On Friday, it turned out that Shinji hadn't the vaguest clue where to go.
Asuka found him at the breakfast table wearing a frown and studying a travel guide labeled simply "California", which she found odd, considering that he lived there. He'd finished breakfast: several orange seeds remained on the sticky plate in front of him.
"Hey." His face broke into a smile when he noticed her, and he was quick to lay down the magazine. "Do you want me to make you something?"
"No, that's fine." She sat down and helped herself to the platter of fruit.
"How would you like to go strawberry picking?"
"Strawberry picking?"
"Well, it sounds more interesting than 'Garlic Capital of the World'..."
Shinji turned the page.
"Or we can go visit the Barbie Doll Hall of Fame... no wait, that's closed...what about the jelly bean factory? That should be interesting."
"Okay." Asuka knew what jelly beans were. Akamatsu-san purchased them directly from the manufacturer in Tokyo-3, and she and Madoka would sometimes sprinkle a couple loosely on a scoop of ice cream according to the customer's request. Asuka loved to pick among the colors and make them match the shade of ice cream.
"Do you still want to go strawberry picking? We could do that first and then go see the jelly bean factory."
"That's fine."
Asuka bit into a slice of apple and crunched it satisfactorily. Shinji leafed through the book some more, then left it on the table. He left the room and reappeared a little while later with his laptop.
"Kensuke emailed me those pictures he took of you that first day at work," he said, not making eye contact with her as he clicked and typed. Asuka choked on her piece of apple. "Look."
He whirled the laptop around.
"Oh, no..."
She hadn't remembered Kensuke taking that many pictures, but there were twenty-three in all, all shot in a short period of time so that they looked like still frames of a motion picture. The first one showed Asuka smiling, and the next changed to an expression of shock; in later pictures she was ducking behind Shinji with only an arm visible and finally, only Shinji's amused grin.
Asuka blushed and closed her eyes. "I hope no one ever sees them..."
"Hm... maybe I should email them to Misato?"
Her eyes popped open and he threw up his hands in mock defense. "Just kidding... when do you want to leave to go strawberry picking?"
"Now would be fine."
"All right. Do you want to go ahead and get in the car? I'll clean up here–and the keys are on the counter."
Asuka took his keys and went outside, enjoying the sunshine. It was relatively cool due to the rainstorm. She pointed the mechanism at the car and pressed the little button. The car greeted her with a beep and a flashing of its lights. Asuka got in and sat down.
It smelled—like Shinji. She touched the seams of the leather seats, thinking wistfully that she would have to leave soon. Shinji strode out, interrupting her reveries, and shut the garage door.
"You should've worn your strawberry dress." He started the engine.
"But I wore that yesterday."
They traveled on several large highways, then smaller, local roads—and finally through a dusty unpaved road. Several miles down, Asuka spotted a handwritten sign that read "Strawberries" with an arrow pointing straight ahead.
A mile later, nothing that vaguely resembled a strawberry had appeared.
Shinji was agitated. He was sure the road hadn't forked anywhere, and he was certainly still driving on the dusty old road. Could that sign possibly have been left over from years past? Then again, the magazine he had been reading was quite recent, issued only last month, and he had followed its instructions down to the letter...
"There!"
Shinji's head jerked upwards. "What? Where?"
"There!"
= = = = = = =
"There; you may go anywhere over the fields and pick as many strawberries as you like, and return here to pay when you are finished."
Asuka was in front, carrying a cardboard tray in which she began to stack ripe strawberries. It was a skill, she thought, to be able to find the perfect strawberry. She had just a bit of experience selecting strawberries—they had to be perfectly ripe, since strawberries did not ripen once they were picked. They had to be bright red and firm, with no bruises. She loved perfectly-shaped strawberries. Asuka brushed aside a leaf, found the perfect strawberry, and plucked it.
"How do you keep having such good luck?" Shinji came over, wearing a pout. He had picked a total of five strawberries, two of which were bruised and leaking juice all over the others.
Asuka slapped at a pesky mosquito. She found a perfect strawberry and held it up in her hand. "Look, Shinji... to be perfectly ripe, it should be bright red, no bruises, no holes from insects..."
