(Exhaustion)
The things that cannot be changed must be borne.
There is no point in getting worked up about it, no point in responding, in having any opinion at all, for that would change naught – it is what it is, so, one must live with it. Arrange oneself with it.
I had known this a long time.
It was impossible for me not to know it.
The principle had been made apparent to me on uncountably many occasions, through a plethora of examples.
I knew it well, through unforgiving bone-deep experience.
I bore with so many things already, pushing through with grit teeth, with nary a sound, from the horrid and unspeakable to the grinding daily assault of merely uncomfortable details.
So what is a hostile and disagreeable colleague added on top of that?
Yet another facet of reality that would have to be endured, nothing more, nothing less.
She may be grating on us quite noticeable so soon after her arrival, but in time, I was sure, we would simply get used to her. She would just become another part of life, another aspect of battle proceedings, another happening in my awareness, making noise on the sidelines.
Nothing more, nothing less.
There was no point in even grudging or resenting her.
She would come, she'd say her piece, and then she would be done and fall silent.
...
Predictably, the Second Child was added to our class.
Somehow, Ikari-kun and his friends appeared surprised by that.
I suppose Aida and Suzuhara at least had solid reason for being surprised – for in and of itself, the Second's education could be considered complete.
But we were not in this school for our education. We were here to keep up appearances, for purposes of camouflage and security. Our education would not matter at all, once the Third Impact came in just a few months' time.
This of course was not known to my classmates at all when the Second came waltzing through the door. She was well endowed so as to attract attention and adept at compelling it. Her appearance, her academic track record, her athletic prowess and her apparent confidence, all this, I presume, must have seemed appealing to my classmates.
Desirable to those attracted to girls, a strategic choice of friend in the social games and hierarchies even to those that weren't.
There was a great deal of talking and fuss, I noticed, simply because one could not help but notice.
Soon she could be glimpsed amid circles of followers and admirers.
It did not pay this much heed, as it was none of my concern.
What surprised me however was to spot the class representative in the circle of girls ringing her.
I'd known her as a person of genuine and sincere character and would not have expected her to be drawn to positions of social dominance.
Though of course I was aware that I, as each one of us, saw the world colored through the lens of being myself. Not even just colored by my personal bias, but rather, influenced by the way that people respond to me simply because I am me.
I do not think that I inspire fond responses.
And so it is with everyone:
Those who are attractive and charming may think of people as brighter and chattier.
Those who are discriminated see bigots everywhere, for the worst of the worst come to seek them out.
Ikari-kun and I saw the Second Child through the sights of those she'd named as rivals.
Perhaps she might be very different with a simple friend whom she had no reason to see as a threat. Maybe when she was with Horaki-san you might see a glimpse of the regular girl that she might have been in another life, had she not been singled out to spend her youth in combat.
But whatever other side there might have been to her – the her that wasn't an EVA pilot, a simple girl names Asuka Langley – she was as inaccessible to us as those intermediate quantum states that decayed upon observation.
Just by being us, by being tied to the meanings and representations that she had attached to us, we triggered those neural pathways in her that were interlocked with the desperate assertion of social dominance.
In particular, Ikari-kun did.
Her mind was made up, her view fixed.
It was as if she could not see his reluctant, uncertain demeanor – or if she did, she did not care. Perhaps she took offense at that, too, that he was not what she expected and did not slide into the role assigned to him.
Even so it should have been evident that his whole manner was placating, that he wished not for competition.
I knew little of people, but even I could tell.
The supposed talent that had drawn her ire and her envy was but a curse to him.
He would swap it in a moment for the chance of having been prepared – or for not having to fight at all.
Yet she resented him for a gift he'd got unwanted, as if that single rose smelled sweeter than her own rich bouquet of gifts, as if this last pearl missing from her collection made her own riches taste sour.
She had it out for him – it was so plain that one couldn't possibly miss it.
Be it at NERV or, in the classroom, one often saw her aiming jabs and jeers at him – "Sure, your synch rate's increased again, but it's still way below mine."
If the adults so much as strayed out of earshot, and no, sometimes even while they were there, she wasted no time in disparaging his courage, skill and intelligence at every possible turn, always in that same disdainful superior manner. "stupid stupid stupid – as expected of a spoiled little Daddy's boy."
