Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Normal to Reality ❯ Chapter 4 ( Chapter 5 )

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 4

 

By Midnight_Cereal

 

It was only when the muffled hiss of the hotel shower abruptly ceased that Souichi Nakajima bothered opening his eyes again. There was nothing impossibly intriguing etched in the black shadows of the indigo ceiling, but he stared anyway as he lay prostrate, his long legs dangling over the foot of the bed.

 

No. Not very interesting at all, as compelling as the room was large as it was luxurious as its walls were thick; a low moan periodically rose from behind the last thing, each successive cry more guttural, more desperate than the last. Lost in the perpetual darkness of the space or his own thoughts, So ignored those sounds, and also the breezy soprano hum emanating from the bathroom.

 

For all practical purposes, So Nakajima was nothing more than another piece of furniture, and other than the slow rise and fall of his shallow chest, the seventeen year-old was no more animate than the television or the floor lamp, the cherry wood desk populated by continental breakfast menus and coffee filters, or the corner armchair strewn with underclothes.

 

This was all true until the humming stopped and So smiled, a gradual, practiced creasing that fit his face in the manner a sock gradually conformed to a foot. Only a second passed before the expression appropriately mapped the flesh contour, and afterwards he belonged to humanity once more. Just enough.

 

There was a click as the bathroom knob turned and artificial light tore a gash across the Berber carpet. Mana stepped out, wearing mild confusion on her face, a t-shirt that came to her mid thigh, and that was it.

 

“Why didn't you turn the lights back on?” she asked as her eyes swept across the small dark suite.

 

“There was nothing here worth me doing so.” He shrugged mechanically. “You were taking a shower, after all.”

 

The sound that crawled out of the back of Mana's throat was completely at odds with the innocent kindergartener waltz that carried her to the patio curtains. She threw them open and smirked back at him. “When are you going to get tired of mentioning me and `doing' in the same breath?”

 

“Possibly when you put some more clothes on.” He finally turned to her as he rested on his side, meeting the displeasure that momentarily infected her moonlit face.

 

“That's perilously close to a complaint, So,” she warned, holding her thumb and index finger molecules apart. Perhaps Mana did not react to the hurt in his eyes because there was not enough light to reflect it. Regardless, the look was quickly ironed out of his brow.

 

“I don't have a reason in the world to complain about staring at you…neither do all the men outside you're providing a free show for.”

 

She scoffed. “Oh, you mean all the men standing outside on the beach with night vision goggles that happen also to be staring up at the twenty-third floor at four o'clock in the morning? All those men?”

 

“We're up at four o'clock, are we not?”

 

“Are we not?” the girl parroted mockingly. “Look, if some perv comes all the way up here just to get a peek at my skinny behind, I think they've earned it. Don't you? The only ones disturbing our peace right now anyway are Miyazawa and Arima.”

 

On cue, a euphoric shriek rose through the wall closest to the head of the mattress, and Mana could not help laughing.

 

So looked confused.

 

“Oh, come on!” she started, jerking a thumb in the direction of their…busy…high school classmates. “You don't think that's funny?”

 

So looked confused.

 

“Because! They're all like…” The girl pumped both of her firsts three times in rapid succession, “and we can hear everything, and they don't even care! And we know them! You don't think that's hilarious?”

 

“Ah, I see. An apology is in order.” His lopsided grin became a lazy, mischievous thing. “You were being funny the entire time and I did not laugh once-”

 

“Shut up or I'll kill you!” Mana yelled, even as the credibility of her threat was undermined by her infectious grin and wobbly white crane stance. “I'll do it, too. I was a spy, you know. You'd die like fifteen times before you even hit the ground.”

 

“But I'm already lying down. And how do you kill someone who's already died?”

 

“What…what do you mean by…you are so fatal, you know that?” Mana lowered her leg and stared back out over New Goza Beach. Her profile grew solemn, tempered.

 

“Did…was I really that noisy?”

 

“I prefer `hilarious', but noisy is equa…just as appropriate.”

 

She breathed silently, and then turned to her boyfriend with lifeless eyes. “Didn't I just finish warning you?”

 

She was dashing before he could open his mouth, reaching for something in the armchair, carmine locks whirling as she spun on him. “KIRISHIMA CLAN SECRET TECHNIQUE! FLIGHT OF THE SHURIKEN PLUSHIE!”

 

“How secret could it be of you tell-OW!” he managed before the twirling toss pillow smashed into his face. She tried not chuckling at the cute way he writhed in pain, and succeeded. She giggled instead.

