Categories > Anime/Manga > Neon Genesis Evangelion > Precipitate
Author's notes
Welcome to my second shot at an Evangelion fic. Hopefully nobody remembers my first, about nine months past. For those who do, suffice it to say that this story isn't like it, save perhaps for my few cheap shots at Shinji's...you'll understand.
I'm not telling you when or where or why this fic takes place deliberately, though I expect that if you're a little clever, you'll probably catch on anyway. It's no big secret in any event, but it's not an AU. I think.
I'm going to experiment with all three of the children's perspectives, but I'm most comfortable writing from Shinji's. If you're in the mood for a little concrit after a few chapters, I'd love your feedback on how I do, and where I can improve my interpretation of their voices.
Short and uneventful, that's the way prologues go. Enjoy! (And, as always, thanks for reading!)
Precipitate
(A tale of horror)
Prologue
Shinji Ikari would have very much liked to simply drop his keys on the table, let himself fall in front of the television, and let his consciousness drain into the oblivion it offered him, in a convenient little 12" tube. He could not, however, do either one, because the apartment's sole table was covered in clutter-empty convenience store wrappers, molding wooden chopsticks, bills and paper advertisements, and even a pair of sandals. It was the only piece of squalor in an otherwise spotless apartment, the one area that Shinji, try as he might, could simply not get to stay clean, mostly because he had no idea what to do with half of the stuff on the table, and the other half he didn't dare approach.
As for the television, that one was simpler: His power seemed to have been cut off. The reason was probably laying somewhere in that stack of shit on top of the table, in the form of an unopened rent bill, probably by now defended by the same slime that patrolled the rest of the table. Again, Shinji wouldn't be able to touch it. He'd probably have to settle that directly with the apartment's manager, and soon. It wasn't the first time, either-the manager had learned, somewhere down the road, that if he cut off the power to an unpaid room for a few days, the tenant usually cracked and paid. It was easy, and a hell of a lot less stressful than eviction, and Shinji supposed he should probably be grateful for it. It was better than coming home one day and finding that the keys that he so desperately wished to drop no longer worked.
Shinji had once heard a saying, that the only way to escape the hell of marriage was with the blindfold of routine. That that was why so many old, married couples barely looked at each other every morning when they got up to brush their teeth, eat breakfast, read the paper, watch the news. That that was why the murder rate was so low.
Shinji thought that this was very much the same way one escaped the hell of poverty in a city where nobody gave two flicks of a dog's dirty ass about you. He knew exactly what was going to happen every day before it happened, because it was exactly the same thing that had happened every day for the past year. Since he had come to this city
from where?
with Rei Ayanami and Asuka Soryu. They had nothing; no education, no talents (or at least Shinji had none, he knew) or connections. Really, nobody had any reason to care about
me
/ /them at all, so they didn't. So they worked. They worked trashy jobs-convenience stores, the lot of them-and earned enough between the three of them to pay for rent and food and nothing else. They worked every day, except for their mandatory days off, so they knew what to expect, and they knew how to deal with it. It was an easy way of keeping peace between three kids who, on their best days, got along shakily if one were being optimistic. Even Rei and Asuka had shortly ceased their-admittedly one-sided-bickering as they too succumbed to the daily exhaustion that was all a part of their routine.
Really, Shinji saw no way out of it, ever. Not even one of them could get a high school diploma-if they lost a full third of their income, even their manager wouldn't be able to postpone changing the locks for long. Shinji, at least, didn't see himself ever being able to pass an equivalency test, either. /Maybe /Asuka, but...
Shinji shook his head and pocketed his keys, and then shut the door behind him, inhaling the stale, awkward smell of his room-the kind of awkward you only got from the mingled scents of three gangly, pubescent teenagers, who didn't have the money to bathe nearly as often as they'd like, living in exceptionally close quarters.
The room was, overall, fairly simplistic. It was surprisingly spacious for a Japanese house, but only because there were only two rooms-a bathroom, and "the other room," where everything else was-their table, their television, seated on the far right side of the room, on the floor, and three sleeping bags, each on their own individual wall. There was a small refrigerator near Asuka's bed, on the far right side of the room, the same side where the door to the bathroom was, and a counter with a stove and sink on the other side of the room near Shinji's bed. On Rei's side, near the table and the window, was a large barrel of rice.
