The darkness had returned, a deaf and profound darkness that seemed to come from within as if something inside him had gone out.
Shinji wasn't sure if he was still alive. He wasn't feeling the pain, nor was he feeling the cold anymore. He wasn't even feeling his body, just his consciousness suspended somewhere in nothingness, when a light appeared in front of him.
The light was tiny at first, a pinprick on the horizon of his mind when it started to grow slowly, and from that light, a voice started to come out. Not a voice Shinji heard with his ears but a voice that vibrated inside him, like a note struck on a cracked string.
"You must remember… Argus."
Shinji opened his eyes but when his heart should have raced, it no longer beat. The name floated in the air, then dissipated like smoke.
"Argus? …" He murmured without understanding.
The name brushed against him, making him shiver. He didn't know who it belonged to but one thing was certain: he had heard it before.
[ Trial 3 of Remorse: The Vindictive ]
He closed his eyes again, but this time when he opened them, there wasn't a light standing in the middle of darkness; there was a small room, a room Shinji recognised in an instant.
Shinji sat up abruptly. It was his room, the same mess, musty smell, and yellowed paper on the walls, but that night, it was bathed in moonlight, and here he was on the bed, the boy he once was, not the boy who still had a reason to live. He was the one who had nothing alive left in his eyes.
The boy stood without a sound like a silhouette already dead; his movements were slow and measured, but there was no hesitation in his eyes.
Shinji watched him pass in front of him as he reached out, instinctively.
"Wait…"
His fingers once again passed through the air. The boy felt nothing; he moved through him like mist and left the room.
"Is this happening again…"
Shinji, shaken, found himself alone for a moment in that room where time no longer existed before following the young boy as he closed the front door behind him.
Shinji followed the boy outside through the city. The roads, the bushes, the streetlights. Everything was in its place, the same place as last time.
"Is this… what he was talking about? Why… Why do I have to see this? " screamed Shinji, although none of it reached the boy's ears.
The boy walked quickly, too quickly for Shinji to get lost in his thoughts. The boy finally lowered his pace as they arrived at a bar.
He entered without a word before sitting at the counter when someone else entered. A man, broad-shouldered man, the same round face as the one he saw under the bridge. The same voice as the man he had just killed.
Shinji stepped back, his breath trapped in his throat. He wanted to run as far as he could and scream from the top of his lungs, but as he already knew, no sound came out. He realised that he once again got trapped in a memory and that this memory… was about to show him what he had forgotten.
The man sat at the counter next to the boy. He was tired, the kind of exhaustion you can't drink away, and yet drinking was the only way that helped to cope with it. With heavy bags under his eyes, a raspy voice came out of him.
"Just… something strong," he said to the bartender.
Shinji didn't take his eyes off him; he was trembling. He already knew what was coming, he tried to look away, but he couldn't.
The bartender served without question, the man drank in one gulp, then another, and before he knew, he emptied three bottles of the strongest liquor the bartender had to offer. His face grew redder, blurrier and his tongue loosened.
"Funny…" he said with a joyless laugh. "Didn't think I'd talk to anyone tonight. Thought I'd just drink and go home… But you've got a face… a face that reminds me of someone."
The boy smiled at the man.
"Me too," he said. "Didn't think I'd stay."
He didn't ask the man's name and the man didn't seem to notice.
The man kept talking, unloading his pain like spitting out poison.
"You know… I've done things I'm not proud of. Stupid things. Two years ago… I… I ran over a cat."
He lowered his eyes. His voice tightened.
"It's just a cat, who cares, right ?... but a kid was watching me… he saw it, everything and I ran like a coward. That stare… I was never able to forget it."
Shinji felt his heart shatter. He knew, he knew exactly what he was talking about, who he was talking about. The boy was him and the cat was Neko, the only reason to continue living, the last thing that kept him going and this man had just confessed it, here like an anecdote, a drunken confession to free himself from the guilt.
"That look… I can't forget it. Even now, I can't sleep. I see his eyes. I see that cat. I see myself. And I want to smash my head against the walls," said the man between hiccups.
"I didn't talk to anyone that night. I went home, I didn't eat, didn't talk to my wife, my daughter. I went to bed like a dead man." He inhaled. "But every time I close my eyes, I see that damn look."
Shinji, behind the boy, wanted to cry and vomit as he saw his double nodding and pretending to listen.
He understood what the boy was here for. It wasn't compassion in the boy's eyes; he was here to take a slow, cold vengeance, disguised as kindness.
The boy turned to the bartender and handed him a bill.
"You did a good job," he said. "Go take a break, you've earned it."
The bartender shrugged with a vicious smile on the side of his lips before leaving through the back door. As he left, he left the boy and the man in silence; they were the last two remaining in the bar, the moon outside at its highest.
The boy stood slowly, and the man turned his head, confused, thinking the boy paid for him. As he was about to speak, the boy extended his hand.
"Thanks for sharing that with me. Really."
The man responded with a smile as he started to reach out his hand to shake the hand of the boy, but instead of shaking the man's hand, the boy drew a blade from his pocket.
The glint of metal flashed for a moment in the tired neon light.
"This blade… It's…"
Without a word, the boy plunged it quickly into the man's throat, and the moment the blade pierced the man's throat…a shadow escaped from it.
Unlike the shadow Shinji saw under the bridge, chaotic and undisciplined, this shadow knew its purpose as it slid along the bloodied neck, snaked across the wooden counter, and vanished into the floor, soundlessly.
Blood splattered the counter and the floor, and the man choked as his pupils widened and grew blacker as seconds went by.
As he was about to take his last breath, the boy came down to him and murmured in his right ear:
"That… is for taking everything I had left."
The blood continued to spread slowly, a red that was as dark as the shadow.
The man writhed on the floor, his legs kicked weakly, and his fingers clawed at the air, grasping for something, anything. He was suffocating, his fingers clutched at nothing. And in his final moments… it wasn't his wife, his daughter, or a happy memory that crossed his mind.
It was that look, the boy's look. He saw it again, that look that didn't tremble.
"Two… two damn years, I've suffered enough… haven't I?" tried to scream the man, but only blood came out of his mouth.
"Why…?" he managed to whisper, in a breath almost inaudible.
The boy didn't move right away; he stood there, watching the man die before kneeling once again as his fingers found the man's neck. They felt one pulse, then two, before absolute silence.
The boy, then, slowly stood and pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket, and without a word, without a trace of emotion on his face, he wiped his bloodied hands.
The cloth fell to the floor, it laid there, soaked in crimson red, alongside the man, and it was at that moment that the boy looked up, his eyes met Shinji's, who watched, powerless, from the shadow of his own memory.
Their gazes locked for a brief moment, but it was enough, it was enough to shatter everything.
Shinji knew this was not an illusion nor was it a dream. It was him, that monster standing in the harsh light of the bar, hands stained of blood… it was him, and in that precise moment, that fleeting moment where the world was nothing but silence and eyes locked on eyes; Shinji's consciousness wavered.
His breath choked, and as the darkness returned, Shinji collapsed into it. He collapsed into it without a cry, without a tear, just the weight of his own gaze.
[ The host becomes: The Vindictive ]
[ … ]
[ The host hasn't passed Trial 1 Of Remorse: The Unforgiving ]
[ The host hasn't passed Trail 2 Of Remorse: The Master Of Chains ]
[ The host doesn't gain: The Weapon Of Retribution ]