She never stopped hammering him with it, and he shrunk under her barrage of insults every time, or at least so often as I witnessed it.
I wondered often if I should say something, but I expected not that this would do anything further than just to provoke her further. If she snapped at me, that didn't matter, but I didn't wish to be responsible for her taking it out on him as soon as I turned my back.
Behold another paradoxical behavior: If you so disliked a person, why did you not simply leave them alone? If their presence was so loathsome, why not simply minimize the time you spend in their vicinity or the number and duration of your interactions?
It seemed the most logical thing, yet despite her attested prodigious intellect, this idea did not seem to have occurred to the Second.
It's as if our mere existence, quiet and unobtrusive in our own corners, was to her some deathly insult that demanded retaliation.
As if by minding our own business, little more than complete neutrality, or, in Ikari-kun's case, even repeated attempts at politeness, the most undemanding, unobtrusive, harmless acts we could possibly have sent her way, we were still somehow withholding something she felt rightfully entitled to. Praise? Attention? Deference?
I knew not and I cared not.
She was needed for the defeating of the angels.
Thus, she must be endured.
…
In the beginning, the Second Child's crosshairs were for the most part set on Ikari-kun.
Maybe it was because his uncommonly swift mastery of Unit One presented a possible threat to her perceived dominance, or perhaps it was simply that she found him easier to get a reaction from… but this does not mean that I was left alone.
One day, during recess, not long after she transferred, a curious incident occurred.
I had been sitting on a bench near the lower portion of the schoolyard, reading a sizable volume on genetics.
My head was in the book, all my surroundings and even my own being mercifully forgotten in the relief of immersion. Intense concentration was about the closest that I ever came to release from the labor of living – if I could have, I think I might have spent my entire time absorbed in one thing or another.
Alas, I was about to be snapped right out of it.
At first I only marked a shadow blocking out the sun from the page in front of me.
I cared not what it was, I merely shifted a few inches to the right.
But then the shadow followed, revealing what I'd assumed to be a coincidental obscuration for an intentional act.
She stood broad and proud on the brick wall beside my seat like an actress upon a stage: Much like during her introduction, she had arranged to face me from an elevated position, placing me squarely beneath her.
It seems she would not even lower herself to calling out to me – instead, she had made a display out of interrupting my reading, as if to make me look at her first.
"Yo, First Child!" she called out, her smirk poorly concealed as a smile.
"Seems like don't have a lot of friends."
"What of it?"
I understood that it was relevant in the context of her lording her social status upon me, and that it was generally considered desirable to have associates.
But it was nothing to me, so I answered as if it was nothing.
My purpose here was not the same as the other students – and even if it had been, I found it nonsensical to treat it as a competition. People were not points to be racked on on some scale, tokens to collect or objectives to be won or lost. Rather, they were independent actors who extended or recalled their association based on their affinities, likes and dislikes.
It was not simply a binary notion of approval or disapproval. People were different from each other. They had different needs. Besides they differed in their desires and goals, in what kinds of friendships they wanted and what they wanted out of them – so more was not always better. One might prefer a small, but tightly knit group, as some of the characters in the books I'd read.
Ikari-kun was probably such a person. Not all were the same. Not all are inclined to be friends with everyone.
I suppose I, in particular, was very different from my classmates in both my traits and my goals, so, it wasn't surprising that few associates had been found. Only one or two, really, and they were awkward, loose ones. Ikari-kun and perhaps Horaki-san.
I wasn't even too sure about Ikari-kun, really, as of late our time together as pilots had been dominated by the Second's presence so there had not been as much time to converse one on one.
But it was everyone's good, individual right whether to associate with me or not – it was not an indictment on a person if there were few, nor was it proof of superiority if there were many.
It meant merely that, for the Second Child, her agenda happened to align with that of many others.
She wanted status and popularity – the others wanted proximity to it. It was a mere transaction.
A few of her swarm of followers might well be genuine friends – such as Hokari-san, whom I could not picture as seeking after status, but most were probably not.
So far as genuine connections went, she might not have had all that many more than I.