Shinji looked red-facedly at his meager harvest.
"Okay, let's start over," he said cheerfully, tossing the bruised ones over his shoulder, not bothering to see where they landed. Asuka noticed, however.
"Mommy! Something just hit me in the back! Oww! It hit me again!"
"Let me see, Kevin..."
"It's wet!" The little boy ran over to his mother, twisting his neck and pulling his shirt around in an attempt to see what had hit him. "Eww! Mommy!"
The mother shifted the baby to her other hip and crooned softly to the one in her stroller. "Let me see..."
There were two purple-red splotches on the back of his shirt.
"Kevin!" She straightened up as best as she could, for the baby was wailing and kicking. "You've ruined another good shirt! That's the last white one you have!"
"But Mommy..."
"I don't want to hear any buts, Kevin. You have to be careful! What did I tell you on the way? Strawberry juice doesn't wash out!" She patted the girl on the head and set her on the floor, where she toddled a few steps before falling. Kevin rolled his eyes and turned back to picking strawberries, the mishap forgotten. Dirty clothes were not an issue to him, regardless of how much they might irritate his mother. He moved back a step—and stepped on his sister's foot. The child let out a cry.
"KEVIN!"
"I'm sorry!"
A sigh. "Pick up your basket. We're moving to a wider row, where Kara can move around freely. And Julie, please don't throw your pacifier down again... it's getting all dirty."
Shinji was hunched over, his face as red as Asuka's strawberries. Asuka, on the other hand, was struggling not to laugh.
"I feel really guilty..."
"He'll get over it." Asuka knew this from experience; the boy reminded her strongly of Makoto. "It's his mother that'll have to suffer, but I'm sure she can handle it." As could Kimie. She missed Kimie. "He'll be off and running again in no time."
Shinji glanced over his shoulder, barely daring to show his face, but Asuka was right; the boy was running far ahead of his mother, who was pushing the stroller with one hand and carrying her middle child in the other.
Asuka bit into a strawberry. It was sweet and succulent, having just been plucked moments ago. The redhead glanced at the small family in the distance as she licked crimson juice from her lips. The boy was running and jumping around, the baby happily settled in a patch of strawberry plants, and even the mother was relaxed now. They reminded her of the children back in Tokyo-3—Makoto, Keiichi, Kimie, and all the others. Were they here, Makoto would be running to stuff his cheeks full with ripe fruit; Kimie would be calmly filling a basket with perfect fruit, occasionally pulling her youngest brother back within her reach. Keiichi's behavior would be somewhere between the two.
She put another red berry into her tray. If only we could all live together in Japan, she thought wistfully. It was something to look forward to, however, seeing the children and Misato again; Asuka knew she had been moping way too much over leaving Shinji. She turned back to her patch.
"Hey!" Shinji called excitedly. "I found a perfect one!"
= = = = = = =
It began to soon get uncomfortably hot, and the mosquitoes came in huge swarms. Asuka was tired of the furry sensation that strawberry leaves left on her hand, and Shinji was frustrated at finding insect-infested berries. He paid for their strawberries (three full trays in total), and they set off towards the jelly bean factory. It suddenly occurred to them that strawberries had to be kept chilled. The fruit would not fare well if it were left in the Californian summer heat for several hours.
Shinji stopped at the first grocery store he could find and immediately headed to the ice freezer—but then Asuka reminded him that they couldn't simply place the ice bag on top of the strawberries; they needed separate containers. Shinji thought this over and wandered around the store, looking for anything that could hold ice and strawberries and keep the mixture cool for some time. Then he found the section of children's lunchboxes.
Several people gave them weird looks as they made their way back to the car, carrying four lunch boxes apiece, but it solved the problem. Asuka layered ice in the bottom of each lunchbox and Shinji placed a single layer of strawberries on top. After sandwiching eight lunchboxes of ice and strawberries and placing them in the shade, the two climbed back into their respective seats and continued the drive.
= = = = = = =
They were ushered into the factory in groups packed so closely together that Asuka held on to Shinji's arm for fear she would trip over someone. She passed time by alternating standing still and moving forward about ten feet at a time. She had not known that jelly beans were so popular in America.
