Early that evening Rei had returned to her loft from school and lab. On the prior evening Dr. Foch gave her another exam and determined that her remaining internal surgery wounds had completely healed and she was released from any remaining physical restrictions, and as a result Rei intended to promptly resume both swimming and dance and get herself back into better physical shape.
She had initially though to go to the student pool that evening, but the weather outside was cold and rainy and she didn't want to risk catching cold on her first outing swimming. Instead she changed into dance attire and started working on stretching inside of the apartment. For the next half an hour and wearing a lavender-colored strap leotard and white tights, Rei slowly stretched out every muscle of her legs and back on the apartment floor as her cat sat on the bed and looked on.
Rei was still working on loosening up her muscles when there was a knock on the door. She hadn't expected anyone to come that evening and wondered who it was. She sprung herself off the apartment floor and glided towards the front door and opened it.
Standing outside in the pouring rain was Erin. Her blonde hair was drenched wet and her clothes were soaked, and her quivering face showed the expression of anger and sadness. Wet mascara mixed with the tears that were drained down her cheeks in the rain. The two girls looked at each other for a moment, and then Erin rushed for Rei and embraced her, burying her face on her shoulder as she sobbed.
Taking her off the front porch and out of the rain, Rei led Erin to the inside of the loft and sat her down on the bed, while she then went to the kitchen to make hot tea. Erin tried to recover herself while she sat and waited for Rei, gently petting the cat in silence as Rei worked on preparing things in the kitchen.
Within a few minutes Rei came back with a tray and two teacups and offered it to Erin, who took a teacup and promptly sipped it while Rei took the other and sat down next to her. Together the two girls simply sipped tea as the rain intensified outside, the only sounds being Erin's slurps and an occasional purr from the cat.
Finally, Rei broke the silence, having confidence in knowing why Erin was there. "Something happened with the boy, didn't it?" Erin was shaking, trying to get herself steady enough to speak.
"I'm such a fool," she said. Rei didn't say anything to her but simply listened on.
"I trusted him. I…I thought that he was different. So nice, so easy to get along with. And then when he's got what he wants out of me this happens!"
"What happened?" Rei asked. Erin grabbed her phone out of her coat pocket and handed it to Rei, the front screen was still showing the message board where Erin saw Diego's posting at EVA-Chan.
"This is EVA-Chan," declared Rei. Then she read the complete string of messages and fully understood Erin's plight.
"I can't believe I did this!" cried Erin. "I'm such an idiot, I always trust the wrong person."
"That is not true," Rei told her.
"How isn't it?"
"You are here now. Can you not trust me?"
Erin looked at Rei, managing a broken smile. "I guess you're right. But I really messed this up."
Rei however was very logical on the whole affair. "You are still here. You are still alive and healthy. Did you speak to him about this?"
"Yeah, after I did a few things on-line." Rei's eyebrows went up in surprise. Erin looked at her and said. "Don't ask what I did. In any case he won't be here at school much longer. But he's like 'oh, I didn't mean to hurt you, I didn't actually mention you by name' and shit like that. What an asshole," Erin continued. "He just wanted a conquest he could show off."
"Someone hurt him a long time ago," Rei said to Erin. "He is acting out of the rejection but chose foolishly."
"He knew what he was doing," replied Erin. "I'm the fool here. Shouldn't have gave myself to him like that." Erin sighed and then looked at Rei again. "I guess it's good that Patrick wasn't here when this happened, was it? Otherwise he would have dropped him head-first out of the school tower."
Finally feeling a bit warmer from being in Rei's loft, Erin stood up and started to remove her coat. "I'm sorry, I didn't take off my wet clothes when I came in here." She slipped off her sweater. "Hey," Erin spoke to Rei, still trembling with emotion. "Anyway that I can…you know, stay the night? I just don't want to be alone tonight." Rei nodded with agreement.
