Plug Suits and Penguins

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Chapter 9: The Green Penguin

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She rang the front bell without thinking. And then instantly had second thoughts. He might be sleeping again. She was developing a sense that piloting a giant robot was taxing, physically and mentally. Ayanami missing chunks of school semesters was nothing new and Ikari absences were growing to be a regular occurrence, as well. But neither of them offered up information freely and Hikari was in no position to demand it. So she was left to wonder.

Maybe they were sworn to secrecy by NERV. Scratch that. Ikari blabbed in class. Maybe they were recently sworn to secrecy by NERV. Apart from that day, there was a conspicuous lack of details about the robots. Aida was disciplined a few times for sharing images and videos during class. Hikari only saw one recording, taken from the school roof last month. An entire side of a hill retracted somehow, and two robots emerged to lumber by as students cheered them on.

She recalled the robots looked strange. It was only for a moment but Hikari felt a sense of unease seeing them. They weren't boxy mechanical contraptions from some cartoon. They moved like giant, metal people. And Ikari and Ayanami were somewhere inside those strange things, fighting other, stranger things.

Hikari was on the cusp of a consideration, that maybe piloting a giant robot was not a pleasant experience. Maybe it was actively bad. Maybe Ikari and Ayanami were suffering. She couldn't quite form the idea, though. The distance between her and them was too great to get a clear enough picture. But the feeling of regret took hold.

The front door slid open and she was readying a wave of apologies.

"Class Rep," Shinji said. "Hi."

"Ikari," she responded. "Hi."

He was in what she supposed were his pajamas like last time, shorts and a t-shirt. His hair was mussed, but he appeared not recently awakened. A brief flare of class rep indignation almost moved her to scold him for not being in an exhausted heap of trauma during a school absence. She tamped it down.

"I thought you'd be sleeping," Hikari said. Tamped, but not extinguished.

"I was. But Penpen came scratching at my door an hour ago."

"Looking for food?"

"Yeah. And he's been squawking at me since."

"You didn't feed him enough?"

"I didn't feed him anything."

"Why not?" she demanded. A hungry penguin was no trifling matter.

Shinji shrugged. "I figured you might be stopping by with printouts. I thought you'd like to give him a snack."

Hikari looked down. Cloud nine was far below. "I would like that, thank you."

He let her into the apartment, down the front hall to the kitchen. Her giddiness remained, devoid of the anxiety from the last visit. Penguin time! her brain kept blaring, drowning out anything but dizzy joy. Hikari spotted him by one of the refrigerators and beelined past Shinji.

"Good afternoon, Penpen," she cooed.

The bird appraised her, deemed her not to currently bear any food, and turned back to Shinji with a terse wark.

"I know, I know," he said, rooting around the fridge.

Penpen waddled up to his side, wearing a scowl. What Hikari assumed was a scowl. Impatient to be fed. She was impatient too, to be allowed the gift of nourishing an adorable little penguin.

"What is he having today?" she asked.

"I tried some squid on him last week and he loved it. Here."

He offered her a small package of fresh squid. Maybe still wriggling. The plastic covering played tricks on her eyes.

"Uh…"

Shinji drew his hand back. "… Do you want me to cut it up?"

"Oh, um, yes. I mean, you know better than me how he likes it prepared."

He chopped, seasoned and sautéed in a wok. It smelled good, as far as tentacled sea creatures went. Penpen watched intently, every sizzle and flip of the pan cause to lightly claw at the floor.

Shinji plated the snack and handed it to her. She received it like a winning lottery ticket. She and Penpen trilled softly in unison.

For all the effort and time and expensive ingredients he put into the dish, Shinji seemed untroubled by the utter lack of acknowledgement. Like he was used to having his endeavors meet silent disregard. Hikari was too enraptured with Penpen who was too enraptured with inhaling the squid. He shrugged. At least they seemed happy.

Penpen nearly cracked his porcelain dish trying to get every last morsel into his beak. He warked pleasantly, rose, and recalled other living things were present in the room with him. Food Boy cleaned the wok. Snail Girl stared at him, sitting on her heels, hands cradling her chin, gazing into his avian soul.

He departed for his refrigerator, belly full, a little later than usual but full nonetheless. He glanced back at the humans. Hikari still stared at him, fighting off the need to blink. Shinji dried the dishes. Penpen warked once more, both a farewell and stern urging to keep it down out there during his afternoon nap. His refrigerator shut.

Hikari rocked backwards and beamed. "He is so cute."

Glad you think so, he thought. Maybe it really was a girl thing. He held a sudden intense desire to see how Rei responded to Penpen. Perhaps she'd smile again. "I guess so."

"Oh, absolutely. This was such a treat. Thank you, Ikari."

"You're welcome. I guess you don't have any pets, huh?"

"Heavens, no," she groaned. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love animals, but I'd be the only one taking care of it and I'm not home enough to do that properly. Dad's no help with stuff like that, Nozomi's too forgetful and Kodama is Kodama." She pondered a moment. "Maybe a fish, but I can't pet those."