There was an attraction in the very front that kept drawing "ooh"s and "ahh"s from the waiting tourists, but Asuka could not see what it was, even as she stood on tiptoe. When her turn came, she was disappointed at not being able to recognize the man whose portrait had been created out of jelly beans. Shinji identified him as Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States.
"Such a great president," sighed the lady on duty, who was waiting for her turn to take them on tour. She wore a large green apron sprinkled with jelly beans of all different colors. "There's an identical portrait in his hometown of Dixon, Illinois."
A light overhead flashed green, and the woman got up quickly from the railing she was leaning on. She waved her arms.
"All right folks! This way!
"It takes seven days to make a jelly bean," she explained, as the group of people boarded a large elevator that took them up to the second floor. She took a microphone off of the elevator wall and continued to speak over the marvels of the tourists, all of whom were plainly much more interested in watching through the glass walls than listening to what she had to say. "Fortunately, they are not made one at a time; in fact, they are made millions at a time. Jelly beans are made mostly out of sugar, although they also contain some water and starch. They have two parts—a center and an outer shell, which contains the flavor—look to your left, that machine is pouring sugar into the mixer—"
"That's an awful lot of sugar," Shinji commented.
"—after the solution is done, it will be used to fill little jelly bean molds and heated so that all the water evaporates, leaving us with a solid jelly bean center."
The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. The tour guide led the way out, and Shinji and Asuka followed. They were now on a sort of balcony with a floor of strong wire mesh framed with metal fences to ensure that no one fell into the tanks.
"Right this way, please." Her heels clanked on the mesh; she walked quickly, and Shinji and Asuka hurried to keep up. "We are now in a section of the factory where the outer covering is added to the jelly bean centers. If you look down there now, you can see one of our bean-hives, where the dried bean centers are being coated with a mixture of sugar, coloring, and their proper flavor. Yes?"
A little boy in the front had raised his hand. "What kind is being made here?"
"Buttered Popcorn; it's one of our most popular flavors."
She paused to let them admire the art of jelly bean making.
"The hive spins them around and ensures that each bean is sufficiently coated with the butter mixture. During this process, pipes are used to suck out the air so that the beans dry and do not stick together. When they dry, they will eventually be mixed with other colors, packaged, and shipped off across America."
Shinji and Asuka followed everyone else back down to the lobby, where they were given free samples. Asuka didn't care for the taste of jelly beans and handed her package to Shinji, who ate his way through half the bag before choking on a jalapeno flavored bean.
"We need to go soon," Asuka pointed out, recalling the strawberries in their back trunk. "We've still got—Shinji? Hey, Shinji?"
Shinji was bent over a trashcan, spitting out every last trace of the jalapeno jelly bean.
= = = = = = =
"Are you sure you don't want any?"
"I'm sure."
Shinji popped another bean into his mouth. The second package was now open and sitting in a little crevice under his radio, and his hand kept straying to it.
Asuka jumped suddenly, and Shinji swerved. "Oh! I should have saved some to bring back to the children!"
"You can have the rest," Shinji offered, twisting up the top of the bag. Asuka shook her head. "Or we can always purchase a bag at the store that looks exactly the same. You can tell them how jelly beans are made, and only you and I will know that I ate all of our original jelly beans."
"All right. One bag might not be enough though..." She trailed off, thinking about the boys.
"You can buy as many as you want." Shinji plucked another one from the bag. Asuka laughed at him—he'd been eating all the way home—and snatched the bag away playfully.
Shinji pouted.
Author's Notes: To tell the truth, I haven't been to California in more than nine years (and I was six years old then) so I really don't know much about it. Nor do I know anything about jelly bean making, so I did a bit of research on that; my apologizes for any errors I've made (several parts came directly from my imagination). In case anyone is interested, there really is a jelly bean factory in Fairfield, California!
I'm really sorry for having the story drag on for so long; I promise it's almost over!
And yes, Misato's handbag belongs to Mireille Bouquet, the Corsican blonde of Noir. (I don't own any part of that, either). Congratulations to selti and Amethyst Wind!
