Mari Makinami

Mari is sixteen, her long hair worn loose through most of the chapter. Her usual outfit pairs denim shorts with a short-sleeved shirt and short boots, along with the bag holding her university things. Visiting Fuyutsuki's office she throws on a white lab coat, sleeves shoved past the elbows. By the story's end Yui has restyled her hair into pigtails and handed over her own glasses, producing the look that echoes her Rebuild namesake.

Mari is a top student whose pride took its first real bruise at Kyoto University, where Yui Ikari outshone her without trying. Her response is a tangle of hostility and attachment: she declares that she hates Yui, swipes her glasses, and storms off when conversation turns to Yui's new boyfriend, yet she also tells the Dean outright that Yui is the more deserving candidate for a prestigious recommendation. A colleague reads her exactly, guessing she had simply never met anyone she could not beat before. She even blushes passing Gendo in a hallway. Cornered at last, she admits the truth: the jealousy is real, and so is the affection underneath it.

The chapter, an Extra Stage titled Eden in Summer, opens in 1998 at Kyoto University's Metaphysical Biological Research Lab 1, where Mari finds Yui asleep and drooling on a table and pockets her glasses out of spite. The Dean then offers Mari a fully funded place in England, under Professor Alex at Saintford University; she counters that Yui is better qualified, only to learn the state has already claimed Yui for a government-run research institution.

Over drinks with a colleague, Yui gushes about how she met Gendo Rokubungi, and Mari grabs her things and leaves in a huff. Later, delivering a paper to Fuyutsuki's room, she finds Yui has knocked over the lab-rat cages, and the two scramble to recapture the loose animals. In the chaos Mari's bag spills open, exposing the stolen glasses. She confesses everything: the hatred, the jealousy, and the fondness she resents feeling. Yui answers by sitting her down, weaving her hair into pigtails, gifting her the glasses, and telling her she looks cute, like a high schooler. Mari reveals she leaves to study in England within the month and promises to wish Yui and Gendo happiness from far away.

Sadamoto has repeatedly fenced the chapter off from canon, describing it as fanservice written on impulse and stressing that it belongs to neither the manga's storyline nor the Rebuild series, where his involvement stopped at character design. He has likewise dismissed fan theories linking Mari to the lookalike figures in Volume 9 or to Asuka's adoptive sister, a connection the timeline rules out since Mari was already sixteen in 1998 while the adoptive sister remains a child as of 2005.