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For someone who went out in a (metaphorical?) blaze of fireworks, his return was very understated. He just knocked on the door. Like he was the goddamn Ayanami type or something.
"Took you long enough," Asuka said, one eyebrow raised in pointed judgment, as she opened the door.
Shinji— twenty-eight-year-old Shinji who was now taller than her and wow, that was weird— smiled at her and seemed about to say something when he was hastily shoved aside by a blur of brown and pink that promptly barreled into Asuka.
"Princess!" Mari squealed, somehow finding a way to wrap every available limb around the now severely weighed-down redhead. "Did you miss me?"
"Like a rash," Asuka said with a dismissive snort, but the corners of her mouth were quirking up. She'd never admit it out loud, but she'd really missed the four-eyed barnacle currently clinging to her.
"How long has it been?" Shinji asked. His voice was deeper. Adult. The voice of a man... not that the timbre of his voice was at all relevant to Asuka. Not even a little.
"Fourteen years," Asuka deadpanned, schooling her features into a dark sort of neutrality. Shinji blinked, then gaped at her. She studiously forced her expression to remain the same. It was a tough task.
Then Kensuke peeked around the corner and ruined her perfect prank. "It's only been a few weeks," he revealed. Grinning, he sidestepped the ShikiMaki merged chimera creature and moved to give Shinji a hug. "Welcome back! We were starting to think we wouldn't see you again."
"It just took us a while," Shinji said, recovering from the brief scare to pat his friend's back. "We reappeared in Ube. Since society still isn't fully operational, traveling the normal way was difficult."
"He wouldn't let me steal a car," Mari quipped in Asuka's ear like she was commenting on the weather. "Then an old lady offered to give us her car if we did a few chores for her, but Puppy Boy wouldn't hear of it either."
Asuka snickered. "Oh, trust me, I get it. Stupid-Shinji never learned how to drive, and he was probably afraid if you took the wheel, you'd embed the car with both of you in it on the side of a building or drive off a cliff or something. You're not exactly known for your restraint, Four-Eyes."
Mari considered this. "Yeah, that tracks," she said with a shrug, then promptly dislodged herself from around Asuka to stand on her own two feet. "So, give me the grand tour, then!"
"Come in, come in," Kensuke said. Mari followed, throwing curious glances all around her. Her long brown hair hung loose, covering the back of her pink overalls. Only she could manage to find something to wear that was both cute and comfy in a literal post-apocalyptic landscape.
Shinji hung back; he'd already stayed here before, so he was well acquainted with the layout. Asuka closed the front door and smirked at him. "Dummy. I can't believe you fell for that joke about the fourteen years," she gloated, snickering.
The old (young) Shinji might have puffed up self-righteously, or conversely deflated, beating himself up for not catching on more quickly. This Shinji, however, only smiled and shrugged. "It's happened at least once before, so I've learned not to assume anything is beyond possible."
His unperturbed countenance was... atypical, to say the least. She could see, even from before, that he'd started to mature some after he came out of his post-4I paralysis. Still, this seemed like a big jump. She wondered if it was Instrumentality or just his new physical age— or perhaps lessons learned during the trip from Ube with Mari?— that had made him this... solid.
She examined him carefully. His outfit was not dissimilar to the school uniform he'd worn for most of their acquaintance, but it was more obviously casual: he wore a plaid navy-and-white short-sleeved shirt, medium grey slacks, and white sneakers— slightly scuffed and dirty from the trek— without socks. These were clothes he'd most likely acquired somehow during the trip, breezy and comfortable but still his style. The blue of his shirt brought out the blue in his eyes, though, and made his skin look less sallow. His jaw was shadowed with stubble, a sign that he hadn't had much opportunity to shave, but not enough to hint at the possibility of a full beard. It made him look older— or should she say "his age"? He also shouldered a heavy-looking backpack in which Asuka suspected he carried not just the few resources he managed to accumulate on the road, but also all of Mari's. Because that was just the kind person he was.
Asuka couldn't tell if it was these small changes that made him look more confident, or if it was this newfound confidence that prompted the changes.
He noticed her staring. "...What?"
Caught like a little girl with a hand in the cookie jar, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "You look like your father." As soon as she heard her own words, she realized it was the wrong thing to say.
