It was six thirty in the morning and Shinji was trying to milk a cow and watch news footage on his phone at the same time; he’d taped his phone to the cow, who didn’t care. He would have rather been almost anywhere else in the universe than milking a cow at this hour, but that’s what happens when you live on a farm because your father doesn’t want you. It wasn’t quite as bad most mornings because most mornings he could just listen to music while he worked and if he knew anything in this world, it was that listening to music made almost anything more tolerable. Except pecans; Shinji’s hatred for pecans could not be stopped by God or man or any force of nature. Too many evenings spent shelling pecans had taught Shinji that evil existed and its name was ‘pecan’. That his uncle loved them just made them more evil.
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It was six thirty in the morning and Shinji was trying to milk a cow and watch news footage on his phone at the same time; he’d taped his phone to the cow, who didn’t care. He would have rather been almost anywhere else in the universe than milking a cow at this hour, but that’s what happens when you live on a farm because your father doesn’t want you.
It wasn’t quite as bad most mornings because most mornings he could just listen to music while he worked and if he knew anything in this world, it was that listening to music made almost anything more tolerable.
Except pecans; Shinji’s hatred for pecans could not be stopped by God or man or any force of nature. Too many evenings spent shelling pecans had taught Shinji that evil existed and its name was ‘pecan’. That his uncle loved them just made them more evil.
The reason he was trying to watch his phone was that Kaji-sensei, his English teacher, had told them all to watch it, in English, so they could discuss it in class. This was okay by Shinji, who was good at English. His Aunt and Uncle had crammed it down his throat and his generation was good with languages anyway.
The timing, however, was pretty annoying. Fortunately, Shinji was, by now, experienced enough in cow milking that he could do it without having to think.
“The Falcon will launch in five minutes,” the announcer said. “Once it reaches orbit, it will dock with International
Space Station Four and refuel, then head off to Venus’ last known location, where it vanished, close to sixteen years ago.”
Shinji wondered again what Venus had looked like in the dawn and twilight skies; he’d heard it called the Evening Star, but no one in his generation had ever seen it.
“If all goes well, it will arrive there just in time for the sixteenth anniversary of the Vanishing,” the announcer continued. “NERV remains confident that there will be no problems with this mission, though many are skeptical that anything useful will actually be found, given the time lapse and the previous visit of multiple drone probes to the area.”
NERV, Shinji thought, frowning. His father ran NERV but didn’t want him there and he still didn’t know why. His aunt and uncle didn’t like his father but wouldn’t explain why Shinji had been exiled here; he just knew it happened after his mother died.
He watched the rest of the launch and ran back to the farm house, wolfed down breakfast, then hopped on his bike to try to get to school on time, though he wasn’t very optimistic it was going to happen.
Shinji was generally not an optimist about anything.
******************
Neon Genesis Silmarillion (an EVA/Tolkien Legendarium fusion)Book 1: The Road Leads Ever OnChapter 1: The Dancing Maiden
***********************
Shinji had known he wasn’t going to make it in time when, to his surprise, a Corvette pulled up alongside him and Takino-sensei, the other English teacher, who had been Shinji’s great bane the previous year (and most other student’s bane too), rolled down the window. “Throw your bike in the trunk and hop in, Ichijou.” Shinji was not sure why he had to use his aunt and uncle’s last name in public but it was the rule and Shinji followed the rules.
Following the rules kept you from being yelled at.
“Really?” he said in surprise.
“You wouldn’t be late if your damn parents would drive you like sensible people,” she said flatly.
Shinji quickly put his bike and cello in the trunk; hauling it on his bike was tricky but his aunt and uncle wouldn’t let him leave it at the school and he liked having it at home anyway. He’d gotten good at it.
Shinji now hesitated; Takino-sensei had a reputation as a terrible driver. She was about a decade older than himself with
short black hair and brown eyes that usually twinkled with merriment. Often at the expense of her students.
She was good at English and teachers were in short supply here in Hokkaido or Shinji assumed she would have been fired long ago. Mind you, he’d heard some students gossiping that she’d blackmailed the principal.
He could believe it.
“GET IN THE CAR NOW,” she bellowed and he hopped in and buckled up as she peeled out at ludicrous speed.
Shinji shrank in his seat and prayed he would live through this.
********************
Shinji stumbled into the classroom; half the class wasn’t here yet, but Horaki Hikari was; she was up at the teacher’s podium, busy doing a math problem and frowning at it. She glanced over and saw him and her light brown eyes widened. “Ichijou-san, you’re here already?” She checked her watch and looked confused.
Shinji frowned. “Yes.” Then he bounced off the door frame, still too jittery to walk smoothly. He’d already dropped off his cello in the music room.
“Well, good for you,” she said, then went back to her work, frowning at it and ultimately ripping out the page of her
notework, crumpling it and throwing it into the garbage can as Shinji sat down.
Or she tried, anyway, as it missed and she had to scramble for it.
A student Shinji knew vaguely now arrived; he had touseled brown hair and glasses. “Hey, Suzuhara-san, did you… Hey, Horaki-san, where’s Suzuhara?”
Horaki looked up and frowned. “I don’t know, he usually comes to campus early so he can work out, Aida-san.”
Aida grinned toothily. “Oh, so you know his schedule.”
“Shut up!” she said frantically, taking a swing at him with her paper fan but he dodged it and ran to his seat, laughing.
Shinji wondered briefly why that mattered; she certainly knows my schedule he thought, then sighed. Hopefully, this would be a quiet day.
*****************
“Sensei, stop kissing your girlfriend and get in here!” Horaki yelled into the hallway when, five minutes after the official classtime, he still hadn’t arrived.
“One more minute,” Takino-sensei shouted; she was the girlfriend.
Horaki now dragged a laughing, rumpled Kaji-sensei into the classroom. He was one of the coaches but he also taught English, which was their first subject of the day. “Good morning, everyone,” he said. “I hope you all watched the launch, as we’re going to discuss it.”
“Do you know where Suzuhara is?” Horaki asked, now heading for her seat. “He’s the only person absent.”
“His sister tried to run away from home and he’s busy chasing her down,” Kaji-sensei said. “His father called me and let me know.”
Horaki said, “Seriously?” She looked stunned.
Kaji made a hand wave. “I just know what Suzuhara told me.”
“I am READY,” Aida said, then launched into a long spiel about the launch which basically made it unnecessary for anyone else to say anything as it was now all said.
This pleased Shinji; he was good at English but didn’t like speaking with everyone looking at him. He preferred to move quietly, unnoticed through life.
It was less trouble.
*****************
The day went very smoothly through his classes: English, then Biology, then Japanese Literature, then Lunch, then Geometry, then Cultural Studies, then Gym, then Music. Followed by club time; Shinji actually belonged to a club, mainly because Kijima-sensei, the music teacher, had told him to join it. The music club was one person short of a string quartet, having Shinji on cello and two violinists but no viola player. They also had a piano player and a guitar player, Kubo Keiichi, generally considered the coolest kid in their grade. Kijima-sensei kept trying to get Aida to join; Aida was very good with sound equipment and was a skilled keyboardist but Aida was knee-deep in RangerWatch, an international society obsessed with NERV’s giant robots, the Rangers.
Shinji carefully evaded RangerWatch, as he didn’t want anything to do with NERV.
Except on the days he wished his father would call him home.
Then he hated himself for wanting that.
The music club room was also the music class room and was full of stuff, though it easily had room for a lot more people; the whole school was like that, riddled with empty rooms or ones barely being used; Shinji knew the town was down to about half-size since the Long Winter. Though it seemed to him to be growing again; old buildings kept getting razed and new ones came up to replace them.
Kijima-sensei, like a lot of the teachers, was a little messy; Shinji wondered if this was some new education trend. He had stubble and sparkling blue eyes and usually looked pretty cheerful like right now. “If any of you know someone who might be interested in picking up the viola, I can teach,” he said. As always.
“I tried to talk Kameko into it but she’s busy with the Handicraft Club,” Keiichi said. Kubo Keiichi was tall (for a fifteen year old) with short black hair, wearing a leather jacket over his school uniform; Shinji wondered how the heat didn’t kill him; it was the warm part of the day, too warm for jackets by far.
“I wish I had a girlfriend,” Takahashi Ichiro grumbled; he was a short guy, skinny with long brown hair. He was one of the violin players.
Suzuhara now stuck his head into the classroom. “Anyone seen my stupid sister?” he asked.
“What, she’s still missing?” Keiichi said, blinking.
“Surely she wouldn’t run away to campus,” Kijima-sensei said, then sighed. “We’ll be sure to tell you, Suzuhara-san.”
“Thanks,” Suzuhara said. “And you don’t have a girlfriend because you’re totally uncool, Takahashi.” Then he strode off.
“Asshole!” Ichiro shouted after him, but Suzuhara didn’t even seem to notice. Shinji sighed.
Suzuhara got in fights a lot but had, thankfully, never hit Shinji. There were others who caused Shinji a lot of trouble, some of whom seemed to be regular sparring partners of Suzuhara, who usually won.
In fact, Shinji now heard the sounds of a scrap in the distance and tried to ignore it.
They had just started a piece when Takino-sensei stuck her head into the room. “Sorry to interrupt but I need Ichijou’s body now.”
Everyone stared at Shinji, who crumpled up, wanting to die of embarrassment. “Don’t put it like that,” he mumbled.
“When the piece is over,” Kijima-sensei said.
Takino-sensei stood in the doorway, fidgeting, until they finished, then quickly dragged Shinji along. “You should have exactly the right weight.”
“How would you even know?” he asked weakly.
“I am good at judging things,” she said.
Shinji ended up sitting on a board on top of some other stuff which was on another board, acting as a human press. Meanwhile, the Handicraft club was hard at work around him on some project.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know she’d drag you from your club, Ichijou,” Ito Kameko said weakly to him. She was Kubo’s girlfriend, a little taller than Shinji with long black hair in a braid and thick glasses which hid her eyes. She had a work apron on over her uniform. “We’re getting things ready for the summer festival and our press broke.”
Shinji felt a little sorry for her; once things broke here, getting the money to pay for repairs was difficult. “Sorry,” he said.
“Oh, it’s not your fault,” she said. “I’d have told her to get Keiichi if I’d known she’d raid your club. I’m really sorry. This was my idea.”
Shinji glanced around; everyone was taller than him, even the girls, which aggravated him vaguely. He’d been a late bloomer and still was and even though he ought to be older and taller than everyone in his class, always ended up shorter somehow anyway.
“Keiko tried but she crushed the last batch; we have to squeeze the excess moisture out,” Ito said, then launched into an excited description of their project; Shinji found her voice slightly hypnotic; it had a melodious quality and he suddenly wished he could hear her sing.
Did she normally sound like this? He’d never heard her so happy and excited but he’d never seen her in her club before, either. She usually… she didn’t drone but she wasn’t enthused.
In fact, the last two or three years, she usually looked and sounded unhappy unless she was talking to Keiichi.
He’d known her, vaguely, for a long time, as he’d lived here since he was… three? Four? Five? Before starting school, anyway.
“I like your happy voice,” he said, surprising himself and she now turned red. “I bet you’d make a good singer.”
“Really?” she said. “I… I like dancing.”
Shinji watched a thin fluid leak out the end of the improvised press, then looked back at her. “You have a musical voice when you’re like this.”
She smiled very brightly at him. “Flatterer.”
“Ichijou has never flattered anyone ever,” another one of the club members said; Shinji only vaguely knew her as she was two grades ahead of him and they’d never been in a class together. In fact, it was easily three or four years since the last time he’d heard her speak. Whoever she was, she was busy painting signs.
“I didn’t know he *could* talk,” another club member said and now Shinji turned red and stared down at his feet.
“Don’t be mean,” Ito said angrily. “Better to only talk when it’s important than to spew mean things out of your mouth all the time.” Then she shrank in on herself and sighed.
Only now did Shinji realize how big this club was; a lot of kids didn’t do clubs and there were less and many of the clubs, except sports, were really small. But this club had a good forty or so people!
Doing a bunch of different things, from painting to making wire frames to some sort of sculpting to whatever exactly he was helping Ito with.
To his surprise, Ito now took this odd little frame of different sized tubes and began testing his fingers with them. She finally found one which fit the way she wanted… whatever she wanted and nodded to herself.
Shinji was a little curious but she didn’t explain so he didn’t ask.
Finally, she said, “Sorry to drag you here. But you can go back to your club now. It’s pressed enough.”
“I think we’ll need more,” Hanzo-sensei said; he was the head of the Handicraft Club, in his sixties with short white hair.
“I hate to keep him here,” Ito said, sounding guilty.
“It’s okay,” Shinji said. “If you need me, I can stay.” He wanted to listen to Ito’s voice some more.
Ito smiled nervously. “Thank you, Shinji.”
“Just sing something.”
That got the whole club singing, which made it hard to tell but Shinji felt even more certain that she ought to be pursing singing.
***************
Because he was still thinking about this later, he forgot to sneak out of the school and Ikeda Kuo grabbed him as he headed for the side exit after club was over; the bike rake was just outside it; he dropped his cello and got slammed into the wall. “Damn you, Ichijou, sicking Suzuhara on me!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Shinji protested. Shinji didn’t bother to ask why Ikeda thought this; his experience of people like Ikeda was that asking them to think was, in fact, like asking a cat to fly.
“I should just break your damn guitar,” Ikeda said.
Shinji tried to gently kick it away from them but this just moved it very slightly.
He winced as Ikeda brought his foot down to stomp it; it would be hard to replace; he didn’t have the money and his uncle would lecture him *forever* on this. He’d bitched forever about paying for it in the first place.
But then nothing happened and Shinji opened his eyes and now Kaji-sensei was holding the cello. “I see you’re looking to
get yourself suspended, Ikeda,” he said casually. “How about we start with you letting go of Ichijou?”
“Shouldn’t you be fucking Takino-sensei right now?” Ikeda said bitterly.
“Let go of Ichijou or I will make you let go,” Kaji-sensei said calmly. Shinji wasn’t sure if he could actually make Ikeda do it; Kaji-sensei was in good health but Ikeda was big and strong and Kaji-sensei was only average looking in terms of strength.
“I might as well get in trouble for something worth…” Ikeda began, pulling back a fist.
Shinji cringed and shielded his face with his arms.
But then Ikeda gave a cry and let go and Shinji opened his eyes and Ikeda was now in a fancy hold which immobilized him and which he clearly did not enjoy.
“My dad will sue!” Ikeda shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”
“We’ll see,” Kaji-sensei said amiably. “Ichijou, do you need a ride home?”
“No, I’m fine,” Shinji said, stunned. He’d been clobbered lots of times when he was younger, and while he hid from bullies better now, he still had never actually been saved by someone before. Except the time that one boy’s father had
shown up and whipped him in front of Shinji. Spanked him, not whipped literally.
Remember that was one of the things Shinji did when most frustrated and it usually brought him a little cheer. He bowed to Kaji-sensei. “And tell Takino-sensei thank you for driving me to school.”
“Yeah, what was up with that?” Aida asked and Shinji jumped; he was down the hallway with his phone, taking a picture of Shinji, Ikeda, and Kaji-sensei. “Half the school thinks some illicit teacher-student love-love is going down.”
Ikeda grumbled and Shinji stared. “They think… seriously?”
He suddenly wondered what he’d do if Takino-sensei came on to him. He instinctively dismissed it as impossible, yet knew he’d probably say yes because he was bad at saying no and she was just…
Shinji’s eyes crossed and he wanted to die.
“She is my girlfriend,” Kaji-sensei said. “So if I find out anyone I am looking at has been spreading such rumors, it won’t be good.” His voice was amiable but Aida now looked panicked.
“I wasn’t… I just… I mean…”
“I’m sure you can point out to her who all is telling people this,” Kaji-sensei continued.
Aida fled and Shinji buried his face in his hands.
“If people thought that, they’d think she was after half the people in this school,” Kaji-sensei said. “Don’t worry, Ichijou, I’m sure he was overstating things. You know how Aida is.”
Yes, I do, Shinji thought.
***************
Shinji studied the cookies; they wouldn’t be totally fresh but they would be fairly fresh still in the morning; his aunt had insisted he make them for Takino-sensei and Kaji-sensei to thank them. After she’d pried the story of his day, which he had hoped to never think of again, out of his head.
He’d ended up with way more cookies than he knew what to do with but he decided to take them to school; maybe I can sell the rest and get back the cost of the dough, which his aunt had bought for him but insisted he pay her back later.
Trying one, he was pleased with the results. He was a fair cook, though his aunt was better. But he cooked about a third of the time, and had gotten good at it.
Really, they earned some cookies, he told himself, then had one more but just one.
******************
He was in the woods again, watching the beautiful maiden dance; she was like a dream with her raven locks and blue dress, dancing to the ethereal music of a flute under the stars in the great forest of Doriath. He knew its name now, he realized; normally, he could not remember it, but he knew it now, the hidden home of the Elves. He had fled here.
After his father’s death and the fall of his family’s land to the north. They had failed. Their lands had burned.
Yet seeing her, he knew there was still beauty in the world; the enemy had not taken this place. Maybe he never would.
She gave him hope that the bleakness of his life was not the sum of experience, that life did not have to go to ever increasing failure.
Her grey eyes glittered in the starlight and her rainment was girt with golden flowers and her face shone with the light of the Elves, for she had to be one of them.
And he, who had passed through long horrors and shadows to reach this land, he could not look away.
Until his alarm clock went off.
*******************
Waking from the happiest of his dreams did not make Shinji happy but he stumbled through his morning and tried to rush to school. Miracle of miracles, he was on time by 30 seconds, enough for him to be on time, but not enough to give Kaji-sensei some cookies.
He thought about asking Suzuhara about why Ikeda had thought… but he was afraid to ask; who knew what might set Suzuhara off?
“You found your sister?” Kaji-sensei asked Suzuhara at the start of class.
He sighed. “Yeah. She and Shinobu had some crazy plan of crazy. Aida, your sister is insane,” Suzuhara said and only now did Shinji see the bags under his eyes.
“I can’t deny that,” Aida said, then nervously glanced at Kaji-sensei.
“I’m glad she’s okay; she’s a good athlete,” Kaji-sensei said. “Her coach was worried.”
“Yeah, we all were,” Suzuhara said. “Please don’t flunk me if I fall asleep.”
“You can go take a nap in the coaches’ office if you need to.”
“Thanks, coach,” Suzuhara said and stumbled out the door.
Class then commenced.
*****************
A few people had looked at Shinji funny but he assumed the rumor had been exaggerated by Aida. He’d found Takino-sensei about to go get lunch at lunchtime, then shoved a bag of cookies into her hands. “Thank you, sensei.”
“Oh, Ichijou, you’re so sweet,” she said. “Chocolate! YES!” She fistpumped the air. “Yeah. Feel free to give me cookies any time.”
“People might get the wrong idea,” he mumbled.
Her eyes crossed. “I’m not like that,” she said; he’d never seen her look so serious.
He felt relieved. “Anyway, I have to find Kaji-sensei; I have some for him.”
“Yeah, he told me about that idiot.” She frowned. “Don’t worry, he won’t bother you again.”
Shinji wished he could believe that.
****************
He was surprised to be stopped by Ito-san, who handed him a small bag of… cookies. “This is a thank you for yesterday,” she said, smiling nervously.
He handed her some of his extra. “This is for singing,” he said to her, laughing nervously.
“Oh, you didn’t have to,” she said, embarrassed.
“Neither did you,” he said to her and they smiled nervously at each other, then had a cookie.
“Why don’t you come eat with Keiichi and I?” she said hesitantly.
“I would be in the way,” he said.
“No, no, it’ll be fine, there will be lots of us.”
In fact, it turned out to be a half dozen girls from the Handicraft Club and three other guys too and Shinji ended up trading half his lunch for other people’s lunches at their suggestion and ended up giving away the rest of his extra cookies.
“Wow, your mom cooks great,” Kubo Keiichi said warmly to Shinji; he was one of those eating Shinji’s lunch; Shinji had a small amount of calamari and rice from him.
“I made it,” Shinji said. “It’s leftovers from last night’s dinner.”
“Wow, then you’re a great cook,” Hasegawa Emi said; she was Shinji’s age, short with curly brown hair that spilled down
past her shoulder blades but not far beyond; she had a slender build which was utterly normal for a girl her age in Japan.
Being complimented by a bunch of people was a strange experience to Shinji but it felt good. Almost like a dream.
“He’s a great cellist too,” Kubo said. “Our whole club is really good but we need a viola player.” He glanced at Ito.