For the next hour Erin cleaned herself up, removing her wet clothes and then taking a hot shower while Rei waited and prepared more hot tea for the two of them. Rei loaned Erin an oversized t-shirt top and she wore it as a night shirt as the two of them again sat on the bed and drank hot tea to warm the chills of the night. Erin didn't say much more to Rei during the evening, except to sit and watch as Rei cleaned up and prepared for sleep. Despite the early hour sleep seemed like the best thing to both girls and just before 10 o'clock they both took to Rei's bed and settle in under the covers, Rei wearing an oversized white button-down nightshirt as her usual sleeping gown.
With the lights out the two girls lay there in the darkness of the apartment, only feeling the howling wind rub against the glass of the windows, and the cat as he jumped back onto the bed to get warm. They remained that way, with Rei curled up on her side of the bed while Erin stared at the ceiling.
"Why do I keep doing this?" Erin finally asked.
"What are you doing?" replied Rei.
"I always trust the wrong person. I mean, for years I trusted my dad, really believed in everything he said. Then I found Patrick and found out just how much he hid from me. Then I trusted Vance and it turned out he was a killer. And then it was Keel and he just lied and lied to me and I bought all of it."
"You learned the truth about each one of them," said Rei.
"Yeah, but always too late. Now this happens. I mean," Erin sighed long and hard. "I mean, Diego seemed like a perfect gentleman. Really nice, seemed to always be there and willing to put up with me, for months even. All for this? And I just totally fell for it. I just don't get why he would do it, why it was just so important that he had to…well, deflower me and then do that afterwards. Just ruins everything."
"You're not ruined," Rei observed.
"I suppose not. But I just wanted that, you know, to be special. Now every time I think about it I think about how screwed over I made myself."
"You're not the only one to mistrust someone," said Rei. Erin turned over in bed as Rei continued.
"In the beginning," Rei told her, "the Commander was the first person I knew. He was the first one to do anything kind for me. I did not know anyone else or anything else, so it was easy for me to focus on him."
She went on. "There was a point when he was everything. All I wanted was to see him smile, to even just touch me a little. Even after I met Onii-chan, I still thought of him so much. But he hid things from me."
"Like what?"
"Like the other me. Like who I came from. When I finally reached out to Unit 01, I learned some of the truth, but I could not do anything about it. I was not strong then. It was not until I became the next me that I realized what had truly happened. And I hated him for it."
"So your dad lied to you too."
"He did worse."
"What else did he do?"
Rei rolled over and looked at Erin in the darkness. She stared at her with he upmost seriousness, and Erin struggled to understand what Rei was trying to communicate to her. Finally Rei took Erin's hand and moved it down to between her legs, showing Erin where Commander Ikari had once touched her. Erin's eyes went wide.
"What?!" she whispered, releasing her hand from Rei.
"He put Adam inside of me," Rei told her, "by doing this."
"Oh my God! What…what did you do?"
"I almost ended the world."
"Well, that would have been a bummer."
"It was Onii-chan that pulled me back," she went on. "Actually it wasn't just Onii-chan, but it was Forri-kun too. Forri-kun helped teach me to think for myself, and I knew that I wanted to be myself. But, to be myself I had to forget the bad he did. I had to forget the lies. I had to accept the good things and that there were good things. But that there was no point in hating him, or else I would become him."
"So you forgave him?"
"I forgave myself," Rei corrected. "I had to do that first. I had to forgive myself for being a fool, and learn to love myself despite it. Then the rest became alright."
Erin was intrigued at how open Rei was with her. Had she ever spoke to anyone else before like this about her secrets? She wondered. "Whatever happened to him?" asked Erin. "Commander Ikari? Patrick never mentions him."
"He helped defeat SEELE, so they let him go. He teaches now, and he no longer has a beard. I have not communicated with him since he left."
"Do you feel like you ever could?"
Rei paused a little before answering. "I want to. I want to tell him everything I've learned, and hope he will understand. But it will not be the same. And sometimes I still think of when he was there and I knew nothing but him, and how simple that was. And sometimes I still think of the hurt, and of what he did. I also know that he is not the same as he was. Like me, there is a new him too. So it is difficult."
