Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction ❯ Normal to Reality ❯ Chapter 5 ( Chapter 6 )

[ 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 5
By MidnightCereal
She got away.
Oh, yes she did. She was promised two painless, bookless, testless, lectureless weeks. She was promised time that was hers to waste, minutes, hours -vast, consecutive sums of both- not used to better herself. Perhaps used even to retrogress, to degenerate.
Yes, slink back into an olid, slovenly shell. Ignore the phone. Screw the dishes. Let them soak in the sink until green things start growing on them, things with smells. The written word is for losers, read nothing with more than three syllables. Pick your nose when you're sure no one is looking. Reasonably sure. Break wind. Blame it on little sis. Blame it on dad.
That's right. Sure wasn't me. Hikari Horaki cuts many cheeses, save for one.
Oh! And that thing! With your eyes closed and the blackness, and you feel nothing unless it's that dream with Touji, the one in your bedroom at three thirty-three in the morning and then you feel everything
I'm going to sleep. It's going to happen. Spring semester is over and the deepest thought I will have in the next fourteen days is `the'. No work. And sleep. Magnificent oblivion.
However, that she was so excited, so hell-bent on not being conscious for the next hundred hours, called into question her current station. Back in Tokyo-3. A grocery store. Buying produce and a liter of bleach. Two liters…they were out of the smaller containers.
It was a mistake she had made -a foolish rookie mistake, really- of prefacing her trip from Keio with a phone call.
Nozomi wanted tempura for dinner. And apparently, there was something green growing on the dishes in the sink. That pretty mush explained why she was bagging okra. And scallops. And kobocha. And soba. And also why she had invested in two liters of sodium hypochlorite-dammit!
Stupid labels.
That's right. Stupid labels. Stupid heavy bags and stupid walk to the bus stop. Why on Earth did she tell Nozomi that she was coming home with just one piece of luggage? Why'd she turn down little sis' offer of a car ride back home? Besides the fact that Hikari Horaki liked her internal organs just the way they were currently arranged? No reason.
If she wasn't careful, she was going to start thinking again, worrying as she walked/staggered to the depot, which was a sunny, noisy spring block away. Too bad she hadn't been able to talk her roommate into spending the break at the Horaki residence. Hikari could have at least had help with the bags. It turned out that convincing Mana Kirishima to set a single toe back into the Tokyo-3 Metropolitan Area was easier said, begged, bribed and blackmailed, than done.
The two freshmen had not spent one night in their third floor flat before Mana stopped between mouthfuls of udon to explain how it was she had become so close to Shinji Ikari. Only now could Hikari admit to herself that she had been half-listening, mentally organizing her hectic first semester schedule…until Mana said the E word. That the eighteen year-old had been a government spy and had operated black program mecha were instantly relegated to sub-tertiary footnotes.
Knowing Shinji Ikari, Asuka, Nerv and Evangelion was as sure a recipe for total emotional collapse as anything in Hikari Horaki's wonderfully brutal experiences. Anyone who knew those people, those things…those things…deserved an empathy the former class representative could not manufacture. Not anymore.
She had tried, nevertheless. She had hugged Mana that night. Mana had cried herself to sleep, alone in her room.
Mana. Alone. Again. Waving goodbye at the front door and `smiling'…please, these grocery bags were less plastic.
Now there was a woman that liked her solitude. Kirishima didn't request it too frequently, and never at an inconvenience to her flat mate, but when it came the brunette always granted it. It was always absolute.
Fifteen minutes at a time. An hour. Half a day…and then ninety-six consecutive hours in February. Horaki could take an educated stab at what memories imprisoned Mana for four straight days, coming to the realization that it must be something worth knowing…which meant she really didn't want to know at all.
Darn it, it was hot, and Hikari could feel the cotton of her blue buttoned blouse clinging to her waist like a warm towel. She wanted to be home now, not sticky and weighed down by squash and third-person angst. It was because of this the young adult at first did not question, but rather luxuriated in having the burden on her right shoulder alleviated. She looked to her side and up, finding it imperative to choke down a gasp.
Then Souichi Nakajima blinked, and whatever it was that had unnerved her was lost to confusion.
“For…for a second,” she started, “you had looked…never mind.”
“Never mind what, Miss Horaki?”
“Do you know…? Forget it. As long as I don't have to carry that bleach and the T-16 gets here on time.” Hers was a cursory glance, an economic, subtle scan that ran over and assessed the black tousle of short spikes that crowned him and obscured his eyes. She tried looking at least, but he had since turned forward to smile at some distant vanishing point.
The hair, the eyes…that smile. Hikari now knew why Mana was into him…had been into him. Regardless, memories, pictures, thoughts of Nakajima were easily shared by his ex-girlfriend, due in no small part to the fact Mana had the luxury of an amicable breakup. Mana had the luxury of a breakup. Of goodbye…
“Small world,” she said in a small voice before speaking louder. “Who'd think of all places you'd turn up in my hometown?”
His eyebrows swung down and up again like broken second hands. Nothing was broken about So's smile. “You sound certain I should have shown up elsewhere. Why is that, Miss Horaki?”
“Hikari's fine. And it's just that there are better places to show up. Much better.” Then stupid things came out of her mouth. “I'm saying that Mana's not too far from here. Did you know that? And after you two split up, she never heard anything else from you. Not that she was trying very hard to find you-”
“Then all is as it should be.” As he looked ahead once more, she imagined something unpleasant crawling just beneath his opaque simper. Ugh.
“Oh no…do you think I'm prying? I'm not prying!” She sighed. “Yes I am. I'm just saying that you confused her, that's all. She said you made so much sense that it never really made sense, whatever the heck that means. Stop me if you've heard this before.”
“I haven't.” The young man shrugged as his grin faltered for all of a millisecond. “Being reminded of it…is not as painful as I'd imagined it to be. Our breakup was amicable, after all.”
See?
“But I don't understand. Mana's goodbye…it was one of conviction. I had envied it. It would pain me if I had left her and her heart had remained weak.”
“You make it sound like it was some kind of job.”