Asuka found him at the breakfast table wearing a frown and studying a travel guide labeled simply "California", which she found odd, considering that he lived there. He'd finished breakfast: several orange seeds remained on the sticky plate in front of him.
"Hey." His face broke into a smile when he noticed her, and he was quick to lay down the magazine. "Do you want me to make you something?"
"No, that's fine." She sat down and helped herself to the platter of fruit.
"How would you like to go strawberry picking?"
"Strawberry picking?"
"Well, it sounds more interesting than 'Garlic Capital of the World'..."
Shinji turned the page.
"Or we can go visit the Barbie Doll Hall of Fame... no wait, that's closed...what about the jelly bean factory? That should be interesting."
"Okay." Asuka knew what jelly beans were. Akamatsu-san purchased them directly from the manufacturer in Tokyo-3, and she and Madoka would sometimes sprinkle a couple loosely on a scoop of ice cream according to the customer's request. Asuka loved to pick among the colors and make them match the shade of ice cream.
"Do you still want to go strawberry picking? We could do that first and then go see the jelly bean factory."
"That's fine."
Asuka bit into a slice of apple and crunched it satisfactorily. Shinji leafed through the book some more, then left it on the table. He left the room and reappeared a little while later with his laptop.
"Kensuke emailed me those pictures he took of you that first day at work," he said, not making eye contact with her as he clicked and typed. Asuka choked on her piece of apple. "Look."
He whirled the laptop around.
"Oh, no..."
She hadn't remembered Kensuke taking that many pictures, but there were twenty-three in all, all shot in a short period of time so that they looked like still frames of a motion picture. The first one showed Asuka smiling, and the next changed to an expression of shock; in later pictures she was ducking behind Shinji with only an arm visible and finally, only Shinji's amused grin.
Asuka blushed and closed her eyes. "I hope no one ever sees them..."
"Hm... maybe I should email them to Misato?"
Her eyes popped open and he threw up his hands in mock defense. "Just kidding... when do you want to leave to go strawberry picking?"
"Now would be fine."
"All right. Do you want to go ahead and get in the car? I'll clean up here–and the keys are on the counter."
Asuka took his keys and went outside, enjoying the sunshine. It was relatively cool due to the rainstorm. She pointed the mechanism at the car and pressed the little button. The car greeted her with a beep and a flashing of its lights. Asuka got in and sat down.
It smelled—like Shinji. She touched the seams of the leather seats, thinking wistfully that she would have to leave soon. Shinji strode out, interrupting her reveries, and shut the garage door.
"You should've worn your strawberry dress." He started the engine.
"But I wore that yesterday."
They traveled on several large highways, then smaller, local roads—and finally through a dusty unpaved road. Several miles down, Asuka spotted a handwritten sign that read "Strawberries" with an arrow pointing straight ahead.
A mile later, nothing that vaguely resembled a strawberry had appeared.
Shinji was agitated. He was sure the road hadn't forked anywhere, and he was certainly still driving on the dusty old road. Could that sign possibly have been left over from years past? Then again, the magazine he had been reading was quite recent, issued only last month, and he had followed its instructions down to the letter...
"There!"
Shinji's head jerked upwards. "What? Where?"
"There!"
= = = = = = =
"There; you may go anywhere over the fields and pick as many strawberries as you like, and return here to pay when you are finished."
Asuka was in front, carrying a cardboard tray in which she began to stack ripe strawberries. It was a skill, she thought, to be able to find the perfect strawberry. She had just a bit of experience selecting strawberries—they had to be perfectly ripe, since strawberries did not ripen once they were picked. They had to be bright red and firm, with no bruises. She loved perfectly-shaped strawberries. Asuka brushed aside a leaf, found the perfect strawberry, and plucked it.
"How do you keep having such good luck?" Shinji came over, wearing a pout. He had picked a total of five strawberries, two of which were bruised and leaking juice all over the others.
Asuka slapped at a pesky mosquito. She found a perfect strawberry and held it up in her hand. "Look, Shinji... to be perfectly ripe, it should be bright red, no bruises, no holes from insects..."
