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Another splash of the waves brought Shinji back from his absentminded thoughts, as the cascading sound of the beach reiterated the fact that they had returned there again. It had almost become routine at this point, though the reasoning behind that pattern was indecipherable to either of the two.
It served a dichotomizing setting of soothing ambience yet unsettling remembrance. Shinji supposed the two feelings coincided to make it a particularly perfect place to think, which is all he had been doing recently. Asuka, on the other hand, only came along because he was there. That motivation had been running thin as of late, however.
She called his name out once midst the silence, but he either didn’t hear her or was unwilling to listen. The waves crashed yet again, their roseate hue disappearing into the sand below.
Again, she tried. More forcefully this time. He remained lost in his own thoughts, like sand had muddled his ears. More accurately, the silence had. He wasn’t used to dissociating in such a ‘tranquil’ and ‘ambient’ atmosphere, and it left him distant.
“SHINJI!” The word was delivered alongside a light push— the unexpectedness of which caused Shinji’s hand to slip as his elbow collided with the sand. Slowly, he turned to Asuka, who was giving him a flummoxed look devoid of visible concern. “Let’s go back. We’ve wasted enough time out here.”
He inhaled slowly like he had just awoken from sleep, and he dug his hands into the sand as he brought his knees to his chest. “To do what?” he murmured to the displeasure of Asuka. “We already set up the shelter… and we just foraged yesterday.”
“We is a strong word,” Asuka grumbled in response. “I foraged and set things up.” She paused for a moment as her mind searched for another retaliation, but none came quickly. “We’re better off doing something productive instead of just sitting out here like you always do,” she settled with.
Shinji slowly looked upwards, shifting the hair out of his eyes as he did so. It had grown a bit too long over the time the two had been out there. It was hard to place a direct measure on it— weeks, maybe. He’d need to cut some of the front eventually. “...yeah, okay,” he commemorated lightly, slowly standing and brushing the sand off his backside.
Asuka frowned at the simple answer, but it’d do for now. The rapidity of them had been growing to annoying levels lately, though. It was as if Shinji had given up on the days of conversation the two used to have freely in service of his own little world within his head. He was even doing it now and looking up to the sky like a child lost in thought, only to slowly redirect his attention to catching up to Asuka’s stride, who was a few dozen feet ahead of him on the path.
There the two walked, though not side by side. Shinji kept behind her a few paces, his eyes scouring their surroundings inattentively. Another building had seemingly begun to crumble since yesterday— another affirmation of Shinji’s reasoning as to why they shouldn’t ever sleep in one. Tents had served them well up to that point, and they would continue to do fine. Their walk remained painfully awkward as Shinji or Asuka refused to speak— though that was obviously the fault of the former, who had been lacking in the social department for a few days up to that point.
To her vexation, it reminded Asuka of how he had been towards her before everything. Like a replay of the terrible period he had undergone since things had slowly worsened and festered, up until the boiling point of such extreme degree that it had bubbled up to near-extinction. They had been better after all of that—conversating, understanding, even back to their old bickering—only for Shinji to seemingly want to toss all that progress away. Well, Asuka would be damned to let that slide, and had just begun to switch into her own “problem-solving” mode as she wondered the reasoning for his absentmindedness.
As signaled by the sight of their crude cooking fire and camping stove, the two had arrived at their shelter or camp— call it what you will. They settled into their foldable seats and tried to relax, only for Shinji’s prior point to make itself apparent. They had nothing to do.
After a solid few minutes of shifting awkwardly in his chair and sneaking glances at Asuka as she read, Shinji sighed performatively, prompting the attention of Asuka.
Slowly, she flipped the page to her novel and peered past its spine, catching the sight of Shinji. “Why are you just sitting there?” she immediately questioned. And, before he could respond, she continued. “You could be making yourself useful and try to set up that camping stuff we stole.”
“I…” he groaned. “I don’t really know what to do. It’s been boring.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You’re just realizing that now? That life without electricity or the internet could possibly be ‘boring’?”
“No, it’s like—” he tried, before mentally rolling his eyes at her patronization. “I just… it’s like I want to distract myself and— I don’t know, disassociate. But lately I just can’t. Nothing’s doing it for me.”
