(Insecurity)
Until recently, I had not had much experience with the sensation known as 'happiness', so I did not have much of an opinion about it.
However, from how I'd heard it discussed, I had been under the impression that it was generally a desirable experience.
Now I can say with confidence that it was not so.
It seemed indeed to me that this 'hapiness' was the most wretched and most twisted one of them all, the single worst thng one could feel – for, once they've tasted it, one would have to endure it knowing that it can never last, and once it's faded, it drives them mad with the fear that they can never ever go back to it.
I would rather have despair.
I found myself craving for despair to wash away the dreadful memory of the happiness that might have had.
...
...how is one to be rational about this?
How do I be rational?
The forces contained within me popped and burst like bubbling sludge,
scatching and biting like wild animals.
I don't want this.
Why?
Please no.
I hate this. I cannot stand it.
But it is fact, and it won't go away.
It was never not true.
What has been seen cannot be unseen.
So long.
For so long, I had been fine with not having anything.
I'd asked for nothing.
I'd been willing to do without, understood that nothing could be done about it.
But all the while, there has been three… or maybe only two things, that been wholly and entirely my own.
One was the Commander. I was no longer so sure about him, but, we had a bond. He still has his scars. His glasses lie still on my dresser.
Another were my books. My interest in sceience and literature, my thoughts, my pondrous wanderings of mind.
The last was Ikari-kun.
That, at least, was mine. He, at least, always seemed to have sought me up for me, to see me as me, to desire, in my place, the presence of none other -
And now it seemed as if all of those had summarily been ripped away from me -
worse yet, for a parting implies some hope or reunion or, when it doesn't at least leaves you to hold a cherished memory.
It wasn't a parting, an ending to what was.
It was a finding of all that ever had been as irrevocably tainted.
I kept facing the blank concrete wall in front of me, for I knew that if I turned around, my glance would graze against my dresser, and I'd see on top of it what had been there for a very long time – my stack of science books and Commander Ikari's discarded old glasses.
Except this time, I would wonder if he rushed to come get me, the way he did, because it had reminded him of the accident in which his wife perished.
I wouldn't really have to wonder, honestly.
Not any more than it was a mystery if he would smile at me like he did because the sight of me awakened a lingering tenderness for his late spouse – when he saw me reading those books, did he think to himseld fondly that I must have inherited his wife's intellectual talents? When he gave me her journal, was some part of him hoping that I would be driven to imitate her, that I would be more like her as a result?
When Vice-Commander Fuyutsuki would regard me with those sad, piteous looks, was it because he saw in me a distorted mockery of his dear student?
And what of Dr. Akagi's hostility? What of those little comments she kept making?
For the fitst time, it dawned on me what she may have been implying, and why.
I never quite put it together. I couldn't fully excuse it with my youth.
The conclusion had just never occurred to be, what she may be thinking that is going on, because I had been thinking of the Commander as… something like a parent, I suppose.
Is that how he sees me?
Calling me by the name he had once picked out in case of a little girl?
Or was his glance not that of a lover, looking at a stone statue, a painting, a flesh-clad memory of his beloved…
And what of Ikari-kun?
All those comments he had made, aboutH this and that reminding him of his mother.
I had always chalked them up to recent contact with EVA 01.
I would, of course, just one whose appearance was exceptionally beautiful would think of people in general as more friendly.
What reason had I to think that he would not mention her just as often around everyone else?
All of us are blindest to the effects of experiencing the world as ourselves.
When he said that he felt at ease around me, that was… special to me.
I was very glad to hear it.
But what if I was simply mistaken?
What if he was simply recognizing some semblance to the comfort of his mother's arms?
...of course it wouldn't be me that he longs for.
Why would it be me?
There would have to be something very wrong with him for it to be me, what would he even like about me?
The stilted charme of my artificial programing? The alien void of Lillith's soul?
Of course it couldn't me.
He might say that it's me, and he might even genuinely believe that, but-
Alright, alright.
Let's be rational.
Let's get clear about this.
Let us consider what it even really means.
Sharing some of Yui Ikari's DNA would not make me the same as hers.
Identical twins share DNA – even all of it, rather than just some – and they are still different individuals.
A twin could marry a man and have a son, and the man wouldn't be her sister's husband, nor would the boy be the sister's son.
There is simply a range of possible humans that can be created from the same set of DNA.
Except it wasn't quite that simple, because the Magi System and therefore the technology to fully digitalize an imprint of a human mind was only completed in 2010.
Six years prior, Yui Ikari had vanished into EVA 01, as it was still attached to Lillith, and the failed attempt to salvage her resulted in… something. Some kind of remains.
And something else was left: Unit One's user personality profile.
Even now, after Ikari-ku had been using it for a while, it was rather similar to Unit Zero's – that's why we could be interchanged in the compatibility experiment.
But the only one who had been using Unit Zero was me.
There was nothing in there but my own echo.
And since I was intended for piloting Unit One originally, what else would they have use in my prpgramming?
They had only two data prints, Yui Ikari's, and whichever was using in the initial testing of Unit Two – and I don't see why they would use that one.
The technology did not exist to digitize just any mind, much less create one from scratch.
They had to use one of the existing prints.
I though that I had been drawn to Ikari-kun and the Commander because they had shown some care for me. Because they had bothered to speak to me- especially Ikari-kun, who had no discernible reason for it.
I seem to recall that things did not go very smooth at the beginning, I don't think that I was immediately drawn to him or anything.
Then again, would I know?
If what I was feeling right now was rigged from the beginning…
If it was just some sort of echo of Yui Ikari's affection towards her son…
How would I know?
This is hard to evaluate as the one affected.
I recall Dr. Akagi remarking how strange she found it that I'd suddenly begun paying attention to any human person-
I- I don't think this was the case, but I don't know for sure that it isn't.
I wouldn't know how I would know.
...this isn't fair.
These feelings, at least, were supposed to be mine.
They were supposed to be me.
They were supposed to mean something, to have a real reason-
To be something that I'd chosen for myself, even there was no other choice -
They might well be the most hollow things at all.
Imagine that they were to boot up a new clone, pour inside Lillith's soul, and activate it with just the most basic programing, some file labelled 'Rei Ayanami Personality Construct', maybe, without inputting anything of what had come from Yui Ikari's profile.
What sort of being would one be left with, without even a rough copy of actual humanity, without the genuine ghost of a dead woman for the machine to be imbued with?
One might imagine that such an act would give birth to a creature that might well respond when it is prompted, that could process human language and carry out what it is ordered to, but it would have no initiative, no content.
Between orders, it would not do any other thing than wait for more orders.
Though its reason functioned, not another thought would pass between its ears.
It would be free of Yui Ikari's interest in science, if Yui's it was – wherever it lived, it would need to keep its pills, much like I did, but there would be no books, no mementos, no notion of what it is to care about anything at all, very little for Lillith to watch from the dark recesses where her soul dwelt.
If I wished to separate myself from Yui, to extricate her from me, what would I even be left with?
What was there left to call 'me', when I'd already decided that it wasn't Lillith?
Much as I'd often pictured Lillith waking up as if from a confusing dream, shaking off my form and all the memories that made up my being like drops of melting wax, I now envisioned Dr. Ikari, somehow returned by some unlikely coincidence to what remained of her old flesh, or the closest thing to it, stretching her too-thin, too-pale limbs and finding them much diminished – maybe she would be horrified and repulsed by the memories of what she had done without her soul (for they would remain in that brain still), unable to piece back together the mentality that lead her to act as she did.
