Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Normal to Reality ❯ Chapter 2 ( Chapter 3 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is a Studio Gainax production, its characters created by Hideaki Anno. They say the word, and this story ceases to exist.
 
Normal to Reality: Chapter 2
 
By Midnight_Cereal
 
 
“There's a place some ways from here and they have this really, really good green tea, but this is okay for now, I guess.”
 
“Don't worry too much about putting yourself out for me,” he said.
 
“Don't worry about…ha! Are you kidding me? If I knew you were coming we coulda made plans, I coulda made plans. Look at me, I'm a mess. I probably smell like sulfur...”
 
“You look fine,” he said. She smelled fine, too. She sounded fine. When she had closed the distance between them and hugged him when they had first locked eyes today, she had felt fine, too. Better than fine, said something inside him. She had felt fine all over-
 
“But I could've at least washed up or something. But, but I didn't and…and you're here now and, and…you're here…”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“Wow…you're here. I don't believe this. You just have to understand that.” She had to stop talking as she tried to temper the ecstatic, contagious grin spreading over her pretty face. She wasn't trying very hard. “I didn't know if you…if it was okay now. I mean, you never ever tried until now.”
 
“I'm sorry.”
 
She exuded thorough confusion. “For what? Don't be sorry. Don't ever be sorry for this. You came now. You're here. That's all that matters.”
 
“Okay.” Shinji Ikari tried to look settled and attentive as he sat with and looked across the table at Mana Kirishima. They were nestled in the corner of an outdoor café one block from Keio University, pinned in by a brick façade perhaps a meter high and lined with bonsai.
 
He recalled her eyes being pools of deep grayish blue, but had forgotten just how beautiful they were. They momentarily flickered as she glanced over the wall at the narrow one-way street adjacent to them, and after her irises caught the glint off a passing sedan she turned them back to him. With a slow, careful breath she pushed her fingers through bangs and short locks of burnt umber. Just above the ambient idle din of conversation and table busing, there were her Converse Classics against the concrete, drumming for a silent, nervous band.
 
She was nervous. She didn't have to be; he wasn't paying attention. God help him, this vibrant, stunning angel was going to twist herself into knots making a good first impression (again), and she was the furthest thing from his mind at the moment.
 
Mana had just asked him a question. He diverted just enough brain power to mail in the answer.
 
“No, I still play. I'm actually tutoring a girl on the side to make a little extra money.”
 
It was enough to get her talking again. He'd be allowed to think again, about…
 
Look at me. I'm right here.
 
The Third Child discretely ran a slick finger over the crease of red parchment in his pocket. It was still there. It was as indisputably real as the faint scar high on Mana's forehead, the one that plunged into her dark red roots and was entirely hidden when her hand came away from her hair. It was as real as the possibility that the hand that wrote those words belonged to someone who had been very dead for five very long years.
 
He acknowledged it as her handwriting, her words. He acknowledged her insult…
 
He had acknowledged her.
 
For half a decade Shinji had always been so careful. It was okay to look, and that was all that was okay. He never spoke to Asuka when she materialized, never tried touching her, never getting close enough to-
 
“And we're so close! And I'm not…spoken for. You too, I guess? Aren't?
 
“I'm not seeing anyone. I mean, I was. But that was two years ago. And short. Just really short.”
 
Mana let out a breath neither probably realized she had been holding. She relaxed and continued talking with her hands and mouth, wearing a warm smile. He tried basking in its lambency. He tried appreciating it for the work of art it was.
 
Look at me.
 
He failed.
 
What now? The Second Child had seemed to have always prattled on about what an idiot he was; or wounding memories of the year they had lived together, the year of the war; how much she hated him and how she never, ever, ever wanted to see him again, ever, you fucking loser and I'm never coming back; how much she missed him. Was the German girl going to start commenting on his aftershave? Was she going to criticize his semester midterm grades? Mock the pattern on his plaid boxers?
 
What if…what if she started touching him?
 
“I mean…you and Asuka…”
 
Speak of the devil.
 
“You and her. I just got the feeling that…I don't know…she was everything to you. Or she wanted to be everything.” Mana laughed abruptly and just as quickly bit her lip. “I'd understand, I really would if you didn't want me, TO SEE ME…to see me…”
 
Before Shinji Ikari could stop himself he was already sealing his fate.
 