His laugh, a sound bereft of true mirth, lacked also scorn. “A splendid job. And I thought I had succeeded. Her choice was quite clear.”
Hikari had been puzzling over the young man's diction, concurrently formal and unorthodox. But mostly weird. She managed to capture his last words, which pressed against her brain until understanding seeped through. “Her…choice?”
“Her heart, it is such a wonderful thing, Miss Horaki. You feel whole again beneath it, so much freedom merited by gentle sovereignty…until she hits you.” He thoroughly ignored the roaming eyes of a passing schoolgirl. “Aside from that, what price is there? Other than a cheap, feckless irony? She should trust in her heart. Not one person would reject it.”
He allowed gravity from a severe thought to bow his mouth again. “Not one person that is worth saving…”
Got it. “I don't even know what it takes to be that noble. Don't get me wrong. I want to be happy for Mana and Shinji. It's not that easy for me, So.” She felt momentarily annoyed. “And call me Hikari.”
He adjusted the grip on the bag in his left hand as he tried to look surprised. “You're not happy for her?”
“Well, what about?” she asked, silently counting cracks in the pavement. They turned a corner as she thought of what to say. “It's not like she's been seeing him. She hasn't even talked to him in five years. I mean, if it wasn't for me, she wouldn't even know he was alive.”
Now that had been an interesting night…
“She's scared,” Hikari sighed. “She doesn't want to come here, and she wouldn't know what to say to him. God, she wouldn't even…well, actually she would know what to do. But she's just scared, So.”
She should be, said something stygian and pitted in Hikari's mind. Because to her admittedly outdated knowledge, Shinji Ikari was no more alive than Touji Suzahara. Having a warm body, going to class, breathing and eating lunch were prerequisites, sure. But for heaven's sake, you had to do more than that! Hikari had silently, sadly watched Shinji from afar during each and everyone one of their blissfully uneventful high school days, and she could not recall the former pilot ever doing more than that.
Case in point: The former class representative was to matchmaking what the former class representative was to matchmaking. This was to say Hikari Horaki had no peer when it came to finding the two most severely traumatized, socially inept or pitifully needy creatures in all of Tokyo-3, and then slamming them into each other like ions in a particle accelerator. In retrospect then, it had not been a terribly awesome idea to hook Shinji up with fellow class representative Yukie Utsumi.
Whose boyfriend had just died.
That the attractive dark-eyed girl had been falling back on a wholly unrequited love that dated back to Sohryu-era Tokyo-3, should have occurred to Hikari before she had engineered a meeting between Madam Rebound and The Boy That Would Not Blink. After a week it had been too late. After about three months, it had been too loud, too angry, too belligerent, too nasty. Too crushed. Shinji had shrugged though it all, and when it was all over he had quietly muttered something about cake. Huh?
Hikari did not care what Souichi said that Mana said. Horaki could love Shinji like a brother only if he'd let her, but that didn't mean that Mana should have to live through the unpleasantry of seeing what very little was left of him.
Mana Kirishima should not see Shinji Ikari at all.
“She'll see him again,” said So.
“Well…that bothers me. And it would bother you, too, if you knew Shinji.” She smiled a bit, not really feeling happy. “It's kind of a prerequisite when you play matchmaker. I learned that the hard way.”
“And I am nothing if not qualified…”
“What in the world does that mean?” She was getting just a little tired of him speaking over her head, and was unwilling to let this bit of oddness fly under the radar.
“It means that you should take the C-8 back through district six.”
Well, that wasn't random at…she took note of her surroundings.
“Wait, this isn't my bus stop…” It only seemed to get hotter and louder as they approached a depot chaperoned by empty plastic benches. They had passed her stop. Oh God, why hadn't she paid attention to where they were walking? This crap was heavy! “I gotta go back. I'll miss it in the next minute.”
“This is the correct stop,” he stated with assuredness that bordered on obnox…no, screw that, it was obnoxious-
“You know what? Gimme my bleach.” She snatched the plastic sac from his long fingers as a bus -not the T-16- was breaking toward them with a high-pitched metallic squeal. Hikari eyed the digital display below her upturned palm.
3:48:59
Thank goodness, she wasn't late.
3:49:01
Now she was.
Great.”
Yeah…wasn't it great she would have to wait twenty-four minutes for anoth…back up.
Her house was in district six. How did he know where she lived? How did Souichi even know her? After all, he and Mana had met and dated and broken up all before Hikari started rooming with the carmine-haired girl. Kirishima did not have any pictures of Hikari back then, either. Someone else might have, however…
“Souichi,” she began, emerging from that last cocoon of thought, “you know Shinji, don't you?” She turned to him, intent on extracting the truth behind his words, his eyes and smile. But those things were gone, as was the rest of him.
Somehow…somehow he had just gone.
“So? Souichi?” Hikari turned in a slow circle, slower than the sorry explanations that came to her for why she and her bags were suddenly, entirely alone.
“This isn't funny!”
“Do I look like I'm laughing?”
Curt impatience turned her back to the road. She found her view of the traveled asphalt blocked by a Tokyo-3 Municipal Metro bus (not the T-16), shuddering as it idled. The middle-aged operator frowned down at her beyond the opened door in order to make it easier to dislike him.
“No you don't,” she said.
If possible, even more things crawled up his ass and died…oops, did she really just think that? Asuka would've been proud.
Funny. Ma'am, I have to be in Kojiri in eleven minutes. Are you getting on or not?”
“I just…um…” When it occurred to her that staring harder at the spot Souichi Nakajima had occupied did nothing to make him un-vanish, Hikari hastily gathered up her clothes, cleansers and perishables to board the northbound C-8.
He was there. And then he was not.
She had to catch herself as the vehicle lunged forward and merged into traffic. What was that jerk so snarky about? There couldn't have been more than eight other people on the stupid bus. Express or not, none of them looked to be in much of a hurry. Or awake…or sober.
This all made it that much easier to take a seat and a breath, to forget about recalcitrant roommates and their pontificating, disappearing ex-boyfriends. All that mattered was that she was going home and Kensuke Aida was staring at her. What?
