The following afternoon.
The old banyan's shadow cut summer into pieces.
Lu Mingfei hid in a secluded patch of shade, pressed against the rough bark. He pulled the new Nokia from his pocket and dialed the only number in its contacts.
"Hello? Is that Lu Mingfei? Thank God, you finally called!" A male voice with the stilted cadence of a dubbed movie boomed through the receiver. "This is Guderian from Cassell College! You got the letter, right?"
"Just got it."
"What a coincidence! I was just about to have No... have my assistant contact you again." Professor Guderian sounded as excited as a gamer who had just pulled an SSR. "Congratulations, Lu Mingfei! The college has decided to offer you a full scholarship. All tuition waived, plus an annual stipend of thirty-six thousand dollars."
A breeze passed, sending the banyan leaves rustling overhead.
Thirty-six thousand dollars.
In his aunt's eyes, that money could buy Lu Mingze a place in the Ivy League. To an ordinary high school student, it was manna from heaven.
But to Lu Mingfei's brain, thoroughly pickled in LCL, a lavish stipend offered for no reason meant only one thing-
Money to risk your life. Also known as hazard pay.
"Thank you," Lu Mingfei said politely. "What obligations would I have?"
The other end of the line went quiet.
On a leather sofa in the office, a girl with dark red hair was chewing bubble gum, wearing headphones as she practiced StarCraft.
At the question from the speakerphone, her fingers suddenly stopped tapping the keyboard. She turned to Guderian with an intrigued look.
Guderian had been pacing all over the room, phone in hand, ready to receive the Chinese boy's effusive gratitude. The question stopped him cold. He stood rooted to the spot, mouth hanging open.
"Operations? Oh, obligations! Mainly to study hard!" Guderian hurriedly pulled out an admissions brochure and read haltingly, "Cassell is a college with a long history, primarily dedicated to the study of ancient civilizations..."
"Ancient civilizations?"
"Yes, yes. The college has many interesting projects. Sometimes we organize teams to conduct field research around the world!"
"Field research?"
"Yes! Europe, South America, Africa-we have partner sites everywhere!" Guderian grew more enthusiastic as he spoke. "China in particular will be a major focus for our college in the future!"
Lu Mingfei murmured an acknowledgment and raised a hand to touch his neck.
"Sounds pretty busy."
"It's academic research." Guderian laughed. "You have to get out of the library sometime."
"Is the school in downtown Chicago?"
"No," Guderian explained cheerfully. "It's far out in the suburbs. Very peaceful, perfect for studying! It's a closed campus."
"A closed campus?"
"Yes, a purely academic atmosphere!"
"Where do you usually store the materials the research teams bring back?"
"In the college archives and laboratories, of course."
"Aboveground or underground?"
That question was a little outside the syllabus.
Guderian hesitated. "...For security reasons, the core materials are kept in the underground archives. Why?"
"No reason." Lu Mingfei nodded slightly.
Mythical creatures. Global deployments. A sealed fortress. Underground facilities.
Hah.
At the other end of the line.
The red-haired girl on the sofa had stopped gaming altogether. At first, she had only been listening out of boredom.
Calls with prospective students were usually dull. They asked how the scholarship money was paid, whether the classes were hard, whether American cafeteria food tasted any good-that sort of thing.
But after two minutes, she suddenly felt something was off.
This student asked questions in a peculiar way.
He hardly ever used long sentences. He simply repeated words the other person had just said, as though checking terms one by one.
"Students go on field assignments?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"Only certain elite programs require-"
"I see. I understand." Lu Mingfei cut him off, brisk and decisive. "Where's the interview?"
Guderian instinctively straightened. "The Regent Hotel, ten in the morning the day after tomorrow!"
"Okay."
The abrupt tone of a disconnected call sounded from the receiver.
Guderian put down his phone. "This boy... he's quite, quite composed. Is that what S-ranks are like? Neither excited nor moved?" He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. "Still, he certainly seems interested in academic matters. He even asked where the archives were. Such a thirst for knowledge! Such a thirst for knowledge!"
"Professor."
Nono slowly tapped her fingers against the table, interrupting Guderian's self-congratulation.
"What is it, Nono?"
"He wasn't asking about a college."