“So you've been living with Hikari long?”
 
“We were freshmen here last year, and ended up meeting at orientation.” The young man nodded, exceedingly grateful she had grabbed the clue and changed the subject. “I'm glad I caught up with her again. I really wasn't sure if coming back to this area was a hot idea with…everything and all. Do you know what I mean?”
 
“I know.” He of all people should know.
 
“And she needed someone. She'd never let you know, though. You'd have to torture it out of her.”
 
Shinji began to truly relax as he felt himself finally being drawn into the conversation with Mana. “Torture what out of her?”
 
“Well, I'd think you'd know. Maybe not, eh?”
 
“Eh?”
 
She was faux agitation and feigned exasperation. “Shinji…she misses Touji, get it? Her big sister's a broker in Nagano, her little sister's a senior, and she's not going to attend Keio. Stanford, if I remember. Hikari's lonely...”
 
“I didn't mean to get stupid. I think I understand. Really. It's-”
 
This was the exact moment Shinji messed way, way up.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
 
Roper (6) proceeded in the spirit of the Burke-Schumann approach, but allowed the characteristic velocity to vary with axial distance as modified by buoyancy and in accordance with continuity.
 
Hikari blinked, unlocked her jaw and her teeth, took a deep, deep breath, and reread the passage for the seventeenth time.
 
Roper (6) proceeded in the spirit of the Burke-Schumann approach, but allowed the characteristic velocity to vary with axial dist-
 
“WHAT?” She incredulously asked her textbook. “WHAT?” she inquired of the window in her room with equal volume and incredulity. “WHAT?” she demanded from her ceiling.
 
This is so…who can possibly decipher this…this…
 
“Me no understand…”
 
The middle Horaki escaped her small room to trundle into the hallway and then the kitchen. She needed some water. To go with the aspirin.
 
General chemistry was a requirement for occupational therapy majors at Keio University, and since she had started taking the course earlier in the year, the modest brunette found herself wishing it wasn't. On the rare days their maddening schedules intersected, Hikari would just ask her flat mate for help. Unfortunately, if things went really well for her friend tonight, the only beneficiary of Mana's `help' would be Shinji Ikari.
 
She refilled the water pitcher and groaned. Why can't I understand this? Am I just the dumbest person in the world? “Mana, where are you when I need you?”
 
“On the couch. Lying down.”
 
Hikari turned slowly as her roommate's somber inflection began to register. Uh-oh. “What…what are you doing back here?”
 
“I live here.” Kirishima asserted this fact as if weighing a lung in the district morgue.
 
“But I thought…Mana, you and Shinji were so clo-”
 
“You know what he said?”
 
Hikari could only blink and look at the back of their couch. On the other side, she heard Mana sigh.
 
“You know what he said to me? I said something like, `People get lonely after Third Impact,' and he told me,” Mana stifled something, maybe a laugh, probably not, “he said, `I understand. Really. It's like all the people I ever really cared about never came back.'” And then Mana jackknifed upright, peering over the furniture's ridge at the freckled young woman. She was smiling, oddly.
 
Something mothering welled up from within Hikari, but she articulated it with a fumbling stutter. “I-I'm sure he didn't mean-”
 
All of them.” The sitting student sucked on her lower lip and blinked furiously. “I think I stopped thinking, just…I just shut down. I hit him-”
 
“You what?”
 
“Not hard…not real hard. But he felt it. He better had felt it. I think I overreacted, but I just wasn't ready to hear that.” She nodded, still smiling like she knew a terrible, dirty secret. She sucked her lip again, and the corners of her mouth suddenly dipped.
 
“Mana…if I knew he didn't care anymore I wouldn't have bothered getting back to Kensuke. I wouldn't have set this up. You know that.”
 
Hikari's flat mate mused for a silent second, rose and rounded a cushy armrest. “He cares. He thinks he can fake me out. He cares. I'll be ready next time. Sure bet.”
 
“So…” Hikari paused and shrugged. Mana was closer. “What do you…can I do something?”
 
The girl with burnt umber hair jerked her shoulders again. Again and again and again. “Come on, Hikari. What do you think?”
 
“…Come here,” was all Horaki murmured. It was enough for Mana to take the last few steps into the offered embrace and break the rest of the way down. “Just take a breath. It's okay-”
 
“-hurts…not all of them…” Mana shook again.
 