Yup, there he was. The brown eyes behind those ovular rims accounted for the groceries and luggage wrapped around her narrow torso. Putting zero and zero together, the sandy-haired man grinned up at her.
“I would've thought you'd have taken the T-16 back home.”
“Yeah,” she gave a small, small laugh, “me too.” Hoping that nothing on her freckled face hinted at the confusion that caught up to and abruptly seized her, she reciprocated Kensuke's hospitality and lowered herself in the seat next to his.
Forget about it. You're home.
Holy crap. He was really gone.
-----
Shinji stood in the dim backstage with Maya, watching as his jubilant student bounded up to them. The last thing he expected was for Mihiro to kick him in the shin. Hence, it came as a great surprise when Mihiro kicked him in the shin.
“What is wrong with you?” he heard Maya ask while he knelt and massaged his throbbing leg. Right on the bone! It's like her shoes were made of Painium.
Mihiro apologized with a derisive snort. “Lady, I'm just doing what his girlfriend's gonna do for not being invited. Same thing I'm gonna do to Shinta…”
“He didn't come?” Shinji asked, unfolding himself as he blinked back tears. Maya was frowning, now.
Mihiro's narrowed eyes shot to a corner with stacked sand bags before snapping, “Like I even care what that jerk does.”
Crossing her arms fitfully, she tried swallowing her own lie before surprising him with a sober stare. “I really wanted to meet Mana, teacher.”
“And how do you know I'm not Mana?” Maya interjected with valiant cheer. “I still sometimes pass for nineteen or twenty.”
“Far be it from me to intrude on other people's fantasies,” laughed Mihiro, looking the woman up and down. “I'm hope I'm that positive when I get that old-”
“I didn't tell Mana because I didn't think she'd be interested,” Ikari blurted. He slowly rubbed Maya's opposite shoulder as the…uh…old woman simmered. “I mean, not that you weren't interesting. You were fantastic.”
Kamakura shook her head of straight black hair. “I know you're saying lots of different placating things, but all I keep hearing is, `please, Mihiro, kick me in the shins.' If you can't understand why Mana would be upset then you need to be. And you're welcome, by the way.”
“For…for what?”
“For getting you tickets into Fujikyu Highlands so we can all celebrate my performance, hello? Dad got me season park passes, a bunch of them.”
“Wonderful,” he muttered.
Isn't it? Now you don't have to make up anymore sorry excuses for why you won't introduce me to your girlfriend instead of just coming out and saying you didn't want me to embarrass you in front of her because that's what you thought would happen!”
“Uh…” He blinked. “Thank you?”
“You are quite welcome,” the girl repeated cordially. “You gotta make her feel needed, teacher. I mean, after that one time you never ever talked about her.”
“I don't talk about a lot of things, Mihiro.”
The smirk that moved across her heart-shaped visage was a little too knowing for comfort. And by a little, he meant a lot. “I know that, but it isn't like it isn't one of those things that you shouldn't not talk about. Right?”
“………………Right?”
“Of course I'm right,” Mihiro established. “I'm cupid. I'm awesome.”
Before Shinji even knew what he was saying he was saying it. “Who in their right mind would give you a bow and arrow?”
THWACK.
“Stop kicking him!”
“…I'm awesome,” Mihiro reiterated for reasons known only to herself. “And I'm tired and I'm hungry. What're you going to do about it, teacher?”
“Is…is there any answer I can give that won't result in you kicking me again?”
“I don't believe you're striking the correct tone regarding my dole of gratitude suffused with a vague limerent subtext, my dear L-O.”
As his brain attempted to capsize, Shinji realized that she said that with a completely straight face.
“But to answer your question, introvertedmentorprovidingcongratulatorydinnerforvirtuosoviolincellistsaysw hat.”
“What?”
Mihiro beamed. “You're awesome. Let me go get my stuff.”
He felt his face twist in the proverbial wind as the girl skipped off, presumably to `get her stuff'. “I missed something. What did I miss?”
“You're taking her to dinner,” said Maya. “I'm not old.”
They began making their way offstage and the Third Child shook his head, one part disbelief, two parts burgeoning headache. “Unbelievable. Over a year I've been trying to get her to play Baa-Baa Black Sheep, and this whole time she's had more class in her little finger than I do in my entire-”
-----
“-sphincter. But I'm tellin' you, if I ever have to stick my arm in a mare's ass again, it'll be too soon.”
And that was more than Shinji had ever wanted to know about artificial horse insemination.
Mihiro kept elaborating anyway…with enthusiasm…and a visual aid…and come on, who carries something like that in their pocket?
He squirmed beneath the hot lamp irradiating their restaurant booth, and was appropriately disconcerted when he swore the bratwurst populating his specialty plate squirmed also. His periphery caught Maya sitting to his right, and he correctly interpreted her expression, which quite clearly said, `Urp'.
“W-what did you say your IQ was, again?” Shinji asked, hoping to abate the disgusting tide and give himself less to think about. Perhaps it was also the conflagration of sloshed, harmony-challenged salarymen, the flare-festooned chorus of uniformed birthday well-wishers, the shrieking babies, and the shrieking babies, that made his head stabout three percent increase in cox countering with six hundred grams panadol increase to six fifty nothing to just cephalgia worry about to minimize coeval dsyexecutive activity negitirt to hurt.
“One sixty-eight,” said Mihiro, before leaning over her empty plate to point at Maya's untouched soujouk. “You gonna eat that?”
The tight-lipped scientist still looked a little urp-y, and no sooner did she shake her head did Mihiro stab the broiled ground beef with her fork. “I love Sausage Tuesdays! They have so much sausage here, especially on Tuesday.”
“I'm just glad I can do something for you, Mihiro, because I get the feeling that after the first few weeks you didn't need me to teach you anything.”
Mihiro swallowed. “Nope.”
Shinji threw his hands up and laughed. Almost. “I knew it! That whole time you were just jerking me around! You've been screwing with me and you were really Nina Kotova in a skirt!”
The young cellist blinked rapidly. “Uh…Nina Kotova is a woman, teacher.”
