I

  "—I'm sorry!"

  Asuka's eyes flew open as she jolted upright. "I'm sorry!"

  Her hand clutched at the T-shirt above her wildly pounding heart. Her breath came in short, ragged bursts.

  "I’m..."

  She forced herself to breathe slower, then looked around. She was sitting upright in her bed in her room, in Misato’s apartment.

  Reddish light seeped through the blinds, heralding a new morning.

  Just a dream... Just a fucking nightmare.

  She ran a hand through her red hair and drew in a deep breath. But it had felt so real...

  She threw the blanket aside, swung her legs out of bed, and picked her way through a minefield of used clothes.

  Shinji really needs to do my laundry again, I don’t have—

  A stabbing pain exploded in her chest. It felt like someone had driven a red-hot needle straight into her heart. Images pierced her consciousness like tiny shards of glass — and she collapsed, trembling, gasping for air.

  Flashes of Shinji, bathed entirely in white, playing the guitar.

  A car ride.

  Loud thunder.

  And a man with a beard.

  Touji and Hikari, both crying in front of a delivery van.

  A moldy basement.

  And blood—so much blood...

  Asuka clamped a hand over her mouth and stumbled, crawling into the bathroom, where she vomited noisily into the toilet.

  “Fuck...” she gasped, crouching beside the bowl, wiping her mouth with a piece of toilet paper.

  Must’ve been the food from last night...

  Unsteadily, she rose to her feet, gripped the sink for support, and drank a few gulps of water to get rid of the foul taste. Then she splashed cold water on her face.

  Better, she thought.

  She rummaged through the medicine cabinet. “Misato? Baka-Shinji? Where the hell are the damn headache pills?”

  No answer.

  Asuka stuck her head out of the bathroom. “Hello? Is anyone home?”

  Silence. Not even the steady chirping of the cicadas could be heard.

  “What the hell...?”

  She went to Shinji's room, opened the door, and turned on the light —only to find the room empty. No Shinji.

  Wait... she had to turn the light on? But... why was it so dark?

  Asuka ran to the window and peered outside.

  The moon hung in the sky. Stars sparkled.

  The day had only just begun... Had she really spent half the day in the bathroom?

  She turned around — and froze.

  Someone was standing in the doorway.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and her eyes flew open.

  “Rei?”

  “Asuka.”

  The first thought that crossed Asuka's mind wasn't why Rei was standing in her apartment in the middle of the night — but that she wasn’t wearing her school uniform.

  Instead, she wore simple brown trousers and a loose white shirt. Her long — her long? — blue hair was tied into a ponytail and fell over her shoulder. And she was barefoot.

  “We need to talk,” Rei said, turning around and heading toward the kitchen.

  Asuka needed a few seconds for her brain to catch up after the shock.

  I’d rather have the sudden night, thank you, she thought, then followed Rei into the kitchen.

  Rei was sitting at the dining table when Asuka entered the room.

  “Do you want to sit?”

  Still speechless, Asuka slowly pulled out the second chair and sat down.

  “You must have questions.”

  Asuka snorted.

  “And I’ll answer them. But we don’t have much time. While we’re talking, time outside is moving faster — and your soul can’t stay in the soul-tank for too long without its body.”

  ***

  Flickering light. The smell of heated plastic and ionization fills the air.

  “Circulatory collapse! Blood pressure dropping rapidly – sixty over thirty!”

  Rotors screech above them. Someone yells: “Separation! We need to intubate!”

  Another voice crackles through the radio: “Thoracic fracture with multiple hematomas! Massive internal blood loss – we’re losing her!”

  “Misato?”

  “Prepare Section Theta! Vacuum transfer in five seconds!”

  A jolt. The environment changes. Cold neon light. The air smells of disinfectant and seared tissue.

  “Access port open! We’re losing her – now!”

  A glass cylinder rises from the floor.

  Asuka’s body is slid into it.

  The liquid rises – golden, weightless.

  “Stabilize the soul matrix. Binding in three… two… one…”

  A hiss. Then – silence.

  And darkness.

  ***

  “What...?”

  Once again, something stabbed at her chest. Darkness swept over her eyes, and a breathless scream tore from her throat. Then, images flashed before her eyes again:

  Figures dressed in white.

  Sachiel.

  A light bulb.

  Tsubame?