“I’m too busy,” she said apologetically. “And I just barely know how to play anything.”
“You could sing,” Shinji said, then felt embarrassed saying it. “Your club is so big,” he said, feeling jealous.
“We fused a half dozen clubs since most of us had overlapping interests,” Hasegawa Emi said. “You guys should fuse with the choir.”
“I suggested that but they were too snobby,” Kubo said, sighing.
Shinji mostly listened as people discussed things, but even just listening was kind of nice and strange feeling. He was used to eating alone.
But this really wasn’t bad.
*****************
Having Ikeda eyeing him and making leg-breaking gestures all through gym class, that was another question. Ikeda wasn’t in his class but both classes were out on the field at once and it made Shinji nervous to be glared at the whole time.
But he got home without Ikeda killing him. *That* was a huge win from his perspective.
*******************
He was with Father again, back so long ago. He had been just a little boy when his father had taken him to the edge of the hilly woods in which he had grown up and pointed off across a great grassy plains which ran northwards. “Do you know what this is, my son?” Father asked him.
He looked up at his father, who towered over him; he was very young, his Father was much older and a giant, like all adults. “Grass,” he said.
For a few moments, his father stared at him, and then he smiled sadly. “It is grass; it is Ard-galen, and beyond it lies Thangodrim; you could see a distant gray blur, far, far beyond the nearby grasses, but not make out any features of it, and above it the blue sky turned dark and threatening. “That is where the Enemy lives, the foe of all things living. One day, you will fight him, as I fight him and my brothers and my friends and my followers and the mighty Noldor who we serve.”
“Surely, you’ll defeat him by then, Father,” he said solemnly.
His Father sighed. “I wish it was so easy but he is immortal, my son. His servants we can fight but I do not know if anyone can master him if he comes forth himself. But long it has been and perhaps he can no longer come out.” His father’s voice wobbled and even at his tender age, he could tell when someone was trying to fool another. Or themselves.
“I will fight with all my heart,” he promised his Father. “We’ll fight together.”
“And I will be proud to have you by my side,” his Father said, patting his head and lifting him up. “We stand here together, my son, to defend the lands beyond that they might not fall under the Shadow. Even if we die, we will die knowing we did all that we could. That is all that can be asked of any man, even by the Creator himself, that we use our full strength so long as we can, to do what is right.”
I will fight for our land, he told himself. I will fight with Father and we will never give up. We will fight. Together.
Shinji awoke, wishing he did not have dreams which could never come true.
*******************
He was surprised to find Ito Kameko lurking around the front door when he rushed to school the next day. “Hey there,” she said, smiling.
“Hey,” he said. “Aren’t we late for class?”
“Well, maybe a little,” she said, embarrassed. “You should join us for lunch; most of us are girls and I think Keiichi feels more comfortable with more guys there.” She glanced at him as they started to head towards their grade’s classrooms. “If you don’t mind.”
“Okay,” Shinji said. He tended to do what people told him to do.
And it had been kind of nice.
And he kind of hoped Hasegawa Emi had brought some of that ‘coleslaw’ again as he rather liked it.
She smiled again. “Good. We’d better run!” And now she took off at a sprint; Shinji followed after her, trying not to drop his cello.
Though now he wondered why it had suddenly become urgent.
****************
He never got an answer to that question. Instead, he had a mostly ordinary day, though eating lunch with actual people wasn’t normal. But it was a good not normal. For a little while, he could be one of the men he dreamed of, and not himself.
And that was a blessing.
******************
But blessings do not last forever, even in faerie tales; he came outside and found that both of his tires had no air; someone had let the air out of them. And of course his tire pump was at home. And if he called his uncle, he’d chewed out for irresponsibility.
But what else could he do?
“Ichijou, did both of your tires get a hole?” Horaki asked him and he jumped in surprise, then realized the bike he had seen a million times before, the only other one left, must be hers.
“Yes,” Shinji said, sighing.
“Look, just wait here and I’ll bike home, grab my pump, and come back. I only live a few blocks away,” she said.
“I would hate to bother you,” Shinji said to her.
“It is my duty as class representative to help out everyone,” she said sternly. “Except for being late, you never cause trouble and I appreciate that.” Horaki sighed wearily. “Unlike some people. Anyway, just wait right here and I will be right back.”
Shinji got out his cello and began to practice, having nothing better to do; he could still hear the sports teams going at it, practicing hard for their last game before the summer break; it was all football right now.
He lost himself in his music, trying to reproduce the music the maiden sometimes danced to in his dreams but he couldn’t find it. It was hard to remember when he was awake.
And then there was fire, Ard-galen was burning and there were shouts and sounds of battle and he played along, turning fire into notes and making them real, though the fire was only in his mind. He’d dreamed it before and it came to him vividly now. Armies trying to fight in the fire and the smoke; he was cut off from Father and then the maiden came, out of the fire and smoke and led him back to his Father and they cut their way through the foe, trying to cover the retreat of those who would warn the women and children to escape.
Not the dancing maiden but another maiden had guided him, with short blue hair and crimson eyes; he’d never seen her before, it had been another warrior who guided him but here she was and…
“Ichijou, that’s incredible,” Horaki said and reality suddenly crashed back in with him with a bang.
He nearly dropped his cello and he blinked at her and the music was gone. “Thank you,” he said automatically, then sighed.
“I’m sorry, did I mess you up?” she said apologetically.
“It’s okay,” he said. Getting mad at people usually just led to trouble and… he had mixed feelings about that dream, anyway.
Why had it changed?
She now pumped up his tires and then secured the pump on the back of her bike. “See you tomorrow, Ichijou.”
“See you tomorrow,” he said to her. “Thank you.”
“I am just doing my job,” she said, but she smiled in a way he was unaccustomed to. “You have such good manners, Ichijou, unlike…” She sighed and shook her head. “Some people. Anyway, I will see you tomorrow.”
“See you,” he said, then biked home without any more trouble, thankfully.
******************
The problem with baking cookies to thank someone was having to explain why to his uncle, who then chewed him out for letting his tires run down; Shinji was pretty sure someone had let the air out but it wasn’t worth fighting with his uncle. He could never win.
Fortunately, his aunt insisted he got to make the cookies; it was good manners. This meant he could have a cookie and had a few extras in case he needed to thank anyone else. Which
would avoid having to make more cookies and another yelling at.
He had the shopping mall dream that night; it was the one where he was in a circular shopping mall and kept going around it and it was different on every iteration but always full of faceless people who drifted past him, looking at goods while he kept trying to find someone who he couldn’t locate.
Not all who wander are lost but he certainly was.
He awoke and began his morning routine.
*******************
Shinji ran in with a minute to spare and thrust the cookies into Horaki’s hands, then said, “Thanks a lot for your help yesterday.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, looking surprised. “You really are well-mannered, Ichijou.” As usual, she was up at the podium; this time she was correcting a paper.
That triggered a wave of whispers, though Shinji didn’t understand why. “It’s how I was raised,” he said.
“Then you are a lucky man,” she said to him.
He didn’t *feel* lucky. In fact, he felt like his Dad had thrown him in the garbage can. The one with an angry muppet in it.
“You’re welcome,” he said anyway, and went to his seat. Class soon commenced.
***************
“So….,” Aida said to Shinji as he was about to go eat lunch outside.
Shinji jumped, then blinked. “So what?”
“You and Horaki…,” he said, trailing off with a sly look.
“What about us?” Shinji asked, confused.
“Ahh, like that, gotcha,” Aida said and winked. “See ya!” Then he ran off.
“You coming, Shinji?” Hasegawa Emi asked him, coming out of another classroom nearby.
“Yes,” he said. “If you want me to.”
“Of course, you’re always welcome with us,” she said warmly.
Being treated nicely was confusing to Shinji but he went along. He always did.
*****************
I should learn to make this, Shinji thought as he ate more coleslaw; Hasegawa Emi had brought some, the usual lunch exchanges had ensued, and now he was eating some.
His musing was interrupted by the sound of metal twisting and banging noises, which was not a happy sound. Everyone put their hands over their ears and Kubo especially groaned. “Aaargh, that sounds so terrible,” he said.
“I think someone must be… my bike!” Kayo shouted; she was short and blonde; blonde hair was rare in Japan, but not as rare as it had been before the Vanishing. Shinji knew three other blondes in his grade alone.
She rose and ran and soon everyone ran; half of them biked to school. They soon found Shinji’s bike with both wheels off and one of them basically folded in half; the guilty party had run away.
“Uncle is going to KILL ME,” Shinji said, rising to what passed for a shout with him by the end. He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
“It’s probably that punk Ikeda,” Hasegawa Emi said angrily behind Shinji, then put a hand on his shoulder. “We can probably figure out some way to fix your bike at the club later, Ichijou.”
“We can do something,” Ito said angrily.
“Geez, someone really did a job on your bike,” Keiichi said. “Sorry, Man. I expect Kameko could fix the wires, but… can you really fix the rim?”
“We can try,” Hasegawa Emi said firmly.
Uncle is going to KILL ME, Shinji thought. All he could think about was the image of his uncle biting his head off for being irresponsible.
This day was ruined.
**************
“We could try and ride double on my bike,” Horaki said to him hesitantly, after gym, and before everyone scattered to go to their elective. Unlike the other classes, you had a choice of electives and the classes divided and reconfigured for them.
“Thank you,” Shinji said. Manners were important. “Uncle will be less angry with me if he doesn’t have to come get me. The Handicraft Club are going to try to fix it.”
“He’ll be mad at you because someone else attacked your bike?” Horaki said, stunned.
“Yes,” Shinji said miserably.
Her staring at him did not make things better.
She sighed. “I can try and get Father to drive you if my bike won’t work, then.” She sounded rather nervous. “He’s in town.”
“He goes on business trips a lot?” Shinji asked.
“Yes,” Horaki said quickly. “Business takes him all over Hokkaido all the time.”
“I wish my uncle went on business trips all the time,” Shinji grumbled. “Thank you. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do. It’s my job to watch over everyone,” Horaki said, then got an oddly far away look for a moment. “I have to run herd on everyone at home too since… Father is gone a lot.”
“Lots of younger siblings?”
“Lots of siblings to keep in line,” she said. “Anyway, I need to go help sensei. See you after your club, Ichijou-san.”
He smiled a little. “Thanks, Horaki-san.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and now ran off.
He headed off to music class.
******************
Music class went smoothly and so did his club meeting. He could hear huge mechanical noises from the handicraft club’s
room. When there was a huge shout, Kijima-sensei ran off to check on them, then returned to tell Shinji, “It broke. What on Earth happened to your tire?”
“I don’t know how but someone folded it in half.” He’d suspected they couldn’t fix it but it hadn’t hurt to let them try.
“Do you need a ride home?”
“Horaki-san offered to give me a ride home,” Shinji said hesitantly. “On her bike or getting her father to give me a ride.”
“On her bike?” Kijima-sensei said, confused. “Is it really huge?”
Shinji had been too worked up to think about it. “I guess it will have to be her father,” he said.
“Okay. As long as you have a way home.”
They finished and Ito and Hasegawa Emi came up to him. “I’m sorry, now it’s totally destroyed,” Ito said, sounding guilty.
“It’s okay,” Shinji said. He sighed. “Horaki-san is going to get her father to give me a ride.”
Hasegawa got an odd look on her face. “Okay.” She paused. “I’ll bring lunch as an apology tomorrow.”
“It’s not your fault my bike got damaged,” Shinji said.
“It’s fine,” Hasegawa said.
“I’ll help you,” Ito said to her.
“Have fun with Horaki-san,” Hasegawa said weakly.
“Okay,” Shinji said. How you could have fun riding in a car, he didn’t know.
****************
“Nice to meet you, Ichijou,” Horaki’s father said to Shinji, who felt a sudden twinge of jealousy that Horaki had a father who was here and willing to help her. His car was a fancy blue sportscar, the sort Shinji would expect someone who went on business trips to drive. It was one of the cleanest things he had ever seen in his life; there was not a speck of dirt inside it or on the outside of it and he couldn’t understand why Horaki herself looked at it like it was the devil.
“You have a very nice car,” Shinji said.
He beamed brightly; Horaki Hikaru was a big burly man who towered over his daughter and Shinji, though from the few pictures Shinji had seen of his father, his own father was even taller, a veritable giant for a Japanese man. He wore a white buttoned shirt which needed ironing, a tie which was very new and shiny and full of fish, and very clean slacks. He also looked very clean shaven. “It’s my other baby,” he said. “Well, you can’t really call Hikari a baby any more, not for a long time.” For a moment, he suddenly looked twice his age and weary, the
way Shinji’s uncle often did. Shinji guessed he was probably in his late thirties and must have had his daughter young.
Shinji then remembered Horaki had said she had several siblings.
Shinji and Horaki Hikari ended up squeezed in the back with Shinji’s cello riding in the front passenger seat. “That’s a big guitar,” Horaki Hikaru observed as he got in.
“It’s a cello, sir,” Shinji said to him.
“A what?” he said.
Horaki Hikari cringed and Shinji blinked. “It’s played with a bow and looks sort of like a giant violin.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, then took off like a rocket. “East of town, right, Ichijou?” he said.
“Yes,” Shinji said. “So how do you have a fun in a car?” he asked, then wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“We could play I Spy,” Horaki Hikari said very, very quickly, cutting off her father in the middle of his first syllable.
“I spy with my little eye… something which starts with the letter H,” Horaki Hikaru said.
“Are you looking at me in the rear view mirror?” Horaki Hikari said.
“Damn, that always used to work on you,” he grumbled.
“When I was four,” she said, embarrassed.
The game went back and forth, but Shinji could never figure it out before one of the other two guessed it. Watching them go at it was weird; they were both quite happy and enjoying themselves but seeing them be father and daughter made his stomach sour. It was a reminder that his father would never, ever do this with him.
“Ichijou, you have to be more aggressive or Hikari will always trample over you when you speak,” Horaki Hikaru said as they hit the fringe of town. “Hiroko was...”
She cut him off. “I am not like that at all.”
“…just like that,” he concluded, then grinned a little.
Shinji didn’t even know what to say. “You are very lucky to have each other,” he mumbled.
Horaki now looked embarrassed and Horaki Hikaru said softly, “What happened to your parents, Ichijou? I lost my dear Hiroko a little over six years ago to a mugger, so then we moved here so Hikari would be safe. It makes my work harder but that’s okay.”
Horaki Hikari turned very red and mumbled into her hand.
Shinji shifted uncomfortably. No one had ever actually asked him that. “Uncle Hayao was my mother’s brother; after she died in a laboratory accident, he took me in but… I’ve lived with him since I was very little. And with Aunt Mariko.”
There was a long silence and Horaki Hikaru finally said, “You shouldn’t pry, Dad. You don’t have to talk about it, Ichijou.”
“You are very lucky,” Shinji said to Horaki Hikari, then he regretted it. Judgement gets you in trouble.
“I say that every day, then she yells at me anyway,” Horaki Hikaru said amiably. “All of my siblings are dead, but I am fortunate to have friends who will take Hikari in if something happens to me on the road.”
The countryside went past at high speed.
Too high. “We missed the turnoff,” Shinji said apologetically.
“Father, don’t you dare,” Hikari said urgently.
“No choice,” he said cheerfully.
Shouting and feeling he would die, Shinji now learned what a bootlegger turn feels like. Hikari was screaming and his blood was pounding and he wanted to die and he could almost hear action movie music playing.
And then it stopped and they resumed normal driving.
Shinji was breathing hard and Horaki Hikari was panting but Horaki Hikaru looked like a gleeful child. “Man, this car handles like a dream,” he said with a happy sigh. “Worth every yen.”
Horaki Hikaru just made a strangled noise.
“So what sort of hairstyle do you think looks best on a woman?” Horaki Hikaru asked with an amused look on his face.
“Long and flowing,” Shinji said. Like the woman in his dream.
Horaki Hikaru sighed. “That’s not very practical, Ichijou; it’s a ton of work and gets in the way of sports.” Her hair was a touch past shoulder-length with two short pony-tails in the back, on either side of her neck.
“I’m sorry,” Shinji said, worried she took it as an insult.
“That’s how Hiroko’s hair was,” Horaki Hikaru said. “Izumi only has hers down to mid-shoulder, but I like red hair.”
“It’s a dye,” Horaki Hikaru grumbled.
“Natural is overrated,” he said.
And now he pulled up to the farmhouse. “Wow, that’s a lot of asparagus.” You could see endless fields of it from here, then
the hills further east and the woods which perched on them. He got out and got out Shinji’s bike. And a new wheel. “I’ll put this on for you,” he said.
“I… you bought me a wheel?” Shinji said, stunned.
“Your folks won’t have to know,” he said.
“We could have put it on back in town,” Horaki Hikari said, surprised herself.
“Yes, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to spend some time with your friend,” her father said cheerfully and Horaki Hikari’s eyes crossed. “Hah! I can be clever too, you know.”
“Thank you very much. I’ll find some way to save enough to repay you,” Shinji said.
“It’s okay, you can just owe Hikari a favor; I’m sure she’ll need your help some time and she can call in her marker,” he said, then began putting the wheel on; this went very quickly. “Good as new,” he said.
Shinji did not even know what to say. “Thank you so much,” he said weakly.
“Glad to help my daughter’s friend,” he said. “Just be nice to Hikari.”
“I will,” Shinji said.
“Okay, hop in, it’s time for me to take more years off your life, Hikari,” her father said to her.
“Father!” she said, then he laughed and she said to Shinji, “See you tomorrow. Be on time.” Her voice was stern.
“I will,” he said. Somehow. He had to now.
*****************
“Father, take me with you!,” he begged his father, who was a mighty lord among men. Their hold stood in the foothills of the mountains which separated their highland home from the burnt out fields of Anfauglith, once known as Ard-galen, to the east. It was a magnificent hall of cut timbers with a small tower at one end, which held his family, while their sworn men slept in the great hall, with the tables pushed to the wall. During the day, the tables and benches came out and the great hall was used to eat and to feast and discuss the matters of men. Nearby was another hall for the women, where they slept and cooked and sewed and did crafts. A covered walkway connected it to the other end of the men’s hall.
He had heard stories of the palaces of the Elves and how grand they were and he wondered how many men could sleep in their great halls. Hundreds, probably. His father had two dozen sworn men who lived with him but dozens more who had sworn men of their own, living across the hills and down in the valley.
“Not yet, not this time,” his father told him. “You have only just begun your training. You must be here to stand guard
over my dear wife, your mother. She will need you in the days to come. You know how she is; she may well wander off to the battle to yell at me if you don’t stop her,” his father whispered to him.
“I heard that,” his mother said, but then she laughed; she was a great queen among women and clad in fine sturdy linen, dyed purple to reflect her rank. Though the wool of the common man was often worn by all in this land for the winters were chill this high above the plains. Dor-lomin was an elevated plateau, fenced by mountains and the sea.
For a moment, somehow he knew he would never see his mother laugh again and it chilled him. He saw her, old and bent but unbowed, but then realized he would never see her that old, that his efforts to find her would fail, that from this day on, everything in his life would go ill. He had to stop it. He knew what was to come. He could stop it.
“I will do my best, Father,” he said, laughing in turn, then taking his mother’s hand. “I won’t let her escape.”
Morwen ruffled his hair. That was her name, Morwen. “My dear little Turin, what a mighty jailer, you are.” Then she turned serious. “Ride hard and fight hard, my husband. Show them the valor of the House of Hador.”
“The plan is a good one,” his father, Hurin, said. “All the enemies of Morgoth shall stand together, and we shall defeat him. I will return victorious or I will die.”
Neither would be true, he knew. He had to warn his father. But the words would not come. “I know you can’t lose,” he said confidently, instead. His own body would not answer him. He couldn’t change anything. He could see the doom approaching and he couldn’t change anything.
He knew this feeling too well; it had come to dominate his life. But now he had another chance. He had to stop it.
But he couldn’t; the scene played out, just as before and his father rode off to be defeated and become a prisoner, all his valor for naught; from this point on, everything the House of Hador touched would turn to poison and bring ruin to everything and everyone they loved.
It was their destiny and it could not be escaped.
Unless the alarm went off.
******************
“Shinji, if you don’t eat slower, you will choke,” Aunt Mariko said chidingly as Shinji wolfed down orange juice and cereal with strawberry slices in it.
“Have to be ontime,” he said frantically, then ran out of the house and leaped on his bike, pedaling like a maniac.
She watched him go and wondered what was going on.
******************
Shinji slumped into his seat in the classroom, breathing hard. “I made it,” he mumbled. He was on time.