“Take a breath. It's alright.”
 
Her roommate, her best friend, happened to be the only person that could have helped her with an assignment that was due to morrow, and had been eating her alive for the last week. Mana Kirishima was in no state of mind to answer questions pertaining to global reaction rates of hydrocarbon molecules, and the person responsible was also the reason Hikari Horaki was able to take solace that she was, at the very least, not the dumbest person in the world.
 
Shinji…you stupid, stupid man…
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
 
“Okay…stop playing. Just stop… stop.”
 
“Don't you think it'd help if I added some more rosin to the bow?”
 
“No. No, I don't.”
 
“How about raising my elbow?”
 
“No.”
 
“Well, we won't find out if I don't try, will we?”
 
“I don't want you to try because I know it won't work, and I know it won't work because I've been doing this long enough to know. And I do know. So please…don't try. Please.”
 
“I see………………but maybe if I played for just a second.”
 
No…” But the student played anyway. The teacher listened and let his disciplined ears provide the answer, which was unsurprisingly and unequivocally No, no, oh Jesus, no…
 
Mihiro…”
 
What? Now I know it doesn't work because-”
 
“Because I said it wouldn't before you even started playing.”
 
“No, it's because I tried and now I know from personal experience…what was that face for?”
 
“It's for nothing, alright? Shift with your arm and keep your wrist straight.”
 
“That's it? Why didn't you just say that right off the bat, then?”
 
“I did say that right off the bat!”
 
“When?”
 
“Just a minute ago.”
 
“No you didn't. I would've remembered that.”
 
“I know what I said, Mihiro!”
 
“And I would've remembered if you really just said it. I'm like an elephant when it comes to remembering things. A robot elephant that poops memory banks. You probably thought you said it when you only really thought it. Don't get so bent out of shape about it, happens to the best of us.”
 
And before he could open his mouth to tell her no, I know what I said and I'm not getting bent out of shape, she was playing again.
 
Somewhere, Yo-Yo Ma was having a sudden and unexpected stroke. Of this, Shinji Ikari was quite certain.
 
There was the money the nineteen year-old man received for these lessons -fifteen hundred yen per week- and…yeah, that was it, actually. He couldn't think of another reason he voluntarily put himself through this. Thirteen year-old Mihiro Kamakura had a way of generating especially virulent cultures of distemper, and…and maybe that was it. Because his agitation was very nearly tangible. To Shinji, her cello lessons became irrevocably linked with angry mental rashes, and there was guaranteed to be a at least a break out or two-
 
“Are you plucking the strings?”
 
“No…”
 
“What did I say about plucking the strings?”
 
“Don't pluck the strings or you'll detune the cello?”
 
“What're you doing now?”
 
“Plucking the strings.”
 
“Stop doing it! I…you're doing it right now! You're doing it as I'm speaking the words that are coming out of my mouth right now that are informing you to stop plucking the strings! Right now!”
 
“Okay.”
 
“…You're still doing it!”
 
“I forgot, okay? I'm sorry.”
 
“But you just said you remembered…” Was she doing this on purpose? It was moments like this Shinji -cautiously- wondered what Asuka might do in a similar situation. As a result, nearly every Tuesday and Thursday from four-thirty to six o'clock for the past year, he was beholden to the stark image of the Kamakura's only child wearing her three-quarter cello like a splintered yoke. Misato always said he had the patience of a saint, but it was these tortur…tutoring sessions with the cute (but annoying) and well-meaning (but very annoying) teenager-initiate that consistently reminded him his former guardian was right. She was so very right.
 
“Mihiro…whatever. Just…whatever. Can we get back to playing?”
 
Her straight shoulder length black hair swayed slightly as she nodded. “Sure.”
 
“Can you get back to listening to me?”
 
“I can do that.”
 
“And then actually doing what I'm telling you to do?”
 
“This is a strong possibility.”
 
“Let's concentrate.”
 
“Gotcha.”
 
The phone rang and she became a guided missile, homing in on the warbling appliance, nearly breaking her neck tripping over and effectively detuning her string instrument.
 
“Hello? SHINTA!”
 
Shinji often thought someone should pray for her boyfriend. Not him; preferably someone with much less experience with God.
 
