The World We Couldn't Have

Chapter 2 - ...And all's right with the world.

Finally, after what felt like a grating eternity of walking, her legs burning and her heart pounding, she found herself at Kensuke's "house", if one could even call it that. It was just some old train station, the roof and rails rusting away, that he had reappropriated into a house. She pushed open the old door, hanging crookedly off the frame, and closed it behind her. Her old pair of combat boots laid with the rest of the shoes at the front door, just where she had left them.

The air of the home was still, just the sound of the old frame creaking as it expanded in the daylight sun, the homemade shower releasing small, rhythmic drops of water, striking against the floor with a PLAP every few seconds. She stepped over to where she had been sleeping before the final battle, everything she left behind put together and organized, the bed tidied up. Kensuke must have organized everything. Jeez, he set everything up like it was some... funeral... She thought to herself, at first a bit offended that he put all her keepsakes on display, but she guessed she could cut him some slack. After all, it's realistic that he could have thought she wouldn't return. Her old jacket, the red and white one she had abandoned for the green one Kensuke lent her was folded neatly on the edge of the bed, her black cap with the roundel and the skull placed just above it. Her WonderSwan laid just adjacent to the clothing, with a fresh set of batteries next to it. Kensuke always seemed to have this... unnatural ability to know when Asuka's console was in need of new batteries. It was a little strange, but it kept her from having to deal with the inconvenience of it dying on her, so she just accepted it.

Almost instinctively, she turned to Shinji's corner, that spot he spent so goddamn long just moping and sniveling like a brat. All there was was the pad and the sheets. The boy had nothing with him, no trinkets, no tools, just the clothes on his back and that damn walkman, which was no doubt destroyed with the Wunder.

Thanks for saying you liked me... I liked you too.

Dammit. Those words popped into her head again. A knot twisted in her stomach as she looked at the bare, empty corner, a stark reminder of how little of anything Shinji had. He'd come to Kensuke's house with nothing but the clothes on his back and his damaged walkman, no extra clothes, no personal mementos. Unlike her own space, cluttered with the things Kensuke had so carefully organized, Shinji's corner felt... hollow. The realization struck her hard, like a punch to the gut, a pang of guilt shooting through her. She'd always thought of Shinji as a crybaby, someone who ran away from every burden, but standing there, seeing his corner so empty, a different image crept into her mind–a boy so used to having nothing he never expected to keep anything at all.

That was only part of it. Another surge of guilt passed through her, as she thought of his words again. She'd barely been able to look at him in their last meeting... why? Was she that pathetically afraid of her feelings being reciprocated? For all she knew that was the last time she'd ever see him, and all she could do was turn away, and shut him out. She didn't love the boy anymore, not in any romantic way, anyways. She'd grown up before him, plain and simple. But somehow that made it all feel worse. She couldn't have loved him anyways.

Give my regards... to Kensuke?

She looked down at her feet, and the hard concrete beneath them, the silence of the home weighing heavily on her as Shinji's final words to her rang through her head. She looked back to her jacket, and her beloved hat. She'd almost brought it with her on the Wunder. She silently thanked the universe that she had decided not to. "Yeah, okay Shinji," She said aloud, lifting her hat and rubbing her finger over the rough edge of one of the pins, "I'll let him know you said hi..."

She gently grasped the jacket, slinging it around her shoulders and zipping it up like she'd done a million times before. She placed the cap on top of her head, pulling it down until it was snug against her skull. The familiarity of the clothes felt comforting to her, placing a bit of confidence into her still bleeding heart. She began making her way to the door, when suddenly, an unfamiliar sensation assailed her. Hunger. Honest-to-god hunger. She hadn't felt that since... the incident with the 9th angel. The sensation left her momentarily speechless, stopped in her tracks. "The fuck?" She asked herself, staring down at her stomach as if it'd give her an answer, but it just continued to churn with that unfamiliar sensation. What had happened? What did that idiot Shinji do?