"I had no idea. Does Patrick know any of this?"
"No. I will not tell him," said Rei. "if Forri found out I know what he would do. Especially now, now that Forri is learning how to hunt other men. That would make matters much worse."
"Hmmph," Erin replied. "Mr. Stud doesn't seem so bad compared to that."
"So you are fortunate."
"Still stupid."
"No, you're not."
They paused for a while and then rolled over to try and sleep. The wind had died down and the rain became more gentle, with a soft pitter-patter on the glass windows of the loft. Rei rolled over in the bed and Erin pressed against her back for warmth, wrapping her arms around her.
"What if I'm pregnant?" she asked Rei in the darkness. Rei didn't reply right away, but her response came as a surprise to Erin.
"I'd like to see what your child would be like."
"You're kidding, right? You'd want me to be pregnant?"
"I want me to be pregnant," Rei replied. "But hopefully under better circumstances." Rei turned over to speak to Erin further.
"I am sorry. I do not mean that you prefer this right now."
"Not, but I can understand your point. What's easy for the rest of us isn't easy for you, is it?" Rei shook her head. "No, although perhaps that has changed. But Forri-chan, if you become pregnant, I will help you."
"Because you'd want to see what my kid would be like?"'
"Because I want to give any life that I can a chance, no matter where it comes from."
Erin just looked at Rei, not immediately knowing how she should feel. She knew she didn't want to compound her mistake with having a child out of it, but all the same she could understand where Rei was coming from. As she was already giving up so much of her time and energy just to have the possibility of even having children of her own, Rei knew the value well of what she was offering Erin. It was inspiring enough to Erin to appreciate exactly what Rei meant, and that perhaps things weren't as bad as they seemed. Rei rolled over again and again Erin put her arms around her, holding her tight.
"You know, if you and Patrick stay together for much longer we won't be just friends. We'll be sisters, won't we?"
Rei didn't look back but took Erin's hands in her own. "I think I'd like that."
Hakone, Japan
To Misato, the kitchen had always represented a symbol of frustration and anguish as she wasn't a particularly patient woman. Losing her mother early in life had not helped the matter, and by the time she was an adult her household diet had consisted of instant everything from ramen to teppanyaki. Her only true expertise in the kitchen arts had been to master precisely what settings she needed to enter on the microwave oven controls.
But then came Akira, her little black-haired bundle of joy, and suddenly she was faced with the challenges of feeding a small child with a still-developing palate and immune system. When Misato first gave birth to Akira, she at least had the benefits of other more responsible persons in the household, and wit the ample assistance of Shinji, Rei, and Kaji she managed those first two years of baby food and frequent diaper changes.
Now however the kids were all gone overseas to school and Kaji's workload saw him more frequently away from home, leaving Misato to contend alone with an adorable but temperamental two-year-old. Well, she wasn't quite alone.
"PenPen?" Misato called out to the bird as she worked on lunch for her toddler. "PenPen?" Dutifully, the black and white penguin waddled over to her as she stood above the stove top. Failing badly at first in making semi-solid food to give Akira in order to wean him off baby food products, Misato had developed a system where she'd make something like soft rice with little protein bits like chicken or fish and then surreptitiously feed a portion to PenPen first in order to check if the food was appetizing. If PenPen took it well, then it would probably be good enough for Akira to not throw it back in her face upon tasting it.
Life had been good to PenPen, too good in fact. The little penguin had gained significant weight since his days in Misato's Tokyo-3 apartment and now he spent his existence daily lounging about the Kaji house's large grounds, occasionally taking dips in the koi pool in their backyard when he wasn't sitting in his own small room watching TV and reading up on local politics in the newspaper. Actually no one knew what PenPen read in the newspaper, or even if he read at all, but somehow he was strangely satisfied with the experience and no one questioned it.
"Here you go," Misato gave PenPen a little spoonful and watched as he carefully sniffed and then slurped up the gooey rice mix in his beak. Thinking a little about what he just ate, the little bird looked up at Misato and squawked with approval. Misato sighed in relief.
