One Question
"What's it like in Germany?"
The boy had asked that question with the same dumb look on his face she had come to know. Where that question had come from, she would never know. Perhaps it was just a way to get to know a fellow pilot better, or maybe he had heard that question asked to her by a hundred different boys at school, each of which got a swift dismissive answer.
But for him, she actually thought about giving a true answer.
Her mind began to formulate some witty response, berating him for his naivety and lack of knowledge of her home country. She started to build a list of landmarks that she could rattle off and describe to him that would put his own home country to shame.
Cologne Cathedral, that towering structure that dwarfed an entire city came to mind, but she had never been there. There was nothing she could tell him that ink-stained paper wouldn't. The girl had never had a chance to stare up at those massive spires nor had she ever witnessed the beauty of the spectacular stained-glass windows firsthand.
She couldn't tell him of any imposing architecture in the major cities that she had seen with her own two eyes. All she knew of them were from pages and photos.
The Reichstag? A picture in her textbooks.
Brandenburg Gate? A grainy black and white movie shown to them.
The best she could do was a graffiti-covered concrete chunk that had been brought to them as children, a remitment of a scar that had cut their capital in two.
The Alps in the south came to mind, but she had never seen those either. Once again, pictures and films had allowed her to envision hiking those mountains, feeling the sting of frigid air on her face, and finally look down over the seemingly inconsequential world as a giant, but she had never lived that. The closest she had come was her artic training at NERV, but even that had been simulated.
What could she describe to him that she had seen?
The rowdy classrooms she had detested as a child? The cradle that had held Unit-02 while it was being built? The bustle of heavy lifting equipment on a military base? No, those weren't special enough.
The metallic winding halls of NERV's German branch came to mind, but that was all underground and here NERV's Headquarters was ten times the size. It was nothing the boy hadn't seen before.
The simulators where she had fought battle after battle, training to fight with her Evangelion one day? Once again, he had that too, not nearly as many hours as her, but it was nothing exotic.
Had she actually graduated in person for college she might have been able to tell him about campus life, but just like her high school, it had all been remote. She had never set foot in a college classroom, nor the campus itself. That would have only wasted time, time that was better spent training to become the best pilot she could be.
Home? What little time she had spent there recently didn't exactly scream of excitement and beauty. Her father had been gone on a business trip and she had no desire to spend time with her stepmother. She spent no time outside since there was nothing to see and had either been studying inside or playing video games alone.
What could she tell him?
"It's nicer than here! That's for sure!" She boasted while quickening her stride. Their sync test was today and she would make sure both of her fellow pilots know who was the elite among them.
What did it matter? He didn't need to know about where she came from, if he wanted to learn he could find some books. She didn't need to share anything with him, it was better that way.