 

“You big, bony baby,” Mana admonished, climbing on the bed beside him as he cupped his nose. She mussed his black hair as he groaned again. “Let me see…”

 

By the time the teenager had pried his hands open and smiled down at Souichi, she was sitting on him. Pressing into him. Kissing him, again. Rising slightly, just enough so that the tips of their noses brushed. Then descending to put her lips over his and crush his tongue with her own, first into his mouth, then out of his and into hers. Rising. Descending. Up. Down. In. Out. Lost now, in the essential, cardinal rhythm of doing and not doing, doing and not doing.

 

Mostly doing.

 

“You just took a shower,” he whispered.

 

“I'll get dirty and I'll take another shower,” she finally said, “and you can come with me.” She paused, maneuvering on top of him so that there was no space between his pelvis and her own. “I don't like being funny, So. I don't like being laughed at. I want to be taken seriously. I want to be an executioner. We have all weekend to make me an assassin.”

 

“If that's what you desire,” he said, looking up at something through the back of her head.

 

“That's what we desire,” Mana corrected him, serenading him with kisses to reinforce her point. “Don't get any weirder, now's not the time.”

 

Before she could shut him up he was saying more. Getting weirder. “But, I feel it in you. Finally, I'm certain it's something I could never hope to gratify by simply-”

 

“What…” she growled, the seductive ardor tingeing her voice all but strangled by growing choler. “What the hell are you talking about? We, So, as in us together, decided to come out to Shima because you liked the beach. I wanted to go to the hot springs, remember? I don't see where this `Oh, I'm doing all this for little Mana's sake' crap is coming from.”

 

“The same place it's always come from. I only chose where we would stay because letting me choose gave you joy.”

 

“Gave…gave me joy?” She sat up, mouth agape. “I don't believe this.”

 

“I…I'm being forward, but your anger…it's unfounded. I don't mean that being with you is undesirable. Far from it.”

 

She blinked. “Oh…well, I'm glad you liked deflowering me. Get to the point.”

 

“You were thinking of him.”

 

The girl did, said, and possibly saw and heard nothing at first. Then she calmly rolled off of the boy, found a soft, cool pillow, smashed it into her face and screamed.

 

“Mana…” he breathed, eyeing her with quiet concern, “I wasn't making a judgment. Only an observation. I feel it through your shirt, I smell it on your breath. You taste like it. And…I'm okay with it. It's about time you were, also.”

 

Mana stilled as she lay on her back beside So, and exhaled behind the plump cushion. Only then did she let him know how okay she was by blindly backfisting him in the sternum. She sat up, the look in her wet, shining eyes oblivious to his newfound agony.

 

“Nakajima…Souichi…this was supposed to be our night. You know what that means? Me, not talking about guys I fawned over years and years ago. You, NOT passive-aggressively guilt tripping me about having a place for him, when it's something I couldn't do anything about if I tried.”

 

“N-not passive aggressive,” he breathed when he could finally…breathe. “I'm satisfied, knowing I'm only a …substitute. Because now I know what you're hoping for. You're sustained by just the dream of an opportunity. And it all makes you…perfect.”

 

“You are, by far…far…the weirdest boyfriend I've ever had. I just needed to get that off of my chest.”

 

“Noted.”

 

“Perfect…” A bitter smirk, a shudder from Mana, passing on as she ran her hands through damp clumps of dirty red. She snapped to him, glaring. “Look at me, So. Are you looking?”

 

The whole of him was a dim dark blue, but her eyes narrowed when she saw him nod.

 

“So…you. Are not. An EMPATH. You are some skinny dude that caught my eye on the class trip, when I went back for a third helping of cheddar biscuits in the buffet line at Cactus Kojima's. And if you can't wrap your brain around the fact that my thoughts were of you, only you when I let you in…I will regret this.”

 

“You called me Shinji.”

 

Mana Kirishima turned her back to him and quietly wept. The noise that had been floating in from the neighboring room had ceased.

 

“Don't you touch me,” she commanded when he had tried, but did nothing when he still clasped her trembling shoulder. If the purpose was to staunch her silent tears, he had succeeded.

 

“This was going to be it,” Mana suddenly blurted, still facing away from So as confusion proctored her wavering voice. “You know? I was going to come here with you, and…and after that he'd just be obsolete. Easy.”

 

The young woman endured another slight tremor, but it diffused when So's grip tightened.

