Hikari plops down beside Asuka.
"Alright, spill it Asuka. You spent the morning glaring at me, until half an hour ago when you suddenly looked relieved instead. Then you started smiling like an idiot. On top of that, I swear Ayanami is looking very pleased with herself and she doesn't even have facial expressions."
Asuka looks over at her friend, "I know your scheming ways Hikari. I was convinced you'd somehow worked out how to teach Shinji how to kiss, despite the only opportunity you'd have would have been when I was out with Rei. And I know he was at home that entire time doing laundry and practising."
Hikari laughs, "I did no such thing Asuka, I'm not that good. Although from the looks of things Shinji is."
Asuka turns an interesting shade of red.
"So," asks Hikari innocently, "was he better than Ayanami?"
Asuka's continuing experiments on the breathability of liquids other than LCL produce another failure.
Hikari risks patting Asuka on the back until she's breathing properly again.
"I take it both your dates went really well then?"
"No! Yes! I don't know. And it wasn't a date. Either of them."
Hikari looks at her annoyed friend, "Well grab your lunch and you can tell me all about your 'wasn't a date' while we eat."
As Asuka picked her red bento box back up, Hikari added teasingly, "Especially what happened to 'I'm not kissing him any more than you are'."
Asuka groaned. She was already regretting saying anything. She didn't want to even think about kissing Shinji. Or Rei. Or anyone. Her subconscious apparently strongly disagreed with her on that.
Hikari was going to be persistent, but just maybe she could keep her distracted by talking about the rest of Shinji's how to have a date training and not deal with the assumptions Hikari had already jumped to for long enough for lunch to be over.
"Are you going to talk to me, or just stare at your bento?" asked Hikari softly.
"What? Oh, you wanted to hear about Shinji's training? Amazingly he followed the instructions before we went out and only apologised once..."
Asuka expounded on the not-a-date to Hikari for the rest of the lunch break. By the time the bell rang, she had realised, much to her own consternation, that as long as she kept Hikari and her subconscious away from the topic of kissing anyone, that she had actually really enjoyed the afternoon with Shinji. Maybe she needed to instigate a full time no-apologising rule, but even she couldn't convince herself that was all there was to it.
She didn't feel any different about him, he was still her's, whatever that meant. Was there even such a thing as platonic kissing? Hopefully that was something she could put off thinking about for another couple of days. Until after the other thing she wasn't thinking about.