[THE 18TH ANGEL HAS BEEN FINALLY ELIMINATED.]
A reason
A reason to just keep existing.
A reason it doesn't feel wrong to be here anymore.
And somewhere within that reason,
There was an individual existence called Hikigaya Hachiman.
That creature.
No longer wished for an End nor did he wish for a beginning that promised anything. That creature only hungered for one thing.
It simply craved clarity.
[THE 18TH ANGEL HAS BEEN FINALLY ELIMINATED.]
And yet that creature did not scream. He just stood still.
Why did you kill him?
"I had to."
Why did you kill him?
"...Because there is something, I finally think... I can do."
Why did you kill him?
"Because it's going to mean something."
A pause.
Why did you kill another human, like that?
"He wasn't human."
Then what was he?
Silence...
[THE 18TH ANGEL HAS BEEN FINALLY ELIMINATED.]
No answer crawled from that creature's lips. The silence stretches, coiling like a serpent in the dark.
Did you ever hate him?
"...I don't think I was able to."
Do you really want to do that?
"...Yeah... I don't think I am ready to stop."
B...but why?
Silence...
Then Why?
Silence stretches.
For Why?
Why?
'Why? Why?'
"Why? Why? Why?"
"Tell me WHYYYYYYY..."
The questions began to bleed into one another, a frantic scratching against the silence. It sounded like someone begging for a logic that no longer existed.
Yet again, that Isolated Existing Creature named Hikigaya Hachiman chose silence.
[THE 18TH ANGEL HAS BEEN FINALLY ELIMINATED.]
-------0------
WEEEUU-WEEEUU-WEEEUU-
The shriek of a siren split the silence.
Red lights pulsed along the corridor walls of NERV. Water dripped from ruptured pipes pooling on the floor, reflecting fractured shadows.
WEEEUU-WEEEUU-WEEEUU-
A creature walked toward Central Dogma.
His school uniform is torn, sleeves soaked dark. In his left hand, he drags something heavy along the ground. The object scraped along the floor, bumping as it went and leaving a smeared red trail behind. Its shape was indistinct.
Somewhere far above, something explodes.
The impact rolls through the building like a slow, heavy breath from the depths, rattling pipes with sharp clangs, loosening dust from the ceiling and debris that fell caused him to lose his balance.
WEEEUU-WEEEUU-
Gunfire echoes in the distance.
A side door slides open as he passes it. Two soldiers step out weapons raised on reflex.
They saw him, and he saw them.
Their eyes dropped to the trail behind him, to the thing he dragged along the floor.
For a moment, no one spoke.
The siren filled the silence.
WEEEUU-WEEEUU- WEEEUU-
"Target sighted-!"
The boy stopped and slowly raised his free hands. The motion carried no fear, only quiet acknowledgment.
The other hand doesn't let go of what he's dragging.
WEEEUU-WEEEUU- WEEEUU-
"...Nothing personal, kid," the soldier whispered.
He started to pull the trigger.
BOOM.
The floor didn't shake. It ruptured.
Concrete split upward as massive hands tore through from below, a violent roar ripping through steel and stone.
WEEE-UUU-uu The siren died as the power cut out.
"...Yeah," the creature said softly. "I think I get what you mean. It is-
-------0------
-nothing personal, after all, Ayanami... I just don't see another way."
The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them, as if the choice had already been made.
He looked down.
Blue hair matted with blood and LCL, strands clinging to her face like something half-drowned. Her body lay bare beneath his hand.
Ayanami Rei.
Both of his hands still smeared with drying blood settled over the slender column of her throat. Fingers spread slowly across her skin, thumb resting in the soft hollow beneath her jaw.
He didn't realize his hand had tightened until her throat answered with a small, fragile sound.
She kept looking at him with her red eyes, unfocused yet still conscious. She neither resisted nor accepted what he was doing. In that moment, she was simply there.
His fingers trembled.
"...Hachiman," she said softly. "Are you sad?"
"...Huh? That's not-" he started, then stopped.
The question hit harder than any scream would have. He saw a droplet of moisture on her cheek, then another, but it wasn't her own.
"...Am I crying? Really! ha... ha... ha..."
His vision blurred.
Tears began to slide down his face, falling through the dim light to splash onto her pale skin.
"Your tears," she whispered, her voice thinning as his grip remained. "They are... warm."
His throat tightened as if the words had been pulled out of him rather than spoken.
"Maybe... maybe I am,"
His grip tightened.
His fingers closed fully around her throat, cutting off her breath as his weight bore down on her.
The chamber roared suddenly.
With a feral, inhuman scream, a colossal figure tore through the already-broken ceiling, concrete and steel exploding outward as it descended into the chamber.
STOP! NOT HER TOO! HIKIGAYA-STOP IT! The familiar voice of a boy cracked with something between fury and terror.
"Stop!" followed by screams of a woman. "Hachiman, this is past containment! Past prediction! If you continue-!"
Even then that creature didn't turn around. His grip stayed firm, despite the tremor running through it.
NOT HER TOO! NOT LIKE HIM. PLEASE!
"You never controlled me, Ritsuko" he replied with quiet disdain. "So just... just SHUT UP!"
His voice dropped.
"And it's far too late for the story you all tried to write for us,"
A pause.
"The ink has already been dried black."
This time he turned just enough for his words to reach them.
"And it isn't going to fade. Not even for you, Ikari Shinji,"
He tightened his grip on Rei's throat, his knuckles white against her marble skin.