“I'm not your teacher, anymore. And you'd be forgetful too if you found out your student's been lying to you for over a year, for no good reason at all.”
“I liked the company…” From out of nowhere, pitch-black threadbare candor.
The thin man was a thousand times grateful the girl had been looking down and cutting into her food as she said it. Hoping the heat in his face wasn't too glaring, he found the resolve to meet her smile.
“It's not really in your best interests to complain anyway,” she continued, “but I guess getting paid better than fifty percent above the median for classical instrument tutors isn't enough incentive to stay in the game. I'm sure dad'll be more than understanding.”
“Are…are you blackmailing me into getting paid?”
“I suppose not,” she sighed. “If dad really gave a crap I wouldn't have had to bum a ride to my own fucking recital.”
“I didn't know that…I'm sorry.”
“Well, I'm glad someone is, even if it isn't their fault. I wouldn't think I'd be able to intimidate someone who had to fight giant alien monsters, anyway.”
He barely kept from gasping. Maya could not.
“I…I never talked about…how did you know?”
“I didn't,” admitted Mihiro, “not until you just told me.”
He felt Maya kick him in the shin.
The thirteen year-old leaned back in her seat, shrugging, looking content. “I had my suspicions. Did you know mom used to work at Nerv? She still won't tell me what she did there, which is effed in the butt hole `cause she was always there, but anyway, she had this slip of the tongue one day. `Shinji the Third Children', something like that. There's more than one of you.”
“Was.”
“Oh…” Her eyes swung up to him with dread. “Oh gawd…you two aren't gonna have to kill me now, are you?”
Ikari blanched. “Don't even joke…”
She fitted her face with a wan smile before planting her elbliminary readings negative still no change parallel wave border stability unchanged since zero zero nine cox level maintained at don't concentrate on that right now just log the barrier integrity as long as we maintain his eows on the heavy polished oak.
What kept doing that? His head was still hurting. It was getting worse.
Mihiro's large brown eyes wandered around his face. “You're practically a superhero, you know that? God, you even cook your ass off!”
Now Maya was razing him with lidded eyes. “You cook for her?”
“Seriously, are you supposed to be his mother? I mean, what?”
Mihiro…” Shinji reflexively chided.
“Not his mother-”
“But I like cooking. You know that, Maya. I really don't see any harm in making her some real food since her parents don't really…oh no-”
“It's all good,” Kamakura's daughter said, quietly killing off Shinji's fledgling apology. “It's not like you're lying or saying something I don't say myself, like, all the time. To their faces. You're right. I probably won't see mom for another two months, not until she's done in Toronto, and…”
For a long, terrible, long, painful, long moment, the girl that would not shut up said nothing at all, smiling and shrugging when she was ready to talk again.
“Well…you came. One out of four ain't so bad.”
Far be it from him to question someone with an IQ of one-hundred and sixty-eight, but Shinji Ikari felt that Mihiro's math skills leural feedback is negligible good long it takes to run these damn diagnostics oh be patient who knows preliminaries green how many from nodes three chances we'll get four six to three zero three three doft much to be desired.
Ow.
-----
Ow.
“I can't believe you've never seen Twilight Seibei.”
“I wasn't even a year old when it came out,” Shinji quietly answered Maya. Quietly, because invisible ball-peen hammers had chased him from Sausage Tuesdays. They had caught up to him when they dropped Mihiro off at her lonely, lightless home…house. They had begun tapping out Baa-Baa Black Sheep at a precise spot on his skull -everywhere- when the girl spared them something pleading and accusing before allowing herself to be swallowed up by the unlit hollow.
It was also rare when he was honored by a quality rendition of Moby Dick, so he could be forgiven for not doing the sensible thing and declining Ibuki's idea of renting a movie, especially since he had to be up early in the morning…since his head hurt so damned much…
“Are you okay?” It was there in her voice, again, concern beyond concern. It was a little jarring, now that it wasn't over the phone, now that she was looking at him as they stepped over the threshold into his cool apartment. So long as she's not panicking. He associated a panicked Maya Ibuki with an assortment of things, half unpleasant, the other half Asu-
Stop.
“I just need to sit down for a bit. I'm tired for some reason.”
My head's about to explode for some reason.
The phone on the living room coffee table helped immensely by shrieking at an impossibly high volume. He thought it helped more that the voice on the other end of the line composed a soft, feminine melody…until he realized who it was.
“It…it's great to here from you again, Yukie.”
“And you still talk like old people fuck,” she murmured, her voice drifting like a dead carp in a poisoned brook, “like you fuck.”
“Can this wait? I don't really need to be hearing this, now.”
“Ah. Then I won't keep you.” Shinji could see her, and those dull dolls eyes -glossed with righteous menace- unveiled with a toss of dark chestnut, her pink lips pursing and parting. “Happy anniversary, faggot.”
“But we started dating in March, not-”
Click.
“…June.”
“Who was that?” It was official; Maya Ibuki was an invective detector. “Was that Mana?”
“No, it-”
“That was Mana, wasn't it?”
No…” Shinji ironed the antagony from his brow, if only to smother the woman's maternal instincts. “Yukie.”
“I haven't heard that name in a while.”
“I wish I could say the same.” He really did. “Can I go wash up or something before we start watching?”
“Take your time. Take a bath.” Maya was wandering, unsuccessful in finding a remotely interesting…thing…on or near the walls of his criminally unfurnished residence. “Don't worry about me. Nerv starts when I start. My subordinates won't complain.”
“Subordinates? I guess you really are in control there...” He weakly chuckled. “You're almost like Ritsuko, now.”
“…Go take your bath.”
-----
Shinji stopped trying to move. Innumerable pinpoints of heat pricked and buoyed him beneath the fluid glass, tendrils curling up from it like white smoke. Good. He had been feeling cold and heavy, from weighty shackles that drew around tighter as the night dragged on. It was perhaps this that made him sink further into the furo, until his jaw leveled with liquid crystal ripples. It was the loathsome weight of recurrence.
Ritsuko Akagi's protégé had found reasons to call him in the middle of the night and invite him to lunch, to accompany him to Mihiro's cello recital and…and now they were movie buddies?
