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The Angels couldn't be destroyed by conventional weapons, and some of the collateral damage caused by their war against humanity was unconventional too. There was the physical destruction that mostly affected Tokyo-3 and the surrounding areas, the psychological toll burdening the on-edge citizens of the wider Kanto and Chubu regions; but also, in a phenomenon surprising researchers as much as it did Joe Public, the way the weather over much of Honshu had become more variable than it had ever been post-Second Impact.
This evening, a Western Europe-style storm had been predicted to hit Tokyo-3, with rows of cancelled services on the more “vintage” forms of public transport, and radio adverts urging people to be careful.
The storm was predicted to reach its peak in the evening, but it wasn't even 5pm when Shinji climbed over the second fallen tree of his journey. He was battling the gales to bring the ever-absent Rei Ayanami her latest batch of missed homework.
He hadn't managed to leave Rei's apartment by the time the winds really picked up. Although Ayanami didn't seem to ever open her curtains, Shinji could hear the panes of her windows quivering in their frames and whooshing gusts loudly whooing through the gaps between tower blocks. He was not looking forward to walking back to the rail halt in that.
And then the power went out. Even more darkness in Ayanami's apartment, accompanied by a noise something between a thud and a single, loud handclap.
He figured from that loud sound that the power cut was city-wide: the residents of Tokyo-3 had been told to prepare for one. Shinji didn't understand how a city so futuristic and carefully crafted could have an Achilles' heel, let alone one that could be caused by high winds, of all things. His heart sank as he realised how much of Tokyo-3 required a power supply: street lights; broadcasting towers; most of the public transit system…
He clearly wouldn't be going home for a while.
Ayanami suddenly stood up and took a lighter out of a drawer, lighting a couple of candles around the room that Shinji had never noticed before.
He didn't know why he was surprised.
He had always just assumed Ayanami could see in the dark, he guessed.
That was half an hour ago now. They sat apart from each other, in silence.
“Ikari-kun.” Rei didn't seem to look up from the book she was reading.
“Yeah?”
“Why aren't you occupying yourself?”
Shinji had thought it was awkward enough to be sitting in the house of someone he didn't know very well with literally nothing to do, but now he knew that being in that situation and getting asked why he was doing nothing was even worse. “I-I… uh…”
“If you would also like to read a book, feel free to do so.”
“Uh… thanks, Ayanami, but I… I don't have a book.”
“I see.”
Awkward silence.
This was so embarrassing. Shinji was used to being bored, and he could handle a bit of awkwardness, but this was excruciating. He prayed that power would be restored to the city soon and the authorities would be on the radio broadcasting the green light to travel again.
“Perhaps you could find some literature concealed within this apartment.”
…What?
Those sounded like the words of a non-playable videogame character setting the player a challenge, or those of a puzzle-writer for the back of children's cereal boxes. It felt very surreal. But, he thought, this must be Ayanami's way of inviting him to search her space for something to occupy himself with, right?
“Oh, um… thanks.”
Shinji's trepidation (he remembered the glasses incident from his first visit to Ayanami's place) slightly outweighed his boredom, but then he remembered that his current situation was kind of soul-destroying overall; so he started opening cabinets and cupboards, scanning shelves on his tiptoes.
He opened one drawer and a piece of metal leapt forward. It was a silver… wedding ring? Plain, smooth and shiny, although slightly tarnished.
The glasses were one thing. This was stranger, and maybe even a little bit disconcerting.
“Ayanami, um… why do you have a wedding ring?”
Rei put her book down and looked at Shinji. “It belonged to Dr Akagi.”
“…to Ritsuko-san…?”
“This does not concern you.” More awkward silence. Shinji didn't expect to be shut down like that – he wasn't even aware of having asked a probing question.
However, when something is this unusual, you can't just stop at one question. “Did… did Ritsuko-san give it to you?” It was a stupid question, because the answer was obviously yes, but the matter was just too unusual to stop talking about it so quickly.
