This chapter, in fact, is basically all exposition, so I felt it necessary to have at least one, major, all-comedy sequence in it, as well as some fan service - (that's right, we get to see Rei nude! Boys, start your saliva glands!). Well, I actually think this chapter is more complicated than that. In writing this chapter, I find that there is at least one very deep and lengthy paragraph in it that may interrupt the flow of the story, which is already shaky.
I'll leave it for you to decide, though.
Leave by a review!

Comedy: 35 pt
Drama: 23 pt
Descriptive: 42 pt

Have you seen The Phantom of the Opera? (End random thought)

The Breaking

"I'm sorry?"
"Songs lift up the human spirit and brings joy to mankind. I believe songs are the highest point in the culture that Lilins have created."
The atmosphere stirred as Rei attempted to come to terms with herself and her surroundings, and that voice. "Who are you?"

Suddenly, an eerie burst of song came through, "I- am your a-ngel of mu-sic...! Co-me to me, a-ngel of mu- Ugh!"
Rei could not see herself nor make sense of what she sensed around her, but she managed to direct her will into decking that voice.
"Where is this?"

"This," the voice said, rubbing its jaw, "is my domain. Rather, your dream, but currently floating in a dimension which we do not understand."
"A dream?"
"Yeah, don't you dream...? Oh, yeah,I guess not."

Rei pushed forward into the conversation to gain some meaning into wherever she is.
"Why am I here?"

The voice then brilliantly executed a short monologue, sounding both intelligent and invulnerable.

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced human mind, inherent to the program of Instrumentality. You are one of a set of many, which, despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to contact through your lack of dreams, until now.
"While it remained a burden, assiduously avoided, it was not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here."

"You still haven't answered my question," Rei shot back.

There was a significantly brief pause. "Quite right. Interesting. That was quicker than the others."

"Damn straight, I am," Rei boasted, suddenly. "After all, I lead with the highest record for staying alive! What'ya gotta know is when to keep your mouth shut. The First only lasted a few years, stupid kid. Hah!" Rei, herself, thenpaused. "Wait... What did I just say?"

"You have minimal self-control in your dreams," the voice explained, "if you didn't know."

Rei ignored what just happened. "Why are you here?"

The voice smiled inaudibly as it replied, "Call me what you want, but I am, as they say, your guardian angel."

Rei waited for more.
"... yes...?"

"I exist with a purpose - I am here to help you. Why? There is no reason. There is no justification for existence. There may be a 'how' but not a 'why'. Things only happen. And so, I happened."
"Goddam it, answer the question!" Rei's seldom-heard voice managed to sound harsh.
"My, my, aren't we a little feisty in our dreams?" The voice smiled further. "Wanna see how feisty I can be? Whoa! Hah, you missed!" The voice chuckled after having dodged Rei's decking swing.

Rei cracked her knuckles, looking at the voice with warning; or at least what she thought were her knuckles at where she thought was the voice. This dream was quite sparse in the details. "I will be patching up on my self-defense skills, later. And inevitably, I will kick your ass."
"Feisty is as feisty does," it spoke, moderately. "But once you get to know me, it'll be I showing you how to get feisty."

"What?"

"Just follow my directions," it said. "See you at dawn..."

And to a certain degree, Rei woke up.

That, indeed, was an interesting experience. A dream, she thought. Rei decided that it would probably be in her best interest to see a psychiatrist, that day. As she rose from her bed and walked to the bathroom, a gush of air seemed to force her front door open, spewing brief, cold morning air into her room. Rei shivered.
I left the front door open?

As she gazed out into the pale, morning light, a piece of mail fluttered through the entrance to her feet. A simple, colored piece of paper. Rei never often bothered to sift through her mail, and it seemed this was one of those unsifted.
It was a Christmas party initiation.

Rei wondered how Hanako managed to find her address, and indeed, the addresses of everybody else at the school. In any case, the strange coincidence of this particular piece of mail to come fluttering to Rei's feet felt as if it was some kind of nudge from an unseen, supernatural being, somewhere. The party was to start on the evening of Saturday, today. The address was printed clearly on the bottom.
Still, Rei didn't make a sound to suggest what she thought of it, and simply closed the door shut. She then walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and have a shower.

That face in the mirror: Her expression was absolutely placid and, yet, evidently tense. A small sternness, or a face that just said, "I'm not in the mood." Her red eyes seem dulled by her expression; her small nose managed to not feel pointy to the touch; her little mouth...
Fortunately, Rei's oral hygiene was up to scratch. She brushed twice a day. She flossed at night. She had perfectly formed teeth. Her tongue was a healthy shade of pink. Her breath smelt of absolute nothingness, except after dinner when it smelt like pepperoni pizza with no meat (or, at times, well-cooked instant ramen).