Not that this was a notion that she herself would have considered – in her mind, her quickly-found popularity entitled her as surely as a golden crown to address with mocking pity and condescension:
"I was thinking I might fix that – I know we didn't get off on the right foot so far, but I'd be willing to bury the hatchet. What do you think? Us girls gotta stick together now that everyone's gotten so obsessed with praising the rookie?"
"What do you mean?"
Nothing of what she was suggesting there was making very much friend.
She looked at me like she must have thought me a complete imbecile.
"I'm saying let's be friends."
I did very much catch that implication, thank you very much. What confused me is that nothing in her previous behavior appeared compatible with any such intention.
Even now, she was facing me from a position of superiority, not equality.
Even literally and physically.
Besides, I barely knew her. I had not seen enough of her that might move me to associate with her – indeed, irrelevant as this was to our professional relationship and duties, her actions had rather moved the opposite of liking. It made no sense.
Thus, I asked:
"Why would we do that?"
The very notion seemed to affront her.
"What do you mean 'why'?! Do you need a reason? It would be practical is all."
'Practical'? Is that all the value that friendship has to her? I can't claim to be an expert, but for all that she seems to consider her friendship so valuable that it seems inconceivable that it could be refused, she didn't seem to hold it as anything especially precious that was given away only with great care.
But of course, just as I thought, this wasn't really about companionship or connection, but about hierarchy. She was approaching me as a great silver-back, looking to see a gesture of submission. Submission that, to her, would be quite practical, as it would mean victory in her imaginary contest of competing with us.
Honestly, I'd rather not.
Any bond I would have with an actual human would mean strain and difficulty, but in this case, there was no promise dangling at the other end.
She gains popularity & victory, and I gain nothing, but that I'd be expected and obligated to endure her presence and take part in onerous social rituals.
She had clearly already decided what she thought of me.
Everything I did would just be interpreted according to those assumptions – in essence, she had never seen me from the first, as most people did not, and if I was to try and convince somebody, I did not know why in the name of god I would choose her.
If I looked inside myself, I could find absolutely no desire to take her up on her offer.
There was nothing to be gained but exhaustion and frustration.
There was nothing of meaning to be found.
Nothing inside me compelled me to say yes.
This was all about hierarchy, which I wanted nothing to do with -
She came to me flaunting some kind of superior status, as one taking pity on a helpless, hapless thing, something to look down on.
I had absolutely no interest in that.
So this was what I say:
"I will cooperate with you insofar as I am ordered to."
Nothing more, nothing less.
I may have no choice about whom I spend my time when it comes to my duties, but for whatever narrow slice of my existence that I could be considered to have any distant semblance of control over, I'd rather choose to keep it for myself, or at least, to give it out only to people of my choosing rather than whoever felt entitled to come knocking, as if my time and attention were in fact theirs by right and thus something I was wrongfully withholding.
I had to endure enough as it is.
As a pilot, I obviously had no choice but to cooperate with her sometimes – this, I would do.
I had never said that I wouldn't.
I would do what they asked so I might be left in peace again.
I was doing nothing to her, but simply existing. I left her be whenever I could, so I didn't see why she could not extend the same courtesy.
Her response, then, came as a moderate shock to me, a wave of anger and displeasure that startled me where I sat – a loud, hammer-like voice that seemed to ring all the way into my bones:
"What do you mean, 'If you're ordered to'? What the heck is wrong with you, first?"
I suppose, too many things to count.
I was well used to being thought of as repulsive – as something that puts others ill at ease.
But this went further than that – it seemed an eruption of a more personal kind of rage.
For reasons that may be much clearer to one who knew the story of her life, something about what I'd said must have set her off. Maybe it was some phrase I used, or something about the situation – I have no means to comprehend.
But I think this might have been when she well and truly began to despise me.
"Who the heck do you think you are, anyways? I'm trying to be nice to you, and do you a favor, and you give me this!"
I never asked for such a 'favor".
"I'll have you know that I only talked to you 'cause Hikari asked me to make up with you! Everyone else said that you've got to be antisocial or retarded, but you know what? I think it's both!"
Thus she marched off, her true opinion and intention made plain.