But this new Shinji, both so familiar and so different at the same time, did not step on the trap she'd unwittingly laid down. The one that led to misunderstandings, and rejection, and hurt.
Instead, he just kept smiling, serene and unruffled. "Well... you look beautiful. So."
Asuka spluttered. She had just come in from work, so she was still wearing the tank top/shorts/green jacket combo she'd worn for her perimeter rounds. There were probably holes and dirty streaks on the fabric from where she'd had to crawl under fences or walked through bushes. The only thing she'd changed out of were her work boots, which she'd taken off when she'd arrived, leaving her feet in nothing but some fluffy hand-knit socks. So, beautiful? Whatever. He should be glad she didn't open the door naked.
She scoffed. "I— That's not even— Ugh! Idiot." She stomped past him, hoping against hope that she wasn't blushing. "Come on, then! Ken-Ken can probably scrounge up some food for you— unless you're too much of a hotshot for the likes of rations these days!"
"Alright, I'm coming, I'm coming," she heard him say in that mollifying tone he'd used sometimes with Touji before N3I when the boy started getting all huffy and argumentative. She probably should be offended by that.
.
.
.
Kensuke was enough of a survivalist to be able to cook a decent meal, but he was no Michelin-star chef. Dinner consisted of rice and some reheated BBQ beef they got from the Suzuharas the previous week, which they had to split into tiny portions because it had to feed four now. Still, neither of their guests complained— it was better than nothing.
"So, when do we move?" Mari asked, chopsticks with rice halfway to her mouth.
Everyone just stared at her.
"What? We obviously don't all fit in here."
"Who said you're moving in here?" Asuka retorted, pausing only to mutter the words before delving back into her food. Her body was actually growing now, and her work required a lot of walking. She was starving.
"No one!" Mari replied, nonplussed. "I'm saying we should move somewhere else. This place is cool, but there's not enough space for four people."
"I meant, who said you're moving in with us?" Asuka corrected, though she knew Mari had understood her meaning the first time. She just liked playing dumb to exasperate her. (The tactic usually succeeded, and today was no exception.)
"Oh, come on, Princess!" she said in English before switching back to Japanese. "The Wunder doesn't exist anymore, so my old digs are gone, and since you're my bestie—"
"Don't call me 'bestie,'" Asuka grumbled with a roll of her eyes.
"—it would only make sense for us to be roommates!" Mari continued like the redhead had not spoken at all. "And Puppy Boy needs somewhere to stay, too, so if we already have two former EVA pilots under one roof, why not three?"
"He can go stay with the Suzuharas," Asuka argued, almost setting her food aside in her insistence, but not far enough to forget about it. "JockDoc and the Class Rep would take him in. They like stragglers. They've housed at least one before."
She carefully didn't mention the Suzuharas' former guest being Original Batch. She didn't know how Stupid-Shinji would react at the reminder, but up till then he'd only been shifting his somewhat amused gaze between the two girls, like watching a sports match.
"Now, now. A young married couple with an infant child deserves their privacy," Mari insisted with a shake of her head and a finger wiggle, sounding like a damn grade-school teacher. "But we could be close! I'm thinking we could get a place in town..."
"I am not moving to town," Asuka declared, final, before going back to her food. She liked the people of Village 3 just fine, and she would lay down her life to protect them, but she could only handle groups in small doses. She and Ken-Ken were doing just fine in the outskirts, thankyouverymuch.
Kensuke chuckled. "We can probably just expand here, Makinami," he offered. "I was planning on doing that, regardless. Now that the core-ization in the rest of the world is being reversed, we've been getting a lot of— what did you call them? Stragglers?" He paused only to chew on a mouthful of rice. "Just lots of confused people looking for shelter until they can get back on their feet. I was thinking if we enlarged the place, we could put up a few here."
Then he smirked impishly. "Besides, Shikinami doesn't like going into town because she wants to stay away from her new boyfriend."
Shinji seemed to choke on his rice, which prompted a coughing fit so loud that Mari, matching Kensuke's mischievous expression, had to raise her voice. "Eeeeh? Why have I not heard about this before?"
"Because it's not true," Asuka snapped forcefully at her, then turned to Kensuke. "Fuck you, Aida."
Shinji's coughing subsided as he took a relieving gulp of water. Kensuke just laughed some more. "It seems that a certain Kaji, Ryouji Kaji has formed an emotional attachment to our dear Ms. Shikinami here."
