[ grabbing a snack from the convenience store... ]

One Friday down, I guess.

[Just kind of picking at a granola bar.]

The start of a long eight weeks.

Yep.

[ glances over as he opens his bag of avocado chips. ]

You've probably got pretty good odds of making it to the end, at least. The younger you are, the less eager people are to murder you, usually.

[ unless you're karma, but he deserved it. (lol.) ]

Is it that enviable to survive? Sometimes I wondered if dying would be easier.

[At least the dead didn't fear their own turning on them.]

Yeah, it probably would be. There were only five of us at the end last time, so it was a lot of pressure for us to get everything on our side right...

[ takes a chip... eats it ]

Buuuut I don't enjoy dying, and it kind of feels like you've accomplished something when you make it to the last day. So I'd still rather do that.

I didn't mind dying so much.

[normal death At least... He looks up. ]

Did you manage it? To save everyone?

Yeah, we did. Though I mean, they were doing stuff on their side too, it was just different stuff. So we can only take credit for part of that.

[ he'd take a lot more credit except that everyone else who's here from his game died back there so he doesn't want to be rude if they might hear about this conversation ]

Seems that way for most people I talked to.

So... at least we didn't seem to get any losers.

Right? And things seem way less unpredictable this time too, so I'm not too worried about the end result. Mostly just mad that it's happening.

Yeah. Once was enough. More than enough.

[ ...despite having been in kaworu's shoes and feeling his emotions just now, todomatsu thinks afterward that he's really got to side with shinji on this one. that was indeed pretty weird, and girls always come first??? ]

...Who was that?

A boy that I was supposed to keep tabs on as part of my mission. He had no idea that I was sent to the organization he was part of as an infiltrator and saboteur.