Besides Dr. Ikari, who dissappeared, I'm aware that there was another adult test pilot who went insane, though I haven't been told the specifics. Dr. Akagi mentioned this recently, with regards to why a higher synch rate isn't always better. What I had pieced together over the years, however, was that this second test pilot had to be institutionalized.
The subject was left unable to properly care for herself, was described as bereft of her usual emotional responses, failed to recognize her loved ones, and eventually lost all will to live.
I could picture how some dispassionate clinician might easily say the very same things about myself, or worse.
If Yui Ikari were to somehow return to her once vacant shell, I could easily see how she might attribute what it was like to be me to the absence of her soul – an utter lack of drive, of vitality, of hope, or care for others – it would be like awakening from a very strange nightmare, and in particular, she may be horrified toward how she had acted toward her own son.
And if Lillith was still in there, well, I imagine that she would keep up her silent, impenetrable watching just as she always had.
Fleeing from one of them would drive me straight into the other's arms -
And caught between, there is so little, such a flimsy see-through thing-
How could I know if what I felt was truly mine?
And if it wasn't, what was there left inside me, but those patient seven eyes?
They, and the awareness that I was nothing.
I did not think that what I felt toward Ikari-kun was really the 'parent' or 'family' kind of feeling…
But how would I know?
What do I know of human connections, of 'family'?
I never needed to know.
I never thought I would have.
It all caved back in upon me, what I had always, always known.
Nothing is mine.
Nothing is ever mine.
Nothing about me is real, or special, or meaningful-
I'm just one thing out of many, produced identical inside a great big tank, and if you loaded up the software, maybe every single one would have the exact same misplaced feelings, and mistake them for something profound – how very pitiful.
What a hollow, broken machine, with nothing but emptiness-
...let's not get ahead of oneself.
Alright?
This book there right next to my hand.
If there is one thing that it proves, it would be that Yui Ikari and I were entirely different human beings.
I did not exactly feel the rush of recognition as I was reading it.
I couldn't relate to much of it at all.
The circumstances were all different, right?
Even if we knew some of the same people, the nature of the connections was different.
We had different experiences and different environments, and in those environments, we became different people, even if there was something of a similar substance to start with.
She would not swallow me up.
We were different, different, different, intrinsically, irrevocably -
But if it was the circumstance that had made us different, then…
If experienced had changed me, experiences could change me again.
If connections had formed me, connections would continue to form me.
Existing as I had in this different place and different time, I had not turned out much like Yui Ikari.
But now I had her journal beside me on the bed, and her son's lunch box on my counter – and I'd been planning to fill it with homemade cooking, much as she might have…
What had I almost done there?
Maybe nothing at all.
I felt again the fragility of the collection of experiences, memories, habits and attitudes that constituted me as a person.
My existence, as a drafty shed blown through by the wind, penetrated by cold, shot through with blinding light from the outside.
If I got closer of all that used to be Yui Ikari's – if I drew closer to her son, and the morself or her legacy, touching what she had touched, walking where she had walked…
Was I not shrinking what separated us?
But to which extent was such a gap worth keeping open?
What did it really consist of, that was in any way worthwhile?
Was I worth keeping?
Was that which makes me 'me' even worth holding onto?
Would I not lose it in the end either way?
...it was hard to say which I was more scared of.
Being like her, being swallowed up, drowned out, erased, as a mere caterpillar must dissolve to inevitably become a butterfly-
Or maybe I could be content to dissolve in her, if that meant that I got to be of use, not just as the tool that I had been, but as someone beloved – to be her was to be the means, not the ends.
But that, I could never have. That place was already taken by her, who already exists.
No worse than being unable to escape becoming her was the prospect that I might try to be her, only to be found lacking – hapless. Incapable. Insufficient. Unsatisfactory.
Maybe the fullness of the horror was to be trapped between both those ends:
Though I could not be distinct from her, I also couldn't be her.
Neither her, not something other. Whatever other thing I may try to be would always have a strain of her in it, and a generous helping of Lillith –
I couldn't be completely her, fully her, properly her – Held up next to her, I would always be found lacking. She would be the standard I would be judged by, and any difference there was between us could only count to my detriment.
I could not become her, but neither could I be free of her -
A mongrel, changeling existence, not young nor old, not subject nor object.
Where can I go?
Where is there for me to go?
There's nowhere in all this present world….
...
...then again, had it ever been any different?
Another thought occurred to me, at a different time.
Was I ever anything other than completely adrift?
There were days when I had clung to the at least nominal purpose of my mission, but if I am honest, had I ever truly believed it? Ever truly been convinced?
Long I had wondered what exactly I am to the Commander.
So long I yearned for him to see me as his child while never expecting him to consider me more than a tool.
Now I knew the answer.
When he brought me along with him to her grave, year after year – an act that had always puzzled me – was it not because I was much more her grave than the black marker that he visited?
Her moving, walking grave, containing a piece of her desecrated remains, grown from the cells of what was produced in an attempt to restore her flesh?
Her very corpse, resurrected by arcane necromantic arts, yet imbued with an alien soul to animate it, with a demon to possess it, to keep the soulless flesh from rotting while the spirit of its original mistress remained far beyond his reach -
An automaton, a Galathea, and abomination of the living dead -
Her neutered, discarded soulless shell, preserved by unnatural means, as surely as a body dipped in formaldehyde ad plastinated.
And having been revived again since, and again, leaving a copy of a copy of a faded grainy afterimage.
No wonder then that all I am ever craved so much to fall apart, if I have always been a corpse.
And a grave, symbol, as blind to it as the witless rock that forms that marker.
The grave of that woman, and of the man Commander Ikari used to be, of his hopes and dreams, his very faith in this fading world -
One he may still be looking to protect rather than unveave, if his missus was still with him…
Whose survival he once saw as possibile, without telling me, all my life, that it was impossible, and had been so from the start.
Now I doubted not that Commander Ikari still saw himself in accordance with the old plan, many points of which I had recognized from Dr. Ikari's journal. He was still subverting the will of SEELE, still, after a fashion, looking to preserve mankind. If you asked him, he would merely describe his instrumentality plan as a refinement and specification of what had been previously left vague, as a result of realizations only come about in hindsight, as consequences of the experiment.
After all, there was never any plan for me to exist, while Yui Ikari still lived.
The failed attempt at saving her that produced my existence had handed the Commander and his associates an unprecedented tool, and new means for his prayers to reach the goddess that was Lillith – or rather, a remote control for her.
I had known the Commander for too long to expect him to view this in any but the most pragmatic of terms. The scraps of flesh I was made from presented an unprecedented oportunity to give a deity orders, to compell her to grant prayers – or, as the commander undoubtedly sees it, to hack into the ancient's terraforming device and do with it things that their lot had never intended for.
Surely he would just see it as adapting to the circumstances, as doing what SEELE couldn't with their rigid insistence on following to the letter what their primitive ancestors had raised them to see as a prophecy.
But I was not sure if even Yui Ikari herself would still have considered them to be the same plan.
Does she know, of his intentions?
She must know something of what transpired from what she'd see in touching the mind of her son.
Out of the two, whom do I believe?
Her idea came first, but she is, without doubt, a naive optimist.
It's possible both of them might be wrong.
It might be that neither of their plans can even save humanity.
Or perhaps that Maria Iscariot person was right and it may be saved without either of their plans.
That would be very convenient, however.
It doesn't seem like anything that could happen in this world that I have known.
