Asuka couldn't feel the pleasant sea breeze blowing over her through all the layers of clothing she had wrapped herself in before coming on deck. She had originally picked out a simple yellow sun dress for her Japanese debut, but it left her feeling exposed this time around. Instead, she wore a long and loose-fitting dress with a faint floral print. Over that she wore a heavy cardigan and over that a bomber jacket she had snatched from a naval aviator's locker.
She hadn't packed anything longer than shorts. They had told her how the climate of Japan was particularly warm since Second Impact even in winter. Instead she wore thick, dark stockings she brought for the occasional chilly days. Asuka supposed she could buy pants with her stipend once they arrived. A pair of aviator sunglasses, also borrowed from the crew, shielded her two weary blue eyes from the sun's glare.
The flight deck below crawled with activity. Out at sea, she tracked a boxy UN VTOL transport craft approaching from the direction of the mainland. She knew it was carrying her welcome party of Misato, Shinji, and his friends. Soon they would meet for the first time—again—right before the fish Angel would strike. Her mind played out a few combat scenarios based on her prior experience. She had been in training since she was four years old so it was too easy a habit to slip back into when thinking itself became burdensome.
Asuka let her head droop so she could watch the sea far below her perch on the superstructure of the aircraft carrier. The grey hull of the antique battlewagon effortlessly sliced through the water much like she could herself as she was a trained diver. She was a strong swimmer, maybe too strong. She wondered, should she fall, if she would count as flotsam or jetsam. She wondered if the difference would matter to whatever maritime authority adjudicated her death, should she fall.
She mouthed some words from her mother's lullaby: Und sperrt man mich ein im finsteren Kerker...
Asuka clutched at her stomach and squeezed, nearly caving herself in all on her own. The vast and empty hollowness within her had formed after the first few nights. A void she had wished to fill yawned wider than she had thought possible. A vacuum that pulled her flesh taut from within. The weight of the air itself felt oppressive.
Not as oppressive, though, as the hands that now rested on her shoulders and squeezed them lightly. His hands. She could not say that name or even think it any longer. Not since. She sensed that he had noted that change, but it seemed to frighten him more than hurt him. She found herself wishing the latter was the case. At least it would mean he could be still be moved by anything she felt for him.
You're disgusting, Asuka. You're pathetic.
"Asuka-chan," he said, as breezy as the wind, though with an edge that had never been there before. It made him sound like a villain in a child's cartoon. "We have to keep what you did..." he squeezed, "that night and everything else our secret. I don't think it has to be said. Nevertheless, I'm saying it. There will also be a lot more..." he squeezed again, "supervision at the GeoFront. We'll have to see less of each other, but I'll see what arrangements can be made. It will be hard on me, too."
It had been a long voyage from Germany to Japan. Asuka measured it in nights. She had designed her new reality to begin the first night out of Wilhelmshaven and put into action the very same plot that she had schemed about for weeks the first time around. It was not hard to contrive a similar situation on that first night since she already possessed the audacity to make her move. Wherever the two of them went aboard ship, they soon found themselves left alone. The UN naval personnel, wary of anybody involved with those robotic monsters that slept in baths of blood, gave the two a wide berth. Now, afterwards, the crew still did, but not because of the Evangelion.
She had thought she would pull off her plan because, like a god, she had created this fantasy to live out her infinite days. Before Japan, before the crowded little apartment, before the Angel had bored through her mind, before the bathtub and the hospital. Before the boy. She arrived at the perfect moment before her life had been completely derailed. The moment when she knew for certain who she wanted by her side.
"And," he continued, "they will notice how you've changed when you get you're processed. You won't be able to hide it so don't try. I think your last one was a few weeks before we left. You didn't have any since Unit-02 was packed for shipment, right?"
It had been a clear and starry night on the North Sea, the first night out. Asuka had scouted out the perfect place to strike on the battleship's stern. The enormous bulk of the ship's aft turret obscured a large area from any prying eyes up in the superstructure. She had practically dragged him there by the arm, leaving deep creases in his sleeve.
