Disclaimer: Characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion have 
been used without permission. They aren't mine and I'm not 
making any money off them, but you ought to know that, 
right?

Warning: This story contains female/female undertones
in case you don't stomach that kind of thing.

======

Tell me who you love
Part 3
----
Ka-Wing Tam

======   

That night, I didn't go straight home after work. Instead, 
I went to see a movie, alone. I didn't feel like calling 
any friends. This wasn't something you could really talk to 
anyone about. I fell asleep halfway through the movie and 
had to be gently shaken awake by the usher. 

I grabbed some dinner from a ramen stand and started to walk 
home. I passed several couples, some of them holding hands, 
others laughing and joking together, others silent and 
strained. 

I have to admit that I was jealous.

When I got home, I plunked down on the couch and stared at 
the television for a few hours. There wasn't anything 
particularly good on, and I recited random facts to myself 
to keep myself from dying of boredome. 2 times 5 is 10. 
Tokyo is the capital of Japan. The year is 2015. The sun 
rises in the East. I am in love with Akagi Ritsuko. 
Eventually I fell asleep. My dreams were normal and 
uneventful.

Telling yourself that you were in love with a woman wasn't 
really that hard, once you resigned yourself to the idea. 
In fact, I was able to greet Sempai calmly and normally the 
next morning. Even I couldn't tell that anything was wrong, 
I felt so normal. It was only when she leaned past me to 
reach for a sheaf of paper and I caught a whiff of her 
perfume that my breath started to catch in my throat again. 

I excused myself and went to wash my face. 

Then at lunch, Shigeru started ribbing Makoto about his two 
secret loves again, and my contribution was somewhat loud 
and over the top. Way out of character.

I excused myself and slammed down a couple of Cokes without 
taking in a breath at the vending machine.

My hands seemed to be filled with some sort of excessive 
hyperactivity. They slammed mercilessly down onto the 
keyboard and the console and a lot of typing errors were 
made that day. I knocked over my coffee mug twice, laughed 
at the wrong jokes, slammed my knee regularly against my 
desk and generally made a fool of myself. When the day was 
over I leaned back and sighed with relief. Finally done and 
over with. I was going home, and nothing in the world could 
stop me.

"Maya, I know this is kind of short notice, but are you 
free to work overtime tonight? There's a little more to 
finish off at the lab, and Aoba and Hyuuga are both busy."

"Why, yes, of course!" I jumped up and hit my knee on the 
desk again.

Was this what it was like to be in love?

Not quite. 

Being alone in a lab with the person you love is not good 
for the job. Feeling that way about someone, while looking 
her in the face, working directly across from her, 
accidentally bumping into her from time to time, and having 
your heart race and your palms get sweaty really isn't good 
for the job. For one thing, it is really very easy to get 
distracted.

"Uh, Maya? Could you save the data please? ... I said to 
save it, not delete it. *sigh* I guess we'll just have to 
do those figures all over again."

"Uh.. Sorry, Sempai."

I resolved never to work late again with her alone again.

Yet, the next night, "Maya? You've been feeling out of 
sorts these few days, I can tell, but Aoba and Hyuuga 
aren't free tonight and--"

"Yes, of course, Sempai!"

"Thanks, I really appreciate it."

Those words were pure bliss to hear. I'd walk to the ends 
of the earth to hear her say them again.

As the days went by, I started to observe Sempai carefully 
without realizing it. Her habits, her likes and dislikes, 
the way she moved, the way she talked, the way her forehead 
creased when she was thinking... I suddenly knew so much 
about her, and yet there was so much more that needed to be 
discovered. I wanted to know everything about her. It was 
almost like an obsession. 

I began haunting the coffee machine, trying to pick up tips 
on how to make Sempai's coffee just the way she liked it. 
At first I got Misato to teach me. That was a bad idea.

In the end I decided simply to get Sempai those three-in-
one express coffee packets. She liked them, and thanked me. 
I resisted the urge to get three months' worth of them and 
stash them at home ready whenever Sempai needed some more.

And then, I began to watch her to see who she favoured. She 
was like that, you see. Whenever she met someone she 
respected and liked -- which wasn't often -- the expression 
in her eyes would shift slightly. I don't know how to 
explain it, but she was like that. I hoped -- always only 
hoping, never anything more -- that her eyes would change 
for me. But they never did. 

I was going through some of the dummy plug system files and 
accidentally discovered the origin of Ayanami Rei and 
exactly _how_ she was related to it. Sempai was getting 
careless. What I found didn't quite sicken me as I thought 
it would, but it was impossible to look at Rei in the same 
light after that... and I wondered for what reason that 
Sempai would sometimes glare at the clone of Shinji's 
mother so strangely sometimes. 

Then, one day, I overheard a conversation between Sempai 
and Commander Ikari, the contents of which were about their 
relationship and not for children, or anyone, to hear. The 
Commander was extremely cruel to her. I felt disgusted and 
ashamed. I wanted to rush in and strangle him. 