“I hear Ikeda posted on Faceplace that you suck,” one of Shinji’s classmates said to him.
“That’s nice,” Shinji mumbled, now tired and his legs aching.
The classmate stared.
“He sounded kinda pissed, from what I heard,” the boy, Abe Saburo, said. He was, like Shinji, short and dark haired, though not as short as Shinji.
“I don’t even know why,” Shinji said.
“Better keep your eyes open,” Saburo said.
Shinji wanted to sleep and found that hard advice to take.
*******************
Lunch with everyone was pretty nice; by then he wasn’t so tired and the lunch Hasegawa made for him, ribs, pork fried rice, coleslaw and sliced cucumber, was very good. “Thank you,” he said, though he didn’t feel he deserved it. But manners were important.
She smiled brightly, more when she saw him clearly enjoy it.
Ito Kameko just looked guilty. “I’m sorry we couldn’t help you.”
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” he told her.
“That idiot hit on me a month ago but Keiichi drove him off,” she said.
“I stand as your champion knight,” he said, waving his chopsticks and laughing. “We on for tonight?” he asked Ito.
She looked nervous, then said, “We’re on.”
Shinji had his own plans for the night.
****************
Namely, his aunt and uncle would watch movies and get drunk and do things he didn’t want to be around for on Friday nights, so he’d slip out, go out to the woods and play music and watch the stars. It was his weekly ritual and it played a fundamental role in keeping his sanity intact.
He liked the woods; they reminded him of his happier dreams and it was quiet and no one made demands of him. It was just him, the stars, the trees, his music, and a few animals but nothing dangerous.
He found his favorite rock and was just about to unleash his cello music on the quiet of the forest when he heard distant music.
He blinked in surprise, then realized it was guitar music. Someone trying to play something not quite designed for guitar.
Was that Kubo?
Curiosity overcame him and he rose with his cello, leaving the case by the rock and walked through the woods, the music growing louder. It also grew more confident as the player got the hang of what he was doing and now he could hear a voice, a beautiful voice singing in a tongue which he almost knew but not quite.
He sped up and now lingered at the edge of a small clearing, part of which was exposed stone, and on the stone a maiden danced in a blue dress, her legs bare and her long raven locks unbound and flowing freely as she moved. At times she stumbled and her dancing skills could not match her singing, but the moon shone down on her and he knew this dance.
It was the dance of the forest maiden of his dreams. She was not the woman but she was trying to be the woman and he stared, feeling his body get excited, feeling his breath speeding up. As Kubo sat on a stump, playing his guitar, she danced under the stars and they sang too, strengthening the song and Shinji could see the dancing maiden and the real dancing woman at once.
Her eyes were brown but with a few grey flecks in them and they shone in the starlight and she smiled like the dawn, lost in the glory of movement and the trees rustled as if trying to dance with her.
Shinji, in that moment, would not have been surprised if they had danced with her, if the stars themselves had moved into alignment with their song; he could feel them, feeling them singing, trying to make something real.
For a moment, he half-remembered a story, from one of the dreams. Where he and the dancing maiden had talked of the world’s birth. Something about a song.
What world were the stars trying to sing into existence here? What story would they tell?
He could not have said if he watched for a minute, an hour, a day. He could feel the power of the stars, feel the power of the song, feel the power of the dance and they were all one thing, music which was story, story which was reality, reality which was music.
For the first time in his life, Shinji touched eternity. It could not last, for this was the mortal world, the dying world, where eternity could not dwell, which it had to flee, to retreat along the high road which led beyond this mortal coil, to a land now forgotten by mortal man.
It was Ito Kameko, as he’d never seen her before, so much more beautiful than usual.
For a moment, he had a strange feeling as if he was somewhere else, standing at the door of a club and watching a woman on the dance floor, seeing her move to the beat and being transfixed with a feeling he had never known before. He had never seen her before but he had to know her. How could anyone make him feel like this?
And then that was gone, but the maiden of his dreams was not and neither was Kameko and they were not one and the same but they overlapped and they were each other and not.
It made his head swim and then she stumbled and said, “Is someone there?”
And he fled, overwhelmed by a sudden terror that he’d somehow ruined everything just by looking and as he fled, the song faded and the world became one, just the mundane world of trees and leaves and roots and rocks, where the grass might slip under your feet and you might send your cello sliding down the hill and you might fall after it trying to save it because your uncle will kill you if it breaks.
And that’s how Shinji found a cave he’d never seen before, though he’d roamed these woods many time. He’d nearly fallen right into the mouth of it, and that would have hurt, but instead, he’d come down the side, close enough to see it but not to have a headlong, face-smashing tumble into the ground.
Grass and vines hung down over the entrance and the star and moonlight shone into the cave a little. There was writing
just inside it and he got out his penlight which he had on his keychain. It was strong enough to study the runes; he felt he ought to know them, had known them, but he couldn’t read them. They weren’t Japanese, Chinese, Hangul or the Latin script either. Or Arabic. He could have read German; he knew enough to get by, just in case…
Not that Father would ever call him back. Not like the dreams.
Had that been mother? But he had dreamed of her like…
His eyes crossed and he sat down, just inside the cave, to think about what he’d seen. She was doing the dancing maiden’s dance. But how could she know it? He’d tried to find videos of it on MeTube but he had never succeeded.
Then he realized the blue-haired maiden with crimson eyes was here, wearing the blue dress of the dancing maiden. But she was not the dancing maiden, was she? Her eyes were not silver and her hair was not long raven locks but short cut and a kind of ice-blue. And she wore a ring which burned in his sight like a brand, golden set with a sapphire.
But she wasn’t real, just his imagination, translucent and overlaid on the world like all his waking dreams. And now she saw him looking at her and her eyes widened and she waved her hand in front of herself and faded into the light of her ring, then that guttered and went out.
It hadn’t been like this when he was little; it wasn’t even that common now but a few years ago, in 2014, in April, he’d had a really vivid waking dream and ever since then, it happened more often.
As he thought about it, his phone suddenly rang.
He blinked and took the call despite it being an unlisted number; if it was his aunt and uncle and he didn’t answer, his life would become hell.
“Hello, Ichijou Shinji is here,” he said.
“Hello, I am an exchange student in Germany but like you, I am from Japan,” a woman said crisply with a beautiful voice. “Are you in a cave?”
“I… is this a phone survey? Yes, I am,” he said weakly. “What’s your name?”
“Ayanami Rei,” she said; her voice was liquid, it evoked the sea and Shinji thought it was very soothing. He felt strongly she likely had a beautiful singing voice. “Do you do music?”
“Yes,” Shinji said. “I am in the music club.”
“What is your instrument?”
“The cello,” he said. “Do you play an instrument?” He hoped it was okay to ask.
“The viola,” she said.
“We could use you for our string quartet that isn’t quite.” He then felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry, you’re in Germany. Your Japanese is really good.”
“I am Japanese like you,” she said softly. “Can you sing?”
“Badly,” he said.
“Dance?”
“I’m not sure,” he confessed. He did really well at the group dances in gym class, which he now explained to her.
She asked some questions about musical preferences and they were soon deep in discussing some pieces they’d both played or heard; Shinji gradually relaxed and in fact, felt it was one of the best conversations of his life; he rarely got to really talk music with people, even at the club where they usually came, did some pieces and went.
Distantly, he heard Kameko shout, “Is anyone there?”
He both wanted to say hello to her and to hide forever.
“Is someone calling you?” Ayanami Rei asked him.
“Yes,” he confessed. “But I don’t know if I should say hello.”
“Lars tells me to say hello more often,” she said softly, but did not explain who ‘Lars’ was. “You should probably let them know you are fine. I will call you back another time.”
“Okay,” he said, not sure how to end the conversation.
“Please record a piece for me; I would like to hear you play,” she said to him.
“Okay,” he said.
“Goodbye, Ichijou-san.”
“Goodbye, Ayanami-san,” he said.
“Hello?” he heard Kubo shout.
Ayanami hung up and he shouted, “I fell down the hill.”
They made their way down and then Ito began dusting Shinji off, while Kubo now spotted the odd writing. “What’s this, Ichijou?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Shinji confessed. “It’s not any language I know.”
“Maybe it’s Norse runes?” Ito asked as she continued to dust him off. Shinji shivered a little; she was not as beautiful now as before but she was still very pretty and his body shouted things at him which he tried to ignore.
Kubo got a piece of paper out and took a rubbing with a pencil. “I bet someone at the school will know.”
Shinji hoped they would not get in trouble somehow but this was his family’s land, he was pretty sure, though maybe… well, the split was somewhere in the middle of this.
“Do you live near here, Kubo?” Shinji asked.
“We just came out here for privacy since Kameko gets embarrassed when people watch her dance,” he said, working on his rubbing. “But now you know how good she is.”
Ito turned red. “I’m not that good.”
“You’re good,” Shinji said. He wanted to ask about the maiden, if she dreamed of the maiden too but was afraid to ask. Silence usually protected him better than speaking.
“Flatterer,” she said, sounding embarrassed, but she smiled and her smile made her prettier to Shinji.
Kubo had run out of paper. “Going to have come back here with more paper. I normally hard need it.”
“Can’t you photograph it with your phone?” Ito said.
“Not enough light and I don’t have a flash,” he said, slumping a little. “Maybe this is some kind of Ainu script; didn’t they rule this island before our ancestors?”
“I think so,” Shinji said. He had the dim idea the Shoguns had conquered the Ainu, in fact. But he had never paid much attention to history.
“Yeah,” Ito said thoughtfully.
“I take it your folks hate cello music?” Kubo asked, glancing at Shinji’s cello. “Or do you just like to practice in the woods?”
“I like to play under the stars,” Shinji told him. “And Friday, they want privacy.”
“They kick you out into the woods?” Ito said horrified. “What if it rains?”
“I play in the barn,” Shinji said.
Ito rubbed her forehead and Kubo said, “Well, why don’t you play with us? We can do some club pieces and Kameko can stun us with her dancing.”
“If you don’t mind,” Shinji said nervously.
The rest of the night was a blur of music and dancing to Shinji but he went home happy and dreamed of dancing with the dancing maiden all night.
****************
Only in the morning did he wonder how Ayanami had known to ask him if he was in a cave. He did his chores then went to the barn and recorded a Bach piece for her; it had a mixture of moods but it all came out light and breezy because he was still in a good mood. It was one of his favorites, though usually moodier.
The sound quality wasn’t great but it would have to do and then he sent it to an email address she’d sent him overnight: [email protected].
Part of him worried he was setting himself up for some scam; the other half had enjoyed talking to her too much to care.
The second half was a strange feeling to him.
The rest of the weekend went quietly; Sunday night, she emailed him back with a viola piece; unlike his, hers was recorded with perfect sound quality and Shinji added it to his playlist immediately; it was haunting and a little sad and he’d never heard it before, yet it somehow felt familiar.
That night, he dreamed it being played at a grand ball in some huge stone-walled ballroom, dozens of well-dressed couples dancing in groups or pairs; he danced with many women who were eager to see him and called him hero and when awake, he knew that would never happen but it was a pleasant dream.
But he would never be a hero. He didn’t really want to be; he was too practical for that. His dreams were small, practical
dreams and it seemed likely to him the closest thing he would ever come to adventure was running away from people and falling down the hill.
Though he was a little curious about the writing. Maybe it would be important and he might even get his picture in the paper with something nice said about him. Probably not but he dreamed of that all the way to the school Monday morning.
***************
Up to lunch, everything was normal. Shinji was about to go join the group he now ate lunch with when he was suddenly grabbed by Aida and dragged into an empty classroom. “You found writing of the ancients?” Aida said excitedly.
For a few seconds, Shinji stared mindlessly at him. “Found what?”
“The writing! Kubo showed me! If I’m right, that’s ALIEN writing,” Aida said excitedly. “We can’t prove it but there’s too much evidence!”
“Why would aliens write on the side of a cave near my house?” Shinji asked hesitantly. “It’s probably Ainu writing.”
They knew aliens existed because *someone* stole Venus and it wasn’t anything humans could do or happen naturally.
But surely they wouldn’t scribble in a cave, Shinji thought.
“The Ainu were primitive savages who could never have their own writing system,” Aida said dismissively. “We don’t know what the characters mean but everyone is sure NERV knows.”
Shinji shivered. “Maybe it’s best to stay away from anything connected to NERV,” Shinji said. His father must have had some reason to send him away and probably wouldn’t be happy if Shinji was knee-deep in NERV business.
“My stupid Dad works for NERV,” Aida said bitterly. “But he shunted us off to this town because it was allegedly ‘safer’, when he got the job at the Geo-Front. As if we’d be safer here than inside a FORTRESS.” His voice got angrier and angrier and now a few students peeked in, saw Aida and Shinji and lost interest, moving on.
Shinji blinked. “Really?” He felt weird, like… he didn’t know what it was, but it was a feeling of… it was good. “Look, I’m late to lunch; Kubo will be there and you can tell him about ancient aliens or whatever.”
“So are you and Hasegawa a thing or what?” Aida asked.
“I… what?” Shinji said. “What kind of thing?”
Aida raised an eyebrow, then said, “Let’s go eat.”
***************
Shinji was a bit surprised to have Suzuhara join them as well, though several of the girls eyed him appreciatively; he was shooting up and strong and good looking and made Shinji feel tinier by comparison. He traded food with several of the others as usual and noticed Aida watching this like it was suspicious, even as he yammered at Kubo about aliens while Kubo looked trapped.
“What’s this about aliens?” Hasegawa whispered to Shinji, scooting over to sit by him.
“We found Ainu writing in a cave and he thinks it’s aliens,” Shinji whispered.
Hasegawa laughed loudly; two of the girls were busy talking to Suzuhara about the sports team and Shinji noticed he looked happier than usual. Why he’d come over, Shinji still wasn’t sure, though.
Ito listened to the yammering about aliens and looked oddly withdrawn to Shinji; seeing her like this felt weird to him; she was a lot less pretty with her hair bound and just… She had been so beautiful and now Shinji wondered if he’d imagined it. She was kind of cute but it wasn’t the same.
“Are you still looking for a viola player?” Hasegawa asked hesitantly.
“Yes, but unless someone transfers in, there’s no chance of it, really,” Shinji said, then ate more of his pork; Emi had given
him ribs and he’d given her some squid. Her ribs were good, he thought. Messy but good.
A pity Ayanami didn’t live here; she’d be perfect. “I know a viola player but she’s in Germany,” Shinji said.
Hasegawa looked thoughtful as she ate. Ito continued to be withdrawn; Suzuhara’s presence continued to be unexplained but drew half the group’s attention; the rest watched Aida just babble endlessly at Kubo, who could not get a word in edgewise.
Hasegawa finally said to Ito, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Ito said, continuing to eat quietly.
“You’re awfully silent,” Hasegawa said, frowning now.
Shinji could see her doing what he often did; he didn’t know why she was afraid to say anything but he could see it; it was an odd moment to see himself reflected in another.
As he had with Ayanami and her love of the same music he loved.
He suddenly wondered if something bad had happened… maybe her parents found out about going to the woods and got mad at her? That was probably it. Now he felt guilty she’d gotten in trouble; he knew what that was like; he never wanted to see or talk to anyone ever again.
That had to be it.
“Ichijou, earth to Ichijou,” Aida said.
Shinji started. “I’m sorry, what?”
Everyone started when weird, archaic electronic sounds echoed out of a classroom window, followed by Tokino-sensei belting out some sort of song about Pac-Man.
For about half a minute, everyone just stared, then shook their heads. Aida said weakly, “Please tell me she’s not doing what I think she is.”
“I don’t want to know,” Suzuhara said. “Anyway…” He shoved Aida gently.
“Shinji, I’m thinking Friday, we should gear up and go out to the cave and do a thorough study,” Aida said. He was in a weird pose, on his knees and leaning forward, holding himself up with his hands. Shinji couldn’t figure out how it could be comfortable.
Kubo was making some sort of gestures at Shinji from behind Aida, but Shinji could not figure out what Kubo wanted beyond him looking desperate.
“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Ito said softly.
“I don’t know if Uncle will agree,” Shinji said hesitantly, trying to figure out if Kubo urgently wanted him to say yes or no.
“We can make a party of it,” Suzuhara said. “It would have to be Saturday for me, though; I have a game on Friday.”
Aida twitched, then said, “Okay, Touji.”
Some of the girls now made an odd noise and Aida blinked. “What?”
Suzuhara looked confused, then said, “Anyway, I’m kinda curious; I expect Ken’s getting his hopes up too high but nothing ever happens in this town, so it would be kinda cool if it was alien writing.”
“Once I have proof, I’ll send it to Dad,” Aida said, sounding determined. “Can you ask your uncle?”
Shinji would have, in his ideal universe, never made a request of his uncle ever again. But now Hasegawa said, “I am kind of curious.”
Pretty soon everyone wanted to go, except Kubo, who was watching Ito, and Ito, who clearly thought this a bad idea for some reason.
“I can ask,” Shinji said weakly, unable to resist so many people bearing down on him.
“Sweet!” Aida said and began making plans as if it was a done deal.
*********************
Shinji was surprised to find Horaki waiting for him, looking displeased. “Is it true you’re throwing a giant party in the woods on Saturday?”
“I… what?” Shinji said. “It’s not a giant party.”
“A medium party,” she said, frowning.
“I… no, just… there’s this cave with weird writing and Kensuke wants to see it and so does everyone else for some reason so I have to ask my uncle, who will probably say no,” Shinji said, crumbling under the weight of her gaze.
“Weird writing?” she asked.
“Aida thinks it’s aliens but it’s probably just Ainu writing,” Shinji said.
“I think the Ainu just use katakana,” Horaki said hesitantly, then got Shinji to try to draw some of it for her.
“This might be something important,” she finally said. “I’ll take charge of this. Make sure no one gets in trouble.”
“Okay,” Shinji said. He certainly didn’t want to be in charge and he knew Horaki was a good organizer. “You should talk to Aida.”
“I will,” she said and strode off.
Shinji fled before she could return.
***************
Shinji had tried five times to muster the will to ask his uncle, but instead, he was in his room, busy doing homework. Aida had sent him FOUR ‘did you ask yet’ messages, so he couldn’t focus on homework but his fear that his uncle would get mad at him for even asking left him paralyzed.
Then he got a phone call; it was Ayanami Rei, to his surprise. “Hello, Ichijou-san,” she said. “I hope I am not interrupting anything.”
“Just homework,” he said. And not asking his uncle.
He wondered again how she’d originally gotten his number but he liked talking to her too much to risk her never talking to him again from asking too much.
“I have sent you another piece,” she said. “I have a test in a little while, so I can’t talk for long, but I wanted to make sure you knew to look.” Her voice was cool but not in a hostile way and it had the same kind of liquid musical quality that Ito had when she sang.
“Do you dance?” he asked, then was embarrassed over asking.
“I am versed in many dances, mostly older ones,” she said calmly. “I sing well but I think my viola playing is superior.” She paused a moment, then said, “I have to go; I have some questions for you later.”
“Okay,” he said. “Good luck on your test. Is it hard?”
“One of my… classmates…” There was an unusual hesitation there. “Will likely rave about how good her score was and will be cross if she does not do better than me, but I do not know for sure who will do better.”
Shinji winced. “Does she get mad at you a lot?”
“Yes,” Ayanami said to him. “She is passionate by nature.”
I hope she doesn’t get violent, Shinji thought; he avoided talking about his grades due to bad experiences. Not that most of his aroused jealousy in anyone.
“Anyway, I must go, Mother is calling me. I will talk to you later, Ichijou. Farewell,” Ayanami said solemnly.
“Farewell, Ayanami,” he said, then hung up and went back to simmering.
******************
Shinji stood frozen outside his uncle’s door; he’d gotten as far down the hallway as the door but he couldn’t bring himself to bother his aunt and uncle as they got ready for bed. The last time, he’d ended up walking in on his aunt naked and his uncle had spanked him what felt like forever.
Everyone was counting on him.
His uncle was best avoided; his aunt didn’t like him but didn’t hate him but he could tell his uncle resented him deeply. Why this was, when he was the brother of Shinji’s mother, Shinji didn’t know.
Unless Uncle and his mother had fallen out, but Shinji had never heard his uncle say anything bad about his mother.
“Shinji, I can hear you, come in,” his uncle said wearily and now Shinji wanted to die but he came in.
His uncle was in his usual green pajamas and his aunt in her matching blue ones. “You should get ready for bed,” his uncle said sternly.
“Yes, uncle,” he said and his uncle sighed.
“What do you want?” he asked.