 

“And it's so stupid, because I was just using him! When he found out he wasn't even mad. I think…think I wanted him to be like his dad. I was waiting for him to just snap and choke the shit out of me. Or shoot me in the head. I'm still waiting.” She sighed then, a sudden, angry rush of air. “But he was so good it made me sick.”

 

She made that noise again, and choked back the sorrow lodged in her throat.

 

“He's dead. Ten times over. They massacred everyone at Nerv. I heard they shot or they burned them all. He's not even real, anymore. He's KILLING me and HE'S NOT EVEN TRYING! I…” It was a full minute before Mana reined herself in, finally saying, “I can't even hate him for it, and it makes me sick because it's all so…”

 

“Fair.”

 

“I should've known better than to lie to someone who finishes my sentences.”

 

“You'll see him again.”

 

“And that's the worst thing you've ever said to me.”

 

The tug on her shoulder was impossibly light, but the specter of force alone rolled Mana onto her back. Cerulean pools were riveted by something in a far dark corner as he hovered above her. She flinched when he spoke, anyway.

 

“You have to know that now is not the best time to be inconsistent.”

 

“…meaning?”

 

“That you should believe me.”

 

“Fine…” Mana's eyes finally swiveled to meet his own with fledgling resolve. “Now I want to talk about something less embarrassing. Like when I caught grandma doing it with Mister Saito-”

 

“No you don't.”

 

The resolve decomposed. Her shirt rode up her thighs in bunches as she squirmed beneath him. “Just…I have to forget. For a few minutes.”

 

“No.”

 

“So, come on. I won't…don't want to think about him this time-”

 

“But you will.” He was looking through her, again.

 

Mana Kirishima tried not shivering, merely teared up as she finally gave in. “And…and I'll see him again?”

 

“Because you're perfect,” So reiterated.

 

“If you say so…” She laughed abruptly, a roiling, delirious sound. “God, you sound like you have connections or something.”

 

“Or something,” he said.

 

“…touch it…”

 

He did.

 

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Shinji's leisurely, yet purposeful stroll to Mihiro Kamakura's residence was not interrupted by the urgent, blaring wail of Tokyo-3's (well-practiced) emergency broadcast network. He was not followed by stupidly conspicuous unmarked carbon black cruisers, occupied by stone-faced drones that draped hard eyes with equally black Raybans. He always thought they were Raybans for some reason.

 

The nineteen year-old crested a steep incline blanketed with the shuffling shadow of cherry trees. He looked on the other side, and nothing monstrous, nothing menacing and xenocidal -nothing that would justify the intrusion of the first two things- drifted on currents of omniscience, waked by the blight of death and the fetor of rank terror.

 

Blight would have been good. Terror would have fit the bill. Anything to fill the space between him and Mana, the thought of whom had been tormenting him since the night he had, much to her delight, run himself ragged playing at her stupid game. Until Asuka had looked at him.

 

Well, almost anything…

 

At the moment, his mind's eye peered beyond an illimitable nothing, and the Kirishima girl never failed to look back.

 

It was a questioning look.

 

Right now, it was just him and that look, the sound of air rushing over a passing Toyota, and pockets of radiant warmth that spilled through pores of discomposing shade.

 

It had been a dissecting look.

 

Soon, it would be him, and Mihiro, and her…be brave…her lessons. And that made him genuinely sad. Not the kind of sad that consumed the former spy, the sadness wrought by deprivation, by denial. By rejection.

 

It had been a tortured look.

 

Three weeks ago was the last time he had actual physical proof this Mana girl existed outside of the psychiatric therapist's wet dream customarily referred to as Shinji's Brain. This…was not fair to her. She was now more than the sum of Asuka and Misato, and any other jerk that thought, wouldn't it be totally awesome if I were, like, some undead memory of someone that Ikari boy knew, y'know, the one with that white shirt and black pants? Doesn't he wear anything else? Yes, I do. But I had to go straight from school to Nerv and you'd wear the same damn thing too, if you had to stay in that high-tech dungeon forever then drowned and stripped naked and stared at by full-grown women and your father and now he was talking to himself. Not anymore, though. Excluding the last thought. And the last one. And the one before this one-

 

He lost track.

 

-aight from school to Nerv and you'd nev-

 

Back.

 

-ally awesome if I were, like, some undead memory of someone that Ik-

 

Back.

 

-sum of Asuka and-

 

Right there.

 

-Misato, simply by virtue of the fact that he could, theoretically, touch and hold a conversation with Kirishima, and not give in to the urge to spoon his brains out and make them part of this balanced breakfast. But it had been three weeks…

 

Did she still look like that? Like he owed her more than just some pathetic mealy-mouthed excuse for why he had twice already ripped her heart out?