It was expectancy. It was strand after strand of hope linked to reciprocity. The symmetry struck him, then, when he considered his friends, those that wished to be more than friends and those that used to be the former or latter. They all…still wanted something from him. Or just him, it was all the same. Mana, Maya, Mihiro, Kensuke, they all hase differential dropping to lower limit theta and smr wave form solutions converged on the eighty fourth iterad a use for him. Yukie still did, in a borderline sadomasochistic way.
Man, she sure did like saying things to him.
Pre and Post Third Impact Shinji Ikari shared that one injurious link, and having once again to stomach third party aspirations would lead to something as ardently appealing now as it was then. Not. That Eva was one of countless artifacts cast down into a world -a reality- five years dead, was entirely moot. Praise and scorn, highs and precipitous lows, could be siphoned from alternative reservoirs banal and preternatural.
Breathing would be harder than letting go and plunging into that familiar, eager dependency. But then, at least, he could be near someone, could form rosaries built up from the morsels of praise they dispensed, even if they injured him, lied to him or muddied him with their disdain. Even if outside their own selfish interests, he was less than nothing. He could be near Mana and-
-and shut up.
In the end, it was far and away the best thing to not give a god-fucking-damn about their feelings either way. If he was to paramilitary extraterrestrial warfare what Sadaharu Oh was to baseball, then more power to them. If he was an easy mark, ripe for perpetual mockery and good for an occasional cello lesson, it was all good. Well, mostly bad, but again, he tried not to care.
If he was meant to care, then he would not have woken on that white beach roofed by indigo. Alone.
A surge of cold welled within and flooded him to momentarily dispel the bath's cloying heat. Betrayal always felt cold. Never as tired as he suddenly felt, though.
If…she…would not return even when he had asked her to, when he had hoped for it and did his best to will her into existence, why was she hounding him? Did she know that this was worse than father, worse than Kaworu?
Worse than Mana? Stop it
Of course. She had been the smartest person he had ever met. Of course she knew.
It had been no more a conscious decision on his part to live as it was to die in this place. Yet, it seemed as if it had been some survival mechanism that made him this way, the way he had been since Asuka had returned, broken, dead, alive. Her and Misato. Ardor for complementation, that was how they had plied him, made him care…and he had finally been delivered from it.
Somewhere along the way to renouncing praise and the contempt which shadowed it -on the way to not needing anyone- self-worth as a relevant measure of his identity found a hole to crawl into, coiled unto itself, and promptly died. That's right. Shinji Ikari found a way to weaponize apathy.
No one would ever again bend him to their will with second-rate palaver. No more ups and downs. The less people he knew, the less chance there was of discovering just how worthless he was. Being nothing to everyone, or everything to no one; Shinji could live with either.
But not if Misato could help it.
“Go to sleep,” she said.
Shinji always did what he was told.
-----
WAKE UP!
-----
Shinji honestly did not know why he felt embarrassed standing in his apartment, in shorts and a loose-fitting tank top. After all, Maya had seen him decked out in full bathtub birthday suit regalia mere minutes ago. Perhaps it was the fact that the older woman had seen him butt-nekkid so many times during his piloting days they should have been legally married.
Or perhaps it was because when she had lifted his head above the bathwater's surface, she had been shouting and crying hysterically, thus rendering any transgression on his part downright regal by comparison.
Who knew Maya Ibuki had such a powerful set of lungs?
I do, he thought, drawing her hair-trigger gaze from across the kitchenette when he loudly coughed.
“I'm fine,” he said, swallowing. “Just a little water down the wrong pipe. You can relax…please?”
Shinji was looking away before he saw any lax in her hard, scared eyes, more to afford her feminine modesty than anything else. About half the contents of his furo ended up soaking her snug collared blouse to the point of translucency.
“You're lucky you still have a shoji for your bathroom door, you know that?” Her back was to him as she looked down and jabbed at something with a stiff thumb. The phone. “Lucky lucky lucky…”
“I was just tired.”
“Uh-huh.” What was she doing?
“I'm calling Doctor Ueto.” That was Nerv Cranial psychiatric therapist Kiyohiko Ueto. Ibuki pressed the phone to her ear, her other hand frittering at the damp fringe of her white top. She laughed a little. “What time is it? Almost eleven. Sometimes she's still in her office catching up on online publications, something about having dialup at home. Dialup. Can you believe that, Shinji?”
“I guess so.” He shrugged and watched her shiver. “I don't need to see a therapist, Ma-”
She spun on him, slamming the phone into its receiver with a resounding crack. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? DON'T TELL ME `NOTHING'! YOU BETTER NOT SAY IT'S `NOTHING'!”
“I don't know.”
Was that the best answer? The worst? Whatever it was to Maya, it depleted her wellspring of righteous crusader fury and forced her into the nearest seat, where she began to softly cry behind her hands. Shinji had the unsettling impression she was grieving for him. A minute passed before something told the man to move, but she was up by then, pacing and wiping at her wet cheeks. And speaking.
“Shinji…you… cannotdo this to people.”
“Do what to people?” Her flushed face became twisted by a soft, mocking smile as she stood off a few paces beyond his beige couch. “I don't know what you mean. I haven't done anything to make anyone care-”
“You don't have to do anything!” she snapped. “Don't you get it? People already care! I care! Kensuke cares! Mihiro cares! Mana cares! Why is giving a damn so hard for you, Shinji? I found you asleep. Underwater. Doesn't that worry you? Aren't you scared?”
Her inquiry was suspended by a viscous pause thick enough to choke off any vocalization. Not that he could have said anything to temper Maya's brittle edge. Thankfully, it fell away on its own and the young doctor returned to her formal shell with an audible sigh.
He could breathe again. “I'm sorry.”
“No, I'm sorry,” the short-haired woman intimated, shrinking the space between them with soft steps. “It's not fair to expect you to have all these answers when no one bothered to even ask until now. But did you really think we were going to let you just sink and die?”
