Path of Hollowness

by KendrixTermina

Pilot Childhood Friends AU, Yui & Kyoko live, Shinji grew up with his parents, the devastation of Second Impact was avoided, but none of this will save them when the angels finally arrive. Gradual tone shift - Starts something like the ep 26 AU or SIRP, becomes progressively less silly and more serious/ canon-like. The ReiShin plotfic I wish to see in the world.

29. 2,4,4: FREE DAY

(2.4.4: FREE DAY)

It was inevitable that I would wonder, though, at least as soon as my mind got the opportunity to wander.

What was it that Rei had not wanted me to know?

What was it that got her so worked up for that one moment, when she thought Kaworu might have told it to me? What could surpass even having been created in a laboratory?

Maybe I wasn't as concerned about this as I could have been because, in a sense, I had already been given the answer atleast insofar as it pertained to me: The reason why she wasn't telling me. That was made clear, I think, by her response to hearing what I did learn:

„Will your previous idea of me be erased because another exists now?"

In other words: ‚Will this change how you think of me?'

If I found out, would I still look at her as 'Rei, my classmate' or 'Rei the girl', or would I just wholly forget those in lieu of 'Rei the test-tube baby' or 'Rei, the artificial soldier'?

As if I'd even fully grasped the implication of the latter.

But maybe I grasped another kind of truth, or that's at least my desperate hope: Though my circumstances were not so extreme as hers I'd had enough encounters with the 'joys' of imposter syndrome to know that particular worry. The same old fear that people might reject you if they saw your true self – and maybe this was short-sighted, or focussed only on myself at the expense of the bigger picture, but I'd be damned to hell if I didn't sympathize with that.

That, at least was my conclusion then – more than a thought, less than a conviction.

When it was put to the test after, I cannot say that I passed with flying colors – the more I sank into the well of desperation, the less I could bear any ambiguity, any nook or cranny or crack or unknown patch where rejection and mockery of me might have been hiding.

I cannot say if Rei blamed me, but if she didn't, she probably should have...

December 17th 2014 – 8:34

T minus 379 days, 15 hours and 26 minutes

Of course, back then, I had thought the problem mostly resolved.

I thought the secret was out – or the awkward encumberance that was my knowledge of the secret.

I felt relieved, assured.

I set out from the appartment extra early in the morning in hopes to catch up with Rei on the tram line she would take to school. I more or less knew by now which wagons would come to halt near the center of the platform. I still almost didn't catch her, since she had been waiting close to the outer edge of the station, but that was good luck within bad luck in the end, as this meant she entered near the tail end of the streetcar, where it wasn't as crowded from people going on their morning commute.

It helps that Rei's unusual haircolor makes her easy to spot from afar.

I rushed over to the bench where she was sitting, still keeping a respectable token distance and yet sitting down beside her, undeterred by her subdued acknowledgement and honestly excited despite the early cold morning hour.

I knew that I was trusted, let in, in spite of all her not so obvious mannerisms.

"Good morning Ayanami! I'm glad to see you!"

"Shinji-kun."

"I just wanted to say thanks for inviting me again, I was really happy about that."

I thought that should go without saying, but apparently not. I guess I really wanted her to know that at least some people really want to have her present, and know what she has to say, whatever she might have thought about having nothing to add. And I wanted to say it in such a way that it would really come across as appreciation, not some backhanded shaming or demand.

"I really mean it! I was happy that you came to the party, too."

Bit clumsy perhaps, but I wanted my sincerity to come across.

"I see." she observed, pensively.

"I had already done all my work for that day, so it was fine."

"Honestly, it was just nice to have everyone together like that, after we've all been so busy… except…"

Except that the elimination of one worried had made room for me to feel again the big elephant in the room.

"...except that my parents weren't there…"

"The commander and Dr. Ikari?"

"They were there for my birthday party in the summer, for example… but lately it's been so long since we had a chance to really talk…"

Even back then, I think that my feelings were already more ambivalent than they had once been. There was still that voice inside me that had always sincerely sought their approval, but that was no longer all of me, now that they had left me alone for so long, now that I knew about the situation with Rei… and still I was basically a child, looking at the world through a lense of how it pertained to me, nursing a certain pouty petulance.

"If they'd been there, then maybe we could have talked…"

"You wish to talk with your parents?" she observed, as if it was some mildly surprising thing to say. But I was all caught up in my own feelings by then: "I became a candidate for them. Cause I wanted them to be proud, to spend more time with them… but that didn't happen at all. I keep getting mad at them, so how can I keep piloting for them?"

I was definitely in the realm of sulking by then. "I wonder if they would even have come, if they'd been invited. Or if we'd really ended up talking about anything more than pleasantries. It#s not like I have that much interesting stuff to tell them, anyways, I just… miss them, I guess.

I see you talking with father all the time, at GEHIRN… say, what it is that you talk about?"

"Work, for the most part."

A rather understated answer.

But then, she turned her whole body towards me, beyond just glancing at me once in a while, her hands brought together in front of her chest in a sincere, tender sort of gesture, though her eyes looked straight at me with a kind of decisive boldness:

"You should tell them."

"Huh?"

"You should tell your parents, if you want to talk to them. Else, how are they ever going to know? You should tell them what you're really thinking."

I guess some of you might be surprised to hear that she'd tell me something like that, because she tends to be quiet and not so assertive.

But she's actually pretty blunt and direct once you get to know her;

Knowing what I know now, I must conclude that she was never once truly docile, but rather apathetic and resigned, having long since dispaired of hoping for anything better than the life she had now.

I was impressed with her then, honestly, since I'd rarely been so bold.

I realized of course that she was right.

Regardless of how the world maybe should be if it were better and fairer, I was in this real, flawed world now and I couldn't expect the things I wanted to come to me without ever taking any action to make them so…

"We have training this afternoon. You could speak to them after that."

She wastes no time huh. Once a decision is made, there is no reason to delay. A direct, refreshing intentionality, which, I suppose, might just have been the push that I needed- but though I recognized her wisdom I can't say that I didn't feel a swell of dread rising up within me at the prospect of actually springing into action and facing… what? Whatever consequences that may come from this? What was the most that I could have expected to happen?

It was not too long ago that I was talking to my parents every day, but of course that was before they had given me any reasons to feel apprehension. Or perhaps what I was noticing was simply the awakening of the greater capacity to think for myself that comes with maturity.

Either way, I was probably just nervous, but moving past that was not as easily done as it was said.

Still, I could imagine that by the next morning, Rei would ask me just as bluntly wether I had talked to my parents or not, and if I hadn't, I would have to tell her why when I could barely produce the answer myself – In other words, I couldn't really back out of this one.

Maybe this is what you'd call having an 'accountability partner' – that sounds so businesslike though, like a 'go, go, go, make money!' kind of thing and that's not what it was.

It was like… getting to have very special, intimate sort of confidant, or that's what it meant to me at least.

I can't say that I could have borne anything that followed if she hadn't been at my side, and once we were parted, well – that was the beginning of the end.

Though it might be selfish of me to simply say that we 'were' parted, as if my very own shortcommings didn't have anything to do with it.

December 17th 2014 – 12:27

T minus 379 days, 11 hours and 33 minutes

I'd be given a breather, at least, some processing time – before I'd have the chance to even attempt speaking to my parents, I'd first have to endure my training and my time at school.

At least some of the teachers were so generous as to provide rough summaries of the topics that would be featured in the exams – that was something like a last mercy, a chance to hear the teacher summarize everything in order, including all the stuff that had thus far passed me by.

I made sure to take notes – this way I could at least get the basics of some of this stuff, maybe enough to sort of bullshit something and get some fraction of the points if it came up in the exam.

I didn't dare to ask follow-up questions though, concerned that I would just end up holding up the progression of topics in making it very obvious that I was behind on my studying. I knew too little too even properly hash out what I don't know, though it was faintly comforting to realize that I recognized most of the topics that had been mentioned – that's something, at least.

I wasn't as completely lost as it might have been…

When lunch hour came around, I was expecting to have lunch with Touji and the boys today, but our usual quartet found itself one 'baka' short, hough it didn't take us very long to figure out why: right past the window, we could spot the walking talking dresscode violation that was Touji and his tracksuit (a slightly thicker one for jogging in the winter.)

He was right there in the courtyard, the heads of himself and his companion cut from our view by the walkway above them, though we could still make up a characteristic pair or pigtails on the skirted person to his right.

It seems that he had picked up an all new lunchtime ritual.

Kensuke was quite torn between well-wishes and jealousy!"They're having the time of their lives, aren't they? That lucky bastard!"

He paused here for a moment to aim some looks at myself and Kaworu as if expecting commiseration: "But never fear! I know it in my heart that we are sure to get out turn one of these days. Mark my words: My resolution for this coming year is to finally find the gorgeous gamer girlfriend of my dreams!"

To emphasize his determination, he pumped his right fist up into the air.

Kensuke has a lot of energy sometimes.

But his liveliness can also be quite refreshing sometimes, and I think Kaworu shared my impression there.

The two of us remained sitting at the window for long after we were technically done with lunch.

Having bought his meal at the cafeteria, Kensuke wasn't too keen on putting his crumb-filled wrappers inside the bag wth all his school books, so he had left to dispose of his trash, leaving the two of us to contemplate the gray winter landscape outside with its many barren trees framing the outskirts of the courtyard before the many buildings of the city started up again.

Regarding the nude brown branches, not all thoughts that came to my mind were pleasant ones – and of course Kaworu would notice right away:

"Say, Shinji-kun, might I ask what's on your mind?"

"I was just… thinking…"

I guess I wanted to say it, but I also didn't want to say it.

And of course Kaworu was ever so good about teasing it out while still making me feel at ease:

"Would you like to talk about it? You don't have to share it if you don't want to, but I would be genuinely interested in hearing."

I swear, sometimes it's like he knows me better than I know myself.

"It's because of what Kensuke just said. That it's almost the new year.

I guess that's made me realize how quickly everything is changing.

Not too long ago, Touji and the class rep were always fighting, and now they're having lunch together… I guess that would make him the first one in our group to get a girlfriend, too.