Shinji looked red-facedly at his meager harvest.
"Okay, let's start over," he said cheerfully, tossing the bruised ones over his shoulder, not bothering to see where they landed. Asuka noticed, however.
"Mommy! Something just hit me in the back! Oww! It hit me again!"
"Let me see, Kevin..."
"It's wet!" The little boy ran over to his mother, twisting his neck and pulling his shirt around in an attempt to see what had hit him. "Eww! Mommy!"
The mother shifted the baby to her other hip and crooned softly to the one in her stroller. "Let me see..."
There were two purple-red splotches on the back of his shirt.
"Kevin!" She straightened up as best as she could, for the baby was wailing and kicking. "You've ruined another good shirt! That's the last white one you have!"
"But Mommy..."
"I don't want to hear any buts, Kevin. You have to be careful! What did I tell you on the way? Strawberry juice doesn't wash out!" She patted the girl on the head and set her on the floor, where she toddled a few steps before falling. Kevin rolled his eyes and turned back to picking strawberries, the mishap forgotten. Dirty clothes were not an issue to him, regardless of how much they might irritate his mother. He moved back a step—and stepped on his sister's foot. The child let out a cry.
"KEVIN!"
"I'm sorry!"
A sigh. "Pick up your basket. We're moving to a wider row, where Kara can move around freely. And Julie, please don't throw your pacifier down again... it's getting all dirty."
Shinji was hunched over, his face as red as Asuka's strawberries. Asuka, on the other hand, was struggling not to laugh.
"I feel really guilty..."
"He'll get over it." Asuka knew this from experience; the boy reminded her strongly of Makoto. "It's his mother that'll have to suffer, but I'm sure she can handle it." As could Kimie. She missed Kimie. "He'll be off and running again in no time."
Shinji glanced over his shoulder, barely daring to show his face, but Asuka was right; the boy was running far ahead of his mother, who was pushing the stroller with one hand and carrying her middle child in the other.
Asuka bit into a strawberry. It was sweet and succulent, having just been plucked moments ago. The redhead glanced at the small family in the distance as she licked crimson juice from her lips. The boy was running and jumping around, the baby happily settled in a patch of strawberry plants, and even the mother was relaxed now. They reminded her of the children back in Tokyo-3—Makoto, Keiichi, Kimie, and all the others. Were they here, Makoto would be running to stuff his cheeks full with ripe fruit; Kimie would be calmly filling a basket with perfect fruit, occasionally pulling her youngest brother back within her reach. Keiichi's behavior would be somewhere between the two.
She put another red berry into her tray. If only we could all live together in Japan, she thought wistfully. It was something to look forward to, however, seeing the children and Misato again; Asuka knew she had been moping way too much over leaving Shinji. She turned back to her patch.
"Hey!" Shinji called excitedly. "I found a perfect one!"
= = = = = = =
It began to soon get uncomfortably hot, and the mosquitoes came in huge swarms. Asuka was tired of the furry sensation that strawberry leaves left on her hand, and Shinji was frustrated at finding insect-infested berries. He paid for their strawberries (three full trays in total), and they set off towards the jelly bean factory. It suddenly occurred to them that strawberries had to be kept chilled. The fruit would not fare well if it were left in the Californian summer heat for several hours.
Shinji stopped at the first grocery store he could find and immediately headed to the ice freezer—but then Asuka reminded him that they couldn't simply place the ice bag on top of the strawberries; they needed separate containers. Shinji thought this over and wandered around the store, looking for anything that could hold ice and strawberries and keep the mixture cool for some time. Then he found the section of children's lunchboxes.
Several people gave them weird looks as they made their way back to the car, carrying four lunch boxes apiece, but it solved the problem. Asuka layered ice in the bottom of each lunchbox and Shinji placed a single layer of strawberries on top. After sandwiching eight lunchboxes of ice and strawberries and placing them in the shade, the two climbed back into their respective seats and continued the drive.
= = = = = = =
They were ushered into the factory in groups packed so closely together that Asuka held on to Shinji's arm for fear she would trip over someone. She passed time by alternating standing still and moving forward about ten feet at a time. She had not known that jelly beans were so popular in America.