 

He could call and find out. He could visit. He could plunk down two-hundred yen and be at Keio University within the half hour. No later than ten minutes afterward he could slip behind her as she cleaned and organized an assortment of graduated cylinders. Within the space of time it would take her to sense his presence and whirl to meet his gaze, he would know if he could ever call or visit again. He could see her grey blue eyes scuttling him, killing him, telling him `no' before her mouth did.

 

She could say no.

 

Shinji Ikari's stomach flopped when he could not tell what frightened him more: Yes…or no.

 

The front door to the Kamakura household was ajar, and as the nineteen year-old made his presence known, removed his shoes and placed them next to a lonely pair of loafers, he moved Mihiro's parents up to number four on his personal list of Most Unfit Guardians of All Time ©.

 

It was sad the Kamakuras could not balance the vast financial success they had achieved with even meager communion, if just for their only daughter who, in Shinji's mind, was the adage `desperate cry for attention' given human form…and on one impossibly awkward occasion, an aluminum bat taken to the hood of daddy's Lexus.

 

Boring old run-of-the-mill negligence was not enough to displace the top three spots.

 

Number one was a lock. Always had been. Always would be.

 

He entered the sunlit study room tucked in a cozy first floor nook, found Mihiro Kamakura in it, and immediately -and justifiably- bumped her parents to the number one spot.

 

Because she was dead.

 

“Mi…Mihi…ro…” He started, truncating his choked whisper when he realized the glint from her scarlet halo was the dull shine from something gelled. She had probably been lying on the carpet in her navy blue fuku for some time, with one leg bent outward at the knee as she smiled.

 

Oh no, she was smiling…

 

The roiling bile leapt when he began to ask himself questions. The terrible answers crushed him into the plush, beige carpet.

 

Who did this? Who would do this? How long had she been alive, awake, waiting and grasping at thinning strands of life so father, or mother, could save her? Had she been waiting for him? Or just waiting to die?

 

She had been waiting too long. That and nothing else matters. You are the savior of despair, nothing more.

 

“I…I'm so…Mihiro…”

 

Here she was, yet another ghost to taint his waking life and nurture his mania. Another that would watch and blame him with living eyes, even though all things surrounding them were lost to corporeal existence years ago, eternities ago…

 

And all he could do was kneel before the broken child as her house fell away, and sounds were lost to the nameless void.

 

“MIHIRO, I'M SORRY!”

 

His face was pinching, his sanity listing as he fought the welling tears.

 

Why? Do it for her. Weep for her as you would not for Asuka, for Misato. As you could not for Rei, for Kaworu.

 

Your solstice wanes before the hot tide of blood. Weep, to honor her and her sacrifice, for she has been brought low with the worms to thaw you, son of Ikar-

 

“PSYCH!”

 

The dead girl's eyes shot wide as she leapt to standing and hopped around like a springbok on Prozac, raining gales of puckish laughter down upon Shinji. Who remained kneeling, mourning a brat-shaped indentation in the floor as the realization filtered through his grief-stricken haze; he had just been unquestionably, thoroughly…punk'd.

 

“I got you so good! You were about to pee and everything!”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Oh man!” She giggled, smacking the back of his bowed head as she indulged in a one-on-one game of duck-duck-goose. “You shoulda seen your face! You were all like, `Oh no, sweet little Mihiro! Someone came in here and bashed your head in with a shot put!'”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Awwww…don't be sore,” Mihiro chided as it suddenly dawned on him how deliciously ironic it would be if he just up and choked the life out of her. No, not ironic. Stupid.

 

She ran some fingers through clumps of her supposedly bloodstained hair, coming away with sticky, synthetic crimson. “See? They're just dye packs for squibs. My cousin works for Tsuburaya, I got a whole box of these in my room.”

 

Shinji faced her as the last of the adrenalin seeped away. “Would you also happen to have your cello in your room?”

 

“You can be a real au pair when you want to be,” the young teen huffed, “you know that, Shinji?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“You know what I mean?”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“See what I'm getting at, here?”

 

“Yup.”

 

“You following me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Gettin' my drift?”

 

“Yes, dammit!”

 

“Berserker…” she mouthed, backing away with feigned discretion. “Well, when you use that tone of voice I know it's time to fetch my weapon of mass disruption, `cause nothing says `pinnacle of intellectual endeavor' like the string instrument whose sound most closely resembles the human fart-”

 

“Just go get it!” he finally yelled as he massaged his temple.