Not much longer, and we won't be kids anymore, and we'll have to think about serious responsibilities… Everything's changing, and it's happening so fast…

Is Touji even still gonna want to hang out with us now that he's got a girlfriend?"

Hearing this, Kaworu pensively stared off into the distance, and then, after wresting aside some reluctance, he posed one tentative question:

"Would you prefer a world where nothing ever changed? If there was a way to get such a world, would you want it?"

That gave me pause.
"I don't know. I guess some part of me does. The selfish, pathetic part. But the part of me that's Touji's and Horaki-san's friend couldn't stand to take away their happiness. I wouldn't want that, I just… I guess I'm afraid that I'm going to be left behind.

I mean, what have I accomplished this last year? How have I made new memories? Sure, I sighned up for some new activities at school and I tried one or two new things, but it didn't really make a difference."

"That's not true. All the little steps of progress will eventually add up to something greater."

I didn't see how they could.

"I just keep picturing some horrible future where Touji and the class rep are married with kids, and maybe Kensuke has finally found his Gamer Girlfriend and they're living in some cool DIY house that he built with his nerd skills, Mari has finally learned Chinese and fulfilled her dream of becoming a Sci-Fi author, and Suzunami's probably gonna be some super popular famous singer... – and I'm still me.

Unchanged from today. A boringperson who doesn't make a difference to anyone…"

Just for an instant, Kaworu looked really sad for some reason, which I now guess is because he never expected the world as we knew it to continue beyond next year, but then he mastered himself, and spoke to me with pointed deliberate emphasis:

"You make a difference to me. I'm not going to change – you don't have to change to stay friends with me."

"...Thanks, Kaworu-kun."

It was a comfort, it really was. More so the demonstration that I mattered to him than the unrealistic assurance.

But it still wasn't satisfaction.

December 17th 2014 – 16:57

T minus 379 days, 7 hours and 3 minutes

Guess what today's training was: Yep. Yet more war games!

Not even bothering with the pretense of games anymore.

They had simply marched us to the same shooting range that the GEHIRN employees used for basic training.

We did get a stern warning from Misato that there are real and that we should be careful about where we point them, but overall it was much less spectacular than you'd expect, nor were any of the adults as stern as you would think from that fact that they were, you know, handing guns to a bunch of middle schoolers.

Laser tag, NERF guns or paintball wouldn't do, they wanted us to get used to get used to the weight and the recoil with our own bodies.

We'd been using simulations of real guns for months though, and gone through the corresponding safety training many times. Though I'd never held one before, the sensation was familiar. If we mucked up with EVA-sized guns, there was much more at stake than us blowing out our own brains, we could level entire buildings or city blocks depending on the potency of the weapon.

A handgun was a downgrade, despite the absurdity of a 13 year old holding one.

A handgun was a joke compared to the EVAs themselves.

Of course they could not justify to do this ridiculousness with regular kids.

It was only the pilot candidates. The GEHIRN staff was probably quite desensitized to seeing Asuka in this protective gear, even when they'd had to somehow procure little girl versions of it for her when she was even younger. As for Rei and Kaworu, had this even required any getting used to, or did they just not get counted as people to begin with?

The GEHIRN staff was nice to us, sure, but we were really government assets.

When Misato took a few shots for demonstration purposes, every single one hit the black in the center of the target.

I kept the weapon religiously pointed downwards just like I had been instructed.

But if I moved my arm upward just a bit, I could have technically killed Misato with it.

All safety is an illusion of course, kept in place by pro-social instincts and the programs of civilization fed into us in early childhood. If I seriously wanted to kill, I could just take rocks and hurl them at cars passing a busy road, or shove someone in front of a car, or off a ledge in a staircase. More than a physical limitation, it was the difficulty to build up such an action potential between by neurons that prevented such an act.

But like everything else that I did – especially anything novel – these training sessions were surely adjusting all those little weights and connection patterns inside my head, according to some logic that I didn't understand.

In Asuka, similar programs had long-since taken root – she received some of her earliest training according to military procedures, after all. She just picked up a damn machine gun, went over to the range and started blasting away, picking up another different weapon every time she'd emptied one out. I could make a joke hee about making a mental note not to cross her but that wouldn't do justice to the sheer wrongness and surreality of seeing such acts performed by a schoolgirl. She was no worse at this than Misato, maybe better even.

Some of you might be expecting some nefarious scheme now about how every bit of my surroundings might have been engineered to get me to submit, or, to make us all perfect killers or something. I had thoughts like these myself on occasion. But looking back now, I really don't think that it's the case. It's just a projection of my fears, or perhaps a perverted wish to have a reason for my suffering. There is no reason. There is no plan. Nobody cares. No one is holding the reins. Nobody's even invested in us enough to bother about controlling our lives to the last detail.

GEHIRN is a rather sloppy organization, there could be no better proof than the fact that three important assets had been left in the care of what, seen from a bird's eye view, must seem like an irresponsible drunkard simply because she was the leader of the operations division.

Between the need for secrecy and the lack of oversight ensured by GEHIRN's wealthy backers, there was just very little stopping them from winging it.

They didn't have the time and ressources to get into our heads. They had some profiles on us and that worked well enough for their purposes, as you will see, but all this concerns the broad strokes, the rough tendencies.

No one in this building complex gave us enough of a thought to even consider to like, control us down to the tiniest detail.

Like any military, they just want a very specific end result. A soldier that shoots.

Solong as we shoot, the rest of us can be safely abstracted away, our flesh, blood and bone all reduced to one single binary variable.

And shoot we did. Mari was outright excited and went pestering Asuka for tips on how to wrangle that long, imposing sniper rifle she had picked out of the toolbox. It seems that she was serious about mastering the arts of long-range support – as serious as Mari ever gets about anything, that is.

Rei had stoically executed the instructions the moment that Misato told her to go, wordless, unreadable, silent until the shots began ringing out. She, too, had got used to this long ago.

The closest to showing signs of discomfort was probably Kaworu, but whatever reluctant melancholia might have darkened his face, it did not keep him from hitting his mark every single time.

And there was me, just standing there. Reluctantly moving to one of the stalls if only to avoid being called out for just standing around.

It shouldn't be hard, I had done this many times before in the simulations, but despite the sensory feedback, that still had never felt as real.

I guess this was the point of this training. To drive out this fear of the real thing, lest we be hit with it in its full force the first time that we faced the real foes in the city.

Aching to withdraw my consciousness from the weight in my hand and the actions that were expected to follow, my eyes wandered to the next occupied stall to my right, where Rei was hard at work. At least she wasn't relishing it. At least she took no pleasure in it, through she proceeded to do what's necessary with consummate efficiency, one purposeful move after another, crimson eyes staring straight ahead…

Or they were, for a good while, until it would seem that she noticed, and lowered her outstretched arm.

"Are you having difficulty? Should I show you how to use it?"

I nodded, because that was easier than finding words for my reluctance.

And so she ended up close enough for me to feel her warmth, lined up next to me to show me with her hands how I was to hold my arm.

"Like this," she instructed me, tonelessly "now pull the trigger."

And I did, because at this point it was easier than not doing it.

Just a small little motion of my finger. Just a little action potential building up between some choice neurons.

Up close, it was even louder.

Unbearably loud, ringing in the bones of my hand.

"Disconcerting, is it not?" remarked Kaworu as we were putting away the guns later.

He didn't preface it with any further explanations or context, because none were necessary.

Nor did I have to reply; To him, my reluctance was enough of an answer.

"There is nothing shameful about having a distaste toward violence. In truth, I share it.

You don't know how I wish that we could all be spared from this necessity.

It won't be long until we will be forced to kill to hold onto our lives – but what lives will those be, if we become killers? If we cannot escape such a path completely, then at the very least, it's a consideration that bears keeping in mind."

"...but we're not going to be killing people-" I supplied, reluctantly, because that thought had been my only shield, even if it was never without doubt festering under its surface – "We'll be fighting monsters."

"Certainly…" remarked Kaworu with somber sobriety, "-but what is a monster, really?"

"What is a monster… that's a good question, really…"

I hadn't really thought about that.

I didn't expect that it would ever become relevant to my life again once I'd stopped believing in monsters under the bed.

"You realize that in the eyes of some, I myself might be accounted a monster. A creature bred in a machine for the sole purpose of doing battle."

This, at least, had a clear answer so far as I am concerned – it seemed obvious or, at least, it did back then. I stubbornly shook my head:

"That makes no sense. Monsters are supposed to be scary, and I always feel calm when I am with you."

A selfish reasoning, perhaps.

But for all his consideration, Kaworu was not wholly free of his own subtle brand of selfishness.

He did not correct me, but smiled gently with a quiet little fondness.

"Thank you, Shinji-kun."

It was not long before the magic of the moment was broken.

The first thing I noticed were Kaworu's eyes darting away to some other part of the room.

I followed tentatively, so that at first, only the seam of a blue skirt caught my eye, until I looked up to find Rei.

I didn't hear her coming at all, she must have approached us in absolute silence.

"Commander Ikari and his wife should be in their office now, if you wish to speak to them. "

December 17th 2014 – 19:15

T minus 379 days, 4 hours and 45 minutes

'Just tell them how you feel', huh?

That's hard enough under normal circumstances.

That's hard enough when it's just one of your peers who isn't going to cancel your allowance if you get them mad – No, it was no longer just that.

They were no longer just my parents as I used to find them every morning, drinking coffee in the kitchen.

They were my employers. My masters even, for they had more power over me than any employer should ever have.

If I had been thinking logically back then, I would have to concieve of them as people that I should have been worried about even if I had never been related to me at all, since they were in charge of everybody's fate, and as such, glaringly intransparent.

But logic was the furthest thing from my mind.

While I was out in the hallway, the astringent taste of ambivalence was almost impossible to tune out, but now I'd rang the door bell, I was aware on some level that it would be so much easier to just let the entrenched old patterns to the talking, the neural networks build up from the earliest age that still shaped my default response even as functions capable of a more nuanced sceptical understanding were already crystallizing around them like an onion.

The part of me that would always be a child longed still for a fool's paradise – and ewas quickly struck with deserving punishment for leaving itself exposed and open, for when the automatic door slid aside, it became obvious that the pair beyond had not been expecting me.

