"Soryu-san, you look so cool!"
"Mana-chan's right, those look perfect on you!"
The day outside the classroom window is grey and dull. There are no birds flying or cotton clouds swirling about, only a great overcast dome that smothers out the sky like ash. I don't turn to my classmates, but I do allow my head to shift from the left to a neutral position. I can hear them better as a consequence. Kirishima and Horaki address Her.
Kirishima says: "I couldn't pull off that style. I don't have your eyes."
Horaki says: "Where'd you get them? Were they expensive?"
I look slightly to the right with only a motion of my eyes. The Second wears a newly-purchased pair of sunglasses. They are ruby red browlines with gold-colored frames around black-tinted lenses. I cannot see precisely what the others mean about Her appearance as She sits ahead of me. She flicks Her wrist in a vague direction.
"Downtown."
Kirishima puts a hand to her mouth to catch a gasp. The sincerity of her interest is suspect, so much so that even I can tell. Horaki's mouth hangs open honestly.
"Gosh, Asuka, I didn't know they paid you that much..."
The Second waves Her wallet in front of the others with Her Gehirn ID facing outwards.
"Employee discount. Applies everywhere in Tokyo-3," She says. "I still paid out the butt, though, 'cause these ones have the blue light filter coating."
"Blue light filter?" Kirishima asks. The sincerity of her ignorance rings true this time.
The Second sighs as if in agreement. "You know, the crap that's supposed to melt your eyeballs and keep you up at night? Blocks it out."
"Sugoi..."
"Not like it'll do me any good on this shitty day."
I turn back towards the window. The sky is a comfort. It reminds me of the sense of enclosure I have looking up under the GeoFront. If I angle my neck so, if I narrow my eyes so, the grey fills my vision until there's nothing left beyond or within me.
The chimes ring, the school day ends. I slowly shift myself around to stand. My joints ache, my back is stiff. I haven't moved for a long time. The class empties by the time I rise. Ikari-kun has long since left in tow behind Her, goaded along by Her haranguing. For them it is too easy to pretend, to be afraid, that they don't know how to stop.
When I turn to leave, a glint catches my eye from the middle of the classroom. Two lenses leer out at me from inside Her desk.
I pick up the sunglasses and point them at myself. The lenses are black. They shine under the classroom lights like big, wet eyes. I put them on, I want to see. I glance around the room, then up at a light fixture. The lenses dull my vision so that the world, though it stays in focus, is not so vivid anymore. I register a sense of... relief.
I want to see more.
Looking back at myself in the bathroom mirror is a human-shaped girl very much like me, but perhaps a copy who was taught to accessorize. I place my hands on the counter and lean in. The color of my eyes is duller through the tint, but still red unqualified. Two red rings that narrow due to the shadow I cast with my face.
I stand erect to experiment further. First a frown, then I purse my lips. I bite my lower lip and look down just enough so I can peer over the top. Two red rings against white over the thick red frame. With one finger, I push a corner of my mouth up into a half-smirk. The expressions feel unnatural to me, but the complementary effect is undeniable. My reflection looks... I look...
"So cool."
Sugoi.
At the schoolyard gate, I am faced with a dilemma. I want the sunglasses. Surprise doubles within me: One, I wish to keep something that's not mine? Two, the overcast renders their practical purpose redundant, but still I wish to wear them?
I lift my foot before I know which way to turn so I set it down again.
The sunglasses belong to Her, and I do not desire a memento of Hers to remember Her by. It is right that I return them. To return them, I could bring them to Major Katsuragi's residence. To bear them there, I could wear them. All the conflicts cancel out, the equation is in balance, and my two feet take me towards the solution.
Just before the rail station, I pass the entrance to one of the new walking trails carved through the city. I heard of them by chance while Dr. Akagi and Lt. Ibuki argued about their utility. Dr. Akagi believed that they were "ridiculous baubles of a pre-Impact time, when leisure wasn't a luxury" but Lt. Ibuki said she liked to walk them on her days off and spot which birds had returned. The trail winds over to a station on the way to Major Katsuragi's, though in a roundabout way. Taking it would allow me to wear the sunglasses longer...
The crush-crush of gravel on the trail feels novel under my feet. I am used to tile and stone and concrete, three unyielding surfaces. Here the Earth is not so certain, it moves and slides, but if I focus on the grey horizon I keep my bearings. People approach me in the other direction.
