It's been, um, just shy of a year. Let's ignore that, haha...
Rei Ayanami remained seated for the entire night, completely engrossed in her book. She was reading a Japanese translation of some English-language Star Wars novel that Shinji told Kaji he'd recommended to her.
Some establishments, especially those possessing barely a dozen spots for customers to seat themselves, might discourage someone occupying a seat for hours on end without justifying their continued presence by ordering more food. A business exists to exchange goods or services in exchange for the customer's money, after all. And with so few seats, it wasn't like Kaji could afford to let someone occupy one indefinitely. She was like a wall, separating him from potential customers through her presence.
But that was fine.
As previously established, when Shinji had been younger his depressive episodes had grown so severe and so frequent he became unable to function. This loss of executive function left him with a sense of guilt, knowing he was capable of far greater, and this guilt fed into an anxiety over his inability to perform, which in turn further compounded his depression. He sank so deep into despair that it became untenable and his apathetic depression morphed into a nervous panic, a feeling of great alarm at how unhappy he found his life and how hard it was to escape his day-to-day suffering.
The breaking point came during a routine classroom examination. He spent nearly the entire test period unable to even pick up his pencil; every time he even looked at the exam sheet he saw how much there was to do and it only made him feel more nervous and more guilty. By the time he finally worked up the willpower to force his way through the mental walls holding him back and pick up the pencil, the effort was so unpleasant and so distressing his self control eroded. His self-loathing guilt over taking so long to even do such a simple task meant that when he again tried to look at the exam sheet to begin answering the questions, he–
He–
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…
Shinji barely recalled what happened. The clearest memory of what came next was the school nurse gently coaxing him out of a bathroom stall, his shirt partly ripped and his hands bruised, even bleeding.
He had apparently screamed and stood up in the middle of the classroom, violently knocking his desk aside as he did so, and immediately fled.
It was almost too cliche a nervous breakdown.
Rei, one of only three friends he had at school, was waiting for him in the nurse's office. Shinji would later learn that she had demanded to be there. She stayed with him until Misato came to take him back to her apartment–for even then, he still, on some subconscious level, thought of it as "her apartment"and not "his home."
After that he didn't go outside for five months.
Shinji's breakdown is inspired by my own struggles.
This chapter is short, but a lot will be I imagine.
Originally published April 7, 2025.