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Sometimes it’s like she’s not even there.
Hikari would never ever say that of course. Not to her face anyway. She likes Asuka a lot; she thinks Asuka deserves the world even! But it is often that Asuka stares blankly out the windowpane in Hikari’s room, seeming to almost vanish from her own body. It’s times like that when Hikari is terrified of her.
Asuka has been staying in Hikari’s apartment for nearly a month, barely eating, barely bathing, unless Hikari makes her. Asuka still leaves the house for her job when she’s called, dragging her paper body out the door and against the wind to the ER. It should surprise Hikari, maybe, that despite being barely functional Asuka still makes the effort to put her skin on and work. It doesn’t though.
Problems aren’t something that Asuka talks about. Oh sure, she complains all the time. She complains when the video games that she and Hikari are playing stall, or when the rice in her bento is slightly undercooked, or when Nozomi snores loudly enough to hear it from Hikari’s room. She knows better than to think that her sister’s engine mouth is what plagues Asuka at night, though. Hikari has been class rep long enough to be able to read her peers. Certainly she’s been Asuka’s friend long enough to see through her thin veil of irritation over the most unimportant things.
Asuka doesn’t talk about her problems, but she doesn’t have to. Hikari knows that work is the only thing Asuka lives for. A depressing thought, but true. Hikari can see it better than anyone how praise falls just so on Asuka and bends her smug smirk into the most genuine grin of them all; she can see the endless frustration crawling under Asuka’s paper skin whenever Shinji or Rei best her at a task. She sees most of all how Asuka ties her entire self-worth to this place and to these people and how she thinks “If I cannot prove myself time and again then I am not important.”
At night after the turn of a gentle dusk, after Hikari has put her sisters to bed and called their dad to wish him goodnight (since he works night shifts at his job), she prods Asuka into bed, holding open the bedsheets and watching with an aching heart as she crawls in.
When Asuka first started staying over they would titter long after the lights went off – about hair-styles, their jobs, their small annoyances, boys, and the future. Hikari liked talking to Asuka. Asuka understood that it was hard for her to take care of two siblings and have the responsibility of class representative and homework, while still carrying a torch the size of a mountain for a certain Toji Suzuhara. And everyone could say what they damn well wanted to about Asuka Soryu Langley, but she never once teased Hikari for her ridiculous crush, or her mother-like worry over her sisters, or her anxiety over keeping her position in the class. So despite the way Asuka would skim over her own problems for something less important, like how she still had yet to woo her favorite teacher, Hikari could appreciate her steadiness and her loyalty.
Unfortunately, now it is rare that they even share this. Many times Hikari will crawl in after Asuka and they will lay in punctuated silence as Nozomi snores in the room over. Then, after an indeterminable amount of pretending to be asleep, Asuka will budge over to Hikari’s side of the bed and she will allow herself to be held. Sometimes she cries, but most of the time she just clings to Hikari like a life-line. In the instances that Asuka does cry, Hikari will caress her gently and pull her hair back from her face. She kisses her damp cheeks and her forehead and her scrunched nose because she’s allowed. And though they never talk – generally Hikari will just wait it out and embrace her as they both fall asleep – Hikari thinks that she gets it.
A few months back, Asuka had told her that after graduation she would be leaving for Germany. “Just about six months, I think,” she said with that paper-thin smirk, “And it’ll be so much fun! I’ll finally see Kaji again, and my old neighbors can see how beautiful I’ve gotten while I’ve been away. Japan’s food is really so good for keeping up a complexion. I’ll definitely write you, Hikari. And take tons of pictures for you. And I’ll get you a cook book because I know you like that kind of thing.”
Hikari had smiled and tittered with her and they gushed about it, but all the while Hikari could see how Asuka had stretched herself thin over a bauble of false happiness and was pretending as much for her sake as she was for Hikari’s. In truth, this was devastating. Leaving her work behind? That was a temple she had precariously erected on a foundation of sand, and her leaving might as well have been a flood. Hikari wasn’t surprised in the least when Asuka had announced that she would be spending her last month with her instead of at Misato’s apartment. Misato joked helplessly about how she always knew Asuka had preferred the quiet life of the suburbs to the city, but Hikari knew. All she could do was giggle and claim that it was her cooking that kept Asuka around, while Asuka pouted at the both of them and laughed.
So Hikari held her when she could, and kissed her empty face when she could, and pretended not to be terrified when Asuka looked with those eyes that stared blankly into nothing, and was nothing. Despite all of her longing for Toji and her false nonchalance over Asuka’s period of waiting, Hikari thought she might be falling in love with Asuka, just a little bit. And when she held her, cooed to her, and felt her heart ache dangerously as they both fell asleep, she wondered if she was allowed.