“You could read,” she immediately pointed out with a wiggle of the book in her hands. “I didn’t trek all the way out to that libary—then haul back all those books—just for me. You can use them too, you know.”
Shinji gave a slow turn of his head as he fastened his gaze upon the pile of books in one of their tents. His expression soured. “Well, uhm. It’s—”
“What, you can’t read?” she interjected. “I wouldn’t be surprised."
He let his head droop back and fall onto his seat cushion, his gaze angled directly upward at the coral tainted clouds. “I can read, Asuka,” he muttered condescendingly. “ It’s… well, I don’t know how to put it,” he admitted.
The two stooped into silence for a moment— real silence. The sounds of nature had been almost eerily absent ever since everything. The birds no longer sang, the bushes ceased their shifting— even the woosh of an occasional bug seemed absent. They were still there—Shinji knew that firsthand as he struggled with mosquito bites—but it was as if they feared what their home had become, and opted to hide away where they could. All that had not seemingly died was the chilling gust of the wind, which brought forth the only sounds audible to the two as they sat: the rustling of leaves and the shifting of trees. That was until Asuka placed her book down.
“You just can’t visualize it?” she suggested, her gaze now locked on Shinji’s head, which was still staring at the sky above.
Shinji opened his mouth to disagree until realization struck him. “...yeah. It’s like that. It’s just words to me, so I can’t really get invested.” Then, after a beat, “how’d you know?”
“Heard about it,” she immediately replied, as though the answer was already chambered. “I don’t really get that, though. You just can’t see anything?”
He gave a meek shrug.
Asuka slowly nodded as she turned away to shift her posture. “So is that why you had all those comic books, like a child?”
He squinted his eyes at the insult. “I guess. That and the TV were stuff that distracted me. Other than that I only liked stuff that let me think instead of sidetrack from it. Like…”
Asuka stared at him yet again as she waited for him to finalize his sentence, only for him to end it off with a prolonged exhale as he slouched deeper into his chair. All she could note from his demeanor was the fact that his hand seemed to be gripping something nonexistent, as though he had a phantom-idea of what he wanted.
“Didn’t you used to play videogames?” Shinji asked, much to the surprise of Asuka. Seemingly he had found relief of his boredom in talking to her, finally giving him reason enough to speak up.
“On occasion,” she commemorated. “Really all it was was a distraction, so I guess it’d be perfect for whatever you're complaining about right now. It was sort of fun.”
Hesitantly, Shinji nodded at the statement, but regardless he hadn’t been listening. He had already begun losing himself in his own thoughts yet again, being done with the conversation. Even those short few words he said prior had already dropped an epiphany on him as to what he was missing. No longer did he have the escape that he clutched so desperately to; the walls he placed up in solidarity against a world he didn’t want to face.
It was a shame he was left without it— after Kaworu, he couldn't handle keeping his walls up and let the worst parts of him flee out of their now broken shelter, shattered by the lack of their coping foundations. So, he left it behind, and lost it. Now it was surely gone— along with Misato’s entire apartment. Lately, the lack of it had tremendously worried him. He had gone without it before as aforementioned— and he knew the way that had turned out. Perhaps he was better off keeping quiet so as to stop those pieces of him from fleeing in their naked state— only while he was without his defense, of course.
And steadily, it appeared as though Asuka had come upon the same conclusion of what he was missing— for entirely different reasons, of course.
Shinji winced immediately, flinging his hand back after the touch. Comfortingly, he cradled his hand and stared at his now burnt finger with disdain. Their crude camping stove always had been awfully janky and misshapen, and he had finally been clumsy enough to touch one of the superheated protrusions of metal upon it. With a groan—of annoyance, not of pain—he searched around for some water to soothe it, though his efforts were in vain as he realized all their readily available water bottles had turned up empty. He would need to go down to one of their rainwater basins— a minor annoyance to yet another mundane and monotone day. He whined yet again before beginning his trek, flicking off the stove as he went. The food was ready, anyway.