There was an attraction in the very front that kept drawing "ooh"s and "ahh"s from the waiting tourists, but Asuka could not see what it was, even as she stood on tiptoe. When her turn came, she was disappointed at not being able to recognize the man whose portrait had been created out of jelly beans. Shinji identified him as Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States.
"Such a great president," sighed the lady on duty, who was waiting for her turn to take them on tour. She wore a large green apron sprinkled with jelly beans of all different colors. "There's an identical portrait in his hometown of Dixon, Illinois."
A light overhead flashed green, and the woman got up quickly from the railing she was leaning on. She waved her arms.
"All right folks! This way!
"It takes seven days to make a jelly bean," she explained, as the group of people boarded a large elevator that took them up to the second floor. She took a microphone off of the elevator wall and continued to speak over the marvels of the tourists, all of whom were plainly much more interested in watching through the glass walls than listening to what she had to say. "Fortunately, they are not made one at a time; in fact, they are made millions at a time. Jelly beans are made mostly out of sugar, although they also contain some water and starch. They have two parts—a center and an outer shell, which contains the flavor—look to your left, that machine is pouring sugar into the mixer—"
"That's an awful lot of sugar," Shinji commented.
"—after the solution is done, it will be used to fill little jelly bean molds and heated so that all the water evaporates, leaving us with a solid jelly bean center."
The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. The tour guide led the way out, and Shinji and Asuka followed. They were now on a sort of balcony with a floor of strong wire mesh framed with metal fences to ensure that no one fell into the tanks.
"Right this way, please." Her heels clanked on the mesh; she walked quickly, and Shinji and Asuka hurried to keep up. "We are now in a section of the factory where the outer covering is added to the jelly bean centers. If you look down there now, you can see one of our bean-hives, where the dried bean centers are being coated with a mixture of sugar, coloring, and their proper flavor. Yes?"
A little boy in the front had raised his hand. "What kind is being made here?"
"Buttered Popcorn; it's one of our most popular flavors."
She paused to let them admire the art of jelly bean making.
"The hive spins them around and ensures that each bean is sufficiently coated with the butter mixture. During this process, pipes are used to suck out the air so that the beans dry and do not stick together. When they dry, they will eventually be mixed with other colors, packaged, and shipped off across America."
Shinji and Asuka followed everyone else back down to the lobby, where they were given free samples. Asuka didn't care for the taste of jelly beans and handed her package to Shinji, who ate his way through half the bag before choking on a jalapeno flavored bean.
"We need to go soon," Asuka pointed out, recalling the strawberries in their back trunk. "We've still got—Shinji? Hey, Shinji?"
Shinji was bent over a trashcan, spitting out every last trace of the jalapeno jelly bean.
= = = = = = =
"Are you sure you don't want any?"
"I'm sure."
Shinji popped another bean into his mouth. The second package was now open and sitting in a little crevice under his radio, and his hand kept straying to it.
Asuka jumped suddenly, and Shinji swerved. "Oh! I should have saved some to bring back to the children!"
"You can have the rest," Shinji offered, twisting up the top of the bag. Asuka shook her head. "Or we can always purchase a bag at the store that looks exactly the same. You can tell them how jelly beans are made, and only you and I will know that I ate all of our original jelly beans."
"All right. One bag might not be enough though..." She trailed off, thinking about the boys.
"You can buy as many as you want." Shinji plucked another one from the bag. Asuka laughed at him—he'd been eating all the way home—and snatched the bag away playfully.
Shinji pouted.
Author's Notes: To tell the truth, I haven't been to California in more than nine years (and I was six years old then) so I really don't know much about it. Nor do I know anything about jelly bean making, so I did a bit of research on that; my apologizes for any errors I've made (several parts came directly from my imagination). In case anyone is interested, there really is a jelly bean factory in Fairfield, California!
I'm really sorry for having the story drag on for so long; I promise it's almost over!
And yes, Misato's handbag belongs to Mireille Bouquet, the Corsican blonde of Noir. (I don't own any part of that, either). Congratulations to selti and Amethyst Wind!