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You’re much brighter than the sun is to me.
Giants stood above them, stomping about in incomprehensible conflict. They sat in the dark, bunkered, given nothing to follow but the occasional rumblings of the earth about them. The world could be over already. That robot, mankind’s savior, could’ve fallen as easily as all the buildings of Tokyo-3, those hollow, hasty shapes built to be knocked down and brought back up soon after. That faceless pilot could’ve crumpled beneath the pressure and turned the machine against themself: ripped through the glass and wire, tore the flesh beneath in two. A better end than being devoured by the maws of the unknown, the hunkering angel, heavensent.
Toji Suzuhara flinched twice, once at the crash above and then again upon realizing someone amongst the huddled crowd might’ve seen. End of the world or no, he was still a teenage boy. An older brother at that. It was up to adolescence to shoulder the weight of the world. The young were to carry both the present and future, damn their own wants.
He picked at his skin – an anxious twitch. All those around him barely read as human: lumps of cloth, faceless mounds, begging for what little comfort there still is to find in proximity to others. Family, strangers, friends.
This was just one of many bunkers coffined beneath Tokyo-3. They had all learned, following the Second Impact, to never grow fond of home, of beds, lest the sky lean down and snatch it all away from you. But here, here could be permanent. The ground might swallow them up, keep them for itself. Toji thought of the shape of the sun. It was all too easy to forget.
He felt someone’s hand on his shoulder. His tracksuit crinkled at the touch. He turned. In the commotion, he had forgotten his classmate sitting nearby. Kensuke Aida, dirty blonde hair hanging just above the rim of his glasses, forced a smile, as if this was all just as normal as they had, since birth, been taught it was.
“Want to watch a tape?”
He pointed towards his portable camera, strap fastened tightly around his palm. He made a habit of sneaking it in one of the many pockets of his military-fashion forest-camo fatigues. He held the camera like a journalist, or a fetishist. He could carry the world in a single palm, forever on film. Sometimes, in the doldrums of evacuation, the lull of now mundane procedure, Kensuke almost hoped the limb of an EVA would crash through the ceiling, just so that he could catch it on camera – this heroic machine reaching out, begging him to be its pilot.
But, more than that, he brought the camera, the tapes, as a sort of reassurance of what they would return to above. The ocean, the streets, fuck - everything. Noise. Actual, human noise. Something other than the unearthly screams they could, even now, faintly discern, beneath the reverberation of military hellfire. He’d flick the miniscule screen open, listen to the hum of the tape in motion and lose himself in the images of Tokyo-3 as he knew it: something out of a slice of life, alongside Toji, who was always there, no matter how he initially resisted being filmed. When he held his hand out, defensively, towards the camera, Kensuke almost mistook Toji for reaching out towards him, to take his hand in his own. Like the EVA that would dig past the bunker walls and save him from enfeeble boredom. It was a fantasy he often indulged – he, a Gundam protagonist, and Toji, his reason to fight.
Toji gave a nod and forced a smile in response. Kensuke stood to his feet, the clunk of his oversized military surplus boots impossible to ignore. Toji stared, as if unsure if he was to follow. Kensuke motioned off towards a far corner. “I think I know a spot where we can be alone.”
They made their way from the group, with those around them paying little mind. Kensuke walked seemingly with directions in mind and Toji followed, for no other reason than that he trusted his friend complete and wholly. He reached for Kensuke’s hand and, when the next tremor came, clasped it tight. Could this be the sound of humanity’s swift and sudden end?
Kensuke turned red and suddenly lost all sense of direction. He played at pushing up his glasses, just to cover his face, hoping Toji wouldn’t noticed how easily flustered he was.
In one hand, tapes of his best friend, of their days spent together beneath blue sky, living, breathing. In the other, Toji himself, following, willingly, somewhere away from all the others. Even on film, a moment like this could never be captured. It demanded to be felt, not seen. Underground, at the end of the world, this moment could go on forever, just in this small touch.