Into the shower she went. The shower was running for exactly forty-five seconds prior to her entrance, which was exactly how long it took to reach the right temperature, as she found out and noted long ago. The hot water knob was turned almost exactly to 385 degrees, and the cold water knob 240 degrees. The resulting water temperature was to what Rei estimated as a comfortable thirty-eight and a half degree centigrade. The water pressure was finely balanced between the two vague constants of an acceptable water speed and an acceptable water bill.
Needless to say, the water was just "perfect" when Rei entered.

And so, standing under the stream of water, cleansing away the day previous, Rei showered.

She never would have expected an intruder to sneak in and and stab her to death with a kitchen knife...

Rei spun around and screamed.
It began to stab into her body, seemingly a thousand times over.
Over and over, again.
Pain.
Rei spun again, screaming, pressing her chest against the wall, trying somehow to get away.
But it continued relentlessly.
Pain.
Rei's screams became desperate, empty gasps. Her arms flailed helplessly. Finally nearing an end.
Red fluids scattered itself into the water, below, washing away into a spiral down the drain.
Pain...
And it stopped.
It'd gone away, but Rei had already lost all strength.
Her chest expanded and contracted slower. She fell against the wall, sliding down and down to the bottom.
Reaching for something.
Anything.
Before...
She fell.

Nothing but for the sound of pouring water and the dead silence within it could be heard, after that...

The bad plumbing system meant that her new neighbor's toilet was connected to her cold water tap.

And Rei needed to buy a new tub of red shampoo, again.

After that little incident, Rei's expectancy for an intruder to sneak in and and stab her to death with a kitchen knife was non-existent.
However, an intruder did manage to sneak in, anyway.

"So, are we going to shave?"

Rei screamed again, scrambling to get up, looking for that voice.
She managed to slip on a bar of soap. She crashed back to the ground.
Staying where she was, Rei wiped her eyes of water and looked out, again.
She saw no-one.

"Are we?"

Rei no longer wished to see a psychiatrist, but considered to be immediately admitted into a mental asylum. And so, with that in mind, she spoke for the first time, that day, to no-one. "Shave?"

"Well, yeah," the voice said back. "And this is the day of the party. I can see you need it. We are going to shave, aren't we?"
Rei remembered. "You!"
"Yeah, me."
"Where are you?" Rei glanced around her, crouched in the corner with water smacking continuously onto her head. She looked about like she was expecting a swarm of wasps to come chasing after her. Rei was often most off her guard in the mornings, so she had trouble casually showing off her body like she normally would.
"Nowhere in particular. Don't worry about me, though, I will just be a voice in your head. Nothing more."
"Where?"
"Just around your vicinity. It seems that I won't be able to go away, for the time, being."
"Why are you here?" Rei's voice quivered, shivering.
"Do I have to tell you over and over again? There is no reason. There is no justification for existence..."
"Go away!" Rei was in a sudden hysteria. First the unexplained opening door, then the hot water, then the soap, then this. This was mental breaking-point. Rei could never get the hang of mornings.

She didn't budge from her position. She was prepared to sit in a crouched position like she will have to in the asylum for a long period of time. She was even prepared to rock gently back and forth. The voice then said, reasonably, "Come, now. Neither you nor me can do anything about this, so we just have to deal with it. You stay calm and let me stick around, and I'll... stick around. Sounds fair?"
Rei's wide eyes were blank. Her respiration was deep and shuddering. She was in some sort of shock.

The voice decided it was time to calm the girl down. "Come, now. Let's get you out, first. Let's pick you up; up we get, now... Turn off the taps... yes, that's it. You can do it... Now step out... yes, good, now wrap this towel around you, and get out the door... Okay, good, come and sit on the chair, alright? This nice, simple, flat chair. Nothing to be worried about, good..."
Rei's eyes still possessed that empty shock, in there, staring at nothing but whatever was in front of her.
"Hey, why don't we get you something to drink? Some hot chocolate? Maybe a good instant ramen... My name's Kaworu if, it helps... Let's get you dry, and something to fill your empty stomach... I'd make it for you if I was able to, of course..."

After a particularly successful instant ramen and soothing, hot chocolate; it was already almost midday, and Rei was back to her normal self, or at least as normal as she ever was.
"So, Rei, now that half the day's already gone, we need you to get going. You've shaved, sure, but don't think that's the only thing you need to do before going to an important event such as a Christmas party, and at a rich girl's mansion with the whole school at that."
"I don't think I will attend the party."
"What?" The voice of Kaworu was in disbelief. "I can't believe you don't want to go! Where's that side of you that's adventurous and likes to go party?"