The former pilot had long ago grown accustomed to the passage of time during the tutoring sessions at Mihiro's large house, nestled in a hilly well-to-do district of Tokyo-3. Sure enough, a quick glance at his flip phone vindicated his internal clock. He would be done here in a few…someone left him a message.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
 
“Here you go. Have as much as you like. What's it called, again? I forgot already.”
 
“It's shawarma. You don't have to share anymore.”
 
“How could I forget something with that name? I want to share.” Maya grinned and waved in the general direction of the shsv…sharva…tasty lamb thingy. “Eat, Shinji.”
 
The young man in question nodded at the other person at the table. “Maybe Kensuke wants to try some more?”
 
“Kensuke's had enough,” Ibuki quickly asserted with a tight smile.
 
Kensuke slowly withdrew his chopsticks from the shawarma.
 
“I didn't know you two were friends,” said Shinji as Maya swatted Kensuke's hand, again hovering over her meal.
 
The woman wagged a finger. “But you were the one who suggested he try for a security position in the first place, remember? So all the blame falls on you.”
 
I was just joking. Don't apologize. Don't apologize. Don't apologize. Don't apolog-
 
“Sorry.”
 
Maya gave a mental sigh. He seemed so much of the child that had literally been dragged kicking and screaming into the family business half a decade ago. He was good at breathing and blinking and not trying to hurt anything, living to live because no one told him to die.
 
He was good at acting like Misato and Asuka and Rei never happened. There wasn't any growth in him. She had glimpsed a new, better man that had been blossoming into that empty shell even as the old world crumbled around him in eroding clumps. Somewhere in between the end of that world and their impromptu dinner at Mimi's Café today, that new man had been dealt with. She fought the frown begging to contort her small, tight mouth.
 
Kensuke softly patted Shinji's shoulder. “Take my word for it. The only reason you'd have to apologize to me is if I was working directly under her-OW!”
 
“Stop. Eating.”
 
Kensuke massaged his sore hand as Shinji leaned forward and gently propped his elbows on the table top. He looked at her. “Have I thanked you yet for inviting me?”
 
She tried waving him off.
 
“I wasn't really in the mood to cook after those cello lessons…” He flashed a glance at a corner in the restaurant, brows momentarily knitting.
 
“Shinji…is she…Mihiro's getting on your nerves? Cute little Mihiro?” The woman knew she sounded unreasonably amused, truly not caring.
 
“I know learning a new instrument can be really hard, but…” He just shook his head, “but goddamn…”
 
Now that made Maya laugh. The thought of someone, anyone getting to Shinji enough for him to curse them was uplifting in a way only someone who made a living at Nerv could understand. Maya understood perfectly, and was just grateful that something had made her smile in a way she hadn't in a long, long…
 
“What's that on your cheek?” the bifocaled man asked, abruptly truncating Maya's tree of warm n' fuzzies “Right under your eye?”
 
Shinji was suddenly still before he wiped at a series of thin, long abrasions running parallel to each other on his cheek bone. “Oh…accident.”
 
“What kind of accident?” Kensuke pursued, something akin to cynical disbelief solidifying in his voice. That in itself was unsettling to the scientist, not only because the young Aida took pains to maintain an affable, benign attitude, but also because as a member of Nerv Security he had been trained to smell a lie a mile away.
 
Disbelief transmuted into good ol' fashioned horror. “Oh no…she hit you, didn't she?”
 
Maya sat up. “Who hit you?”
 
Shinji shrugged. “She had the right to. I…I said something stupid, that's all.”
 
Who had a right to?”
 
Kensuke groaned. “Oh man. You pissed Mana off? Wow. That is pure skill, the way Hikari said she kept talking you up.”
 
Mana? Why did that name sound so familiar to her? “What did you say that could justify…I know you at least that well.” Don't I?
 
“Just something stupid, okay? Don't worry about it. It's been a week. It's over now.”
 
Kensuke's new face was naked concern, which further unsettled Maya. He knew better than anyone what Shinji's real malfunction was, and if he had reason to be worried…
 
Maya squirmed.
 