For a moment, he was in a throne room, a beautiful stone hall carved to look like wood with ‘vines’ around the pillar and
flowing pillars shaped like laurel trees and other kinds as well. Green-eyed with long silver hair, the king was a giant, even among tall people and his wife a raven-haired giantess with eyes that saw right through Shinji. She knew his every secret with a glance.
And then they were gone and it was but his aunt and uncle, though he now realized his uncle had the same eye color as the king. And black hair turning grey and wrinkles Shinji had never noticed. In part because he avoided looking at his uncle.
“If you’re that tired, go to bed,” his uncle said sharply.
“Um, Saturday… woods… umm…,” Shinji began to babble.
His aunt blinked. “What?”
“Spit it out,” his uncle said harshly.
This made it harder to sit it out.
Shinji would never have managed to spit it out, except that now he had a flash of the King and the Queen; the Queen watched him cooly, while the King yelled at him angrily. But in the Queen… she was the Dancing Maiden’s mother.
Which reminded him of the Dancing Maiden.
Which reminded him of Ito Kameko dancing.
And he wanted to see that again.
“Can I have some guests, Saturday? We’ll go in the woods and won’t bother you; they just want to see some of it,” Shinji said in a rush.
“Okay,” his aunt said. “No sex, no alcohol, no nudity, clean up your mess.”
His uncle started to speak and she put a hand on his knee and Uncle Hayao frowned and fell silent.
“Horaki-san would never allow any of that,” Shinji said. “She’s our class representative and in charge. But I had to ask because it’s your land.”
“Never heard of her,” Uncle Hayao said, frowning, though he now put a hand on his wife’s hand on his knee.
“Is she a nice girl, Shinji?” Aunt Mariko asked softly.
“She has a father,” he said, then wished he’d never said that and feared what his own face must look like.
“Everyone has a father unless they come out of a testtube and even then there’s a father, it’s just unnatural,” Uncle Hayao said, grimacing.
“Our modified asparagus came out of a test tube at NERV,” Aunt Mariko said chidingly.
“That’s different, who cares about plant parents?” Uncle Hayao protested.
Aunt Mariko studied him and suddenly Shinji felt as if he was pinned under an all-seeing gaze. As if she could slice away all the layers of him to the tiny Shinji at the core, as if he was a living Russian hollow doll set. For a moment, he could see the Queen and he felt music. But he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, as his Aunt looked perceptive and so did the Queen, yet you couldn’t read their judgment of what they saw.
“Peace, Hayao,” she said softly to her husband. “It’s okay, Shinji. I will buy you some soda to take with you; you can use the blue cooler.”
“Really? Thank you,” Shinji said, bowing deeply.
Then he fled as soon as he could.
****************
The week went by in a blur of Aida bouncing off the walls and lunch trades and music trades with Ayanami. She’d passed her test and now her classmate was busy being cranky. So Shinji had sent her his best advice on how to hide from angry people.
It was the least he could do.
Horaki had extensively interrogated him on forest conditions and organized a list of who brought what supplies.
Shinji wondered if bringing so much was a good idea as it was a fair distance to haul things and how was everyone going to get it all to his house, anyway?
The answer turned out to be a pickup truck driven by Horaki’s father, crammed full of kids in the back and the supplies. Shinji wasn’t sure where his Uncle was, but Aunt Mariko came out and talked briefly to Horaki’s father, and then Aunt Mariko went inside and Horaki-san drove off and now Shinji was alone with… a bunch of people.
Which to his surprise included Kaji-sensei, who roared up as Horaki tried to get everyone organized. He had Takino-sensei with him and they were in t-shirts and shorts and Shinji felt strange seeing teachers so casual.
“We’re here to chaperone!” Takino-sensei said and one of the other boys groaned, so she stuck out her tongue at him. “Horaki-san invited us.”
There was a lot of grumbling, but Aida said, “No, no, this is good, if we have proof of alien visitors here, it’ll be better to have adult witnesses.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Suzuhara said, then took the cooler from Shinji. “I’ll take that, since you have a cello to haul.”
“Thank you,” Shinji said.
The stars were singing a cheerful tune tonight, but Shinji was disappointed to see Kameko in her usual outfit, not the dress, hair down. He’d hoped…
But he was used to squashed hopes and she probably was too embarrassed to dance in front of everyone.
Hasegawa lurked near him, then suddenly said, “Thank you for inviting us, Shinji.”
Aida had… everyone had invited themselves, but Shinji said, “Thank you for coming, Hasegawa-san.”
She smiled brightly.
Horaki glanced at Takino-sensei, then said, “I thought you’d said you weren’t coming, sensei.” Her voice was hesitant.
“We would have had thirteen, which is an unlucky number,” Kaji-sensei said. “In English. So I invited her to make it a lucky fourteen.”
Just for a moment, Shinji got a flash of a large group of short people but it faded as if something had driven it away. He rubbed his forehead and told himself not to daydream when he had guests.
Horaki got a call, looked at her phone, visibly deleted a message, and grimaced. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Now we’ll all be picked off one by one in the woods by the monster for drinking and using drugs and having sex and I’ll have to kill the monster,” Takino-sensei said cheerfully.
“There’s no such thing as monsters,” Horaki said, sighing. “Unless stupid family members count.”
“They totally count,” Takino-sensei said, shaking her head. “My sister is really loud and obnoxious.”
Most of the students froze at the idea of someone Takino-sensei considered loud and obnoxious.
Aida quickly typed a message into his phone, then said, “Let’s go!” He took off running and everyone else trailed after him.
******************
“Ken, you’re like a brother to me, but you suck at running,” Suzuhara said to him amiably as he carried Aida.
“I’ll always have your back,” Aida said to Suzuhara’s back.
This caused some laughter and Aida frowned. “You know what I mean!”
Shinji walked up the slope, hoping he could find the cave again. Hasegawa ambled along next to him. He kept noticing Ito looked like something terrible would happen, while Kubo lurked next to her, looking alternately cheerful and worried.
“She won’t tell anyone why she’s so down,” Hasegawa whispered to Shinji. “I’m her best friend and she won’t tell me anything,” she continued, sounding frustrated.
“You have a nice basket,” he said lamely, not knowing how to respond.
She had a slightly fancy wicker basket; Shinji could smell something tasty in it.
“I made it,” she said proudly. “The basket and the food.” She now showed it off to everyone, who looked impressed. “I do woodworking in the club.”
“She made me a very nice chair for my desk,” Ito said, now brightening up a little. “Thanks, Emi.”
“You’re welcome, Kameko,” Hasegawa said warmly to her.
Shinji suddenly felt depressed he wasn’t on a first name basis with anyone. He’d never cared but then he’d never noticed.
“What’s wrong?” Hasegawa whispered.
“Nothing, just worried that everything will go well,” he lied. He was good at this lie.
She nodded. “It’ll be fine,” she whispered.
Shinji now noticed Kubo covertly giving him a thumbs up and had no idea why at all.
“We should have a snark hunt after this,” Kubo said to Kaji-sensei.
“But what if it’s a boojum?” he said cheerfully.
Kubo stared at him blankly, and only Horaki and Takino-sensei laughed. Then Horaki looked embarrassed; nothing in the universe could embarrass Takino-sensei, who now stumbled into a tree and continued to laugh even as she nearly fell down.
“How deep is this cave?” Kaji-sensei asked curiously.
“I don’t know,” Kubo said thoughtfully. “We didn’t have much of a light but I brought a lantern.”
“I’ll go in first, just in case there is a bear or something,” Kaji-sensei said.
“A bear?” Horaki said, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“There’s no wildlife bigger than squirrels,” Shinji said, though now he was nervous and he’d bumped into Hasegawa four times but she didn’t seem to notice or maybe didn’t care but surely she’d care.
“Kaji is very cautious,” Takino-sensei said, then began to laugh.
“I can be cautious if I want,” Kaji-sensei said amiably. He got the lantern when they reached it and went in, shining the light around; the cave went back about fifty feet and then you could see a well carved and shaped hallway with rectangular walls and a floor carved into a simple repeating diamond pattern. Everyone’s breath caught at the sight of it, staring in from the entrance.
“Wow, it must be a secret old alien base!” Aida said excitedly. “Put me down, Touji.”
Touji did so, but Kubo prevented him rushing in. “Hold on, let him make sure it’s safe.”
Kaji-sensei said, “Hmm, just three rooms, but someone carried off everything. There’s some art and more writing, though.”
They soon all were milling around with flashlights and lanterns; there were pictures of tall, slender people carved into the stone, though some looked more muscular, all rather pretty or handsome, wearing archaic clothing that looked medieval European to the kids. One wall had a picture of fourteen men and women, seven of each, clustered around two who were clearly a King and a Queen; they were not the ones from Shinji’s dream but he felt he almost knew who they were.
One of them… he had a tiara on his brow and long robes; a few flecks of green paint clung to them. He looked wise and kind to Shinji and Shinji felt he’d seen the man before,
somehow. The man pinned his cloak with a flower Shinji did not know and he held a cup which he offered to the viewer; the woman next to him held out a tray of bread and looked sleepy. “Does anyone know this flower?” Shinji asked.
Horaki came over, then paused and studied the King on his throne, touching his ‘face’ engraved into the stone. A great eagle perched above him on the top of the high-backed throne and she touched it as well, then turned to the flower. “That’s a pretty flower.” She concentrated as if by an act of will, she could know what it was.
Kaji-sensei turned, then stared for a few seconds at the flower. “I’m afraid I don’t know it either,” he said, continuing to look.
Hasegawa studied him, then the woman with him. “They must be the King’s butler and… I’m not sure of the word. In charge of hospitality.”
“I like this one,” Touji said, pointing to a man in armor at one end; he was holding a beautiful woman’s hand as she did a dance step. “He looks badass.”
“I like his wife,” Ito said softly, then tried to do the step, then froze as everyone looked at her.
“The Royal Champion,” Horaki said. “He looks strong.” She studied the dance step and tried to duplicate it but was worse than Ito.
Now everyone crowded around it, picking favorites and arguing which character was cooler, as if they hadn’t just seen this for the first time shortly before.
“If she’s married to him, it’s probably a ninja kick,” Takino-sensei said dismissively. She executed a snap kick. “They likely go kick ass together.”
“I don’t think she fights,” Ito said hesitantly.
“Maybe she’s the king and queen’s daughter, who they married to a strong knight to protect her,” Hasegawa speculated.
“She’s a dancer,” Ito said. “I have… I can tell.” She sighed.
“You’re a good dancer,” Shinji said and now Ito turned red.
“Dance for us,” Aida said. “I’ll dance too if you want.”
“Ichijou and I are armed and dangerous,” Kubo said, pointing to the instruments they’d left in the cave entrance.
“And I will sing,” Takino-sensei said excitedly.
“No,” Kaji-sensei said flatly.
“But…”
“No,” he repeated and she sighed, then grumbled and leaned on the wall.
“Someone’s sleeping on the couch,” she muttered, staring at the floor, her purse banging into the wall now.
“I’ve never danced with everyone looking,” Ito squeaked.
“They’ll be impressed,” Kubo said reassuringly to her.
Distantly, an eagle cried out, surprising them all. “I didn’t think they were nocturnal,” Horaki said, blinking.
“He’s looking for his relative,” Aida joked, pointing to the carving and everyone laughed.
Shinji and Kubo now got their instruments and sat down to play. Shinji then stood, then frowned, wishing he’d brought a chair; he ended up sitting on a cooler.
Everyone found somewhere to sit; Hasegawa sat down by Shinji on the floor, her back against an engraved forest.
Ito was just about to dance when Aida suddenly said, “You know, this may be the best night of my whole life. This *has* to be aliens or everyone would look Japanese!”
“Good luck, man,” Suzuhara said to him, and they fistbumped as they sat down.
Shinji had an idea; he put on a viola tune from Ayanami and he and Kubo accompanied it; another guy from the music club sighed; he was a violinist but hadn’t thought to bring it.
Ito danced hesitantly but the lively music gave her wings and soon she moved freely; her moves weren’t perfect but it matched well and she grew more confident. Everyone stared; only Hasegawa seemed unsurprised. She whispered to Shinji, “You’re really good,” and he smiled and nodded to her.
He could see the Dancing Maiden dancing for a collection of guests at her father’s hall, the King and Queen heading up a feast and all joyful and gay. The world might be torn by sorrow elsewhere, but here, here all was good.
And so it would be forgotten until now, a quiet moment not part of any great saga, but they remembered. Shinji knew somehow they would always remember.
And he would always remember this.
******************
It was only on the second dance that one of the girls gasped and pointed at the picture.
The armored man’s wife was dancing; somehow the stone carving was moving around on the surface of the wall, dancing as Ito did, the dance in perfection but timed to her movements and everyone stared at it.
Shinji glanced at his soda but surely Aunt Mariko wouldn’t spike the soda. He would have thought it his fanciful imagination but everyone else saw it too.
In fact, all the carved figures were moving a little and now watching the dancer, who now dragged her husband over to dance with her.
Ito now suddenly grabbed Suzuhara and dragged him into dancing with her, trying to match the figures on the wall as everyone stared, eyes wide. Suzuhara stumbled around at first but soon got it and now Shinji could hear music outside, accompanying their tune; the stars were singing and the light of the lanterns and flashlights flickered across the walls in constantly changing pools of light, of gold and silver, mixing and mingling.
Pretty soon, everyone was dancing except for Kubo and Shinji, who played on; Kubo’s eyes were wide and Shinji expected his were too. Aida was dancing with Horaki and looked utterly ecstatic. It was crowded and the air was heavy but Shinji could smell sweet perfumes and now… now he could hear a viola and he saw the blue-haired maiden, half real and half not, playing along with himself and Kubo; she wore a blue blouse and a knee-length skirt and on her right hand blazed her ring.
Aida, Horaki, Ito, and Suzuhara all started and looked around, while everyone else danced on, though they soon resumed their dancing.
Kaji-sensei was watching him for some reason, looking thoughtful, which worried Shinji; attention was basically a bad thing. It was best to pass through life unnoticed.
She plays as beautifully as Ayanami, Shinji thought, then decided he was probably imagining this woman with a viola because he kept wondering what Ayanami looked like.
The dancing seemed to go on forever; Shinji was stunned when Takino-sensei said to him, “You should take a break; I’ll play.”
The idea of letting her touch his cello made Shinji very nervous but he wasn’t good at saying no. “Be gentle,” he mumbled, handing his cello over.
“I am the very soul of gentility,” she said grandly.
Kaji-sensei laughed and now got a soda.
“SHUT UP! I am gentle and elegant!” Takino-sensei shouted.
This caused everyone to laugh until she glared at them.
Then she began to play; she was not up to Shinji’s level but she was acceptable; Shinji relaxed a little and got a soda and listened to the music, eyes closed, and wondered what on Earth could be going on with the wall carvings. Maybe it was alien technology.
Was it really safe to be dancing in some ancient alien facility?
He could see the Dancing Maiden in his mind’s eye; she was dancing with the armored man from the wall; his armor was golden and he laughed for joy as they danced and she smiled happily and she was two women at once, herself and the man’s wife, the woman on the wall. And yet they were also Ito and Suzuhara, reflections and shadows of each other and it made Shinji’s head spin.
“Wake up,” Hasegawa said gently, shaking his shoulder.
Shinji started and opened his eyes; she was leaning over him in such a way that he could see down her blouse though there wasn’t a lot to see but he made himself look up before he could get killed. She was smiling at him and he didn’t want to end that.
“Hey, would you, umm…” Now she suddenly looked very nervous.
He sipped his soda and kept his eyes on her face. He could see Horaki dancing with Kaji-sensei now and looking embarrassed as Kaji-sensei said something that made his face amused. There was something… was there an eagle on Horaki’s head? Obviously my imagination out of control again, Shinji thought.
Hasegawa, at least, was just Hasegawa. He saw how nervous she was and he knew that feeling well. “Do you need me to do something?” he asked.
“Dance with me,” she said urgently and he now danced with her, though neither of them knew quite what they were doing; Shinji tried to copy Suzuhara and Ito; Ito was smiling brightly now and Shinji was glad; he hadn’t liked seeing her so worried.
Ito looked beautiful as she danced; it was like she became the Dancing Maiden and the Dancing Maiden was beautiful beyond measure. Suzuhara looked stronger and Horaki wiser and Aida more clever, as if everyone became more themselves here their better self.
Shinji spun Hasegawa around and she laughed happily and as they danced, he knew better how to dance; it was almost as if someone was dancing through him, that he was embodying a dance which already existed.
And then, suddenly, there was someone around… in… on… Hasegawa. Golden haired and blue eyed, a magnificent princess clad in green and blue silk, and upon her finger she wore a silver ring carved with a rune like one of the ones on the wall. She was older than Shinji but young for an adult and her eyes gleamed with joy. She was soft and had never known sorrow or pain, but this had made her gentle and friendly.
Shinji could see someone was upon him but he couldn’t tell who, just that in his mind’s eye, he himself wore finery of black and silver.
The more they danced, the easier it got, the wilder his imagination got, seeing everyone shadowed by people in his
mind’s eye, many of whom he’d never imagined before. The blue haired maiden looked realer now, smiling a small smile as she lost herself in her music, and she herself was overshadowed by another woman, the plate holder from the wall, the wife of the king’s cupbearer.
Shinji was excited and the world was utterly surreal now, layer upon layer, as if he was in many places at once with different groups of people in each, all stacked on each other, echoing each other. It was wonderful and strange and he did not know if he was awake or asleep.
But it felt good to be alive.
At some point, somehow Kaji-sensei took over Kubo’s guitar and now Shinji could see Ito dancing with Kubo and smiling at him and then somehow he got traded and now he was dancing with Ito and… had his clothing changed? The him that wasn’t him was different now, Shinji thought, though at this time he was nearly in a trance, letting his imagination pilot his body; it knew how to dance better than he did.
Ito’s eyes were wide but her lips were smiling and she looked relaxed other than her eyes. “Do I look weird?” Shinji asked.
“I…you… no, you look fine, Ichijou,” she said but she still… was she seeing something? He looked down at himself but he looked normal other than not being him, exactly.
But that felt normal too.
The runes on the wall shone softly with silver light that brightened into gold and faded back into silver. They bathed the cave in their glow. Though Shinji was sure he had to be imagining it. Could any of this be real? Was he really dancing with a beautiful girl, surrounded by others?
It couldn’t be real but he wanted it to be.
“You dance wonderfully,” he said and now they dipped low, then rose back up and quickstepped forward, circling the mass of people trying to dance in the middle; many of them clearly knew little of dancing but enjoyed closeness to others.
Shinji greatly enjoyed being close to Ito.
And then he saw the blue-haired maiden take a phone call and the viola music stopped as she stopped playing; she didn’t look pleased but she now made an odd gesture to Shinji and faded away.
Everything became more real now, more kids dancing to a cello and a guitar in a strange underground room and less of a surreal dreamland of stacked realities to Shinji. He could still see some of it but everyone seemed able to tell something had changed if not quite sure what. Ito sighed, but then smiled agai at Shinji. “I felt something terrible was going to happen but I guess it’s going to be okay,” she whispered to him.
“As long as Takino-sensei doesn’t break my cello, it’ll be okay,” he said, worried, then spun her around Horaki and
Suzuhara, who were dancing together; Horaki looked somewhat embarrassed still, and Shinji wondered what was wrong.
“I’m sure… I can’t lie,” she squeaked. “But she seems to be gentle enough.”
Her playing was vigorous but more… controlled… than Shinji was used to from her.
Kubo now had to take the guitar back over as Kaji-sensei got a call and had to go outside.
“And she’s good at it, right?” Ito said uncertainly, her eyes shining in the lantern light.
“She’s okay,” Shinji said. “She clearly hasn’t done it in a while.”
Ito winced and Shinji worried he’d been too honest.
“But it lets you dance too, right?” Ito said weakly.
“I like dancing with you,” Shinji confessed and now she smiled brightly as he spun her about. They moved into a box step with a series of spins and turns. It came to him so easily now.
And the Dancing Maiden was strong in her. Ito moved lightly as if she always danced in caves now and joy lit her face and it made Shinji feel alive, feel like a normal boy.
“I’m sorry, kids, but the party’s over,” Kaji-sensei said. “Horaki’s dad is waiting down on the farm and your parents will kill me if we stay out longer.”
“Oh man, my parents aren’t even here, I have to stay with my aunt and uncle,” Kensuke grumbled.
“Thanks for dancing with me,” Ito said softly to Shinji.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s too bad there’s no dance club; you’d be president.”
She turned red and smiled goofily.
