"You hugged me before without asking my permission, so it should be okay if I just want to stay a little while now, right?"
Asuka lay on her side in Shinji Ikari's bed with her back to him, her whole body curled up like a little animal tucked into itself.
She looked like a kitten, burying its paws and head in the crook of its forelegs, its back slightly arched, quiet yet alert. The girl seemed utterly lonely.
"You were really cool today. But I can't ask for help," Asuka suddenly said.
"Why not?"
"During the fight today, you told me it was okay to ask for help, right?"
"Yes."
"But I can't," Asuka said.
"My mother was gone before I was very old. I don't know who my father is, but I actually used to have lots of sisters. They gradually disappeared too."
"If I do that, if I can't defeat the Angels, if I need other people, then someone as useless as me will definitely be abandoned just like they were."
"So you're afraid of those animals? What's so bad about being abandoned by animals like that? Wanting to stay with them is what's strange," Shinji Ikari said.
Anyone who would abandon someone for being unable to pilot an EVA was clearly the same kind of animal as Gendo Ikari. And animals, of course, mattered less than humans.
"But I'll disappear!"
"No, you won't, because humans can stay beside God. The place beside God is the promised land he pledged to them, a place where humans are allowed to exist."
Shinji Ikari lay down too. Rather than looking at the girl beside him, he simply gazed at the familiar ceiling.
It was time for his favorite activity again: counseling someone. This girl clearly needed something to lean on