Asuka groaned. "It was already weird when I had the body of a 14-year-old, and it's even weirder now that I look my age."
"I don't know... he's cute. Being both Commanders' son, the kid probably won the genetic lottery," Mari said, waving her chopsticks nonchalantly. "And it's not too long a wait until he's eighteen."
Asuka made a face. "Oh my God, Four-Eyes."
Mari played the innocent little lamb. "What? Fourteen years is not that much."
"You're old enough to be my mother," Shinji pointed out, speaking for the first time in the entire conversation.
Asuka was about to throw in something about Mari being absolutely gross when Shinji's words registered in her ears. "...Wait, what?"
Kensuke wasn't about to touch that thread of conversation with a ten-foot pole— it was way above his pay grade. "Maybe try to stick with people who are the same physical age, Makinami. It'll save you a lot of trouble in the long run."
Asuka snorted, now starting to dig into her small portion of beef. "Ken-ken's just relieved I look my age now and people just wonder if we're sleeping together, rather than assuming he's some kind of deviant pervert."
"We could give them a real roommate romance to talk about if you want," Mary offered in that way of hers where Asuka couldn't tell if she was serious or just joking. "I'd be willing—"
Kensuke just smiled placidly at her. "Uh. Terrible idea."
"How come?" Mari insisted, propping her elbows on the table so she could lean closer to Kensuke. "You're kind of hot, in a nerdy sort of way. I'm sure there are plenty of girls in town who dig the whole Indiana Jones aesthetic." She paused. "Or guys. I don't judge." The addition was marked with a wink.
"Who?" Asuka and Shinji asked at the same time, having no idea what this Indiana thing was.
Kensuke's smile tightened to the point where it looked more like a grimace. "I don't need help getting dates, thank you."
It was Asuka's turn to grin evilly, glad the conversation had shifted from her own love life (or lack thereof) to Ken-Ken's. "Yes, he does," she mouthed to Mari in an exaggerated fashion.
Kensuke glared at her. "You know, I used to tell Touji how nice it was that I didn't have to deal with annoyances such as little sisters."
"I'm only two months younger than you," Asuka pointed out smartly, plopping a small cube of BBQ beef into her mouth and chewing contentedly.
Mari let out a loud, dramatic sigh. "Maybe I'll go chat up Nagara next time I'm in the village. She's super hot."
"As long as it's not a fourteen-year-old, you weirdo," Asuka mumbled into her food.
"At least you only have to deal with Junior when we go into town for leadership meetings," Kensuke said. At Shinji's confused look, he explained. "The kid's moved in with Dr. Akagi. Apparently, it's what Commander Katsuragi would've wanted."
There was a brief flash of sadness in Shinji's eyes. Not that Asuka didn't miss Misato herself— fighting shoulder to shoulder with someone for over fourteen years created a bond even she couldn't deny. But this wasn't the right time or place to talk about their former guardian and her sacrifice.
"The bottle-blonde doctor wasted no time declaring herself the mayor of Village 3," she continued Kensuke's train of conversation. She shrugged. "People don't really mind. She's good at executive stuff. And then Ibuki and the bridge bunnies are in charge of the search effort for people who might come back from de-core-ization. The integration of the WILLE crew is actually working out quite well."
Shinji nodded. "What can we do to help?"
Kensuke reclined in his chair, done with his dinner. "Well, most people just work in the fields; that's where we need the most hands. But if there's a particular skill you have, you can get an exemption. Like me, in maintenance, and Chief Security Officer Shikinami here." He turned to look at Mari. "What do you say, Makinami? Do you have any skills other than piloting an EVA?"
"I love reading," Mari said with a dreamy expression. "I had quite the collection of books in my pod aboard the Wunder." She pouted, dejected. "I guess that's gone now, as well."
"There's a library in town," Kensuke suggested. "Maybe you could help there. I know they're looking to expand as well." Mari's expression lit up like Kensuke had just handed her a Christmas present.
He turned to Shinji. "What about you, Ikari? Any special skills?"
Shinji thought about it for a bit. "Um, I can play the piano a little bit. Maybe I could do something with that?" He smiled, though the gesture looked a little bittersweet. "I'd like to be able to teach people the way Kaworu taught me."