And besides, all of these people and their plans cannot easily be stopped once they've been set in motion. The hearts of people cannot be rewound anymore than time can.
This must be why Commander Fuyutsuki still sticks by the Commander – because his plan is the best option that still has any chance of happening.
At this point, I think that my reason is quickly becoming the same as his.
Even if there ever was a chance of Third Impact not happening, it was certainly far too late for it to be prevented. It was probably decided long before I excited, before Ikari-kun ever knew how to count or read.
If it could have been prevented, then certainly not by me.
It was my mere existence that made it possible; And it was that existence that I could not escape.
Dr. Akagi would not hesitate for an instant to thaw out the next clone if I refused to perform as I was bid.
People love to say 'Imagine there's a war and no one shows up'. And that may be true: If no one showed up, the generals would find it hard to wage a war without the foot soldiers.
But decisions are not made collectively.
Collectives don't exist – they are only a mental abstraction for large numbers of individuals.
And if one individual doesn't go to war, all that happens is that he will be prosecuted for desertion and his family will be penalized. Another one will take his place, and not a single casualty will be saved.
You might opt to die with clean hands, if you happen to prefer your ego over your family, or the other way around, but it's beyond your power to save anyone.
People do not like that idea; They call pacifism a privilege disregarding that the capacity for effective opposition is no different.
They may claim to love an underdog, but it's a noble, heroic underdog that they like.
The martyr that may lose, but secretly wins in spirit, that is superior even, in some real of moral rightheousness and courage.
True weakness – the weakness of a battered wife, or an obseqious servant, of the browbeaten peasant that understands that the only step down is a corpse, of those that perfectly understand that the most rational action for them is to yield, to flee or fawn or freeze in place like they were dead already because none of the other actions were within their power.
True weakness is disgusting. It is disdained and not forgiven.
True weakness is depressing and no one wants to hear about it.
People squash it down and kick it out of sight so as not to be reminded that they, too, might fall this low.
If you are happy, even just barely, you don't want to see the weakness that would steal your joy.
If it's abundant you don't know what it is to be without it, and if it's fragile, then you'll want to think even less of using it.
And if you are miserable, the one thing need someone who is even more miserable than you.
These two facts put together explain everything about my existence.
It is why all the staff of NERV has looked away;
It is why the Second Child and Dr. Akagi chose me to lash out at.
I am as good as weakness itself, and despair embodied:
I am that what is left over when joy has gone away.
I am that which is born of hope being extinguished forever.
I am a prayer for the very destruction of this world that has so long been longed for, the coalesced form of all the tears and pained moans and all the blood that ever dripped from its grand merciless machinery.
I was here to put them all out of the very same misery that I'd always yearned to be released from since the wretched instant of my creation.
Perhaps, when that day came, I would be doing it for myself.
For all the suffering I had witnessed and gathered then within my heart.
…
The world I looked at was so changed that the sky might as well have been a different shade of blue.
For the first time in a while, I was tempted to just stay in bed and just not go to school.
It's not like anyone would care…
No, that was no longer quite correct.
Just as Yui Ikari's book lay on my dresser now, looming like an open, there was a plastic lunchbox left on the dresser.
I'm not proud to admit it, but in that moment I firmly resented it that I had made anyone aware of my existence. That I would ever do such a foolish thing.
In that instand, his knowledge of me, his attention paid to me just felt like yet another shackle, even though he was so much of all the kindness I had ever known.
So I needed to keep moving through this so very changed world that looked to me now wholly foreign. To wade with it with this body that repelled me in all ways that it wasn't truly mine, and yet precisely what produced me.
The one thing that never changed was that I had no choice.
No choice but to keep chopping wood and carrying water.
Which means that, in my dumbstruck floating through an increasingly uneal world that seemed ever more to come apart on me like a glitching video game, I was to put myself in the same classrooms, trams and experimentation halls as him.
Yui Ikari's son.
It doesn't seem natural to think of him like this.
That's not all he is, or who he is to me.
He is so much else.
What he evokes in me is – well.
Does it matter how one would label it? Can it be labelled?
Or am I just avoiding a label, as I might not like the answer?
Looking away from it as I had looked away from Lillith.
A foolish hope, really, to think that if whatever feelings I had from him were only different that would be proof that I was different from her. Both of them.
That those feelings could be mine, a feeble proof of my existence.
No feeling could make me into anything, no connection could change, for no matter what I may act out, here inside I would always be me.
But just thinking that to myself did not make the feelings go away.
I wanted to walk over to him and speak with him, like I might have done had I never picked up his journal. Like I was slowly getting used to doing.
A little bit, every day, on various occasions.
But, if I speak to him would I find it to be a mother's way of speaking?
It was flattering when I thought he was linking me to something missed, something real -
Not a particular other person, someone different from me.
Thinking he might see her memory sticking onto me – that my very form and voice and gestures would betray me, in oozing her from every pore… that made me think that I ought to get as far from him as I possibly could.
As if it could make me 'real'.
As if being real in one person's eyes would even change anything.
I was certainly happy for him, seeing him speaking quite animated with Aida and Suzuhara.
But was it an echo of what Yui Ikari may have felt seeing him play with other toddlers at the daycare?
It was nonsensical. It was pointless.
It was repeating the words till they barely meant anything, an absurdity.
Yet an absurdity that may in fact have been newly created by technology, though it was impossible before.
I'm not certain that I was even done growing, how would I think of anybody as my son?
A pregnancy at such a young age would be accounted a tragedy.
I'd considered that nonsense before in regards to Lillith – the idea that he should be to me as my son. But then I'd dismissed it in part because he was special to me, different from everybody else.
Lillith would have to call all living creatures branching from LUCA her children.
Yui Ikari, however?
She wasn't the mother of all living things, just of Shinji Ikari in particular.
Though surely he would find it ridiculous if I were to begin to act as if I was her.
We didn't have the same shared history.
I wasn't old enough to have carried a child his age.
The real Yui Ikari was still around – she was right now in a cage at NERV herdquarters.
What am I, in a world where she exists?
I could say that I am like her twin. What became part of my programing, I might not account greater than the effect than a partially shared upbringing may have had.
If she is my sister, then Ikari-kun would be my nephew.
Unusual for one's nephew to be the same age, but it is thinkable, occasionally there are siblings with large age gaps…
To be the sibling of Yui Ikari would be to be the child of her parents.
What are even their names?
Her sister, even a much younger sister, would be likely to have grown up in a big mansion, with private tutors and the like.
Even the mental image was ridiculous, and I could not even say that it was even 'technically' true.
I was not just born after her, I came from her, in a sense.
So perhaps, Yui Ikari is my mother, and Lillith may be accounted as my other parent – or even the Commander, since he created me, though none of his own flesh was used.
It makes more sense, on some intuitive level - Children sometimes grow up never knowing their parents.
Which might make myself and Ikari-kun siblings.
I searched my memory for things I had read about siblings.
It was an alien concept.
From what I could piece together, if anyone fit the description it may have been the Second Child – since they had lived in the same household, adressed each other in an unfamiliar manner and shared parental figures in Inspector Kaji and the Major. Even the bickering and competition may not be out of line for siblings.
Obviously their dynamic also continued elements that would not at all be found in siblings, but that just served to illustrate how far I was from any such point.
Maybe that was the wrong question, however: Kinship is not always a matter of genetics. In some tribal societies, you were considered kin if you roe a boot together or went together to settle a new area. There were rituals to become 'blood brothers', and there was adoptions, as well as groups of friends that came to regard each other as kin.