Shinji walked over to the refrigerator, hungry but resigned to the fact that, when he had checked that morning, there had been nothing but a bottle of soy sauce in there. He cracked it open anyway, peering in, as though trying to make out some speck of food in the dim light from the apartment's sole window, and found nothing at all. He sighed, resigned to another meal of rice. He shut the refrigerator. In any case, he wouldn't be able to eat until he settled the power bill, since he couldn't cook the rice, since the rice cooker was electric.
No, that's not quite right.
He opened it again, and there was a small plastic bag from a convenience store in the door. Seico Mart, /the bag read, and Shinji frowned-it wasn't his store, and he was usually the one that brought home groceries/. /He worked for Daily Yamazaki, and Asuka for Lawson. /Rei works at Seico Mart...but I didn't even know she knew /how /to buy groceries.
One of the things one picks up living in the conditions that Shinji lived in was an uncanny knowledge of what to do and how to do it, in order to best get by. One learns to make compromises, how to find deals and where to find what they absolutely must have for less than everybody else buys it for. Shinji certainly had, and even the stubborn Asuka had, to some degree. Out of all of them, only Rei seemed not to have developed or changed
From what?
/ /at all. She had roughly zero survival skills. It was like she didn't even care for her own existence-like the only reason she kept on feeding herself was because Shinji fed her.
But that's just your imagination talking at you. Best to keep that trap shut.
Could Asuka have possibly gone shopping and come home early? /Shinji wondered. It seemed unlikely that Asuka would cover one of Shinji's many duties for him-/You're a man, aren't you? This is man's work/-she had said when it became officially /decided that he would carry out most (all) of the household tasks and chores. His protests had been weak and few in any case; perhaps because he was too exhausted to put up a fight, or perhaps simply because it was unlike him to protest much anyway.
Suddenly, the dim sound of rushing water filled his ears, fighting more powerfully than water should have been able to against the dull silence that normally filled the apartment. Shinji, lost in consideration about this strange, unprecedented bag that had infiltrated his abode, jumped and lost his grip on the refrigerator door, which slammed shut. A moment later, the door to the bathroom opened and Rei Ayanami stepped out, adjusting one of the cuffs of her white work uniform, not absently as most would, but with utter focus, both eyes locked on it, hand fiddling with it in a strangely mechanical way, working towards some ambiguous goal that only she could really understand.
Shinji watched this in rapt fascination, not daring to disturb her. After about thirty seconds, she apparently achieved whatever goal she was aiming for. (To Shinji it didn't look like anything at all had been adjusted at all). Without looking up, she said, "What?"
"Oh-" Shinji jumped for the second time that day. "I just-" he stoped, unable to properly form the feeling that he was aiming for into words, either in his head or his throat.
Even Rei had eventually succumbed to the lure of the television every night. Maybe it was because there was literally nothing else to do, or maybe it was because it genuinely fascinated her. In any event, she was exactly like the other two now-when she did nothing else, she watched TV, the depressed (and broke) man's marijuana.
Ignoring him, Rei walked over to the television and sat down in front of it, in what Asuka had described as a soft spot on the floor. She clicked the power button once, twice, three times, and then frowned.
"The power is out."
Shinji blinked./ You didn't notice ... in there...when... "Oh, right," he said. "I'll go take care of that. I'm going to have to put it on the card again, so we'll...." /We'll what? Discuss how to pay it? /You'll /discuss it with them? They'll discuss it back? Right, and then your opinion will be--
"I will handle it," Rei said quietly, brushing a lock of sky-blue hair out of her eyes with one slender, pale hand.
You'll...
/ /Shinji found himself straining his ears, perhaps trying to pick up an echo of what she'd said so that he could make sure he'd heard right. He /had /known the place to echo a little when the air was just right, and Asuka was screaming her lungs out. Or maybe that was their neighbors, screaming back at them to /just shut the fuck up already. /Maybe that was why it seemed like an echo.
What?
"You'll...handle it?" Shinji's voice was composed of equal parts disbelief and apprehension.
"Yes," Rei said, standing up again. "I will handle it."
"How?"
An image flashed in front of Shinji's eyes before he could close them-whether to see it more clearly or to block it out was, perhaps, down to the day he was asked: A naked Rei, her pale skin, covered with a sheen of sweat, glinting even in the dim light of the manager's office, straddling that fat bastard as he sat with his pants down in his big leather chair, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her face a perfectly crafted image of ecstasy, probably from straight off of some pornographic advertisement. Something he knew would never happen, but something he had thought about more than once, in any event-living in the apartment, after all, was both too lonely and too crowded for any man to stay chaste for long, even in thought.