  A knife.

  "Will you marry me?"

  “No!” Asuka screamed, shaking her head violently and jumping up so abruptly that the chair tipped over with a crash. “No...”

  “Asuka, please...” Rei also stood up and slowly walked around the table, taking a step towards her.

  “Stop!” Asuka stretched out a hand. “Stay where you are!”

  Rei stopped – an arm’s length away.

  “What’s happening to me? What’s going on? Where are Shinji and Misato?”

  Suddenly, she started to tremble. A thick lump formed in her throat, and her breath came in gasps.

  She sank to her knees and began to cry.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  An unshakable realization filled her – like cold earth filling a grave.

  “Rei?” she gasped through her sobs. She looked down at her hands, then up at Rei. “Am I... dead?”

  ***

  Static noises. Muffled voices behind thick glass.

  “Body structure unstable – cell matrix beginning to disintegrate.”

  A blinking hologram displays Asuka’s outline – flickering, pulsing, dissolving.

  “AT-Field residual signature collapsing. Neural coherence below fourteen percent.”

  “Adjust synthetic LCL to Phase II. Maintain contact threshold at 0.03.”

  An alarm starts to beep.

  “Soul anchor... drifting.”

  “Damn it. Stabilize the interface with the Imaginary Realm! We’re losing her in the quantum layer!”

  Then a new sound. Deep. Alien.

  Something responds.

  “Subject Soryu... is not alone.”

  Silence. Liquid. Light.

  And then: Binding deepens.

  ***

  Rei knelt beside her, took her into her arms, and gently stroked her head.

  Asuka was too shocked and overwhelmed to realize that the old Rei – the one she had known – would never have done something like this.

  Rei pulled her a little closer. Her voice was soft but clear, almost tender – like the rustling of fabric in still air.

  “You were dead, Asuka.”

  Asuka flinched.

  “Tsubame’s knife hit your heart. You were dead within minutes.”

  Then Asuka felt Rei tuck a strand of hair behind her ear – slowly, almost ceremoniously. The gesture had nothing childish about it. It was calm, determined. Something deeper. Something that stayed.

  “And Shinji?” Asuka mumbled into Rei’s shirt.

  “Shinji is…” Rei hesitated for a moment. “Shinji saved you.”

  Asuka smiled weakly. “My Baka-Shinji…”

  And then the pain came – not like a wave, but like an electric shock to her heart.

  “I said no…”

  Sob after sob wracked her body like waves through a sinking ship.

  “He gave me everything. He asked me to marry him – and I just said no, Rei… Oh God…”

  Asuka continued to cry, feeling Rei’s fingers glide through her hair again – calm, even, like a motion no one would ever have expected from the old Rei.

  Then she heard her voice – soft, almost brittle, but with a clarity that went under her skin.

  “He didn’t ask you that question because he needed an answer. He asked because he loves you.”

  Asuka buried her face deeper into the shirt, which had become wet with tears.

  “Love is not a transaction,” Rei said. “Not a contract. It was already there before you answered. And it was still there when you said ‘no.’”

  Asuka heard her swallow. For a moment, she thought she heard a hint of hesitation in Rei’s voice – or was it just her imagination?

  “Shinji gave you his hope,” Rei finally said. “And you accepted it. Even if you didn’t realize it.”

  Asuka lifted her head just enough to look at Rei. Her eyes burned.

  “But I messed up,” she whispered. “I broke everything. I pushed him away, and then...” Her voice broke. “Then it was too late.”

  Rei just looked at her. Not with pity. Just there. Calm. Steady.

  Asuka swallowed hard, shaking her head.

  “I didn’t want to hurt him. I… I was just scared. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

  She laughed dryly – a hollow, broken sound.

  “Of all people... the great, strong Asuka Langley Soryu. Scared of a damn ring.”

  She pressed her forehead against Rei’s shoulder.

  “What a joke I am.”

  Rei said nothing. And that, in itself, was comforting. No reproaches. No explanations. Just warmth.

  Just like Shinji had always done.

  Rei placed a hand on Asuka's cheek and looked at her with an expression Asuka didn’t know. Not the cold emptiness of earlier days. Not the analytical distance she often displayed.

  This was warmth. And something deeper.

  “You are not a joke, Asuka,” Rei said quietly. Her voice vibrated, as if it were not only passing through space, but through something much greater.