At the thought, Shinji’s mind went back to the topic of dinner. He had been preparing it for quite some time now in preparation of Asuka’s return from her "surprise expedition”, only to grow increasingly confused as she didn’t show up. Now he had already finished the meal and she was still nowhere to be seen. Her absence, in culmination with his preexisting mood and thoughts, had been the cause of incredible ennui and apathy as he found himself both alone and unable to escape his own thoughts. He wasn’t very worried about it, though, as she went off on her walks alone so often he had grown rather numb to his superstitious worry. Even still, her presence would only be a minor alleviation to that feeling as it served as a lackluster ailment. They didn’t have much to do together—neither of them had thought to bring even a pack of cards back to the camp—aside from conversing, which Shinji’s newfound situation made impossible as he still suffered from the lack of his escape.
Still, an alleviation was an alleviation regardless. Shinji knew he’d be lying if he didn’t like having her around. The degree of that like, however, was still a topic of great ambiguity in his head. Luckily, he wouldn’t be stuck to think on it alone much longer as he made out a silhouette in the distance. It was a great coincidence for him to notice it on his way to the rainwater basins, but it was a welcome one regardless. Slowly, she grew ever closer and closer, where eventually Shinji could make out the fact that she seemed to be carrying… nothing. Even her backpack seemed empty despite how long a journey she had taken— it must’ve been at least half the day at that point, judging from the sky.
Suddenly, Shinji forgot about his minor burn in favor of confusion as he walked towards Asuka.
“Shinji!” she called out, her voice awfully cheery— almost singsongy. Such a tone was practically a cause for fear in Shinji, though he couldn’t quite understand why.
“Asuka?” he called back as he diminished the distance between them. “What… took you so long? You said it was just a short–”
“Because I had to go all the way to another district!” she interjected in a disbelieving exclamation. “Can you believe that? The only music store I could find was like 100 blocks away! What makes those so special, anyway?”
“I—” Shinji began without thought, only to pause as his mind came to terms with what she had said. “Wait, what? Why’d you go to a music store?”
“Because,” she started matter-of-factly, “I, in my sympathetic and thoughtful ways, thought to get you a birthday present. It’s been, what, a month? And everything happened around December, so it’s nearly your birthday.”
Shinji narrowed his gaze, his hand weakly raising to scratch the back of his head. “My… my birthday’s in June.”
“Right, it’s pretty close,” she stated firmly with a frown.
The two stood there for a moment in each other's company, before Asuka clicked her tongue and flipped her backpack off to promptly rummage through it. Shinji watched on in hesitation, only for his expectations to be blown out of the water as Asuka flamboyantly presented her gift.
“I— you—” Shinji found himself blabbering as he looked on in near-amazement. “You found one?!”
With a grin, Asuka almost waved it tauntingly. “Look at you, so excited,” she remarked.
With maternal-like care, Shinji tenderly took the S-DAT into his hands. It was a slight malaise that his tape would be gone—although, it was more of a hand me down from his father, which made it special in the first place—it was still a great comfort to actually have the machine back in his possession. He only listened to the last two songs, anyway. Expectantly, he flipped it over only to check that the tape cartridge was empty, which prompted a slight frown as he almost thought Asuka wouldn’t have had the foresight to purchase a tape for the thing.
As if she could read his mind, she immediately shook the backpack, causing a clatter within as plastic collided upon plastic. “I didn’t know what you listened to, so I picked whatever looked interesting,” she explained. “Just take it, you can go look through them and… I don’t know, listen all gleefully or whatever you do.”
Shinji obliged, taking the backpack from her into his free hand. “I… uhm,” he stumbled, “I don’t even know what to say. Why’d you—?”
“Like I said,” she interrupted. “It’s a present, since you love to harp on how bored you are. You’re supposed to say thank you.”
“Oh,” he said, staring at the aforementioned present tentatively. “Thanks— thank you, Asuka.”
