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All around me, I heard music.
That was the first thing I was aware of. I opened my eyes to the sound of it drifting through my ears, a symphony that was chosen by one of the Old Men to mark the occasion of my birth. As time passed, I would come to know the name of this piece, the name of the human who composed it, where and when they wrote it, and I would come to understand why the Old Men deemed it fitting that I should be born into this world to its sound.
All of this I know.
What I do not know are the words to describe the chill that crawled up my arms the first time I heard it, or the pain in my chest when I hear certain notes in its movements. I have described these sensations to the Old Men, but the words they offer me are clumsy, unable to catch the shape of these nameless feelings in their grasp. I have no words to describe what happens to me when I hear that music. I could tell you everything there is to know about it, except for what happens after it passes through my ears. That place is a sacred territory that none may enter.
Not even me.
My education was not forthcoming in filling these gaps in my knowledge. The Old Men, appearing before me in their fleshless bodies when they had knowledge they wished to impart, speak to me in images of all things under the sun: the blue-green orb in the dark, all the people living on it, everything they have built and made and thought, and I hear this vast knowledge in colourless words: monotone syllables that come one after another. And then, once they are finished telling me something, explaining what it is and what it means, they tell me its name. It surprises me, every time, how so much history and purpose and meaning can be held in a tiny string of syllables. It is remarkable.
Not everything I am taught follows that loop of understanding and recognition. The first thing they taught me was that there is a border that exists around me, a separation that exists between the me that exists in here, and the all that exists out there. The Lilin – the people of the old men – call this barrier an "AT Field". It was one of the first names that I had been told, and it was the first that did not fit. I recognized the things they spoke of, the sensations and feelings of the inside, the objects of the outside, and the barrier that stood between them, but the name felt hollow and empty on my tongue. The name of the word did not contain what meaning I felt in it.
It was years before I asked them a question. After one of the Old Men had finished describing some new location or person or concept, my curiosity could not contain itself any longer, and before I could stop myself, I asked them what these...things were that lurked behind my border, behind my "AT Field". I described the sensations I felt, the things I thought. What that chill was that ran down my arms and down my spine when I heard that music.
The answer they gave me wasn't an answer at all. They named the feelings, told me what they were and what they meant, but all the words they gave me were wrong. It was like that word "AT Field" – toneless, petty things that captured nothing of what the sensations actually were, what they felt like, and how it felt to feel them. I told them this: that the words they gave me were wrong, that these sensations could not possibly be contained by such small words. I told them this, and in response, the first of the Old Men told me that these words were correct and that I was wrong.
Because I wasn't like him, he said. We were both human, he and I, but I was something different as well. Something about this answer did not feel right, but like almost everything else the Old Men told me, in the absence of other answers, I accepted it.
He was Lilin. I was Angel. I was human, but also not. And my failure to understand things the way he did was because of this. Because I was different. Because I was not him.
All of this I know.
It just didn't make any sense to me. Neither did the name the Old Men gave me after I asked my first question. It was something simple, two syllables, but filled with meaning the Old Men explained to me. But behind my barrier, it had no meaning. It was empty. I understood what the name meant, to others, to the world. I just didn't know why it was mine.
From a direction that I had no name for, I heard music.
***
It was a few years before I felt The Song. It's hard to say when it began, as when I first heard it, it was like it was always there, a crawling sensation in my chest that had existed all my life, and I was only waking up to it now. It was a feeling that I heard like beautiful music, but in sharp, loud tones that filled me with as much dread and fear as it did bliss. When I surrender myself to it, I want nothing more to follow it, to find what lies at the end of that invisible tether, but when I pull away from it, it seems cold, cruel, and distant, a warmth with jagged edges constantly pushing in. From the first moment I heard it, my entire body began to shift imperceptibly towards it, to change in ways that better helped me hear it.
I tried to hide this from the Old Men, at first, but it wasn't long before they realized what had happened. It's like they were waiting for it, an inevitability they expected. They knew what The Song was, and once they knew I heard it, they spoke furtive words to one another and vanished, leaving me alone with myself...and The Song, which caressed the edges of the barrier around me, beckoning me up, towards the blue-green orb in the sky.