I was confounded at that moment, but I think now that she may have taken my lack of interest as a personal rejection, something she may have been sensitive to.
But it is also my own inexperience in interpersonal matters that might have been to blame.
I had not realized then that there is not really a socially acceptable way to express neutrality.
There is this concept of 'damning by faint praise', another of these rituals of saying the opposite of what one means. If somebody says 'I don't like you' it is usually meant to signify that you actively dislike them, not just a lack of affinity.
It seems paradoxical to me, as you cannot possibly be informed enough about everything situation, thing or person in the world to have an opinion on them.
If you do not know yet, does it not make sense to reserve judgment?
Likewise, one cannot possibly be friends with all the billions of people on the globe – time and energy are limited, so one must choose. Besides, I was not here to make friends. I was here to pilot EVA.
What I meant to express was that I didn't have any particular interest in spending further time with her, for reasons I was content to keep to myself. It was not my intention to slight or spurn her, but for her, who might have assumed that everyone always wants more friends to rack up more popularity points, the only reason one would refuse, I suppose, must be because I had judged her as unworthy.
As if being admitted into my nonexistent "circle" were some prize that one might be denied – I had nothing to give or offer. There was no benefit in me saying yes, other than for her pet projects of rivalry and status.
I was not keeping anything from her.
One could not withhold what doesn't exist.
Especially not when she was not wanting for companions to lavish attention on her – why did she need my attention, too?
Me not wanting to associate was simply a choice, not a judgment on her. I wasn't saying that nobody should choose to spend time with her. I was simply saying that I did not wish to, and frankly, she had not given me reason to wish to. I would not even have considered this choice final or unchangeable.
Yet all the same, the reality was that she felt slighted, and that this was bound to have consequences.
…
It was not long before things came to a head, in a manner of speaking – an incident, that, in time, would stand out as one of the first defining frames of what my relation to this new colleague was bound to be dominated by.
At the time, I was merely trying to get from A to B, dragging myself through yet another day where I was required to do very many things. I no longer even recall just what it was that Doctor Akagi had needed me for. It was at NERV.
I was to cross one of the many narrow overpasses or catwalks at the facility, as I had done so very many times. There were too many to count, too many to give names to.
It was a banal moment that would not have been worth retaining in memory, but for one unexpected occurrence: As I neared the pass from afar, I could hear the noise of raised voices, of harsh, snickering laughter.
The path, narrow as it was, was already occupied. I was witnessing yet another scene of the Second Child bringing her weight to bear upon the Third, making one mean-spirited comment or another.
I recall not. She made so many of them and they seldom differed in substance. There was little I could do.
It was one of the many loud and awful occurrences that I could do little to change.
Silent and startled, it was all I could do to bear the noise.
The most relevant facet to this, so far as my purpose in this world was concerned, is that the pair was blocking the path upon the narrow catwalk, and that my destination was on the other side.
The Second Child, in particular stood wide with her feet broadly apart, her hands wildly gesturing.
If I'd tried to steal past her, there would have been a non-zero chance that I might have got smacked in passing through the commotion.
I had no choice but to resort to using my voice, to engage with the outside, which felt at times no less strenuous than putting on my clothes and descending down the stairs to fetch something from the next available convenience store – unless it was quite urgent, I rarely even bothered.
Both with the forgotten ingredients, and with the speaking,
at least if it meant involvement in these ugly, dreadful affairs.
"Excuse me, but could I get by?"
It surprised me not how the Second whirred around, still quite fired up from her argument with Ikari-kun, bristling as if my very presence were some tailored, personal insult.
Still she did lower her arm, which I took as my best chance to go and pass her by.
In keeping my head low and desisting from further words, I had hoped to perhaps be left in peace, that she would content herself with just a sneer, or but a passing comment.
But it seem that, in her mind, she had been spited by some absence of due deference.
If she found me so unpleasant, you'd think she'd just be glad to see me gone. You'd think she'd let me pass, relieved that she'd had to hear and sense as little of me as possible.
I could not for the love of me understand why she would come barging after me, leaving Ikari-kun to whirl around in alarm.
"Oi, First! Don't just ignore me!"
