(Indulgence)
There were probably several dozen hot spring resorts in the general area of Neo Tokyo 3, and many more smaller bathhouses.
One might almost wonder if the geothermic activity was in some way down to the influence of the Black Moon's location here.
The particular spring that I had chosen to visit today, however, had more or less been selected by chance – it was the first one that came to my mind simply because I had driven past this establishment on the tram many times on my way to school.
I had never gotten off at this stop before, however.
All the streets businesses I had walked past were quite new to me, as was the novel experience that expected me behind this humble wooden door.
Taking one last look at the price list on a sign next to the entrance, I made sure to count my money one last time and keep the sum I would need inside my hand.
I was a while ago that Ikari-kun had expressed surprise that I had spent all my life in an area famous for hot springs and yet never visited one.
I would not say that I felt any kind of patriotic attachment to the city or that I was too keen on recapitulating whatever characteristic set of experiences were associated with this area.
It was just that I had been thinking lately about all the many experiences that I had never had and would never get to have because of my particular circumstances and the coming end of the world as we know it… and compared to the majority of them, never having been to a hot bring bath seemed well within my power to remedy.
It was saturday and there weren't any experiments sheduled for today, besides I had leftover money. So it was absolutely possible and thinkable for me to go and visit a hot spring if I so pleased.
So here I was. The wooden building I passed through was fairly small, just a few facilities for showering and changing clothes, and of course the reception and waiting areas.
The actual spring was in a kind of backyard, surrounded by a tall fence for the benefit of the visitors' privacy.
There was no actual roof, so one could see the windowless backwalls of some neighboring buildings and up above, the pale disc of the moon.
Soon I was sitting on the warm dark rocks inside the gently bubbling water.
On my head I had placed a little towel which the receptionist had given me, similar to how I saw some older lady visitors using theirs.
I had chosen to place myself in a secluded quiet corner away from the greater mass of visiting ladies. (men got their turn on different weekdays)
I looked out before me at the pale lithe columns of my legs.
My knees left behind some ripples when I ducked them beneath the surface.
If I'm honest, I was enjoying this a whole lot more than I thought.
From the description, I would assume that it wouldn't be too different from being submerged in LCL or using the pool at NERV HQ, but it was different.
Rather pleasant. Warm and comforting.
Very calming and soothing of little aches.
That was something that I really couldn't have learned from a book, not without actually going and experiencing it for myself, with my very own body, upon my very skin.
And here is something that was even stranger to consider:
Right now, I was existing without any sort of orders.
My being here was not part of any plan or purpose or order.
I had simply come because I wanted to.
There were a few other things kind of like this that I'd experienced, like my love of books or the times I'd spent with Ikari-kun outside of our shared duties, but in that case I might say that I was doing it also for his sake, or that the books were meant to teach me about the world so I could better carry out my duties as a pilot.
This, however? Right here, right now?
This had no greater rhyme or reason.
It was because it was.
Right now, I was simply existing, growing wild as the grasses by the side of the road.
Why is that? For no reason, maybe.
That might be why I had not done this before.
I always knew I could, technically, but it had never seemed pertinent.
I seemed like there would be no real point in doing it, so, I never really considered whether I wanted to.
That I could just do things for their own sake.
The full moon above, visible still between the high walls of the surrounding buildings, reflected back down to me the question that had come from that which I'd once labelled as Lillith – or perhaps just as my other self that dwells unknown in the darkness, a part that could not be satisfied with the stated purpose of my existence in the waking world, that wished to know more:
"Why do you exist?"
Never had I nor that other me considered that I could simply be my own reason for being, that I could be just to be, just because I am, every bit as much as the grass and the moon and all the other things that fill this world.
And that was precious.
I had been made very happy and felt really flattered during those times where another had treated me as if I were something precious, but that was always laced with sadness and the knowing that I really wasn't, that it must be an illusion or a misunderstanding based on false pretenses, sure to fall apart the moment it is tested.
But is it not good, to be here and breathe the fresh night-time air and feel the warmth in my body?
Despite all the pain, and sorrow, and endless suffering that will likely only come to an end in my dissolution, is there not something valuable about being able to think, about awareness, about experiencing things?
Is it not precious that all the circumstances and experiences and particular quirks that have made up my being have left me a vessel through which all my experiences filtered through a very particular way, so that I now look up at this sky connecting what I see to very particular things, seeing what I see in the particular way that can only be seen by me, by the consciousness that is produced by the sum of all the natural characteristics inbued into me and every single influence or experience that has acted upon me thus far?
There is something precious, at least, about this moment where I am only that I am.