Nagisa. The 13th Angel. Asuka wasn't sure what had transpired between him and Shinji while they were at NERV HQ, but it was clear from Shinji's near-catatonia after the 13th died that they'd been close.
"I don't know if we can get a hold of a piano, but you might have something there with the teaching thing," Kensuke noted. "We're always in need of more teachers for the little kids, especially since more people are arriving every day. It has to be all hands on deck when it comes to setting up a school."
Shinji looked like he was seriously considering it. Asuka wasn't sure she could see it, him being a teacher. He hadn't even finished secondary school, after all. But with N3I truncating society to a grade-level education, perhaps it didn't matter much.
"Well, then," Kensuke said, pushing himself to his feet and grabbing his empty bowl, then Mari's, followed by Asuka handing him hers and then Shinji's. He stacked them on top of each other and smiled at the three former pilots. "You can come with me tomorrow and we'll talk to Mayor Akagi about getting you your job assignments. Once we've got that, we can start figuring out how to expand the house here."
He moved to set the bowls down in the sink. "Be up at six, okay?"
Mari groaned. "Six a.m., really?" she whined.
Asuka chortled. "Sucks to be you." Shinji laughed as well. Asuka was sure, if any part of the old Shinji remained in his new twenty-eight-year-old body, he would be up at five to make them all breakfast.
.
.
.
After some more long, vehement back-and-forth ("I'm not sharing a bed with you, Four-Eyes. You kick in your sleep!"), it was decided that Asuka and Mari would take the main room, Kensuke would lay down a sleeping mat in the loading dock, and Shinji would take Asuka's bed.
Mari was sleep-muttering something about a pigtailed girl with long stockings in what sounded vaguely like Swedish. Asuka couldn't sleep, and Germanic languages all sounded sort of similar, so she was distracted by the odd somniloquy. On top of that, she'd only managed to doze off for an hour or so before her high-strung mind woke her up, bombarding her with questions that had gone unasked in the unexpectedly quotidian dialogue at dinner.
Unbidden, her hand stretched out to take hold of her hand puppet but found nothing. Of course, this wasn't her bed. It was probably for the best— she couldn't really voice her thoughts to the doll with Mari in the room, and she had resolved after the South Pole to leave the puppet behind, anyway; she felt she was officially too old to be playing with dolls.
Still, the reflex would take some time to disappear.
With a frustrated huff, she got up and made her way out of the room, toward her own bed. She could see the back of Shinji's head and the contour of his body under the sheets as he slept facing the wall.
He clearly had no problem falling asleep and staying that way, the jerk. Almost destroyed the world, saved the world, then disappeared off the face of the earth for weeks, leaving everybody— everybody else, that is— wondering if he was dead. Then he came back with a wave and that stupid (not attractive) smile of his, consumed their rations, and slept like a damn baby. How dare he.
He couldn't see her glare, but she was definitely glaring.
As she got on the bed, she didn't bother being delicate about it. What did she care if Stupid-Shinji woke up, anyway? If she couldn't sleep, then neither should he. In fact, she accidentally— or not-so-accidentally— nudged him with her shoulder when she turned her back on him. He stirred, his entire body stiffening for as he realized someone else was in bed with him, but he relaxed a second later, when he recognized who it was.
Then came a chuckle. "'Don't turn around,' I'm guessing?" he asked, recalling the last time they found themselves in this very situation. His voice was husky from sleep, and in the silence of the night, it seemed to reverberate against the makeshift walls of her home.
She scoffed. "Don't try to be cute, Stupid-Shinji," she said quietly, not wanting to alert anyone else as to their current position. "This is my bed. You should be grateful I'm not kicking you out of it."
Shinji hummed, pensive. "That's fair," he conceded easily.
Asuka had to marvel at that reaction. The Shinji she knew would've whined and complained, possibly, or maybe he would've gotten up and gone to sleep in a corner so she could have the bed if she wanted it back so much. Maybe he would've tried to appeasingly distract her, like he used to do with Suzuhara when they were kids and he started getting all huffy for some dumb jock reason.
Now, her intentional rebukes were met with a tone of affection— maybe a little amusement— like he understood that was just who she was and saw it as a positive rather than be hurt by it. It wasn't a bad development; it was just... unexpected. Kind of weird, really, when she let herself think about it.
"Instrumentality changed you." It was a factual assertion as much as an expression of bitterness, a Why couldn't you change for us? implied between the words.