 

“Alright, alright…” She turned to leave the warm room. Then she stopped. “But you would've been sad…right?”

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

She bounded away and back in short order, hefting the black pear-shaped case above her with, impossibly, meticulous carelessness.

 

“Be careful with that, Mihiro-”

 

“Will you chill? For a second? It's not like it's made out of balsa wood. So…chill.” She stood the instrument against a near wall to take out a folding chair. “I wouldn't do anything in the world to break it, especially not now.”

 

The beginnings of dread, perhaps instinctively, tickled the part of Shinji's brain that regaled him with those delightful Monday morning migraines. It did not seem to care it was Thursday. At all. “What's happening `now'?”

 

“Right now? Nothing. Now as in next Tuesday `now'? This…” Princess Hellion produced a white envelope that fluttered to his lap with a flick of her delicate wrist. Mihiro sat down with the instrument as he eyeballed it.

 

Anticipating at least four flavors of doom, Shinji pulled out its paper contents and read it.

 

Six flavors.

 

“'Mister Shinji Ikari and one guest of his choosing are cordially invited to the fourth Annual Tokyo-3 Junior High School Summer Instrumental, as per the request of…” He stopped reading just long enough to blast his student with a Level Five Disbelieving Stare. “…of cellist Mihiro `Ritalin Beast' Kamakura?”

 

“I love hearing that!” the girl squealed, balling her small fists under her chin. “Picked it myself!”

 

“I couldn't tell, really,” the Third Child mumbled. “You aren't embarrassed by this? I went to Tokyo-3 Junior High, and that auditorium holds almost nine-hundred people. And…and now all of them are going to read that silly nickname when you come out to…to…”

 

Somewhere, the filament in a dull, dusty light bulb flickered to life.

 

“YOU'RE GOING TO BE PLAYING?”

 

Kamakura blew at a tuft of ebony hair. “Uh, duh? That's why I gave you the stationary?”

 

Ah, that's right. He had been too busy fighting the urge to laugh maniacally to read the bottom of the invitation, and when he finally did read it, he found it completely necessary to double his efforts.

 

“Bach's Cello Sonatas? You're doing Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello? Do you have any idea how insane this is?”

 

“Insane enough that I know better than to perform the entire thing,” she assured him, her hands moving up and down the bow with rosin. “I'm just gonna do the sixth suite.”

 

He laughed maniacally as the Shinji Ikari Spin Machine finally broke down and erupted into a raging, towering inferno. “But that's the worst one you could've picked! I…no, that's the worst!”

 

Her lips went taught with a wan smile. “Y'know, it's pretty hard to feel confident in your abilities when your own mentor doesn't have any faith in you…”

 

“Why, oh why are you doing this?” he asked, chuckling with disbelief, ignoring the enormous slug of guilt Mihiro's words had lodged in his gut.

 

Reason with her. Someway, somehow, she was going to see the light at the end of the tunnel…and realize it was a bullet train. He stood over her now to make the truth as clear as possible without…well…telling the truth.

 

“Okay…remember when I asked you to play an ascending scale in octaves and it took me twenty minutes to explain what an arpeggio was?”

 

“Vaguely…”

 

“That was Tuesday. Tuesday! And the week before that, I asked you to play an ascending scale in octaves and it took me half an hour to explain what an arpeggio was. And the week before that I asked you to play an ascending scale in octaves and it took me forty minutes to explain what an arpeggio was. Before that, I asked you to play an ascending scale in octaves, and then everything smelled like chlorine for some reason, and we looked around your house and we never found out, but after it was all over you didn't know what an arpeggio was.”

 

She blinked. There was a pause as the central cooling unit kicked in with a click and a cool convecting breath. She blinked.

 

“…what's your point?”

 

The college student was not surprised that he smelled chlorine as he slowly sank to the floor.

 

“My point,” Shinji sighed, looking up at her, “is that you're going to have to cancel.”

 

She had the nerve to look surprised. And oddly enough…fearful? “I can't do that.”

 

“You are, because that's the only thing you can do, Mihiro. So tell them something, anything except you're performing. You got sick, family emergency, you're pregnant. I don't care what.”

 

The Kamakura girl snorted.

 

“I think me getting pregnant would constitute a family emergency, and I ain't tellin' them that, that's for sure…” She smiled lazily, and then, slowly, placed her soft hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed. “Unless you go something in mind…teacher…”

 

“No, you little pervert!” He shot up and away from the thirteen year-old, who cackled as he began pacing the study room. Shinji raked deep troughs of brown hair with fleshy talons. “Next Tuesday…is going to hurt so…much.”

