(Hope)
The next day, I was awakened by a loud rapping on my door, falling out of dreamless sleep, stumbling to my feet still half tangled in the strings of immaterial blackness.
I doubted not for an instant that the ones knocking out there must be the security guards from Section Two, come to collect me to face another angel in a fight to the death -
To suffer once more, or perhaps to be liberated from the suffocating strings of existence.
'No, no, no no!' thought some part of me, resisting, as ever, every interruption to my dim abstracted drifting, resisting existence itself -
Though I had known now for a very long time that I had no choice but to ignore it.
Most of the time, I barely even registered it any more, but there were moments like these, when I would be racked with pain or freshly shaken out of sleep, when I'd be too tired to keep it wholly from awareness, and be forced to feel every threadbare patch of my worn-down soul, the bone-deep weariness as I considered all the things that I constantly had to do just to justify my existence, the fatigued numbness that came over me as I wondered what it is that they would want from me this time, what else I would be forced to give up, how much more of my diminished, hacked-up being would be taken out and chipped away this time.
What else? What now?
When there is no way out, the only way out is to give in.
And I was so stone-dead-tired of always, always giving in.
Another temporary thing that might pass, I supposed.
Another pointless distraction better off ignored. What must be, would be regardless, the only choice I had was whether or not to make it harder for myself.
So I stood at attention, grimly resigned, and made my way to the door, just as I was, with just a few buttons buttoned in the oversize dress shirt that I used for a nightgown and naught but my slippers on my feet.
I supposed that I would have the opportunity to exchange them for my plugsuit soon enough – there wasn't a moment to loose.
With the sand still left in my eyes and my hair standing off in a directions as a cloud-like blue bedhead, I pulled the door open just a stretch, just enough to see to peer at whoever it was, and slip through if needed, only to be met with the garish light of day…
...and something very different than what my bleary eyes had been left to expect.
Rather than several broad-shouldered, black-clad security agents each the size of an armored safe, there was only one single, slender boy, wrapped in warm colors by the golden light the early noon.
It was Ikari-kun, standing in his uniform with his school bag slung over his shoulder.
His hand still tentatively outstretched to where the door had been,
his eyes wide, his cheeks but slightly colored.
It would not be long before he'd be tripping over himself to apologize:
"Oh- oh sorry! Were you sleeping?"
Most of the urgency drained out of me like it just evaporated in a puff of smoke.
I found myself idly rubbing at the corners of my eyes; My exhaustion was too great to piece together any statement but the truth:
"The restart test took all night…"
"Ah… I see…" he responded, half trailing off into a mumble, his glances getting lost somewhere around the scattered papers beneath my slippers.
"So, uh, I guess Unit Zero is all fixed then?"
"Yes."
"I'm glad for you! - uh…."
His voice wavered somewhat here.
"I've brought your printouts… and stuff…" he fumbled forth, feebly holding up the papers and proceeding to awkwardly place them down on my kitchen counter when I didn't do much more than look at them, taking great care not to brush against me, or to even cross the threshold uninvited.
It occurred to me that hardly anyone took any care to be mindful of my things, or respectful of my space, to tread only gently into my personal world, respecting the invisible lines that I had drawn up inside my mind, or demarcated with the placement of objects.
And I did realize that he did this only because he did not want to impose, or incur a scolding, because he was concerned with the opinions of others and clung to conventions as shields, but he did it nonetheless.
He was only here for a purpose, likely sent by Horaki-san who was in turn instructed to bring absent students their papers as part of her class representative duties, but still he took care to do so with kindness and consideration.
It must have been because I was still out of sorts. Because I had been woken up so suddenly, and staid up till dawn before that.
There must not have been enough time for sleep to clear the chemical debris of wakefulness from my brain.
But there was something about that simple politeness -
that bare minimum consideration that I never would have asked for of my own account, that brought up some kind of ache from deep within the void that lurked just beneath the thin membrane of my skin.
He smiled a little bit as he raised his hand for a tentative wave, just as he was about to turn away.
"Go get some rest then. I'm sorry I woke you up."
I realized that he was about to leave.
But of course he was. His business here was concluded.
There was no further reason for him to stay – leaving probably seemed like the considerate thing, the possible only action that he could take.