A moment later, it became visible what he was thinking about, even as he shut the image from his mind, and Rei, ever-observant, noticed. She walked past him without so much as a grin, and his mind flooded with a sudden fear that he had offended her decency, whatever the hell that meant, and that she was just going to storm out in disgust. It never occurred to him that by now he was mixing his two female roommates' traits, and that they might soon become one person in his mind.
The door creaked open, and there was a brief halt in Rei's footsteps, and then, spoken in her monotone, but with the slightest hint of a smile lurking somewhere between her voice and her lips, though certainly not present on either (/especially /not her lips): "Not like that."
Shinji flushed red, and then the door closed and he was alone with his thoughts again. Where he liked it best, and worst, of all.
(Why is Rei home so early?)
(That Youko at work is really pretty.)
(I wonder what Rei brought back? I'd love to find out but she'd probably yell at me for eating her food. No, wait. That's Asuka. Asuka would yell at me.)
(Rei hasn't really changed much since...)
(Since what?)
(I wonder what I'll cook for dinner...that is, if Rei brought anything edible. Maybe I'm better off with just rice anyway, since I'd probably just screw it up if I tried.)
(I wonder when I stopped being able to cook.)
(I could cook? When?)
(I wonder where Asuka is...maybe she got the day off from work too and then we can all hang out together and)
(and what? And watch television and not look at each other? Why would you want to? Why would /they /want to?)
(How did we...)
Something loud and piercing blared not far off, and suddenly, the apartment was flooded with the artificial whiteness and soothing-or infuriating, depending on the day-bees-in-a-jar hum that only a fluorescent light could provide, and Shinji looked up at one of them, as though expecting to see something fascinating in them. All he could think of aside from that was, huh. She did it.
A few minutes later, the door clicked open quietly, and Rei walked in wordlessly. "Hey," Shinji said, trying his best not to act bewildered. "How did you..."
"I paid the bill," she said quietly.
You? With what?
/ /He blushed a little this time, and Rei repeated, "Not like that."
Then how? With what money? This thought banished even his immediate shame.
/ /And...
Why?
"Oh."
Rei said nothing, but rather, simply walked past him and sat down in front of the television again. She turned it on, and immediately, Shinji was greeted with the enticing sound of a crowd, all laughing as one. A laugh track, maybe, or a stand-up comic.
Another moment, and Rei turned it back off. Shinji looked at her awry, and she looked back, expectantly. Waiting for him to ask something, maybe, or simply wondering what he wanted.
"Never mind," he murmured, and then his mind went back to food, and, apparently, so did his stomach, as it growled. Nervously, he said, "I...I noticed you brought something home from your ...from your store."
"I did." She nodded her agreement: She had, indeed, purchased something from a store and brought it home.
"I...I guess I was wondering..."
"Do not eat it," she said, her tone voicing the same bizarre agreement. "It...is for later."
For later?
/ /For what?
Something buzzed in their room. Once, and then a moment later, again. It took Shinji a full half-minute, and two more buzzes, each a moment apart, to realize what it was: It was their doorbell. Somebody wanted into the building. /Probably just some bum trying to get out from the cold, /Shinji thought, planning full well on ignoring it.
Rei, however, did not. She stood up, and before Shinji could protest-or rather, before he could decide if he /should /protest, she walked past him where he stood, to the door, and clicked the small intercom's transmitter. "Yes?"
The voice on the other end was tired, frustrated, and familiar. Tired, frustrated, familiar, and Asuka. "Get down /here and /help /me, wonder-girl!" it snapped without any sort of pretense or greeting. "This thing is /heavy!"
"I will be right there," Rei murmured into the intercom. A minute later, she had her shoes on, and was on her way out the door, when she turned to Shinji and said, about as seriously as she had ever said anything in her life:
"Please stay here, Shinji. I will be right back."
Completely dumbstruck, Shinji couldn't think of anything to do but nod. And then, a /slam /later (the hinge on the door hadn't worked since they'd arrived there, so you had to slam it or it wouldn't close) Shinji was alone with his thoughts again, this time too jumbled to make much sense out of them.