“They all did before.” Maya stopped close enough for him to watch the hope in her eyes die gruesomely. He felt embarrassment again. Of all Nerv people, Maya was perhaps deserving of the least blame, at least less blame than him. He had chosen to pilot, after all. He had chosen to stay. A slave to extolment.
No more
“If,” he started, “if you want to help me-”
“Of course. Anything.”
“My head is killing me.”
“Why can't all your problems be this simple?” she asked, rounding him to reach for something she eyed on his dining room table. A bottle of aspirin that she tried opening.
“Good luck with that. I tried already.”
She sniffled, laughing at him. “It's not stuck. It's a childproof cap. You must really be out of it, Shinji. I've had my share of downs, but,” She grunted. “but -shit- but…it's stuck.”
“I told you.”
Hush, you.” Maya put the white bottle down and looked at him. “You wouldn't happen to have any ginger in here, would you? Or some honey?”
“Second cabin on the right. No, the one above you. That's it. What're you doing?”
“Any alcohol? Something pretty soft.”
“Last cabinet on the left.”
She scooted over and sure enough, plucked a filmed-over bottle of Pinot-Noir from a spartan shelf. “I have to say…I'm surprised you have this in here, even if it is unopened.”
“It's Yukie's actually. She was saving it for something special, just never came back for it.”
“Something special,” his guest repeated, filling a small pot with faucet water. “Something like, what?”
You don't have to say it now. And I won't ask you anymore. Where can I put this?”
Last cabinet on the left.”
I love you. Hope you won't keep me waiting too long…”
“I don't remember,” he said.
“Oh,” Maya breathed absently, staying busy. “To answer your question, I am making a family remedy to cure headaches. Well, either that or a tea that prevents food poisoning, in which case you'll vomit uncontrollably. I paid pretty good attention to mom, though.”
The hammers were back. “How good?”
Squat blue light danced beneath the pot on his white range. “Don't worry, I saw mom make this for me all the time as a girl.”
“Wait. Your mother got you drunk when you had headaches?”
Maya turned around long enough to shoot him an admonishing smile. “No!” She turned back around. “A little. Just a tiny bit to help us relax.”
“Us? I didn't know you have siblings.”
“I don't,” she said. “Just a few more minutes…”
-----
“I'm still not vomiting uncontrollably.”
“And I'm still not cleaning up your uncontrollable vomit.” Maya looked down past her chest and smiled. “I chose wisely.”
“Yeah. I don't think my head's going to explode anymore.” Sometime in between downing the hot concoction Maya had cooked up for him and now, his head found its way to her lap, the rest of him stretched out along his plumate couch.
Perhaps Twilight Seibei was a good movie, or perhaps he just felt that way because his brain, mercifully, seemed less detonable.
In the darkness, amidst the sounds of shogunate-era swordplay, something slid across his scalp and then back again. It worked languidly to coax the day's tension from behind his eyes, lading them with fatigue.
“Still not getting why she hates you so much. Yukie.”
“Same reason you were yelling at me tonight.” Shinji blinked to uproot a germinal seed of sleep. “Also, her boyfriend, the one before me, he died.”
Her thigh tensed as she absorbed the information. “That's a pretty big also.”
“She was looking for help. Something good. So not me.”
He half-expected her to cuff him for saying something so completely self-detracting. That would have been bad, because the fingers that sifted through his brown hair were soft and warm, wholly unlike the cold, calloused digits he imagined them to be. They weren't fingers hardened by years of endlessly typing and taking apart things. Ritsuko's fingers. Maya did not stop, and he settled further into his drowsy haze.
“Was it a car accident? I hate to say it, but lots of young people are getting cancer.”
“No.” He blinked out of and into consciousness. “Do you remember…the Municipal High School basketball decapitation case-”
“Her boyfriend was Jin Takashi?” The pressure from her hand increased ever so slightly. “Oh my God…”
“I couldn't have helped her if I had tried.” The collegiate yawned, and it did nothing to ward off a memory of his ex-girlfriend. Of anger. Of that voice, infected with the betrayal he had passed on to her like Ebola. “It's that I didn't try at all. She has every right to hate my guts.”
“Not every right, no,” Maya said with rigid flatness. “You tell me if she does anything to you, anything dangerous. I'll take care of it.”
“Who's Ta-chan?”
The fingers stopped. She breathed and they started again. “I'll put it this way: I don't like to think back on everything that happened before Impact. If ever.” The woman's breath rolled in on invisible currents of turbulence. “Sometimes I can stop it, Shinji. Other days…the bad days…they come to me and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing at all.”
His head was thick with sleep but clear of pain. He couldn't decide if the words he heard were Maya's, or lines that his dream spun for her. He looked to a river flowing across the television screen, and he drowned beneath its blue eddies.
“Those bad days…they come and I want to die,” she whispered. “That's when I think about Ta-chan. On the good days, I think of Ritsuko.”
“Why?” Shinji heard someone ask. Him. “Why Ritsuko?”
“Because it's not my fault she's dead.”
“You could never kill anyone, Maya.”
“Neither could you. Yet you did.”
They were Asuka's fingers and they were laced with Mana's warmth. He could not tell whose lips pressed against his temple.
“Go to sleep, Ta-chan.”
Shinji always did what he was told.
-----
New Fujikyu Highlands was cradled in the cemetery of its abandoned predecessor, in the shadow of its dormant namesake. The park's sinuating steel loops and wooden hills crosscut teeming arterial galleries, their resurrection absolved by the screams of willful captives thundering past lesser venues from the clear blue sky.
Shinji's current line station permitted a view all the way down one the park's brimming arcades. He saw people flow into and out of myriad restaurants -buffets, cafeterias, Meiji-era izayaka, cold-stone ice cream parlors, baseball-themed, American-themed though he didn't know why, seeing as he couldn't go three blocks in Tokyo-3 without walking beneath golden arches.
He saw people, adults smiling patiently as their small children either embraced furry mimic mascots…or ran from them screaming in abject terror. Shinji knew therapy fodder when he saw it. He saw people walk into a restroom, because he had been standing in line for twenty damn minutes and he had to use the restroom.