“See, I didn’t kill your baby,” Takino-sensei said chidingly to Shinji, passing him his cello. “Man, I haven’t played since high school. But it was fun.”
“Wow, you are good for being so rusty,” Kubo said to her.
“Well, my generation may not be as big of geniuses as you all but we are better than those before us,” Takino-sensei said. “But I recognized that my real genius was hitting people.” She paused. “Teaching English.”
Aida began to laugh hysterically and she cheerfully gave him the finger.
Kaji-sensei now kissed her, half-laughing and then said, “Okay, pack everything up, we’re out of here.”
“Man, Dad is going to have a cow,” Aida said. “He’ll have to let me come home after this.” He looked satisfied.
Suzuhara whispered to him and suddenly Aida looked very embarrassed. Then Suzuhara kissed Ito’s hand and she turned red and Horaki glared at them both. “You’re a hell of a dancer. You should think about being a cheerleader next year.”
Ito’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “Really?”
“Yeah, seriously,” he said. “You’d need to probably build your leg strength some, but man, you move like a dream.”
“Don’t go hitting on every woman in sight!” Horaki said irritably, shaking her paper fan at him. Shinji blinked; he hadn’t even seen her bring it.
So now Suzuhara took her hand and kissed it. “You dance good too,” he said and Horaki’s eyes crossed.
“Enough flirting, we need to get moving so I don’t get my pay docked AGAIN,” Takino-sensei said.
Knowing she wasn’t as invulnerable to consequences as it seemed reassured Shinji just a little that the universe could be a just place.
With the music over, the carvings on the walls neither glowed nor moved and everything had returned entirely to normal reality. But the memory lingered in Shinji’s mind as he headed out of the cave and back to the farm.
*****************
“Thank you for inviting us,” Hasegawa said to Shinji as everyone loaded into the pickup truck. Shinji wondered how many different cars Horaki’s father had; he must be pretty loaded, Shinji thought.
Really, he hadn’t invited them; they’d invited themselves.
But he’d enjoyed having a little adventure, and the dance… it was like a dream come to life and he wanted to do it again.
“Thank you for coming,” Shinji said; politeness mattered.
It avoided trouble.
“Either kiss him or get in the truck!,” Suzuhara shouted.
Shinji and Hasegawa both turned red now and she said quickly, “I’ll see you Monday!” Then she fled and got into the truck and it pulled out with her waving to him.
Why would she kiss me, Shinji wondered. Or maybe the hand kissing thing… should I have done that with the girls I danced with?
He didn’t know or even who to ask.
Then his uncle took him and smelled his breath for some reason. Uncle Hayao said, “Dammit,” and handed a 1000 yen bill to his wife, who looked smug.
I don’t get it, Shinji thought but decided to sleep.
He dreamed of dancing with the Dancing Maiden in the great stone hall once more.
******************
But he also dreamed of a battlefield and dead people everywhere and clouds of fog and steam that obscured sight and a sky with no moon, only stars and hideous grey-skinned human-like monsters who were slaughtering everyone and then, he saw it, the great dragon and its eyes caught him and he could not escape.
Before he could meet his doom, though, he was woken by banging on his door and his uncle said, “Shinji, I don’t know what you did this time but people from NERV are here to see you.”
Shinji panicked. “Coming,” he said, but once he was dressed, he went out the window, slipped around the side of the house and peaked. There were two vans in the driveway, both black with NERV painted on it in white and a silver leaf logo surrounded by words: ‘Day Shall Come Again’.
He’d blown things somehow; they had come for him and that couldn’t be good. His father wouldn’t just send people
without a call or something and otherwise… Probably NERV had decided they’d seen too much and now was going to grab them all.
Though his father…
He couldn’t count on his father. Not the man who sent him away.
He managed to slip to the fields and headed for the woods, consumed by panic, not rational thought. In his mind, he was half here and half fleeing strange inhuman grey-skinned creatures who were trying to hunt him down, who had killed his father and destroyed his home.
Either way, he was in trouble.
****************
He had several good hiding places in the woods; he soon found himself holed up in one as his panic faded and calm returned; people kept calling him but he ignored them, afraid to give his position away by answering.
As sweet reason reasserted itself, though, he now wondered if he’d run for nothing. They might have just wanted to know about the place; it wasn’t like they’d put armed guards around the house.
But if he went back now, he’d *definitely* be in trouble. Uncle will kill me, he thought.
His phone rang again; he wasn’t sure if it was even safe to see who it was.
Was it safe to use his phone to listen to music?
His stomach was grumbling and he distantly heard a dog howl. Or a wolf but they rarely got wolves around here any more; he’d heard that during the Long Winter, wolves had actually invaded the village; they’d come down out of the mountains.
But he’d never actually seen a wolf; a few years ago, he had seen a poor cow that got killed; the memory turned his stomach and reminded him he hadn’t eaten.
His phone rang again, but he couldn’t answer.
I am in so much trouble, he thought. But he didn’t know what to do to avoid getting in trouble. The longer he stayed, the more trouble; either his Uncle would punish him or NERV would or worse, both.
It was slowly getting warmer, though it would never really get too hot, not even in July, not now. Shinji writhed, caught between fear and other fears. He alternately regretted running, regretted running without any food, and regretted having ever gone to the woods and set all this in motion.
Several times, he nearly went back, but each time, his fear of the inevitable punishment by his uncle kept him from returning.
And some dog kept howling in the distance. Closer now, which worried him more.
Almost any of Shinji’s classmates would have just gone back by now, but Shinji’s fears were stronger. He knew his uncle was looking for an excuse to bite his head off.
And now he’d given him one. Even if NERV wasn’t angry, his uncle would be wroth.
The king’s men were after him; he could feel it, felt it deep. His mind kept drifting to the things he dreamed of most and all of them included times of being hunted, whether by kings or monsters, or both, the nightmare lord of the North. His mind, with nothing to do but drift, found it hard to avoid drifting into those fancies and at times, he nearly fled his hiding place in a panic, afraid the… creatures… whatever they were called… were after him.
“You dumb kid!” a man shouted in the distance. “Why’d you have to go running off like a moron? Your uncle is going to whip you but I’m gonna whip you first!” Shinji didn’t know the voice but he could tell the man was angry.
“You dumbass!” someone shouted but then talked more softly.
There was a good chance they’d miss the little hollow like Shinji had at times missed it himself and he had plenty of greenery. He’d turned off his phone so it wouldn’t ring and give his position away and he crouched under bushes, now knowing that if he got found, he’d get whipped.
He wished he hadn’t run.
He wished he’d jumped on his bike and pedaled; then he would be further away and he could go get food.
He wished he had food.
He wished his father hadn’t sent him away.
Surely this wasn’t all to take him back; sometimes he dreamed of his father welcoming him home. But more often he dreamed he’d never see him again or his father would require him to do something impossible like steal the President of the USA’s desk.
“Fine, they won’t let me whoop you but you are going to get you ass busted by your uncle if you don’t come now!” the voice shouted closer.
Shinji felt his blood pound, his mind focused on them getting closer and his imminent beating.
“We’re not going to whip you,” a woman shouted. “We just need to talk to you about your discovery.”
He wanted to believe that but Shinji didn’t trust change, new things, or NERV. Or his father.
Maybe I’m being an idiot, he thought.
But they could be lying to lure me out.
He felt sick and hungry and it was hard to think. He didn’t look quite right and this reminded him of too many unpleasant dreams.
For a moment, he thought his right hand was gone.
He heard more howling and men grumbling and they were even closer and he suddenly worried a wolf would eat him before he could get out of here.
And then the softest of whispers. ‘ichijou’. It was Ayanami Rei but how could he hear her voice when his phone was off?
He looked and saw the blue haired maiden, kneeling by him, looking spectral, as if he saw her only in his imagination, not in reality. She was not here, but here. ~ichijou~, she said and tried to touch him; he got a shiver but her hand went through him.
“Ayanami?” he whispered. This was how she’d seen him in the cave but how could she do this? He’d thought he was imagining her like he’d done with other things before. Was the Dancing Maiden real? The strange dreams?
~you should go home, they won’t hurt you,~ Ayanami said softly. ~they only want to know about the cave.~
“My uncle is going to punish me,” Shinji said but now he felt faintly ridiculous; in Ayanami’s presence, his fears fled; he could see the light of her ring, a silvery light, and now he felt calmer.
Wait, how did Ayanami even know about NERV being here? Shinji had the feeling of a fly who has only now realized he’s in a web. “How do you know about NERV being here?” he asked.
The men drew closer and the urge to run returned but now Ayanami said, ~i work for nerv, ichijou. so does mother. i can’t say more.~
How… “How are we even talking?” he asked. Was this some kind of NERV wonder tech? He knew they’d built better spaceships, augmented plants, revived dead species…
His mother had died in one of their experiments.
~special nerv technology~, she told him.
He figured. Man, this was kind of incredible; despite his fear of a beating, he was impressed. But then… “Why did you come see me the first time? Did NERV want you to watch me?”
~it is complicated; it was an experiment which led me to you~, she said.
“Ichijou, are you there?” the second man said. “You need to come home, your aunt is worried and we need to talk to you.”
Shinji felt he’d screwed up. “My uncle is going to kill me,” he whispered.
~i will ensure he does not hurt you~, she said with an absolute assurance. He envied her that, and she was so pretty, if not as pretty as the dancing maiden.
He suddenly remembered Ito dancing and turned a little red; she’d been so beautiful and it had been fun to dance with her and Hasegawa. Who had seemed to be that beautiful blond princess.
And yet he felt as if something bad had happened to said princess.
He prayed he wasn’t screwing up or going mad. How could Ayanami possibly project herself like this? How did she find him?
“I’m here,” he shouted and prayed this wouldn’t lead to something horrible.
Too horrible.
******************
“I’m sorry, Dr. Scott, I don’t know what’s wrong with this boy but he’s never been very cooperative or easy to deal with,” Uncle Hayao was saying to a brown haired European of middling height. They were speaking in English; Shinji was good enough to follow it easily as the NERV men escorted him into the living room. He could hear his aunt in the kitchen, maybe some others as well, and the living room had three adults in casual clothing suitable for tromping around the woods and three soldiers.
“I have a daughter; I know how teenagers are,” Dr. Scott said. Shinji guessed he was in his late thirties or early forties. “She spends all her time making art.” He sighed. “Admittedly, she’s really great and will probably be famous one day but her grades could be *much* better.”
“Same for Shinji; Yui was a genius and he hardly tries,” Uncle Hayao said.
“Sir, we have the boy,” one of the four people with Shinji said; they were all Japanese men; most of the people in the room were Japanese, though there was one white female soldier and one white woman who was not a soldier.
Shinji could feel the angry glare at the back of his head from the one who had been angry to have to search for him and he now cringed as his uncle glared at him.
I have been such an idiot, he felt.
Ayanami had left to go talk to someone; he’d feel better if she was here.
If he hadn’t imagined her.
But the calls had to be real; others had heard him play the viola recordings.
Maybe I’m insane, he thought, and that’s why Father sent me away.
It seemed he’d gotten more prone to imagining things lately and he didn’t know why.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Dr. Scott said kindly; he had blue-grey eyes and Shinji noticed his hands looked so soft; even Shinji’s hands were rougher than his from years of chores. He had a strong accent, American, maybe. But his Japanese was good. “I’m Dr. Walter Scott,” he began.
Wasn’t there… Shinji was sure he knew that name from somewhere.
“I am going to give you a whipping,” Uncle Hayao said, scowling. “For stupidly running away and causing so much trouble. What is wrong with you, boy? Your mother never pulled this kind of… thing.”
Shinji could see the King… the bad king who didn’t like him… on his uncle for a moment. But as usual when he was
engaged with people, it was only a flicker of his imagination. The urge to flee was strong.
“Later,” Dr. Scott said, making a hand gesture Shinji didn’t understand and stepping forward. “Shinji, we need to talk about that place you found.”
“Is everyone in trouble?” Shinji asked weakly.
“Not with us,” Dr. Scott said kindly, but Uncle Hayao continued to gaze angrily at Shinji. “Let’s go to your room so we can talk in private.”
He plugged his phone into a power cord which ran to Shinji’s wall socket, then recorded the conversation and they talked for what felt like an incredibly long time as Shinji’s stomach tried to devour him to sustain itself. The man was gentle in tone but relentless, digging every little bit about the place out of Shinji.
He had to take a call briefly from someone named ‘Fuyutsuki’; it was harder for Shinji to follow the German but it was apparently a progress report.
Then he turned back to Shinji. “That was my boss, Professor Fuyutsuki; he’s the head of NERV’s research wing. I am the head of linguistics, and I will be studying what you found to see if it’s authentic.”
“I wouldn’t be stupid enough to make a fake,” Shinji protested.
“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “But it’s not impossible this is not really what we think it is.”
“Is it really aliens?” Shinji said weakly.
“I can’t talk about that yet,” he said to Shinji. “Did anything unusual happen during the dance?”
Shinji was afraid the man would think he was crazy if he told him.
Afraid that he was crazy.
“Strange things can happen in these places,” Dr. Scott said gently, then waited, sitting at Shinji’s desk while Shinji sat on his bed.
The bedroom was simply furnished with a single bed with blue sheets, a desk with a wooden chair, a dresser drawers and a closet with a sliding door which was full of sheets, towels, clothing, and what few knick-nacks Shinji possessed.
Shinji would have claimed to see nothing but now he noticed Dr. Scott wore a silver ring set with a topaz carved into one of the runes he’d seen in the cave. It seemed to almost glow in the light of his ceiling lamp. It reminded him of Ayanami’s ring, though that was golden.
“Who made your ring?” he asked softly.
“Your father,” Dr. Scott said and Shinji froze.
Had he made Ayanami’s ring? Something about them seemed similar.
“What did you see?” Dr. Scott asked him again, his voice firm and commanding like Shinji’s dim memories of his father. For one long moment, Shinji wondered if this somehow was his father, but that was impossible. But as he gazed at Shinji, Shinji couldn’t hide the truth.
“The music and the dancing made the runes glow and the…” Even now Shinji could barely say it.
“Go on,” Dr. Scott said calmly.
“The carvings seemed to move,” Shinji said softly. “I could see things.”
“What things?” Dr. Scott asked, now a little more eager.
“My imagination was more vivid than usual.” He was still afraid to sound crazy if he said more.
But maybe it was something like however Ayanami could just project herself around the world somehow.
What kind of crazy technology did NERV have now?
“How?” he asked.
His eyes, Shinji couldn’t look away from his eyes. “Like everyone was someone else. Sort of; like seeing a transparency,” he continued. “Or a shadow but made of light.”
Dr. Scott nodded, as if he expected this. “Like things you’ve seen in dreams?”
“Yes,” Shinji said, now leaning forward. “I… is this common?”
“It is rare, but you are not alone. My daughter has very vivid dreams which she then paints or sculpts,” Dr. Scott said, smiling for some reason. “Hold on.”
He now fumbled with his phone for several minutes and finally called up a slide show of images. Some of them, Shinji didn’t know but they felt like something he could dream. And one of them…
A maiden danced in blue upon a hill with a one handed man and their young child, a boy with dark hair like his father. They wore archaic clothing and the land was hilly with scattered trees.
The Dancing Maiden.
“I know her,” Shinji said softly.
Several others, he recognized as well, places, people, some of the wall figures done as paintings.
He felt a little jealous her art was so good; he was barely above stick figures. “Does she do music?” he asked.
“She is a mediocre musician, though she tries. She has a decent singing voice but has not developed it,” Dr. Scott said, sounding regretful. “But really, I would rather she get her grades up in math, science, and the humanities, where she is consistently mediocre. Though she is better at languages.”
“Like you,” Shinji said softly, feeling envious.
“She could be better than me if she cared but she only cares about her art. And her friends.” Dr. Scott sighed and seemed less the man of power from before and more bewildered by things he didn’t understand.
Shinji wanted to meet her, to see if she dreamed his dreams, who she dreamed of being. If she knew who *he* was dreaming of being. “How can we dream the same things?” he asked.
“We don’t fully understand it but it seems like some people can tap into the collective unconscious.” He frowned. “I know, it sounds like insane hippie talk but we don’t have a better name and it’s mostly people of your generation.”
“I know my generation is different,” Shinji said hesitantly.
“My generation was noticeably different but you’re ahead of us as we were ahead of our parents,” Dr. Scott said, looking baffled again. “No one knows why. Evelyn can speak German
as if she was a native and she didn’t even try all that hard. It’s especially languages. I had a knack but when your generation grows up, you’ll outdo me.” He stared off into space for a little while. “But all we can give you is a world slowly spiraling away from the sun and a war with an enemy who we can’t even find.” He slumped now and Shinji felt guilty.
“It’s not your fault,” Shinji said weakly.
“Have you ever told anyone else about this?” Dr. Scott asked, straightening back up.
“No,” Shinji said. “I never talk about my dreams.” Not since it had gotten him beaten up as a kid. Suddenly it hit him. “Wait, you know my father…”
“Yes,” Dr. Scott said. “Only I know of those who came. It’s possible we may have to move you after this but probably this will not reveal your secret.”
“Why do I have to hide my family name? Wouldn’t anyone who is an enemy of Father notice I’m with his brother-in-law?” Shinji asked.
“They changed their family name as well,” Dr. Scott said. “To protect you.”
Shinji’s eyes widened.
“I know you and your uncle don’t get on well, but they have given up a lot for your sake,” Dr. Scott continued.
“Fortunately, Aida tried to impress his father instead of going to the media. This site must remain secret, though that is going to be hard.” He sighed. “So don’t talk about it on Twitter, FacePlace or anything else.”
“I’m not into that sort of thing,” Shinji said.
“Good,” Dr. Scott said, relieved. “You should call your friends Ito and Hasegawa. They have kept barraging me with messages asking if you are okay.”
Now Shinji wanted to just die.
Dr. Scott then yawned and looked embarrassed. “It’s 5 AM or so back home. I wish I could sleep but I can’t.” He sighed. “I will likely talk to you again soon but I need to talk to the rest of the others if they’ve been rounded up. We will likely be taking over the woods for a good while. You should get some food and check your messages.”
Shinji craved food and feared checking his messages.
******************
“I’m fine,” he said to Hasegawa for the fourth time. “I just… I guess I listened too much to conspiracy theories or something.”
“Everyone knew something went wrong but not what,” she said weakly.
He was in his room; they were on the phone with each other.
He wanted to ask if she ever dreamed of the blonde woman he’d seen her as, but he was afraid to ask; he knew he wasn’t alone but who else saw? He only knew Dr. Scott’s daughter for sure.
“I just panicked and now my uncle is probably going to punish me,” Shinji said, sighing. “How did anyone know?”
“They ended up talking to everyone about the walls and things and if we had seen you today. I think it was supposed to be subtle but it wasn’t and the news got around.” She sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unless Uncle sends me to Africa or something.” He grimaced.
“I… could he?” she asked nervously.
“I hope not.”
“I’d better let you go,” she said reluctantly. “See you later, okay?”
“Yes,” he said, then began making more calls.
************************
It could have been worse; he was grounded for a month and his uncle would have taken his phone but Dr. Scott told him NERV might want to call him, so Uncle Hayao had reluctantly left it in Shinji’s hands. And he got spanked, which he hated. That was for kids.
And his aunt lectured him *endlessly*.
Finally, the day ended, he fell asleep and he dreamed.
*******************
The Orcs were coming again.
They would not live long to regret this.
He lifted his sword and charged, shouting angrily, his black blade eager for slaughter and he took the first one in the heart before it could even finish cursing him. His shield blocked a second’s blade and he pushed it back then turned and carved open the third one’s chest. The fourth began to run but he now spitted the second one before it could flee, ran down the fourth and stabbed it in the back.
Then he cleaned his blade, leaning on a tree and breathing hard. This was going to be another long night.
***************
Hearing wolves howl made Shinji nervous. Or dogs. Either way, he really did not want them to show up when he was on a bike.
His fear drove him to school quickly, enabling him to be on time. To his surprise, Hasegawa was lurking by the school entrance and now jumped towards him as he came in; he nearly fell down but she caught him and lifted him up. “I’m sorry!” she said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “How are you?”
They began hustling to their classes. “I’m okay,” she said. “Umm, do you think this weekend…”
“I’m grounded for a month,” he said, frowning.
She sighed. “Okay. I guess we’ll still see each other here, though, right?” She sounded nervous.
“Of course,” he said. He wondered why she questioned this.
She relaxed now. “I’ll see you at lunch, then, we’d better sprint!”
And now they both ran off to their classes.
