In Tokyo-3, the battles against the Angels have almost become routine. But for Shinji Ikari, pilot of Eva Unit-01, a single, painful question gnaws at his heart. His father and NERV Commander, Gendo Ikari, has never praised him. He's never even had a real conversation with him.
Caught in this gloomy mood, Shinji bickers as always with his classmate and Eva Unit-02 pilot, Asuka Langley Soryu. 'How long are you gonna mope around?! Do something for yourself for once!' Asuka yells. Shinji mutters b
Evangelion IF: Tomorrow, with a Smile - Red Impact, the Spilling Cry of the Heart
*Bang, bang, bang.*
A rough, irritated knock hammered against Shinji's door. After his father Gendou had cut the communication in the previous chapter, he'd been curled up on his bed ever since. The core of his chest felt cold, and he couldn't bring himself to move.
"Hey, Shinji! I know you're in there, open up!"
That was Asuka's voice. He could picture her clearly—waist-length blonde twintails swaying, her assertive blue eyes angled up even sharper than usual.
Shinji didn't answer. His slightly long black bangs hung over his eyes. Nothing mattered anymore.
He pressed his hand tightly against his chest, over the blanket.
(*I'm just a tool to him...*)
In that last battle, he'd fought desperately to protect the JSSDF personnel. He'd gripped his Progressive Knife, neutralized the A.T. Field, and shattered the core. But all his father had said was, "If there's nothing else, I'm hanging up."
The knocking continued for a while.
Then, suddenly, it stopped.
(*Guess she left.*)
The moment he thought that—
*Click.*
The sound of the doorknob turning.
"I'm coming in!"
The blonde twintails burst into the room.
She looked down at Shinji, still curled up on the bed, planted her hands on her hips, and angled her assertive blue eyes up even more sharply. Those eyes, which looked angry, wavered just the slightest bit.
"What the hell was that screw-up in the last battle?!"
The verbal abuse flew at him the moment she opened her mouth.
"Screw-up...?"
Shinji murmured quietly. He kept his head down, unable to look at Asuka's face.
"You think it wasn't?! You froze up in the middle of it, didn't you! The whole operation dragged on because of you!"
Asuka strode right into the room and stood directly beside Shinji's bed. Her red hair clips glinted, reflecting the room's light.
"But, at that moment, the JSSDF people were..."
"JSSDF?! Those guys are nothing but dead weight for NERV! You're an Eva pilot, aren't you? Defeating the Angel is obviously the top priority!"
Asuka's voice echoed throughout the room. Shinji curled up even tighter.
(*But... I thought I had to save that person...*)
He wanted to argue back, but the words wouldn't come. *No matter what I say, no one will listen anyway.* That feeling bound Shinji, just as it always did.
"God, you're so wishy-washy, it seriously pisses me off! As a fellow pilot, could you *not* drag me down?!"
Asuka tried to forcibly yank the blanket off Shinji. He resisted, but her strength was surprisingly formidable.
(*Scary...*)
Shinji thought. But at the same time, he felt something else.
Asuka was angry. Really, really angry. But it wasn't just anger. She was looking at Shinji—properly looking at him—as a fellow pilot.
Not like his father, who just gave orders, treating him as nothing more than a tool. She was genuinely furious about what Shinji had done, and what he hadn't done, and she was throwing it right at him.
And somehow, that melted the coldness in Shinji's chest, just a little.
"...I tried my best, you know."
The words slipped out, barely a whisper.
"Huh?"
"I tried my best... in my own way. I thought I had to protect them, so I..."
His voice was trembling, enough to surprise even himself. He desperately fought back the urge to cry.
For just a moment, Asuka was at a loss for words. Her twintails swayed softly.
"...Are you fighting of your own will?"
Her voice was quiet. Completely different from the shouting just moments before.
"Aren't you just piloting the Eva because someone told you to? Because you have no choice?"
Those words were a sharp blade. They pierced straight through the softest part of Shinji's heart.
Shinji couldn't say anything.
(*She's right. I'm only piloting the Eva because my father told me to.*)
(*Because I don't want to be abandoned. That's all.*)
"I'm different. I fight for myself."
Asuka puffed out her chest and declared it clearly. Her blue eyes shone with a strong light. But behind that light, something else seemed to be hidden.
Shinji felt awe at her strength, and a faint sense of longing. Something he could never possess. The power to stand and fight by one's own will.
(*She's amazing... Asuka.*)
The argument was over.
Asuka snorted, "Hmph," and left the room without another word.
Left behind, Shinji just stared blankly at the ceiling from his bed.
The core of his chest throbbed with pain. But it felt slightly different from the cold ache he'd felt before.
***
The next morning, the living room of the Katsuragi residence was wrapped in an awkward silence.
Their guardian, Katsuragi Misato, was reading the newspaper with a can of beer in one hand. Usually sloppy and cheerful, even she was reading the room this morning and saying nothing.