Likewise I'd read of many accounts where individuals had grown up apart from each other and did not much consider each other related, for example when parents gave up their child to be raised by someone else or refused to provide care.
So, a better question might be: Did I want us to be kin? If I told him some simplified version of what I'd learned, he may be willing to have us become kin. Perhaps he might end up asking Suzuhara for advice on how to be an elder brother.
So, did I want that?
...well. It's better than that patent nonsense of him being my son, at least. If I regarded my feelings as those of a sister, that would also make them my own in some way, those of a separate individual, connected to Yui Ikari, maybe, but not identical.
But it is not as if those were the only options.
It is not that I hated the idea of having the opportunity to find out what having kin is like, but I just wouldn't want it to be him.
...why is that?
This bears some thinking about.
The feeling is like…
I suppose it is part of 'not wanting to be erased in the minds of others if another exists'.
That similar, sharp sensation. Fear, possibly.
I don't want to begin a certain kind of relation with him based on this information because I already have a relation with him, and I don't want it to be drowed out or supplanted.
I don't want anything to change.
I don't want what was there before to be supplanted and taken away, replaced by something clearly defined and generic forced on us by mere technical definition rather than what was created on its own from our coming together…
Laughable as that may seem when every facet of our coming together was rigged to serve project.
It's not fair.
I don't know why anyone would even expect any of this to be fair, but it still isn't.
All these grand heavy truths loom above me, uncloaking themselves one by one, and there is nothing I can do about it.
Nothing but stand where I am as time inoxerably keeps moving.
I suppose that is what life is.
What existing is, for anyone who bears a form that is even adjacent to humans.
The quick things are over so quickly that they've fully gone and happened before you've had any chance to respond to it, and most of it is just living on regardless, resonating like a bell that has been struck, dragging onward, sitting in a room while knowing what is coming.
One might almost think it a fitting punishment for Lillith, or for once of the First Ancestral Race – to be stripped of her divinity and be forced to endure the life of those creations she had so irresponsibly spat into the void.
So see what it is like, and behold with her own eyes this faior creation of god, to see all the ways in which it was not good and know for herself the preposterousness of calling life a gift, of in any way exalting the act of turning that which cannot suffer into a sentient state that will -
To experience for herself the closed-off prison of the human being, with all the same uncertainty that her children suffer, the indignity the confusion, all the cruelty and sorrow, and the doubt, which the gods don't know and scoff at in laughter when they ask us to have faith.
And perhaps Yui Ikari should be punished as well, for the far more mundane crime of the reckless experiment that resulted in the effective abandonment of her family – and most of all, for even chosing to have a child at all in the knowledge that apocalypse is coming.
What a cruel and selfish thing, to put a sentence in such a cold and hopeless world, to eke out a futile lap just before its very end.
Be it Yui or Lillith, if you had put them in my skin, they may hardly be punished enough.
Not that I would desire this.
Punishment creates nothing, it just destroys further, and it is futile in changing the minds of those determined not to change it.
I do not really see how bleeding an innocent life upon the altar might wash clean the blood of the past.
If a soul of my own would make me see the sense in it, I am not even sure that I would want it….
How could that same if if it might, in a sense, erase me?
Even if that were possible, that might just create another, all new person different from me or Lillith or Dr. Ikari.
...
"...Ayanami?"
Ikari-kun had spoken to me.
Right - He could do that.
That was possible when you were physically in the same room, particularly since it was lunch break and most of the others had left to get sustenance.
I wondered why he wasn't doing the same.
I hoped he hadn't been sidetracked by useless concern for me.
Concern for me, or for the echo of his late mother?
He would deny it, of course, but he may easily not be conscious of it.
If it wasn't for me, well… there was a part of me that would almost rather he went away, rather than recall me from the distant inner thoughts I had sunken into.
And worse yet, there was a part that didn't want that.
What of my response then, was that an artifact embedded in my programming somehow?
It's not like I could keep track of that and focus on responding at the same time, all the time.
Attention is finite.
How is one supposed to be in this world, after having seen all of its terrible reciepts?
When even what had seemed the closest to succor was inextricably woven into the web of all that was hopeless….
To think that just a few days before, I would have been unambigously glad that he spoke to me.
And I mean, I was, but with all this going on, his presence was another thing to menage, like his response to me. Like my own response to him, now newly complicated by countless factors.
I could not return to the innocent ignorance of ere-yesterday even if I had wanted to.
I used to be so glad then, that he had noticed.
That he would notice things.
Everyone else would not have cared to catch a difference.
Now I felt exposed, put on the spot, interrogated, despite clear rational awareness that this couldn't be further from his intention.
Poor him, for coming to me.
"...Ayanami, I'm just wondering… are you okay? Did something happen?"
Rationally, I understood that he couldn't be further from pushing me.
That he was even trying to put me at ease:
"It's okay if you don't wanna talk about it! I don't mean to pry, either! I was just thinking, if I don't say anything – uh, well what if it's something where I should have said something?"
I was wondering something similar.
"-I don't wanna be making assumptions so if I'm wrong, please tell me – it's just that lately, you've been… distant, a little. A bit more like you used to be, when I had the impression that things had been changing earlier…
-Uh, not that there's anything wrong with that – I mean, both what you were, and how you've been changing…"
I think I was kind of leaving him hanging there, without the reply that wouldn't come to me.
I could think of many things that I might say, but not out loud.
"...I messed up again, didn't I?"
No. Not at all.
It wasn't you. It's not him, it's me.
I wish that I could make this clear in a way that he might find satisfying.
I was never made for this -
Though I suppose that human beings aren't really made for anything either.
They are all products of random chance, aren't they?
He ducked his head abashedly, a little bit, just before slinking off.
"Sorry for bothering you..."
…
You know who has never once met Yui Ikari?
Horaki-san.
She couldn't possibly have spoken to her, on account of having been about two years old at the time of Dr. Ikari's demise.
None of the disappeared researcher's legacy would ever have touched her or tinged her responses or expectations in any way.
This occurred to me, just as I was on my way out of the classroom, and heard her distinctive voice reming whoever was on cleaning duty to go and sweep the floor – it was some spiky-haired boy whose name I could honestly barely put a name to.
I had the thought that, if I just waited a little in the hallway just outside the door, I might get a chance to talk to her.
I might ask her, for example, what having siblings is like or how one might go about building such a bond.
Not because I was really meaning to, but rather because I probably wouldn't, yet still wished I were able to envision what it might be like.
Another thing I might do instead is to ask her to describe, in as neutral terms as possible, what she thought of me, to see if she would describe me more alike to Yui Ikari than I would be willing to admit. Though that still left the assessment of Yui Ikari's characteristics to me; Perhaps some more neutral assessment could be gained by asking her to describe in how far she perceived Ikari-kun and myself as alike.
It seemed pointless, though, to ask her about anything when I could already more or less imagine on my own what the answer would do.
She would probably just be confused to get those kinds of questions practically out of nowhere.
If I ever talked to her again after that, I would have to know that she would still remember such an incongruous exchange, that she might bring it up at any point.
And why would she not?
It did not fit inside the unusual human conversation scripts.
Perhaps it would be more permissible to breach that, to speak more openly heart-to-heart, if we were more familiar with each other.
Just a while ago there had been string of interactions that had been looking like they were beginning to constitute a trajectory, a getting closer, but since then much had happened, the time had passed me by like leaved in the wind and now it had honestly been a while since we last spoke to each other.
She was the only one that came to mind, though.
Who else did I know that wasn't entangled with this – Suzuhara, maybe?