“Well…” the sandy-haired man started, “I guess that explains why she didn't meet up with us here. If I knew you two had a falling out I wouldn't have invited-”
 
Mana. Kirishima.” Only after the name rolled off Maya's Teflon tongue was she able to close her mouth. She stared past the boys, at the person that had just walked through the door, who, incidentally, the name belonged to. She had been kept abreast of the Trident incident on only the most rudimentary level. It was Mana she remembered, just hanging all over the fourteen-year old Third Child like a heavy coat on a wire hanger. She vividly recalled thinking if the cherubic girl ever lived to see adulthood she would be a stunningly, heart-achingly, impossibly beautiful woman.
 
And Mana Kirishima was very much alive. But shock steadily gave way to simmering anger as Shinji's spine further calcified with each of Mana's footfalls.
 
“The train was really late,” the younger woman blurted out as soon as she entered conversational range. “Late, like thirty minutes. In this country, what're the odds of that? Really?”
 
“Why didn't you call?” Kensuke wondered aloud. “We would've waited.”
 
Mana and Maya snorted for entirely different reasons.
 
“Call? Well, not with my service. It's pathetic.” Mana was touching Shinji now, a feather's touch drifting along his shoulder. She was staring at the side of his head. “Aren't you surprised?”
 
Shinji nodded stupidly while smiling tightly, choosing rather to sip his carbonated beverage than open his mouth…
 
And give her another reason to put her hands on him…
 
“Why bother coming at all, then?” Maya heard herself ask as she tried placing the strain of agitation coursing through her.
 
The Kirishima girl finally looked at her questioner, her own annoyance momentarily pan-flashing. “Because I like surprises, getting and giving. You're Maya, aren't you? Shinji kept saying how nice you were.”
 
“Right. But people can be pretty selective about what they think is a good or bad surprise, just like people can be selective about whom they're nice to.”
 
The woman with grey blue eyes gave a small laugh as Kensuke and Shinji adjusted to the precipitous drop in room temperature. Then she smiled at Ibuki. “Yeah. What am I going to do about who's mean to me, besides nothing? And if Shinji doesn't like my surprises he can just say so.”
 
“I'm sorry, Mana. I gave the impression I was just talking about Shinji. I wasn't.”
 
“And I'm sorry, too,” Mana communicated, placing the flat of her free palm over her heart in a show of empathy that almost seemed sincere. “I gave the impression that I cared you weren't just talking about Shinji. I don't.”
 
Shinji coughed. Kensuke held out Maya's plate. “You wanna try some shawarma?”
 
“For someone so fixated on him you have an odd way of showing you care.”
 
Should the older woman have felt guilty her latest barb eroded the last of Mana's cheer? Because she didn't, and even smirked as Mana snapped back. “This may come as a bit of a shock, but I didn't come all the way here to fight you.”
 
“Of course not. Not when you're already fighting Shinji.”
 
The indignation reflected in the younger woman's eyes, and etched in her brow and tight mouth withered instantly with that, and Mana looked to the floor. The Third Child emulated her as Maya took it upon herself to speak on his behalf.
 
“What could he have said to you? Shinji would cut his own arm off before hurting anyone else. So you understand where I'm coming from when I say I have to hear this. This is going to be good. I can feel it.”
 
Something scraped against the floor offensively as Shinji abruptly pushed away from the table and rose. “Thanks for dinner, okay? It was nice. Real nice. I have work to do back on the campus-”
 
Maya Ibuki was having none of this. “Don't cover for her, please? It's not your job to excuse her-”
 
As he stood next to Mana he seethed and failed at hiding it. “God, Maya. It was just…a scratch.”
 
“Not to me.”
 
“Why do you even care? Just please drop it.”
 
“I'm not letting anyone hurt you, Ta-chan.”
 
“He…he said I kinda smelled. I'd been working with chemicals all day, and I didn't have any sleep and I had bombed this test. I was stressed and I took it out on him. I didn't mean…”
 
As Kensuke crunched on a piece of ice, Shinji looked momentarily confused. Maya…
 
“THAT'S IT?” An idle worker lounging in the corner of empty Mimi's Café sat up at the oldest customer's outburst. “YOU PUNCHED HIM BECAUSE YOU STINK? THAT'S IT?”
 
At first, the son of Gendo just stared. “What is your problem?”
 
“You're the one with the problem. I'm just helping you get rid of it.”
 
“But I didn't ask…Mana!” Shinji called after the woman who had wordlessly spun and stalked towards the exit. He hesitated before pursuing her, just for a moment, and not long enough for Maya's liking.
 
