"It's too bad they're letting you go, Ikari. But you're a good kid; I know you'll land on your feet."
"Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the drink, senpai."
"Hey, it's the least I can do. Listen: I want you to put me down as a reference…"
When he emerged from the bar a couple drinks later, the sunlight caught him by surprise and made him squint. He loosened his tie, and felt the wind around his collar. That day the sakura were in bloom. Reveling in his daytime drunkenness, he took a leisurely stroll beneath their swaying branches. Pink petals were strewn along the pavement, or floated in the reflected blue of puddles.
Beguiled by the fragrance of cherry blossoms, Shinji wandered down a lane that led to the gate of his old high school. There, all along the embankment, underneath the falling petals, members of the graduating class were on their way back from their commencement ceremony, carrying diplomas in ribboned tubes. The girls' laughter rang out in peals, and their satiny gowns billowed in the breeze. A few were getting their pictures taken under the canopies of pale flowers. Presently, a girl dragging a boy by the arm approached Shinji and said:
"Oji-san, could you take our picture?"
Oji-san? His stiff smile barely concealed his chagrin. He was only 22 years old.
"Sure," he said, accepting the proffered flip phone. "Congratulations."
The girl hugged the boy's arm, and he smiled. Golden tassels hung from the edges of their caps. Shinji snapped a photo.
"Ah, thank you so much!"
They left, hand in hand, and after they receded into the distance Shinji turned and headed up the cobblestone steps of the embankment, then down a footpath into the cherry orchard, through the arches of the trees. With his hands buried in his pockets, his shirt front half untucked, and his eyes on the ground, looking for a can to kick perhaps, he shuffled on, trampling the fallen petals. He was trying to outpace a sickly feeling of nostalgia that had started to creep up on him, but his thoughts kept drifting to the day of his own graduation.
A photograph, taken in this very garden, lay face down on his dresser: himself and Asuka, linked at the elbow, he smiling brightly at the camera, she bashful, unable to look directly into the lens. It was the start of their life together as adults. The promises they made in their hearts that day! How hopeful the future had seemed!
He had reached the water's edge. In the pond, a pair of ducks drew meandering lines through the petals that covered its surface, obscuring his reflection. He picked one up, held it to the light, and closed one eye to examine the notch. He was recalling a dream he recently had. Not in fire or in ice, but in a storm of sakura petals had the world ended. At a touch, men and women would burst into flurries of the pale petals (coat, muffler, and hat all falling in that order into neat piles where they stood), and a howling wind pitched them through the streets of the city like a plague of locusts, gathering density and strength, swarming up from every university town in the world. In the end the petals were so numerous, so omnipresent, that not only did they lose all their usual symbolism, but also their significance, their discreteness and identity—they were just "there", which is to say, everywhere, enveloping the whole Earth, transmuting every substance.
"Shinji?"
He turned in the direction of the voice. Toward him was walking a freckled, bespectacled, mousy-looking brunette, demurely dressed in a frumpy knit cardigan and knee-length pleated skirt. She regarded Shinji with a small, expectant smile. It took him a couple of seconds to recognize her; she was wearing her hair down…
"Class Rep!"
A/N:
Even though I've been a fan of NGE for a long time, this is my first time writing a fanfic for it. Subsequent chapters will probably be longer than this one, but on the whole I'll try to keep them on the shorter side so I can update more often. I hope that you'll enjoy my interpretation of the characters. Please bear with me as I get the necessary setup out of the way, and then the fic can begin in earnest. In the meantime, please R&R.
I'm also looking for a beta reader for this work. If you're an attentive reader and willing to point out mistakes, lapses of taste and style, etc., in drafts of chapters before they are released, please reach out to me, I'd appreciate the help. If you require it, I'll even return the service.