He'd visited my place once, but that was merely an isolated incident.
I am not really good at keeping connections, beyond just being inexperienced.
I might be lacking in the natural instinct or drive that compells people to seek each other out, that which makes not just so that they remember, but that they can hardly bear to be parted from each other.
That, at least, must have come from Lillith. Yui Ikari, I know, was rather sociable… but what is the passe of time to an immortal that rested through ages in a cavern beneath the air, a solitary entity complete upon itself?
How unfortunate, seeing as I was still more like a human in the sense of being very much perishable. Though how knows if I'd get wrinkles, if the dysfunction of my pathwork shell did not imbue it with a much closer experitation date.
I don't seem to be made for a world where time passes, where the people's attachment decreased with every day that their interaction isn't renewed.
I can expect that it probably makes them feel ignored or forgotten, like they're not important or just barely being tolerated, and I don't want to do that others,, which makes me even more reluctant to be in contact with any of them.
Like I would merely be subjecting them to something, little different from all the things I am always getting subjected to.
When I heard Horaki-san's steps finally approaching the door, I set myself in motion, making sure I would be halfway down the hallways before she would perceive me.
…
When I heard the rapping on my door, my mind was very far from registering that it was probably the first time I'd been visited without any particular reason.
There were no printouts to deliver, no new ID cards, no business from NERV.
I heard the noise of knuckles on plastic, and my eyes went wide, staring blankly at the grey concrete ceiling above my bed.
There were really only two options, and the one I dreaded more was not a Section Two Agent coming to get me for battle.
It's not even that I didn't want to see Ikari-kun.
I would be very glad to, if I were ready.
If I knew what to say to him, on what terms to engage with him…
but of course the world cannot be put on pause.
Its wheels mercilessly grind onward, whether I'm ready for it or not.
I suppose it was fortunate that I hadn't taken off my uniform yet, so I did not have to choose between hurrying to the door and the risk of maybe startling him with some state of undress, as it had occurred before.
If I didn't get the door, he might assume I was absent or indisposed and help himself inside.
That is how things had gone during previous encounters, so it would be reasonable to expect this to continue.
I didn't want him to come in, of all sudden.
The place wasn't fit for him to come in.
There was stuff everywhere again, though it had not been too long to since his last visit, I just couldn't summon up the will to get rid of it, not with… everything going on.
I used to live around it, as I always had.
It never used to matter, at all, in any way, what anyone saw, or what anyone did.
But now that there was a possibility, even a stray one, of actual, deliberate noticing, I desperately didn't wish to be seen.
And that was terrible because, I did understand that, if I refrained answering long enough, he would, quite logically, eventually stop coming.
It turns out that wasn't what I wanted.
If I could do what I wanted… well, it wouldn't matter and the immense dark void of the cold hard dark universe wouldn't care one bit, but if I could do what I wanted – if reality wasn't object -
I think I'd want to go to him, and go with him, to somewhere far away.
As far away as it gets, the furthest place possible.
Somewhere as distant as the moon, from where everything down here looks vacuous and unimportant, just a tiny blip somewhere, up to the void and the pale disk of the moon, where nothing at all matters – not EVA, Yui Ikari, not NERV, not anything, nothing but him and me and the eternal cold dark silence.
Then, of course, I mentally took a step back from all of this and realized that it was all nonsense.
It didn't matter if anyone came inside, it never had mattered.
What did any of it matter?
What did anything matter?
I got up and swiftly covered the short distance to the door.
It was exactly who I expected it to be.
The crimson of ever-present sunset streamed all around us.
He wasn't actually wearing his school uniform, but a a simple salmon polo shirt, and for some reason, he was carrying a paper shopping bag.
I let him in and put the kettle on.
Naturally. That's what you're supposed to do with visitors, right?
The tin box of tea was actually somewhat emptier than it had been at the time of his last visit. After realizing that I kind of liked the warm sensation when I first tried it, I had gone on to brew the occasional cup for myself.
Might as well use up the stuff rather than let it decompose after Third Impact.
It would have taken a very long time to decay by purely chemical processes, since there would not be any more fungi or even bacteria left to consume it.
I didn't intend on buying another box once this one was used up, though, I might not have time to use it up before Third Impact comes.
But I still had some now, so I prepared it, after leading Ikari-lun to place himself on his chair.
If nothing else, it filled the time that lacked for stuffing.
I tried not to ponder too much about whether he was watching me as I simply concentrated on getting the process right. There would be no accident this time.
While the water was cooking, I reached for two mugs from the sink to clean them out.
When I was done, I went to get my phone so I could measure out the correct time for steeping with the clock contained in it.
I was aware that Ikari-kun observed me as I passed through the room to get to where I had left my bag.
The minutes stretched in silence, but eventually I came to the point where I was to hand him his mug.
I sat down across from him on the ever-crumpled bed.
"I- uh… I hope I'm not imposing…" he began, awkwardly, perhaps assuming that it was his responsibility to make conversation.
"You know, I'm glad I found you here. I wasn't sure if you'd even be at home today… I've been a bit worried about you, so, I'm really glad I was able to meet me."
"There is no reason for you to concern yourself with this."
"It's fine-" he declared, holding up his hands in what I thought was something of a defensive.
"I'm not going to pester you with questions or anything. I get it – whatever is going on is probably some secret NERV thing that you can't talk about. And even if it weren't – I don't wanna get in your business or make assumptions. I just thought I'd stop by to try and cheer you up a little."
"There is no need to cheer me up."
"Ah, really? That's good to hear then…"
He still reached for his paper bag then, though he had probably been counting on a different segue.
"I guess you can consider this a 'just because' thing then. Or an early birthday gift…"
With one hand, he reached inside, and there was a rustle of fabric.
"I asked Misato-san about your size, but I think she kind of eyeballed it, so I really hope it fits – but if it doesn't, I kept the receipt, so we can still have it changed…"
I think he might have said some more things then, but all I could see was the purple fabric.
A shade of violent not unlike the paintjob of EVA 01, or the faded designs on the worn old notebook resting on my dresser – Yui Ikari's most favorite color.
"Why this?"
The words just fell out, immediately, high and breathless.
He didn't seem to be expecting the question.
"What do you mean?"
"Why this dress."
"Like I said, as a little something to cheer you up."
"I heard that. But why did you choose this article of clothing?"
"...no reason, I guess. I just thought- well – most girls like fashion, right?"
Did he not think beyond this, then? Was my image in his thoughts then nothing more fleshed out than just 'juvenile female'?
"Surely not all girls."
"Of course not! But most do..."
"So then what lead you to think that I was one of 'most'?"
"Nothing, I guess – I just wasn't sure what to pick..."
"But why, of all possible fashion articles, a dress? Why this dress? Why this color?"
"No reason, like I said. I guess I didn't think it through -
I just – I just had this feeling, when I saw it, that you'd probably like it…"
"What sort of feeling. For what reason. "
"I dunno."
I knew, rationally, that this wasn't an answer, but it might as well have been.
He surely wouldn't say that he was influenced by some vague reminiscence of his dead mother. It could be the case even if he were perfectly ignorant of it.
So what use could there be in asking him?
I think now that I must have made him uncomfortable with all the questions.
But in that moment, I was caught in my own response, despite all attempts at reason.
"-If you don't like it, I can still return it, like I said…"
"Please do."
…
This day, both Horaki-san and I were on cleaning duty.
Judging by past experience, it would take us about ten minutes to be done.
First, the chairs and tables had to be stacked at the margins of the room so that the floor was acessible to be cleansed.