But mostly, Shinji Ikari saw people, and he was struck by how many there were. Tokyo-3 was a major international metropolis by most standards of wealth, population, tourism or power. But not vitality. For example, Tokyo-3 had no major sports franchises. A bid to co-host the 2024 Olympics with New-Yokohama had been summarily rejected by the IOC, due mostly to non-existent public support. The city, collectively, did not suffer fools. Or fun. Or camaraderie. Or mascosts.
The home of Nerv, the place of The Final Battle, had recovered from its trauma in much the same way someone might recover from a stroke; all of the physical therapy, all of the medical care in the world, would never recoup that which had defined that person and had been lost. Things would never be the same, always diminished.
New Fujikyu Highlands did not simply serve Tokyo-3, however. The park had been revitalized by effort, money, hope and manpower that had flowed down tributaries from all over the Kanto region. The same civil technology that had been employed to afford Kansai International Airport a foundation had raised the sections of the park that had been submerged.
Fujikyu Highlands had risen from reposing depths to buoy the hearts of all those that cherished it, and you could see it on the faces of nearly everyone that ate or laughed, or stood in line for twenty-five minutes godammit how long does it take to get on this coaster it better be the best ride ever.
Minimally, it was one of the most terrifying, as vindicated by a car roaring past the terminal canopy, its occupants crying in…well…terror. After the fourth pass Shinji began guessing what the coaster's name -Sheissen Antifergen- meant in German. New Underwear, perhaps?
He thanked some ambivalent deity when he and his cohorts were finally herded to the front of the line, and that Mihiro had gone on a few cars ahead of them. This was more than fine with the Third, seeing that the underage girl had taken to yelling, `NO SHINJI, I WILL NOT DO YOU IN NEGATIVE G,' every fifth minute she had been pressed against him in the crush of anticipant riders.
Beyond the channeled throng of park-goers, Chippy the Cinnamon Capybara traipsed down a boulevard, enduring wave after wave of sugar-crazed kindergarteners with aplomb. Shinji did not think it odd Mana chose that moment to squeeze his hand tighter.
“I didn't think you'd get nervous, with your experiences and all.”
“I'm not,” she answered, peeling her eyes from the giant anthropomorphic rodent as a toddler lovingly hurled herself at the back of his knee.
“It's okay if you are,” Shinji gently averred. “I tried seeing the top of this thing and all I got was sun.”
“Here…” She quickly lifted his palm to her heart and pressed. “See? I'm not nervous. Are you?”
Mana,” Hikari hissed from behind them, “there are children everywhere-”
“Hey, he's the one that's feeling me up!”
The freckled woman elbowed the freckled man behind her, glowering. “Kensuke! Say something!”
“Like what?” he asked as he kneaded a floating rib, “Score?
“How about I came here to have fun, Hikari? Okay? No one's thinking about us, anyway-”
“HEY MISTER! DO HER IN NEGATIVE G!”
The canopy exploded in laughter. A pudgy boy in the back collected high fives.
There was something about being made the object of ridicule for a man in a giant rat suit that made one less saucy, and Mana removed Shinji's hand from her ample bosom.
“I'm gonna get that kid,” she grumbled.
-----
With park employees giving thumbs up to the coaster operator, they glided from the terminal, out into the sun and sound until metal teeth caught above them. Shinji supposed that things would get hectic once they reached the top of the steel lift, so he tried to relax until it got tall and loud.
Then Mana kicked him. “Can we talk?”
He looked to his right, his view of her obscured by her head restraints. “Now?
“We got time.” A Fujikyu Highlands golf cart shrank below her dangling legs. “So…are you, like, just slowly, passive-aggressively torturing me? Are you revenging me, or…what?”
“I don't hurt anyone, Mana-”
“You hurt me,” he heard her say. “Believe me, you're very, very good at hurting me. And I just want to know if it's because you hate me and you're just too nice to tell me to my face. You can tell me now.”
The top of the hill just could not get there fast enough. Were they going backwards? “I don't hate you. I've never…”
“Not even when you found out I had been lying to you? Not when you found out I was a spy, and using you? Not even for one second?”
“I…” Shinji tried shrinking into his seat. “That was so long ago it shouldn't even matter.”
“Okay…” His de-facto girlfriend breathed with satisfaction. “Then why didn't you invite me to go to Mihiro's recital?”
How the hell did she know about that? He never recalled tel-Kensuke
“Are you serious? That little…thing? Why would you have wanted to go to that?”
“Well, were you there?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Well, there you go. I don't know what's going on with you, but if you're waiting on me to turn into Yukie and just go away…well, good for you that you're a patient guy.”
Shinji had been looking at Fuji-san, realizing that they were still going the fuck up, when Mana began dropping names. Why would Kensuke tell her something so perso-Hikari
“I've heard some things about her. I feel for her, about her boyfriend and all, I really do. But she sounds like a punk.” Her calf brushed up against his. “Do you think I'm a punk, Shinji?”
“No.”
“Do you think that if you sigh enough and lie enough and don't return a certain fraction of my phone calls, I'm just going to give up? That's what you think?”
“No.”
“You think that when you smile at me while you reject me, I just go home, close my door and cry all alone, for hours at a time?”
No.”
“Well, I do. But that's beside the point. Because I don't have any other choice but to hope that one day we'll be able to understand each other.”
He was injected with dreadful nostalgia. “W-what did you just say?”
“I'm saying I can't just go away. And you do not hate me. Did I hear you right?”
“No. I mean, yes.”
“Then get it together, Ikari.” She paused as the other passengers began clamoring. “Please…get it together.”
“…how…”
“I love you,” she said. “That's how.”
He started to scream.
-----
Hikari was reorganizing her anarchic hairdo. “I think I almost swallowed my tongue back there.”
“I think I almost swallowed your tongue,” Kensuke muttered, readjusting his glasses and squinting at his former class rep. “Could you have screamed in my ear any louder?”
“I did not scream in your ear!”
“Miss Horaki, please stop screaming,” Mihiro pleaded. “And you were all screaming, okay? I heard you pansies all the way down at the station.” Grinning, she made her way to the front of their troupe, where Shinji and Mana were walking. “Everyone except my girl here! You didn't make a sound, did you?”
