15.3 Years in
Dinner finished, Kensuke excused himself. The remaining roommates continued to read at the table.
After a while, Hikari broke the silence.
"Hey, Mister Ikari-"
"Shinji."
"Whatever. Why've the Pollies got their own squadron?"
"Politics."
"That's not an answer."
He sighed and looked up from the well-read newspaper - Misato gave him her personal copy every afternoon. The three roommates would share it over the course of the afternoon/evening.
Well. All Hikari Junior really read was The Funnies, though she'd skim the rest first for appearances' sake.
It'd been at least a decade since he'd read a new cartoon. TV was even worse.
"Well," he said "it's a very stupid story. Doctor Akagi agrees that it's a moronic idea that reduces our operational effectiveness and raises the net casualty-rate, but it happened anyway."
"Still not an answer."
He grinned, but it faded quickly. "Mister Okada was always very ambitious, and command-level rations are very tempting." He found himself off on a tangent. "Some might say that grassroots support made it inevitable, but that's bullshit. We're too far removed from the public for that."
He sniffed. "Anyway. In a word? Politics."
They lapsed into a comfortable silence. She just had to have the last word, though.
"I was just asking, jeez. You didn't have to make a whole speech out of it and everything."
He smiled. It was small, but - like so many of them lately - genuine.
15.6 Years in
He plucked the bottle out of Kensuke's hands and placed it out of his reach.
"Ken, you gotta stop doing this man."
"What, 'sjust... 'sjust my rations, man..."
"It's not. I can tell black-market packaging when I see it. Black market stuff isn't safe, I keep telling you that."
He held back Kensuke's hair as he retched and made to vomit into the toilet again. Shinji caught sight of Hikari. She mouthed 'is he okay?' with a look more of disgust than, well, sympathy. 'He's fine', he mouthed back, and she disappeared without a word. He flushed the toiled and rubbed Kensuke's back as his roommate slumped down again, forehead resting on the bowl.
"Better now?"
Despite the lack of a reply, Shinji liked to think the silence was a comfortable one. He was almost surprised when Kensuke broke it.
"How do you do it?"
"You're going to have to be a little more specific."
"Live. How do you keep on living? What's there to live for? Another week of watery stews and craptastic alcohol? I'm sick of just surviving. I wanna live."
He hiccuped. "Like you did, in the old days, when you had-" another hiccup "chicken and, and beer. And every second family had a car, and there was more than one kind of paper, and people believed in things other than The goddamned Final Victory. You know, the one that never comes."
He was just like his dad. Really. Just like him. Spitting image, and temperamentally they were so alike it was uncanny.
"Ease up, champ. One day at a time." He sighed. "Look, I know all that stuff must sound great to you. But I don't miss it. It's just stuff."
He had his attention now. All he had to do now as say more-or-less the right thing, and wait until later to come to terms with the irreperable psych-damage he'd probably have done the kid.
"But you are not replaceable, and you are not 'stuff'. You're my ward, and I live to see you safe. As I do Hikari."
Wonderboy had nothing to say. He still felt he'd screwed up a little, somehow, but oh well. He'd tried, at least. Couldn't fault himself for that.
"Come on, champ. Brush your teeth, then let's get you to bed with a nice glass of boiled water okay? I'll put the kettle on."
It wasn't a special occasion - not really - but he added some of the Tea Leaves to the water. He got the sinking feeling, as the leaves refused to sink, that you were probably supposed to add the water to the Tea Leaves and not the other way 'round.
He put the mug of sort-of-tea on the floor by Kensuke's futon.
"It smells really nice..."
"It's tea."
"For real? I didn't even know we had any..."
He chuckled. "A little, but it's only for special occasions."
He ruffled Aida's hair. "'night, champ."
"Goodnight, Shinji."
15.9 years in
He sighed, tapping the paper with his pen. "Okay, how about this. Remember Enemy T-23?"
"Yeah..."
"How did we kill it?"
"We piped that stuff into it and then stabbed it."
"Right, right. Do you remember what the stuff was?"
She sniffed. "They didn't tell us."
"Oh."
He scratched the back of his head. "Well, that stuff was coolant. You see, thermal expansion..."
Idly, she watched him wrestle with how to explain it. Eventually, he seemed to give up. "Bigger things are..." he coughed "When a thing gets hot it gets bigger, and when it gets cold it gets smaller. But sometimes it works the other way 'round, like with ice cubes."
"What're 'ice cubes'?"
He practically tore his hair out.