Technicality Number 1
"Fuck!" I yelled, slamming my fist into my locker.
Hikari was looking over at me.
"Asuka?" She asked.
I had trouble holding in my anger. I crumpled the piece of white paper I held in my hands furiously. Men, the biggest fucking assholes on the planet. Shinji was alive the whole time. I couldn't believe the bull shit I had to take when he disappeared and now I find out that he's been alive?! Rei told me all about the time she spent with him last night. Fuck. I can't believe this shit. Well, at least he isn't dead, but that means he's different. Why can't he show himself to anyone? 'Cause Nerv will conduct tests on him. I knew what he had become, Rei told me that too.
Oh well, life goes on. Fuck it, why waste time, at least he ain't dead. Rei's happy, I'm a bit relieved, but Misato is still a wreck. I could just tell her, but I don't know if I can count on her to keep a secret. I'd also be breaking my promise to Rei, who wished to tell Misato herself. Until then, I'm to remain with my mouth shut and act like I always do.
"It's nothing Hikari." I muttered.
"OK, but you might want to wash you're hands. You're bleeding."
Fuck. One more trouble to deal with. I gave Hikari a smile before picking up my bag and walking to a restroom. Once inside and growled and threw my bag on the ground. I turned on one of the faucets and washed my hands. It stung little, but it was no big deal. The blood stopped flowing out of my hand so I left it alone, clean and stinging. I picked up my bag and walked out. I walked to my class, Psychology. It was a small class since it was early morning and the entire class, which consisted of 15 people including myself, was there, chatting with each other. I opened my bag, lucky to find nothing crunched and pulled out my laptop and text book, setting them out on my desk. The teacher a nice young guy, fresh out of med school, about eight years older than I was. He understood us more than any of our other teachers could, partially because I virtually was like one of us and he also had a PH.D. in psychology and psycho therapy. The bell rang.
"All right, please be seated." He said, sitting at his own desk in front of the class.
He was a thin man, with brown hair that was cut in between long and short. He wore wire framed glasses and hardly never smiled. He was just an overall, nice guy. Why I never meet men like that? I'll never understand.
"Take out your text books and turn to page 309 please."
I flipped to the page. Chapter 25 mental psychosis. We were starting the psycho therapy unit. Section one, mental diseases.
"So, now we start the all famous mental disease section of psycho therapy." He grinned, "Now, will one of you please read the first paragraph."
Umi Takanashi raised her hand first and he pointed to her and nodded.
"Mental Disease is the explanation for when a person's mind becomes so troubled that it causes them to do things they would never do or even thought of before. It also includes stimulation of the brain and other bodily functions. Mental trauma, high amounts of stress, and phobias can cause mental disease, however the most common known is gene defects from birth," She said, without breaking or pausing, save for when she was breathing.
"The most common of the mental diseases is Obsessive Compulsive, the disease which makes the subject scared of certain things every day and need to do certain things immediately. For example, fear of stepping on the slightest crack in the floor, or opening a new packet of soap to wash your hands and then throwing it away when you finished, only to open another the next time and repeat the cycle."
She was a good speaker, but I could read faster than she was reading it out to us and I was already up to section 2. I just continued to read, regardless of what was happening around me. Every few paragraphs or so someone else would raise their hand to read. By the time they finished I was done with section 4.
"Alright. I want you all to think about Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a disease which causes the person to see and hear things no one else can. For example, thinking that their is a friend that you have that no one else can see, but you can hear what they say and see what they do. Many psychotic episodes can come out of schizophrenia when a voice tells them to kill someone for the good of all mankind or something similar. The Dictionary says that Schizophrenia is a psychotic mental illness that is characterized by a twisted view of the real world, be a greatly reduced ability to carry out one's daily tasks, and by abnormal ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. That's why this mental illness is included in the Psycho Therapy unit," he said pausing, "now, imagine that everything you know about the world is wrong. Imagine that you've lost the will to do any of the taskes you used to do as a part of every day life. Imagine that you hear a voice in you head. That voice is telling you to murder your best friend to free them of the tragedy called life. But you also must imagine that you've lost control of your thoughts, that you don't want to murder your friend but you do at the same time. That's what many of the people who end up in mental prisons diagnosed with schizophrenia are like."
I understood what he meant. As did everyone else in the class. Schizophrenia. The disease
was like an old friend, still lurking in the darkness for many rehabilitated Schizo's,
wondering why they left it alone. I should know, I had it for a while after my mother
disappeared into my Eva. Ironic, Shinji's went to his Eva, mine went to my Eva, but Rei?
None of use knew what had been in Rei's Eva. But that was all in the past. We didn't pilot
the Eva's. We were like normal people again, except for Shinji. My thoughts left the class
room and back to what Rei told me on the way to the school.
"Asuka, I have to tell you something." She said.
"What?" I replied.
She took a deep breath before looking at me.
"Shinji is still alive, but he has to hide."
I stopped walking and looked over at my friend.
"No fucking way!"
She nodded and said, "I'm telling you the truth, you can't tell anyone though! If you do and
they capture him and start testing him, I'll kill you."
Shit. She told me all this when we were walking to school, and she was serious about what
she'd do if I let the information leak out. I sighed and got back to my class work.
* * *
It was 4:30 when Misato came home. She immediately went for a beer.
"Misato. Would you try not getting drunk, for once?" I asked.
She gave me a funny look and opened the fridge. When she closed it a can of beer and a package were in her hands.
"Who the hell put this in hear?" she yelled.
"How the should I know?" I shouted back, "What is it any ways?"
She put it down on the table in front of me. It was the ingredients and instructions on making Okonomyaki.
"It's just some stuff for making Okonomyaki, Misato, calm down."
But she didn't.
"That was one of the best things Shinji ever used to make!"
A single tear rolled down her cheek. Now I remembered. It was a few days before the day we fought the 13th Angel. He was standing in the kitchen, actually happy and whistling a song, preparing the Okonomyaki for Misato, Hikari, Rei, his two idiot friends, and I. It was so good afterwards, I actually gave him my compliments. He must have felt so much pain when he remembered it. It was the last day we all saw Touji in one piece. Literally.
"My god." I muttered, realizing that Shinji had been in the house.
I could almost smell the old scent of a wolf. As if he had entered as a wolf, holding the straps for the bag in his mouth and left it on the counter. Misato looked at the un-opened beer in her hand. I looked at her eyes and I could see the hatred and loathing that was in them. Before I even knew it she threw the beer can as hard as she could through a window.
"Misato!" I cried out, "what the hell are you doing?!"
"I'm taking my life back!" she shouted, as she began one by one, throwing the beer cans in the fridge out the window.
"Let me help."
We both began chucking the beer cans out the window, grinning like two little children who were about to collapse laughing. When they were all gone, we both cleaned the apartment up together.
"That's it. From now on, I'm going to live my life without drowning my sorrows in beer." she said triumphantly.
I smiled at her. She had impressed me. She had moved from a nervous wreck to a human being again.
"Now lets make that Okonomyaki!" She said excitedly, taking a soda can out from the fridge.