They didn't shift too far from their respective pokerfaces, but it was enough.

Maybe they had thought some business parner of theirs was coming, or one of their underlings bearing a report – Mr. Kaji, Miss Kaga, Miss Soryu or perhaps Miss Ritsuko.

Plus, they weren't alone – I could spot Vice Commander Fuyutsuki near the window of their spacious office, which made everything awkward.

"Shinji? What are you doing here?"

Though serious, my father's voice didn't even sound all that severe, but still my courage faltered.

"I just- wanted to ask something-"

"You do know that your mother and I are engaged in important work here, right? GEHIRN is of the utmost-"

He fell silent at once when my mother raised her arm; She'd been sitting at the side of his desk, her ever-present smile unperturbed as always.

"It's alright. A few minutes won't make that much of a difference anyways. Please tell us what you wanted to ask."

Even so, I felt like I shouldn't have come here without some official request. Like they were The Commander and The Science Division leader in here, not Mom and Dad. It had been a good while since I had seen either of those….

I struggled to speak through all the unacknowledged feelings that insisted on welling up.

"I was thinking, like- uh… that it's been a pretty long time… since we really did anything together…. Other than work, I mean…"

Lost in this large, barren office, I quickly grew very self-conscious of the triviality of my concerns.

"So I wanted to ask if we could maybe… hang out sometime?"

I would have been tempted to laugh at myself, if my voice were not so close to petering out completely.

I was supposed to have been getting taller. Their silhouettes were supposed to be getting less looming, with the years, but my parents both cast long, dark shadows on the engraved crystalline floors of this office.

When mother deigned to speak, it was as if a goddess were granting my prayer:

"Hm…" she mused, delicately balancing her chin on a single finger, "We just heard that tomorrow's conference was called off on short notice, and aside from that we don't have anything else scheduled that couldn't be posponed. I know this is sudden, but, if tomorrow won't work, it could be a long, long time before we can clear another afternoon."

Her voice itself was perfectly pleasant, but that doesn't change that she used to always know wether or not the next day would 'work' for me.

Yet I pushed down that resentful, ungrateful thought.

"I mean, it was just an idea, you don't have to do it if it bothers you so much-"

"It's not a bother at all," said mother in her light-like, angelic voice which seemed to know everything, "Your father is right in saying that our work is important, but the earth probably won't stop turning if we take a single day of. Besides, I want you to know ou can always come to us when you need something. You're our son, after all."

I had never wanted to believe an obvious lie so badly….

December 17th 2014 – 19:32

T minus 379 days, 4 hours and 28 minutes

On the elevator ride back to the terminals, I ended up running into Rei.

She boarded the elevator just a few stops after I did, and then we were descending to the dephts while the dial indicating the current floor ticked away swiftly.

I still didn't know what was on most of these floors, though I had come to memorize how to get to and from the places that I saw on a regular basis. Between those, the building remained filled with great black boxes for me.

So I had no idea what Rei could have been doing before she came in – she has changed back into her regular uniform since I last saw her. The crumpled woolen uniform jacket lay crumpled along the small frame of her shoulders, just beneath where her short bob of hair came to an end.

I was looking at her from the back because she did not immediately speak to be after she came in. She just remained standing there at first, staring at the door as if keeping herself ready to step right out when the time age.

But this no longer confounded or irritated me as much as it once did.

I could speak to her with as much light ease as I could muster considering the subject:

"I, uh… I talked to my parents."

"I see."

It no longer bothered me that she didn't turn around at once; I knew she was listening & was glad for this opportunity to speak with her.

"...turns out you were totally right – I wonder why I didn't just talk to them to begin with…"

I put in a little awkward laugh here, but I couldn't sustain the momentum of positivity while other doubts tugged at it from below.

"It seems like I'm gonna get to spend some time with them tomorrow… say… Rei… what should I talk to them about?"

She appeared mildly puzzled at this, honestly, for good reason:

"You are their son. Why are you asking me to find this answer? Shouldn't you know them best?"

"I guess so… it's just- that I've never known this whole side of them. Like, what they're like as leaders of GEHIRN. It's like they're complete strangers…"

"I did not know what they would be like at your home. They were like complete strangers to me."

It seems like our experiences had been precisely opposite mirror images – and she continued on in that same, slightly gloomy tone: "...is this why you have been looking at me during training? Because you've been thinking to ask me with?"

At once, I perceived a quickening of my pulse.

Rei had… noticed me looking at her?!

What's more, and what hit me here bluntly, with a marked delay:

...had she not just implied that she wanted me to look at her?

Was she not expressing dissapointment that there had turned out to be some reason behind her that would seem to deflate her hopes that I'd been looking at her all for its own sake?!

Yet before this profound revelation dawned upon me, I had already blurted out the sort of noncomittal 'uh-huh' that was bound to make everything worse.

I scrambled to fix this, but I was nervous, so I ended up blurting out whatever first came to my mind:

"Uh – but- that wasn't the only reason! I was thinking that you looked really cool earlier like, you can really be really dedicated and dilligent sometimes. Your husband and your kids are gonna be really lucky someday!"

Oh dear. I'm rambling.

Now of all times, Rei turned her head ever so slightly.

"Kids? Husband?"

"Yeah- uh, I'm sure you'd be great with a family!"

Now it was clear that some great emotion was coming over her.

It's like there was a subtle change in every tenden of her body, a million subtle shifts in her body, like it was actually tensed and inhabited and not a limp puppet hanging down from the head down – her shoulders tensed, her elbows curved, and she reached for one of them with her other hand, as if she was about to curl into herself. Her eyes, too, were going through some rapid shifts while an obvious, immense blush had built up around them.

When she found her words again, her voice was almost trembling.

"What are you saying?

I can never have children or a husband."

That came out of the left field -

"W-Whyever not?"

"- please stop speaking for now. ...you are making me embarassed…"

She didn't quite regain her composure for the rest of the elevator ride, and left without a word, clearly hungry for the space to process this on her own… whatever 'this' was all about.

At first, I didn't understand what ever happened, other than that I must have said something unneccessary.

December 17th 2014 – 20:15

T minus 379 days, 3 hours and 45 minutes

I came home to find Asuka and Misato embroiled in some sort of argument.

"Come on! You have got to let me borrow your lavender parfume! Don't be so stingy!"

"It's got nothing to do with stinginess. That stuff isn't for kids."

"Oh come on! It's the first real date of my one and only middle school experience!"

"You got a date?"

Asuka swirled around at once when she noticed by presence, but of course, as per her usually policy, she could not let people suspect that she could have feelings like an ordinary human, thus reflexively denying any sort of real investment:

"Well – not really. He's just a friend of Hikari's sister. I'm really just doing her a favor so he doesn't bother them no more."

Even so, I smiled to myself as I dumped off my bag and went about preparing dinner.

If she's looking into any male humans whose name isn't Kaji, then she must finally be moving on from the elevator kiss incident.

Even if she was still acting just a little bit grumpy towards Misato. "Look at her chugging all that beer! I wonder if I'll also to stuff like that when I'm her age."

Unable to defend herself from that accusation, Misato opted from a strategy of distraction:

"Now now girls, you have the best time of your life still ahead of you, you should enjoy your youth instead of being in such a hurry to grow up!"

"Spoken like an old hag!"

"What did you say?!"

Calm as ever, Mari sagely shook her head as this while she pinned her rice between her chopsticks.

"Princess, growing up doesn't mean that you suddenly become someone different. You might have a bit more experience, but you won't magically turn into some responsible superhuman. Have you opened a newspaper lately? Lots of the grownups out there are just big giant babies. They obviously don't know anything that you and I wouldn't get."

December 17th 2014 – 21:03

T minus 379 days, 2 hours and 57 minutes

Having got away from them after dinner, I still considered it a relief to finally put a door between myself and their constant racket. I lacked the slightest clue that there would come a day when I would find myself begging to the heavens for them to fill the flat with noise again.

I let myself sink onto the bed, losing sight of the old familiar ceiling as my eyes unfocussed, letting myself get lost in thought.

I cannot say if the idea of studying even occurend to me anymore.

I could not say with certainly that I looked forward to tomorrow, nor that I clearly didn't.

There was a sense of dissonance packed in cotton in the background of my mind, isolated thoughts and tidbits that I didn't want to mix.

As I reflected on the events of the day, the incident with Rei bubbled up to the forefront again.

I could no longer think of my parents without being reminded of all the unfair circumstances that she and the other pilot candidates had been put through.

But I wasn't ready to confront that yet.

None of them really seemed to blame my parents, so I would have had to own that this discomfort is my own, an unacknowledged feeling that would hang between us and create a distance, disrupting my hopes of having things go back the way they were, of looking at this outing as a sign that everything was still normal and the worries all in my mind.

It was easier to stick with the self-involved preoccupation of wether or not Rei was mad at me or something.

Though I didn't have that self-awareness as the time; If you'd asked me back then how I ended up picking up my phone, I would have told you that it was on a whim, or that I was bored.

Boredom could have been alleviated just as well by any of the many text messages I had received, there were all sorts of funny pictures courtesy of Touji, Kensuke, Mana and so on, all of which I ignored to scroll down to the relatively inactive chat that connected me to Rei, the tiny sum of our previous conversations still in view.

There was a threshold of reluctance to be overcome, but still, my thumbs got moving.

["I'm sorry about earlier! I promise that I didn't mean anything weird by it. I didn't wanna make you uncomfortable or anything…"]

Moments later, I frantically added the following:

["- oh, and don't feel like you have to reply to this. If you don't feel like talking to me right now, or if you're still mad, that's ok. I just wanted you to know, just to clarify things."]

It was marked as read almost immediately – so I felt my body tensing and, for a few instants, I lay there waiting with bated breath… and nothing happened.

Of course not. After all I had told her that she needn't reply.

That was the nice, considerate thing to do but that awareness did very little to make my preoccupation simmer down – I wanted to be reassured right now that we're cool.

Kinda pathethic, hm?

I'd let my arm sink down onto the matress and tried my best to tune out the phone screen's blue glow from behind my lids; Already I was mentally preparing to put the phone away and get changed for bed when I heard the telltale 'ping' of an incomming text message.