So he waited.
(...meet?)
Welcome to my second shot at an Evangelion fic. Hopefully nobody remembers my first, about nine months past. For those who do, suffice it to say that this story isn't like it, save perhaps for my few cheap shots at Shinji's...you'll understand.
I'm not telling you when or where or why this fic takes place deliberately, though I expect that if you're a little clever, you'll probably catch on anyway. It's no big secret in any event, but it's not an AU. I think.
I'm going to experiment with all three of the children's perspectives, but I'm most comfortable writing from Shinji's. If you're in the mood for a little concrit after a few chapters, I'd love your feedback on how I do, and where I can improve my interpretation of their voices.
Short and uneventful, that's the way prologues go. Enjoy! (And, as always, thanks for reading!)
Precipitate
(A tale of horror)
Prologue
Shinji Ikari would have very much liked to simply drop his keys on the table, let himself fall in front of the television, and let his consciousness drain into the oblivion it offered him, in a convenient little 12" tube. He could not, however, do either one, because the apartment's sole table was covered in clutter-empty convenience store wrappers, molding wooden chopsticks, bills and paper advertisements, and even a pair of sandals. It was the only piece of squalor in an otherwise spotless apartment, the one area that Shinji, try as he might, could simply not get to stay clean, mostly because he had no idea what to do with half of the stuff on the table, and the other half he didn't dare approach.
As for the television, that one was simpler: His power seemed to have been cut off. The reason was probably laying somewhere in that stack of shit on top of the table, in the form of an unopened rent bill, probably by now defended by the same slime that patrolled the rest of the table. Again, Shinji wouldn't be able to touch it. He'd probably have to settle that directly with the apartment's manager, and soon. It wasn't the first time, either-the manager had learned, somewhere down the road, that if he cut off the power to an unpaid room for a few days, the tenant usually cracked and paid. It was easy, and a hell of a lot less stressful than eviction, and Shinji supposed he should probably be grateful for it. It was better than coming home one day and finding that the keys that he so desperately wished to drop no longer worked.
Shinji had once heard a saying, that the only way to escape the hell of marriage was with the blindfold of routine. That that was why so many old, married couples barely looked at each other every morning when they got up to brush their teeth, eat breakfast, read the paper, watch the news. That that was why the murder rate was so low.
Shinji thought that this was very much the same way one escaped the hell of poverty in a city where nobody gave two flicks of a dog's dirty ass about you. He knew exactly what was going to happen every day before it happened, because it was exactly the same thing that had happened every day for the past year. Since he had come to this city
from where?
with Rei Ayanami and Asuka Soryu. They had nothing; no education, no talents (or at least Shinji had none, he knew) or connections. Really, nobody had any reason to care about
me
/ /them at all, so they didn't. So they worked. They worked trashy jobs-convenience stores, the lot of them-and earned enough between the three of them to pay for rent and food and nothing else. They worked every day, except for their mandatory days off, so they knew what to expect, and they knew how to deal with it. It was an easy way of keeping peace between three kids who, on their best days, got along shakily if one were being optimistic. Even Rei and Asuka had shortly ceased their-admittedly one-sided-bickering as they too succumbed to the daily exhaustion that was all a part of their routine.
Really, Shinji saw no way out of it, ever. Not even one of them could get a high school diploma-if they lost a full third of their income, even their manager wouldn't be able to postpone changing the locks for long. Shinji, at least, didn't see himself ever being able to pass an equivalency test, either. /Maybe /Asuka, but...
Shinji shook his head and pocketed his keys, and then shut the door behind him, inhaling the stale, awkward smell of his room-the kind of awkward you only got from the mingled scents of three gangly, pubescent teenagers, who didn't have the money to bathe nearly as often as they'd like, living in exceptionally close quarters.
The room was, overall, fairly simplistic. It was surprisingly spacious for a Japanese house, but only because there were only two rooms-a bathroom, and "the other room," where everything else was-their table, their television, seated on the far right side of the room, on the floor, and three sleeping bags, each on their own individual wall. There was a small refrigerator near Asuka's bed, on the far right side of the room, the same side where the door to the bathroom was, and a counter with a stove and sink on the other side of the room near Shinji's bed. On Rei's side, near the table and the window, was a large barrel of rice.
