Do you ever look at someone and feel like your heart is going to burst?

.

"Do you ever look at someone and feel like your heart is going to burst?", Misato had said to him. It had been days, and Shinji still hadn't quite taken that sentence in. Things had never been worse at their house. Since the woman had come home to hear Kaji's final message, she looked more like a walking ghost than the vivid woman who had so eagerly picked Shinji up in her car in the middle of an Angel attack. The woman who'd made him feel the closest to a home than ever, even with her failed attempts at cooking, her terrible cleaning habits, and how much beer she drank.

When Shinji first heard her desperate crying, his first thought was to run. Run from her, run from her sadness. He had enough of his own. And so he did. He came back to his small bedroom, lay in bed and listened to the same songs he always did. Misato's cry could barely be heard through his headphones and his closed door. Whatever bothered her would be dealt and done with by the morning, he thought.

It wasn't dealt and done with by the following morning, or the morning after that, too. In the following day after he'd first heard her cry, he woke up and didn't see her for hours. She only came out of her room to grab as much beer as she could hold, and returned to her loneliness at once. That routine remained for a long time. When Shinji saw her at NERV, she was Major Katsuragi as she always was, strong-willed, committed, smart.

At home, though, things took a whole different turn. He had come to hate dinner, when he, Asuka and Misato sat down together and ate in uncomfortable silence. He didn't understand why, but Asuka was quickly becoming more and more aggressive towards him, or, actually, anyone. Shinji could see the hurtful words threatening to come out of her mouth at any moment, and he kept running away from her. The situation was nerve-wracking. Shinji had been absorbed by Unit 01 for a whole month, according to Misato, after she rescued him, and he kept wondering if it wasn't his time to rescue her, too.

He'd tried to get some sort of help from Asuka, but she'd screamed at his face before slamming the door shut. She would always scream lately. She truly seemed to hate him now, after she'd been saved by his Unit 01 in a bloody battle. What could he do? Apparently nothing. He had already tried enough, tried to be kind, tried to win her over with food, tried to be quiet so he wouldn't irritate her, but the problem seemed to be really serious.

And there was Misato, yet again. She ate just enough not to starve and filled her body with beer. More beer than usual. There were dark bags under her eyes, and he was pretty sure she hadn't washed her clothes or cleaned her bedroom in a long time. No crying, though. At least not when anyone was nearby; the puffy eyes gave her away, but she never mentioned it, never tried to ask for any of the kid's company or help.

However, it would be unfair to say everything had gone to shit. There was... someone. Although he was so queer that Shinji sometimes thought of him more as a something, however cruel that might sound. Kaworu Nagisa. The new pilot that had presented himself at NERV right after the Spear of Longinus had been used by Unit 00 to defeat the Angel. Shinji was sitting alone by the lake, for no particular reason other than his desire to leave all the troubled women in his life behind for a little while, when someone had appeared. A boy his age. Taller than him. Dressed in his school's uniform. His first thought was Touji. But that couldn't be right.

Touji had been crushed by his Unit 01's dummy plug, and God knows where he was now, if he had even survived. Misato had said he did, but she surely had reasons to lie in order for him to keep piloting the EVA. It was a thought that haunted him from time to time. He could no longer face school. Could no longer face Hikari Horaki's sad excuse of a smile when he came through the door. Kensuke's pity. Still, he looked up, with the slightest hope that someone up there had finally decided to give him a gift.

As soon as the boy got a tiniest bit closer, he could already tell he had been brutally wrong. This boy couldn't be mistaken for Touji, not ever. His features were much, much softer. Greyish hair, almost white. A slim figure. He walked with his hands on his trouser's pockets, with the grace of a model. What? Why did I think that? He even thought the boy would just walk him by, not paying any attention. He looked like someone who wouldn't just give you attention. Like he was something more. He surely had a different aura than the rest of his classmates. But he walked straight to where Shinji was sitting down, and sat by his side, uttering no words, not even a hello. He then proceeded to hum to a song. At that point, Shinji could already tell something was off about the boy. He just hoped it wasn't in a bad way.