 

“No it won't,” she countered, her soft voice imbued by a heretofore unknown source of…it was confidence. “Dad's gonna be there.”

 

Shinji stopped pacing. And thought.

 

And thought.

 

And thought.

 

“We can do this,” he said.

 

He saw Mihiro roll her eyes out of the corner of his. “That's what I just said, didn't I?”

 

“We can do this. I've had to deal with worse.” Though rarely with this little time, said a voice that sounded entirely too much like his own for him to like. He kindly asked it not to let the door hit it on its way out. “Now…all you have to do is practice until your fingers fall off. All of them”

 

Shinji wished that he could find (and then repeatedly hit with a barbell) the thing that allowed Mihiro Kamakura to live, blissfully, in a world that consisted of little more than temper tantrums, astonishingly cruel practical jokes, and…

 

“I don't see why I can't just practice for about twenty minutes to keep fresh, like I do everyday.”

 

…and supreme, peerless ignorance.

 

“Because, Mihiro, miracles aren't something that just happen, they're something that people make happen, and if you listen to me and do exactly as I say, we're going to be just fine.”

 

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“We are just so screwed,” Shinji established. For the tenth time. This discouraged Maya Ibuki, seeing as she was currently driving them both to the supposed source of her discouragement. She wasted a small moment, pulling her attention away from the violets and vermilions of the Tuesday twilight to glance sideways at her inconsolable passenger. So that's what that noise was…

 

“Can you please stop beating your head against my window?”

 

“Sorry.” He began beating the back of his skull against the headrest by the time she had turned back to the clustered road. The woman pulled the hem of her charcoal-colored pencil skirt past her knees with a free hand.

 

Charcoal…pencil…get it?

 

Bah, no wonder I gave up on being a comedian in fourth grade.

 

But the young professional wanted a reason to laugh.

 

“We are just so screwed.”

 

It was just that the former pilot was not cooperating. The eternal optimist's standard answer to this was, of course, “Well, I think you should just be glad it isn't any worse. The way you've explained it, it sounds like that's possible-”

 

“And her father's so rich, too. I've been tutoring her for over a year, getting paid all this time, and she…sucks just as hard as that first day.” Oh well. Shinji Ikari never did respond well to optimism. “Her dad could just…yeah, he's going to have me killed. I just know it. It's like I've been stealing from him.”

 

If he's worried about being murdered, that's a pretty good indicator he wants to live…isn't it?

 

Maya's eyebrow twitched of its own volition and she quickly rubbed the tension out of the flinching muscle. “Shinji, you're overreacting. Mihiro's not playing for the TSO, just friends and family. And some classmates. This is a happy day.”

 

Her breath suddenly became hesitant as her sedan dove into the cool shadow of a rolling, verdant mountain. “Even if what you say is true…I wouldn't let anything happen to you, anyway.”

 

There, he finally smiled, albeit briefly, placatingly. “Thanks, Maya.”

 

“But I still don't understand why you invited me instead of Mana.” She knew she was prying, and knew that she wanted to know, regardless. She silently wilted when the back of his head turned to her and the front stared out at the blending milieu.

 

It was only when she saw Tokyo-3 Junior High rise over a gentle upward slope that he spoke again.

 

“I wouldn't want Mana to see this, anyway. I want this to be as least embarrassing as possible.”

 

“It's a middle school recital, Shinji-”

 

“Mihiro goes first. Who knows? Maybe after she finishes I can get out of there before anyone recognizes me.”

 

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“Before Miss Kamakura begins her performance, she has requested that her instructor for the past fourteen months be acknowledged for his steadfastness in advancing her skills as an instrumentalist. So stand up and be counted, our very own Tokyo-3 Junior High School alumnus, Mister Shinji Ikari!”

 

And as soon as the announcer rogered-out, an overhead spotlight swung out over the clapping audience to where Mihiro was pointing. Right at him.

 

Shinji stood as if waiting for someone to dragon kick him back into his cushioned chair, but he was only showered with blinding light and polite, appreciative applause. He supposed the teachers and parents in attendance thought his protégé's was a splendidly charitable gesture, a demonstration of respect that kids these days just weren't supposed to have.

 

To Shinji Ikari, that spotlight was the Eye of Sauron. And Mihiro Kamakura was the Devil. That was all there was to it.

