FicWad

Author's notes: Author's notes:

Sorry about the delay on this chapter, everyone. And, also, you know, about how nothing happens in it. The next one will be out faster, promise, and probably more will happen in it. Think of this one as "atmosphere setting."

Also, if you like it, don't forget to rate and / or review it! I always appreciate it!

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We used to be like /that /but now we're like /this /all the time
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One

Shinji had once, near the beginning of their stay at the apartment, purchased an eight hundred yen coffeemaker-bottom of the barrel it was, but it ran. It was before the manager had increased their rent to the point where they had literally no spending money.
Funny really-any more and we'd have to start cutting food out of our diet or not using the lights. Almost like he knew what we had, and he knew how to take it away without driving us off.
/With it, he had purchased a large tub of ground coffee. The pot had its own little plastic filter that let in more coffee than it blocked more often than not, so Shinji had also purchased a small package of filters. Maybe he had thought they could save some money by reusing the filters. At the time, he had been seriously concerned with scrimping, as though he had some kind of forewarning of the fiscal hell that was to come. Now, though, he wasn't /concerned /with it-no more than any commuter was /concerned /with the traffic jam that inevitably forced them to push their departure for work back hours earlier. Now it was just his niche. It was what he /did.
The pot had been used once; the day it had been brought home. He had tried his best to make it a surprise for Rei and Asuka, at least one of whom he was certain had been a coffee fan at some point. It had gone moderately well, as surprises went, and he had at least made it in the building with the pot tucked safely into its bag, but Asuka had, through what he was quite certain was his own ineptitude, found him out in a chance meeting on the elevator. The coffee from the tub had tasted quite good to him
When was the last time you'd had coffee?
/ /but Asuka had refused it, claiming that caffeine was for weaklings; Rei had only politely nursed it, and Shinji still wasn't certain what had become of her cup. Shinji wondered how the two would react to it now: Though he liked coffee quite a bit, as time went on and money got scarcer, he came to realize that it would be quite possibly the last tub of coffee grounds and the last box of filters he may ever have, and he wasn't entirely certain, frankly, that he could afford the extra water usage. So he saved it-all of it except for the grounds-in a small cabinet where they didn't keep anything but cobwebs. He didn't know what he was saving it for, and he was certain that the grounds-kept in the tiny freezer in small plastic baggies that he'd swiped from work, since the tub wouldn't fit-would taste positively atrocious now if he tried to use them, but still he saved them.
/For a better time, maybe./
/ /Now, that same little niggling feeling inside of his head that had warned him before not to be too frugal, to save what little extra income they had, told him that he might want to use some of that coffee. It wasn't the joyous thing he had thought it would be, though. Not in the least bit-he had thought that when he broke out that rancid coffee, it would be to celebrate something.
Happy birthday, Shinji./ Congratulations on your raise, Shinji. Well done on that new book, Shinji. Smashing job on that election, Shinji./
welcome home shinji
im home
/But the feeling didn't feel particularly anticipatory. Rather, he felt almost...resigned. /Use it, because you might not get a chance to later and then what the fuck were you saving all of that for? To smell pretty when it rotted?
/ /And there was dread. For the briefest, smallest of instants, there was dread. What had Rei gone for? What did Asuka have with her? How had Rei paid off their rent? Why
Are we here?
/ /the hell were they even still alive after all of their problems? The answer to any of these questions seemed, in that moment, to be the answer to all of these questions and all of them led to one place: The source of this sudden, instantaneous dread that Shinji felt.
And then it was gone, all of it, as the buzzer rang for a second time. Shinji hesitated for a moment, waiting for it to ring a second time-even though he was quite certain of who was calling him, that paranoia in his head, bred in from a year of bums and salesmen, of cultists demanding that he acknowledge the dead and politicians demanding that he acknowledge the living, still made him wait for that all-important second buzz. Bums never buzzed twice. They waited, because it was what everybody else thought was polite, and if they weren't polite, nobody looked at them once, saying nothing of twice.
The second buzz came a few seconds later, and Shinji hit the intercom almost before the second-long buzz ended.
Asuka was being polite, which meant she wanted something that she had no business wanting. "Shinji?" she said, her voice slightly raspy (she'd been yelling at Rei, no doubt) but still as sweet as sugar. "Could you come down here and help us with something?"
"What is-"
"It's very cold out here, and we're locked out as it is, so if you could just hurry down, that'd be lovely." Asuka spoke as though he hadn't even opened his mouth, and Shinji sighed. This, he knew, was normal, but still mildly irritating. He was sure that, if the occupants of his apartment had more energy on a day-to-day basis, Asuka would instigate a good few fights that way, but as it was, they barely had the energy to speak to each other after work every day.
Not that they had anything to say anyway. For all intents and purposes, they should have had nothing in common, yet something seemed to keep them from simply drifting apart entirely. It was as if they shared some common experience that none of them ever reminisced about anymore, like elderly friends who couldn't quite recall how they met nor why they liked each other; they simply accepted it and moved on with their lives.
Shinji nodded into the intercom, as though Asuka could see him, and let go of the button, wanting to be irate with Asuka, but not quite able to convey it any other way.
A few moments later, on his way to grab his shoes and coat, he rushed back to the intercom, pressed it, and said, "All right, I'm coming," quickly.