Tired as I was, I had gone through this encounter on autopilot, saying no more than was needed, limiting each interaction with the humans of this world to the barest minimum, as I always had.
Always looking to endure what I must, always counting down the seconds, to extricate myself, to cut the minutes short, to do whatever was asked for so that it would finally be over.
Ever shrinking from the light, flinching from the sound, freezing under any gazes -
Clutching at whatever peace and solitude I might be left with -
and all the while, I'd been so braced against what I thought would happen,
that I never asked myself what it was that I wanted to happen.
I watched myself watching as Ikari-kun gave me one last, gentle nod of acknowledgment,
and I pictured how he would leave, how I would let him, without saying any further words.
How I would probably slam the door shut the moment that his back was turned, not even watching him as he left.
I saw myself going back inside, flopping back down on the bed and letting the image of the ceiling on my retinas burn out all semblance of consciousness from my sorry burnt-out head.
I saw the future stretching before me like a fallow field, filled with but a few more of these scattered barely-interactions, and I saw myself lying in bed, mentally replaying each one countless times like a catchy song with nonsensical lyrics while he likely forgot them as soon as they occurred, going about to do plenty of whatever it was that humans did with their friends in the company of Aida, Suzuhara and the Second.
I could imagine clearly how our conversations could easily end up getting further and further apart, less and less frequent, until his efforts to greet me would calcify into little more than surface politeness, and then, before I knew it, we would both be slain in battle, or perhaps we would not be, and live to see the waves of third impact washing it all away, until there would be no more him and no more me left to be experiencing anything at all.
I felt almost like all these things were already happened, and both of us long dead and gone, mere curious, hopeful footnotes in whatever the coming world would preserve of our memories as it transitioned into another form of existence.
And all my soul shouted "No!" even as my body stood there motionless, unmoved and slumped-shouldered.
He was about to leave, and I really wished he wouldn't.
"Wait-" I cried, the high voice frail and strangled in my throat –
I reached out my hand, and found it frozen in the threshold.
I wanted to speak, but I couldn't bring myself to cough up the words,
caught, so that I couldn't get myself to move forward, but neither could I pull back.
He might, of course, say no.
I'd known about this possibility from the beginning – that would be the only reason that I had even dared to do this, because I knew that, whatever couldn't be changed would not be changed no matter what I did.
I could not stop what's coming, I could not interfere with the plan in any way.
Nothing I did would matter at all, in the end.
That knowledge was the only thing that had ever got me through the days.
If none of this was going to matter, then I might as well?
Then why couldn't I just do it?
Why not just do it, and see what happens?
Just as a learning experience. Just as an experiment.
Just because.
Oh to hell with it all.
Oh curse it – I am so, so tired.
Whyever not, if it didn't matter one way or another?
If he says no, then that too won't matter.
That would just be right what I'd expected.
If he just leaves, then it's all just as I'd thought.
Like I'd expected it would be even from the beginning, before I ever knew he existed.
I could do without his 'yes'.
It's not like I really care.
It's not like it matters at all what I think.
If he agrees to stay, that would be nice, but if it doesn't work out, it's the same either way.
It would be fine. It wouldn't affect the project, or the scenario, or anything of import.
Had he not said it himself? How small he and I are, to this world, and to the universe?
Nobody at all really cares what we do, or what happens to us.
Above us, the universe is gaping, the black sky stretching wide its maw even if the sun currently hides it from view, and no one on the other side of Alpha Centauri has any clue that we even exist.
And wouldn't it be interesting, to know what he would answer, if it asked him?
Just out of morbid curiosity.
Just in case.
Why don't I just try it and see what might happen?
Why don't I just watch and see what the two of us will do?
It was then, at last, when I had finally convinced myself that absolutely nothing I thought or felt or did would end up mattering one way or another, that I finally seemed to see myself moving.
The words came to my lips before I had the chance to think about them, as if my mouth moved on its own.
It was as if I was simply just hearing myself saying it:
"Say… why don't you come in for a little while?"
He reacted to this with great surprise.
I wondered, for a moment, if he was going to make some sort of remark that would make me regret this. Something about how he hadn't thought that I'd ever do something like this. The sort of comment the Second might make.
But he did not.
All he did was nod, and come on in.