The next day I put some laxatives in the Commander's coffee 
mug and watched in delight as he scrambled to the men's 
room every few minutes.

It was extremely childish, I know. Being in love is like 
that. It makes you younger than you really are. It makes 
you forget things. It makes you irrational. 

I knew where I stood. I didn't have a chance. The 
expression in Sempai's eyes, every time she looked at him, 
told me that there was no room for anyone in her heart 
except Ikari Gendou. I was sure he felt nothing for her. 
That was the worst part of it all, knowing that Sempai 
wouldn't be able to find love with the one she wanted. Half 
of me wanted to berate her for having such poor taste, the 
other half wanted to pity her. And I think my heart came 
close to dying within me, many, many times.

But oh, it was bitter, it was sweet, it was like warm 
liquid metal flowing through my stomach, and it was all 
worth it.

And after a while, I figured that maybe... just maybe... 
being in love wasn't so bad after all. Even if it was with 
a woman.

Just as long as no one found out.

And I liked coming home after a long day at work and just 
thinking of Sempai. It was like harbouring a secret 
treasure in your chest, and you felt like the only person 
in the world. When I closed my eyes, I could clearly hear 
her voice in my ears, I could see every smiling feature on 
her face, and my heart would almost sigh in contentedness.

So what if I didn't have a chance? I could always wish. And 
hope.

I was just happy to be around her.

======

It was yet another late night, and we were working overtime 
yet again.

"Sempai, you seem tired..."

She yawned widely in response. "I'm fine, I'll manage... we 
have to get this finished."

"But it's not really that urgent, and we've been working on 
this for so long already. I mean, there's plenty of other 
things we ought to--"

"We have orders to complete this by next morning, so we 
don't have much choice but to keep going."

"Really? Whose orders?" 

"The Commander's."

"Oh," I said flatly. I was jealous. I continued to type 
away at the computer while Sempai examined the monitor 
carefully, sitting beside me and leaning towards me. 
Occasionally her breath would warmly brush against my neck, 
and I'd shiver. Then after about half an hour, I noticed 
that she wasn't sitting next to me any more.

"Sempai?"

At some point or other she had moved away.  She was lying 
at her desk, her head cushioned in her arms. Upon hearing 
my voice, she lazily sat up and rubbed her eyes lazily. 

"Are you all right, Sempai?"

She yawned and covered her mouth. "Nnnn... nothing. Just a 
bit tired." 

"A bit tired? That's an understatement." I hadn't seen her 
take a break all day today, and all day yesterday either. 
"Why dont you take a nap?"

She shrugged, trying to ease the kinks out of her neck. "I 
didn't get to go home last night, I've been working 40 
hours straight already and a couple more won't hurt."

The crazy woman. "You'll kill yourself! Have you had any 
sleep at all?"

"No, but I had lots of coffee." She reached for her mug to 
take another sip but found it empty. 

"Here, let me take that," I said. "I'll refill it for you. 
You need to get some rest."

"No, I need to get this finished," said Sempai stubbornly, 
stifling a yawn.

"Take a nap. I'll finish up here, okay?"

Sempai looked dubious. "But I need to look over the..."

"I can do this, it's not that hard. You've already been 
through all of it with me, before. You get some rest."

"Really?" She looked grateful. "Are you sure?"

"You can trust me. There's only a bit more anyway. Just go 
to sleep."

It was as if she'd been waiting for that order all day. She 
put her head back onto the table and immediately zoned out. 

I was slightly taken aback - I hadn't expected her to fall 
asleep _that_ fast.

Then again, I _had_ declared that I would complete the rest 
of it, on my own, right? Only a few more hours of work, 
right?

The work itself wasn't that challenging. There were only a 
few rather complicated safety programs I needed to upload 
into the mainframe computers. 

The hard part, really, was concentrating on my work. 

She was less than two feet away from me. The right side of 
her face was pressed against her arms and her features were 
all bunched together. The strain of the past two days was 
really showing in her. She hadn't bothered to redo her 
make-up. I could clearly see the slowly fading tension 
around her eye muscles, the limpness of her hair, the 
pallor on her skin. My gaze travelled from her forehead 
down along the curve of her nose, coming to rest on her 
lipstick-smudged mouth. Her lips were parted slightly, dry 
and chapped and pale, and she was drooling slightly. I 
giggled a little at that. 

I resisted the urge to kneel down and embrace her tightly 
from behind, telling her how much I wanted to hold her her, 
press face against her shoulder, comfort her every sorrow. 
She was so vulnerable right now. She wasn't standing up 
straight and rigid as a post anymore, carrying the weight 
of the world on her shoulders. She was curled up like a 
child, small and carefree and undisturbed. Those eyelashes, 
long and droopy. God, how I loved her.

I reached over and gently brushed a lock of hair away from 
her forehead before resuming my work.

=====

End Part 3

Started sometime September 2000
Revised February 27 2001