Shinji silently nibbled on his toast. His bangs hung over his eyes, hiding his expression. Asuka, sitting next to him, was also tearing her bread apart irritably. Neither of them spoke a single word about the previous night.
In the end, no one opened their mouth throughout the entire breakfast. Only the clinking of dishes and the sound of Misato turning newspaper pages echoed in the living room.
Tokyo-3 Municipal Junior High School. The school building was situated in a corner of the city, laid out in a neat grid pattern. It was a perfectly ordinary municipal junior high with about three hundred students. However, hidden among those students were three Eva pilots who bore the fate of the world on their shoulders.
During class, Shinji barely heard the teacher's voice. He gazed out the window without really looking. Blue sky. A common sight in this country, now stuck in an eternal summer. But to Shinji, that blueness felt hollow.
(*Asuka was right.*)
(*Maybe I don't have any will of my own.*)
School ended. Shinji left the classroom without talking to anyone. Today, he didn't even put in his earphones; he just walked alone. With no destination in mind, he wandered aimlessly through the city streets.
Before he knew it, he had arrived at the artificial lakeside park along Lake Ashi.
This was a place Shinji often came to alone. A roughly three-kilometer promenade. In the distance, he could see the entrance to the Geofront where NERV Headquarters lay dormant. The wind blew, making the lake's surface glitter and sway.
(*When I come here, I feel a little calmer.*)
That's what he was thinking, when—
He saw a girl sitting on a bench further down the promenade.
Twintails. Red hair clips. Waist-length, bright blonde hair swaying in the wind.
It was Asuka.
She was staring at the distant horizon. Her usual assertive expression was gone. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her blue eyes were narrowed, as if looking at something sad.
Her profile looked terribly, deeply lonely.
Shinji stopped in his tracks. He caught his breath.
(*Asuka...?*)
He hesitated to call out to her. If he tried to talk to her now, he might just make her angry again.
In the end, Shinji quietly left the way he came.
But he couldn't get it out of his head.
The lonely profile of Asuka he'd seen in the park.
(*Is that the real Asuka?*)
(*She's always acting tough, but really...*)
He knew nothing about Asuka's mother. He didn't know that she had lost her mother to mental illness at a young age, or that she had lived her life relying on no one but herself. So he hadn't yet realized the deep loneliness behind her cry of, "I've lived my whole life alone!"
But Shinji sensed it. The scent of the same loneliness as his own, hidden beneath Asuka's mask of strength.
*I want to get closer to her.*
*I want to know more about her.*
That was the first "impulse" in his entire life that had welled up from inside his own heart. It wasn't because someone told him to, or to meet someone's expectations. It was his own "something."
***
Night.
Shinji was summoned to NERV Headquarters.
The massive pyramid-shaped structure. At the center of the Geofront, nine hundred meters underground, it exuded a cold, oppressive aura. Shinji walked alone down the long corridor leading to the Commander's office.
The Commander's office was an eerily vast space. The SEELE emblem, the "Tree of Life," was depicted on the ceiling. There was only one desk, in the center of the room.
There sat his father, Ikari Gendou.
His short-cropped black hair was mixed with gray, and his face was covered in stubble. His deep brown eyes glinted coldly behind his glasses. His hands were folded in front of his face in his characteristic pose.
He wasn't looking at Shinji.
"...Father."
Shinji gathered his courage and spoke. His voice echoed unnaturally loud in the hollow space.
Gendou said nothing. He just stared down at the documents on his desk, expressionless.
Vice Commander Fuyutsuki Kouzou stood beside Gendou. He looked at Shinji as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he didn't open his mouth.
"Um, about the next Angel..."
"Win."
Just one word. A simple command, devoid of emotion.
"...Is that all?"
"What else is there?"
Shinji hung his head.
(*As I thought, I'm just a tool.*)
(*Winning is the only thing demanded of me.*)
He felt the inside of his heart, which had warmed just a little after talking with Asuka yesterday, freeze over once again.
"Dismissed. The next Angel is powerful. With your sync ratio, a difficult battle is unavoidable. Fulfill your role as a tool even more thoroughly."
*Your role as a tool.*
Those words echoed in his head.
Shinji couldn't say anything. He simply bowed and fled the Commander's office.
As he walked down the corridor, he unconsciously pressed his hand tightly against his chest.
(*What am I piloting the Eva for?*)
(*Because I want my father to acknowledge me?*)
(*But my father isn't even looking at me.*)
(*Then...*)
That's when it happened.
In a corner of his mind, Asuka's words from last night suddenly resurfaced.
*"Are you fighting of your own will?"*
*"I'm different. I fight for myself."*
(*My own will...*)
(*For myself...*)
Shinji stopped walking.
(*I still don't understand.*)
(*What it means to fight for myself.*)
(*But—*)
He raised his head.
The Geofront's artificial sun shone faintly on his face.
A small sense of dissonance with his old self—the self that just drifted along as always—had begun to stir, faintly but surely, deep within his heart.
The signs of change were still far too small and fragile. But it was the moment when something that had never moved before began to move for the very first time.
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