<span style="font-style: italic">Don't fall asleep in service. Shimada, don't fall asleep in service. Don't fall asleep in service. You can't fall asleep in service.</span>he repeated to himself, mechanically making small circles with his fingers, pressed onto his temples. He was definitely stressing himself more than he should, and was finding out (once again) that an obsession with work that made him forsake sleep for the two previous nights was dangerous. None the less, he kept working, and buried his head in the records he's collected.<br/><br/>The last lab simulation, which he's been through just about two hours ago, was a fail. He refused to sign it to the account of fatigue and blamed just his incompetency for not succeeding, and thus instead decided to study the records of others in the same type of mech, just as well as his own previous papers, along with further memorizing combat strategies. If one would walk into the lab he's closed himself in, Shimada would be nigh-invisible if not for his hair, which distinguished the paper-pale officer from the similarly paper-pale walls.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Someone left the door open. Evelynn's door. The thick board of metal alloy that barred the only exit from the large hall, disguised as a library without windows or other doors. She wouldn't have noticed for sure - if the person that forgot to close it in the rush he was in wasn't her only friend, the person whom she always followed to the door to say goodbye to him.<br/><br/>He was in a hurry today, and forgot to close the door completely.<br/><br/>She noticed it, the thin gap between the door and the wall. Her eyes glimmered - this was the forbidden fruit. She knew she shouldn't leave... But the temptation was simply too much for her.<br/><br/>Gently laying her hands down onto the door, she pushed it open, and her slender body slipped through. The sleeves of her dress were slowly beginning to break down with the excitement that had her on her tiptoes, barefoot skipping through the corridor. She didn't know the way... But was that even important? All the corridors led somewhere, in the end.<br/><br/>The door on its end wasn't locked. Was it that he hurried so bad that he forgot to lock it? None the less, Eve slipped through.<br/><br/>The streets. Where was she? They were beautiful! So colorful, lively and loud! And there were so many people around...<br/><br/>She has moved to London when she was just a child, but never expected the city to be this... Huge. It was enormous. And beautiful, she reminded herself. Her bare feet tapped on the pavement as she, a pale white ghost, slipped through the crowds nearly unnoticed. A wide smile stretched across her lips, the sort of smile you'd see on a young child, as she marveled as everything around her.<br/><br/>Beautiful!