Of course it could have been a message sent by just about anybody else – that's what I told myself as I picked it up.

But of course the answer had in fact come from Rei:

["What are you referring to?"]

["That's stuff earlier – in the elevator. I was just rambling, and I didn't think it through… I was trying to say something nice, I didn't mean to say that you have to get married and have kids just because you're a girl or something like that. Obviously you don't have to do that, if you don't want to, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that when I think back of, like, when my mom still used to have the time to cook for us or clean our house, that reminds me of – I dunno, a nostalgic, peaceful kind of feeling, and that's what I was thinking of – I'm not saying that you have to do that, if you don't want to."]

Rei's answer to this, however, was not at all what I expected.

["It is not a question of 'want'. It is physically impossible."]

["What do you mean, 'physically'?"]

["Just what I said. I thought Nagisa-kun had told you. In our creation, there were alterations made to make us compatible with the EVAs. In my case, those changes make it so that I cannot have offspring. I've been told that I need not even expect some of the usual changes that happen to young women as they mature, such as the bleeding."]

That's an awfully private thing to be so casually discussing with your classmate – particularly a boy classmate. But then again, she's probably used to hearing people just discussing stuff about her body as if it were – well. A taxpayer-funded government project. She must be used to hearing the finer points of her genetic makeup discussed by all manner of GEHIRN scientists, male and female alike.

["That's awful! It's like they didn't care at all about what you might want in the future, just as long as they get a pilot out of it!"]

["If they did not require pilots, I would not have been created at all."]

["Still! It's not fair! I mean in the end, they ended up working out that normal kids can do it after all-"]

["Such developments are not unusual in the development of technology."]

Technology. Technology!

"Still-" I stopped myself in my tracks there and erased what I had been beginning to type. Because, did I want her to be bothered, just because it bothered me? If she accepted the realities of her life, was that not a good thing? Who was I to say that some reaction should, nay must be there? And if it's hidden somewhere under layers, she's certainly not going to reveal it to the ones that make her feel judged. But I wanted to send some kind of answer.

["...I suppose so…"]

I wanted to keep the conversation going.

["I guess we're all really young anyways, so it's way too early to be worrying about being parents. By the time we're older, the doctors might have better tech or medicines that could help with this, & even if they don't, you could always adopt – the most important part of being a parent is raising the kids, anyways – and you'd be great at that, if you wanted, cause you're gentle, and dilligent, and you notice all the little things-"]

["I can barely take care of my own life."]

["Well of course, we're still really young, &, still figuring things out. Having a baby now would be a really bad idea… but in the future, ten, fifteen years, things might be totally different. We might be completely different people. Maybe you wouldn't even want to have kids any more, or if you did, you'd be much better at everything – besides, you wouldn't have to take care of them by yourself, maybe your husband could do the cleaning…"]

I hoped, deeply, that she was currently picturing a taller, handsomer grownup version of me leisurely twirling around a broom. Now I know that her true thouhts must have been very far from such idyllic fantasies. But all she could tell me was this:

["I exist to carry out the project."]

["Maybe for now – it can't be helped that we have to give much of our life to GEHIRN and the EVAs. But the war's not gonna be forever, right? From what mom tells me, it might be over by the end of next year. When the space aliens are all defeated, we won't have to be pilots anymore."]

["Then I will no longer be needed."]

What a sad way to put it. Though I could kind of understand. At the beginning, I might not have, but after that whole business with Asuka recently during the pair training, I think I could guess where she was coming from.

["...I guess it must be scary, since all your life has been dedicated to being a pilot… I think Asuka might actually feel the same, even if she doesn't say it. Piloting has been your whole life, so I can see how it's tough to imagine your life without it – but this is exactly why it may not be a bad idea to think about what you wanna do after. I mean, Kaworu-kun has his art. Asuka has many talents so she could get any job she wants. And Mari has the sort of attitude where you'd think that she could probably make the best out of any situation… "]

But I didn't see it. I didn't understand. I knew nothing.

["I am different from you. I've told you before. You are pilots as well, but you are also other things. You are more than just pilots."]

I'm not so sure about myself, really. What other good features did I have? But Rei seemed to think that I did, so it was all the more important that I return the favor:

["...but you're just the same. Like, not exactly the same, of course, since you're your own unique person. But you like reading, you're interested in science stuff, you're someone who really thinks about stuff, you're a good student, and you're our friend. You've got stuff that's not related to being a pilot – after the war, you could just keep doing that.

Or anything else that you want. We'll be free – all of us. But I guess you, Kaworu and Asuka most of all. For the first time, you'll be abler to decide everything for yourself – that's something to look forward to, isn't it?"]

["The world may have changed greatly after the war. Even if we survive, it might be nothing like what you're used to."]

["Do you think there might be a lot of destruction?"]

["It's not unlikely."]

Naive as I was, I still counted this as a victory, because for the first time, I had gotten her to mention a possible future after the war. My words can't have been much of a comfort, because in every single one it must have been evident how much I simply did not know what she meant.

["...but still. At least we'll be free then. At least we won't have to go through any more awful stuff."]

["Yes. At least that."]

It was hard to tell for sure, without actually being able to hear her voice.

But somehow, I did not get the sense that she had penned those words with any sense of joyous anticipation – and there, at least, I wasn't wrong.

The kind of liberation that she was anticipating, and the future I was hoping for, were two very, very disparate things, separated through night and wind as the two of us were behind our respective screens that day.

December 18th 2014

T minus 378 days

I do sometimes wonder whatever PenPen might have thought of us all getting all dressed up in our fancy clothes and then leaving one by one – Misato was going out, too, off to attend the wedding of a mutual friend with Mr. Kaji, Miss Ritsuko and Kenzaki the security guard.

I'm not entirely sure where Mari went off to; She wasn't really in a habit of sharing such things.

Knowing her, it could have been anything from questionable spy business to a whimsical stroll.

I wasn't sure where exactly we would be going, so I picked my clothes to be neither too light nor too heavy – I went with some high closed shoes, tan pants, a checkered scarf and a soft green-and-white cardigan for extra warmth – oh, and a plain cream shirt below that.

My mom had sent me a text message to tell me that I should go & meet her in the geofront, & while I could have taken the tram to the laboratory's main above-ground building & descended from there, I was already used to using the various subterranian accessways that would get me to and from my training sessions.

Besides the one beneath the school, I'd been shown one that was actually not too far from Misato's appartment, near the very same tram stop that I'd taken to and from school in the early days, through what I'd taken to be some electricity maintenance box… thing.

But of course, one more obvious non-coincidence, that GEHIRN's supreme commander and his wife the lead scientist would rent a house close to such an accessway.

This had probably been considered all the way back when we first moved in here, and now, that same subterranian path was poised to ferry Misato and Asuka all the way down to headquarters if an enemy should finally arrive.

I had already used it so many times on business that I thought little of using it for a personal errand – it took my keycard all the same.

Now my mother had not actually told me what sort of room that was that I was supposed to meet up with her in, but from the layout of the hallways I could surmise that it wasn't too far from Kaworu's quarters.

Still I did not make the connection, not even when my mother appeared behind the sliding doors with only a dim shine visible behind her.

– but then she beckoned me inside:

"Your father is still getting ready – I told him to hurry up, but you know how he is – so why don't we have some nice cool drink why we wait for him?"

She led me in, and only then did I put two and two together, and consider where I was.

These must be their new private quarters.

This is where they must have been living, ever since…. Since they had left.

It was not welcoming, not much like a home in the slightest, much more like a workplace.

I did not felt any lingering, tugging wish to move in here with them – there would have been no space to squeeze into.

Despite its great size, the main table was thoroughly covered in documents and boxes, and dociments and boxes dominanted the room. Stacks of them, crates of piled up books, nothing but work, work work, some inner world of my parents' bared of the surface need to appear organizationally expedient or socially welcomned, the true distilled unfiltered thing that they each had inside of them, and in those inner essences, they were very alike.

Not that the room was wholly void of personal touches. Their external behaviors, too, where things they could not help.

Mom wouldn't let anybody stop her from hanging up many dusty picture frames all across the walls, all assorted memories, or perhaps symbols rather, declarations of intent.

And left there in one of the corners, in the only space bare of crates and bookshelves, stood a grand piano that could only belong to my father, so there was his touch on this space.

He must be getting himself ready behind one of the two little plastic doors that led to this central room, a bedroom and a bathroom I'd presume.

There was nothing suggesting a kitchen, only a small fridge and a lone cupboard with a water cooker placed on top of it, and it was there where my mother went to retrieve the cold drinks.

Lemonade in the winter might seem like an odd choice, but it was not so puzzling in the face of the obvious implications that my parents cannot have visited the surface very often in the recent past. I presume that they saw the sun on business trips once in a while, but those would frequently require them to fly to different countries.

I wonder, how long can you live under the earth until you lose track of the seasons?

But it didn't matter, because I'd just been handed a glass of Mom's familiar old Hatchimitsu Yuzu Lemonade, with that same old nostalgic taste.

I had all these complicated ambivalent thoughts about ethics and free will, but in the end, I was still an animal, a sophisticated monkey that was easily put at ease by creature comforts, bought out with blasted sugar water.

Mother smiled broadly when she noticed the understated delight curling the edges of my lips, that entrancing, infection smile that probably makes the comitee people give her all the grant money.

She was all dressed up already, all ready to go in a long, red skirt, sheer tights going all the way to her pointy shoes and a high collared white jumper adorned with a fancy jewelled brooch. On top of that, she wore a black cardigan on her own, making for an alltogether distinguished, elegant impression.

You wouldn't have believed that shy, stilted creature such as myself could be her son.

"So, how have you been doing?" she asked, light as butterfly wings.

"Ah, uh… not too bad. I guess."

"That's good to hear."

Yes. I suppose it is. That's why I told it to her, though it may not have been strictly the truth.

She noted with great pleasure that I liked the lemonade, and followed my gaze when it trailed off to the fotos, the old familiar pattern that I'd always perceived as warm attentiveness, but which was now beset by the sharp contrast of a larger context – Slowly but surely, I felt the logical contradictions creeping up on me.