Asuka's heart had pounded with anticipation and embarrassment. Remembering how she had tried before brought waves of humiliation back onto herself: I was too eager, too childish. This time will be different. She still complained about not getting to see him as much when they arrived, but caught herself before she blurted out Misato's name. There was no reason to remind him of the past. When he brought up the Third Child, she had quietly unfastened the top buttons of her dress from collar to chest.
The VTOL was close enough to make out some of its larger markings, like the big UN NAVY lettering. He spoke, "Yeah, it must have been a few weeks. Just enough time. Who was that guy in your physics seminar? The one you said would stare at you? Felix?"
Asuka pressed her lips into a thin line. Her college classmates had largely ignored her, the temperamental tween prodigy, after she had humiliated herself enough times trying to approach them as her peers. They had appreciated her advanced knowledge and technical expertise as a lab partner. Some of the women had even invited her to their study sessions, though there she felt more like their mascot—or their doll—than like anything resembling a colleague. An impermeable curtain was drawn between Asuka and them outside of academics. She could sense the mood shift, when to slip away when the discussion turned towards topics only for adults, like their endlessly shifting webs of romance, sex, breakups.
The most consistent attention she garnered was the silent sort that followed her from the classroom door to her desk and back again after class was dismissed. The quiet attentiveness of a pair of eyes. In every class there was at least one pair, often more.
Asuka had developed her first and only defensive tactic purely by accident. She was late one day after a prototype sync test ran long at Third Branch. When she entered the full classroom, she made eye contact with an admirer as she found her way to her desk. His eyes widened, his predilection found out. Like a bent reed suddenly released, he shot up in his seat and turned towards the professor. There his gaze remained fixed until class was dismissed when Asuka found herself being tracked as she left.
Yeah, I see you, pervert, she recalled thinking, the whole of her soul clouding over. She had learned the principles of jiu jitsu as part of her combat training and put them to use on this battlefield. It didn't take much, just leaning forward would do. Then she'd wait one of them out. It never took long. Then, without moving, she'd swivel her eyes over and stare back. It took a moment for them to notice, but she always caught her prey.
In those moments she knew she had made the most intimate connections she ever would with her classmates. She expanded her universe of self-hatred outwards to encompass her body, too.
A sudden gust of sea air caught Asuka in the face.
"I think it was Felix," he said with more certainty.
She earnestly had forgotten his name at this point. It might have been Felix. Rarely did they bother to make introductions. She tried to shrug but the weight of his hands dampened the gesture.
"Well, when they notice, blow it off as nothing. It's not such a big deal. You grew up so fast, we all know that. They shouldn't be surprised given how attractive you are. If they press you, just blame that creep. You knew you were leaving, had a silly fling, didn't mean anything. No need to make a fuss or follow up."
And on that starry first night at sea when before he had dismissed her as a child, Asuka didn't whine or beg or fling herself on top of him.
"You're still a child," he had said then, wearily. She tugged the front of her dress open just enough. She whispered in a husky voice like something out of a movie.
"Oh? Look at me, Ryoji."
That time he did more than look, he finally saw. He saw her as the adult—the woman—she knew she was ready to become. She rolled into him and felt his resistance fail. All the usual reluctance and propriety, of prying her loose and wagging his finger, it was all a pretense just as she had long fantasized. He stopped pushing and instead pulled her into a place she could never leave.
After the first night, Asuka wondered where the butterflies in her stomach had gone. She wondered if they had hid themselves in a chrysalis like the one she had at last escaped. After the second night, she found it harder to meet his gaze. After the third, she could no longer say his name. A tepid smile had to do from then on. The butterflies were dead: that lovey-dovey stuff was for children, but what they were doing wasn't for adults. There were too many nights between Germany and Japan.
The VTOL now hovered over the landing zone. Deck crew hurried around preparing for the landing, shouting and waving their arms. Asuka blinked something out of her eyes and looked at the windows in the passenger compartment. She could see Misato and the otaku with his camera peering out, but not Shinji's face.
"Too late, again, idiot," she whispered into the jet howl.
After a final curt squeeze, he released her shoulders.
"Why don't you go out and meet Misato and the Third Child now? You remember her, right? She and I, well, it was a long time ago and people grow apart."