"Not even with that god you call EVA Unit-01."
The roar that answered after that wasn't of a human anymore.
As a massive mechanical foot descended with the speed of a falling star, aimed at the Isolated Existing Creature named Hikigaya Hachiman.
-------0------
'Hey'
"...Yeah?"
'Hey There'
"...Is someone calling me?"
'Hey can you hear me.'
"...Am I asleep?"
My eyes open.
Or maybe they never closed. I can't tell which one would make more sense.
The world did not end. At least... that's what it looks like.
"...Am I awake... or am I dreaming right now?"
'Who cares whether it's a dream or reality? You'll find out soon enough, once it all ends, right?'
"...Yeah, I guess you're right."
'How are you feeling right now? After starting all this?'
"...That's a weird question," I say. "I don't think I have a word for it."
There's a pause, like it's waiting to see if I'll add something.
"So... maybe that's the answer," I mutter. "If I can't name it, I probably didn't understand it as well as I thought."
'You always have something to say.'
"...Yeah. Usually." I exhale slowly.
"It feels like I stopped pretending something," I say after a moment. "Not in a big way. Just... I don't feel like I'm bracing myself anymore."
'For what?'
"...For fitting in."
The answer catches me off guard as soon as I say it.
"I used to think fitting in meant survival," I continue, staring ahead. "Like if you bent enough, people would eventually let you exist without pushing back."
'And now?'
"...Now I'm not sure that was ever the lie."
A quiet distortion settles over me as I try to follow my own thought.
"Maybe the lie was thinking I was different for noticing it."
Another quiet moment passes.
'When you tried to be seen and nothing looked back-'
"-Was that... pain?" I ask, softer than before.
The space inside me narrows for a moment, like something unseen tightening its grip from deep within.
"I thought pain meant something. That if it hurt, it was real. That if it hurt enough, it would make me better."
'Did it ever?'
I let out a short breath. "...No. Not really."
"Sometimes it just made things easier to justify. Things I didn't want to admit I chose."
'Like what?'
I think or maybe hesitated for a moment.
"Like...like staying quiet," I answer. "Calling it some kind of distance instead of fear."
The words don't sting the way I expected them to.
'So, pain didn't fix anything?'
"...Heh. You really think that works?" I say at first.
Then, after a pause-
"There was a moment," I add, the words carrying me into a dream layered beneath another, "When pain stopped asking for justification. When it was just... shared, and nobody turned away."
A quiet distortion settles over me as I try to reach for it.
"And even though it was so terrifying," I add, "It was still warm."
'Warm, huh...?'
"Yeah... it was warm. Like... like my tears were." A dull ache passes through me, followed by a faint pressure coiling deep inside as I shake my head.
'Did it last, then?'
"...You mean the tears? Or the warmth? It doesn't really matter. Both lose their meaning."
'So that moment's already gone, then.'
I didn't argue with that. The thought didn't go anywhere else. It just... ends, and the silence takes its place.
'So now that it's been done...'
I look around again. Same world. Same distance between things. It looks real. It feels like a dream. And at the same time, it feels like neither.
'...Is this what you were looking for?'
I don't answer right away. It takes a second to realize what question actually was.
'Is this... what clarity is supposed to feel like?'
The words distort the space between thoughts, leaving a weight behind.
'Is this... something genuine then?'
That one makes my thoughts shatter. For a moment, nothing comes to mind.
"...Ah," I said as I finally got it.
"I...i remember I-no we were looking for something like this. weren't we? I mean that's the reason why we are here."
There's a brief pause. It feels like something is approaching close enough to feel, not to see.
'Then can you say it now?'
"...I don't think I can, not right now. Even though we are finally here, I don't think I've earned the right to say it just yet. It's... it's too soon to answer that."
'But...but-'
It couldn't finish. Its voice vanished into a sudden, deafening hum as my vision went completely white, not like light, but like the embodiment of absence itself.
For a brief instant, I feel myself pulled forward, stretched thin, as if something is drawing me through a narrow place and I felt a violent tug in the centre of my chest, a sensation of being sucked upward and outward at the same time.
'Are-
The empty void begins to fill as a massive root started branching endlessly through the darkness, like the veins of a god reaching for something inside my chest that isn't there.
-you leav-g, finally?'
The voice fades, dissolving into something increasingly difficult to grasp.
"...Yeah," I whisper, not even sure I still have a mouth to speak with. "It's finally started. It's going to be one long dream."
'Wi-will you be... al-right?'
"...I don't know," I admit quietly. "I really don't."
"But I want to see the other end of this. The other side of this beginning. Maybe... if I can reach that far, I can finally..."
The white swallowed the rest of my thoughts.
The pain, the warmth, and the weight of the journey so far all of it dissolved into something...
The "Isolated Existing Creature" was gone and the "Boy" began falling into the first page of a story that had not yet woken from its beginning.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Author's Note:
Hey everyone, welcome to a new dark and obscure fanfiction that brings together Evangelion and Oregairu. I hope this opening is enough to spark your curiosity about what lies ahead.
This story is co-written with 'CacciaFulmini.' I highly recommend checking out his other work as well, especially "MY FATE IS WRONG! As Expected," on (FF.net). It's a pretty good story.
One more thing before you continue: this story begins at a somewhat unusual point-the end. But if you follow along, I promise the journey getting there will be anything but boring.
Stay tuned for more.
-Raijinmaru_K2