**************
“You got grounded? That’s totally bullshit,” Aida said to Shinji. “Dad thanked me for telling him, though I dunno if this will do more than get me a bigger Christmas present.” He sighed. “And we can’t talk about it.”
Those who had gone were all clustered together for lunch; they all wanted to talk about it and couldn’t talk to anyone else. Everyone was excitingly talking about it; it was the weirdest, coolest thing they’d ever seen. Shinji could tell most of them hadn’t seen everything but he wasn’t entirely sure who had for sure.
He wondered how much Dr. Scott had told them but wasn’t sure if he should ask.
“It’s really terrible. Kubo and Kameko want to go see Five Lucky Ducks and I do too but if I go alone, I’ll feel like a fifth wheel,” Hasegawa said to the two of them. Kubo and Kameko were nearby but not too near, busy talking to some of the others.
“I had this weird dream about being a midget the night after,” Aida said and everyone around them laughed. “I wouldn’t mind going with you, Hasegawa, if you want company.”
Shinji said, “I would go but I’m grounded.”
Hasegawa now looked very indecisive, a look Shinji knew well. He worked on the fried chicken she’d given him, along with rice he’d traded noodles to Horaki to get.
“Okay,” Hasegawa said reluctantly to Aida, looking slightly trapped.
“Cool,” he said and they began discussing details while Shinji ate and tried idly to see if he could see anything.
But he rarely had his fantasies when being with people and he felt only the faintest hints of things.
And it might not be good to monkey around with things he didn’t understand well, anyway.
The chicken was just so juicy. “How did you cook this?” he asked Hasegawa. “It’s so good.”
Her eyes lit up and they were soon discussing how to cook chicken.
Before lunch ended, Ito pulled him aside, around a nearby tree. “Did she actually ask you?” she asked softly.
“I’m grounded,” he said, and sighed.
“Why?” Ito said, looking confused and Shinji explained.
“I guess I dreamed of your doom,” she mumbled.
“What did you dream?” he asked her; he thought she’d heard the viola… maybe she was like him too.
“That we would somehow wake up a monster to come eat us all,” Ito said, looking embarrassed. “A really silly thing to be afraid of but it seemed so real. But Dragons only exist in faerie tales. And we were all going to a mountain in the dream. And we’d all turned super-deformed.” She laughed softly. “And had armor and swords and things.”
“Suzuhara might actually look good with a sword and armor,” Shinji said hesitantly.
“You know, I could see that,” she said, looking at Suzuhara.
Then Shinji remembered the pictures; he couldn’t think of any with super-deformed people unless you counted the kid.
“So there’s no way to get out of it?” Ito asked, frowning.
“Out… oh. No, if I tried, he’d probably ground me longer,” Shinji said.
She sighed. “How long?”
“A month.” It would feel like forever, he knew.
“I thought my parents were bad,” she said, frowning. Then she sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry, we all dragged you into it.”
“Not your fault,” Shinji said.
They went back to finish eating.
***************
Over the course of the week, lots of NERV people showed up and fenced off the woods and went into it; lots of people heard wolves but never actually saw any; Shinji also had to repeat his account to two more of Dr. Scott’s co-workers and was tired of telling it by the third time. He did his chores and practiced his music and suddenly felt confined.
It was worst that Friday when he had to sit in his room and try to go deaf to the noises from his aunt and uncle’s room. Normally he didn’t mind being alone on Friday but now he couldn’t leave the house for anything but school or chores and he was starting to feel confined.
His mind drifted in and out of fantasies, and a plethora of images came to him as he played. He could very dimly hear the stars outside; the house muffled them.
Suzuhara roused him briefly by sending a text bragging about how they’d won their last game before the break. Only now did Shinji’s mind register he was going to spend part of his summer vacation grounded. And they had tests next week before the break.
He was used to studying alone, but right now, he found it hard to focus.
Then he heard the house phone ring; it wasn’t for him or they’d call his cell. He tried to study and was doing math when his cell did ring to his surprise.
“Ichijou, can you help us with an experiment tomorrow night?” Dr. Scott asked.
“Yes, sir,” he told Dr. Scott. “If my Aunt and Uncle approve.”
“They said yes, though I don’t think your uncle is happy about it,” Dr. Scott said.
This increased Shinji’s desire to help. They laid out the plans and he went back to half-studying and half-drifting-off but now he had something to look forwards to.
*****************
Having troops and a fence around the woods made him nervous; having the whole group reassembled was a little reassuring. Hasegawa took him aside as they walked into the woods.
Then she didn’t say anything, just look at him nervously and fidget as they walked along. Shinji let her be, as he wasn’t the type to pry but even he eventually said, “What’s wrong?”
“I just… I wish you could have gone with us,” she said urgently.
“I’m grounded,” he said apologetically.
She sighed. “That’s ridiculous. Your uncle is a terrible person.”
“I know,” Shinji said. He hadn’t been grounded this long in *years*. Something had really set his uncle off even more than usual.
At times, he could see, just for a moment, the blonde princess around Hasegawa again; the image would appear if he wasn’t looking head on and vanish if he looked right at her; it left him with a faint feeling of vertigo. At times, his hands weren’t quite his own as he walked along, even rougher than his own and stronger looking.
He tried to push it away and it stopped. This never used to happen so much and it worried him.
“Don’t sneak away little lovebirds,” Takino-sensei said cheerfully, somehow sneaking up on them.
They both jumped and Hasegawa frantically said, “We’re not lovebirds! We’re just talking!” She looked over nervously at Shinji.
“You’re the lovebird,” Shinji said firmly.
Takino-sensei laughed cheerfully and a wolf howled distantly, so she now pretended to be the howling wolf. “Is it just me or have we heard a lot of wolf howls lately?”
“It’s not you, sensei, and it worries me,” Hasegawa said, stepping closer to Shinji. Again, for a moment, the blond princess was there, was her, and then it passed.
Shinji blinked, then said, “Well, with all these soldiers everywhere, we ought to be safe, right?”
Takino-sensei turned very serious. “Don’t worry, kids, you’re safe here with NERV on watch and us two here. NERV only sacrifices the elderly to its dark gods.” Shinji was confused to see a flicker of a wavy haired young man, maybe the same age as her but with ash-blonde hair, around her. But he was the size of a child but with adult features. He got the vertigo feeling again and pushed it away.
They both stared at her and she sighed. “That was a joke.”
Shinji forced himself to laugh, while Hasegawa just buried her face in her hands.
She sighed. “I will find someone who appreciates my art.” Then she went off to harass some of the others.
Shinji hoped he wouldn’t find a way to get in more trouble.
*****************
At the cave, he was surprised to see Ayanami, wearing casual clothing, a nice green blouse and an ankle-length skirt with a silver rose necklace. “Good to see you again,” she said.
Hasegawa eyed her like she was evil incarnate for some reason, then said, “I’m Hasegawa Emi,” and shook Ayanami’s hand.
“She’s one of my friends from school,” Shinji said, then realized he had people he could call friends.
And that was a strange feeling.
“It is nice to meet you,” Ayanami said with her cool voice that made it hard to tell if she actually was pleased or not.
Dr. Scott was here, along with his daughter, who looked half-asleep and was chugging a coke when Dr. Scott herded her over to Shinji. Evelyn Scott was taller than Shinji and a little pale but her hands were as rough as his and had blue-grey eyes and long brown hair that ran nearly down to her buttocks; she was middling in build and wore denim pants and a white t-shirt with green letters proclaiming ‘Geofront Treekeepers’. Her first effort to shake Shinji’s hand missed and put her hand on his chest, so she tried again and did so. Her father said, “This is my daughter, Evelyn, who did the paintings you saw.”
Evelyn smiled, then yawned. “I’m sorry, I just flew in and it’s 2 AM back home right now, I think.”
Shinji wanted to ask about her dreams but was afraid to do so in front of everyone else. “You’re a wonderful artist,” he said sincerely.
“Thanks, Dad tells me you’re a great musician,” she said, trying to smile and yawning instead.
Hasegawa eyed her warily and asked, “What medium? I do woodworking.” She showed off her wicker basket.
“Wow, that’s good. I can’t do much with wood,” Evelyn Scott said regretfully. “But I am good with painting, drawing, and sculpture.”
“I do pottery too but I’m not as good.”
They were soon discussing art, while Shinji listened quietly and watched everyone mill around. Dr. Scott had flitted off to talk to the teachers.
There were weird looking electronic gizmos everywhere and cameras and they’d set up a computer in the antechamber, with some technicians studying it. Aida was busy harassing every technician in sight with questions about the equipment and looked utterly ecstatic. At times, there was a flicker of a red-haired man around him, much taller and more handsome than Aida, with piercing eyes.
Shinji now realized Ayanami had been standing here with them, listening quietly as Evelyn Scott and Hasegawa talked art shop. “Hey,” he said awkwardly to her.
She wasn’t tired at all, he realized. “You haven’t been here all week, have you?”
“I had school, so I flew here with Evelyn on the special shuttle,” Ayanami said.
“What makes it special?” Shinji asked curiously.
“It’s supersonic,” she said. “NERV uses it for situations where someone has to be moved around the world very quickly; there’s only two, as that isn’t too common, yet.”
“Yet?” Shinji asked.
“One day the enemy will return and we must be ready,” she said calmly as if not speaking of alien invasion.
Evelyn yawned. “I’m sorry, we got caught up in talking about art. You two must be bored.”
“I was observing everyone before we begin,” Ayanami said.
“I’m sorry, what exactly are we going to do?” Hasegawa asked. “Is your father here too, Ayanami?”
“My parents are dead,” she said softly and now Hasegawa looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” Hasegawa said. “I didn’t know.” She stared uncomfortably at the floor now.
“And my parents too,” Shinji said; it was the official story, and he was pretty sure his mother really was dead. Though at times, he had nightmares where she’d faked it to get rid of him.
Now Hasegawa looked ready to just die. “I should see if Kameko is okay,” she mumbled.
“I guess we’re both lucky,” Evelyn Scott said to Hasegawa. “It’s okay, you don’t have to go.”
Shinji felt a pang of sympathy for Hasegawa; he did that sort of thing often enough himself and his instinct was to flee too.
“We are going to recreate your party so we can study it,” Ayanami said.
Evelyn said, “Dad wanted to see if I’d recognize anything and I have.” She glanced around, frowning. “I’ve seen some but not all of those figures on the walls.”
“How did they move?” Hasegawa asked. “I thought I must be drunk but we all had canned drinks.” She sounded very hesitant.
“That’s the other thing, not all of you saw the same things,” Evelyn said, frowning more. “If I understood it.”
“The old…,” Ayanami began. She paused. “It is a matter of genetics, Mother would say.”
Hasegawa opened her mouth, then shut it and stepped closer to Shinji.
“Mother adopted me after her mother and my parents died,” Ayanami said. Her eyes got a far away look. “Her mother died protecting me.”
Hasegawa seemed to have lost the ability to speak, possibly to breathe.
“She’s around here somewhere, even if this isn’t her thing,” Evelyn said, looking around.
“She’s here to collect blood samples from anyone willing to let her study them,” Ayanami said. “And the MAGI will analyze the data and the MAGI are part of her responsibility.”
“They’re super-computers, right?” Hasegawa said. “Aida may try to ask your mother to marry him.” Then she laughed.
Shinji laughed, Evelyn looked confused, and Ayanami said, “Mother has a wife.” She frowned. “Not a very good one.”
“I do not have a wife,” a woman now said; she was in her thirties with short blonde hair, wearing slacks and a tan blouse which now had stains on it which might never come out. She wore a ring like Ayanami’s, but silver with a topaz and her rune was different. “I’m Dr. Akagi Ritsuko and I am not married. Misato was drunk and that was a joke,” she said firmly to Ayanami.
Shinji just kept his mouth shut, knowing it best he keep his head out of this hornet’s nest. Hasegawa now looked ready to just die and Evelyn yawned, then sighed. “You shouldn’t tease your mother, Rei.”
“You should study harder like your father,” Rei said chidingly to Evelyn, who now frowned. “I am sorry, Mother, but I cannot lie.”
Dr. Akagi sighed. “You’re Ichijou Shinji and Hasegawa Emi, right?”
“You know me?” Hasegawa squeaked.
“I studied the dossiers,” Dr. Akagi said. “If you two would be willing to give blood before we start, I’d be grateful. It’ll just be a tiny bit. Your parents and guardians have approved this but I don’t know if it was explained to you.”
“Not really, Father just said it best to help NERV because they are working to defend us,” Hasegawa said. “But it’s okay, I give blood regularly.”
Shinji was nervous but it was wisest to do what adults asked. “Okay.”
Evelyn Scott and Ayanami trailed after them and Shinji and Hasegawa quickly gave blood to a kindly looking young woman in her twenties. She looked Japanese to Shinji. So did Dr. Akagi, though he was pretty sure blonde hair was rare in her generation; to the surprise of everyone, a handful of his
generation had been born blonde. No one was sure why, but as many as 2 percent had unusual hair colors from birth or their hair had started lightening around puberty.
For Shinji, it was just part of his world.
There was something different about Rei when she was around her mother, but Shinji wasn’t sure what; he wasn’t good at reading people and the flashes of others he got from them didn’t mean anything to him. If they meant anything. He still wasn’t sure how the things Dr. Scott had told him worked.
Then it hit him… they both had rings made by his Father. And so did Dr. Akagi’s assistant. And Dr. Scott. A glance showed him Evelyn Scott had a ring also, set with an amethyst. But none of the other NERV personnel did.
Dr. Scott and Dr. Akagi now rounded everyone up and got them ready. “Okay, just do the things you did last Saturday and we’ll monitor what happens,” Dr. Scott said. “Just try to pretend we’re not watching.”
Shinji took a deep breath, got his cello, and began to play.
**************
For a while, not much happened; technicians babbled jargon at each other and people danced and sang and Shinji and Kubo played. Slowly, Shinji got more flashes and he started to hear the stars and then Ayanami began to play.
Now the wall came to life and everyone stared again and they danced. Suzuhara spun Ito around and she laughed for joy; she was wearing the sundress she’d worn the first time he’d seen her dancing and he could see the Dancing Maiden in her. He could see others in those around him more and more and it excited and scared him at once. It often changed, but for a few it did not change. Ayanami, he noticed, at times resembled the plate bearer and Suzuhara was most commonly the armored man and… Horaki had the King’s eagle. Aida was many people but they all had tools, Shinji noticed. Many of the people he saw in others, though, he didn’t recognize at all. He saw various women with tools as well around Evelyn Scott, like the weaver woman on the wall.
“Hey!” Aida said excitedly and ran over to Dr. Scott, talking to him briefly, then went back to dance with one of the ladies present.
And Kubo… he was the musician who Shinji sometimes dreamed of seeing with the Dancing Maiden; he played the music she danced to. Shinji wondered if he could see the Dancing Maiden too.
The jargon levels were rising too; the technicians were excited; they were getting high levels of something or another. It was all gabble to Shinji but he could feel their excitement.
Now, to Shinji’s surprise, Kaji-sensei came up to Dr. Akagi and asked her to dance; she stared at him suspiciously, but then smiled a rueful smile and took his hands and danced with her. He glanced over; Takino-sensei looked ready to set Dr. Akagi
on fire with her eyes but now just dragged Dr. Scott into dancing with her. He looked somewhat embarrassed.
Shinji hoped this wouldn’t somehow make a mess of everything. The oddest thing was that they both now developed new flickering images around Kaji-sensei and Dr. Akagi… in black and white. He’d never seen that before and he missed a few notes.
The four adults finished and Takino-sensei and Kaji-sensei now took over for Shinji and Kubo; Shinji now went to Dr. Scott and told him what he had seen.
“Really?” Dr. Scott said, surprised, then they talked to Evelyn.
“The only black and white dreams I’ve had were from watching black and white movies,” she told them.
“Hmm, can you two dance?” Dr. Scott asked.
Shinji said, “I am capa… oh, yes, sir.” He felt embarrassed.
Evelyn Scott laughed softly, then said, “Sure.”
They moved together; Shinji let the music guide him and they danced gracefully, him more than her, though she slowly got better. “We should talk later about the things we’ve both seen,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he said. She had pretty eyes. In fact, she was very pretty in general and dancing with her left him strangely elated.
Dancing with any girl seemed to, really.
“I can see things around them but not in black and white. I get glimpses of Dr. Akagi’s mother around her sometimes,” Evelyn Scott said softly. “I don’t know your teacher but I see unhappy people around him.”
Shinji couldn’t see anything around Kaji-sensei now, which was a little odd too. The air was getting heavy again and the lights in the room flickered a lot and the shading of the light kept varying. This seemed to excite the technicians. “He has a girlfriend,” Shinji mumbled.
“I could tell,” Evelyn said, wincing. “I think she and your teacher know each other somehow.”
How was that possible? Though Dr. Akagi was probably Japanese.
He now wondered if Ayanami’s hair was naturally blue or an affectation.
They finished the dance and Hasegawa came up and hovered, hesitantly.
“You can have Shinji now,” Evelyn Scott said, letting go of Shinji.
Shinji’s eyes widened and so did Hasegawa and Evelyn Scott looked confused. “I… that is your name, right?” she said weakly.
“It’s okay,” Shinji said. Then he realized his name was backward from European style names… so she wouldn’t know. She must think my last name is Shinji, he thought.
He told Hasegawa this once they started dancing and she looked relieved. “That makes sense. I was wondering why she had a boy’s name but I’d forgotten that.”
He danced with her a while and then with Ito, who looked ecstatic. The image around her never changed, Shinji realized; it was, if anything, stronger.
Distantly, he heard wolves howl but he barely noticed, focused on her; the more he danced with her, the more he wanted to dance with her. The stars sung of them dancing and it felt wonderful, like he was far away from his usual problems.
He danced with her in the forest under the moon and their worries were far away; they had a quest, a dangerous one, but he could forget it for now, for with her, he could face anything, do anything, and go anywhere.
He might have danced with her like that forever, if reality had not asserted itself in the form of the need to go to the bathroom; she was flushed and smiling and so beautiful even just as herself but he had to bow out for the moment and run.
***************
When he returned, Ayanami Rei was taking a break while Dr. Akagi played her viola. For a moment, Shinji felt the most incredible burst of jealousy he had ever had in his life, seeing Ayanami and Dr. Akagi’s similar movements as they played and being keenly reminded that he would never play the cello with his father, short of a miracle. Even though the closest he’d ever come to his father since leaving was the cello-related gifts his father had sent him. Dr. Akagi wasn’t even her real mother, but she… they…
He felt this incredible rage which terrified him, and he stumbled, nearly knocking a technician into the wall. He stammered an apology and ran towards the drink table, dodging dancers, then realized he was running towards Ayanami and he froze.
Aida now pulled him over to the drink table, where Ayanami stood nearby, calmly drinking a can of tea and watching her mother play. Shinji felt his heart start to speed up again. But Aida said, “You okay, Ichijou?” He glanced across the room. “It’s pretty clear Hasegawa isn’t interested in anyone but you, you know. She’s just being polite.” He grimaced, but then brightened up. “But I danced with Dr. Scott’s daughter. Man, she is so hot.”
She was dancing with Suzuhara, Shinji noticed; many different people flickered around her, but he was fairly steady.
“I’m fine,” Shinji said; it generally was less trouble to be fine and deal with your own problems. It’s not like Aida could make him feel less jealous.
“Are you mad at me because you got grounded? Because I’m totally sorry; none of this was supposed to get you in trouble,” Aida said, not looking directly at Shinji but sounding unhappy. “I just… I don’t know. I’m pissed off at Dad for dumping us here when I could be in the Geofront and yet… he’s Dad, you know. I guess… well, your Dad is dead, so you don’t have to have mixed feelings but you know what it’s like to miss your Dad, right?” he said weakly.
“I know,” Shinji told him softly. He’d never been bold enough to… he didn’t know if he loved or hated his father or what. Shinji wasn’t good at thinking about his feelings, just at staying out of trouble. But he felt an odd kinship to Aida now. “I hope you get to see your father.” Shinji said softly.
Now Aida looked embarrassed. He clapped Shinji on the back and Shinji spewed soda onto the floor. “You’re the… dammit.”
Worse, there were no paper towels or anything. Ayanami silently handed a handkerchief and Aida sopped up the mess; fortunately Shinji’s mouth had not been too full. “Sorry,” he said to Ayanami. “So you’re from the Geofront, right? You ever met any of the Pilots? Your mother works with them, right?”
Ayanami’s eyes suddenly hardened and she looked intensely at Aida, who stumbled back. “How do you know that?”