Already, the light outside was taking on a golden orange hue – the waning of the day serving as a temporary reminder of the ever-present waning of the world.
And I remembered then, what she had tol me, before we visited the acquarium that one day – that it was alright for me to be different. She meant different from a typical human, not from Yui Ikari, though one might argue that this had been an even stronger statement – what applied in the general sense certainly should be true for an individual one?
This is why I chose her for this.
It's not as if I really had a great selection of choices, but I was grateful to have the option of someone who had told me something like that in the past.
I chose a moment when I wasn't able to look directly at her, when I just finished stacking the lasz couple of chairs and the noise of it had subsided.
"Horaki-san, can you tell me – in your estimation, how can you tell if somebody likes you for the right reasons?"
I kept facing the wall, but I could hear that she ostensibly stopped doing whatever she was busy with.
"-...are you asking me for advice?"
"...is it a bad time now? If so, we can let it be. It isn't really needed."
"No, no, not at all! It's no problem! I'm just surprised is all. It's unusual for you to be asking for help."
I don't know that I would call it 'help' exactly.
I heard some steps – perhaps she was turning around to face me.
"Is this about anyone in particular?"
"...I would prefer if you answer in the general sense for now."
"I see…" she concluded, to my surprise – for a moment I feared that there would be further questions. I doubt that what she thought to have understood could be anywhere near my actual thoughts, but she had certainly assumed something and that was fortunate in that is allowed for the conversation to proceed.
She seemed for a moment to gather your thoughts.
"...Are you worried that this person hasn't been honest with you? Is there something that doesn't match up between their words and their actions, or, are they being evasive somehow?"
" - not that I know of."
It hadn't occurred to me to consider that – this wasn't really what this was about.
She must be picturing something different, which wasn't surprising considering how little I had been able to tell her.
I was wondering if this would turn out to be a pointless endeavor.
I heard her stepping closer, but she kept her distance in the end, leaving a few paces between us.
"Then, have they done anything that gave you a bad feeling?"
"Not in particular."
I'm not sure how my feeling would be relevant, in any case. It could be there for any reason.
It might not have anything to do with the other person at all.
"Then why are you worried?"
"It is not to do with worry. It is just that I do not know the reason."
This may have irritated her a little, judging by how her voice wavered just a bit at the start, but it seems she was making an effort to be helpful:
"Well, have you asked them?"
"…they have told me some reasons, but, I am not certain how I would discern that they're the only ones, or the true ones. There might be other reasons that they are not voicing. Reasons that are present even without their awareness. They might say one thing, and they may even believe it, but they may be mistaken about what the real reason is…"
"Well… maybe we should look at it this way: Do you like being with this person?"
"I think I do, and I think I know why I do, but I may be mistaken about that also. I am trying to view this objectively, but there is no guarantee that I can."
"You know, Ayanami-san, I think that you might be overthinking this."
What does she mean, 'over-think'?
It was hard to imagine how ther could be such a thing as too much thought. It is mostly too little thought that seems to lead to carelessness or pointless actions….
Seeing as this surprised me, I turned around then.
I was aware that it would only make a minuscule distance as to how well I would understand what she was saying acoustically, I think it was more some kind of impulse to heighten focus.
"Do elaborate."
On Horaki-san's face, I found something like a sheepish yet benevolent voice.
"Well… from what you're saying, you like being with that person, and they seem to like you. Does there really need to be another reason for it? Why overcomplicate it?"
"There is always a reason, for everything, due to cause and effect. I've read much about it. It matters what the reason is, what it's based on. It matters for what expectations they will have.
They could be drawn to my appearance – in that case, they will leave if it changes. Or, they could be expecting me to perform a certain social role, or have some fantasy that they wish to fulfill. They could feel a large amount of emotion, but all directed towards an erroneous idea of me in their minds, so that it will disappear or change to resentment when they are presented with the reality. Sometimes people associate which each other for access to the other's monetary or social resources. Sometimes they desire attention or the thrill of excitement. Sometimes it is simply down to pheromones or compatible immune genes. From what I've read, it's not uncommon for individuals to imprint, for example, on their parents and seek out their likeness. So a person may repeatedly be drawn to relationships with people that hurt them much the same way as that parent did, or even if they're not hurt, they might respond or react to the partner as if they were the parent, or expect them to act this way. Or, they may be looking for the other person to 'complete' them somehow, to become an extension of themselves, like a possession.
They may be looking for comfort, or perhaps they just want company…"
"Uhm… if they only like you for your looks and don't pay attention to the rest of you, that's obviously no good. But if you're happy with them generally, isn't it good if they do? Your looks are part of you, after all. Isn't it a good thing to be wanted? To have things that you can give others?"
"That is impossible to say, with just that information. Wanted for what? Depending on that, it might be preferable to never be wanted for anything. They might take something I don't wish to part with."
"What do you mean, 'take'?"
Is that not apparent?
I would have thought this would be obvious.
"Everyone always wants to take something. I would rather know what it is."
"...that's pretty grim."
"Grim? What does that have to do with it? It's only logical. Simply reality. If any person does anything, it is because they would be getting something out of it. Even if it is a feeling of satisfaction, or rightheousness, or validation of your sense of self. To be motivated to do something, it must release dopamine inside your brain, causing gratification. I've read much about it."
"...You know… Ayanami-san…"
"-Yes?"
Horaki-san hesitated here, as if wrestling some reluctance, but then she proceeded, perhaps feeling duty-bound to speak what she saw as the truth:
"...don't take this the wring way, but when I listen to you, I get this feeling that you're all the way in the sky so far up that you can't see your own feet. I'm not sure that this stuff you've been reading is really doing you any good here."
"Why not?" I may have asked, with the slightest hint of doubt or offense.
I would have thought that I would at least be trusted to properly understand a text.
But I realized soon that this had nothing to do with competence per se.
It was one of those things. Something Dr. Akagi would probably consider too human for my comprehension.
"It's kind of… the wrong tool for the problem, I think. It doesn't always have something to do with logic or reason whether people like each other or not."
This was dissapointing. I almost felt a fool for asking.
I really should have known that I would get something like this – something almost like what Dr. Akagi might said. It never made sense to be at all, but that would always be taken as proof against me – you can't seem to afford a mere disagreement when you aren't human.
"-but of course there is a reason. Everything has some reason. It's cause and effect. Cultural convention. Pattern recognition. Behaviors. Synapses. Biochemistry. It always has a cause – in an evolving system, each state always follows from the previous one according to laws of physics from which a trajectory can be deduced. Is any of that untrue?"
"Not untrue, but, uh… maybe that isn't the best way to look at it. I'm all for being on the lookout for red flags, but if the person you're talking about hasn't given you any reason to worry, and you're still being this suspicious and expecting them to have bad intentions, that's probably going to get in the way of feeling loved or accepted."
"...suspicious?"
I was quite surprised that she would interpret my inquiries in this way – I could not have told you what part exactly prompted her to consider that idea.
"I don't suspect or blame anybody." I clarified, "I am just trying to see things as what they are, without being clouded by wishful thinking or suspicion. If anything the blame would be with me, if I expected something unreasonable or for someone to be other than what they are capable of.
If I thought they had questionable intentions, I would not be wondering about this in the first place. It is just that everything has limits – even a person with the best possible intention has weakness and the capacity for error. To consider that has nothing to do with suspicion. I'm only trying to be objective about you."
"Well, Ayanami-san…" she trailed off there, as if to carefully chose hher words.