“You should let her go.”
 
“I have to set things right.”
 
“That shouldn't be up to you!” But Shinji was already gone, his and Mana's translucent reflections becoming slight as the glass door shut with a low hiss.
 
“But it's up to you to make things right?”
 
She glowered at Kensuke when she realized his rhetorical question was addressed to her. “We need to talk.”
 
----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------
 
“Mana, wait. Mana…”
 
Shinji suppressed a groan. It seemed that for all the world Maya Ibuki -the second-nicest woman he had ever met- had instigated and engaged Mana Kirishima -the nicest woman he had ever met- in an increasingly heated and personal argument. All he could think was, What an odd way of competing for the title of `Nicest Woman Shinji Ikari Has Ever Met'.
 
“Mana, just slow down, okay? Please?”
 
Well, he could think that, and also wonder if it was possible to quantify exactly how upset Mana currently was, which, judging from the speed and length of her stride, was very very. Just how unfair could things get for her?
 
“So are you ready to get some work in?” She couldn't have just said that; the voice was no where as bitter as it should have been. “Where's your campus, anyway?”
 
“I…it's another ten minutes. Maya's not usually…she's never like that. She's been acting weird the past couple of weeks and I don't know why. That shouldn't have happened to you.”
 
“Huh? Don't sweat it. You weren't the one acting crazy.” She suddenly stopped and stood on the empty sidewalk. Only a second passed before her follower pulled up at her shoulders; he noted they were suddenly tension-free.
 
“I shouldn't be complaining, but you don't seem upset. At all. Shouldn't you be mad?”
 
Casually, Mana turned to him, giving Shinji just enough time to get scared before she beamed, slightly altering her walking path so that their shoulders touched.
 
“I'll act upset if you really want me to. The problem was she tried too hard. It has to be like you don't even care.” He hadn't noticed her wrapping up his right arm until she glanced back, lightly tugging him in the process. “Besides, it worked. You came out after me, now I have you all to myself.”
 
He wondered now just how long it would be this time, before she would be the one tiring of his listless ambiguity, before she came to contemptuously sneer at him, before she came to despise him for being unable to care that he could not despise her back.
 
But for now, now
 
…he enjoyed it. An old feeling made new.
 
“How'd you know I'd leave them to catch up?”
 
Her voice became galvanized by some limitless insurance. “Come on. Maya's not the only one that knows you `that well'. Think about it, Shinji. My side's nicer, younger, softer…”
 
Mana Kirishima was very, very soft.
 
“You have a bigger sun hat,” he chimed in, finally smiling as a flash of mirth sparked a fond memory.
 
The dark-haired woman shoved him, laughing as she did so. “Shut up! Wait, you're talking about that big white hat I had that went with my sundress?”
 
“Oh yeah-”
 
Impossibly, her smile brightened. “SHUT UP! My grandmother gave me that hat! I named that hat!”
 
“You didn't have to lie for me in there,” Shinji said.
 
“If I didn't, then why didn't you stop me?” Mana Kirishima again clasped his thin tricep as he answered with silence. “If everyone you care about is supposed to be gone, I don't think Kensuke and Maya got the memo. I don't think they're the only ones that didn't…do you?” Her words hung close to him.
 
“I wasn't thinking.”
 
“Me neither. We're even. Just try not to ever say something like that again.” Mana's laughter was soft and melodious. “Ever.”
 
“Ha ha. Okay, I know not to-ow!”
 
Mana's laughter was soft and melodious. “Ever.” Her grip began cutting circulation to his forearm.
 
“Okay! Ow! Okay!
 
She called off her boa constrictor and relaxed again. “So…is Maya, like, in love with you or something?”
 
No way. “No way, not with all the stuff we've been through. If you had to know me like she had to you wouldn't want anything to do with me, either.”
 
Mana could only sigh. “You are so…fatal.”
 
“You have no idea.”
 
Shinji could see in her profile the internal skirmish determining whether she'd pursue the meaning of his last words with her next. Thankfully, she did not. “Who's Ta-chan?”
 
 
End of Chapter 2
 
A/N: N/A
 
Random A/N: I want this story to have a soundtrack. One song for each chapter.
 
IT'S COLLEGE BASKETBALL SEASON! HARDWOOD SLUTS GO NUTS!
 
Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.