Asuka vomited over the rail.
Her hands gripped something metal but it was no longer a railing aboard a ship. It was the rim of a spartan steel toilet, the sort that had been installed by the thousands across NERV facilities. Asuka blinked. The water was clean of what she expected to find. Instead, a thin ribbon of pale red stood suspended in the water in the bowl.
"Disgusting, isn't it?" said a distant voice.
A cramp released its hold. It had been a bad one, jagged aches all the way down to her legs. Asuka felt somebody holding her hair back in a fist. She turned her head too suddenly and so yanked her own hair.
"Relax, it's over," murmured the person crouching over her. She released Asuka's hair.
"You're fine," said the more distant voice.
Asuka turned around. There, in a room that could have been any clinical laboratory in the GeoFront, stood Ritsuko Akagi in duplicate. The nearer Ritsuko wore a casual outfit: blue shorts and a black tank top under a sleeveless white blouse. The further Ritsuko was more as Asuka remembered her: severe with her turtleneck zipped to her chin and wearing a lab coat.
Beyond her, where the room became uncertain, a third, shapeless shadow of a figure hung in the air.
"My mother," the scientist said, "created the Magi System as a tripartite division of her own mind. Casper, her-as-a-woman," she indicated the nearer Ritsuko, who smiled, "and Melchior, her-as-a-scientist," and she indicated herself, her own lips a thin line.
Casper added, "And Balthazar, her-as-a-mother."
"We weren't sure what to make of that aspect," Melchior said at the shadow, "lacking the pertinent datapoints. However, we wanted to explore the division concept as an exercise in self-reflection."
Asuka fell back and pressed herself against the wall, coral green as she remembered. She felt her dress hanging open in the front, the same floral pattern one as that night, and clutched it shut. Her confession felt as fresh as a cut. Everything after, though, that led her to the railing high above the sea, was not so certain.
"You can't remember... let's say 'activities' outside your experience," Melchior explained.
"Such a child," remarked Casper.
"Yes. An imaginative one, at that."
Melchior stepped closer to Casper and Asuka. "Do you think 'child' could be our third division?"
Casper shook her head. "I can't remember what it felt like to be one anymore."
A dripping red spot started to show through their clothes, a circle that spread from a tiny bullet-sized point in the middle.
"I didn't think we'd ever make it here," Melchior said. "Well, we'll have to think more on this."
They both turned to Asuka.
"I'm sure we'll find each other again," said Casper.
"It's all any of us can do," Melchior added, "until the end of time."
Asuka blinked her eyes. The stark white glow of the medical wing was replaced by a dim and orange natural sunlight coming in from an open window. A late afternoon hue.
She blinked once more to adjust. Asuka beheld a mess of an off campus apartment, chaotic and cluttered. The only conscious order she could discern was that one corner appeared to be just for beer cans as several were stacked in a slanted pyramid off to one side. A trail of clothing followed a twisting, twirling path from the doorway to the bed. A dusty electric fan hummed by the window. Its even droning tone was the only sound.
The fan blew towards the bed. On the bed sat Misato, alone.
Asuka recognized the room from earlier. She had been with Shinji then. The Misato on the bed looked younger than her years in the low light. She pulled on a man's shirt, blue, and buttoned it up with a practiced motion. It hung off her, wrinkled and baggy.
Asuka looked over her shoulder. Her partner in voyeurism wasn't there like before, nor was Misato's own partner from so many years ago.
"Oh Kaji's long gone," said Misato. "This was all over ages ago."
Asuka looked down at her feet. She had gotten an answer, she had gotten much more than that, but she didn't gain an understanding. She clenched and unclenched her fists. The warm afterglow of the room couldn't penetrate her skin.
"Why wasn't it like this for me?"
"Come here," Misato beckoned. She patted the bed to her left.
After Asuka sat at the very lip of the mattress, Misato fell backwards and folded her arms behind her head. She kicked her legs out and let her feet fall down to the floor with twin thumps. She hadn't buttoned the shirt all the way down. It rode up slightly over her midriff, high enough to let a thin white edge of scar tissue peek out.