It reminded of how one would gravely pause when thinking of how to explain something to a child, and though I did not say anything about it, that irked me more than was probably proportional.
Did I really not seem capable of understanding basic things? Like I could not be trusted to interpret what I'm reading, too?
I did not come here for a polite, cushioned version of what Dr. Akagi might tell me…
At last, that flurry of thoughts was interrupted when Horaki-san seemed to have arrived at something to say.
She straightened out her posture upon growing certain of what she had arrived at.
„Let's think of it like this: Being reasonable is great – I often honestly wish that some of our classmates would use their heads more. In a way, that's actually pretty mature of you. But what I'm trying to say is that this isn't a question that is only about your head –"
...head? What is that about?
I get that it's a common metaphor, but she may as well have been speaking a different language.
I'm not sure if she had even really listened to my points.
„You have to listen to your heart as well."
I do know she didn't mean the literal organ in my chest.
„...after all, you're not trying to decide what a ‚logical observer' should do, but what's the best thing for you, as a particular person. So I think your heart's gotta be involved, too – your feelings about it. If you want to be with this person and there's no solid reason against it, then why shouldn't you? But things probably wouldn't turn out well if you convince yourself that you ‚should' like them, if that's not what you actually feel."
Horaki-san told me this with a gentle smile, as if she meant for this to be something encouraging.
Yet for me, these words spelled complete and utter defeat.
There was not much that I could have replied.
„I see. Thank you for taking your time. Let's finish cleaning up."
Just to cement that this segment of conversation was over, I went to fetch the broom.
I really hoped that she would believe that I was finally satisfied and had no further need of her input.
I tried not to look at her too directly while I went about the cleaning without words, lest something become obvious.
I knew better than to ask anything further.
I could more or less imagine what the results would be, what well-meaning adages I might be told, what professions on my part were unlikely to be believed.
She spoke it as if it would be some easy option, a letting go against some self-inflicted pressure, returning to the natural against unnatural effort.
But if ‚listening to your heart' was required, then there was no hope of me accomplishing this task.
It is not, as some may suspect, that I had imagined that every single human person would have come up with an easy answer or been crystal clear about what was required for ‚listening to your heart'.
It was not even because the answer was hard to find, or because it wouldn't come.
The issue was rather than an answer was very much there, the only one I would ever have:
My heart, if I could call it that, if I dare speak of what was within me as such – well, it was no use.
My heart, if such a thing exists, was filled with a mosaic of discordant cacophonous kaledoscope pinwheel splinters of differing responses, an oxymoron onto itself, like the achromatic screenching of the magpies.
How could something like that guide me?
How can anything, really?
Everything in this world is limited and flawed.
Everything and everyone has their own purpose in mind, and not that of any asker.
If I could not find an answer myself, there is a good chance that it probably does not exist, or at least is beyond my scope to find out.
No one could give me an answer – of course not, there was no precedent for this.
It would be pointless to expect one.
Maybe one day someone would come up with my answer, or maybe the stray anomaly represented by me would just be forgotten, my questions irrelevant to the coming world, more or less forgotten as a minor fluctuation by the collective mind that will follow third impact.
…
Sometimes life can only be understood in hindsight, if at all.
Still it must be lived forward.
Still it must be endured and lived through, until, in the end, your only reward is death.
If I'm honest, I was terribly grateful that next time that I was approached by Ikari-kun was on the tram, in the early morning – the time was limited, and though the passengers were few in number at this time, as it was still dark out, there were just enough to dissuade him from making any kind of scene. Once we arrived, the need to get to class would provide a handy escape.
For just a moment, I had almost begun to look at it as just another onerous task fraught with paralyzing complexity.
There was a part of me that almost wished I had changed the time of my habitual departure the moment he grew wise to it; that I should have moved to another wagon before he found me.
I could leave him behind and not have to contend with the shadow and legacy of Yui Ikari, at least not on this particular day.
But here I stayed, maybe for the same reason that I spent my days reading books that had nothing to do with piloting EVA – because he, like them, was one of the very few sources of joy and respite in my dreary exitence.
Yet as much as I may have yearned for him, now he was here, much of what filled my hollow form seemed just about ready to up and run.
Even so, I remained seated.
He must have gone out of his way to be here at the same time as me, possibly forgoing longer sleep and precious time in his habitually chore-filled morning.
I could see him departing while the pilot of Unit Two was in the shower so as to evade her scrutiny, leaving only her lunchbox on the counter, and the near certainty that he would suffer probing questions from her later in the day.
I'd set myself down in whatever portion of the wagon had been less occupied, much as I usually did.
However, today, this merely ended up leaving him with more than enough space to sit down beside me.
I noticed that he had in his hand a neat little paper bag with the label of a store on it – he must haven taken it out in preparation.
I confess I was filled mostly with apprehension and perhaps a terrible sort of curiosity.
But I said nothing, keeping my glance no higher than the little breast pocket on his uniform shirt.
"Hello Ayanami. Good morning."
I waited for him to reveal his purpose.
"I've been thinking about, uh, the thing with the dress- Actually, I even talked to Kaji-san about it."
"...you spoke to him about our private conversations?"
I didn't mean to express disapproval, but some discomfort with this may have been apparent.
"- I didn't go into any detail! I just-
Maybe I didn't put enough thought into it. If so, I'm sorry for that.
I don't know if you'll believe me just saying this in the aftermath, but, it's important to me that you don't think that I just got you some generic gift for a generic girl, like you're not special, or like it doesn't matter who it is."
….?
"You told me you didn't like the color, or that there wasn't any real reason for it, so, I began to think about whatkind of color woul go best with you, or which one I think you'd be – ah, and maybe I'm still totally wrong about it.
But what I came up with was this:
The color you most remind me of is – like a really dark blue. Like the color of the sky just before the night goes black – Like when you see a photo of the earth from space and the air is like the thinnest little dark blue shell around it – that color."
I heard a rustle then, as he reached into the paper bag.
"I don't know if you'll like this, either, but at least, I don't want you to think that I don't care to put thought & effort into it, as if I don't think you're worth it… that's the furthest thing from what I want…."
By then, his hand was going back up, displaying what appeared to be sizeable hairclip with a glosy dark blue finish.
"They had other designs, but I picked a star. It's because of… this one saying I've heard.
They say, 'if you cry all night because the son isn't there, you will never see the stars'.
Since I came to this city, I've gone through many things that were like a deep dark night, but all the while, I think you have been something like a bright star to me… Somewhere I could return, and feel what it is to be welcome. "
-!
At that point, he carefully held out the clip to me, together with the paper.
"Is this okay with you?"
I never thought that anything lof this nature would ever happen to me.
I've heard of such things in books, but even then I doubted how much of it could be real, and not just more composed thoughts assigned to situations in retrospect.
No, even if believed that such things did happen, I never had expected that anything like this would ever happen to me.
I was filled with a white-hot urgent excitement, giving way to a spreading, glittering warmth – something like a sparkler, or rather something that felt roughly like the impression of lighting up a sparkler or even a regular matchstick in the cold of a dark street.
In that instant, I was beyond thoughts or works.
Little I could say could seem to cover it.
My earlier concerns were all drowned out and overriden.
I would probably come to doubt it again but in that moment, I believed I was certainly glad.
"Thank you for thinking about my gift."
Was all I could say.
I didn't wish for Ikari-kun to feel any more doubt or anguish about this, but to say the gesture wasn't needed would have felt like deprecating it.
I could assure him that it was adequate, but that had the same problems.