 

The moment had passed, so he reseated himself, wallowing in the perverse hope that an Angel would start blasting craters all over Tokyo-3 proper.

 

Oh, that's right…I killed them all…

 

“Look at her!” Maya whispered from his right. She nodded at the stage, to the girl in the pleated knee-length black skirt and white short-sleeved button top. “She's so cute!”

 

“So are Tasmanian Devils-”

 

“No they're not!” she chided, pinching his bicep rather painfully. “There's nothing you can do now, so please…try to sit back and enjoy it.”

 

Shinji sat back and waited to die.

 

Thinking about Mana was vastly preferable to actively listening to what the Kamakura girl was about to…um…play. That is what he did, as much for the fact that he couldn't help it as it was to distract him. And it was better than thinking about Asuka, whose presence sometimes made him feel like a human Ouija board.

 

God, he felt guilty. He was guilty. He might as well have been watching an accident unfold at a thousand frames per second. She was letting him do it, a slow, brutal pressing that crushed the life out of the victim like a rat in the coils of a Burmese Python.

 

Why couldn't Mana Kirishima have been like Yukie Utsumi? Why hadn't she just sighed and cursed him and cut her losses, when he knew that she knew those things would keep her free of the bizarre drama encapsulating someone that hardly cared?

 

But he did care.

 

When he traversed the border bisecting his tepid dreamscape and the horrible waking world, in that moment when the controls on his piecemeal ego were foreign and clumsy, he could feel everything. In the weeks since he had last seen her, Mana had always felt the best. Real. He would get up to make breakfast, then. It finally tasted real. This should be a good thing, a great thing, like sitting before Mihiro's supposedly broken corpse and knowing he had the ability to cry. He could be hurt again and that…oh, shit.

 

It was that damned look! Concern was merely a secondary ingredient. Shinji felt he could handle concern with the same grey wall he had erected to dam his mind away from all manner of living dead nightmares. Mana had been worried, obviously, but that flash in her eyes, the unwavering, unflinching focus…it was as if he had stolen from her.

 

Shinji had replayed the last moments of their last encounter, rewound the memory of her face inches from his as her arms encircled him, claimed him. There it was, the thing he lost that day as he tried recovering from his last meeting with Sohryu. Entitlement, birthright, whatever its truest name, there had been a brief, eternal moment that Mana Kirishima became it.

 

The girl he had last seen preparing for death within the belly of Trident Unit-02, that Mana, she had never looked like that, a realization that made his blood flow like an ice-choked fjord. This all made the woman frightening, beyond the frivolities of infatuation, worriment, sex.

 

Not frightening like Asuka. But close. Close enough that he knew he could not keep them a day's thoughts away simultaneously. Not forever. That was how that German ghost had gotten close enough to slip him paper and break his heart. That was how she could now tower over him, staring down to swallow him with that black hole in her face that led to nothing in the middle of nowhere. For a fraction of eternity far too long for Shinji Ikari's liking, Mana too became otherworldly, her entirety but a vessel for a vast empyreal crusade.

 

Or maybe she was just horny. How the hell should he know?

 

Aside from the fact she liked him, Mana was the most normal woman he knew. Yet still, he could not shake the fact that someone was making love to his ears.

 

Mihiro Kamakura would have instantly perverted the meaning of that last thought into something foul and deeply, disturbingly lolicon, if not for the fact that she was on the stage and immersed in the enterprise of effecting such flowing, flawless resonance.

 

She was playing. She was good. She was better than him. She was better than anyone he had ever heard, ever.

 

Anonymous strains of sorrow mingled and migrated across the girl's face, her furrowed brow and her closed eyes, as she dove into another valley of effortless, seraphic melody. Out again, then segueing into the neighboring movement with the supreme confidence that she dared flashing that last Thursday. Now, it was Tuesday night, and the collage of day-drenched hues had been replaced by a deepening inverted sea of cascading azures, accompanied by Suite Number Six in D Major. Damn, she was good.

 

Shinji broke from his trance long enough to glance at Mihiro's homeroom teacher, who happened to have been sitting to his left. The woman had an almost regal air about her when they had spoken earlier in the evening. This was right up until he had mentioned who he came to the recital for, the girl who was to the woman's composure what dynamite was to a strip mine. She caught his stare with glistening eyes, smiled and mouthed `thank you'.

 

There was gentle pressure on his thigh, someone patting it. He was met with Maya's soft, rare `I told you so' face when he looked in the opposite direction. He conceded with a sheepish smile of his own, even though there hadn't been a single discernable sign in the last year Mihiro Kamakura was, to put it mildly, Cello Jesus. Didn't matter, anyway.

