talk."

Shinji tried to imagine Rei talking voluntarily. He had seen her smile exactly twice in the time he had known her, so a park-walking talkative Rei seemed fantastical.

Kensuke looked around the room, then leaned in close. "Plus," he whispered, "we made out."

"What?" Shinji said, a little too loud. He spun in time to see Hikari glare at them both. He mouthed a quick 'sorry!' and turned back to Kensuke. "You what?" he said, quieter.

"We made out in the park." Kensuke's smile somehow managed to be enthusiastic and smug simultaneously.

"What do you mean?"

"We kissed!"

The image of Rei Ayanami kissing Kensuke Aida tried to form in Shinji's mind, but would not crystalize in anything but a cartoonish simulacrum of his two friends. Whatever his brain was made of, it didn't have the computing power necessary to render the image with any realism. The effort must have shown on his face, too, because Kensuke started laughing.

"How you like that? First of the Three Stooges to kiss a girl."

Shinji raised a finger, his smile returning. "Hold on."

Kensuke's smug enthusiasm dampened. "No."

"Listen—"

"No!"

"—I'm not saying it's happened a lot, but—"

"No! No!"

"—it has definitely happened."

"When?"

Shinji made a show of counting on his fingers. "Like two months ago."

Kensuke slumped down in his seat. He pressed a palm to his head and closed his eyes. "I don't want to think about that. You and Asuka."

"Yeah."

There was a moment of silence. Kensuke broke it when he suddenly leaned forward again. "It's pretty awesome though, right?"

"It's the greatest," Shinji said.

They talked for the rest of lunch. As much as each of them wanted to focus on each other's respective girlfriend, they kept the conflicting personalities out of it. Instead, each boy simply enjoyed talking with a friend about the fascinating discovery of the opposite sex and just how great it could be, to the point that neither of them realized their third friend wasn't in class for lunch.

Author's Note: Thank you for reading what has been labeled in my notes for a year as "the Lunch Chapter". I wanted to situate each character in their own headspace before we jump straight into the fire in the next few chapters.

I hope the scene with Rei and Gendo was rendered well. We see only one glimpse of emotion between them in the show (ignoring all the times Gendo, distressed, shouts "REI!" when she does something suicidal), and that's the scene where they smile and talk with zero audio. I tried to show how he can actually be decent to her, even briefly goofy. Is it genuine? Is it just a method of manipulation? Both?

Stay tuned. I'm working on this every day now, so there should be more soon.