Sometime later, the old men returned. They did so on what I was told was the fourteenth anniversary of the beginning of my existence, and for the first time, it was all of the Old Men, all at once. They had never done this before – only appearing one or perhaps two at a time – and the novelty of the event was all that was needed to give it the appropriate weight. Nothing ever changed in this place, after all. When something did, it was like everything changed.
The First of the Old Men spoke to me and told me that the time had come for me to fulfil my role, my purpose. I had been told before that I had a purpose, that I was born into this world to accomplish a specific goal, but never what that goal was. Now, they told me. They told me the name of The Song, the name of this empty feeling pulling me somewhere I had no name for. It was the song of my Mother, that which bore me, calling me home to fulfil my purpose, and what it would mean when I reached her. What would happen to that world I spent my whole life hearing about, but never saw myself.
And then, at the end, they told me my name, the name by which all on earth would know me, the last name, and the one that mattered. I wanted to ask them what had happened to the old name: did I still have it? Or did this new one replace it? But as I opened my mouth to say it, I realized that it didn't much matter to me. This new name didn't feel any different from the old one, it could have been the exact same collection of syllables for all that I felt about it. I had two names now, and I didn't understand why either was mine.
So I smiled. Told them I understood. I told them that I would play the part that was assigned to me. I repeated the words they once told me: everything has a purpose, everyone was born to do something. They told me what I was born to do, and how could I question it? I had nothing else. This world that would come to an end after I fulfilled my purpose wasn't real to me: didn't exist beyond words and names and the meanings of others. It wasn't a world with any place for me. So why should I question my role? Why should I do anything other than what I am meant to do? Why should I try to be anything other than what they tell me I am?
After the Old Men vanished, in my last moments on the pale rock upon which I had spent my entire life, I repeated the name to myself, in the same way as they said it to me. The words passed through my lips without an echo, leaving no trace of their passage, and drifted up into the sky, no gravity keeping them with me.
The name means nothing to me.
I smiled, put my hands in my pockets, and stepped forward, following those spoken words – Kaworu Nagisa – as they floated listlessly towards the blue-green orb on the empty horizon.
Towards the music my mother made.
***
His name is Shinji Ikari. He is fourteen years old, the same age the old men say I am. They told me about him before I arrived here. Told me that he was part of my mission and that he would be essential to giving me the access I needed. When I arrived, they placed me right next to him, so important was he to fulfilling my purpose.
They told me a lot about him, in fact. They told me about his father and the relationship between the two. They told me all that he had been through recently, everything he had suffered and everything he had done. And beyond, they told me who he was. His flaws, his anxieties, stresses and strengths. They told me everything I would need to know about Shinji Ikari, everything one could possibly know about him.
Except, they didn't. Because from the very beginning, from the first time we spoke to another, I knew that they had told me nothing at all. Because while everything they had told me was true, none of it captured the picture of Shinji Ikari. They were all scattered pieces of a jigsaw, that when put together still could not begin to convey who he was. He was beautiful in ways that were born from his flaws, yet defied them utterly. The Old Men were wrong. They hadn't told me all I needed to know about him. They hadn't told me anything, anything that mattered. One just had to hear him speak to know that.
And if they were wrong about Shinji – if everything they had told me about him did not begin to describe him – then what about everything else? Everything else they had told me about this cruel, angry, painful world? Was that wrong too? Looking out at this lake dotted with concrete monuments, the fingers of some great stone hand breaking upon the surface, its strange beauty that was framed by no grand design, I realized that everything I had been told for my entire life was correct – and completely untrue.
The world was so much more beautiful than I had ever been taught. And I had no words to capture it or describe why I felt this way about it.
The Old Men led me to believe that all human behaviour has a reason, an explanation, a linear series of cause and effect that leads them to the way they are. If this is true, then I must be more different from them than I could have possibly imagined, because I cannot translate the feelings I have towards Shinji Ikari into any rational exchange. I know here are things about him that are special to me, precious beyond words. But as for why I feel these things? I have no answer. It is a question so impossibly vast, so impossible to process, that they might as well ask me to describe why the Universe is the way that it is. It just...is.
I searched through all the words the Old Men gave me, everything they taught, everything I learned, but I have nothing. Nothing that can express how I feel at this moment, how I feel about him. I want to tell him that I never knew what it was like to exist until I saw myself through his eyes, how I never knew what I was until I met him.