"Thank you, mister royal taste-tester! Now let's get Prince Akira in here and try it out." Misato then called out "Akira-chan! Lunch!"
From the hallway came a little black-haired two-year-old boy wearing nothing but a diaper, and holding a tiny jet fighter in his hand. "Zoomzoomzoom" the boy chortled as he stumbled into the kitchen.
"Okay, there you are!" cheerfully greeted Misato as she lifted her son up and into a high chair. "Let's get you set up and fed, okay?" She carefully tied on a bib in front of Akira's chest and then presented him with today's lunch, hoping that this time she could get him on real food and not have to resort to the pureed canned variety again.
"Lunch!" Aikira happily cried out upon seeing the food, and Misato hoped that was as good sign. With PenPen watching from below, she scooped out a spoonful and fed it to Akira. The little boy was reluctant at first but took a mouthful and then took it down with little protest, gratifying Misato to no end.
"Good job! Now let's do that again!" She took a second spoonful and again the little boy gulped it down. "So far so good!" she told him, and now presented the spoon to Akira. "Can you do this by yourself, Akira-chan?" The boy looked at her and then grabbed the toy spoon from Misato's hand. He looked at the soft rice in front of him, scooped up a heaping amount and then presented it to his mouth as Misato looked expectantly. He's gonna do it this time!
A second later, a large protectible of rice and fish landed on Misato's nose, flung there by a laughing Akira. "Mommy funny!" he said out loud as he did it again before she could take the spoon away. Misato quickly wiped off the food and saw PenPen also squawking below her.
"Don't you encourage him, you stupid bird!" she chided. She was about to correct Akira but then the house rang with the digital sound of an incoming call.
"CALL FROM," the automatic speaker sounded out, "SHIN-CHAN."
Good, a break from this. "Take it please!" Misato announced to the house digital assistant and then the call came on the line.
"Ah, Shinji! Such great timing, I was just feeding Akira lunch!"
Shinji's voice came over the house speakers. "Did he get it all over the floor again!"
"On my face actually," she giggled a bit.
"Well, he's learning. He'll be making his own microwave ramen before you know it."
"That'll be a relief," said Misato with a great deal of honesty. "How are you doing? Isn't it pretty early over there?"
"Yeah, I just got up. Actually I wanted to call you right away and tell you I'll be in Japan soon."
"So early? I thought spring break wasn't until March?"
"Well, something came up and I need to come early."
"Why, what happened? Did you get Asuka pregnant?" asked Misato as she smiled to herself.
"MISATO!" Shinji shouted back in a nervous reply. "It's not anything like that!" Misato laughed out loud, knowing fully well Shinji was not telling her the full extent of his current relationship with his fellow EVA pilot. "Then what's brining you home so soon?"
"I got an offer to play solo at an event in Kyushu, in New Kagoshima City."
"All the way down there?"
Shinji explained further. "It's for a charity fundraiser. I told them I was busy in school, but then they'd said they'd make sure my expenses were all well-covered and make a donation to the charity of my own choice. I was thinking about the new foundation you started up with the book proceeds."
"You mean the one in Kensuke's name?"
"Yeah. I'm still using my stage name for this, Misato, so they don't know who I really am. But I thought it would be a good opportunity."
"School's that boring for you then?"
"For me, not really. But for someone else who's having trouble getting along with her teachers…"
Misato knew who that was all too well. "Ah, no need to explain further. Then she'll be coming along, right? It'll be good to see you two again so soon after Christmas. But is your school okay with taking time off?"
"I already spoke to Herr Mueller, and he's okay with this as long as the school gets credited. Oh, and I've got to do more time with him this week to make up for the time off, but that's fine."
"That all seems okay, but who's inviting you to this thing?"
"Something about the Foundation for a Better World. I've never heard of them before, but they seem well organized and they said that he wanted me specifically. He said he heard me on that New Year's broadcast I did before and from the recent concert in Germany. Anyway, can I do this?" Shinji asked for approval.
