Plug Suits and Penguins
Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion
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Chapter 1: A House Visit
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He rang the front bell. He waited. He rang it again. He fidgeted from foot to foot. Checked his watch. The front door opened with an agonized creak of wood just enough to display a slash of inky pitch. The thought this was some elaborate prank, that the homeroom teacher sent him to deliver school printouts to an incognito haunted house sitting in the middle of a cramped residential block, tickled his anxiety.
"Hello?" he cast into the dark.
"Hi."
He looked down. There was a small freckled girl half-peeking out from inside the house. She appeared distracted, her eyes pulling to some unseen placid wonder.
"Hello," he tried again, wracking his brain for how to properly communicate with someone younger than him.
"What'dya want?" the girl asked. Not in rudeness, just being direct and not wanting to waste time.
"Is, this is the Horaki residence, right?"
"Yeah."
"Good." The haunted house worries abated a few steps. "Um, I'm Shinji Ikari. I'm a classmate of Hikari Horaki. I'm here to—"
"Commercial's over!" the girl got out before darting back into the house. Leaving the front door and Shinji ajar.
"… Hello?"
Shinji glanced about him on the deserted street. The lack of explicit permission to enter someone else's home made him hesitate. But school printouts for the sick class rep were school printouts for the sick class rep. She'd want to have them. Although mildly concerned for the unaccompanied minor he just interacted with, Shinji was ready to simply drop the papers on the door mat and hope for the best. When he smelled the smoke.
Still, he had the manners to remove his shoes. A house fire was no excuse for getting the carpet dirty. He stepped into a short receiving hall, lining his sneakers beside three other pairs.
"Hello?" he tried once more, already seeing the headlines in tomorrow's newspaper. Teenage trespasser, brutally murdered by homeowner, was Evangelion pilot. Politely accepted death, Horaki family says.
Down the hall the house was split by a staircase to a second floor, a living room to the left where the young girl was staring, meditatively, devoutly, at a large television belching animated color and sound over her. To the right was a smoky kitchen/dining room. A pot of soup had boiled over on the stovetop onto the floor, spreading across the worn linoleum. What was left above was turned dark, charred deep soot puffing haze along the ceiling.
Shinji stepped into the soup. It was unpleasantly warm and chunky. He switched the stove off, pried the pot free and dumped it into the sink. He swung open the small window overlooking the stove and used a spare oven mitt to fan the smoke out to the nearly non-existent backyard. He idly reviewed the ruined soup with a critical eye. Some form of carrot base, but improperly cut and strained, on way too high heat. Home Ec was indeed a lost art.
"Hello?"
Shinji froze. Someone else was in the kitchen, descended from the second floor. He was too scared to realize how absurd he looked, flailing a polka dot oven mitt at a shoebox window on carrot-stained tiptoes.
"Hello," he replied.
"… Who are you?" the girl asked. She was older, late teens. Short dark hair crowding large glasses. She apparently held no qualms about being seen in her after-school attire of sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt, left shoulder visible.
He spoke through a panic attack. "I'm Shinji Ikari. I'm a classmate of Hikari Horaki. I was sent to deliver—" The printouts currently absorbing a fair amount of carrot soup on the floor. "Sorry, sorry," he prattled. "The door was open and I smelled smoke and the soup was burning and—"
"Kodama!" the young girl leisurely hollered from the living room. "The kitchen stinks!"
"—can't leave or I will fall in this soup—"
"Okay," Kodama, the older girl, said. She looked utterly fine with the situation and explanation. "Ah. The soup burnt. That was that stench. Knew I forgot something." She calmly watched him. "Thanks."
"Sure."
"We should probably clean this up. I'll catch hell if Dad or Hikari sees it."
"Sure."
They cleaned. Shinji cleaned. Kodama tried to clean, didn't know how, so Shinji cleaned. Kodama sat at the kitchen table and offered motivational compliments. He was good at cleaning. Very efficient and thorough.
"Sorry," she told him as he struggled to get in the crevice of architecture between the floor and the wall molding. "I dozed off on the toilet and sort of forgot about the soup." She yawned, having reminded herself she was sleep-deprived. "Midterms and all that."
"Oh." Shinji was worried at the lack of embarrassment he felt at the release of that information, for her and him. Living with Misato had quickly desensitized him to a startling degree. "Glad I could help."
"So you know Hikari?"
"Not very well. I'm still pretty new to the city."
"A transfer in? A rarity. You came at the absolute worst time. You like all the excitement lately?"
Shinji avoided eye contact. "No."
"A smart answer. Give me boring any day." Another yawn. "It's hard to nap crammed in a shelter."
The younger girl wandered into the kitchen, her TV devotional over for the day. "Kodama, when's dinner?"
"You are free to siphon the remnants up off the floor. There's still a patch by the dishwasher Ikari didn't get to yet."
"Sorry." He rushed to remedy the oversight.
"Ikari?" The younger girl realized there were three people in the room. "Oh. The boy who likes Hikari."
Everyone over the age of eleven froze. Kodama, half-tilting her chair back, and Shinji, bent over scrubbing the linoleum.
"What?" they both said.
"You're here to see Hikari. You're a boy. So that means you like her." The girl spoke matter-of-factly, like it was the most obvious truth in the world.
Before he could complete the necessary biological functions to blush Kodama lobbed the question to him, still tilting in her chair.
"You like our sister?"
"I, no, I—"
"What, she isn't good enough for you, Mr. Big Shot Janitor?"
"That wasn't what I meant—"
"So you do like her. You think you're good enough for her, Mr. Big Shot Janitor?"
"I—"
"The kitchen still stinks, Kodama."
"That's because the janitor is dragging his heels in the soup."