Asuka turned away.
"I learned to be good," Misato said, "at hinting at more without making it look like an effort. It only takes shrugging my uniform jacket off my shoulders to go from business to pleasure. A whiff of lavender could turn congenial into allure."
Asuka's hand found one of the flowers on her dress. She crushed it. She couldn't hide anything from Misato, especially not her memories of Misato around the apartment, casual to the point of carelessness, but never giving it all away.
"You looked up to me," Misato finished.
"I was jealous! You couldn't see?! You wouldn't tell me how! I asked!"
Asuka clutched at the neck of her dress, which was fastened all the way to the top. She remembered tearing it open at sea, the way it had really happened. She remembered when she was by the pool at the NERV recreation center pressing her chest in to see if she could get Shinji's eyes to pop out.
"I wanted to know how," Asuka whimpered.
A remembered voice: It's not for children.
Asuka made to lay down on the bed herself.
"Wait!" said Misato. "Before you do, switch the fan to oscillating. It'll feel so cool."
Misato was right. When Asuka did lie back, she enjoyed Misato's recollection of the sensation: A pleasant, wafting chill that wafted over her from head to toe.
"I miss that fan. I drove over it with my car when I moved out, don't ask me how. Anyway, I already told you why. It's because you're a child. You remember."
Asuka shook her head. "That's not good enough. I know I'm not, you know, 'all grown up' but that doesn't stop men from looking at me."
"That's when you found out that you were a woman," Misato said, chuckling. "That's different, Asuka. It happens at a different time."
"I thought it was the cramps."
"No, that's not it at all! Think about it. When was the first time you looked in the mirror and saw a woman looking back at you?"
Asuka thought back, further than she thought she could remember. Misato was there, behind her though not with her, watching.
"It was the day I caught that pervert staring," Asuka said. "After class, I went about my business for the day. I went home, I took a shower. Everything felt the same. I dried myself off and wrapped a big towel around me like always. Nothing felt different from the day before to that day. I started toweling off my hair. I stood in front of a mirror to do that. When I reached up to dry myself, I saw. My chest lifted up, too. I had seen them before, but now I saw them the way he saw. Just a little, but enough to make all the difference."
"Could you even recognize yourself? Being a women means getting found out," Misato continued. "What was I telling Shinji all the time? 'Be a man!' Some good that did, huh? But nobody ever told you 'Asuka, be a woman!' did they? Wasn't for you to choose. You weren't, now you are. They always catch us in the end."
The fan blew a chill up Asuka's leg.
"Being a child is different. Being a child means you're under everybody else's control. Nothing's yours to give," Misato found the edge of her scar with one finger. "And what we get isn't ours to choose."
Misato turned on her side to face Asuka.
"Then you become young. That's when you get out of control: they lied to you, the world isn't fair and it never made sense. After that's adulthood. That's the time when mistakes become regrets because there's no going back to fix them. You just have to make the best of it from then on and make do with what you have left."
She breathed in and out.
"I learned I was an adult by voicemail. What do you think of that?"
Why didn't he call me? Asuka thought an unanswerable question into the myriad minds. There was no response, he was truly dead.
Misato nodded. "What could he have said that'd have made it any easier?"
Misato was right. Asuka couldn't think of anything. A farewell she'd never accept. A lie about some future visit that never arrived.
"I embarrassed him all the time," Asuka said.
Misato shifted. She reached out with her free hand so she could brush Asuka's arm with her fingers. Asuka's skin stayed firm.
"I don't think so. We didn't talk about stuff like that. Really! I don't think he wanted my opinion. Maybe you reminded him too much of me."
"He wouldn't look at me so that's not it."
Misato rested her hand on top of Asuka's.
"He took responsibility for your feelings as best he could. He knew more stuff about than you than you do yourself. Sync logs, psych profiles, your grades, everything. The stuff they had on you kids read like an operating manual. Kaji, he didn't understand other people. Ironic for a spy, huh? I guess he knew how they worked, not why. I wonder if that's my fault. That's pretty egotistical, I guess."