"Yes," Shinji said right away, confirming Asuka's sinking feeling. But then he added, "Also no." Confused, Asuka was about to retort that wasn't an answer, but he halted the question only half out of her mouth by turning over to face her. It was dark, so his features were diffuse at best, but her mind filled in the gaps easily enough, even with his new, more mature-looking appearance.
"A lot happened to get me to this point," he said in that sincere, guileless tone she was so familiar with. "Lifetimes, it feels like."
Asuka snorted. "What, like parallel universes and stuff? Come on, Stupid-Shinji."
He chuckled. "What? It'd hardly be the weirdest thing we've ever lived through."
She rolled her eyes at him but had to concede the point. "I guess," she mumbled. He offered no reply to that, but she could feel his gaze on her face, just catch in the moonlight the serene upturn of his lips, and it made her want to squirm. And Shikinami Asuka Langley never squirmed.
"What?" she asked, defensive.
Shinji shook his head. "Nothing. Just... you've changed, too," he admitted, his voice soft. "I wish I could've been here to see it happen."
The weight of that sentence— of those fourteen years he was missing and the reality of how much she had missed him, whether she could admit it to herself or not— saddened her all of a sudden. "It might not have happened if you'd been here."
She didn't want to say it, but it was the cold, hard truth: sometimes broken people needed to glue themselves together before they could get close to others with their jagged edges. It had taken Asuka a lot of self-reflection and she had to learn to accept a lot of help to even get her to this point, and for a while when Shinji came back and everything went to shit, she feared it would all be undone.
But somehow they'd managed to keep the world together, and she'd managed to keep herself together— just enough to really find her place in that patched-up world. That was something, at least.
And now he was back, and she had wanted him to come back, whether she could admit it to herself or not, but at the same time, she still had remnants of that fear lurking in the back of her mind.
If he was at all concerned by her words, he didn't show it. "Maybe not," he said, then shifted his position until his elbow was propped up on the bed, head held up by his hand. His socked feet tickled her calves with the movement. "Or maybe we would've changed together."
Something warm swooped inside her— a good squirm this time. She was glad for the darkness, because she was certain she was blushing. So she volleyed the ball back in his court. "Why did you choose to come back?" she asked, because she had to. "You had control of the impact. You could have created a perfect world for yourself. A new beginning."
"I thought about it, but it felt too much like running away," he confessed, his voice hushed, like he hadn't ever admitted that to anyone before. "I don't want to do that anymore. Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live." He murmured the sentence hazily, like he'd heard the words in a dream. "I don't need a perfect world; I just need to learn to live in mine."
Then he shrugged with one shoulder, nonchalantly; almost reminiscent of Kaji, she clocked now— the adult Kaji, that is. "Besides, all the people I love are here," he added pointedly. She didn't bother pointing out that they could've been there, too; she knew that's not what he meant.
He seemed eminently comfortable, gaze locked on hers, his position making it so he was almost leaning over her. But reluctantly charmed or not, Asuka was Asuka, and Asuka always had to push. "Are you going to kiss me, Stupid-Shinji?"
His only reaction was a slightly startled twitch, and she thought maybe, just maybe, he was blushing now, too. She was about to smirk when he shook his head, and that record-scratched her celebratory inner monologue.
"No, it's not a good idea to kiss a girl when she hasn't asked for it." He paused for a second, pensive. "Sometimes it's a bad idea even when she has asked for it, to be fair. But definitely if she hasn't. I've learned that lesson by now."
Asuka didn't know if she should feel proud or offended, but she narrowed her eyes at him either way. "Did you learn that with Four-Eyes?" she asked, suspicious. After all, they had been wandering through post-apocalyptic Japan together for two weeks, and Mari was, well... Mari. She wouldn't put it past Four-Eyes to make out with someone just because she was bored.
"Absolutely not," Shinji retorted quickly and decisively, which settled her building dread well enough. Even though he was older now, Shinji was Shinji, and Shinji was a shit liar. She couldn't help but believe him.
"Okay," she said magnanimously, then added: "But do you want to kiss me, Shinji?"
It was a loaded question. Not a trick question, where she set him up on purpose and he was the one put on the spot. No, this was loaded for both of them. She remembered their conversation aboard the Wunder. The beach.
I think I had a crush on you back then.
I liked you, too.