Shinji walked over to the refrigerator, hungry but resigned to the fact that, when he had checked that morning, there had been nothing but a bottle of soy sauce in there. He cracked it open anyway, peering in, as though trying to make out some speck of food in the dim light from the apartment's sole window, and found nothing at all. He sighed, resigned to another meal of rice. He shut the refrigerator. In any case, he wouldn't be able to eat until he settled the power bill, since he couldn't cook the rice, since the rice cooker was electric.
No, that's not quite right.
He opened it again, and there was a small plastic bag from a convenience store in the door. Seico Mart, /the bag read, and Shinji frowned-it wasn't his store, and he was usually the one that brought home groceries/. /He worked for Daily Yamazaki, and Asuka for Lawson. /Rei works at Seico Mart...but I didn't even know she knew /how /to buy groceries.
One of the things one picks up living in the conditions that Shinji lived in was an uncanny knowledge of what to do and how to do it, in order to best get by. One learns to make compromises, how to find deals and where to find what they absolutely must have for less than everybody else buys it for. Shinji certainly had, and even the stubborn Asuka had, to some degree. Out of all of them, only Rei seemed not to have developed or changed
From what?
/ /at all. She had roughly zero survival skills. It was like she didn't even care for her own existence-like the only reason she kept on feeding herself was because Shinji fed her.
But that's just your imagination talking at you. Best to keep that trap shut.
Could Asuka have possibly gone shopping and come home early? /Shinji wondered. It seemed unlikely that Asuka would cover one of Shinji's many duties for him-/You're a man, aren't you? This is man's work/-she had said when it became officially /decided that he would carry out most (all) of the household tasks and chores. His protests had been weak and few in any case; perhaps because he was too exhausted to put up a fight, or perhaps simply because it was unlike him to protest much anyway.
Suddenly, the dim sound of rushing water filled his ears, fighting more powerfully than water should have been able to against the dull silence that normally filled the apartment. Shinji, lost in consideration about this strange, unprecedented bag that had infiltrated his abode, jumped and lost his grip on the refrigerator door, which slammed shut. A moment later, the door to the bathroom opened and Rei Ayanami stepped out, adjusting one of the cuffs of her white work uniform, not absently as most would, but with utter focus, both eyes locked on it, hand fiddling with it in a strangely mechanical way, working towards some ambiguous goal that only she could really understand.
Shinji watched this in rapt fascination, not daring to disturb her. After about thirty seconds, she apparently achieved whatever goal she was aiming for. (To Shinji it didn't look like anything at all had been adjusted at all). Without looking up, she said, "What?"
"Oh-" Shinji jumped for the second time that day. "I just-" he stoped, unable to properly form the feeling that he was aiming for into words, either in his head or his throat.
Even Rei had eventually succumbed to the lure of the television every night. Maybe it was because there was literally nothing else to do, or maybe it was because it genuinely fascinated her. In any event, she was exactly like the other two now-when she did nothing else, she watched TV, the depressed (and broke) man's marijuana.
Ignoring him, Rei walked over to the television and sat down in front of it, in what Asuka had described as a soft spot on the floor. She clicked the power button once, twice, three times, and then frowned.
"The power is out."
Shinji blinked./ You didn't notice ... in there...when... "Oh, right," he said. "I'll go take care of that. I'm going to have to put it on the card again, so we'll...." /We'll what? Discuss how to pay it? /You'll /discuss it with them? They'll discuss it back? Right, and then your opinion will be--
"I will handle it," Rei said quietly, brushing a lock of sky-blue hair out of her eyes with one slender, pale hand.
You'll...
/ /Shinji found himself straining his ears, perhaps trying to pick up an echo of what she'd said so that he could make sure he'd heard right. He /had /known the place to echo a little when the air was just right, and Asuka was screaming her lungs out. Or maybe that was their neighbors, screaming back at them to /just shut the fuck up already. /Maybe that was why it seemed like an echo.
What?
"You'll...handle it?" Shinji's voice was composed of equal parts disbelief and apprehension.
"Yes," Rei said, standing up again. "I will handle it."
"How?"
An image flashed in front of Shinji's eyes before he could close them-whether to see it more clearly or to block it out was, perhaps, down to the day he was asked: A naked Rei, her pale skin, covered with a sheen of sweat, glinting even in the dim light of the manager's office, straddling that fat bastard as he sat with his pants down in his big leather chair, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her face a perfectly crafted image of ecstasy, probably from straight off of some pornographic advertisement. Something he knew would never happen, but something he had thought about more than once, in any event-living in the apartment, after all, was both too lonely and too crowded for any man to stay chaste for long, even in thought.