  “You have fallen, yes. But you are not broken.”

  Asuka blinked. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Your body is not lost,” Rei continued. “Not completely. Not yet.”

  Something in her emphasis made Asuka pause.

  “What do you mean…?” she asked softly.

  But Rei only shook her head gently.

  “Not now. Not yet. Your soul needs time to return. And the place where you are right now... it allows you to heal.”

  Asuka lowered her gaze.

  The place? Everything felt so strange. Weightless. And yet there was gravity – not for the body, but for the heart.

  “So I’m not… dead?”

  “You are between things,” Rei said.

  A hint of sadness lingered in her words, but also mild hope.

  “And there is a way back. If you want to take it.”

  If I want to...?

  Asuka remained silent for a long time. In Rei's arms, in this impossible stillness, which didn’t feel like peace, but like the moment just before impact.

  “If I return...,” she whispered eventually. “Will everything go back to the way it was?”

  Rei looked at her. Her eyes were still – deep as water that had not known waves for a long time.

  “No,” she said. “Nothing will ever be the same. But you will live.”

  Asuka inhaled shakily. Then, barely audible: “What’s the cost?”

  Rei briefly closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was a trace of sadness in her gaze.

  “There’s always a price. Even for life.”

  Asuka wanted to argue, to ask what kind of price, when, why her – but her voice failed her.

  Rei leaned closer to her. Her forehead touched Asuka’s for a moment.

  “When the time comes,” Rei whispered, “you will remember. And you will be ready. But promise me one thing, Asuka.”

  “What?”

  “That you will accept it. The price. Whatever it is.”

  Her voice became softer, almost like a prayer.

  “The way back leads through a shadow. And eventually, you will have to pass through it.”

  Asuka swallowed. Something inside her screamed No. But something else – tired, exhausted, full of regret – nodded slowly.

  “I promise.”

  Rei smiled. Just a hint of a smile.

  Asuka kept her gaze on Rei for a moment longer. Something was working within her, pushing to the surface – an echo from another time, a memory of words she had never said.

  “Rei...” Her voice was barely audible. “Back then... when we were still children. I was mean to you. Cold. Dismissive. I thought you were just an empty puppet. I wanted to hurt you because you were always so quiet, while I was screaming inside. I hated you... because I couldn’t understand you.”

  Before her inner eye, an old image flickered – Rei in her school uniform, standing at the window, her gaze directed outside. Silent. Distant. And Asuka, mocking that silence at the time, just so she wouldn’t have to admit to herself how deeply it unsettled her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  A soft whisper, little more than a breath. But it felt like a vow, long overdue and suddenly as heavy as everything that had remained unspoken.

  Rei was silent for a moment, as though listening to something unsaid, something that could only be felt. Then she spoke gently: “I never hated you. Not then. Not after. I knew you weren’t fighting against me... you were fighting against what was inside you.”

  Asuka blinked. Her lips trembled. Something within her loosened. A knot that had been tied for years.

  Rei tilted her head, almost like a greeting. “You were never alone, Asuka. Even if you believed you were.”

  Then everything began to flicker.

  ***

  “Uh... Movement in the core field. Is that—?”

  “Impossible. The cell matrix... it’s reorganizing on its own.”

  Holographic models spring to life. Shapes grow from light and bio-data. Something is weaving itself together – from memory, from will, from residual light.

  “Collagen network formation active. Muscle tissue... responding. It’s responding!”

  “But the soul binding was unstable. This shouldn’t—”

  “She wants to return.”

  The liquid begins to vibrate. Golden LCL pulses, as if it were breathing. A body – unfinished, fragile – slowly peels itself out of the solution.

  ***

  The light that surrounded Asuka grew brighter, blinding – like water transforming into light. The ground beneath her mind began to tremble, as if she were slowly and inevitably sinking back into herself.

  ***

  "Synapses firing. We... we are receiving brainwaves!"

  Someone whispers: "This can't be..."

  "AT field signature increasing... she's forming herself."

  Misato steps up to the glass. Her voice trembles.

  "Asuka?"

  Then: a breath – no mechanical sound, no programmed twitch.

  A real, shallow, barely audible inhalation.

  "Vital signs online."

  For a moment, everyone in the room holds their breath.