First, a group of school children younger than my apparent age. A pair of boys in gakuran and a girl in sailor fuku. The boys look at me, the girl looks at the boys. She punches the one closer to her as they pass.
Then, a man and his dog approach. The man nods.
"Wan wan! Wan wan!" barks the dog. At first the dog takes a few tentative steps towards me, then bolts behind his owner.
"Ah, I'm sorry, miss! He's not usually like this!"
"Wan wan!" the dog barks from behind the man's legs.
"Pochi, what's wrong with you?! You're scaring the girl!"
That isn't true, but correcting the man would not cause the dog to understand.
"Wan! Wan!"
The man shrugs at me again and he hurries the frightened dog named Pochi past me.
A young couple, a man and a woman, come next. The woman bears an infant girl in a harness on her chest. The two adults wave, but the infant stares.
"C'mon, wave at the nice girl!" encourages the man, presumably the father.
The infant is unmoved by his entreaty.
They pause in their walk and, for reasons subterranean to my own consciousness, so do I.
"Say hi, c'mon," the woman adds, presumably the mother.
The infant looks towards the man, instead, in fear.
I think of the girl who punched the boy. Do I upset women? The girl from earlier, Dr. Akagi, and The Second come to mind. The mother isn't upset by me, though.
It's then that I think of the dog shrinking away from me.
WAN WAN! WAN WAN!
It's then that I think of holding the glasses in my hand. The lenses, so big and glistening. Menacing, dead. It evokes the memory of a film I've seen.
"Lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes."
A doll's eyes.
I take the sunglasses off and, having no better place to put them, tuck them into the waist of my skirt. The tension between myself and the infant dissolves.
"Aww, were you scared, Tsu-chan?" the woman asks.
"Her name is Tsuki," explains the man.
The infant named Tsuki looks back at me like I had played a trick on her. As though I shouldn't yet be believed. I wave by a curl of my fingers, a gesture that tends to win trust with the least sophisticated of humans. Perhaps they find the undulation of the motion soothing?
"Hello, Tsuki. I am Rei."
Tsuki flaps her arms in poor imitation. She looks directly at me with her own big blue baby's eyes.
"My, you have such striking eyes, Rei!" the woman says. "I think Tsuki likes them."
"I see," I say. "Farewell."
I continue my walk along the trail, shaken, not feeling myself, which is strange because it means I must have some idea of who I am.
There is no response to the doorbell at Major Katsuragi's apartment. Ikari-kun has said that I should visit whenever I want, which is never so I haven't. There is a long wait. I rest my finger on the doorbell again and count silently up to an appropriate time before pressing again.
Before that time comes, She does. The door slides open. She has, of course, changed out of Her school uniform. I find the sight of Her vaguely unsettling. When we are dressed the same, at school or work, I can imagine a sense of equivalence between us.
"What?"
But clearly there is no equivalence. I am the same, continuous, there are no shades or gradients to me, but She is made opaque by Her changeability. I regret this gesture.
Before I can answer Her question, She notices.
"Where'd you get those?!"
She plucks Her sunglasses from my waist.
"From your desk."
"Excuse me? What business did you have going in there?"
"None. I thought you forgot them." Which is a portion of the truth.
She lets out a puff of a sigh and assumes an intimidating pose, the one with Her wrists crooked against Her hips. It is effective against the other girls and Ikari-kun. Less so now as She needs to hold the sunglasses with one hand by pinching the bridge.
"If you got your creepy fingerprints on them, you'll regret it."
"I wore them most of the way so it is unlikely."
"You wore them?!" She blisters. She adjusts Her hold so that there's barely any contact between Her fingers and the frame. I register Her disgust.
"You came all this way to return my sunglasses? That's insane."
I say nothing.
"If you think that's going to impress Shinji, he's not here."
I say nothing.
"Well," She says, "you didn't have to do that."
"I know."
"Fine."
"Farewell," I say and turn around but She coughs.
"I didn't tell you to leave yet! It's going to get dark soon so I'll make Misato drive you home."
"That is unnecessary."
"Except she's not here, either, so you have to wait inside. They're out grocery shopping."
"I will go."
"First you go through my stuff. Then you take my stuff. And now you're blowing me off? Look at me when I'm talking!"
I turn back to face Her as it's only polite. She is frowning at me, a lopsided one. I've seen it before when She plans Her next words to Ikari-kun. When their effect matters.
"I'm getting really sick of you, Wundermädchen, so just come inside already!"
