The second floor of the library, the 3E exam room.
At the lectern, Nono swung her long, jean-clad legs, bracing one hand against the desktop and fanning herself with a folder in the other. Her eyes lit up when she saw Lu Mingfei step through the doorway. She hopped straight down, the heels of her Mary Janes striking the floor with a click.
"Lu Mingfei!"
"Morning." Lu Mingfei nodded, treating it as a greeting from someone he knew.
"You did pretty well yesterday," Nono said, walking up to Lu Mingfei and tilting her face up toward him, her amber eyes full of laughter. "Way better than Caesar."
Nono's voice was neither loud nor soft, but her words were like a stone tossed into a still lake. The ripples spread fast.
Yesterday? What had happened yesterday?
The freshmen whispered among themselves, their eyes darting between the two. None of them dared make a racket, but they could barely contain their excitement. Yesterday had been the Day of Freedom. Caesar and Chu Zihang had fought an earthshaking battle in Valhalla, only to be beaten flat by this S-rank student with both hands in his pockets.
But was that really the "yesterday" Nono meant?
Or was it...
"I heard Nono's Lu Mingfei's admissions adviser."
In a corner, a boy wearing glasses lowered his voice as he spoke to the student beside him.
"Yeah, yeah, I heard that too. And before they enrolled, they spent three days and nights together in Hakone, Japan."
"Hakone? Isn't that where couples go?"
"Shh-"
The commotion was restrained, but the excitement was impossible to hide. Gossip at Cassell College had always traveled faster than Word Spirits. The Nightwatch Forum's servers were ready.
Before Lu Mingfei could answer Nono, a cold voice cut in from the side.
"Take your seat."
Professor Manstein emerged from behind the door, his gleaming bald head reflecting the wall lights. He swept a cold gaze over Lu Mingfei. "I will now announce the exam rules!"
Nono pouted, tugged on Lu Mingfei's sleeve, and led him toward the back rows. "Over here."
Lu Mingfei followed Nono down the aisle under the scrutiny of dozens of pairs of eyes.
He discovered that his seat was in the second-to-last row, beside the window.
The legendary protagonist's seat.
He turned to look outside and suddenly realized that the weather was lovely today. The rising sun had climbed above the clouds, its light streaming down along them and casting the window's shadow across the walnut desk. A faint crimson glow tinted the entire classroom.
He remembered when he had first crossed over into the EVA world.
Back then, he had been a middle school student in Tokyo-3, attending classes day after day, with grades that were neither good nor bad and neither too many friends nor too few. Those days had actually been quite ordinary. Every day, he listened to the cicadas and watched the classmate in front of him pretend to sleep.
The only unusual thing was that he had to visit NERV headquarters for a medical examination once a week.
Blood draws, CT scans, MRIs, and then confinement in a white room while he waited for the results.
At the time, he had no idea what those examinations were for. He had even thought they had discovered he was from another world.
Nono came down the aisle carrying a stack of A4 sheets and a handful of sharpened pencils. She handed a set to each freshman as she passed, her movements crisp and efficient, like a female dealer handing out playing cards.
When she placed the exam paper on Lu Mingfei's desk, she tapped the corner twice with her fingers.
"Put your phone and student ID on the corner of your desk."
Lu Mingfei set the N96 the college had given him on the corner. Just then, he saw a hand reach out in the row ahead.
The hand was almost translucent. It quietly pushed a phone to the edge of the desk.
A petite girl sat in front of him, her back turned. With her uniform jacket off, she wore only a white T-shirt. Her pale blond hair was pinned up on top of her head, its color so light it caught the light. Lu Mingfei tilted his head slightly and saw her profile.
Her skin was so white it was almost translucent. In the sunlight, he could see the tiny blue veins near her temple.
In that instant, a name surged to the tip of his tongue.
But he knew it wasn't her.
Ayanami's hair was blue, not blond. Ayanami's eyes were red, not blue. Ayanami wouldn't be sitting in an exam room at Cassell College, because Ayanami-
Lu Mingfei swallowed the name, his throat aching a little.
So there were people like this in every world.
But she wasn't Rei Ayanami.
Once, after a crisis had passed, Lu Mingfei had gone to the infirmary to deliver some supplies.
When he pushed the cart into the infirmary, Rei Ayanami was sitting on a bed.
She held a little white flower from somewhere in her hands, her expression intent, as though she were studying something she had never seen before.
She tilted her head slightly, gently touched the edge of a petal with her fingertip, then drew it back. Looking at the pollen clinging to her finger, she blinked.
Lu Mingfei stood in the doorway without entering or making a sound.
It was probably the first time she had seen that kind of flower.
Later, he had thought countless times that he should have told her what flower it was, what it was called, and what season it bloomed in.
But there had been no later.
On countless late nights spent waiting to deploy, he often let his mind wander. If the war ended one day, if Ayanami developed a personality of her own and no longer had to serve as a cloned vessel, what would she be like?
"Probably just as expressionless as this, Ayanami."
Lu Mingfei received his exam paper. It was completely blank.
A faint sound came from the windows. Black panels slid silently out from between the layers of the carved wooden window frames, sealing every window shut. The classroom was now a locked room straight out of Detective Conan.
As a pounding pop hit began to play, the exam room erupted into a dance of demons. Some students pounded their desks while sobbing, others danced the tango with partners made of air, and still others rolled their eyes back and tried to gnaw at the chair backs in front of them. Professor Manstein adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and nodded in satisfaction at the apocalyptic revelry before him.
Lu Mingfei lowered his head and casually drew a cross on the blank exam paper.
After finishing the cross, he drew a crooked little figure beside it. The figure had no expression, a single tuft of hair sticking up from its head, and a flower cupped in its hands.
Tap, tap.
Someone knocked on his desk.
Lu Mingfei looked up. At some point, Nono had come to stand beside him. She leaned sideways against the neighboring desk, her hands in her pockets, bending slightly to look at his paper.
"Instead of drawing your Spirit Vision," she said, glancing at the cross and crooked little figure with a mischievous curl of her lips, "you're sitting here drawing stick figures?"
Without a change in expression, Lu Mingfei flipped the paper over, hiding the little figure.
"This is my Spirit Vision."
Nono raised an eyebrow. She clearly didn't believe his nonsense, but decided not to call him out.
There was one question, however, that she had been holding back for a long time.
"When did you have your first Spirit Vision?"
Lu Mingfei thought for a moment, recalling the first time he had entered an entry plug.
"A few months ago, I guess."
Nono froze. "That recently?" Her eyes widened. "What did you see?"
"Hmm..."
Nono suddenly regretted speaking so hastily and was about to change the subject.
"A sea."
"A sea?"
"Yeah. An enormous ocean, like blood stretching as far as the eye could see." Lu Mingfei looked at the cross on his exam paper. "At its center stood a pure white cross. The sky was blood-red, and everywhere there was red rain and particles of light swirling through the air."
That was what he had seen inside EVA Unit-03 when he first met Lu Mingze.