I wanted to tell him that he helped me understand what humans were, and what I was. And that while we were different¸ we were also the same. I want to tell him that I thought I understood what people were, how they behaved and what they wanted, and that he defied every single one of those expectations, by being more flawed and strong and hurt and kind and brave than I was taught anyone could possibly be.
I wanted to thank him for letting everything makes sense. For filling all these empty words the Old Men had given me with meaning – true meaning, the kind that I understood and that mattered to me.
But most of all, I wanted to tell him things I have no words for. I wanted to tell him how it felt to hold his hands in mine, what I see when I look at him, what I hear when I listen to him speak. I can't tell him about these things because I cannot explain them myself: I remain completely ill-equipped to carry these deepest thoughts and feelings beyond the sacred barrier that separates him and me.
I wanted to tell him everything, but I couldn't tell him anything. I did the best I could with the words I had, but they couldn't carry my feelings to him, and we remained at a distance that I could not, and cannot, cross.
I know I cannot be with him. I know I cannot resist my Mother's song. I know that everything I do is what the Old Men need me to do. I only have one purpose, one person I was made to be, and I cannot do anything else. I cannot be anything else.
All of this I know.
So, really, there's only one choice I can make.
Far below the ground, the music grows louder and louder.
I make a choice, for the first time.
***
I'm in a hangar, now. Standing in front of one of the Lilin weapons, with an alien scent hanging in the air. I'm waiting, waiting as long as I can. The Song of Adam, my mother, is so loud that I can barely hear myself over it. I know it's only a matter of time before I go down to meet my mother, and everything comes to an end.
But it's ok. Everything will work out, in the end. I know it will.
The Old Men were right about who I was, in some way. The first name they gave, and the meaning they said it held, meant nothing when I first heard it. But now...because of what I do...what I choose to do...it finally means something to me. It feels like me.
I still like the second name they gave me better, though. Because it's the one he knows. It's the name that contains everything he thinks of me, everything I see in his eyes when we look at each other, and everything he sees in mine. That name means everything to me.
I think of music. Not the music calling from below. The first song, the song I awoke to, the song that, after everything, still sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. I sift through all the instruments that make up the melody, passing through each one, until, far at the back, I arrive at soft notes almost buried under everything else, faint, distant, and brief, but holding the entire song on its shoulders. I smile as my chest tightens, and a familiar chill runs down my arms, and for the first time, I name the feeling for what it is.
Love. I love this song.
I imagine myself making the keystrokes that make that sound. I imagine the song coming from me, from behind my walls, expressing feelings that no words ever could, and imagine what it would be like to do this for real. I smile.
Yes. When all this is over, I will learn to play the piano.
It's a pretty lie, and I let myself fall into it. I see myself pressing the keys, and feel my heart skip a beat as I notice another pair of hands beside mine. I hear the music that we make together, feeling it grow louder and louder, drowning out the other song that calls to me from below. I feel myself turning my head, to see Shinji Ikari sitting beside me, smiling as he plays alongside me, a smile that is all the larger and warmer for how small and guarded it is, and suddenly I can't speak, can't think, there's a pain in my chest and I can't think of anything else because I know I'll never see that smile again and all I want is to be in this moment forever and it hurts like I've never felt anything before and I...
...I stop. I have to. Because as...painful as this is, I have to stay strong. Because I'll never have anything like this again, and I have to enjoy it, as long as I can.
I cannot stay in this dream. My mother's song will grow louder, and I will have no choice but to follow it to its source. He will follow me, and, in the end, he will stop me.
All of this I know.
Everything else is hope. Hope that we can share one last moment together. Hope that I can tell him how I feel, in a way that he will understand, a way that reaches him. And hope that, somewhere, somehow...he can be happy. Because he deserves to be. Because I know he deserves to be. Because when he's happy, I'm happy too.
I cannot remain in this place. But I stay, for as long as I can, sitting here with him, making music together, in this dream of a tomorrow that will never come.
In the end, the music fades, the piano vanishes beneath my fingertips, and Shinji Ikari is gone, leaving me with the hurt, an ache in my chest that is all the more painful for knowing what it is. Once again, I am alone in the hangar, with that strange, unnameable smell passing through the air.
"It is time. Let us go, Adam's dark shadow! Servant of the Lilin!"
I breathe for the first time as I step forward, into the air.
And all around me, I hear music.