My drifting glances were mostly meant to escape her, not focus on anything in particular, but since I'd directed them at the pictures on the walls, that is where she looked, piecing together some assumption that I must be wondering about an image that clearly predated my birth:

It showed my parents a good 16 years younger, standing by the side of a great lake, along some winding concrete stair bounded by a rustic wooden fence whom where it was possible to look far across the wide body of water and the open landscape that surrounded it, a vale of mountains dotted with scattered villages.

Father was awkwardly standing off to the left; He had put on a smile out of expectation, but had been staring a bit too directly at the camera, his angular face overgrown with wild stubble.

He was possibly wearing the very same shirt that had since wound up reused as Rei's nightgown.

Next to him, mother would of course have made for a rather contrasting image in her put-together, fashionable clothing. Her hair was a little longer here than I ever remembered seeing it, cascading down her shoulders. She'd wound her ellbow around father's and, in addition, had diverted her second hand into his, as if having only one limb touching him had just not been enough. She was of course smiling into the camera with impeccable charme.

"That was from that one trip to Lake Ashino that we did back in the day", she stated, her eyes sparkling with memory. "One of these days, we must take you there as well."

"...in the middle of winter, though?"

I wondered if she and father hadby now completely lost track of such pesky things as the aboveground seasons.

"That coukd present a problem, I guess…" mused my mother, idly pressed the side of one finger against her lips.

"We might go in the summer," I suggested, aware that I was just dutyfully defaulting to cheering her up as I might with anyone that I cared about in a yet uncomplicated way. The number of wholly uncomplicated relationships in my life was rapidly decreasing, though.

Mother did not not at once, as I would have thought, rather she paused gravely, and just a moment, the smile was well and duly wiped off of her face.

Remorse perhaps? I couldn't have known then what she would have been thinking.

I don't know that I could make sense of it even knowing what I do now, if it has sense at all.

I remember only what she said, musing upon a projected future:

"Hm… I'm not sure if that will work out..."

I think once upon a time, with no elephants in the room, I would have been able to summon up much more earnest, child-like interest.

"Who took this picture, though?"

"Oh, that would have been Miss Makinami – your father didn't even want to take one at first, but the two of us ganged up on him, and we made him..."

"I do not need a picture to treasure that moment – Everything important is right in here."

One of the doors had opened. Father stood ready in the doorway, dressed up in a suit with his beard respectably trimmed. He still looked kind of scruffy, just by virtue of being himself.

It appears that the conversation had amused him – he grinned at the pair of us, making a casual gesture toward his chest with his fist.

Hence, I could easily see that he'd put on that pair of white evening gloves that ke kept for such occasions. I think that during one of her usual summertime visits, Asuka had joked once that these made him look like some B-movie supervillain.

Mom went right over to adjust his collar.

"Sure, dear, I do not doubt that at all. Still, I think one day, you or Shinji will be very glad to have this reminder."

Yet despite my wakened suspicions, I did find this line ominous at all. Not then. Not yet.

We were now ready to leave.

We ended up getting into father's black Limousine. There was a chauffeur and all – the doors were held open for us, I was greeted, with some ceremonial flourish, as 'young master'.

Soon, I had deduced from the context that we were enroute to some high-end theatre.

None of this was really strange, for two influential government functionaries and their son.

I just wasn't used to seeing it in that context.

In theory there was really no reason to be wary here – my parents were in good spirits. Father cracked some of his usual too-blunt jokes; Mother gently made casual conversation.

I was made to understand and anticipate that we would be watching some modern-artsy take on the Phantom Of The Opera, which I knew my parents to be fond of and connect some treasured memories with.

Thus far, I had been thought too young for the serious subject matter, but now, mother was gently teasing me about how I'm 'a big boy now, after all'.

Was I? Perhaps I seemed that way, if you had skipped out on me for weeks on end, seeing me only in a kind of fast-forward, the time passing quick to older folks who had already passed through a lot of it, breezing through mere tuesdays which for me were my slow, ardous formative years, but for them, but the distant prelude to the promised year, a sprint before the finish line.

Even as we were sitting here together, these very same seconds must be passing at an entirely different speed for us.

I was lingering longer in each of them, if only because my inexperienced spirit could not file them away as quickly…

Eventually, my gradual abstraction from the flow of the conversation was bound to be noticed.

"You seem lost in thought. What's the matter, dear?"

How could I explain?

The attentive eyes of my mother were no longer an easy to surrender to as they had once been, when there was nothing that I would have wished to hide from them.

"...I was just thinking… uh… I was wondering if we shouldn't have brought Rei."

"You know, that's not a bad idea, maybe we should take her along next time – but it couldn't have worked today. She's doing some work with Akagi-kun today."

They're making her work extra again huh?

But even as I thought it, was I said was something different, as if I were attempting to make up for these inharmonious thoughts, the fine blade of resentment that in being held back, set a wall between us that wasn't there before:

"...everyone's very busy, huh… If this was really such a busy time, we could have done this some other time-"

"It's alright, don't worry." said mother. In all ways that eyes could see, her warm, reassuring smile was unchanged from what it always had been, and yet, a sliver of ice struck in my heart:"- in a sense, what we're doing today is actually still contributing to the project."

"It- it is?"

"Didn't I tell you? The EVAs are moved with the strenght of your heart. So every single experience that forms and shapes it, every memory you collect – even your free days, or the toes you form with your friends – all of it will become my strenght."

So indeed, my heart and soul, in every sense of the word –

And that is what she wants me to make into a weapon.

To give up for the cause.

To lay bare on the altar.

With that gentle, knowing smile on her face.

Yet still I did not know the half of it.

(2.4.4: Eminence Grise)

The evening went by pleasantly enough – enough almost to wholly wash away that suspect aftertaste for most the duration.

My parents were lively and animated, perhaps themselves glad to have an excuse to take a break. It's not that everything they did was nefarious – the truth was far more banal than that.

Mother teased even father out of his reserve so that he soon got to the point of cracking jokes – he made it no secret that he did not entirely trust the play's director, but in the pause in the middle of the piece he confessed that he was positively surprised at the way it had supposedly been tweaked to be closer to the book.

I wouldn't know, of course, I hadn't read it.

It struck me how the pair of them seemed entirely in their element right in this dazzling luxurious building, surrounded by all these markedly older people in elaborate expensive clothes.

I alone was daunted, but to them, this was nothing out of the ordinary.

Mother waltzed around like she owned the place, as if she had moved in such circles all her life – which she probably had.

And father could be pretty fearless and brazen if he wanted. He sure wasn't afraid of no rich people. He wore a confident smirk and made sure to be towering right behind mother at all the right times.

Some of the people knew her, and greeted her, and paused briefly to look me over and remark upon me, seemingly for the purpose of sucking out for my parents: "So this is your son? What a well-behaved young man we have here. He looks just like his father."

Do I?

One particularly bold lady in a salmon pink designer dress was so bold as to remark that I had "the same gloomy look", for all that mother assured her that I was probably just shy.

My parents must have come here often over the years – they had just thought me too young to be brought along, until today.

Their work at GEHIRN was not the only aspect of their lives that I've been in the dark about…

But in that respect, there is one encounter that particularly sticks out in my memory.

Several encounters, in short sucession.

Now it is a little known fact that poverty is actually expensive while being rich makes things cheaper – cheap boots need replacing, late fees pile up…

In any other establishment, we might have had to pay for our own snacks, but for this crowd, the break entailed a free buffet with all manner of fancy rich people snacks.

The sort of neatly arraned, bite-sized little somethings with overmuch garnishments.

I was sort of howering near the table while my parents made polite conversation with their peers, still feeling very much a child having his cuteness commented on rather than a 'young man' finally invited to an adult event. Most of the heads here were gray already – I couldn't spot any people my age… until I did.

There was an arm waving, suddenly. It did not occur to me at once that it was meant for me.

When I followed the hand down, I was met with a broad smile and a very familiar head of poofy silver hair.

As always, Kaworu lookes especially dashing in black, especially in this sort of fine suit. His frilly shirt and neat black shoes gave him a refined, 'classical' look.

Once he saw that I had spotted him, he came right over.

"Hello, Shinji-kun. Fancy meeting you here."

I explained why I was here. He commented on the performance. I got too wrapped up in the conversation to question his presence here – musical theater did seem like the sort of thing he would like.

But that's not really what made the incident stand out to me.

It was the pointed, prickly old lady voice that interrupted by beginning sense of ease – "Now what on earth are you doing?"

Kaworu turned – he knew the voice. But so did my parents. It wasn't all that loud, yet they picked it out immediately, pulled at once from their own conversation.

I'm not sure if they had noticed Kaworu's approach beforehand, but they certainly noted the pair that seemed to have come after him.

Both of them kept their compure, but one could see it hardening, they expressions maintained but by that very conscious choice frozen into something more deliberate.

Father took a marked step forward, positioning his large frame so that he could easily have moved between the strangers and myself and mother.

On whose account? - A pair of elderly theatergoers drew nearby, their dress and finery subdued but very obviously expensive. I didn't know enough about brands of watches and jewelry to estimate much about their networth but knowing what I know now, they might well have been some of the wealthiest guests present in all this room.

There was a heavyset, austere-looking grey man with a stern face, bushy eyebrows and a big, caucasian nose, his eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses. Following closely behind him was the one who had spoken, a distinctly Japanese lady in elegant, old-fashioned clothing and a traditional sort of topknot hairstyle, giving the impression of being from a distinguished family. Her creased face was sharp and angular, but I also had an odd feeling about it, as if something was tempting my eyes to linger. Now I suspect that it might have been recognition, or familiarity.

I recall trying to talk myself out of the impression that she had looked straight at me the moment that she spotted us.

I also perceived quickly enough that my parents knew them – their eyes affixed themselves to the elderly pair at once. Suddenly there was a tension in the air that I did not understand; yet the one to break it was not one of the adults, but Kaworu, who, perfectly gracious, turned adress his pursuers with the suggestion of a bow:

"Please excuse my wandering off. I was just hoping to exchange some words with my friend here. This is one of my classmates from school, Ikari Shinji-kun."