It had felt final then.
I've grown into an adult ahead of you.
But those circumstances were no longer applicable, were they? Whether it was instrumentality or those lifetimes he said he had lived, they were both adults now, physically and mentally. Maybe we would've changed together, he had told her. In the dark of the night, only inches separating them on her small bed, she wondered if maybe they still could.
Because there was one thing that hadn't changed in all the near–Ends of the World they'd experienced, and it was the way Shinji looked at her like she was something special; not just something he wanted, like some other boys would, but as someone he wanted to be— there was something he saw in her that he wished he could emulate.
It was something that really irritated her back then, because for Stupid-Shinji, it had never been about her prowess with her EVA, even though that is what she was striving so hard for people to acknowledge. And as much as calling him a pervert (or yelling the word at him) was her go-to defense mechanism, she didn't truly believe he was drawn to her because of her physical appearance. So she couldn't understand what it was he was seeing in her— if it wasn't the fact that she was a prodigy, a genius, the best EVA pilot of them all, then she couldn't piece together what it was. And that was immensely frustrating to her.
But there were no EVAs anymore, and he still looked at her like he was seeing something amazing. Or at least she hoped he was. That much she could admit now, at least to herself, and it made her breath catch as she waited for his response.
And when he did voice it, he didn't startle, he didn't get flustered, he didn't blush or stutter or flinch away. Instead, he took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. "Of course I do."
She breathed out as well, relieved, although she wasn't sure why she felt that way, why the knowledge that he wanted her this way felt familiar, even comforting. It wasn't the kind of thing she usually allowed herself to dwell on, to hope for— not for the past few weeks, and not for the fourteen years before that.
But it had been a long time, and it was late, and she was tired. So she inched closer, slowly. So close that his breath tickled her cheeks, which before would've made her self-conscious, but now was reassuring. A reminder, just like the solidity of his form on her bed, that he was really there. That she wasn't just imagining him.
She closed the last couple of inches and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was soft but not tentative— Asuka didn't do anything by half-measures, and this was no exception. It took a beat for Shinji to reciprocate, content to let her take the lead, set the pace, but then his mouth slanted against hers with just as much intent, just as much relief, just as much earnestness, like kissing her was a fated conclusion entertained for years and reluctantly given up on. And perhaps it was.
His lips were chapped from his trek through Honshu, but so were hers from spending so much time outside, doing her rounds. One of his hands rose to cradle her jaw; hers fisted around the softer-than-expected fabric of his shirt.
After a few seconds of contact that somehow felt much longer, she pulled back. As she opened her eyes, her gaze met his, his eyes darker in the tepid darkness of her room.
"Welcome back to real life, Stupid-Shinji," she whispered. He smiled in the moonlight again, and this time it did not make her feel uneasy. Well, not much. She turned around on the bed, her back to him, but it was more playful than anything else.
"By the way," she said, the corners of her mouth quirking up just slightly to match her tongue-in-cheek tone, "if you wake me up at five in the morning, I'll chop off your balls."
She heard him chuckle behind her. "Roger that." She didn't wonder any longer where these new relaxed, perhaps even charmed responses came from. She just enjoyed them.
She didn't feel him move closer— she drifted off to sleep almost immediately, tired from a hard day's work— but she did feel him lift his arm from around her waist in the morning and found that, whether that happened on purpose or by accident, she didn't particularly mind. Heeding her threat from the night before, he didn't pull her fully out of sleep, instead carefully maneuvering around her form so as not to jostle her as he got out of bed.
Bits and pieces of conversation filtered through the fog of sleep, mostly Mari teasing Shinji relentlessly. Asuka hadn't expected that the bedroom she slept in last night would have stayed secret for long, but she was glad she'd have at least until the afternoon to prepare for the onslaught.
Shinji fielded the pestering good-naturedly, the conversation softening as Kensuke joined them for breakfast. Asuka drifted in and out of consciousness for the next while, though she did hear when they left, Mari wondering out loud if she could find some striped thigh-high socks while in town. Kensuke said maybe some of the ladies in town would be nice enough to knit her some.
"You're lucky we made it back to Village 3, then," Shinji said, his voice echoing distantly on the way out the door. "It's good to be back."
That was the last Asuka heard before drifting back into sleep, content to bury her head into the pillows and rest for just a little bit longer until her own day was due to begin.