It belatedly dawned on Shinji he was being teased. This was different enough from Misato's brand to throw him off guard. Kodama was, outwardly, quite staid. No half-hidden smirk screaming to break free. No sly squinting, no cloying tone of voice. Maybe Kodama was just too tired to properly access what he came to know as typical female ribbing.
"I'll clean it up," he sighed. He preempted further banter: "I don't know your sister well. It would be rude to speak like I do."
"Another smart answer," Kodama said, disappointed. She dropped level in her chair.
"So, no dinner tonight?" the younger girl asked.
"I'm putting you in charge, Nozomi. Head chef for the day. Make whatever you wish."
"So, no dinner tonight."
"Not without a miraculous recovery by Hikari."
"Um…" Shinji quietly ummed in their general direction.
Psychic Schoolgirl Kodama perked up a degree and put down the takeout directory. "You can't cook as well as clean, can you, Ikari?"
A few weeks ago, no, he couldn't. His teacher handled their meals of austere simplicity and Shinji was ordered to clean up after. Fate and basic nutritional requirements demanded he learn or starve, post-Katsuragi. Not that he claimed any real prowess, but it had to be better than the burnt carrot soup between his toes.
"I can try."
"Try away."
So he tried. There were no carrots left in the fridge, the entire bag seemed to have been dumped in hot water without even being peeled, but soup was the obvious choice if he was indeed cooking for everyone in the house. He simmered stock and began dicing other vegetables.
"Is Ms. Horaki very ill?" Shinji asked, opting to dial back the seasoning on the broth.
"Just strep. But she's always totally debilitated whenever she comes down with anything. Bedridden and bemoaning her cruel fortune."
"It must be hard for her." He met a lack of understanding. "I mean, she always seems so busy at school."
"You said you didn't know her."
"I…" Hope trailing off indistinctly will end this inquiry. Kodama patiently waited for him to expound. "I don't. But I can see she's a very diligent class representative."
Kodama made a kind of humming noise. "That she is."
"All we're having is soup?" Nozomi asked, sitting up at the kitchen table beside her sister. Shinji multitasked into making rice. "… And dessert?"
"Don't get greedy."
A new yawn sounded from the kitchen doorway. Hikari, clad in penguin print pajamas, complete with a tail flap and beaked hood, wandered in from upstairs. Bleary-eyed and still feverish, she walked right by Shinji at the stove.
"When's dinner?" she rasped. She paused in mild surprise. "It smells good."
"Yeah," Kodama said, silently shushing Nozomi. "It does. How are you feeling? That diarrhea clear up yet?"
"No. And we're out of toilet bowl cleaner."
"Duly noted. If you're not back to normal, maybe go easy on the spices, Ikari."
"Who?"
Hikari turned, saw Shinji, the new kid, miles out of context in her kitchen, wearing her apron and making soup.
"Ikari."
"Ms. Horaki." He took a breath to say more, say anything, and never got the chance.
"Shiiiiiiiiit," Hikari hissed, blushing over her freckles. She bolted from the room, penguin tail bouncing on her way back upstairs.
Nozomi laughed, a pleasant, lilting din. Kodama managed a smile around another yawn. Shinji finally felt a degree of embarrassment.
"Don't worry about her," Kodama told him, rising from her chair. "She'll get over it. Not quite the class rep you're used to, huh?"
"I guess not."
"Well, what's public is public and what's private is private. Usually for a reason." She extracted the soup ladle from him. "Thanks for dinner. I can take it from here."
"You're sure?" Visions of the allayed house fire seized him.
"Probably. I won't nod off on my feet. And it is getting late. Your folks will worry."
Highly unlikely. But to avoid a therapy session with strangers, Shinji relented. He untied Hikari's apron, a frayed cloth mosaic of stains from countless meals, and handed it to Kodama. She held it, hesitated. She looked at what she was wearing, opted not to care. She hung the apron back on its rung by the fridge.
She snuck a taste of the vegetable soup. "Not bad. Four out of five stars, because I hate peas."
"Sorry—"
"Sorry about the socks," Kodama told him. "Bill Hikari next time you see her at school, okay? Nozomi, see our guest out."
"Come on," she told Shinji as she slid off her chair.
He started after, but remembered his socks. He removed them, bowed politely and said goodbye.
"See you around," Kodama said, stirring the soup.
"Do you still like Hikari?" Nozomi asked him as he put on his shoes in the front hall.
"I, what?"
"Since you saw her pajamas and heard about her poop."
"I… do not think less of her." She was the model of prim restraint next to Misato.
"Okay. Bye." She left him tying his right sneaker, sockless, and wandered back into the kitchen to inquire about food again.
"… Bye," Shinji said to the Horaki house.
He left, meeting a late afternoon sun descending into a bed of soft violet and orange. He walked home beneath unlit streetlamps.
"I'm back," he announced to the empty apartment.
Technically not empty. While Misato was at NERV on a late shift, Penpen was here. He emerged from napping in his fridge, drowsily squawking after Shinji for missing his afterschool snack.
"Okay, okay," Shinji soothed, removing his shoes in the entryway. "I'll be right there."
He paused, seeing his bare feet. He recalled his socks were in his pocket. He weighed them in hand, heavy with carrot soup, trying to process the afternoon. It was jarring, interacting with people besides his old teacher. He had been so humorless and severe. Shinji began to think he was the outlier. Maybe people were supposed to be weird. Normally abnormal. Maybe they were all supposed to like teasing each other at every opportunity. Maybe he had to get used to that.
He tossed his socks in the laundry hamper. Maybe he would charge the class rep for a new pair.
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Next chapter: more penguins, less plug suits.