A moment later, it became visible what he was thinking about, even as he shut the image from his mind, and Rei, ever-observant, noticed. She walked past him without so much as a grin, and his mind flooded with a sudden fear that he had offended her decency, whatever the hell that meant, and that she was just going to storm out in disgust. It never occurred to him that by now he was mixing his two female roommates' traits, and that they might soon become one person in his mind.
The door creaked open, and there was a brief halt in Rei's footsteps, and then, spoken in her monotone, but with the slightest hint of a smile lurking somewhere between her voice and her lips, though certainly not present on either (/especially /not her lips): "Not like that."
Shinji flushed red, and then the door closed and he was alone with his thoughts again. Where he liked it best, and worst, of all.
(Why is Rei home so early?)
(That Youko at work is really pretty.)
(I wonder what Rei brought back? I'd love to find out but she'd probably yell at me for eating her food. No, wait. That's Asuka. Asuka would yell at me.)
(Rei hasn't really changed much since...)
(Since what?)
(I wonder what I'll cook for dinner...that is, if Rei brought anything edible. Maybe I'm better off with just rice anyway, since I'd probably just screw it up if I tried.)
(I wonder when I stopped being able to cook.)
(I could cook? When?)
(I wonder where Asuka is...maybe she got the day off from work too and then we can all hang out together and)
(and what? And watch television and not look at each other? Why would you want to? Why would /they /want to?)
(How did we...)
Something loud and piercing blared not far off, and suddenly, the apartment was flooded with the artificial whiteness and soothing-or infuriating, depending on the day-bees-in-a-jar hum that only a fluorescent light could provide, and Shinji looked up at one of them, as though expecting to see something fascinating in them. All he could think of aside from that was, huh. She did it.
A few minutes later, the door clicked open quietly, and Rei walked in wordlessly. "Hey," Shinji said, trying his best not to act bewildered. "How did you..."
"I paid the bill," she said quietly.
You? With what?
/ /He blushed a little this time, and Rei repeated, "Not like that."
Then how? With what money? This thought banished even his immediate shame.
/ /And...
Why?
"Oh."
Rei said nothing, but rather, simply walked past him and sat down in front of the television again. She turned it on, and immediately, Shinji was greeted with the enticing sound of a crowd, all laughing as one. A laugh track, maybe, or a stand-up comic.
Another moment, and Rei turned it back off. Shinji looked at her awry, and she looked back, expectantly. Waiting for him to ask something, maybe, or simply wondering what he wanted.
"Never mind," he murmured, and then his mind went back to food, and, apparently, so did his stomach, as it growled. Nervously, he said, "I...I noticed you brought something home from your ...from your store."
"I did." She nodded her agreement: She had, indeed, purchased something from a store and brought it home.
"I...I guess I was wondering..."
"Do not eat it," she said, her tone voicing the same bizarre agreement. "It...is for later."
For later?
/ /For what?
Something buzzed in their room. Once, and then a moment later, again. It took Shinji a full half-minute, and two more buzzes, each a moment apart, to realize what it was: It was their doorbell. Somebody wanted into the building. /Probably just some bum trying to get out from the cold, /Shinji thought, planning full well on ignoring it.
Rei, however, did not. She stood up, and before Shinji could protest-or rather, before he could decide if he /should /protest, she walked past him where he stood, to the door, and clicked the small intercom's transmitter. "Yes?"
The voice on the other end was tired, frustrated, and familiar. Tired, frustrated, familiar, and Asuka. "Get down /here and /help /me, wonder-girl!" it snapped without any sort of pretense or greeting. "This thing is /heavy!"
"I will be right there," Rei murmured into the intercom. A minute later, she had her shoes on, and was on her way out the door, when she turned to Shinji and said, about as seriously as she had ever said anything in her life:
"Please stay here, Shinji. I will be right back."
Completely dumbstruck, Shinji couldn't think of anything to do but nod. And then, a /slam /later (the hinge on the door hadn't worked since they'd arrived there, so you had to slam it or it wouldn't close) Shinji was alone with his thoughts again, this time too jumbled to make much sense out of them.
So he waited.
(...meet?)
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