“Come on, the whole world knows your grandmother invented the MAGI,” Aida said. “And they all introduced themselves. It’s not a secret the way the pilot identities are. Man, if I could get that…”
“You would have to be locked up so you didn’t tell people,” Ayanami said coldly. “NERV has gone to substantial effort to ensure the safety of the families of those who work here to avoid their use as hostages, when it was not possible or desired for them to be moved to a secure facility.”
“My Dad is a bigwig AT NERV. I told them about this place or you wouldn’t know it exists,” Aida said angrily.
Shinji stood nearby, not knowing what to do. Beyond finishing his soda before he could spew more of it. So he focused on that, then was very glad when Hasegawa dragged him away for another dance.
***************
Eventually, Shinji ended up dancing with Ayanami Rei too. He could see Aida pontificating angrily to Suzuhara, who looked patient but not convinced. He could see the Dancing Maiden in Ayanami too, but there was something different about it. She moved more smoothly than Ito, matching the beats and moves
precisely, and she smiled just a small smile as they danced which made Shinji smile.
He wanted to ask about her hair but feared it rude. And her eyes… why were they crimson? A lab accident? Though Shinji knew enough to know ‘mutation’ didn’t work like in comic books.
“Has anything like this happened to you before?” she asked him softly.
He spun her around and then they moved into a butterfly stance, strutting forwards side by side, two arms forward, two around each other, then came apart with only one hand joining them, then back together. “Not before Saturday; I sometimes saw things but I assumed it imagination.”
She nodded and they danced in silence awhile, enjoying it. Shinji was not a talker by nature and having someone who understood… who he could just move with… who also played an instrument… it had a great appeal to him.
He could hear the stars singing, but the tune changed at times, and the images changed with it. Sometimes she was the dancing maiden and sometimes another dark haired maiden and sometimes other people besides.
“So you help your mother with her research?” Shinji asked. “I guess maybe I shouldn’t ask.”
“Yes,” Ayanami said. “I can’t talk about it too much due to security.”
“You are very lucky,” Shinji said softly. He felt that pang of jealousy again and Ayanami’s eyes widened; he didn’t want to feel jealous but now he felt confused. As that grew, her eyes returned to normal.
“You’re seeing things right now more than normal, right?” Ayanami asked softly.
“Yes,” Shinji said.
She frowned a little, then looked wistful. “When you look at Ito, you see a dancing raven haired maiden, right?”
“You too sometimes,” he said softly and now she smiled a little smile. “Who is she?”
“It’s a long story. For another time,” Ayanami said, looking around. She studied her ring a moment.
There was so much Shinji wanted to ask but he didn’t know the boundaries; having seen her get mad at Aida, he didn’t want to risk her wrath. So he didn’t ask, he just danced and enjoyed it.
***************
After that, he played some more and so did Kubo and Ayanami. He was starting to get really tired, though, and he
thought he’d probably had too much soda too fast and felt kind of wired and jittery. And he was hungry.
And now Ito began to sing in the strange musical language and then Shinji started with Ayanami joined her. The lights got brighter and the stars louder and the technicians became very excited and soon everyone was trying to sing along but other than the chorus, few of them knew the words and Shinji wondered again what language it was. But Dr. Akagi was singing with her daughter and Shinji felt another burst of anger.
Distantly, he heard a wolf howl, though it was very faint. And then he heard distant, mocking laughter, which made him angry. He missed several notes and now the technicians began babbling and he had to stop and breathe. Hasegawa half approached him, then froze in place.
It was stupid to be angry at them.
But he felt angry anyway. Why did they have to be so happy and perfect? When he hadn’t even seen his father in over a decade?
Hasegawa now hesitantly approached him. “Ichijou,” she said weakly.
“Can you get me something without caffeine?” he asked her.
She nodded and ran and now Dr. Scott said, “Okay, I think we should break for lunch and let you all rest.” He glanced at Shinji, who wished he could turn invisible.
He had a bad feeling he was in trouble again.
****************
“I wish we had something to trade,” he said to Hasegawa, then felt silly. She laughed softly and got her purse and gave him a cookie.
“You can pay me back later,” she said, getting out two more for Ito and Kubo and one for herself.
“You’re the best woman,” Kubo said, munching his eagerly.
“I enjoy that too,” Ito confessed. Then she slumped. “I am so tired. I may need a nap.”
Kubo yawned. “I know. This was very draining, more than usual for music.”
“I’m all jumpy awake and tired at once,” Hasegawa confessed.
“That’s me,” Shinji said to her and she smiled.
“Mind if I join you?” Evelyn Scott asked in English; they’d been talking in Japanese.
“Go right ahead,” Kubo said. “Beautiful women are always welcome.”
“If you don’t mind Keiichi flirting,” Ito said, eyes sparkling and Shinji wondered why she wasn’t jealous; didn’t she and Kubo have a thing?
“Thank you… Kameko, right?” Evelyn Scott said hesitantly, opening a bag of chips and unwrapping a ham sandwich.
“Right,” Ito said. “We generally only use first names with people we’re close to, though.” She paused. “I mean, please don’t take that as an insult or anything.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said. “Kids our age all use each other’s first names,” she said. “At the Geofront, anyway.”
“I think Aida is going to beg you to take him home with you,” Hasegawa said, smiling.
“Ken’s a nice guy,” Evelyn said, smiling. Then she sighed. “I don’t know why his father sent him off here. Or his sister too!”
They chatted for a while and Shinji gradually relaxed. Then it was time for more dancing and music.
**************
By the end of the day, Shinji would have welcomed being knocked out. He felt utterly run through the wringer. The others went home but Evelyn and Dr. Scott came home with him and they went over the pictures together; he got the impression Dr. Scott knew more than he was telling.
“I’ve seen dancing in this hall and the really tall king who lives there,” Shinji explained as he sat on the couch with them, pointing out things on Dr. Scott’s tablet.
“And he has a queen too, tall and wise,” Evelyn said softly. “We’ve probably shared other dreams too.”
Shinji hoped no one could share some of his dreams, but this kind… He wondered how many others saw these too. “Are we all like this?” He wondered what the others could see.
“Some of you have a lot more tie to the collective unconscious than others,” Dr. Scott said. “We don’t know why but we hope to find out. Yourself, Aida, Horaki, Ito, and Suzuhara the most strongly.”
“What is that language?” Shinji asked softly. “I felt I knew the words but didn’t know the meaning.”
“You touched the collective unconscious,” Dr. Scott said. “The people who made that place, that was their language,” he continued. “I think it is easier to touch the collective unconsciousness there in that way. I don’t know if they designed it for that or it’s just tied to how much they tapped into that dimension.”
“Is this… how stories of magic got started?” Shinji asked with a sudden insight.
“I believe so. Some people have always had this gift but it’s stronger in your generation; I have to use this to do it at all,” Dr. Scott said, holding up his ring.
Shinji reached towards it, then drew back. He wanted to touch something his father had made.
“With your active gifts, it wouldn’t be safe for you,” Dr. Scott said. “Or I would let you try it.”
Shinji felt embarrassed.
“I had to spend weeks being ready to use mine,” Evelyn Scott said, patting Shinji’s shoulder. “It would overwhelm you if you just put it on.”
“How does it work?” Shinji asked.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Scott confessed. “I only know it relates to tapping into the collective unconscious. But I only dimly know how my phone works either.”
Shinji decided he probably wouldn’t have understood either. “So now what?”
“We may call you all back again for more studies. Again, don’t talk about this to anyone,” Dr. Scott told him.
That may kill Aida, Shinji thought.
“I think Ken may explode,” Evelyn said. “I guess I should call him Aida.”
“If he doesn’t mind, it’s okay but people may assume you’re dating,” Shinji said hesitantly.
“He is charming,” Evelyn said thoughtfully. “And very friendly.” She paused, then said, “Everyone here’s been friendly. That wasn’t meant as a putdown or anything.”
“It’s okay,” Shinji said; he hadn’t taken it that way. Aida was friendly. Just too much so.
But now he remembered Aida apologizing to him. *That* was something almost alien to Shinji. No one was ever sorry for anything they did to him.
Shinji yawned and Dr. Scott said, “We’d better let you sleep. Evelyn has to fly home tomorrow.”
She groaned. “I am going to be a wreck.”
“But we may need you next weekend,” he told Shinji. “Or before, but I’ll call you.”
“Okay,” Shinji said, and once he showed them out, he got ready for bed.
To his surprise, there was a knock; it had to be his aunt; she had manners and was cautious to avoid walking in on him naked ever since he’d gotten older. “Come in,” Shinji said, pulling back the covers and sitting on his bed.
She hovered in the doorway. Softly, she said, “Shinji, is this safe?”
“It could only be safer inside a fortress,” Shinji said. “The worst danger is spilling a drink on myself.” He hoped. NERV did so many great things, they had to know what they were doing right? Surely Dr. Akagi and Dr. Scott wouldn’t risk their own children, right?
For all that his own Father had sent him away, Shinji knew his Father could have kept him and used him for experiments, but he sent him away. So surely a parent who didn’t abandon their child would never use them like that.
He thought about the four of them and his gut clenched in frustration. More so Ayanami and Dr. Akagi; they were just so in synch with each other, it frustrated him. He didn’t know if he’d ever be that close to someone.
“Shinji, did you drink too much soda?” she said, sighing.
“Probably,” he mumbled and ended up taking some antacid at her direction. She studied him in the mirror as he stood in his blue pajamas. “She’s a pretty girl, isn’t she,” his aunt said softly.
He could see her weatherbeaten face; she looked older than… he wasn’t sure how she old was but she looked to him like a grandma with dyed hair. She’d been beautiful once; he’d seen pictures. But now she had faded to a shadow of that; she still had curly black hair, a little down past her shoulderblades, though she usually kept it up.
“Which pretty girl?” he asked.
Now she laughed loudly. “I suppose that does cover several. I was thinking of the American.”
“She is lucky,” Shinji said softly, feeling jealous of that luck. It felt strange; he normally wasn’t really jealous of anyone. Not like this. He couldn’t see any other people, though, not on his aunt or himself.
Though he was really tired.
“I’ll let you sleep,” his aunt said. “I just… if you die, Hayao will be heartbroken.”
“He’ll be relieved,” Shinji said bitterly, wondering what was up with himself.
She sighed. “He loved your mother but he hated your father. It’s slowly eating him up. If you die, he’ll do something foolish.”
Shinji wanted to say ‘I don’t care’ but knew that was trouble. He made himself yawn. “I’m going to bed,” he told his aunt. “I’ll make lunch if you make breakfast.”
She slumped. “He really does care,” she insisted weakly.
Shinji just looked at her and went to bed.
**************
He dreamed terrible dreams of death and destruction but in the morning, he went all day hardly seeing anything but reality. For which he was glad as he had to focus on his homework and chores.
Monday, he was actually glad for school, to get out of the house away from his uncle frowning at him. He’d carefully packed a fancy lunch he’d made the previous night, for trading purposes; he was pretty proud of it and hoped Aida would have some of the German sausage Aida often had for lunch. Sent to him by his Dad.
But then Ikeda found him when he parked his bike and grabbed the lunch, throwing it all over creation and stomping on it as Shinji stared. “You bastard,” he sneered at him. “You’ll pay for this!”
“Pay for what?” Shinji said, frowning but knowing he couldn’t fight Ikeda. He felt angry but it was an impotent anger.
“Posting pictures of me you altered to look like I was doing nasty things with dogs!” Ikeda said angrily. “On FacePlace!”
Shinji stared. “I don’t even HAVE a FacePlace account!”
“LIAR!” He shoved Shinji to the ground. “I’ll kick your ass more later.”
He left and Shinji gathered what remained of his lunch and wished someone would kick Ikeda’s ass.
It wasn’t going to be him.
***************
“I’m sure someone just made an account and stuck your name on it,” Aida said. “You can complain to them and get it taken down, I expect. If that doesn’t work, I can try and take measures.”
They were looking at the site; you could tell the picture of Shinji was out of last year’s yearbook. It had a lot of rather scurrilous invective against Ikeda.
They were in the classroom; Shinji had gotten there early before everything fell apart. “What’s this?” Horaki said, frowning.
“Fake FacePlace page; someone set Shinji up to get whipped by Ikeda,” Aida said, frowning.
Shinji sighed. He knew people who liked to beat him up but none of them had the brains for this, he believed.
“That’s horrible,” Horaki said, patting Shinji’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he said.
“He lost his lunch too,” Aida said. “I can share some of mine.”
“With all of us, I’m sure we can feed you,” Horaki said, frowning. “I’ll be sure of that.”
*************
“You’ve been played, you fool,” Aida said angrily to Ikeda, who had not taken being told about this well.
“Liar! You can’t fool me that easy,” Ikeda said, grimacing. “I’m kicking the punk’s ass after school.”
Shinji listened from a distance as they ate lunch, all clumped together, united by things they now couldn’t tell anyone else. Everyone had chipped in and now he was embarrassed and happy and angry at Ikeda at once. Hasegawa had made him a cookie too, which he relished.
“Whoever marries you will be lucky,” Shinji said and she turned red and smiled.
“You won’t be kicking anyone’s ass, because you will come to me after school and I will ensure you go home or you can become King of Detention,” Tokino-sensei said, now coming up to Ikeda and Aida and Ikeda’s friends, who were clumped under a tree. Suzuhara was there, by Aida, as a bodyguard.
“Fuck,” Ikeda said and his friends grumbled.
“And that goes for the rest of you. You fell for a stupid con,” Tokino-sensei said. “And if we catch who did it, someone will be in serious trouble.”
Shinji resolved to sneak home tonight, just to be sure.
**************
To his surprise, Hasegawa insisted on escorting him to his bike, even though there was little chance she could stop Ikeda. But Shinji was grateful. “Thank you,” he told her.
She smiled brightly and patted his shoulder. “I see Tokino-sensei kept her word for once.”
“See you tomorrow,” he said and for a moment, he got a flash of the blonde maiden on her.
“I… you’ll go to a movie with me once you’re not grounded, right?” she said hesitantly.
“Sure,” he said.
Then it hit him; this was the last week before the break; he wouldn’t see her or anyone until break was over, thanks to the grounding. Well, he’d have a little time at the end.
This frustrated him but what could he do?
**************
The week passed without disaster. Ikeda glared at him a lot and sent him angry emails and Shinji felt a growing dread that he was going to be on his own for several weeks now.
It was not a feeling he was used to and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Friday, his uncle glared at him with an extra dose of glare but didn’t say why, at breakfast. Ito came up to him just before they went off to lunch. “I tried to talk your uncle into giving you tonight off,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “So you could go with us to the movies.”
Shinji winced. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “I just.. I mean…” She sputtered out and Shinji sighed.
“He’s hard to deal with,” Shinji told her.
Wolves howled, though they couldn’t hear it well inside. She frowned. “This has been going on for weeks.”
“There have been attacks on animals and they’re trying to catch them without much luck,” Shinji said, frowning. “Our neighbor is mad because they somehow got past an electric fence and killed his prize pig.”
“Your neighbor guards his prize animals with an electric fence?” she said, stunned.
“And his mushrooms too,” Shinji said. “I guess when you have something really nice, you want to protect it.”
“I’m sorry, I tried,” Ito said. “I kind of… Your music helps me dance,” she said, studying his shoulder.
He wished he knew how much she knew of everything. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for everything,” she told him a little chidingly.
This left Shinji really not knowing what to do beyond go to lunch with her and everyone.
*****************
Shinji was surprised to find Dr. Scott talking to his aunt and uncle, though all went silent when he walked into the living room as they sat around a table, having tea and ricecakes. “I’m home,” he said hesitantly.
“Go to your room,” his uncle said firmly.
He went and did homework, wondering what was going on.
Later, Dr. Scott came in and said to him, “We have another idea. This is a simple one. I want you to go to bed tomorrow night thinking about the dancing maiden; try to dream of her. Rei and Evelyn will be trying to do the same in Germany. I want to see if you can meet each other.”
“Because she’s a dream I visit,” Shinji said hesitantly.
“Yes, they won’t be inside your head,” Dr. Scott said reassuringly.
There was a rap on the window and then another.
“I think one of your friends is trying to sneak in,” Dr. Scott said, amused. “Open the window.”
Shinji went, pulled the curtains, opened the window and found Suzuhara and Aida, lurking outside. “We’re going to come back later when the sun goes down and smuggle you out. I would have called but I feared your uncle would… shit,” Aida said, seeing Dr. Scott.
He came over. “It’s best you not get Shinji in more trouble, though you’re good friends to try. So I won’t tell Shinji’s uncle if you just go home and don’t come back.” He looked thoughtful. “Actually, please come around the front; I need to
talk to each of you and I can pretend I called you to come out here.”
“Thanks for covering us,” Suzuhara said, looking relieved.
“I…” Aida sighed. “Okay.”
They went and Dr. Scott said, “Will you try that tomorrow, Ichijou?”
“Yes, sir,” Shinji said. He could try. It wouldn’t hurt to try, right?
****************
Saturday went by in a blur of tedium; he checked his grades online and some of them were up for the exams they took Thursday and Friday. He’d aced English and Music and the rest were either not up or mediocre as usual.
But he had other things on his mind and he soon closed his eyes and tried to sleep, thinking of the dancing maiden.
****************
He was in the woods again, watching the beautiful maiden dance; she was like a dream with her raven locks and blue dress, dancing to the ethereal music of a flute under the stars in the great forest of Doriath, ruled by mighty Elu Thingol, the most ancient of the Elven Kings, married, it was said, to one of the
Lords of the West, who his people knew only by the rumors of the Elves.
He had fled to this forest, after the failure of his homeland in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and then the death of his father. Their lands had burned and even their rebel band had fallen. He’d feared he would never know hope again as he fled south.
Yet seeing her, he knew there was still beauty in the world; the enemy had not taken this place. Maybe he never would.
She gave him hope that the bleakness of his life was not the sum of experience, that life did not have to go to ever increasing failure.
Her grey-flecked brown eyes glittered in the starlight and her rainment was girt with golden flowers and her face shone with the light of the Elves, for she had to be one of them.
And he, who had passed through long horrors and shadows to reach this land, he could not look away.
And yet now he noticed that she had music; there must be another, not that he desired to ever look again at anyone else. He felt himself ceasing to see anything else in the world, as if he would go into a…
“Damn, she’s hot,” a short, odd looking kid with glasses on said; he was on that cusp between adulthood and childhood where people lacked the innocence of childhood or the wisdom
of adults. “Peeping will get you in trouble, though,” the boy said, continuing to peep.
“Don’t be so crude,” a girl the same age as the boy said; she had brown hair with short pig-tails and now she whacked the boy lightly with a paper fan.
A third, taller boy, bigger but not older than the others laughed nearby. “Man, she… hey, it worked!”
“Just for us, I guess, Touji,” the first boy said, looking around.
And then the first man knew their names. Aida. Horaki. Suzuhara.
And in knowing them, he knew himself and shrank and changed and became just Shinji. The world wobbled as if about to come apart.
But then a woman stepped from the shadows; she was taller than Shinji, her rough hands belying her fair, unweathered face, and she was beautiful if not so much as the maiden of the sward, her long brown hair gathered up into a mound and held in place with a beautiful tiara, her form hidden in four layers of dresses which bustled with her every movement. Blue-grey eyes twinkled in the moonlight and she looked wistful as she studied the scene. She held a finger to her lips and her ring shone softly. “Careful or we’ll get kicked out.” She looked around, looking a little disappointed.
Only now did Shinji realize it was Evelyn Scott. She looked… different. Very pretty.
Admittedly, a lot of girls did that to him these days.
Aida held up his phone questioningly.
Evelyn blinked and studied her phone, then looked confused.
Aida texted them, ‘Is this better or worse?’
‘How are we getting signal in a dream?’ Horaki typed.
‘This never worked before,’ Evelyn said.
‘Why?’ Aida asked. ‘Can’t we dream a phone working?’ He looked confused.
‘I guess we can,’ Evelyn said thoughtfully and now Aida gave himself a thumbs up and Shinji smiled a little.
Ayanami, as fancied up as Evelyn, now emerged silently out of the shadows of the trees they lurked among. Softly, she said, “Your phones work?” She looked surprised.
She now produced hers and studied it, then joined the conversation.
‘What now?’ Horaki asked. ‘Should we look for the others?’
‘We wait,’ Ayanami said. She studied the dancing maiden, then sent Evelyn some sort of message. They typed back and forth without sharing which made the rest nervous.
‘What’s going on? Are we in trouble?’ Touji texted everyone.