Something about the expression of gratitude practically cracked Asuka’s composure— be it the way he said it, or the usage of her name. It was hard to decipher whether it was simply the feeling of causing another happiness, or something more, so she opted to ignore it and leave him be. With a quick ‘you’re welcome’, she turned and walked off to the camp, where he soon followed. He’d likely lock himself off in one of the tents and listen away; closing himself off to the world, really. He’d always do it before, so there was no reason to believe otherwise. It was fine— Asuka could care less, she was sure. So long as he maybe decided to become a little more talkative because of it.
Shinji couldn’t tell how long it had been at that point, the only factor of time he could see being the fact that the sun had begun its descent and was now situated above the horizon firmly. The soon-to-be sunset—in pair with the sanguine ocean—caused the sky around the horizon to glow a deep crimson, a sight that was anything but unfamiliar to Shinji.
He paused his S-DAT for a moment, letting his finger rest upon the button as he did so. The tape he had been listening to was rather interesting, though that was of no surprise; Asuka said she picked them for that very reason. It even had the genre plastered upon its title along with the artists involved, dubbing itself as Schlager. Shinji had no clue what that meant, but it sounded German, so he assumed that's why she decided it was worth buying. It was a miracle she had even found such a tape in a Japanese store. Despite the indecipherability of the lyrics, however, he still liked the music. It was soft, sentimental, and an enjoyable listen, yet still it wasn’t doing it for him. None of the music had— and he had gone through plenty.
It was like the S-DAT had lost its uncanny ability to let him disassociate and hide away, leaving him as vulnerable as he would be with any other activity to numb the time. He had no clue as to why, but it was still troubling nonetheless. Perhaps the setting was to blame, as it wasn’t relaxing or scenic enough to truly make his mind go silent. So, he stood up in his tent and slid open the zipper to slink out silently, only to be met with Asuka’s eyes as soon as he stepped out.
After a moment of silence, he twiddled the S-DAT between his hands and pulled the headphones out of his ears. “I’m going to the beach,” he stated flatly, before turning without waiting for a response.
And so he did just that and took the short trek to the beach— a walk he took so commonly it had become routine. They had situated their little camp close to the shore for that very reason, though it was courtesy of Shinji’s own efforts of course. Asuka couldn’t be bothered to care much about it since she had been more focused on survival, as she put it. Traditions and sentiments had been more Shinji’s speed.
After the walk, he arrived and sat himself down in his traditional spot to placidly turn his S-DAT back on and listen in peace. The view was serene— though he still had to set the giant white monolith aside from his thoughts and allow it to phase out of his concentration. He had long since grown weary of the peering lifeless eyes of… Lillith. His mind almost blanked at the thought of dubbing it as Rei, as if it was inconceivable to do such a thing. It’d be a disservice to call the thing that ended it all Rei. Then again, it was him that ended it all, was it not? Yet another thought he wished he wasn’t having, as he gripped the S-DAT harder in realization that it wasn’t working to let him disassociate.
The song was good, however, so he cut his losses and nodded his head to the beat absentmindedly, unable to even hear the waves crashing just a few dozen feet away. Turning down to his S-DAT, he merely saw a simple 1 on its screen, connotating in the most simple way what number he was on the tracklist. Slowly and carefully, he opened the thing and peered at the tape in curiosity to be met with the album name Jenseits von Eden. Very German— no wonder he didn’t have a clue what in the world it was saying.
It was still enough of a pop beat to be enjoyable, so he sat still and listened in. Unable to disassociate from his thoughts, he decided to focus upon them.
“Verlöscht vielleicht das letzte Licht der Welt,” the singer went on, his voice sounding like an ‘80s artist. Shinji felt his gaze fall upon the sunset of dark crimson before him, as yet another stark realization hit him of just how changed the world truly was. Such a feeling would hit on occasion like a bitter melancholy, but Shinji still hadn’t grown to the sheer scale and power of such a notion.
“Wenn unser Glaube nicht mehr siegen kann, dann sind wir jenseits von Eden,”
Shinji wondered if Asuka had heard this song before. Maybe that’s why she picked it. It really was such a nice gesture for her to go all the way out and buy—steal, he meant—the S-DAT for him, along with all the tapes and batteries she brought along. She really thought the whole thing out, making the gift all the more meaningful.
