Apartment 403

I turned the knob sideways, and as I pushed the door open, envelopes tumbled out of the slot that served as a mailbox. Those mails were mostly advertisements, so I never read them. When the slot was full, I discarded the contents. Still, it was a futile exercise because later the slot would again be stuffed with all sorts of correspondence which did not pertain to me in the slightest.

"Ayanami, isn't it?"

I looked to my left. A man about Lieutenant Aoba's age was poking his head out of the adjacent door. He grinned.

"Hey, I had no idea you were just a kid. I just moved in. We'll be neighbors from now on. My name is Yasojima, by the way."

Like the mails in the slot, this information concerns me very little. But it was information, nonetheless, and I had trained myself to file away any new information I came across. And I very rarely forgot any input my senses had received. I entered my apartment and shut the door.

A few days later, returning home, I encountered the man calling himself Yasojima. He was sitting on the steps leading to the fourth floor, sipping from a bottle wrapped in brown paper. When he saw me, he raised the bottle in a salutary gesture.

"Hey, little lady," he said. "Want a drop? Just to brighten your day. Don't worry, won't cost you a thing."

"I do not consume liquor," I told him, walking past him.

"A pity. You seem like somebody who can hold her drink. Anytime you change your mind, come over to my place."

According to a page of the school reports I had once skimmed through - my reading speed, Dr. Akagi informed me, was above average - this kind of person might be categorized under the term unemployed. There had been quite a number of them in the pre-Second Impact days. That some still existed today, the school reports said, was inevitable - the global catastrophe the world suffered from influenced jobs in Japan not at all. I, however, would not have to worry about employment. I was now more or less an employee of NERV.

Two weeks passed by, and the man Yasojima still inhabited the next apartment. That was a trifle unusual; the tenants here were transitory, moving in and out so fast I could not keep track of them (not that I wanted to). When we met, he usually greeted me as "little lady" or "young miss." I never offered any answer. He did not seem bothered, or discouraged.

It was nine o'clock at night, at which time I customarily went to bed. But tonight there were loud noises emanating from the next apartment, punctuated by high and shrill - mostly feminine - laughter every now and then. Humans only laughed in such a manner when they were highly amused or particularly inebriated. I had never been in either state.

Those noises intervened with my efforts at slumber. I sat up on the bed, staring out at the sky. Clouds were passing across the crescent moon. Several groups of stars were in sight. They were mostly spring constellations. I had never experienced spring - I simply knew from history lessons that there used to be four seasons in Japan, and one of them was named spring.

For three hours I waited for the noises to subside. They eventually did, and only then could I go to sleep.

The next morning, as I went out to dispose of the trash, Yasojima accosted me on the stairs. He was grinning, but not in a cheerful way.

"I'm sorry," he began. "Did I disturb you last night?"

"Disturb?"

"Well, you know, my buddies and I had a wild time, and I'm afraid we laughed like loons. Must have kept you awake."

What did it matter to him, whether or not he and his friends kept me awake? My well-being was of no importance to him. "I slept at twelve," I said, for lack of anything more appropriate to say.

"My apology. If ever I bother you again, just bang on my door, yell or anything."

I saw no reason to do so, but said nothing in reply. I went out to the public garbage bin.

Later that day, I saw Yasojima outside his apartment, slumped against the wall. He watched me closely as I opened my own door.

"What are you doing here, all by yourself?" he said. "A pretty young miss, all alone in this squalid place. Haven't you got any relatives who can take care of you?"

"No, I do not." I slipped into my apartment. To my surprise, he was already behind me. His foot slid between the door and the jamb, preventing me from closing it. I studied him over my shoulder. "Please remove your foot."

"Mind if I come in? I could use some company."

Somewhere I had read of crimes at home, the place which you often thought of as the safest. But I had no valuable possessions - this man could not possibly be interested in robbing me.

He was not giving me time to consider; he stumbled past me and into my room. I had no other choice than to follow him. The Second Pilot, I thought, would not have tolerated such behavior. She would have screamed, cursed and threatened the man. But I was not the Second Pilot.

He stopped at the sight of my bed. I walked straight to the table and put my schoolbag on the floor next to it.

"Sweet heaven," he whispered. "What's that, girl?"

"What is what?"

"That blood all over your pillow, of course! Did you hurt yourself?" His voice became raw. "And those bandages too, in the rubbish bin..." The words trailing off, he gazed at me.

"I just arrived home from the hospital yesterday evening. I had just opened my bandages." Which reminded me, tomorrow being Sunday, I had to go to the Headquarters to do synchronization tests and perhaps learn of the latest news on Ikari-kun. The battle with the Fourteenth had been very severe, disabling all three pilots, but it had hit Ikari-kun the hardest. He had been inside his Evangelion for many days. Dr. Akagi and Lieutenant Ibuki discussed the possibility that Ikari-kun had been "absorbed" into his Evangelion. Everyone feared for his life. I wondered if life was more important than the soul.

Yasojima was turning a shade of gray. "That's right, I haven't seen you for some time. And I made so much noise last night. I had no idea you were injured. I'm really, deeply sorry."

"I am getting better now."

"An accident, wasn't it? What kind of accident?"

Eva pilots had been warned not to reveal their identities to strangers. That meant I had to lie. But I had never lied in my entire life - covering truths was the closest I could do. "An accident," I said.