‘I don’t know,’ Ayanami said. ‘Ito has done something which I would not think a novice could do.’
‘Is she the maiden? Shinji was some other guy when we got here,’ Aida said.
Ayanami studied Shinji, then nodded approvingly. ‘Well done, Ichijou. It is much easier to walk in a dream if you can do that but it’s not easy unless it is someone who truly speaks to you.’
‘The dancing maiden has long spoken to her,’ Evelyn said. ‘I talked to her about it,’ Evelyn said.
‘I dream of being the person watching her a lot, or doing other things with her, though I have other dreams too,’ Shinji typed out.
‘So now what?’ Aida asked.
‘We wait a while to see if we are the only ones here,’ Ayanami told him.
The maiden’s dance was good entertainment, anyway.
***************
No one else arrived, but it didn’t matter because all of them except Ayanami got more or less hypnotized by the dancing maiden, moreso the guys than Horaki and Evelyn Scott. Until, suddenly, she flopped down on the grass.
“I am so wiped out,” she said and suddenly dissolved into Ito and then everything evaporated into grey mist.
“What are we standing on?” Horaki asked and suddenly dropped into the mist and Evelyn dove after her.
“Just come back!” Evelyn shouted.
Shinji tried to *not* think about how he was floating in mist.
Ayanami said, softly, “Ito, we should talk later.”
“Oh wow, hi, everyone,” Ito mumbled. “So tired.”
Evelyn pulled Horaki back up to everyone. Ayanami now concentrated and a floor appeared which they all stood on. “This is not a normal space,” Ayanami said to Horaki. “This test was a partial success. You should all go back to your own dreams now and rest. Thank you.”
Then she had to teach them how to do that.
****************
Shinji ended up undergoing more physical tests with Dr. Akagi. She’d taken over a doctor’s office in town and a NERV van had come and gotten him for the appointment. He wasn’t sure if his results were good or bad.
“They’re good,” Dr. Akagi told him. “You’re in good health. We’re just trying to understand if you and your friends have physical factors in common that those who didn’t succeed lacked.”
“I hope we’re not wasting your time here; you work with the Rangers, right?” Shinji asked hesitantly.
Now she eyed him in a way that made him very nervous as he sat in a cheap plastic chair with electrodes attached to him; he could see weird things like ‘synch rating’ or ‘oneiric capacity’ listed. “This is unusual enough to merit my interest, though I would prefer if you all were brought to the Geofront, because I am stuck working with inadequate equipment here.”
Shinji hadn’t thought about it before but if she was as much a bigwig as Aida thought, her being here was kind of odd.
But not his problem, really.
“Ayanami works with you, right?” he said softly, feeling that clench of jealousy.
She studied his readings and he tried to spot a ‘jealousy rating’ but there was not one to his relief.
“Yes,” Dr. Akagi said. “I am very proud of her.” She smiled an open, honest smile that seemed almost lost on her face and Shinji’s gut clenched again.
Why doesn’t Father want me there?, Shinji wondered.
“Horaki told me your mother was a scientist?” Dr. Akagi asked curiously.
“Yes,” Shinji said. “She died in an accident when I was very little.” He wondered again if Father had been there and lived or just not been there. Sometimes… sometimes he dreamed something ate her. A monstrous giant.
But while his Uncle was a tyrant and his Aunt weak, he didn’t think they’d lied about it. They called it a tragedy and it felt sincere.
“And your father?” Dr. Akagi asked softly.
“Died in the same accident,” Shinji lied. “I don’t know the details,” he said miserably. “No one will tell me.”
“My mother is dead too,” she said softly. “She died defending Ayanami from terrorists.” Then she turned and studied the equipment. “So I have raised Rei for nearly ten years; she’s about the same age as you.”
Shinji didn’t know what to say; his jealousy was replaced by confusion and pain and frustration and something he wasn’t sure what it was as his brain whirled. “I can’t imagine anyone dying for me,” he said, hands clenching and unclenching. “She must have loved Ayanami very much.” Even though Ayanami wasn’t her own child.
Why won’t Father see me?, Shinji thought miserably. If people can die for someone they’re not even related to, why won’t he see me?
There was a long silence and Akagi said, “I’m sure your parents would die to protect you if they were alive.” Her voice was awkward and hesitant, which sounded strange on her, even from how little Shinji had seen of her. “And your friends care about you, don’t they?”
Shinji remembered Aida thanking him and trying to bust him out of his house. “Having friends feels strange.”
“I know,” Akagi said softly, then straightened up. “How about if we go get some ice cream after this? You’re the last one, so I am done.”
“Sure,” Shinji said. He was never one to pass up free ice cream and he knew the best place to get it.
***************
He felt better once he was full of sugar. Dr. Scott joined them at the town’s sweet shop. The shop owner had thankfully
finished his spiel about the quality of Hokkaido milk; Shinji had heard it too many times. The place was unusually packed.
“So now what?” Shinji asked as he worked on cherry ice cream, then eyed the pecans in Dr. Scott’s fancy sundae with distaste.
“A lot of tests. I hate to eat up your break, but we need to see which of you we should approach your parents about training. Some of you have special aptitudes NERV can use,” Dr. Scott said. “If you’re interested. You’d have to move to the Geofront. And we’ll have to test more to be sure.”
“I don’t think my aunt and uncle would want to do that,” Shinji said. He both wanted to and didn’t want to; he wasn’t going to chase his father but he had to know why.
He deserved an answer.
“We’d arrange for you to stay with someone,” Dr. Scott said.
Dr. Akagi ate her ice cream silently, lost in thought, though clearly enjoying her vanilla and peach mix.
Shinji wasn’t sure what he wanted.
******************
As the various tests went forward, Uncle Hayao seemed more and more like a caged bear to Shinji; he hated having
NERV around and looked trapped; he never yelled at Shinji but glared at him constantly, which was harder to deal with.
Shinji did his chores, practiced music, did various tests, some awake and some not, and drifted along as the summer went by. He also sent a lot of messages to the ‘Testing Gang’ as Aida now called it. Suzuhara preferred ‘Cave Posse’ but no one else would use that.
He was used to drifting through life, so this was not as bad for him as it would have been for most people.
Aida had tried again to bust him out and gotten caught and spanked by Uncle Hayao, which seemed to anger both of them equally.
Dr. Akagi went back to the Geofront and was replaced by Dr. Danielle Eida, who was very tall and Nordic and strict; she ran several tests on them all in the cave with more singing and dancing and looked rather intrigued.
After a while, Shinji felt like he’d always been in the middle of experiments he didn’t understand.
Admittedly, much of his life had felt like he was in the middle of things he didn’t understand.
**************
One night, he was about to go to bed, when there was a gentle rapping on the window.
Shinji felt amazed at how determined Aida was. But then when he opened the window, it was Hasegawa. “Come on,” she said softly.
Shinji blinked and said softly, “Uncle will spank you like he did Aida if he finds you here.”
“I don’t care,” she said defiantly and he stared at her in surprise.
He licked his lips nervously and slipped out the window; she took his hand and led him into the asparagus fields. “Ichijou, are you going to go to the Geofront?” she asked softly. “I think… they don’t want me, but they want you and Horaki and Aida and Ito.” She sounded depressed.
“I’m sorry,” he said instinctively.
“I just… I like you, Ichijou,” she said urgently. “Do you like me?”
“Yes,” he said hesitantly, feeling he must be missing something. “I wouldn’t run off… why are we in the asparagus field?” he said, looking around.
“We had to get out of sight of the house,” she said. “And the wood has a fence now.”
“If we stand up, we’re not hidden well,” he said and she suddenly pulled him down to sit and then to his surprise, sat in his lap. His eyes widened and then she kissed him.
He kissed her back, feeling his body come alive and getting very embarrassed. Her hands fumbled on his back and he did the same and now he could hear the stars singing and the blonde princess was all over her and he felt… someone on him. Not the prince who watched the dancing maiden, but someone else. Though he too was a hero.
“I just feel like…” She broke off the kiss and now she was crying. “If you go, something terrible will happen to you. You’d be safer here with me.”
Now he didn’t know what to do; he’d never made a girl cry. Not in a long time and he’d just… he still wasn’t sure why she’d cried in the third grade; he just had the vague feeling it was his fault. Whoever she was.
“Is it Kameko?” she said, suddenly, angrily. “What does she have that I don’t?” she said, agonized.
“If I go, it won’t be for Ito,” Shinji said to her and she relaxed just a little. “Doesn’t she have a boyfriend?” And he’d thought she and Ito were close.
“I don’t know what is going on with her and Keiichi,” Hasegawa said, frustrated. “But she’s good at this and I’m not and I don’t even know why. I just have normal dreams. Is that
so wrong?” she said and Shinji could see the blonde princess on her so strongly.
“You look like a princess to me right now,” he said hesitantly and she kissed him frantically, crying and pushing him down into the dirt, then embraced him and lay upon him, crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly.
“Stop apologizing and kiss me,” she said urgently and they rolled around in the dirt for a while, crashing into plants and kissing, hands fumbling around each other’s bodies.
“I never kissed a boy before,” she said hesitantly.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” Shinji said; she was half-lying on him, her head on his chest now.
“I wish you’d never found that cave. Then you wouldn’t be going,” she said miserably.
“I don’t know if I am,” he told her.
“You will,” she said softly. “I can tell. I know.” She sighed. “You won’t forget me, will you, Ichijou?” she said softly.
He could hear the stars singing… but they couldn’t agree on what; it was discordant, a clash of different songs and it made
his head hurt. “I won’t forget you, Hasegawa,” he told her, then kissed her clumsily, pulling her tight and now she cried more.
“You bastard!” Ikeda shouted and they both started. He had a big stick and looked ready to smack someone. Shinji could see flickers of an angry man around him too, tall with long dark hair, handsome and strong and… enraged. The dream had a sword but thankfully Ikeda only had a stick.
“Are you crazy?” Hasegawa said angrily. “I told you I didn’t want to go out with you weeks ago! Go home!”
Shinji stared, then said to Hasegawa, “Go get my uncle.”
“But Ichijou, he’ll…” She began.
Shinji felt a sudden fey mood upon him; it was not a familiar feeling but now he suddenly got very angry. This idiot had been harassing him because Hasegawa liked him and he wouldn’t take no for an answer and now Shinji wanted very much to hurt him. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. “Get my Uncle. I will keep Ikeda busy,” he said to Hasegawa very seriously and her eyes widened.
“I… Ichijou…” she said weakly.
“Emi,” he said, and now she jumped. “Go before he hurts you too.”
“This is about me and you, you punk!” Ikeda shouted.
“Honorless cur,” Shinji said to him. “You would strike down an unarmed man?”
“I… Shinji,” Hasegawa squeaked.
“Please, Emi,” Shinji said urgently. Even as angry as he was, he was aware Ikeda was bigger and stronger and armed and he was none of the above.
Shinji felt strange but it felt good. He felt more alive than usual and he turned his anger outward at this punk who was threatening Emi. *His* Emi.
For a moment, Ikeda faltered and then he came at Shinji and Emi ran off towards the house.
Distantly, Shinji heard wolves howl and he remembered the first time… something. The memory flitted in then fled. But it didn’t matter. He wrenched a stalk of asparagus out of the ground and struck.
It did not make a good weapon and now he got battered down but he rolled out of the way and fled, using the asparagus as cover and forcing Ikeda to chase him hither and yon.
But he couldn’t hide with Ikeda so hot on his trail and eventually Ikeda caught him and he punched Ikeda in the gut and tried to hammer him but he was too weak; rage could make him fight but it couldn’t, by itself, let him win. Not with no practice or skill.
But it did catch Ikeda by surprise and he couldn’t quite manage to pin Shinji down as they wrestled in the mud, squashing asparagus stalks.
“Stop wiggling!” Ikeda shouted, trying to pin him.
“No! You’ll pay for this, you honorless cur!,” Shinji shouted.
Why does it always come to this, he wondered. Is it my doom to forever turn friends into enemies or have to slay them?
Wait, that made no sense.
Suddenly Ikeda was just Ikeda and he was just himself and the fey mood burst like a balloon.
And now Ikeda had him. But before he could do more than rub Shinji in the dirt, Uncle Hayao said, “Whoever the hell you are, let go of Shinji or I will *make* you.” His voice ached with barely leashed anger.
To Shinji’s surprise, his uncle had a taser.
“Aren’t those things illegal?” Ikeda said, staring in shock.
“Please, Ikeda-san, stop,” Emi begged; she was a dirty, tear-stained mess.
“Get away from my nephew,” Uncle Hayao snarled angrily. He was shirtless, Shinji now realized with jeans he’d forgotten
to put a belt on. You could see the old scars on his chest, even at night, even with the moon fairly dim.
They looked kind of like claw marks to Shinji but his uncle wouldn’t speak of it.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Ikeda said. “My father would sue your ass off.”
Emi began trying to dust Shinji off, though it was futile as she was filthy and her face now was muddy from her tears on the dirt.
“You’ll go home and never come on my land again or I will tell NERV you were here to sneak onto their land and they will bury you in an unmarked grave,” Uncle Hayao barked at him. “GO.”
Ikeda ran without looking back.
For a few seconds, all was silent except for the confused, now faint singing of the stars and the faint noises made by Emi’s desperate, doomed effort to clean up Shinji. Hayao was breathing raggedly and Shinji was breathing hard and hurt all over but Emi’s touch felt good anyway.
Then Emi kissed him and Shinji kissed her back awkwardly, feeling utterly blown and wondering what had happened to him. Something… he’d touched a dream.
If he didn’t go to the Geofront, he might not be able to stop that one day.
It had controlled him.
He had let it control him because he wanted it. Needed what it could do.
Their interests had aligned.
But he hadn’t been able to win anyway.
What was going on? Am I going crazy?, he wondered and suddenly was very scared.
“Do you hear the stars sing?” Uncle Hayao asked softly, tightly.
“Yes,” Shinji said softly.
“Like your mother,” Uncle Hayao said, looking up at the stars. “I could only hear it if she was near. But you hear it clear and loud, don’t you.”
It was not a question.
Emi rested her head on Shinji’s shoulder and he held her clumsily, nervously. “Yes. More so now. I don’t know… I think I hear too much,” he whispered.
“I haven’t been that angry since Yui died,” Uncle Hayao said softly, looking exhausted. “Goddamn NERV, that punk should never have gotten onto our land. But they can’t even be bothered to lift a fucking finger.” He tried to form fists but couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Shinji said instinctively.
Uncle Hayao sighed and said, “Dammit, boy, you didn’t get that from either of your parents or me or your aunt.” Then he glanced at Emi and sighed. “You’re a brave girl,” he said to Emi.
“I ran away, that wasn’t brave,” she said, sounding frustrated.
“Knowing me, knowing it would get you in trouble to be caught here, you did it anyway,” he said, still regarding the stars. “Come back to the house and get clean, then you two can have exactly twenty minutes and then you go home,” Uncle Hayao said. “Shinji.”
“Yes, sir?” Shinji said to him, exhausted himself.
“If you have to fight someone bigger than you, go for his genitals. Kick, bite, punch, whatever it takes. Then run before he recovers. But I hope you won’t have any more fights.” Uncle Hayao did not sound optimistic. “I’m going to bitch out that boy’s father in the morning.”
“His dad is pretty well off,” Emi said hesitantly.
“Fuck him. He picked the wrong person to mess with,” Uncle Hayao said darkly. “Anyway, let’s go. We’re filthy and need to get clean. Let’s go.”
They headed back to the house under the light of the stars.
*******************
Shinji probably would have fallen asleep in the hot tub if not for having other people there; he felt utterly blown out, like the ashes after a campfire. He wasn’t sure why his aunt had needed to bathe too but now he and his uncle and his aunt and Emi and himself were all wrapped in towels and sitting in the hot water together. The ladies had gone first while he and his uncle had stood on the front porch, watching the stars and his uncle rambling on about how to fight someone bigger than you.
Everything seemed normal again, for which he was grateful.
Normal except for having a cute girl cuddled up to him. But he was too tired for his body to even care about that.
“If I wasn’t likely to drown, I’d just sleep here,” his uncle mumbled.
“And the water would get cold,” his aunt pointed out.
Uncle Hayao sighed. “And the water would get cold, yes.”
To Shinji’s surprise, his aunt now kissed Uncle Hayao; they were normally very private about displays of affection.
“We probably would have tried twenty years ago,” she said to him.
“Remember the time we tried to go to the beach so we could see the sun rise for your birthday?” he said, laughing. “Father was so angry he had to come get me out of jail.”
“I still thinking making it illegal was ludicrous,” Aunt Mariko said, shaking her head. “Fortunately, the beach owner didn’t press charges.”
“You were so terrified,” Uncle Hayao said, smiling. “Now I can never be married!” he wailed and she laughed.
Shinji stared, wondering if his aunt and uncle had been possessed, but Emi laughed too.
“That sounds like my sister,” she said, giggling.
“Weren’t you married already twenty years ago?” Shinji asked.
“The beach thing was when were seventeen,” Uncle Hayao said. “I think.”
“Were you first loves?” Emi asked softly.
“No,” Uncle Hayao said. “First love always fails.”
Emi made a face at that.
“First everything fails,” he continued. “You have to get some experience. We got lucky, but we’d both dated in that half-assed teenager kind of way before that,” he finished, idly splashing the water with one hand and holding Aunt Mariko’s hand with the other. “Practice makes perfect. Don’t believe cartoons. No one has a hidden talent which will just explode into full flower the first time you try. You have to work at it. Even your generation has to work at it to reach your potential. You’re a great cellist, Shinji but I remember all the missed notes when you started.”
“So do I,” he mumbled.
“NERV wants you and you can’t fight NERV,” Uncle Hayao said wearily. “I’d tell you to run but you can’t run, either. I don’t know why…” He paused, looked at Emi and sighed. “Let’s get dry; you two can have a few minutes and then she’d better go home before her parents realize she’s here.”
“They’re asleep,” Emi said.
“You can’t ever count on parents staying asleep,” Aunt Mariko said and Uncle Hayao buried his face in his hands. “That really was a loud refrigerator.” She shook her head and rose and she and Uncle Hayao went to dry off, leaving the kids to wonder what had happened back then.
******************
“I have to go but I don’t… I’m sorry,” Shinji said to Emi as she sat on his lap as he sat on his bed.
“You apologize too much,” she told him, then kissed him softly. “It’s okay.” She said it but he wasn’t sure if he believed it. “Just don’t forget me.”
“I couldn’t ever forget you,” he said and she smiled and they kissed again and he wanted more but was afraid to ask.
“Is it scary?” she asked softly. “Leaving here?”
“Yeah,” he said to her. Father… he didn’t know what he would say to Father.
If he’d even see Father. The Geofront was an entire city, so they might well not.
Why did you send me away, he wondered again. Did you blame me for Mother dying? It wasn’t my fault!
“I wish I could go with you,” she mumbled.
He had to go. He had to find out why his father had sent him away. To learn what was he doing. Before he went crazy. He’d felt like… He had to know what was going on even though it scared him.
But now… holding her felt so good. For once, he didn’t feel alone.
Knowing there was another way to be made the prospect of returning it all that much worse.
“Sorry to interrupt but I’d better drive Hasegawa home,” Aunt Mariko said through the closed door. “It’s too late for her to bike home.”
Distantly, a wolf howled and Emi cuddled a little closer to Shinji, now looking worried.
“It’ll be okay,” he told her, stroking her hair clumsily. “They can’t get into a car.”
They kissed again and she left and he slept, sleeping very deeply.
***************
“I’m free?” Shinji said in confusion at breakfast.
“You will likely be leaving soon; you might as well have the chance to spend a little time with your friends before you never see them again,” Uncle Hayao said over his bowl of oatmeal. It contained exactly the number of strawberry, apple, and melon slices he had to have or he would throw a fit. He was a creature of habit, Shinji had learned.
Shinji suspected that when he was old and grey, he’d find himself getting up and making Uncle Hayao that breakfast on pure instinct.
“Thank you,” Shinji said, stunned.
“Your father is a lying, conniving, backstabbing weasel, but your mother was a fighter,” Uncle Hayao told his breakfast. “She’d have fought that punk to the last ditch, like you did. You did her proud, boy. You did her proud.” He sighed and began stuffing his face.
Shinji wondered, briefly, if he was dreaming, then decided to just roll with it. I’m free, he thought.
“We’re going to have some rainy weather, so don’t forget to take an umbrella,” his aunt said, smiling and patting her husband’s shoulder.
Shinji began planning his day, now that he knew he would have one.
END CHAPTER ONE.
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