I obey as it's only polite.
We stand in Major Katsuragi's kitchen, the Second and me. She stares at me, so I look back. I understand that we've engaged in a skirmish, not a pitched battle, fought through our mutual glances. She tries and retries the sunglasses, putting them on, then holding them out towards the light, then repeating. When She wears them, Her eyes are barely perceptible behind the lenses, like two chips of flint in the dark.
"No smudges. Okay. Wait there," She says, pointing at the living room. "Don't come in my room, and don't bother me."
She pads off down the hall, then a door slams. I obey as I am a guest here.
Pen Pen waddles over to me. He looks up at me expectantly, which I understand is a desire to be patted. I oblige. He sits between my knees and leans against me, warking with contentment. His coat is still chilly from his fridge. He knows that I enjoy the coolness.
"You cannot speak, but I understand you best."
"Wark!"
"You are cool, too."
We sit for a while like so.
"The Second purchased new sunglasses," I tell Pen Pen. "She forgot them at school, though they are apparently of great value. I brought them here, but it was because I wanted to wear them. I saw people and a dog on the way here."
"Wark?"
I'm not certain, myself, so I continue.
"The dog and an infant were afraid of me. Others, I don't know. A woman said I have 'striking' eyes, but that was after I removed the sunglasses."
Pen Pen tilts his head up, much further than a human can, to look at me. Did he agree? I think that's what he means. I smooth his crests.
"Thank you."
I'm getting close to an epiphany, I only have to connect a few more clues. There was something Kirishima said, too, about Her eyes. And then just a moment ago in the kitchen. Her eyes were like two grey millstones.
Oh, I see it now.
I nudge Pen Pen away so I can stand. I can tell that he's disappointed, but he understands.
Standing at Her door, I find it difficult to knock so palpable my undesirability was made known, and not for the first time today. I settle on a scratching motion with one finger against the paper.
"What the hell are you, a cat? What do you want?!"
I feel ridiculous. I slide Her door open, but just a crack. She had asked me not to come in.
"I didn't say come in!" She reminds me. She lays on Her bed face down with a magazine in front of Her face, glaring at me from behind the cover. The sunglasses She left on Her dresser.
"I will not."
She kicks Her legs with slow strokes back and forth. I'm reminded of a cat's tail. It's a warning display.
"I also told you not to bother me."
"The coating on Your sunglasses works both ways."
"Huh?"
"Your eyes are blue. Your sunglasses change their natural color, they dull it."
The Second looks at me without comprehension. Her legs stop moving.
"You have striking eyes," I clarify and slide the door shut.
I stay with Pen Pen in the living room until Major Katsuragi returns with Ikari-kun.
"Oh! Hello, Rei!" the Major says when she spots me. "I didn't know you were coming over."
Ikari-kun, who I can see lurching around with his grocery bags behind the Major, blushes slightly.
"I'm sorry, Misato, I didn't know!"
"You aren't in trouble, doofus! I was just surprised. Didn't you invite her?"
"No," I say. "I came to return something—"
"Something she stole from me," The Second says, emerging from the hallway. "When's dinner? I'm hungry."
"What was it?" asks the Major.
"What was what?"
"We just got back!" Ikari-kun complains at Her, but it seems only I hear.
"What did Rei steal? Was it your good manners? Because I've been looking everywhere for those," adds the Major.
"No! It wasn't that! It was these!"
She runs back to Her room and returns with the sunglasses to model them. The Major claps her hand over her forehead.
"As you might say, Mein Gott! Those look expensive! Just how much do they pay you kids, anyway?!"
"She forgot them at school," I mention. "I brought them here."
"Asuka! You really should be more careful if you're going to flaunt your wealth like that!"
The glare directed at me is made less harsh by the dulling effect of the glasses.
(I did warn Her.)
"You do have a point, though," the Major says, sighing towards the kitchen. "I'm getting awfully hungry..."
"If you'd help me unpack everything, it'd go a lot faster..." Ikari-kun grumbles.
The Second indicates me with Her thumb to the Major.
"Well now that you're back, why don't you thank her by driving her home?"
The Major laughs at Her.
"Are you serious? Some friend you are. Rei, would you like to stay for dinner?"
"I'm not her friend!"
"No," I say.
"Then it's settled! Shinji, make four servings!"
"Start with ours first!" says the Second.