"I know who he is," said the woman; Her attention quickly moved on from Kaworu to my parents – my mother, in particular, whom she adressed with what appeared a striking duplicate how her own tactically serene smile, if more subdued, perhaps, more visibly under control.

"Good day, Yui. Long time no see."

Once she had so brazenly adressed my mother by her first name, there could be no mistake that the pair knew each other – and that the old lady was holding this over my parents like some sort of gotcha, a subtile power-play in first seiing and taking posession of the unacknowledged elephant in the room.

Of course, it had always been my father's opinion that the best defense is a brazen offense, so he boldly fired back, only technically humoring some number of unspoken agreements I was out of the loop about: "It's been a long time indeed! And Mister Chairman! I had no idea that you were in the country."

The old man with the sunglasses said nothing.

The lady's grin widened. "He was only passing through, so I took the liberty of treating him to some of the local sights."

So it was true then – that old man, with that scowling, bull-dog like face, was the Chairman of the Comitee. My parents' superior and wealthy backer. Kaworu's guardian.

In theory, the mysterious mastermind behind all of GEHIRN's deeds, shady and mysterious alike.

Were I a braver, more confident person, I might have pointed out to myself how he was just one stooped geezer, but to me he stood eminent in dignity.

I stole some peeks at him, too daunted to face him more directly.

I suppose I felt I should be trying to extract some sort of impression from the sight, but I could glean nothing – his appearance and mannerism told me nothing, all I could sense from him was deeply ambiguous apart from a stern, critical feeling.

His classic black clothes, his opaque sunglasses, his gray hard face.

He was content to let the old lady do the talking, like the encounter was barely worth his attention, but the ladys speech, through flowing, was also coming from a kind of lofty place.

Seldom indeed had I ever witnessed anybody lording over my parents!

"It's a pity that you didn't let me know you were coming here – we could have gone together, just like old times. Perhaps we could have brought Yasuo and his wife as well, and little Itsuki, too..."

This now shocked me indeed. Yasuo was my uncle's name, and Itsuki is my cousin's.

Who exactly is this woman, and how does she know my mother? And she's an associate of chairman Keel's?

I did not understand much that day, but I could guess one thing: That this lady must be someone from my mother's past. Someone she hadn't expected to meet here – from the world she left behind, when she chose to be with my father. The stuff she doesn't talk about…

And yet she seemed remarkably unperturbed.

The old lady had not managed to put the slightest dent in her pleasant serenity.

"I don't know – I'm afraid the both of us have far too many responsibilities these days to think of reliving bygone days – is the same not true for you two as well?"

Now at last the man spoke, a rich, velvety voice, grounded and confident in itself, like a preacher that rests within his own absolute faith in god:

"Indeed, that may be true… I trust, of course, that you will be carrying out the task we have entrusted you with with the utmost dutyful rigor. "

I didn't sound like an expression of trust – even a kid like me could tell.

I couldn't place it at the time, or that is, my mind couldn't.

If I had known to listen to the cold running down my spine and that feeling of my hairs standing on end, I could have known even then, that it was a threat, spoken with a faint smile that was unsettling in its certainty.

We soon parted. I think my parents won the staring contest, if barely. The old lady gestured for Kaworu to come with them, and come he did, after some brief parting words and a quick but solid squeeze to one of my hands.

His easy smile was probably calculated to put me at ease – "See you later", he said.

I spotted him waving to be from a different part of the theater, but that elderly pair was there seated right with him.

For the rest of the evening, I tried my best to focus on the play.

I didn't end up asking my parents who these people were – I told myself that I just didn't want to spoil the moment, but I wonder now if I had even still trusted them enough to give me a straight answer.

Or maybe I just didn't want to find out wether they would answer me or not...

Though I wasn't aware of this at the time, I must conclude in hindsight that Asuka was probably looking out the window by the time I arrived back at what, for the absence of my parents, was now possibly best described as my appartment… did that make sense? I wasn't paying the rent.

I wonder if my parents could write it off as a business expence, now that it contained Misato and three pilots.

The point was that Misato was still away, and god knows where Mari had gone to (we were pretty used to her erratic comings and goings at this point) but Asuka was home already.

If she wasn't at the window, she must have been catching some fresh air on the balcony, but either way, I have reason to thnk that she certainly marked my arrival, or at least the telltale sign of father's sleek black lmousine.

By the time I'd climbed the stairs, I found her sprawled out on the living room floor, feighning nonchalant ennui. She was still wearing the green sailorette dress that she presumably went on her date with, but her beau was nowhere to be seen, not even when I took a cursory look around for fear of maybe interrupting something and getting yelled at as a result.

But it seems there was no one else present, not even PenPen – maybe Mari took him with her when she went out.

"...Hi, Asuka – you're back already?"

I didn't think it wise to ask about her date directly, but in the end she told me of her own accord: "My date was boring me to tears! So I left him in the queue for the rollercoaster. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still waiting in line."

Easy come easy go as usual, huh?

"...that was kind of mean", I observed, but there was no real scolding tone behind it, so accordingly, Asuka laughed it off: "In the end, no one can match up to Kaji-san. He's still the only one for me~"

So much for moving on, huh…

I was willing to give it a rest here and go get dressed for bed, but Asuka turned around on the floor to face me as I walked past her and continued the conversation unprompted:

"So what about you, did you have a great time riding in papa's fancy limousine? I can't believe the chauffeur even held the door open for me!"

"...You saw? Were you waiting for me?"

"Not particularly. Just catching some fresh air to put that crappy lackluster date out of my mind.

I thought he would be all mature since he was somewhat older, but he kept talking about himself and expecting me to be impressed by all the trivial bullshit he was going on about… me! With all my accomplishments. He didn't even ask me about the EVAs, or about growing up in Europe…"

She seems pretty used to the expectation that she would be the most interesting person in any given room.

Even so, I stopped in my tracks and smiled at her midly but fondly – it was very much like her to say that sort of thing.

"If he could get the girls his own age to be impressed with him, he would probably be dating those."

"Do I look like I would have low standards?!"

"No, of course not! But this guy didn't know you before, right? He'd only learned that you're popular and good looking, so I bet he figured that a younger girl would be impressed with anything he does, cause you wouldn't have any boys to compare him to."

"As if I was the same as any other young girl! I'm mature for my age, you know!"

"I'm not saying that you aren't. I'm just saying that this guy might not have picked you for that reason. It kind of seems to have made his whole plan go awry since you weren't so easily impressed."

Asuka set herself back down flat on the floor, spreading her arms wide.

"Grr! Why are all boys such total idiots!"

Does that include me? I'm a boy, in case you don't remember…

Well, it's not woorth fighting about.

Since this conversaton was looking to be continuing, I hung my jacket across the backrest of a chair and sat down.

"Maybe you wouldn't have that problem if you went for one of the boys in our class. They're in the same grade, so they wouldn't have any weird ideas like that."

"Nope! They're all boring and immature."

"And that student guy wasn't?"

This gave her pause long enough for her eventual reply to be all the more insistent: "That's different."

"How? - I'm not trying to tell you what you should do, I'm really just wondering."

"Well-" she began, in her usual assertive manner, and then ran out of steam for lack of actual arguments to make – "The student guy is older, so he's cooler – not as cool as Kaji-san, but, the next best thing. Or he could have been, even if he wasn't. It's not like some ordinary schoolboy that the ordinary girls go out with."

A mean-spirited person may have asked if that made Hikari 'ordinary' for liking a boy from our class, but that would have been a cheap gotcha – I knew that she didn't mean it that way.

But still – "You know… I have no right to tell you what you should do, I don't really have a clue here, compared to you, I have zero experience with dating. But as your friend, comrade and your roommate, I should tell you that…"

"What?"

"...maybe I shouldn't…"

"Nonsense! Spit it out already!"

It was too late to get out of this, huh? I had brought it upon myself.

So I sighed, gathering my thoughts. "It looks a bit like you're looking for a boyfriend that will look good, or that you can brag about, rather than one that will actually make you happy.

You go on about how you want him to be hot and cool and a flashy conquest beyond your league, but you didn't say a single word about how he should treat you, what sort of relationship dynamic and chemistry you would like to have or what kind of little quirks and features you like in a boy.

It sounds more like you're looking for someone who will make you popular, than one who will make you happy."

"Are you saying I'm shallow?!"

"Not at all. I just think It'd be pretty sad if you didn't get to be happy. I mean, you picked out this student guy because you figured he'd be someone to brag about – and that's what you got: Someone who wants you for bragging. He was probably going to go to his student friends to brag about how he's got this super young girlfriend who an 'exotic foreigner' and list all the stuff that is bragworthy about you – but he wouldn't talk about you. He wouldn't be thinking about you at all, only what he can get from you. How you can make him more popular and admired by his peers."

"That's just the adult world, Baka Shinji. No one ever wants anything to do with you unless they can get something from you."

"Is that really what you think?"

"It's how it is. I didn't make the rules. I'm just accepting them because I'm not a spoiled baby riding on the coattails of his rich daddy."

That stung, even then, even though I knew that she was probably just puffing up her bristles in defensiveness.

"It's true that I can't claim to know very much about 'the adult world'. Maybe it really is just like you say. But, if that is true, I think it's really, really sad. I wouldn't be in a hurry to become part of that. Maybe it's not possible, but at least, I'd want to try to find someone who actually likes me, and not what they can get from me…"

"And that's why you're still single."

Hey.

I'm, like, 13. Most people haven't even started dating at that age. None of our friends had a girlfriend or boyfriend yet, unless you count Touji and Hikari already, and they only just got together. I don't know how Asuka was imagining this – you'd think she was meaning to live her entire life in fast-forward, as if to get her PhD at 18 and retire in her late twenties.

Then again, I could hardly say that we would have 'all the time in the world' when a war for the survival of mankind was rearing its ugly head just around the corner…

"I just don't want to get just any girlfriend just for the sake of having one…" I mumbled, half walking away. I don't think Asuka even heard me.

I didn't think it was really worth arguing further, so I took this as my cue to pick up my jacket and go to my room to get changed.

I thought of getting out the school books, but I doubt that I could have focussed much. Instead, I reached for my trusty casette player – what better to drown out the incessant chattering

doubts with. I wanted there to be nothing but the notes following one after another, to become so absorbed in every sound that made up the whole, the fine meanderings of each instrument, that even the lyrics stretched out too far to be understood.