About a minute later, he had his keys, his jacket-it was, after all, rather cold outside-and his shoes, and he was out the door. He locked it and began to make his way to the elevator.
Did you lock the door?
/He was quite certain he had, so he brushed the thought aside. The thought, however, persisted: /Are you sure? Are you sure what you remember doing isn't what you did /last /time you left? You'd better check to make sure. You wouldn't want somebody walking in and taking all of your stuff.
What stuff?
Doesn't matter. People around here will take anything. Check.
/ /Shinji had stopped walking and hadn't even noticed.
Check.
/ /Shinji checked. Moving quickly, he walked back to the door, jiggled the handle, and shoved in a little. When nothing moved but the frame, he nodded, satisfied, and made his way back towards the elevator door.
Like taking candy from a baby, /said the same little niggle in his head that had made him check the doorknob even though he'd been quite certain he'd locked it, just the same as he always did. You, /Shinji, are as easy as taking candy from a baby.
/ /Shinji did his best to ignore it, the same way he always did: By accepting what it said so that it would stop saying it. That was the easiest way to end a conversation: Agree. If you disagree, no matter how politely, an argument could always ensue. If you just nodded, people would stop. And they would like you for it.
Who are you kidding?
/ /The elevator stopped on the ground floor without any fanfare, and the door /creaked /open, the sound of metal grating against metal nearly agonizing the first time, and only another part of the background the three-hundredth.
/ /There was actually a lobby in this apartment building: An old, dark place composed chiefly of cracking tile in a checkerboard pattern and molding walls. Off to the left was the manager's office, closed and shuttered as it always was.
How did Rei...
/ /Directly ahead of him were three heavy metal doors with small glass openings just above anybody's eye level. They had been glass up until about eight months ago, when a bum had broken one of them in a fit of desperation, trying to get out of one of the coldest nights of the year. It always seemed to be cold around there.
The lobby was just as cold as the snow, though. It always was. Shinji sometimes watched with, great interest, his breath float up and away from him, like a soul escaping a corpse in the dim light of that lobby.
Wasting no time, Shinji quickly made the twenty-second trek from the elevator to the doors, his footsteps echoing distinctively in the surprisingly acoustic room. Standing on his tiptoes to peek out the door, he saw nothing for a moment. Then-
Though her voice was muffled almost to silence by the thick doors, when Asuka was angry, Shinji could hear it. "What the /hell /do you think you're doing in there, idiot?" she snapped. "It's goddamn /cold /out here! Get your ass in gear and give us a hand!"
/stupid/
"Sorry, sorry," Shinji mumbled, stepping back a meter and opening the door. He didn't really think that Asuka could hear him, but by this point she probably took it for granted that he'd be apologizing anyway.
Asuka came in first, cradling a massive wooden /something /in the crook of her arms. The first half of it, anyway. Throwing an angry glare at Shinji, she said, "The rest of it's sitting outside. Go get it before somebody takes it."
/The rest of /what? Shinji thought about asking. But at another look from Asuka, he realized he didn't dare. Didn't dare risk her wrath, not when she had been fairly docile for so long now. He opened another door, getting outside just in time to see Rei's retreating head, her short blue hair rustling a little in the same chill wind that blasted him in the face as soon as the door opened. This actually took Shinji by surprise; it was something he wasn't used to, one of the few things in his life-the decompression that usually occurred when leaving a building had long-since ceased happening in the apartment-there were too many cracks in the walls, holes to the outside, for a pressure difference to exist.
Maybe /that /was why
I
it was always cold.
Laying outside was a small wooden stand for some kind of musical instrument. It seemed vaguely familiar to Shinji, in the way something seemed familiar to you if you'd seen it advertised on television a week before you were saw it in a department store. Not thinking on it any more than that, he bent down to pick it up, finding it surprisingly light, the wood surprisingly smooth, as though it had just recently been sanded and glazed. But if Asuka had found it, had /bought /it, that wasn't possible, was it?
He rubbed it with his thumb, trying to gauge if it was actually faux-wood, which seemed more likely. After a moment, though, his thumb found the pleasantly rough sensation of a grain, and he frowned, half in wonder and half in astonishment.
Was this really possible?
There must have been some explanation. Maybe he would even get it, if he spoke to Asuka just right-which was, in fairness, about as likely as a pig accidentally flying into the engine of a commercial jet.
The door had shut in the time he had stopped to ponder all this, and he frowned in annoyance. It took him a moment to fish the key out of his pocket, having to fumble around half a dozen other things-keys to work, old receipts, his dingy old wallet, a small colony of stubborn lint that had taken root there and probably couldn't be extracted without calling in the military. Finally, he found it, pulled it out, and unlocked the door with some difficulty-the locks stuck pretty regularly, which was a hell of a lot better than when they froze. Usually all at the same time. There was a buzzer that went to the manager's office, but most of the time he just laughed if somebody tried using it. And then tried to raise their rent.
By the time he was in, Asuka and Rei were gone, and, that meant, so was the elevator. He sighed again, and crossed the room-his footsteps still echoed, but every now and again-and this was /now/-it almost seemed like they were being /matched. /Of course, no matter how he threw his head around, trying to find the source of this not-quite-perfectly timed second echo, he never could. He'd learned to ignore it.
After that, all he could do was wait for the elevator, which would come when it felt like it. So, once again, he was alone with his thoughts.
But for some reason, this time, keeping them out of his head wasn't such a big trouble.
That was the last time he could say that.