This Object
06: Meme

--

"Hey, Shin-man!" Touji stood in front of the boy, blocking his view. He looked up, reluctantly, towards the figure sitting on the desk diagonal from his, and smiled.

"Hey, Touji. What's up?" His greeting was cheerful, chipper even, but with a slight tinge of annoyance, likely directed towards the boy's location.

"What'cha lookin' at?"

Shinji feigned innocence. "Oh, nothing in particular."

Kensuke, who was actually assigned the desk that the tracksuit-clad figure was sitting on, piped in, vainly trying to change the subject. "So, what shoud we do for the English project? Misato-sensei is giving us pretty much free reign."

This was a mistake. "Oh... Er... About that..." Shinji tried to put it in a way that wouldn't hurt their feelings.

The two boys looked at him curiously, wondering what on earth he was on about. The three always worked together. Unless...

He spit it out, quickly, in an almost incoherent string of unseparated syllables. "Imworkingwithsomeoneelse." He took a deep breath and let it out, then added "gomen".

The two boys looked at each other, then back at Shinji. "Oh, I gots it! You got dragged into working wit that Red Devil!" Kensuke let out a noise of understanding, whilst Touji gave a slight proud smile, happy that he figured it out.

"Well," the bespectacled boy started, "that's ok with us. It's beyond your control; we understand."

"Chigau.()" The two boys veered back slightly, both egos knocked firmly out of the zone of understanding.

"Den who?"

Shinji nodded over Touji's shoulder. Both boys turned to look. They saw Rei, making her usual pose, head propped on hand, staring out the window. They turned slowly back, wide-eyed and somewhat disturbed.

Shinji continued his explanation, this time with words.

--Flashback--

Shinji looked up from his stew, and glanced towards the blue-haired albino sitting beside him. He watched her stare at her own bowl with a mixture of hunger and an avistic fight-or-flight reaction. Noticing his stare, she turned towards him to give a questioning look. Yui, watching carefully, gave a soft snort as she turned back to her food. Gendo was unaware that anything was going on.

The boy decided to start some light conversation. "So, Rei... What are you going to be doing for that English project?"

Her face softened slightly, then she stared down into the murky substance in front of her. "I don't know," she managed.

He smiled. "Well, I suppose if you have no idea, you can ask your partner to choose..."

Her soft face quickly became more rigid and devoid of emotion. "I... don't have one."

The blue-eyed boy looked serious for a moment. This should have been expected, as she didn't seem to have any friends yet. He should have avoided that line of reasoning, so as to avoid as well making her feel insecure. He felt thoroughly dumb. Then an idea hit him, and his face brightened considerably. "I know! Why don't you work with me?"

She looked up slightly. She wasn't sure if this was a joke. No one had ever asked to work with her before, apart from necessity. And, to be sure, no one had ever seemed so... enthusiastic... about it. But this boy, this Ikari Shinji, he had been so nice to her. She had no logical reason to doubt him at this point, aside from her own self-esteem. Just one word, just to be doubly sure. "Really?"

"Yeah. It'd be fun!"

The pale face softened once again, and the red eyes brightened into a shine as the normally untelling mouth formed itself into a slightly awkward smile. "Yes. That would be acceptable." She felt... enthusiastic... inside.

--End Flashback--

The two boys looked at him like he had 57 and a quarter heads. After a moment, he questioned it. "What?"

"She's certainly a strange one, isn't she?"

Just then, a wisp of purple hair was seen at the doorway. Rei mentally sighed. Why was Katsuragi-sensei never quite on time?

"Rise. Bow. Sit."