“Wenn jede Hoffnung nur ein Horizont ist, den man niemals erreicht,”
He almost felt bad at the thought. She had gone and gotten him a birthday gift—albeit very early— while… he hadn’t even been around for hers. He was stuck in his Entry Pod at the time, at least according to Misato. How uncaring of him; the whole thing had been selfish, anyway. He only stayed in the Entry Pod because he was scared of facing everything he had done. Toji, NERV, even Asuka herself.
“Dann haben wir umsonst gelebt…”
Technically, he could make up for it now. Maybe he should, just to return the gesture. They had all the time in the world, anyway. And they had just stocked up on supplies and whatnot only a few days prior.
“Dann haben wir umsonst gelebt…”
With one final thought of consideration, he settled it in his mind. He’d get Asuka a gift as well. Any underlying reasoning to that decision either didn’t matter or was something Shinji didn’t want to grapple with, so he didn’t.
“Ich will mit dir eine neue Liebe spür'n.”
Valiantly, Shinji stood, only to realize it was already getting dark. Well, tomorrow would have to do for his own "surprise expedition”. And, to his own dismay, he likely still had much to think about. So, for the few minutes of twilight he had left, he sat back down and listened on contently.
The camp felt larger when Asuka was the only one in it, despite how tightly and concisely they had laid out all their tents and supplies. It wasn’t necessarily larger from the emptiness, but more so like everything had been pulled too far apart and left that way. The fire had burned down to embers she hadn’t bothered to stir, and Shinji’s chair sat where he’d left it, angled just slightly wrong in front of his own tent.
She adjusted the strap of her bag, looking at it in minor dismay. It was stupid to stand around waiting, like things would magically be less boring when Shinji arrived back. He had gone out for a little solo trip of his own, which was awfully uncharacteristic of him. He’d probably just gone back to the beach again and lied about it so as to not seem stupid— something like that made more sense. That’s where he went to clear his head, Asuka presumed. She did the same with her own solo trips out to the city, where she was free to go about as she pleased. Although, even that wasn’t really comforting, or even peaceful for that matter. She wished she had such a place that was to her what the beach was to Shinji. It was only a minor want, though. There were more important things to be done and addressed. There always had been ever since everything.
Despite herself, she felt her eyes teeter over to the path. There wasn’t a need to worry, though. He’d come back when it got dark, or when he got bored, or when he decided being alone wasn’t doing what he wanted it to. It seemed that lately the latter of those three had been rampant, but it had the opposite effect as intended. He just ended up quieter than usual, much to the dismay of Asuka.
Still, her eyes kept drifting toward the path. Eventually, she realized she could make something out ahead. At first, she thought it was nothing—just the way the light shifted as the sun sank lower, or the trees moving with the wind. Then the shape resolved itself slowly and familiarly, prompting an irrational flicker of irritation at how her chest tightened before she could stop it.
Down the path, Shinji was clearly walking with a backpack of his own. He moved the same way she had the day before: unhurried, shoulders slightly drawn in, attention fixed somewhere just ahead of his feet like he was anticipating something. He hadn’t even noticed the fact that he was being watched until the distance between them had thinned.
Asuka straightened reflexively as they locked eyes, only for Shinji to have a confused expression as to why she didn’t call out sooner. So, albeit hesitantly, he did. “...Asuka? I have an, uhm—”
She gave him a perplexed glare in response as he shifted awkwardly on his feet.
“Well, I was thinking…” he began, slowly removing his backpack to present it. It was incredibly light, and from Asuka’s read, whatever was in it didn’t require the entire backpack to be held. Shinji probably could’ve just brought it with his hand. “About how you got me a birthday gift, and… I thought about how I wasn’t there for yours,” he continued, his voice meek and almost apologetic.
She raised her eyebrow, and her expression softened at the memory. “And?” she spit out robotically, though her tone was laced with anticipation instead of contempt.
“So… I got you a present too,” he finally admitted as he withdrew his hand from the backpack. Slowly, as though building expectation, he revealed a small handheld gaming console with a nervous expression on his face. “I just remember you said you’d play these, sometimes,” he murmured on, though Asuka had his faint voice filtered out as she tentatively outstretched her hands to grab the console.