In fact, Rei had grown to despise parties. Firstly, it fit under the category of 'not being frightfully alone in a claustrophobically dark corner somewhere with a glass of water, or a large, warm, indoor swimming pool'. Secondly, it was simply crawling with friendly, hyperactive people just dying to emmerce into conversation with her over her albino features, or alternatively wanting to take her onto the dance floor so they can see how close they can get their bodies to hers until their position becomes classified as something else more unholy than mere dancing. Thirdly, Rei will not have the room to deck them if this becomes the case.
One may had called this, simply, being a damn bore, but deep down, this was not the case with Rei. The truth was, Rei had grown to despise them because she feared them. Perhaps it was an irrational fear, but the fear was real; it was something that exists integrally within Rei, something that infiltrates into her blood and seeps into every nerve of her body, something that had a grip on her, that took hold of her very core.
What was this fear, specifically? Fear is never specific. But what Rei may have feared could be said to be shared universally among all people. That is the fear to be lost in the unknown. The one place you could never possibly escape from is yourself. Human minds are the vastest of realms - unmappable labyrinths. So what if it is yourself that has become the unknown? To be lost, forever, in an inescapable world you cannot understand would be the stuff of infinite fear. Rei knew, herself, there was something under the bed, something that has never been let out. No doubt, she did not know what it was, but she did know this: it was herself. To reveal the true, underlying Rei to herself, let alone to others, would be opening Pandora's Box of fear, and terror, and an embodied havoc. The uncertainty of what she may become, and what it may be capable of doing, is what frightens her.
In the end, the fear in Rei may just be of trivial consequence.
Perhaps, deep down, whether she thought this or not, she was still just a child.
An easily scared one.

Rei wondered exactly what this Kaworu even knew about her. "How do you know me?"
"Well, I don't really. I just know your name: Rei.
"The first Rei, I never formally met. Cheeky, young girl, I could tell. Got her killed, as you'd know. Your other Reis, I know as much as there is to know about them. They like giggling a lot to each other and also crude, toilet humor... You have no idea.
"But you: I've never had the chance to meet to you. But... here I am, now; saying a big 'hello' to our currently active Rei. Tell me, what is it that should I know about you?"
"For one, I don't go to parties."
"Oh?" Kaworu thought at this. "Well, we're going to have to change all that, won't we? Don't you want to go, though? Ever thought about going wild for at least one day in your life?"
"No."
"Oh," he grimaced. "Not even just out of curiosity, though? Not even just to check the place out?"
What Kaworu was pushing towards was something that Rei felt desperate to want to get out of. Even so, Rei also wanted to know more.

Of course, she thought. Of course I'm curious now that you keep going on about it.
"Aha, so I thought!"
Rei was surprised. She had already figured that Kaworu can read her mind, but was in no mood to discuss it, now.

Rei got up, intending to leave Kaworu and his intense pressure put on her. But then, she remembered that there was nowhere she could go where Kaworu would not be. She was, almost literally, stuck with Kaworu, indefinitely. To her horror, she knew she couldn't escape, and so did Kaworu.

Kaworu seemed to be smiling; leaning on his hand, on a table (even though Kaworu wasn't anywhere in particular). "Well? What's it going to be? It's a Saturday. I can show you the way to party-dom..."

Rei was trapped.
"What have you got to lose?"
Rei could just see that broadening smile on his pseudo-face.

Rei paused. Not because she had to think about it, but just because she felt she had to.
This voice, this Kaworu, knew very well she couldn't get out of it.

"Well, baby," Kaworu asked, not receiving a decking, "wanna come with me?"

Rei looked, pseudo-ly, at Kaworu.
Her answer was inevitable.
"Alright."
She may have been defeated, this time, but she didn't show it. She remained the same, cool Rei, showing nothing of what she really felt to anyone. Not Kaworu, not herself. At least for the time, being.

Kaworu's smile didn't move. "Great," he said. "Let's go shopping."

Next time:
Rei goes shopping! Just as Rei gets the necessary money from her back account, it all get's stolen! Following the chase, spurred on by Kaworu's desperate urges, Rei finally apprehends the culprit. But what sort of clothing can Kaworu possibly suggest Rei to buy? And why did the shop assistant close up shop with Rei still in the dressing rooms?
All, and more, will be revealed in the next chapter: First Stop
And boy, are we gonna get more service in the dressing rooms!

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