But the one thing I could not tune out was my prison of flesh – what I still thought of as simply my body back then because I hadn't yet learned how much pain it could hold.

As much as I stubbornly tried to ignore it at first, I got distinctly thirsty at some point, so that I had to get up to drink some water.

I even thought, paradoxically enough, how nice it would have been if I could have some more of my mother's delicious yuzu lemonade.

By then, Asuka had changed into her pajamas – or no, actually, wait – wasn't that one of Misato's shirts? In any case, she was hanging morosely over the table, looking uncharacteristically listless and bored.

"Mari-san hasn't come home yet?"

"Nope. I'm almost starting to miss her annoying singing."

I'm sure Mari would be ...touched? To hear that.

"...and Misato-san isn't back either."

"She might not come back at all."

"I doubt that, after all, she's out with Kaji-san."

"That's exactly why! You're such a baby!"

I know what you're referring to, Asuka. I just think it's pretty unlikely to be the case with those two, despite what your jealousy might be telling you. Sure, I suppose Misato-san had been a bit softer on him as of late, and there was that episode with the elevator, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions...

Still, I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for her.

As boring, self-important or shady as the date guy may or may not have been, it was clear that she was simply not ready to get with another person yet. The date was probably an attempt to force herself to move on from her dissapointment. That time she tried to put the moves on me was probably no different. As childish as her crush on Mr. Kaji might have looked to an outsider, if she was this upset over it, it must have been very different from those schoolboys that she'd experimented round with and then got bored with in 6th grade, or the date guy himself.

Probably, this was the first time that she'd seriously liked anyone, and it had turned out to be an unwinnable fight from the beginning.

Perhaps far too late, but better late than never, it occurred to me that she could probably use a friend right now.

"Hey," I said, making sure to lean into her field of vision before I gestured at her gaming console.

"Wanna play together? I'm not as good as Mari, but it's better than sitting around."

We sat down then. After growing impatient with how long it took me to navigate the console's menu, she took over the setup.

But not long into our first round of polygon combat, she had something to say, which she could only get herself to divulge with uncharacteristic reluctance.

"Four-Eyes was your replacement to begin with, you know. – when I thought – that we couldn't be friends anymore…"

"What, because of the highscore thing?"

"No! Because you got thirty whopping percent without any training! I thought this meant – that you had to be my rival, from now on. That that would make you someone I had to beat, in order to make Mama's dream come true.

I liked it better when you weren't a pilot. Like Hikari. If I weren't competing with you at anything, then I wouldn't have to win, so it would be okay to be friends."

This sounds like someone who is desperately looking for excuses to be friends with people.

Like picking fights was just a bothersome obligation, and her true wish somewhere different.

"Well, I don't want to be your rival. If I could give you my score or whatever, I would do it right away. I'd much rather be friends with you. I only agreed to be a candidate to be with my friends."

"Bullshit. I know you're not that selfless."

"...maybe you're right. But still, I'd much rather be friends compete with you. It's bad enough that we've got to fight monsters. I don't want us to fight each other as well."

It seems she thought on this a while, and then she sighed, a deep, long exhale from the bottom of her belly that expelled a whole lot of pent-up tension from all the layers of her body.

"That's really sweet of you. Naive, but sweet. - You suck at video games though! At least Four-Eyes puts up a fight!"

"So now you miss her, after calling her your second choice earlier – you know, you ought to appreciate her more. She really likes you."

"Maybe. But her singing is still annoying!"

"Still. You've got to admit that Mari-san is definitely the better choice to ride a mario kart with – that's why it's good to have several friends that you can have several friends with."

I think I caught the slightest glint of a genuine smile there, just for a moment.

A realization that she had friends, at least a few, not just lesser bees flocking to her popularity or superficial alliances, but real actual friends who would still want her when she wasn't feeling like acting all cool and energetic and would stick with her even when she was sulking on her couch, nursing a broken heart.

I hoped hat, at least for today, she would know that she could count myself, Mari and Hikari among that number.

"Eh, whatever… but one thing's for sure."

"Huh?"

"I can't keep basing who my friends and rivals are going to be on wether it's good for my mother's work. I have to live for myself and decide for myself, because I'm not a baby anymore! I can be friends with whoever I want!"

You know what? I'll take it.

If she needs to pretend that being on good terms with me and Mari was some big act of defiance and rebellion for her ego to stomach it… (or perhaps rather, her exaggerated sense of responsibility towards her mother…) then so be it!

I'm not gonna be choosy here and insist that she spit out a formal apology.

I just wanted to let this be alright.

This at least, if so many other things couldn't be.

It was pretty late when Misato finally arrived.

I had suggested going to sleep several times by this point, but Asuka wanted to wait her out, driven by some stubbornness and hope.

Truth be told, Misato barely made it back. She arrived leaning half on the wall and half on Kaji, who looked worse for the wear himself, with tousled air and his necktie half undone.

I have no idea where Misato's high-heeled pumps disappeared to – the bottoms of her stockings were thoroughly ruined by the dirt of the road.

Mr. Kaji urged her forward with one last encouragement that they had almost made it, and wasted no time in hauling her onto her futon. She was out like a light right in her party dress the moment she touched the soft fabric.

The overall impression was that she must have had a little much to drink.

Once she was safely deposited, though, Mr. Kaji got ready to leave right away.

With a half-convincing affectation of her usual bluster, Asuka made some attempt to entice him to stay, but of course it was in vain:

"I'd love to, but I'll be laughed at if I show up at work tomorrow looking like this."

"Come on, it won't matter…"

I didn't notice at first, how her voice lost its vigour here in the end.

"See you later – you two take care of Katsuragi, okay? Good night."

But once the door had closed, and the obvious distraction of our guest was removed, even a clueless kid like me couldn't miss the deflated look written all over every part and detail of Asuka's whole body.

"Are you okay? You look down…"

Her first kneejerk impulse was to bristle at this.

I knew the sudden motion at once, the telltale shifting of her weight, her arms swinging back to get a running start -

But by the time I had instinctively taken two steps backward and braced for the inevitable, she mastered herself somehow – I don't know if it was because of our conversation, or simply the convenient circumstance that the world had not yet beaten her down as much as it would yet come to, but somehow, between stimulus and response, she managed to wedge in a conscious decision instead of a mere automatic reaction.

By the time she spoke, the heat of the impulse was already going out of her voice.

"That's because – it's none of your – let's talk elsewhere, okay? Or else we'll end up waking Misato…"

And that's how I got invited into her room. I'd been here before, of course, for the purposes of vacuuming and picking up the laundry basket, but this was the first time that I'd gone in here with the presence of its owner putting everything in context – the beautification implements, clothing racks, fashion magazines, the few small conserved and cared for collection of plushies and dolls upon her bed and the stylish checkered pillows that she liked to sit on.

It was pretty easy to tell her side of the room from Mari's, and not just because they had placed their bunk bed in the middle to mark the division.

The eccentric brit had decked out her half with antique furniture and piles of books, sorted by language and wether or not they had been read already – it was a truly prodigious amount of clutter considering how recently it was that she moved in.

But Asuka had not let this sap her motivation to keep her half looking like something that most of you would recognize as a young girl's room – at least those of you old enough to remember anything before the coming year.

But even when she'd made the first step on her own volition and chosen quite deliberately to risk leading me past her sliding doors, it seems that she had to overcome some great reluctance before she could speak, years of engrained habits and tight lacings, practiced habits of never blurting out the wrong thing until it had sunken into flesh and blood, until she sat there with her knees pressed together, her head hung low and her hands on her thighs, clamped up in the attempt to undo the geass she had cast upon herself, to call back all the energy she had continually invested in not doing this, like the magician's apprentice despairing of the walking brooms he had summoned to lighten his loads.

She couldn't seem to grab hold of a place to begin, suddenly slight and small somehow now that the usual mannerisms of bluster had faded from her limbs and spine.

But defeated as she might have looked, it seems that she had been proven right in one thing at least:

"Just now… when Kaji-san left… I could smell Misato's parfume all over his clothes…"

"Wait, what… do you mean by that?"

"What are you, stupid?! That's obviously 'cause they must have been making out!

It's what I've been fearing all along, and yet, now that's it actually happened…"

She couldn't bring herself to finish that sentence, but when again, she didn't have it.

Though unintended by her, that tremble in her voice had done all the work for it.

"I knew it. I'd known all along, but I didn't want to believe it…

But now there's no denying it anymore. I bet they're back together. I bet he never got over her to begin with…"

I honestly didn't know what to say.

Finally she was trusting me with her true feelings instead of making me pull them out of her nose over the course several confrontations, and still there wasn't much that I could do.

I'm not sure that any words existed that could make this all okay for whatever I might say about the lack of realistic prospects or the abundance of fish in the sea wasn't going to change that she was certainly in pain right now. Maybe it was the sort of pain that she'd dismiss a teenage nonsense in a couple of years, when she'd had a real serious boyfriend, but as of now, an all new kind of pain that she had never known before.

I knew I had to attempt something, but the results were paltry by necessity:

"This must be very hard for you right now-"

"But I knew all along! You know, after all this thing with Hikari, I thought about what I'd said to her – that we were living in such uncertain days, and that we didn't know when we might die-"

A fact which I'd wrested with all along but which Asuka had not allowed to be real in the name of her obligatory glorious future – until now. "...and so I realized that I should really be taking my own advice. So, while you were chatting with Nagisa earlier after the test, I made off and tried to find Kaji-san in his office. I realized that I needed to make a bold, decisive gesture – to confess my feelings once and for all, without holding anything back…"

Oh dear. I could see where this was going.

"So I told him that I was ready for anything! Kissing and making out, and everything beyond that!"

...if someone had stumbled into that room, they could have gotten a really wrong impression.

"At first he just dismissed me – first he said that he was busy, then, that I couldn't possibly know the real him, like I was just some kid taken in by pretty faces – but I was determined to make him see my real feelings. To lay my reasons clear and bare – So then he said – that he was sorry, and that he didn't mean to dismiss my feelings or treat team as a banality-"

I could tell even from this second-hand account that he must have taken great care not to crush her too harshly, though in the end, that might only have suceeded in giving her false hope.

