The wheel started to turn that day, I couldn't stop a premonition of losing you

Perhaps, if he thought about it, he might have admitted that it was not right, that is was not healthy, thus it was easier if he didn't think about it, if he just let it happen and got on with things as they were. After all, neither of them were the same, were they? He certainly wasn't, time had taken its toll on him, and whilst she looked the same, he knew in his heart that she was not the same girl. What was the word for that, what did you call that, when you ended up sleeping with someone who resembled exactly someone you had once known, many, many years ago?

Better not to think about, Kensuke told himself. Better not to ask questions, life was hard enough as it was without finding more reasons to beat yourself up. If he stopped and thought about, then he would have had to ask questions about it, about who she was, about who he was, and he didn't want that. That was where work came in. When he was out and about, when he was in what remained of the woods, or when he was wading into the stream, or when he stood in the shadow of the L-containment field towers, then he didn't have to think of her, didn't have to think of what had grown up between them.

When younger, when he had been the same age as she still seemed, he would not have been able to understand, would not have been able to contemplate the shaky truce between them that many might tentatively have called a relationship. That was the thing about being a teenager, you hurt others, you spoke up, you lashed out, until you reached the front of the queue and it was your turn to be hurt. He had eyed Shikinami Asuka Langley with a sort of cautious weariness when they had been at school. As to what she thought of him, he would have been surprised if she had ever thought of him, save for in relation to some disparaging and cruel remark.

'The Three Stooges,' that was how she had characterised them, Toji, Shinji, and himself. It was, perhaps, Toji's fault, his open ogling of Ms Misato, but, as an adult looking back on events, he could equally see that it was also her insecurity, the need she felt to compete with others, to prove herself as much of a woman as Misato was.

He wondered if that still drove her, then, quickly, he shook his head. Shikinami was not Asuka. Except maybe she was, he wasn't really certain. Again, he tried not to think about it, and yet, in the cold moonlight and in the warmth of the night, standing alone in the silence overlooking the valley, it was hard to think of such things. During the night, in the light of the moonlight, it was more than the changes of his face he had seen reflected in the waters of the stream.

It was easier when she wasn't there, and yet, when the house was empty, he felt a strange sort of longing for her. When had it started, when had they started sleeping together, he asked himself, almost as if he was trying to get his story straight. 12, 13 years ago? She was 28-years-old, so she said, the same age as him, and yet the frame she inhabited was still that of a 14-year-old girl. Everyone grows up in their own way, he told himself. Everyone grows up at their own pace. Who was going to come and slap his wrists at the end of the world?

He couldn't imagine sharing such moments with an actual teenager, that seemed impossible, the idea of it made him squirm with discomfort. He would have had nothing to say to an actual teenager, he thought, and yet Shikinami, with the childish spite she presented, with the familiar markings of acne about the lips, the tautness of her form, a wild animal held at bay, Shikinami was different. They had both seen the same things, both been shaped by the same things, hadn't they?

A small, self-deprecating laugh escaped his lips. Who was he kidding? He hadn't seen half the things Shikinami had. Maybe no one had.

He tried to remember the taste of cola, tried to remember the taste of carbonated water and sugar, something reassuring, something nostalgic, something to remind him of being young. Instead, his mind dug up the memory of hot summers and cicada songs, glancing up, seeing Shikinami in her gym uniform, then flashing forward, contrasting that with the shape of her naked beneath him, red hair and black cotton covering the right-hand side of her face.

They were different people, he told himself, and even if they weren't, they still were, because for fuck's sake, he was a different person now too, wasn't he? No one survived the end of the world without scars.

A can of cola would be really good right now, he thought, something familiar, something from a time when all they worried about was being crushed by the lumbering, impossible shape of a giant. His eyes drifted out towards the horizon, the red shift in the darkness beyond the L-containment field towers. It would be nice to be that naïve once more, to be that innocent.

He began to move wearily down the incline, heading home, and quietly, hopefully, he wondered if he would still find her there.