She stared at it for a moment with a blank expression, before flipping it over to read the brand. At the sight, she almost immediately frowned, much to Shinji’s sadness as he realized.
He scratched at the back of his head, fighting the urge to step back. “...yeah. I don’t know—”
“It’s fine—good,” Asuka consoled at the sight of how resigned Shinji appeared after noticing her own displeased expression. “Thanks.” Though, to her own downfall, she refused to mention the cause of her displeasure. The gift, while good-hearted, was really nothing more than a piece of terrible remembrance as she noted the brand was the same as the one she had been playing on at Hikari’s home, all that time ago. Back then, it had been a sort of escape that she clutched to, set up like walls against a world she didn’t want to face. It had also been a means of her own solidarity as she ignored Hikari in her own home to simply writhe away and play on the thing. Finally, the thought struck her that the boy before her possibly could've been doing the same with his own device.
Believing the entire interaction to be over—and partially failed—Shinji prepared to walk away, only for Asuka to call him back as she slipped the small device into her back pocket. Confused, he turned back and slowly walked a step or two closer to her.
“It’s cool, but actually…” she began, trying to find a proper way to propose what she had decided upon revealing. “Like I said, it’s just a distraction.”
Shinji nodded, albeit a bit solemnly.
“I’d rather do something that lets me think instead of distracting from it,” she explained almost knowingly as Shinji’s expression shifted. “That’s… that’s what you said the music does for you, right?”
Shinji opened his mouth slowly. “I didn’t say it but… yeah.”
She nodded as she leisurely craned her head around to take in the surroundings, though it was likely just a way of buying herself time to think of a way to put her next words eloquently. “Right. Well, I want to listen to it.”
After a beat, Shinji’s demeanor flickered in realization. “Oh, I—”
“Technically I shouldn’t even be asking, since I’m the one that brought it for you and all, but—” she spieled on, only to be interrupted by Shinji— much to her surprise.
“Yeah, it’s fine. I was expecting you to ask, especially since you brought some of that German music. I’ll go get it and give it to you,” he explained, before turning without another thought to go retrieve said device.
Asuka frowned at his lack of understanding, placing her hands at her sides. “Well, I meant with you.”
That comment finally did it and snapped Shinji out of it as he froze mid-stride. “What?” he asked out of genuine confusion.
Asuka was rather glad he was turned away, since even she could feel the blush forming on her face in the midst of the Tokyo-3 air. “The S-DAT. I want to listen to it with you. Is that a problem?”
Shinji swallowed dryly at the thought, his own flustered attitude now matching Asuka’s as heat rushed to his own face. “Oh, no that’s— that’s okay, too…”
She had always been bold in stating out plainly what she wanted and getting up, but even still, she was almost nervous in the moment. It wasn’t a very common emotion to be elicited from her— at least outwardly. Still, she had already done it, so it was best to lean into it. Possibly in more ways than one, depending on how things played out here. Though, such a thought wasn’t necessarily lessening her flustered state. “So go get it,” she ordered flatly.
“Right, okay,” Shinji said, his words a bit sloppy as though it was his first time saying them. He took a few shaky steps, only to pause and turn over his shoulder. Finally realization had struck him and he decided that she probably wasn’t asking to listen to him just because it wasn’t ‘distracting’. At least to him, maybe it meant more. “...Which tape?”
She paused to think for a moment, though her hesitancy was fake and facetious as she had already decided the instant he asked. “...Jenseits von Eden. That one’s nostalgic,” she admitted.
With a nod, he unsteadily hustled off to his tent while she looked around for a place to sit, eventually deciding a nearby log would do. There she went, subconsciously trying to make herself presentable as she did. With a slight adjustment of her hair behind her ear, she was yet again reminded of her lack of neural connectors. It wasn’t a new choice that she had made—they had been gone for at least a week by now—and yet, every time she found her attention falling upon their absence she was struck with a strange feeling. It wasn’t to be addressed now, however, as she noticed Shinji was coming over with the S-DAT in hand.