Mana looked down, gave a closed-mouth smile and shook her head.
“That's what I'm talking about!” The girl leapt into Mana for a chest bump. “Yeah! Silent bitches in crime!”
“Um…could you not call my girlfriend a bitch?”
“I'm just playing…sorry.”
“But you didn't make a sound,” Shinji said, appraising the young woman with genuine awe, “I guess you really weren't nervous after all, were you?”
Mana looked at him. She flashed a smile and a `V' sign. And then she threw up all over his shirt.
-----
“What was that? Cotton blend? It'll come out. We'll pick up something at one of these souvenir shops.”
Shinji planted his elbows on his knees while nodding up at Hikari. There was nothing like sitting shirtless in an amusement park harboring thousands of fully-clothed patrons to remind you how terminally skinny you were. It was not an unhealthy thinness, mind you. It was just that he wasn't going to be winning any Mister Universe competitions anytime soon. Or Mister Japan. Or Mister Kanagawa Prefecture. Or wrestling any fifteen year-olds.
Mana had gone into the restroom to wash her…DNA…out of his shirt while he and the others patiently loitered. No rush. Aside from the pack of teenaged girls standing off from him to mockingly flex their own non-existent guns, he was quite content to sit back and drift off to-
“HEY MISTER! I GUESS NEGATIVE G'S AREN'T FOR EVERYONE, HUH? HA HA!”
It seemed as if the heavy-set boy was intent on running that joke into the salted earth. The only problem was-
“that my joke? Did he just steal my joke?” Mihiro pointed out to the boy as she addressed Shinji. “He stole my joke!”
“What do you mean your joke?” The kid bellowed. “I didn't see `Skeletor' written anywhere on it.”
What the hell was a Skeletor? Mihiro knew, if what she said next was any indication. “Look harder, because I sure as hell didn't see `Fat-Ass' written anywhere on it, either. You joking about gravity's like an American joking about Hiroshima.”
“Mihiro…” Hikari breathed, attempting to extinguish the dispute before someone caught on fire and…where did Mihiro get that lighter?
“At least one of us has an ass! Do I give you a training bra or play Go on you?”
Where were this kid's parents?
Go…figures you'd be too busy mouth-fucking horse steaks to learn how to play Chess. I bet if I kicked you in the nuts you'd piss gravy, wouldn't you?”
“That's disgusting!” yelled Hikari. “Kensuke, stop laughing!”
“There's only one way to find out, bi-”
It was pretty much on after that.
Shinji could not say exactly when it was he had realized his intervention in the ensuing chaos would have been greatly appreciated. It was, however, sometime after he realized he was too tired to act on the revelation. The sounds of struggling, of kicking, scratching, biting, those things and the biting, he was spiraling away from them all before he even realized there was a drain.
He hid behind his eyes in pitched black fields of tranquility, having bestowed upon him rest he had not known since memories became blood-sopped. There was no blood here. There was no dying here. There was no pain here. Why had it been so difondary procedure begin startup sequence from one module six all nominal from eeg monitor more readings still not chance getting I don't care i'll authorize it if you won't dammit i'll do ifficult to find until now? Because it had not existed until now, that was why.
Ow.
His eyes snapped open like dusty blinds as he shot to standing and gagged. He was making sounds, but couldn't sculpt words from them, could not could not could not find things to describe what was happening to him. Shinji staggered away from the bench and rasped with impenetrable urgency, faintly aware of the lull in commotion as his own crisis began taking precedent.
Teacher?” Disheveled, panting and half-restrained by Hikari, Mihiro paused mid-blow to look on him with a fear he did not feel himself.
Kensuke was gauging him, at just as much a lost as to what to do. Just as scared. They were all looking at him, caught between the desire to help and the cold fear brought on by lethal immediacy. Something in his face scared them terribly.
“Are you sick?” Kensuke asked with the perverse hope that was all it was. “What's wrong?”
No, he wasn't sick. He just couldn't breathe. His windpipe had been perfectly clear up until a moment ago when, inexplicably, it just wasn't. Some slug of heavy fluid was there, sliding up and down his throat with every attempt he made to take in air. Shinji blinked back spots. He felt his knees slam into the ground as friends and concerned onlookers were spurred into action.
Someone was clasping his shoulders; hands moved up and down and patted his back. Shouting. There was so much shouting. Some three o' clock shadows slid beneath him while others mapped his thin arms. All the liquid was still there, and it was still sanctioning his air supply.
Then, at the point where he felt his culture fall away and the instinct to breathe should have seized his limbs and thrashed them…he relaxed.
Because Shinji Ikari had been here before, had done this before.
The Third Child had done this ten-thousand times…
He was racked with heavy wet hacks as the foul-tasting wash rushed from his trachea, hitting the roof of his mouth before splattering the pavement below. He had not taken a full breath before the shadows and hands raced from him. Sound was lost after a tide of gasps.
Then he saw that it was orange. He scented that it smelled of blood. He knew why the hands had left him. Why Mihiro had started screaming, was still screaming. He knew why shadows drew away. All of them, save for one, which Shinji traced back to black Nikes belonging to shapely legs climbing into beige shorts, up to a heaving torso hidden by a t-shirt. It was dyed deep scarlet, a perfect match for the short hair framing the face lit by a realized nightmare.
Shinji tried to smile it all away, but Mana only clasped her mouth harder, as if her composure would flee her through it.
“I…” He shook with another cough, and his throat was finally clear. “I think I need to see Maya.”
End of Chapter 5
A/N: Some slow stuff, some plot progression. Didn't have the heart to leave it out. Chapter six will be more focused. It will have secrets revealed. It will have Rei.
Who just said that?
Random A/N: I should really say something about why it took me a month to complete this chapter, and also why it is nearly twice my average chapter length. But how exciting could being kidnapped by a Bolivian Special Forces-trained cadre of attack chinchillas possibly be? On a related note, this chapter is dedicated to the memory of Commodore Hairy. Never has the spine been ripped out of a braver monkey.
Thank you for reading and your criticism. Ja.