"And if you're thinking of walking home, anyway," the Major says, stepping towards me. "Forget it. You're eating here, and that's an order."
"Understood."
The Major smiles at me. She is much harder to understand than Pen Pen even though she has the power to tell me what to do. I wonder how the two of them ever got along. When the Major leaves us alone to change, The Second turns on the television and turns the volume up very high. Pen Pen lays down on a pillow to watch so I sit in a corner and wait as ordered.
The scent of Ikari-kun's cooking drifts into the living room. I close my eyes. My senses are too fully engaged. Sight, sound, smell, taste. Touch is not, though it never is. I calculate that the kitchen will at least be less noisy and less visually stimulating so I join Ikari-kun there.
"It's almost ready!" he assures me upon entering.
"Okay."
"Did you have a nice day today?"
"I am not sure."
"Oh," he says. I sit at the table, facing away.
"I frightened an infant and a dog."
"You what?"
"What are you two whispering about?" The Second barks from the doorway. She mashes the remote in Her hand to silence the television, then flicks it behind her. She has the sunglasses tucked into Her hair. The appearance is reminiscent of a tiara. "Why are you harassing babies and dogs, weirdo?"
"So how was your day?" Ikari-kun asks Her.
"I don't know what you see in Mana. She's such a bitch."
"Huh? I don't see anything in her!"
"What are you, stupid? 'I don't have your eyes!'" She says in a fair imitation of Kirishima's voice. "The hell does that mean? Racist."
"I don't think Kirishima-san meant it like that."
"You Japanese are so weird about that stuff."
"Asuka!"
"What?"
"I think she meant... I mean, that... Your eyes are... Very..."
The Second makes a curious smile with much teeth. She plows a looping path around the table so She can brush past Ikari-kun.
"My eyes are 'very' what? Gaijin?"
"No! That's not what I'm trying to say!"
I open my mouth. I take in a breath.
"Don't help him!" says The Second. "You're not here so the two of you can gang up on me!"
"But he could use all the help he can get," the Major says, entering the kitchen with Pen Pen in tow. "When you're concerned."
"If Shinji needs to hide behind all his girlfriends for help, that doesn't say much for his manliness. His virility."
"You hear that?" the Major asks Ikari-kun. "Sounds a lot like the plot of that manga you forgot out on the veranda."
"I don't know what you—"
"You know, the harem one!"
"Mein Gott, you are pathetic!"
"M-Misato!"
"Remind me, doesn't the main character get with the red-haired girl in the end? You always seem to reread that one so I took a peek."
"MISATO!" they shout in stereo. I take advantage of the distraction.
"Ikari-kun, what do you think of the sunglasses worn by The Second?"
Everybody looks at me. It's the quietest moment since I arrived.
The Major grins: "Yeah, Shin-chan, what do you think? 'Cause I've been thinking of buying my own pair. I was saving for a down payment, but—"
The Second glares: "Don't you dare buy them! That'd be so lame. You're way too old to wear the same stuff as me!"
Ikari-kun sputters much like the food does on the stove.
"Well I think, um, I think that they're, uh, very nice."
"Very nice? They look very nice, huh?" says She. She rears up to Her full height and looms over Ikari-kun at the stove. It must be quite hot over there. "Very nice? So do I look very nice when I wear them?"
"Um, yes?"
"So!" She says. She takes the sunglasses off. "How bad do I look without them, then? Regular bad or very bad?"
"You don't— That's not what I meant!"
"Ooo, lemme try them on!" says the Major. "I wanna know what Shin-chan thinks of me!" She reaches for the sunglasses, but The Second dodges her. She is nimble.
"No way! I have to keep them on, didn't you hear? I wouldn't want to put Shinji off his appetite or he'll stay a shrimp forever."
The three of them appear to be equally unsuited to live with one another. And yet.
Ikari-kun's food is delicious. In the past I neglected the sense of taste without good reason. Eating sustains, but is a somewhat ridiculous act that felt better to get over with quickly. Not so anymore. The others agree, though the Major expresses it in less elliptical terms than the Second.
The former exclaims: "Yum!"
The latter says: "I wish this tasted worse. Now Ayanami might keep coming around."
When we finish dinner, the Major puts a warm hand on my shoulder.
"Well I think we've tortured you enough, yeah? Let's get you home."
Ikari-kun removes my empty plate from the table.
"I hope you liked it. Thanks, it was nice to cook for you!"