  Then the heart beats. Once. Twice. Steadily.

  ***

  The warmth of Rei’s embrace melted away like mist in the sun.

  Asuka’s fingers wanted to cling, but even her will seemed to slip away.

  A final trace of touch.

  Then there was nothing but white light.

  Loud and boundless.

  II

  A beep – steady, pulsing, like the heart of a world that had been still for too long.

  Asuka drew in a sharp breath. The first inhale burned – in her chest, in her throat, in her soul. It felt as though it had to carve its way through layers of darkness, through memories, through something more than just sleep.

  Artificial light settled over her like a blanket of frosty glass. White. Blinding. Silent. No sounds except the hum of machines and the regular, unsettlingly soothing beep that pulsed somewhere beside her.

  Her fingers twitched. She felt the thin sheet on her skin, the tubes in her arm, the pillow under her head – everything real, everything physical. And yet, there was a veil over the world, as if she had only half returned.

  The smell of disinfectant filled her nose, mixed with something colder, more technical, almost metallic. Not an ordinary hospital. No – too clinical, too dehumanized, too... pure. A place of transition. LICHT.

  Slowly, as if every muscle had to remember how movement worked, she turned her head to the side.

  And there he was.

  Shinji.

  In a simple chair, slumped, as if someone had placed him there and then forgotten. His arms hung limply on his knees, his head was lowered. He wasn’t asleep – he had collapsed. A body that could no longer go on. A mind that refused to let go.

  His shirt was torn, darkly stained in several places – dried blood. Her blood. Mud, dirt, and the ashes of what had happened clung to him like silent witnesses to what he had been through. He hadn’t changed his clothes. Hadn’t washed. Maybe not even slept. For days.

  And yet – he was here. With her.

  Asuka stared at him. It was as if her heart was slowly remembering how to feel. How to love. How to live.

  He had called her. Sung. Cried.

  He had carried her. Killed for her. Saved her.

  He had stayed.

  And she had said no.

  Not because she didn’t love him.

  But because she didn’t know how.

  She could have pushed him away. Again.

  But now… now she didn’t want to anymore.

  Too much had died in her. Only one thing remained.

  She parted her lips – and even though her voice was rough, it was clear.

  "Yes... I do."

  A jolt ran through him. No slow awakening. No cautious look up.

  Shinji shot up as if her whisper had struck him straight to the heart.

  Then he moved – not hesitantly, not groping, but with a force he had never shown before.

  He sprang up, covering the short distance in one raw impulse, bent over her, half-throwing himself onto the bed, his arms wrapped around her – wild, unrestrained, uncontrolled.

  "Asuka!"

  His voice was one cry – of relief, of fear, of love.

  He pressed her against him, tight, desperate, as if he could save her from disappearing by sheer proximity.

  His body trembled, his face buried in her neck, his tears burning on her skin.

  "You’re awake... you’re really awake... I thought—"

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. She saw him swallow – as if he were swallowing all the fear of the last few days, trying not to break under it.

  Asuka sensed his scent – metallic, dirty, infused with something that belonged only to him. His clothes were rough against her skin, soaked with ash, blood, and dirt. But she didn’t care.

  He was here. And he was holding her.

  "Baka," she whispered, a faint, tired smile on her lips. "You stink."

  He laughed – brittle, broken, like something almost forgotten. But it was real. And it was beautiful.

  Asuka raised a hand, touched his cheek. Her fingers glided over his skin, rough and unkempt from days without sleep, without hope.

  Then, very softly:

  "I said no. And I thought that would protect you."

  Shinji lifted his head. He looked at her.

  Tears were in his eyes – and something new. Something she had never seen there before. Something unshakable.

  "You were honest. That meant more than anything."

  Asuka nodded. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  "I thought... I would lose myself if I said yes. But I lost myself because I didn’t say it."

  Shinji closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against hers. "Then start finding yourself again. With me."

  She was silent. And in that silence, something grew. No happy ending. But maybe a beginning.

  Behind the door, footsteps were heard. Voices. Somewhere, someone called for a doctor. A door opened, but Asuka didn’t look. Her world consisted only of this moment. Only this boy.

  Shinji. And her.

  She didn’t know what price she would have to pay. But for the first time, she was ready to accept it.

  Whatever comes. Whatever it costs.

  She was back.

  And they were still here.