I didn't have any scripts or preconceptions about how to respond to such a situation.
"I see your effort." I said then, because that seemed like the most important thing to convey.
"I also see your effort about the other thing as well. I was concerned about some things that day, so I might not have responded appropriately-"
"It's ok." he insisted. "I'm thankful, actually, that you told me what you like and what you don't like. I'm not super good with all this people stuff and I don't have much experience, so, uh, it's hard for me sometimes to really tell what you're thinking. So I'm sorry if I was inconsiderate..."
"Don't worry about that. If you do something that I consider a problem, I will tell you."
"It's the least I can do-"
"It isn't. It truly is not. If there's one thing I know, it would be this. It is not a common thing for people to really think about the thout the thoughts and feelings of others outside of what they mean to themselves or how they can fit into one's agenda.
It's not nothing. Don't speak of your presence in this world as if it does not matter. Don't dismiss or diminish it. You are here. It makes a difference.
It has made a great difference to me, personally, in fact. "
I grasped the hairclip and its wrapper with my fingers, faintly brushing against his.
...
I've decided.
I cannot completely exclude that my feelings and thoughts aren't influenced by Yui Ikari's genetics or the data from her personality profile, but if I were to avoid everything that has anything to do with her or that theoretically might be a product of her influence, I would be ruled by her, or possibly just my mistaken idea of her, as surely as if I copied her deliberately.
I could ruminate as long as I want about how this or that influence could be biasing or contaminating my experience, but in the end, it is what it is, and I can only be what I am.
And the conclusion I have, that seemed inevitable and self-evident to me from the first page of the journal to the last, is that Yui Ikari and I are completely different human beings.
I may have been created in an attempt to ressurect her, but that attempt was unsuccessful.
Something different and entirely new came to be in her place.
In failing to be her, at the same time, I also became something different, by virtue of those very shortcommings.
One may even regard them as not shortcommings at all, but mere difference.
That is the conclusion that seems true to me, after reading her journal.
I almost feel a little bad for reading it, for peeking at the intimate thoughts of a stranger.
I am not the person that should have it;
I should probably give it back to the Commander.
If he was hoping that reading it would make me more like his wife, his hope was as vain as on the day that lead to my creation.
Could this interpretation of things be a self-serving illusion?
Certainly.
Maybe I am not real.
I cannot prove that I'm not – in fact I cannot prove that my entirely life isn't some vivid hallucination.
But if I'm not, then it doesn't matter what I think, whereas if I am, it does matter.
So I am going to assume that I am real, just in case I am –
And that my feelings, too, are real.
I think I understand what Horaki-san meant to tell me.
I still think that it is incorrect to refer to what draws people together as not being rational or logical and I stand by the point that it is governed by the laws of physics, but I don't think that was really the crux of her argument.
That she may not have phrased it in what I would consider the most exact or strictly correct way does not change the rough gist of it. She wasn't exactly aiming for precision in her word choice.
Rather, I think that what she was meaning to bring to my attention is that no one chooses who they are drawn to – it might technically have a reason or cause such as pheromones or playing to subtle emotional associations, but on the layer of the person's subjectivity, it is not the product of choice or intention.
Subjectively, sometimes you like a person just because you do.
In this I really would not be too different from anyone else if there were factors at work that I did not fully understand or control.
No one choses who they like – normal humans don't, either.
It would be one thing if a pattern of influence were leading me to repeated problems, like choosing associates that end up mistreating me.
But when it comes to my feelings about Ikari-kun, regardless of how one might label them…
It's a good feeling.
Not always, not all the time or in every possible context, but by and large, as of now, there was more added to my life than taken away.
It is something to be grateful for, something I would miss.
So, I think that I'm glad for it, regardless of whatever unseen causes may be at work.
I'm glad, because it's a good feeling.
And wherever it came from, it's mine now.
I can ponder the origin of things for ages and ages, and what that will avail is that more time will turn to past.
But what is cannot be divorced from the meaning one gives it – that I choose to give it.
Therefore, the true self is not something that is defined by some fact, given to you from the outside, bought in the shop or found by the side of the road:
It is discovered through experience.
It is created, choice by choice, under harsh constraints, perhaps, under suffering, but at least one may choose what the suffering means, what to take away from it.
Yui Ikari's Diary still sits on the dresser.
I will pack into my bag so I can give it back.
As I do so, my eyes fall on the hairclip that Ikari-kun got me.
I left it there for want of somewhere else to put it.
I need to find a place for it.
I need to find a place for so many things that I didn't expect to need a place in in my narrow little life.
I'm a little daunted by the prospect of surplus, of things I don't know where to put.
I'm already worried of running out of space, though the space in here is not even beginning to be exhausted.
Still, I really want to give it a place, because, I think it would get lost if I just stuffed it inside a drawer, and I really don't want it to get lost.
…
"Horaki-san-"
I don't think I had ever deliberately adressed her by her name before, or, if I did, it was not often.
Most probably, if I talked to her of my own accord before, I most likely would have adressed her as the class representative, in that function.
But that did not seem approporiate for right now, for one thing, school was over.
I met her when she was about to leave the classroom right after reminding whoever was on cleaning duty to see to their tasks.
I had been waiting in the hallway.
"I'd just been wishing to say, about what we discussed during our last conversation-"
To my great surprise, she pre-empted me:
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to lecture you or tell you what to do or give you some feelgoodsy phrase – I think I might have been putting my own issues onto you.
I've thought about it, and, if anyone needs to listen to their heart, it's probably me – I'm always trying to be responsible and consider what I 'should' do, trying to be a 'good girl', but there are some situations where that isn't the right approach -
After we talked, I realized that it's actually me who needs to hear that.
I'm sorry if it seems like I just assumed that you are the same…"
"I – what you describe is not something that I can personally relate to, but I think I understand.
There is no need to apologize.
Actually, I was meaning to tell you that I found our exchange helpful.
It wasn't clear to me at the time, but later on, I think I saw the merits to it…
In any case, the matter that I questioned you about has resolved itself."
"...so you're still not going to tell me who it's about?"
I had been hoping that she would not ask this.
Though I think she noticed that.
"It's ok, you don't have to tell me if you're not comfortable.
I'm glad that I was able to help in some way at least – supporting each other without judgement is exactly what friends should do."
Friends, huh?
I would not have thought that she would count me among their number.
I suppose it may be wishful thinking, or a general tendency in attitude towards acquaintances-
Or, I decided, maybe it wasn't any of that, and I might as well take her word for it.
"I appreciate that very much – I'm not certain if I'm making it very clear, but I truly, really, do."
"That's good to hear."
...
I have to make the decision to be here.
Here, now, in this place, this time, as this person.
Unless I make that decision, nothing is ever going to happen.
Or rather everything will happen, but right past me.
I understand this, I understood it for a while, even,
but the most difficult thing to realize was that the understanding wasn't enough.
It might be enough for a moment, for a time, but beyond that, the momentum would always stall out...
I would find myself again walking into the same invisible walls that don't seem to be there for others.
Lamenting about how stepping forward seems to require of me the very thig that is most difficult, as if that were not precisely the likeliest step to be stuck at.
I picture myself, teetering that the edge of an abyss, reluctant to make the jump.
But I've really been falling the whole time.
I'm falling already.
I'm never going to stop falling.
Guided by a tragic case of multiversal irony, Shinji just happened to grab a slightly smaller version of the ill-fated dress that, in an alternate timeline, would have kicked off the plot of ANIMA. The next chapter, by contrast, is going to have kittens.