Hearing Kodama's name, even in a negative light, even by her younger sister, triggered a significant number of emotions for Shinji. Some positive, some confused, some positively confused. He felt luxurious phantom lips brush his cheek, even now.

He cleared his throat louder than he meant. "Uh, how are your sisters doing?"

"Huh? Oh, fine. They're just, you know, my sisters. What you saw is most likely what you'll always get."

He saw Kodama's face, hovering near his. "I-Is that a bad thing?"

"Well, yeah."

"Oh." He busied himself with wiping down the counter, desperate for distraction. "Um, how was school today? Did I miss much?"

"Nothing academic. Someone pulled a fire alarm during second period. The faculty spent the rest of the day looking for the culprit, still at large." She was reminded school existed. "Oh, yeah. Here are the printouts for today." She produced a hefty stack from her satchel.

"Ah. Thanks."

Hikari watched him carefully. The half-formed worries on his doorstep coalesced, just a fraction. "I, um… I didn't hear about any sort of battle."

Shinji was nonplussed. "Huh?"

"I mean, since you were absent today. Is, is everything okay?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah. There wasn't another Angel or anything. It was just a synch test that ran late." Poor Rei was shambling towards the lockers afterwards.

"A test?" she asked. "Is it hard?"

Be yourself, but outside yourself. Not trying to claw back your awareness but instead learning to let go, to expand outward inside the Eva from the entry plug. Water poured into a balloon was the analogy Ritsuko used once, in a passing moment of frustration with his fluctuating scores. His thoughts and self had to flow into Unit-01, filling it up until the idea of moving his arm moved its arm first, instead of his. He had to stop considering his flesh and blood limb before the metal one.

The balloon concept lingered with him. What happened if he poured too much into the Eva? Would it burst? Would he be able to unpour himself? Would he burst? Or would he be emptied? Such extraneous ideation, as Dr. Akagi might put it, wasn't helping those synch scores, Third Child. But those were the vague terrors that kept him up at night, curled around his SDAT in the dark, trying to confirm his arm was still his own.

In the light of morning such thoughts were deemed silly by Daytime Shinji. And he shouldn't relay any of that to Captain Katsuragi, who would worry, or to Dr. Akagi, who would run even more tests, or to Commander Ikari, who wouldn't care. And certainly not to his middle school class representative.

"… It does require a lot of concentration."

"I can tell." Hikari smiled in commiseration. "No offense, but you look exhausted." Kodama-adjacent fatigue.

"Oh. Yeah." He sighed. Tomorrow was another school day. "But I should at least start the printouts."

"I could help," she decided. She pre-empted refusals: "I stocked up on TV dinners for my sisters, so that's not a problem. Uh, unless I'm overstaying my welcome."

"No. I'd appreciate it. Thanks."

They sat at the kitchen table. Algebra was first in the stack of work, curse her logically alphabetical sorting, but last on both of their preferences. Hikari silently wondered how much she could assist, as the telephone rang.

Shinji answered. "Hello? Hi, Ms. Misato. Yeah. No, that's okay…"

Hikari politely distracted herself from both his conversation and math homework. She looked around the kitchen. It was startlingly clean. Like out of a magazine or TV show. No stains from meals, no cracked linoleum bending up at the walls, no soot-black burners stinking up the room. For a moment it tricked her into believing the kitchen was not used. But she recalled the soup he made for her sisters, the stealthily noticed homemade bentos he brought to school, the squid she witnessed today. Ikari was a neat freak. It tickled her on a deep level. The pilot of a giant robot made house. She wondered how neat Ayanami was.

The only thing she could consider disorderly was a chore chart posted on the wall. It was large, larger than necessary, making it impossible to ignore. The script was a cascading sloppiness, getting less legible as the chart progressed through the days of the week. Almost all of which bore Shinji's name.

She idly checked the calendar beside the chart to see if it was indeed Shinji's turn to do every single thing. Hikari paused.

"… Okay," Shinji was saying, finishing the conversation. "See you then. Bye." He hung up. "On my own for dinner," he muttered, not entirely upset with a missed Misato meal. He returned to the kitchen table and sat. "Sorry. That…"

He cut himself off. Hikari looked lost.

"What's wrong?"

"Huh?" She recalled where she was. "Oh, uh, nothing. Let's get back to work."

"… Okay."

They studied in joint disparity. He kept glancing at her mute distraction. She stared at her paper, all the equations and numbers morphing into the day's date she forgot about until now.

Hikari put her pencil down. "Sorry," she said softly. "It, um… It's the eleventh today, right?"

Shinji followed her eyes towards the calendar. A rare Misato-designated dinner and trash removal day, both of which she was conveniently absent for. "Yup."

"Yeah. It, today's the day my Mom died."

He stared at her. She realized what she said.