"It sounds like a good opportunity," Misato mused, "but I just want to know more about it, as I've never heard of a group with that name before. Go ahead and tell them you should be free once you check with us on it. And Shinji, do me a big favor? Did they send you anything like an invitation by email? Can you send that over to me pretty-please?"
"Okay, I'll send it. Just don't forget to get back to me soon!" Shinji was experienced enough with Misato to know she had her share of distractions.
"Of course," Misato said. "Don't you worry about it!"
Later that evening Kaji made it back to the home late, past ten in the evening as his Porsche 935 pulled through the open security door and into the house driveway. As usual Kaji walked from the detached garage through the central yard of the spacious property, passing by the koi pond and then to the main house, where a black and white bird was waiting for him at the rear patio door.
"Good evening, little fella," Kaji told PenPen, promptly pulling out a small white food take-out bag from his shoulder bag and showing him a piece of fried fish. The hot springs penguin stood at attention as Kaji gently hung it over PenPen and dropped the fish into his wide-open mouth. Satisfied with the late-night snack, PenPen belched then waddled over to his room to sleep off the meal while Kaji made his way to the kitchen.
Misato sat at the kitchen counter, with a glass of beer in her hand as she saw Kaji walk in. "I'm home," Kaji called out.
"Welcome home!" replied Misato, and promptly gave him a good kiss on the lips as he shuffled over to her.
"Where's our little monster?" he asked.
"Finally sleeping it off. Never appreciated how much energy a two-year-old has until now. Dinner's over there for you," informed Misato as she motioned to the deluxe sushi plate next to her on the counter.
"What's the occasion?" Kaji asked her as he sat down to eat.
"Nothing in particular," said Misato as she poured beer into a glass next to Kaji's place. The two of them clanked glasses and then chugged their drinks down quickly, then Misato poured another two drinks for them both.
"Shinji's coming to Japan next month," she told him as he started on his sushi, "He's been invited to play at a charity concert in New Kagoshima."
"Well, that's good for him. I think his music career is really taking off after that composition of his." Kaji took another bite of his sushi and then glanced at Misato, who was staring at him. He knew her well enough by now to know that she had something on her mind and it wasn't good.
"You're suspicious of this." Kaji told her.
"It's some non-profit I've never heard of before that's organizing this concert," Misato said. "Foundation for a Better World."
Kaji sat leaned back in his seat…"I've definitely not heard of them before. How did Shinji get connected with them?"
"He says that they knew him from his prior performances and issued an invitation: all expenses paid for him and a certain traveling companion. He's becoming a big name now."
"But you're still suspicious," queried Kaji as he popped another sushi in his mouth.
"Call it woman's intuition, perhaps just a little too good to be what it seems up front. Anyway, I hate to mix work and home matters…"
Kaji headed her off at the pass. "I'll have Sasuki-chan look into it tomorrow and see if there's anything to worry about," he told her. "Was that all?"
"One more thing: I'm ovulating."
"Oh," Kaji said with surprised eyebrows. "And I suppose you want something done about that, too?"
Misato crossed her arms and smiled. "The thought had crossed my mind. And excuses about work and headaches and such are not acceptable tonight."
There was a twinkle in Kaji's eyes. "I'm quite sure I'm up to the challenge."
When Rei woke up in the morning the rain had abated, and sun shone out of the windows of her loft. Rei lifted herself out of bed to see that the curtains she normally covered the windows with had been drawn aside to fully let the sunlight into the room.
She turned her attention to the kitchenette and there she saw Erin, still dressed in her loaned oversized t-shirt, walking towards her with a tray with tea and toast. There was the pleasant scent of warmed bread in the air of the loft.
Erin presented the tray to Rei and she gently took a teacup along with a slice of toast, while Erin set the tray down on a nightstand and took the other cup and piece of bread. "Good morning," she greeted her.
Rei took a small sip of her tea, then replied "good morning."