Though I had not turned to look, I could more or less reconstruct what they were doing from the sound of their feet on the flooring.
She was getting uncomfortably close.
"Seriously! The least you could do is say hello, or, I don't know, look at us."
So look I did, turning back my head just enough to line my glance up with hers.
I did this because I wished to avoid further unpleasantness, though I couldn't understand why she'd be so insistent. What did it matter where I was looking? What purpose could there be in wishing a good day to someone who certainly wasn't wishing for my day to be good?
Why did she think she got to dictate even the direction of my eyeballs?
Well. It is not as if very much in this world was much up to my choice.
I figured that this would be one more thing to be endured, as she came strutting up to me: "Do you think you're too good to talk to us because you're the Commander's little favorite? I wonder what he sees in such a frigid little bitch!"
She was yelling very loud now.
I hoped she was satisfied now, having said her piece.
I had somewhere to get to, and I didn't see much of a point in standing here for her to yell at to her heart's content. It was obvious from her words that she didn't understand in the slightest what she was speaking about, so her words were simply noise aired for her leisure.
All I had to say to that was this:
"I fail to see how this is any of your business."
With that, I'd turned around. I had put up with enough of this as it was. There wasn't much I could do to stop her, but at least, I'd like to now, even if it was only to make it to a place where I would be prodded and poked at.
But it seems she was not inclined to be so merciful.
Tired as I was, the sudden grasp on her hand on my shoulder was bristling overload, her shrill voice so close to my ears a garish, unforgiving screech:
"HEY! Look at me when I'm talking to you! Don't you dare act like you're better than me just because you're the favorite, you creepy bug-eyed freak!"
The yelling and her grasp, the steamroller force of her all up and close in my face, even the spit flying out of her mouth as she went chewing the scenery – it was all. Too much.
Like a loop of nails on chalkboard -
I wanted to be home by myself so bad.
I could not catch my bearings before I felt the force of her grip pulling me around; It was all I could do to brace for the impact of whatever she sees fit to do next, to stand still and frozen so as to not provoke even more of her wrath, so that she would be satisfied and move on and not to worse than she could have – but the next blow never connected.
Instead I heard another voice – a glimpse of another hand, pulling hers away from me.
"Hey! Cut it out! What the hell are you doing?!"
Ikari-kun. Trying as I might to tune out the whole of this unforgiving place, his presence had almost completely slipped from my consciousness – now he stood right behind her second, her wrist fast in his grasp.
He would not resist her torments when it was his own self at the receiving end, but now, for some reason, he had gone and intervened.
It was just about the last thing that I had ever expected to happen.
I felt a spine of apprehension when her gaze turned now on him, but to my surprise, she responded not with bristling aggression, but cold, aggrieved appraisal.
"So that's how it is…" she concluded, in this quiet small voice that I had not known her to use before.
Affect soon flooded past the initial shock of realization: "First Misato, and now you two! Everyone's so fucking lovey-dovey today, huh?!"
She withdrew her hand with a jerk, and went stomping off right past us, fighting to transmute some other emotion into rage.
It seems she had no further desire to be looking at our faces.
Rattled still, I rubbed my hand against the spot where she had touched me, as if to wring out the lingering sting of the sudden, assaulting sensation.
The concern was plain on Ikari-kun's face as he watched her disappear around the corner.
"She got the wrong idea…" he concluded, his tone betraying some marked fatigue of its own, some barely held back distress.
What idea? Though I suppose it did not matter.
He must be tired, from having to deal with her even more often than I did.
"Why does she have to be like this?" he wondered, worn enough to sound pained.
"We're the only allies we have, in the whole entire world, and yet…"
"Homo Homini Lupus." I remarked.
"...Huh?"
"Man is to Man like a Wolf. Meaning that the worst enemy of mankind is often mankind itself. The Commander is fond of this saying. It just seemed applicable. To this situation."
Ikari-kun sighed, letting out a deep, long exhale.
"…father likes to say that, huh?"
Contemplating this, his pupils trailed off to the corners of his eyes.
"It sounds like something he'd say. Not that I'd really know that much, about what he's like, or what he likes to say. But it still feels right somehow."