"That's when I couldn't take it anymore. Though he was the man that I loved more than anything in the world, I lost my temper at him. I told him that he couldn't keep running away from me and my feelings, and the fact that I wasn't some little girl anymore…"

But evidently, it was what happened next that led her voice to falter, to recuire just that much more overcoming.

"And he actually agreed. He said that I was right. That he wouldn't say that I'm a kid anymore.

Then he asked me, as he said, from one adult to another, to accept that he couldn't return my feelings.

First I thought he was saying this because of Misato, and I got mad, but I just didn't want to see the truth. I must have immediately convinced him that I wasn't mature after all – I kept thinking that if I could just overcome some hurdle, then he would finally notice me:

If only Misato wasn't there. If only I could get him to stop seeing me as just some little girl -

But the truth is that if that was all different, he still wouldn't care about me."

"You know, I don't think that's true."

"What the hell would you know about it?!" she roared back, with no small amount of indignation, but I had begun this thing so I couldn't be responsible for leaving it half-finished:

"It's right that I don't know much about that couples stuff, but I know this: I know that Mr. Kaji went out of his way to go shopping with you for example, or to help us with our synchronized training. He brought you gifts for your birthday, and kept trying to encourage you throughout our training. I think that he actually cares about you a whole lot. Just not in a "girlfriend" sort of way."

"What other way is there?!"

"Well, for example – Misato-san told me that he had a pretty harsh upbringing, and that he lost his little brother when he was young. So maybe he sees you more like a little sister. Or as someone like his own younger self, whom he wants to protect from some of that same harshness."

By this point she was failing badly at trying not to sob.

"Why on earth would he possibly do that?!"

I smiled, maintaining my calm as best as I could.

"I wouldn't know – you'd have to ask him that. But it might be because sometimes people do help each other for reasons other than wanting to get something out of it. I can't say that for sure since I don't have any mind-reading goggles, but I'd like to hope so, I think."

At that point she just grabbed hold of me with both her arms and pressed her face into my chest, hoping to muffle the cries she couldn't fully suppress.

"He was my first real love. I was gonna marry him with a beautiful veil of white – and now it's never gonna happen!"

She squeezed me quite hard there, but I no longer minded.

I just patiently waited a bit, to let her get it all out, to hold the space like I think I would have wanted it done if it were me in her position.

I couldn't say that I had gone through her experience before, but if offering myself as a human stress ball helped even the tiniest bit, then human stressball it is.

Only when I felt her sobs gettong softer and quieter all on their own did I venture some words:

"How about I get dressed and get you the biggest vat of chocolate ice cream that I can find at the combini?"

"That would be really great."

There are, as I was still to learn, a great many things and sorrows that cannot be fixed with ice cream, but fortunately, this wasn't one of them. I came back into Asuka's room with two big spoons' that I'd grabbed from the kitchen counter.

There is something to be said for the power of sugar to quickly bring new energy right into your brain. The more scooped that Asuka had agressively shoveled into her face, the more than she began to look and sound like your old self.

"Thaks for listening to my complaining."

"It's no bother, really, if anything, I'm sorry that you got your heart broken like this..."

"Don't be. I've thought about it while you were gone, and in the end, overcoming my first heartbreak is just a sign that I'm really becoming an adult. Besides, it was good to talk about it, I think. I thought it would just be humiliated, but actually, it felt good to get it all off my chest. I'm glad that you didn't get tired of me when I was being a soddy mess.

I think now I can finally look for the future and move on. After all, it's no use crying over spilled milk! If Hikari can do it, then so can I."

"Do what?"

"Find my true love. I mean, if Kaji-san didn't like me back in that way, then it can't be him. Which means my real true love is somewhere out there. It might be someone I haven't met yet, or maybe someone I already know. Maybe someone I hadn't ever thought about in that way – so I better hurry up and find them."

"You don't need to rush it, though. The war might be coming, but it's not come yet."

"Maybe so – but when you think about it, the sooner that I find my true love, the more time that I'll get to spend with them in the end. Besides, even if I don't find them right away, I'm never going to get any closer if I don't at least start looking. And actually, the same goes for you. You can talk all you want about whatever pure perfect love that you're daydreaming about, but if you don't start going after it, it's never going to happen.

In fact, I've decided!"

She declared, already halfway back to her usual boisterous manner, if not come to something firmer tempered in the fire.

I felt already like some kind of overconfident nefarious plan was afoot – another of those typical Asuka ideas. A fond, familiar sensation, at this point.

"Let's make a pact!"

"...a pact…?"

"You know about the Winter Ball right? That big dance event that's sponsered by the school? The one that takes place at the end of January?"

"...honestly I wasn't really planning on going." I confessed, "You've seen for yourself that I'm not much of a dancer, and besides, I don't really have anybody to go with…"

"See this attitude?! That's precisely what I'm talking about!"

I suppose I should count it as a good sign if she was back to pointing her finger at me.

"Your dreams are never going to come true if you just keep waiting for them to come to you! You need to chase after them like you mean it! I'm telling you because I don't like to see you schooting yourself in the foot, alright? And maybe you were right about some things too, in what you said earlier, so then we both have things that we've gotta change.

And one of the best ways to change is to get an accountability partner.

So how about this: Let's make a promise that by the end of January, we'll both have someone to dance with. I figure this should be pretty of time, right?"

"You want me to get a girlfriend just because of a bet?!"

"Who said anything of girlfriends? Just a dance partner, nothing more, nothing less. Even if nothing comes of it, it'll be prove that we both at least tried to move forward.

How about it? I'm gonna try looking at some boys with less impressive resumes to see if it sparks some of that sentimental stuff you keep blabbering about, and you will finally give yourself a push and tell Kirishima how you feel."

"What- Mana?"

"Don't deny it. I've seen how she looks at you. And the way you keep spacing out looking all distracted as of late."

"I've told you before, Mana and I are just friends. In fact, she's got a boyfriend already!"

"Oh really? That's funny because I haven't seen him even once!"

"That's 'cause he goes to a different school! But he's very much real, I've seen her meeting with him in a café around town once. From what she tells me, his name is Musashi."

"Then who is it? You can't fool me. I know the symptoms. Just spit it out already – Is it the little bookworm with the glasses? Or is it Misato? Sure, she's a bit older but, after what just happen I'm not in any position to judge you there… If it's Hikari, forget it, you're not her type. Or is one of our instructors? The girls from GEHIRN. Agano, Oii or Mogami, maybe? Or wait, I've got it! It has got to be Mari. The boys always go after the ones with the big tits!"

"You're saying that like that's her only good feature." I pouted.

"So, if tits don't excite you, then are you batting for the other team? I always did think that you and Nagisa were awfully close… But hey, don't worry, your secret is safe with me!"

By then, I'd had wholly and entirely enough of the embrassment.

"It's not like that!" I protested, red-cheeked. "I mean, I like all of them. I'm sure they'd be great girlfriends, or boyfriends, in a different universe, maybe. But I already have someone I like. "

This, of course, was the moment when Asuka dropped all pretense of insistence and just brazenly smirked at me like the cat that got the cream.

"Ha! So there is someone! I knew it! Now all you have to do is to get your act together and invite her to the Winter Ball! Come on now, you wouldn't deprive me of my accountability partner, now would you?"

She underlined this with a conspiratorial wink.

"...but- I'm not confident enough for that…"

"Bah! Humbug! You've just gotta fake it till you make it. That's how I do it. You know when Kaji-san took me out shopping? Well, I'm gonna tell you a secret: We went on to a fancy ice cream place and spent a nice day together, but actually I couldn't concentrate much on our lunch because I had to pee the whole time! But did I let it show? No! Because I knew to suck it up!"

"...this really doesn't fit the image that I had of you…"

"That's because you're the sort of guy who can only see one side of a person. But it's never that simple, and if you don't learn that soon, you're gonna end up being pulled over the table by the people that you want to avoid, and end up hurting the ones you wanna keep close.

I bet that even Kirishima has one or two secrets about her that would totally surprise you."

"I've told you already, it's not Mana."

"That's beside the point – it doesn't matter if it's Kirishima or not, because whoever it is is going to be a complex, three dimensional being.

So listen well to what I tell you: Your number one priority is to make her feel safe and at ease cause to get in a flirty mindset she needs to be relaxed.

Girls want it as much as dudes do, but what they want a lot more is not to get axe murdered.

Now I know that you couldn't even murder a fly or a spider, but they don't.

Girls gotta be careful because they can't always tell the difference between a guy who isn't an axe murderer and one who's only good at pretending that he isn't an axe murderer.

So make sure that you don't make her feel cornered. Don't block the door or a hallway or anything like that. The best thing you can do is to give her your number, cause this way she'll know that she doesn't have to be afraid of being pestered or harassed.

You got this, Baka Shinji?"

"...I think so, yes?"

"Then go and make your move! You've got to seize happiness with your own hands, or it's gonna pass you by! You've got to stop waiting for somebody to come and drop it into your lap!"

This dramatic conversation was then somewhat anticlimatically interrupted by a loud "waark!" noise. It was PenPen, who had been carried into the room in the arms of Mari.

We'd been so immersed in our conversation that we'd never heard her unlocking the front door.

"Four Eyes! There you are! I've been looking for you?"

"...you have?"

It was a bit sad to mark the degree of confused blinking on Mari's end – it seems like there were a few things between heaven and earth that could surprise even her. Yet her face lit up quite genuinely when she heard Asuka's answer:

"Well, of course! I'm itching for a good round of Smash Brothers, and Baka Shinji sucks at video games!"

Of course, Mari turned it right back around to silly when she mimed an aristocratic curtsey:

"As your Player Two, I am always at your service, Your Highness~"

For the rest of the evening, we had as much of a good time as we possibly could without waking up Misato, which meant that I was thrown off a whole lot of video game platforms.

Just for one more day, for a few more moments, the world could still be alright.

Of course, by then, I had only a few days left until the moment when all that would change forever. Though in truth, nothing was going to change: I was merely about to find out what had been true all along.