Asuka pulled her hand away from Misato's. She sat up and hugged her legs to her chest.
"I didn't want to be his burden."
"I didn't call you that."
Asuka glowered over her knees.
"Didn't you, though? I was so stupid! I was so stupid around him because I felt him leaving me behind. He was always going away. He should have left me. I didn't deserve him. I didn't know how to make him stay. Would doing all that—if I could have done it—it wouldn't have worked, would it?"
Another cycle of the fan brought a sea breeze over Asuka.
Asuka drifted off. She resurfaced on her last night at sea, the way it had truly ended. Mr. Kaji had taken her by the shoulders and firmly pushed her back and away so he could sit upright. He pulled the front of her dress closed, then took her trembling hands and clasped them over the torn buttons. He shifted his legs just enough so that she slid off of him and onto the cold steel deck. She felt as though she had slipped off the deck entirely, like she had been cast adrift.
"Asuka, you're a very attractive girl. That's why I can't hold you anymore. You understand why it has to be this way. It's too early. For you, I mean."
I'm not a child! she wanted to scream. It has to be now, right now! she tried to cry out though her voice was a husky, wordless hiss. The pounding of her heart made the deck sway under her.
"I have business in Japan that will take up much of my time," Mr. Kaji continued. "Solo. I think that will be good for you. I'll make time for you, too, when I can."
He stood up deliberately and extended his hand to Asuka. She looked down at his feet. The words that couldn't quite reach her lips rang out in her mind.
It's you I need. You're the only one I need!
"You... you're..."
Mr. Kaji squatted down, which made Asuka shake with desperate, futile anticipation. He did not reach out any closer.
"I'm the one who's here, that's what I am to you. That's all it is. People come and go throughout our lives, you'll see. When we get to Japan, you'll meet Ayanami and Ikari and I'll be a memory. Give them a chance, okay?"
I can't do this again, Mr. Kaji. I can't do this twice in one life. There isn't enough of me. You have to take me, it has to be you!
"I... can't..."
"You can, I promise you. Everyone does, sooner or later. The other Children will understand you better than I ever could. You'll share the same burdens together."
The suggestion that she could be anything less than perfect for Kaji revolted her.
"You okay?"
Asuka knew when there was nothing left to say. She stretched her face into a smile before looking up.
"I'm fine, I'm fine. I will, Mr. Kaji. I promise," she said. "I will!" she chirped for emphasis. Once she got started, as was often the case, it got easier to pitch her voice up, to be resilient, adamant, to be good. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
Mr. Kaji waved her words away. He stood back up and brushed himself off.
"For what it's worth, It's not so fair to call you a kid. We all depend on how you can do things nobody else can. That'll make you stronger. Whatever you choose, do it because you'll come out of it stronger and wiser than before. It'll get you in the habit, trust me. I'll leave you alone for a while."
Please don't leave me!
"Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kaji."
In the off campus apartment, the sun had since set and the fan blew an uncomfortable evening chill over the two.
"Yeah," whispered Misato. "He did enjoy his time with you. A man like Kaji gets to choose his own company. Eventually, being around him got too dangerous. He didn't know how to spare your feelings. Blame me for that."
Misato swayed herself upright to sit cross-legged. She shook her head.
"Kaji didn't let anybody inside."
If I can't have all of you, I don't want any of you! Asuka recalled.
"Even when we were together—way back, I mean—he used to say he felt like I was staring at him from across a river. We'd wade over from time to time but couldn't bridge it."
Asuka sat up, too.
"Let me see your scar?"
Misato nodded. She unbuttoned her shirt up to the middle and pulled the fabric aside. White and sharp, curved in a cruel arc, the scar bent from the right down past her ribs.
Asuka looked at Misato's scar. She looked then at her right hand. She blinked her eyes, both of them.
"Why do you have a scar here? This is all fake."
"It's the realest part about me."
Asuka reached over and through the tissue. She could hear her own voice raving over sharing the apartment bath. She could hear herself throwing things, screaming in desperation. Her feelings were those of Misato's: a helpless knot deep in her stomach. She withdrew her hand.
Misato had trouble meeting Asuka's eyes.