“No, I took it.”
Shinji was dumbfounded. All he could muster in response was “Oh. Okay.” Talking to Ayanami often felt surreal — but that was usually partially down to the combination of her soft voice and her curt manner; and partially down to her having a sort of otherworldly air about her, like she was the ambassador of the middle of winter.
But she had just calmly told him she… “took”… Ritsuko-san's… wedding ring…
…this didn't feel like a real conversation about real things. Was he dreaming?
Rei was always reliably cold and calm, like early-morning snow, but she now took the unprecedented step of giving information she hadn't been asked to. “I didn't steal it. Dr Akagi threw it across the room during an argument with her lover and I… wanted to keep it.”
She was cold and calm like early-morning snow, and icy and gelid like a frozen lake. Shinji had never skated on a frozen lake – well, growing up in the twenty-first century meant they only existed in old movies! – but if someone asked him to, he would be extremely reluctant. He would fear the cracking of the crystalline ice – first a hairline, and then sharp fragmentation spreading across the entire surface – knowing that it might well be followed by him taking an unlucky step forward that would plunge him through the tiles of the frozen mosaic, trapping him in freezing water that would become a cold, wet grave.
That was the foreboding he felt now, hearing Ayanami's unusual verbosity. It was as if what she'd told him was a crack in the ice and asking more about it would leave him in danger of plunging to a freezing death.
He put the ring back and, weirdly, felt relieved. Then he realised that he had, actually, found some “literature”: the ring had been sitting on a large, glossy book.
He picked it up. It was a cookbook full of air fryer recipes.
What the—?
“An… air fryer cookbook?” Shinji wondered to himself. This wasn't the kind of thing that would usually make him laugh, but it just seemed so out of place! “Hey, Ayanami,” he said, starting to grin, “do you have an air fryer?”
Rei looked at him, face devoid of emotion. “No.”
“Huh?” Shinji was confused. “Why do you have an air fryer cookbook, then?”
“Commander Ikari had an air fryer.”
“My father… had an air fryer?” repeated Shinji, confused as to how that was supposed to make him less confused.
“Yes.”
He turned it over in his mind and struggled to imagine any real cause-and-effect connection between his father owning an air fryer and Rei owning an air fryer cookbook. Maybe… Ayanami went over to Father's house from time to time and they cooked for each other, trying out different recipes…?
But why would they do that!?
Why wouldn't they do that?
Why was Tokyo-3 so weird!?
While Shinji's brain went into overdrive, Rei remembered Gendo Ikari and his air fryer and began to smile softly.
“Ikari-kun.” Ayanami was… smiling? Why was she smiling? “Did you ever meet Jesus?”
…What?
Okay, that was the weirdest thing she had said yet. Shinji had to be dreaming.
“Um… like the Son of God from Christianity? No, I'm not a Christian,” Shinji laughed nervously.
“No. Ikari Jesus,” replied Rei. “The son of Akagi Ritsuko and Ikari Gendo.”
Shinji didn't hear her properly; it sounded like she said—
“Your half-brother.”
The father who froze him out… had another son?
She wasn't serious, was she? And Ritsuko was the mother of that son? She had to be twenty years younger than Shinji's father, and she had seemed like such a normal person…
“We lived together as a family. Commander Ikari, Dr Akagi, myself, Jesus-kun. I was their daughter,” explained Rei, not realising that Shinji was reeling, or perhaps indifferent to the fact.
“It amuses me to remember when Commander Ikari came home with the air fryer. Dr Akagi was very unenthusiastic about it, so Commander Ikari claimed it could be used for childcare purposes,” recalled Rei, a soft smile once again on her lips. “This sparked my imagination, so I picked Jesus up and sat him in the air fryer. Ritsuko. Flipped. Out!”
Shinji hadn't really heard anything after “we lived together as a family.”
He was numb.