Chapter 548: Yui Ikari
"My mother... is inside Unit-01?" he muttered to himself. This realization made his feelings toward Unit-01 incredibly complex, evoking a volatile mixture of closeness and terror.
A powerful impulse surged in his heart; he wanted to immediately find his father, Gendo Ikari, and demand to know if all of this was true! Was his mother really inside Unit-01? Why had his father never told him over all these years?
"Shinji-kun," Ryo reached out and pressed a hand onto his shoulder before the boy could impulsively turn to leave. His grip wasn't heavy, but it carried an unquestionable sense of grounding stability. "Calm down. You cannot go and question the Commander right now."
"Why?! I have a right to know!" Shinji raised his voice in a rare display of emotional agitation.
Ryo gazed at him, his eyes holding a serene depth that seemed to see through the ways of the world. He spoke slowly: "To the Commander, you are not simply a son. You are the clearest, most indelible imprint left by Ms. Yui Ikari in this world. Your very existence constantly reminds him of the most precious person he has lost. Every time he looks at you, it is as if the unhealed wound in his heart is being repeatedly torn open."
His voice wasn't loud, yet it struck Shinji's heart like a heavy hammer: "If you take this newly discovered conjecture—that your mother might exist inside Unit-01 in an even more cruel form—and confront him directly, it will be no different from pouring salt onto that wound, or twisting a knife in it. Do you wish to see your father suffer that immense agony again because of your interrogation? For him, that would be a fatal secondary trauma."
Shinji froze.
He had never once considered his father's coldness from this perspective. He had always assumed his father purely detested and ignored him, but he had never thought that it might be a desperate flight from a "souvenir" by a man who could not bear the pain of losing his wife.
Ryo's words provided a seemingly reasonable and tragic explanation for his father's cold behavior.
The agitated emotions dissipated rapidly like a punctured balloon, replaced by a deeper sense of powerlessness and confusion. He slowly lowered his head, his shoulders slumping as his voice carried a helpless sob: "Then... what exactly should I do? Doctor... what should I do?"
He looked at Ryo, as if searching for the sole source of light in an endless darkness, tossing this lifelong question to the elder who always seemed capable of seeing through the mist.
Ryo knew the seed had been planted; now it just needed guidance on which way to grow. Looking at the mixture of shock, pain, and confusion in Shinji's eyes, he knew the youth was standing on the precipice of a shattered worldview. Ryo needed to channel this chaotic energy rather than letting it spiral out of control or extinguish.
He did not directly answer Shinji's panicked question. Instead, he curled his fingers and lightly tapped the document laid out between them.
"Aside from your father, there are other pathways to understand the past," Ryo's voice was steady, steering Shinji's focus away from Gendo Ikari. "It is explicitly recorded here that both of your parents were students of Vice Commander Fuyutsuki. He was not only a witness to those years but also the guide on their academic path."
Noticing a slight flicker in Shinji's eyes as if catching a lifeline, Ryo continued in a guiding tone: "Inquiring directly about the truth of your mother's 'disappearance' would undoubtedly touch upon the core secrets, which would inevitably trigger Vice Commander Fuyutsuki's vigilance and avoidance. However, if you change your approach—"
He paused, letting Shinji digest the strategy, before supplementing: "For instance, you can tell him that you accidentally learned your mother was once his student, and you simply wish to know what kind of person she was from an elder's perspective—her ideals, her personality, her academic pursuits."
Ryo paused briefly, then added: "Approaching him with this posture of remembrance rather than interrogation is far better suited to lower his guard. Learning about a student's past from a teacher is entirely reasonable. Perhaps, from these fragments, you can piece together a picture closer to the truth yourself."
This guidance provided the lost and helpless Shinji with a path that seemed feasible and less confrontational, while also handing the initiative of seeking the truth back to him, satisfying his deep-seated need to understand his mother.
Ryo had successfully diverted a potentially violent clash with Gendo Ikari into a much more circuitous and covert gathering of information from Vice Commander Fuyutsuki. This not only pacified Shinji's agitated mind but also laid a secure foundation for his own future exploitation of the father-son relationship and the secrets of Unit-01.
Following Ryo's guidance, Shinji Ikari mustered up his courage on a relatively free afternoon and knocked on the door of Vice Commander Fuyutsuki's office.
Fuyutsuki was indeed somewhat surprised by Shinji's sudden visit. This youth almost never proactively initiated contact outside of work with the upper management, let alone with someone so closely tied to his father.
Nevertheless, he let Shinji inside.
Shinji appeared quite tense, his hands unconsciously gripping the hem of his shirt, his head lowered as he barely dared to look at Fuyutsuki. Following exactly what Ryo had instructed, he did not mention anything regarding experiments, disappearances, or Unit-01. Instead, using a slightly trembling voice, he spoke with extreme caution: "Vice Commander... Fuyutsuki. I... I recently happened to learn that my mother... Yui Ikari, was once your student. Is that true?"
Hearing this, Fuyutsuki's eyes flickered slightly, clearly not expecting Shinji to ask about this.
He fell silent for a moment, leaving only the low hum of the air circulation system within the office. This brief silence caused Shinji's heart to leap into his throat.
However, Fuyutsuki did not evade the question. The lines on his face softened a fraction, and his foundational identity as a scholar and educator briefly overrode the authority of a NERV Vice Commander.
He gestured for Shinji to sit, and then spoke slowly, his voice carrying the calm cadence of recalling the past: "Yes. Your mother, Yui, and your father, Gendo—they were indeed both students I highly valued back then."
His gaze seemed to pierce through time, returning to the campus of many years ago, "That was a very long time ago..."
Fuyutsuki did not disclose any classified research content. He merely, from the perspective of a teacher, described the Yui Ikari of his memories to Shinji: a brilliantly talented woman filled with curiosity and unique insights regarding the essence of life. Her thinking was often dazzling and quick-witted, sometimes even appearing somewhat... unconventional, but she always managed to touch the core of a problem.
He also brought up Gendo, the equally outstanding yet more introverted and goal-oriented young man, and how the two of them gradually came together from an academic resonance. He recounted several minor campus anecdotes—small fragments that could showcase Yui's personality traits, such as how she had once silenced an opponent during an academic debate, or her views on certain ethical issues that were considered quite ahead of their time back then.