 

All that he knew was that somewhere, Yo-Yo Ma was suddenly and unexpectedly weeping tears of joy. Of this, Shinji Ikari was quite certain.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------

 

Kodama was asking for something.

 

The concept never fully registered as `strange' to Hikari, even though her sister was three years her senior. To say that the Horaki sisters were without a mother was a concept Hikari didn't exactly agree with, either. That was because, for as far back as her high-resolution memories stretched (or as far back as Horaki cared to see), she had been their mother.

 

Kodama could have been the ones to pack their lunches on all of those crisp, sleepy school mornings, if not for the fact that, on one occasion, the oldest girl had managed to burn water. Hikari had logically known (and had later been validated by her general chemistry studies) that such a thing was impossible, and that what had been in the pot was probably some sort of grease. Unfortunately, the memory of blue flames licking the ceiling while Kodama, little Nozomi, and dad tore around the kitchen screaming like pillaged villagers, was irreversibly, utterly indelible.

 

After that, the kitchen apron was hers. After that, she'd tell -not ask- them to clear the table. After that, she could send Nozomi to her room with a glare.

 

Hikari Horaki was dead. Long live Kasumi Tendo.

 

The freckled young woman adjusted the tilt of her neck to make it easier to talk into the phone. Her hands frittered autonomously, skinning potatoes in the apartment's kitchen sink.

 

Even mothers weren't psychic. Close, but not psychic.

 

“So, really…how is everything going there?

 

Kodama gave a small, knowing huff. “I said it was all good the last time you asked me.”

 

“Uh-huh. And I'm asking again.” Expectancy tinged Hikari's soft tone. “It's completely within my right to ask you until you tell me what's wrong.”

 

“And maybe you hear something wrong because you want to hear something wrong. You know what I mean?”

 

“I know what you mean.” Hikari nodded to herself. “I know…”

 

Her words hung like the motes of dust catching light above the sink, in which a stream of white water washed the peeled tubers.

 

Then Kodama sighed.

 

“I don't know. Hikari, I…it's nothing, just…I'm way too old to get homesick. So I know it's not that.”

 

“Why not? Why are you too old? Twenty-two's too old?”

 

There was a shaking intake of air. “I guess not. I'm being silly. I mean, I'm making all kinds of good money here, and Nagano's beautiful. But I can't…” She sighed again. “How about you?”

 

The middle Horaki was grateful that Kodama could not see her smile. “I'm too young to be getting empty nest syndrome.”

 

The young professional laughed. “Why not? Why are you too young? Nineteen's too young?”

 

Hikari washed the sediment from her hands and dried them. “You and Nozomi don't really need me to tell you what not to do, not anymore, at least. And dad never did. We all…we just got used to it. We got used to worse things.”

 

“Worse things…” Kodama repeated, “you didn't answer my question.”

 

“If you're asking if I miss being the official Horaki maid…no. And I've got an emergency daughter living with me now, in case I do get a little homesick. I…”

 

Hikari turned on a whim, cupping the phone as she said, “I didn't get to ask you about your test today-”

 

“Failed it.”

 

Hikari was now facing Mana, resisting the fledgling cringe pulling at her mouth as she took in the sorry, disheveled state of her best friend.

 

“It's okay, though,” the redhead said. “They drop one exam at the end of the term. So everything's good.”

 

Hikari wasn't psychic. Didn't need to be. “Then you don't have any reason to look like that. I'm going to put some food in you, and then you're finally going to get yourself togeth-”

 

“I need to use the phone.”

 

Hikari's eyes lingered on Mana's, and she was suddenly, oddly thankful the kitchen phone was cordless.

 

“Kodama? I'll call you back…”

 

 

End of Chapter 4

 

A/N: If it seemed as if there wasn't much plot progression, that's because chapters 4 and 5 were originally one chapter. It got long. Damn long. I'm hoping chapter 5 will be done in two weeks.

 

Yeah, I created the Mihiro character and introduced Mana, so it was time to flesh them out. Hopefully, it'll work out for both the purposes of plot progression and character development. Thank you for the feedback. Thanks to Somewhere N of A for the forum pub, much appreciated. Hopefully I can validate some of this good faith.

 

Just to reiterate, I've been answering questions in my LiveJournal. Hope no one thinks I'm ignoring them…

 

Random A/N: I smell chlorine…

 

Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.