"Good morning, class." The class made a strangled effort to respond, inhibited, as always, by the guys (and a few girls, too, some of them for different reasons) who were drooling over the teacher's corporeal form and choice of wardrobe (the latter of which, to be sure, didn't do much to conceal the former). The woman continued. "I realize now that an assignment like 'do some sort of project relating to English' is a little too vague. Forgive me; I'm used to teaching home ec, and the fact that I happened to be the only one on the payroll who passed college english when your previous teacher had to be called away was pretty much tough luck. Damn school board, too cheap to hire a new teacher... Though I shouldn't be talking; I'm certainly enjoying the extra half pay I'm getting." She sensed that she was losing the class, so she got straight to the point. "So, I'm assigning you a new, different project; one that you will hopefully have fun with. You all will be researching different types of jokes, and presenting your findings to the class. In english, please."

Satisfied at a job well done, she sat down, discreetly reached her hand into the partially hidden side pocket of her bag, and fingered at the tab of her beer can, harbouring fantasies of a quick trip to the ladies' room with her precious. Contraband can be so sweet.

Shinji walked over to where his partner was sitting. She turned to him, and despite the lack of a verbal greeting, the softening of her face was greeting enough for him. He sat down in the empty seat beside her. "Well, we'd better get down to work on this. We need to figure out what we're going to do and get it approved before the end of the day." He secretly figured that Misato would approve just about any kind of joke, unless it was about her age.

"Tell me," she said as she looked over her companion, "what is a joke?" He eyed her nervously, and then broke out laughing.

"That was a good one. Subtle, too."

She gave her trademark confused, deer-in-the-headlights look. "I do not understand. Is what I said strange?" She wondered why he had broken out into some sort of spasm after she asked a simple question. Was he allergic to something? Did she trigger some sort of repressed memory, something that made him feel immense pain? But he said it was a 'good one', so perhaps it was pleasure. Was it necessary that he be taken to the hospital?

"Of course it's strange. Everyone has heard of jokes..." He was not getting anywhere with this train of discourse, so he tried something else. "A joke is something that makes you laugh. Like what I just did. It's something... strange, or unexpected, that makes your body react, and it feels really good."

"Like sexual intercourse?"

The boy blushed. "Uh... Maybe not quite THAT good."

Rei still was confused. "Give me an example." She hoped that perhaps she would then understand.

"Ok," Shinji agreed, glad to be off that subject. "Let's see... jokes... Ok, here's one: why did the chicken cross the road?"

Rei responded quickly. "That would depend on the chicken."

Shinji held in a chuckle. She's good at making jokes, so why can't she understand them. "Any chicken."

"Would it not also depend on the road in question, as well as the general surroundings?" She asked puzzledly, not understanding the purpose or relevance of this brain teaser. "For example, there could be food on the other side, or a rooster, or a mechanical chicken caller. Or, there could be other chickens crossing, and this specific chicken could be following." She had never seen a chicken, let alone a group of them, so she wasn't sure that they had flock behavior, but she guessed.

"The answer is, 'to get to the other side.'"

There was an awkward pause. The girl started suddenly, "That seemed too obvious to be relevant."

He was obviously getting nowhere with this, and knew both of them would fail if she didn't understand what a joke was. But he persevered, knowing that he would not allow himself the dishonor of abandoning her and letting her fail on her own. "Let's try something a little simpler." He thought for a moment, and then said, "A man walked into a bar, and said, 'ouch'."

For a moment, there was what seemed like total silence. Then, suddenly, Rei heard a strange sound from her own mouth. She was hyperventalating. She shook and doubled over herself, making sounds much similar to those that Shinji had made. She was frightened out of her wits, seemingly not in control of her body. If one could keep their point of view still enough in reference to her movements to allow seeing into her eyes, they would show an expression of intense, coporeal fear and lost hope. After what seemed like an eternity, it stopped.

"I guess you really liked that one." And she did. It was, aside from the fear, quite an enjoyable experience.

"Tell me another one. I think I'm getting closer to understanding."

---

Author's notes:
Well, it's finally done. I really have no acceptable excuse for the delay. Sorry. Anyway, I hope you like this chapter. I certainly enjoyed writing it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Eva.

Translations:
- Chigau: (Japanese) wrong.