— I've reduced myself to this… In the end, I'm no better than her.
Shinji was about to kill the young girl.
Around him, gazes pierced like blades. The passersby had frozen.
Fear, disgust, incomprehension. Their contempt gnawed at him, but he wouldn't back down. Not this close to the end.
He raised his eyes one last time.
And she smiled.
A fragile smile.
She reached out her arms toward him. They trembled. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she smiled — as if she were welcoming death.
— That smile… Who are you?
— I was waiting for you, Shinji.
Her voice was soft. Resigned.
Something broke inside him. A primal fear gripped his insides.
His fingers slipped on the blade.
— What am I doing?
That smile… it was a trace of humanity, even though she knew only death awaited her.
And within him, everything refused to pierce her.
He didn't have the right to fail. But he had wavered.
He tried to regain control.
Too late.
A gust sliced through the air.
His knee struck the stone with a sharp crack. The kneecap gave way. He didn't feel the pain — only a strange warmth rising along his broken ribs.
Second impact.
A red flash. Emptiness in his throat. A metallic taste. He tried to speak. Nothing came out.
He collapsed.
The assassin didn't show themselves.
No face. No voice. Nothing but silence.
He was going to die under the bullets of a man who, unlike him, hadn't hesitated.
Not like him.
His body was coming apart. Fiber by fiber. A creeping paralysis drowned his will.
He could no longer fight.
— What are you waiting for… Kill me.
But his vocal cords were severed. Only a faint breath.
In the blur of his vision, a silhouette.
Her.
But it was no longer her.
Her shadow laughed. A distorted, inhuman laugh. Venomous.
— So that's what it feels like… at the very end?
The blood stained the stone. The smell of metal saturated the air.
He was nothing more than an empty shell.
— I… can no longer hear the screams.
Even his hearing was abandoning him.
He understood: there would be no miracle.
So he thought of them.
His parents. The only ones he had truly loved.
He saw his mother's laughter again. His father's complicit silence. A modest life, but one he wouldn't have replaced for anything else.
As he was slipping away, he sought peace — even a false one — in this dirty, slow end.
— Mom… Dad…
He asked for only one thing: that death return what it had taken from him.
Sadness was what still kept him awake.
Then the rain. Cold on his skin.
And suddenly, a light.
Blinding. A fracture in the sky.
He lost his sight.
And in that light… a gaze.
The one he knew too well.
The gaze of the woman who had taken everything from him.
— Not you.
He wished it had been her who died. Not him.
Even at the threshold of death, he still cursed her.
A voice came out of the light.
A feminine voice, broken by grief and rage.
— Why now? After everything I've done… Because of you… Why? ENMA!
Then the silence, shattered by the woman's sobs.
— I don't want to suffer anymore… I trust you, one last time… Free me… Argus.
The light faded. His mind drifted.
He could no longer distinguish dream from reality.
— What if all this… was just a nightmare?
Perhaps he was still in his bed, in a warmer, simpler world.
But no.
He was at the edge of death.
And that glimmer of hope was nothing but a lie.
Only one thing remained. Consuming.
It was no longer mere hatred.
It was something else. The epitomy of it.
— I knew I couldn't trust you…
His emotions were no longer human.
They could only be born in the heart of a monster that had lost all humanity.
— Why… after everything I've done…
He wanted to scream. The void answered him.
And yet, he still moved forward. On his knees. Blind.
A dark alley. Strangely familiar.
Perhaps a memory. Perhaps a trap.
But he knew: his suffering was only beginning.
And at that precise moment, Shinji… sank.
With all the secrets of a life she had shattered.