Hakone, a hot spring inn halfway up the mountain.
The tatami gave off the bitter, fresh scent of rush grass, and a kaiseki meal had been laid out on the low dining table. A serving woman knelt beside it, pouring tea without a sound.
Lu Mingfei sat cross-legged, his head down as he shoveled food into his mouth.
He wasn't really used to such high-end Japanese cuisine.
In that underground city, the logistics department served instant curry and compressed biscuits most of the time. Even when he occasionally went to Misato Katsuragi's place to mooch a meal, all he found was a pile of instant ramen and a table covered in beer cans.
By comparison, the sashimi and matsutake soup before him looked so exquisite they almost seemed fake.
"If you two have some free time tomorrow, you might like to visit the sightseeing boat pier," the serving woman suggested softly. "Or take the ropeway at Ōwakudani. You can see the whole lake from there. The scenery is wonderful."
"We're not going to Ōwakudani."
Lu Mingfei swallowed his mackerel without even looking up. "Go east. Past the third high-voltage transmission tower, head four hundred meters toward the back of the mountain. There's an abandoned slope there. No trees blocking the view, no people wandering around. The sight lines are clearer than at Ōwakudani."
The serving woman's teapot froze in midair as she stared in surprise at the boy in the T-shirt.
"Have you been here before?" She forced a polite smile. "That wooded area was sealed off ages ago. Even the locals don't go there. It isn't marked on the maps."
"I like looking at satellite maps." Lu Mingfei swallowed his food and made up an excuse on the spot. "I like peace and quiet, so I avoid places with lots of tourists."
The serving woman nodded in understanding, bowed again, and left the room.
Late that night.
Lu Mingfei pulled on a jacket, pushed open the side door, and slipped deep into the mountains.
His feet fell on soft earth and fallen leaves. He avoided every brightly lit main path, picking his way through woods and bushes instead.
Following his body's instincts, he headed for the place he knew best in his memories.
The woods ended, and the view suddenly opened up.
Lake Ashi lay ahead.
The wind swept past, stirring waves across the black water. Stars shimmered in the lake's reflection. A few sightseeing boats were moored on the opposite shore, rocking gently with the ripples.
Lu Mingfei walked up to an old tree, crouched, and brushed away the soil.
The roots ran unobstructed, plunging straight down.
Lu Mingfei's gaze dimmed. If NERV's composite armor plating lay underground, the taproots of large trees couldn't possibly grow vertically. They would hit steel and be forced to spread sideways in radiating coils. Besides, the underground city's massive cooling system operated year-round. Even through dozens of meters of earth, it would cause abnormal increases in the local soil temperature. The moss here shouldn't have been so lush, damp, and cold.
Lu Mingfei stood on a huge rock beside the lake.
In his memories, there shouldn't have been a rock here. When the alarm sounded, the lake's waters would churn and part to either side. Enormous steel gates would rise amid a deafening mechanical roar, and an EVA dozens of meters tall would be catapulted out through a launch shaft.
He slowly crouched and pressed his palm against the cold rock.
Rough. Hard. No disguised armor, no faint vibration from the underground city's cooling system.
His fingers clamped onto the edge of the rock, veins bulging on the back of his hand. He clawed at the stone and waited for that damned alarm. Waited for the lake to split open, for a blazing cross-shaped pillar of light to cut through the night sky. But the wind remained steady. Not even a bird stirred.
"The patient's heart rate is over two hundred! Administer a sedative!"
"His neuronal synapses are still firing abnormally! His brain thinks he's being dismembered!"
When Unit-03 was torn apart, the neural connection hadn't severed immediately. Every bite from Unit-01, every distortion of the armor, the desperate crushing pressure as the entry plug was violently squeezed to pieces-all of it had been relayed to his brain at one hundred percent synchronization.
He felt as though his neck had been broken and his spine pulled out. He lay in bed, yet felt like a puddle of mangled flesh.
But when he finally struggled through the agony and opened his eyes, no comfort awaited him.
A heavy metal ring had appeared around his neck.
DSS-the Deification Shutdown System.
"He was parasitized by an Angel. Although he currently displays no signs of mutation, MAGI's calculations indicate that he could become a new threat at any moment." Outside the hospital room, Gendo Ikari's voice was as cold as iron. "The collar stays on. If he displays any abnormalities, or attempts to escape NERV Headquarters... detonate it immediately."
Upon detonation, high explosives and a miniature bone pulse would instantly sever his cervical spine and blast his head off like a rotten watermelon.
The world no longer trusted him.
That old lunatic Gendo Ikari even considered another glance at him a waste of time.
Misato had visited him once. The woman who was always so bold and spirited stood beside his bed, avoiding his eyes.
Ayanami remained as expressionless as ever, silently replacing the pillowcase soaked through with his cold sweat.
Shinji had disappeared.
He had watched himself crush Unit-03 with his own eyes, suffered a complete mental breakdown, and gone berserk inside the base in Unit-01. After that, no one knew where he had gone.
Everyone had been ground to pieces by the tragedy.
Lu Mingfei lay in his hospital bed, watching the red sunset outside the window. He didn't even dare breathe too hard, afraid the DSS collar around his neck would misinterpret his muscles contracting. He felt like a dead dog chained to explosives and dumped by the roadside, free for anyone to kick.
"What the hell is this pathetic look supposed to be?!" Asuka grabbed Lu Mingfei by the collar and hauled him out of bed, forcing him to look straight into her eyes. "What the hell are these useless tears?!"
Lu Mingfei's lips trembled. "I... there's a bomb around my neck... it hurts... Asuka, I don't want to be torn apart again..."
At the sight of the boy's face collapsing into tears, Asuka's grip on his collar loosened slightly, only to tighten fiercely again. Her eyes were red, and she ground out each word through clenched teeth:
"As long as I'm alive, this piece-of-junk collar isn't blowing your head off! So-"
"Wipe that spineless, half-dead look off your face!"
"Lu Mingfei! Wipe that spineless, half-dead look off your face!"
Lu Mingfei's body jolted. He opened his eyes, and his pupils instantly contracted at the sight of the person before him.
At some point, Nono had appeared in front of him. She grabbed the collar of his T-shirt and forcibly hauled him off the rock.
The boy before her had become an overloaded machine, his gaze unfocused in midair.
"Snap out of it! Look at me!"
Nono caught his chin with her other hand and forcibly turned his cold-sweat-drenched face toward her.
Moonlight fell across Nono's delicate, cool face.
She wasn't Asuka. Her eyes were amber, not sea blue; she carried the faint scent of Bulgari perfume, not the smell of LCL left behind in a cockpit.
"I said, look at me!" Nono leaned closer, her voice fierce and commanding.
It wasn't her.
All at once, the strength drained out of him, and a lifeless laugh escaped his throat.
This place was real. Everything was gone.
"What's gotten into you?" Nono released him in disgust, letting him fall back into a sitting position. "Coming out here in the middle of the night to touch rocks and sigh-are you possessed or something?"
"No." He turned away from Nono to face the pitch-black expanse of Lake Ashi.
If this world really had no EVAs, no trace of any Angels, then what exactly was the abnormality inside this body of his?
Lu Mingfei slowly closed his eyes.
He tried to recall the feeling of his A10 Neurons synchronizing with Unit-03 while he was inside its entry plug.
"Deploy."
Beside the dark lake, a low-frequency vibration suddenly rang through the air, as though space itself were being peeled apart.
Lu Mingfei took a step forward. The instant his sole touched the lake's surface, a golden hexagonal screen of light spread out from the point where his foot landed.
Ripples swirled beneath his sole, and he stood on the lake's surface as casually as that.