"She didn't come over on your behalf," says She. "Not everybody hates me, you know, despite how awful it is to look into my eyes."
"I didn't say that!"
"Aaaalright!" the Major says to me. "You've fulfilled your orders, and I'll put you in for hazard pay. Pen Pen, you're in charge until I get back."
"Wark!"
The ride to my apartment stretches silently. The Major's hands slide restlessly on the steering wheel except when she takes a tight corner. I can tell my quietude makes her uncomfortable, but for me it's not so simple as removing sunglasses.
"Rei?"
"Major Katsuragi."
"Did you really want to know what Shinji thought about Asuka's sunglasses?"
"No."
The Major chuckles.
"You follow along more closely than you let on, huh?"
"I see them, Ikari-kun and Her, as they are because I do not fear them. To understand what makes us afraid is to know one another."
"Ikari-kun and Her?"
I cringe. The Major imitated my tone. She knows who I mean, and mocks my mode of address.
"Yes. Her."
"Very well!" she says. "Asuka by any other name would be as annoying, huh?"
I say nothing.
"Would you like to come over more often?"
"I will if I'm ordered to."
"What if I wanted you to?"
"I have disappointed others before," I say. "I am a source of discord."
"Are you kidding? I haven't seen them that happy in ages... You're good for them, and they're good for you."
I don't know what to say.
"I wish I had a friend like you back when I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and stupid, and mostly friendless, and maybe I get too loud and annoying for my age, and... I forget where I was going with this."
I say: "I do enjoy Ikari-kun's food."
The Major says: "I didn't mean a friend for him, necessarily," then nothing more, and I feel a discomfort I can't shake.
I step beyond the pile of mail into my apartment and cross directly to my dresser. I, too, own a pair of glasses. I take them from their case, I put them on and seek out the mirror. Looking back is a human-shaped girl wearing glasses. These lenses work both ways in that they show me nothing, nor change my appearance to any great degree. My vision is already perfect. Unchanging. I take them off, I lay them aside. I speak it, the existential mantra.
"Who am I?"
Who do you see?
I'm not sure, but I see something more than I did this morning. It is late so I undress for bed, but beside my uniform for the next day I place my ID so I don't neglect to take it downtown. I hope that the sun shines tomorrow.
A Minor Epilogue by the Major
Since Asuka moved in, I expect to return to a warzone every time I return home and I'm achingly disappointed when I don't. Shinji sits before the TV without watching. Somehow he's at his most dramatic when he's motionless. Asuka is nowhere to be seen.
"Struck out, huh?"
Shinji lets out a petulant little snort, the brat.
"People-pleasers are the worst at actually pleasing anybody. When are you going to learn?"
"I told Asuka that they looked nice. They do look nice. I didn't say anything wrong!"
I flip the TV off and sit in front of him.
"When I was younger, there was this awful man. Not like Kaji, even worse. Can you imagine? He was way too old to flirt with me. Couldn't take his eyes off of..." and I cross my arms across my chest to underline my point. "You know?"
"Misato!"
"What?! We're all adults here."
"Sometimes I think that there aren't any adults here, Misato," he says in his angry little grumble.
"Ah, well... Anyway, that guy was nasty, but I never forgot one of his lines. I caught him once, and I told him my eyes are up here, you know? And he says that my eyes are 'too striking' to look at directly. Still a creepy old man, but I liked that word. Striking! I told Kaji to call my eyes 'striking' from then on, or I'd leave him for that perv. Left him, anyway, but that's another story... I forget where I was going with this."
I can see Shinji working something out inside.
"Does Mr. Kaji still say it?" Shinji asks. "Striking is a good word for... somebody's eyes, I think."
"He told me he'd 'have to look up at them first' before he did, the jerk. Sometimes I really can't stand him! Don't know why you two worship such a bastard!"
I lurch to my feet using Shinji's head as a brace and tousle his hair to maybe get him thinking. When I reach my room, I turn to shut the door. Shinji hasn't moved. He holds the remote in his hand, but didn't turn the TV back on. Instead, he looks towards the hall.
Geez, Shinji, even Rei can see it. If there's one person you can trust, it's her.
He puts the remote down. I see the beginning of a standing motion so I shut my door to give him some privacy. I don't need to know, I only need to believe it's possible, and I do because I trust in Rei.
Endnote: Always liked this short one so I decided to repost it while I continue work on revising Bardo. It's fun and a little eerie getting inside Rei's head.