"Well...I..." He backed away towards the door. "You must want some rest, since you didn't get much sleep last night. I'll leave you be." He hurried out. I heard the door click shut in his wake.

Ikari-kun was still inside Eva Unit-01. None of the staff working on his attempted retrieval was very optimistic. They had not exactly given him up as dead, but neither were they expecting to see him alive. They wore sober faces and showed little optimism. I knew this because after the synchronization tests I stayed awhile, along with the Second Pilot. She was curious as to how things were progressing.

"You think he's alive?" she asked Major Katsuragi.

"I pray so." The Major did not sound particularly enthusiastic.

While we were fighting against the Twelfth, Ikari-kun had also vanished. But this was different. This time he had been gone for days and officially he was missing presumed dead. But the bridge crew - to say nothing of Major Katsuragi and Dr. Akagi - would not cease their efforts, as long as there was no undeniable proof that Ikari-kun's life was beyond salvation. The Second Pilot might or might not worry. She was always rude to Ikari-kun, sometimes disparaging towards him, but sometimes how people acted did not reflect how they felt.

I found myself hoping that Ikari-kun would survive.

I had never hoped for anything of anyone before.

Climbing the stairs to my apartment, I saw Yasojima sitting on the steps. One hand was hidden behind his back. He smiled when he saw me.

"So there you are. Are your wounds all healed now?"

"They are healing."

"I'm glad." He whipped out his hand. It was holding a box of candies. "This isn't a declaration of love or anything. I just thought that maybe you'd like this little present. Girls like candies, right? I mean, even when they know candies aren't good for their skin and everything. Let's just say this is to celebrate your leaving the hospital. If I'd known, I would've come and visited."

I doubted that, since I was hospitalized in a very restricted area. I received the box from him and began climbing the stairs again.

"Wait!" he called out, patting the spot next to him. "Sit here with me. I'd like to have a talk with you. Tomorrow I'm moving out, because I can't afford the rent anymore. I'm going to stay at my friend's until I find a job."

I remained where I was.

"You don't want to sit with me?"

Without a word I did.

"Good girl. You don't talk much, do you?" He opened the candy box for me. "Let's eat this together, if that's okay with you. Haven't eaten much since this morning. As I said, I'm out of cash, so I can't eat rich, or even pay the rent of one lousy apartment. Unless you'd like to invite me to stay with you?"

"I am not allowed to have much contact with strangers."

"Is that so? Boy, I guess you're some sort of a secret agent, huh?" He popped a leaf-shaped candy into his mouth, and winced. "Ugh! Sorry - haven't been able to get first-rate food for weeks." This, however, did not stop him from reaching for the next one. "Well, it's all my fault anyway...got kicked out of high school and all that, but school's just too much of a bore for me. You don't want to be like me, Ayanami-chan. You want to be at the top of your class, get a scholarship, and get a secure job as a government official."

"My grades are never bad." No one had ever addressed me as Ayanami-chan. It was wrong, somehow, but also oddly funny.

"Great! Keep it that way. Say, this might be off-topic, but do you have a boyfriend?"

I shook my head.

"What! A girl with your killer looks? Those boys don't know what they're missing. Well, it's their loss, not mine. Where have you been just now? Can't be school, since it's Sunday, unless it's some extracurricular activity."

"An acquaintance of mine is...ill." Ikari-kun was certainly more than ill, but I could not tell this man that.

"Gosh! You, and now your pal. The world's a screwy place, isn't it, Ayanami-chan?" The candy box, small as it was, was now half-empty. Yasojima closed it and put it on my lap. "Thanks for bearing with my blabbering. If you don't want those candies, throw it away, feed it to the cat, I don't give a damn. Eating it will only give you stomach ache - it's that horrible. Now, shall I walk you to our floor?"

The next day, when I returned home from school, the landlord met me halfway in front of the apartment building. He was a short, sturdy man who wore tank tops day in and day out, regardless of the weather.

"Ayanami, here's something Yasojima left for you," he said, thrusting a paper bag into my hand. "He vacated his apartment this morning. Good riddance, I say. You can put that kind of person next to scum in the dictionary - the real deal. Forever between jobs, never got any ready cash..."

I proceeded to my floor, carrying the paper bag, while the landlord grumbled on. Once inside my room, I opened it. There was a pack of cigarette with the top half torn off and six cigarettes within, plus a neatly folded piece of paper. It turned out to be a letter.

Ayanami-chan,

Thanks for being a good listener. You made me realize I've been such a whiner. You must have had it tougher than me - those bandages and the blood on your pillow were like a shock therapy to me. And you apparently have very little money and no family to look after you, I could tell - otherwise why'd you live in this luxury suite? But you didn't complain. I wish I could stick around longer, if only to look at your pretty little face, but the landlord's been breathing down my neck. I haven't been exactly a model tenant when it comes to rent money. So, out I go.

Well, at least I bade you farewell. Wish me luck. Here's a little parting gift, in case one day you decide you want to try smoking. Or probably not - you seem like a perfectly nice and proper girl. Did you throw away those candies already? You really ought to.

Always yours,

Yasojima

P.S. May your friend get better soon.

This was new to me; I had never received a letter from anyone. I re-inserted the letter into the paper bag, and put the whole thing inside my drawer, cigarettes and all. People talked of mementos - this might be one that belonged to me. I intended to keep it.

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