Hesitantly he stared at Asuka and the log, only deciding to sit next to her as she narrowed her gaze in condemnation. As he sat, he twiddled with the wires in his hands. “I heard most of this one, I think,” he explained. “I thought it was—”
His words were cut off as Asuka practically snatched one of the earbuds out of his hand and leaned in until her face was a mere few inches away from Shinji. His world nearly went dark, his perception only in tune with the sight directly before him— Asuka’s eyes, which were locked upon his ear as she placed an earbud in it. With it, she had intricately locked the two in that position as if Shinji turned away the earbud would be ripped out of his ear.
Stupidly, he pointed that out, although he couldn’t muster his voice to higher than a whisper. “...you— we can switch earbuds to have more space,” he murmured meekly, mentally wincing at the thought of how his breath could possibly smell bad— or, maybe even worse, could be tickling her from such a distance.
Her eyes locked onto Shinji’s, leading him to almost immediately glare downwards to escape them. As he did, he caught sight of the fact that Asuka’s hand was overtop his, willing his fingers to move upon the buttons of his S-DAT. In the tender and connected moment he was in, he hadn’t even noticed the sensation of her hand on his as his mind was overloaded with the fact that their faces were mere inches apart. Slowly and sensually, she clicked play with his finger.
“If we did…” she began, her voice breathy and low. “Then we’d have the wrong audio channel in each ear.”
Her logic was entirely wrong, but Shinji couldn’t find the reasoning to counteract it. His mind was instead filled with gentle nothingness, all that was possible to perceive being the soft saunter of Asuka’s breath upon his mouth. She had been right all that time ago— it did tickle. But Shinji didn’t mind as his mind focused upon her and solely her. At that point, all five senses were lulled into bliss pertaining to her, so there was no reason to think of anything else anyway.
“Ich will mit dir eine neue Liebe spür'n…”
Shinji felt his own breath come into rhythm with Asuka’s, though that didn’t stop him from wondering what it’d be like to truly share breath with her. Despite his euphoria, he mustered a few words to whisper out a question. “...what do the lyrics mean?”
“Wenn wir uns auch in Gedanken nur berühr'n…”
Her eyes softened for a moment as she met his glance. This time, they stayed that way. “That’s for me to know,” she whispered back.
“Irgendwann muss ich für immer gehen…”
That was a good enough answer for Shinji, who let himself lull back to how he was before. For all he knew, the very world around them could’ve been crumbling away and evaporating into a great dust. It wouldn’t have mattered, so long as this moment remained. So long as what he could perceive remained. No matter the setting—be it blue skies midst hanging clothes yet to dry, or red skies with monoliths of remembrance—what mattered was the moment. And how it was shared.
“Dann will ich sagen, diese Welt war schön…”
In what seemed like his first coherent thought since he had spoken, Shinji realized that despite his efforts in building up his protection yet again with the S-DAT, he in actuality hadn’t been trying to escape in solidarity at all. The S-DAT still played between them, the music still soft and sentimental and incapable of building the walls he had once relied upon, yet for the first time that failure didn’t trouble him. His thoughts were present, his body was present, and so was Asuka—warm at his side, tangible and real, anchoring him to a world he had spent so long trying not to feel.
The boredom he feared never came; there was no ache to flee, no silence begging to be filled. Maybe the escape had never been the sound in his ears, or the walls he raised against the world. And for once, in the quiet aftermath of everything, Shinji allowed himself to think that this—this shared breath, this borrowed warmth, this moment that asked nothing of him but to remain—might’ve served him better. He allowed himself to think that maybe those walls were better off being put up not to keep him isolated, but to protect whoever he opted to share them with.
“Wenn selbst ein Kind nicht mehr lacht wie ein Kind, dann sind wir jenseits von Eden…”
That was good enough for him. And, as the song rolled to a close, it seemed enough for her, as well.
“Wenn wir nicht fühlen, die Erde, sie weint wie kein andrer Planet…”
“Dann haben wir umsonst gelebt…”
“Wenn man für Liebe bezahlen muss, nur um einmal zärtlich zu sein,”
“Dann haben wir umsonst gelebt.”