Guderian asked reflexively, "Huh? If he wasn't asking about a college, what was he asking about?"
Nono leaned back against the edge of the desk, her tone settling into calm.
"He was checking whether we're a military organization."
Guderian laughed. "Surely not? The boy's only seventeen!"
Nono did not reply. She put her headphones back on and tapped the keyboard twice.
"Professor," she said.
"Yes?"
"The interview the day after tomorrow." She looked up. "I'm coming too."
Lu Mingfei slipped the phone back into his pocket and sighed deeply.
Not a diploma mill. An intelligence agency posing as a college.
"These lunatics actually crossed the Pacific to China just to find someone to do their grunt work."
Back home, Lu Mingfei opened his old laptop.
"Ahem!"
In the bottom-right corner of the screen, the penguin icon flashed frantically.
"Want a match?" A big-faced cat avatar blinked on QQ. The username was "Nono."
Lu Mingfei stared at the screen and searched his mind for the name. Nothing came up. Probably an online friend he had added while gaming.
Before going to Tokyo-3, he had indeed possessed a little talent for micromanagement. He could easily keep his units five millimeters beyond the range of the enemy Terran Marines. But in the years that followed, the only machine he had used was a handheld for playing Tetris. His tactical sense had long since gone to waste.
"Not playing. Retired."
He casually closed the chat window.
A second message popped up immediately afterward.
"I'm going. See you the day after tomorrow." The sender was Chen Wenwen.
Chen Wenwen.
He remembered that name. A cotton dress, shoulder-length hair, a soft voice, as though she were afraid of disturbing anyone. She was the Chinese class representative and sat by the window in the third row. She had lent him a pen once, too. He had forgotten to return it.
That was all. That was all he could dredge up.
He tried digging deeper, searching for more details about the girl. What did she look like when she smiled? What songs did she like? Why had she lent him that pen that day?
But the places where his memories of "Chen Wenwen" should have been were occupied by other faces.
An emotionless girl wrapped in bandages, sitting beside a window, her gaze resting somewhere far away that he could not see. A crazy older woman fueled by beer, cigarettes, and instant noodles, patting his shoulder and saying, "Mingfei, I've got an important job for you."
And a red-haired-
Lu Mingfei quickly closed the QQ window, as though afraid something might emerge from the screen.
But it was already too late.
One evening, the acrid smell of gun smoke brought tears to his eyes. A red-haired girl sat slumped at the edge of the ruins, the setting sun stretching her slender shadow far behind her. She did not turn around. She simply seized the hem of Lu Mingfei's filthy logistics uniform.
"You idiot, Mingfei." For once, her voice had lost its usual sting.
"You can't pilot an EVA anymore. From now on, when the alarm goes off, get your ass down to the lowest level."
"Stay away from me. You hear?"
Her words were harsh, but the hand gripping his uniform refused to let go.
Lu Mingfei leaned against the back of his chair and stared at the ceiling for a while.
After spending so long in that world, he knew one thing: this was not the world's first time around.
There had been things in NERV's files that he had stumbled across. Nobody had explained them to him, but he could piece together the rough outline.
The world was not immutable. When a particular script reached a botched ending, some force would reset it, making everything start over.
So, sitting here now, there was one thing he could not actually be certain of-
Was the world he was in a genuinely peaceful parallel universe, or merely the early stages of a loaded save after the previous world had rebooted?
On the surface, those two possibilities looked exactly alike.
He opened his browser and carefully typed a phrase into the search bar:
Travel to Japan.
The page loaded, filling the screen with cherry blossoms, hot springs, and shrines.
Lu Mingfei moved the mouse and refined his search in the search box.
This time, he entered a single name.
"Hakone."
Sweeping scenic photos of Lake Ashi instantly filled the screen, its waters sparkling, Mount Fuji sleeping peacefully in the background. The lake was an immaculate blue.
He remembered that lake. He remembered what lay buried beneath it, how long the underground fortress's corridors were, what it felt like when the smell of LCL seeped from the air vents.
But he did not remember what the place had looked like in the end.
He had to see it with his own eyes.
If there was nothing on that land, if the ground beneath it was clean, without any anomalies...
Perhaps that would mean someone had put that world back together after he left.
Perhaps.