"Kaji, he taught me that, when you have the choice, to run towards hopelessness. I mean, by what he did and how he ended up. I hated it when he gave me advice and didn't listen. I think that, when you do, you'll find somebody else there, and maybe there's hope in that, to be with someone else. I learned too late. I'm sorry."
Asuka pushed herself off the bed. She shut off the fan. She turned back to Misato who laid back down, turning translucent in the twilight shadows.
"I spent a lot of time staring at that ceiling to avoid his eyes," Misato said. "I've got it down perfectly."
"Wasn't he the man of your dreams or something pathetic like that?"
Misato let out a long sigh that ended with a single chuckle.
"Being with him was like a dream when it was just the two of us in this room. No, we clung to each other like shipwrecked sailors. Nobody dreams about that. Then time ran out. If he had come back? And said all those things?"
"It's not fair," said Asuka, "that we can put so much into a guy to need him like that. But he can turn around and tell us to get over him, and do it for him like we owe him a favor for feeling something. When for him anyone would do."
Misato shook her head.
"I told him a terrible lie, you know. That I had found someone else. I thought that being angry and trapping myself in a lie was the only way I'd give up."
The edges of the apartment began to stretch beyond the periphery of Asuka's vision.
"It doesn't work," she said.
Misato nodded.
"No, it doesn't," Misato said, turning her head to look straight at Asuka. "At least let me show you that."
"I'm going to stay here for a while," Misato continued. "It's not so good dwelling on ancient history, but my real calling was archaeology. When you grow up, kid, don't leave so many ruins behind."
"Grow up? Here? A chip doesn't grow into a computer."
The white shadow of Misato's presence didn't reply. The ceiling fascinated her. Asuka turned towards the door. Finality followed every footfall.
"Misato?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm sorry."
"You should be," Misato replied. "You always made a mess of the bathroom and used up all the hot water. That's a joke, you could laugh! But all the rest? That's on me."
Asuka put her hand on the door handle.
"You're both the same," she said. "Neither of you knew what to do with me. So don't be sorry when he can't be."
Misato's voice answered from far away.
"I'm sorry I left you alone. I thought you had him."
Asuka slid the apartment door open to reveal a NERV elevator.
"This is stupid."
Rei was there, as well, and she pressed the Door Close button. Asuka didn't remember entering the elevator car.
"You."
"I like your analogy. 'A chip doesn't grow into a computer.' It is an apt analogy to our roles here and expresses your increasing grasp of the principles of Instrumentality. I once read this in a book: 'The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the Sun.' An expression of human pessimism that here, that now, proves axiomatic. There can be nothing new in this place for there to be complete and complementary understanding."
"Well that sounds really boring to me. I'd hate to be fourteen forever."
Rei opened her mouth and, to Asuka's astonishment, began to sing. Her voice, weak and thin, stayed in tune.
"To everything, turn, turn, turn.
There is a season, turn, turn, turn.
And a time to every purpose under heaven."
"That is a song," Rei stated redundantly. "I have grown to appreciate music. Somebody taught me how singing enriches the soul. Do you agree?"
Asuka rolled her eyes.
"That's fruity even for Shinji if you ask me."
"It was not Ikari. You have not met him yet. Have you decided?"
The ticking of the floor counter grew louder. Misato's voice and her own called out over the din.
"We'd wade over from time to time but couldn't bridge it."
I can't do this twice.
"That's the time when mistakes become regrets because there's no going back to fix them."
You're the only one I need!
"Who?" asked Rei.
The lights went out.
"Wake up," said Rei.
"Hey! Excuse me?!"
"Wake up!" said Rei.
Asuka fumbled for Rei in the dark but she was all tangled up.
"Asuka!"
There was light. Asuka, who had been gaping into the darkness, winced at the shock of brightness.
"Wake up!" bellowed Misato as she flung the door wide open. It slid aside with a thump. Asuka could see that was her door, the door to her room in the apartment she had lived with Misato for some time. Somehow she had gotten all knotted up in her sheets.
"Stop napping and get out here and take out the trash! Kaji and Shinji are going to get here any minute!"
つづく