"Sorry!" she fretted. She managed a smile. "That's a lot. It's, it's not like it happened recently. I was eight, so I barely remember her. I just, I forgot the date until just now." She frowned. "I think Dad did, too. We usually try to visit her grave. But he's working late again. And Kodama's at cram school so much lately. So…"

Shinji still stared.

"Sorry!" Hikari blushed in shame. She forced her mouth shut.

They sat together in silence.

"I'm sorry," Shinji finally said.

"It's not your fault. I'm usually good at remembering important dates. I just forgot this year. I…" She sighed. "It was a difficult day at school, the students were all riled up because of the fire alarm, and Mr. Nebukawa kept talking to the clouds, and I was really looking forward to coming here and seeing Penpen, I…" She slumped. "I forgot."

He thought. He spoke. "But you remembered."

"Yeah." Her eyes drifted to the second refrigerator. "It really was a treat to feed Penpen. I like penguins because they're super cute and unique. And because they have good families. And…" She trailed off.

Shinji waited. A mental debate played out over her face.

Hikari tried to smile, playing it all off. "It's silly. You'll laugh."

"I can't promise. But I can listen."

He waited. She began.

"There was this book my mom read to me when I was little. Francois the Green Penguin. She studied a semester in France when she was in school and she picked up the language. The book's in French, so I can't make heads or tails of it, but it's illustrated, so I can follow along."

She glanced at him. Shinji was somberly rapt. She went on.

"So, so Francois lived in Antarctica with the rest of his family. Only he was born green. The other penguins didn't care, though, and were always nice to him. But since he was green, it made him easy to spot for predators, and it put his family and friends in danger. He tried covering himself in snow but it always washed away. So one day Francois decided to leave his home and family so they'd be safe.

"He swam a long way, as far as he could, day and night, until his flippers were too tired to move. He washed up on an isolated jungle island. It was hot and uncomfortable and lonely but he knew his family was safe. And there was so much green there he blended in perfectly. He missed his old home and family but he knew they were better off without him.

"One morning when Francois woke up he heard a terrible rustling in the jungle. He crept through the bushes and saw his family, all tangled up in vines. They followed him when he left. Francois was upset, and told them to go back home. But they didn't. Because they were a family again. Even oceans away from where they were born, they were home because they were together."

Hikari looked up from her balled hands. She never saw Shinji so grave. He was quiet, internal. She grew nervous.

"Um, sorry to bore you with some silly kid's story."

He shook his head. "It's not silly if it helps you remember your mother."

There was a weight to his words. Heavy, filled with intent and meaning Hikari both wanted to know and was afraid of knowing. Like her worries about his piloting. She swallowed the urge to ask. If he wanted to share, she would hear him, like he did for her.

"Thank you for listening, Ikari. I can't remember the last person I shared that story with. Nozomi's 'too old' for stuff like that. Dad seems incapable of being serious, and Kodama acts like Mom never existed. I guess it must be hard for those two. They knew her better than I did."

"Everybody mourns in their own way." He wondered if Mr. Horaki destroyed all of Mrs. Horaki's photos, too.

Penpen's refrigerator opened and he waddled out, drowsily heading to the facilities. His left wing clipped the doorframe on his way, leaving a pair of old feathers behind.

Shinji was already mentally tidying it up. "I'll see him in a different light, now."

"Oh?"

He recalled who he was speaking to. "Uh, not that I…" Am tired of feeding him and cleaning up after him and scrubbing his fridge and clipping his claws and picking molted feathers out of the shower drain and fighting him for the TV remote.

But Shinji did all of those things. Because Penpen was part of his family now. They were both a long way from their respective Antarcticas, but at least they were together.

"Never mind. I'm glad you were able to see him today." He smiled. "Thank you for telling me that story. You sounded really… calm and glad." Not the frazzled frustration of trying to round up their zoo of a classroom. "I hope it is a good memory for you."

Mom was a voiced presence, an encompassing embrace of warmth and security. Reading to Hikari at night before bed back when she shared a room with her sisters. Kodama always fell asleep first, almost before her head hit the pillow. Nozomi was afraid of the dark, so a very aggressive pineapple-shaped nightlight sat at the foot of her bed, almost brighter than the overhead. She tried to stay awake for the stories but she was transitioning out of an afternoon nap and was groggy by dinnertime.

So it was usually just Mom and Hikari. A brief time alone together. Even exhausted by work and by Dad and by raising three children, when Mom read she was rejuvenated. Each character had a unique voice. Narration was edge-of-your-bed expressive. Sound effects were expertly given aural life. She lost herself in each book, even ones she read a million times. And because she was so enthusiastic and passionate, Hikari could get lost, too.

It was hard to read anything after she died. Hikari couldn't match Mom. She still had trouble clearly recalling her face from memory but her voice remained, narrating in the back of her head sometimes. A reminder of happier times. A hope that times could be happier again. She could almost hear her that moment, already stored to memory, finding acceptance and understanding from the pilot boy with the pet penguin who smiled so easily at her.

Hikari smiled back. "It is."

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Next chapter: Hot-blooded, check it and see. She's already got some sort of college degree.