"You seemed to be sleeping pretty sound, so I didn't want to wake you. But this came in early this morning." Erin presented Rei with her satellite phone. There was a message light on it, so Rei took the phone and paged to the messages app. Within the app there was one unread message from a name she didn't recognize, a Darren McKenzie of Whitehorse Inuit Territory, but Rei suspected she knew who really sent the text. The message read:
MANAGED TO SWIPE SOMEONES PHONE SO I'M SENDING THIS OUT TO BOTH OF YOU WHILE I CAN. I FINISHED THE SURVIVAL COURSE SO I GUESS I'LL PASS FROZEN AND ALL. WILL BE BACK IN USA IN A WEEK. LOVE YOU BOTH BYE.
"Forri-kun!" Rei exclaimed.
"Yeah, I got that about 5:30 in the morning," Erin told her. "I thought to wake you but figured you were still so out of it that I'd wait until you woke up. There's no other message than that anyway."
"So he's coming back then?"
"Sounds like he survived, so yeah."
Rei closed her eyes in relief. While she knew Patrick was very capable of taking care of himself, the reputation of Camp X being deathly dangerous had given her much reason to worry for his well-being. The news of his return in one piece was welcome indeed.
"Can't wait to see him, can you?" Rei looked up at Erin with a slight smile on her face and nodded.
"Well, tell you what? I really owe you for last night. I mean you shared something with me that I guess was pretty hard for you, wasn't it?" Erin continued. "So, I mean to pay you back. Today, we're going to get you ready for Patrick's return. You're going to be happy to see him when he comes back, right?" Rei again nodded.
"And, um, you're gonna show him just how happy you are, right?" Erin's implied meaning was clear to Rei, clear enough that she began to blush brightly red in embarrassment.
Erin sat down on the bed next to Rei, feeling as cheerful as she'd not been in quite a while. "So let's start getting you all prettied up, because you're going to give him a night that he'll never forget!"
A few days later the rainy weather returned to Cambridge, and to keep out of the storm that morning Rei again sat in the student café reading before classes. Erin hadn't joined her that day as she had her work schedule at the campus computer center to fulfill, so Rei remained alone in the café and spent another hour there simply reading and drinking hot tea when she noticed that she was being watched by someone other than her security detail. She glanced up from her book, expecting to see Zummy as it was he who normally showed up this time of the day. But it wasn't Zummy who stood in front of her but instead it was Diego, Erin's now former boyfriend.
Rei looked up at Diego. The young man was a mess, his clothes drenched from the cold rain outside, his curly black hair wet, but most of all noticeable to Rei was the boy's facial expression. He wasn't just sad but seemed more afraid to her. Upon seeing him so disheveled now I'm curious about what Forri-chan did to Diego once she found out her secret was exposed.
She continued to glance at him while Diego met her glance with sad black eyes. He said nothing to her as he stood there, and finally Rei needed to break the silence if only to find out Diego's true intentions of being there.
"Can I help you?" Rei asked him.
"I have a letter," he replied in a trembling voice.
His efforts are pointless. "I do not think Forri-chan will accept anything from you," Rei said to him.
"This letter," Diego replied, still trembling, "is not for her." Without saying anything further, he removed a white envelope from his inside jacket pocket and then carefully laid it on the table in front of Rei. Without saying anything further Diego turned around and hustled out of the café, barely avoiding an incoming student as he pushed his way out of the glass front doors.
Rei waited until Diego was out of sight and then picked up the envelope. He had laid the envelop with the seal facing upwards, and when Rei turned it around she saw a string of Japanese characters hand written on it. The kanji characters were written very neatly, with black ink in the manner of a formal communication.
AYANAMI-SAMA
Rei glanced again to see if Diego had somehow returned but he was nowhere to be seen. She then gently opened up the envelope to see a single page, written by black ink on extremely high-quality paper. The letter was a message directed to her, and she carefully read it once and then again, and then again.
Oh, no!
After a few real-world driven delays we have another chapter out, as the fallout from Erin's breakup with Diego starts to unfold. While this chapter may seem fairly low key, there are some strategic moves taking place that will have a big impact later on. Things are picking up.