Happiness for those who seek it.
Is happiness a reward?
Is happiness a goal?
Happiness is a mirage in a desert you wandered into by mistake, but from which it's now too late to turn back.
Is it true that happiness finds those who fought for it? Probably, yes. That's the answer if you look superficially at the glossy side of the coin, without looking at what's beneath it.
Whoever fights diligently for their dream should, in theory, receive a reward. Right? That's what they teach in books, in fairy tales, in sermons. Everything that glitters goes to those who don't retreat.
However... However, in life everything is far less glossy. In life everything is far less forgiving.
Such a path. The path of struggle, it always has a price. You don't get happiness. You get pain, and after pain comes hatred.
Hatred for what you fought for. And hatred from those you tried to protect.
I was considered a deranged monster. Without feelings, without pity. Without the right to forgiveness. A monster who grew tired of the game he himself created.
And perhaps they were right.
I made a contract with one of my own creations, we began a game. A game with a name that sounded like a sentence: inevitable fate. For everyone who played it, no choice existed.
In this process, not a game, not a battle, but precisely a process, we absorbed hatred into each other. I toward them, they toward me, like two sides of one coin on which is scratched "it's all over."
But why? Why couldn't they understand?
I didn't choose to be the pinnacle. I had to, as one who stands above all. As one who's obligated to decide when it hurts the rest even to breathe.
I made a decision. Unwavering, like a king who passes sentence on his subjects to save those very subjects.
In the process of this merciless war, everyone died. Each step, new blood. Even if humanity was at stake, even if the alternative was the end for everyone... a decision remained a decision.
Everyone dies or let half leave? Anyone would choose the second, but not everyone would want to be the one who chooses.
I destroyed more than half of what I myself created, with my own hands. By my own decision. And all so the rest would have a chance to continue living.
Did they understand me? No. They hated. How can you understand one who sacrifices you for others? How can you forgive one who grants you salvation at the price of pain?
One person... one, he agreed. He wanted power, such power that could destroy everyone.
I granted it.
Perhaps there were other paths. But they're impossible.
I created countless hierarchies. Placed higher beings upon them, and lost everything. Half my power, connection with them. Control. Forever sealed in my own world. Locked. Like a book no one reads. I could only observe how my creations went toward destruction, not even having the ability to warn them.
Irony? Perhaps. I had absolute power, but I turned out to be a pawn. Someone else's piece. In someone else's game.
Their fear of me was natural. As a child fears the monster under the bed, so they feared me. A monster who perhaps truly existed.
All I wanted was to return lost power. Only it would give me a chance to stop the coming disaster. The Great Disaster. But even for one who holds fate itself... Even for him an end is prepared.
Standing above all life and death, you don't expect your demise. You're certain it's impossible. You're immortal, but a person who cast aside everything. His essence, his nature, himself, he proved that even the end can come. Even for those above death.
His name was Yahweh. He's the one with whom I made the contract. He's the one with whom I began the game.
Four years. An eternity of pain and suffering, compressed into a pitiful human measurement of time. We lost our feelings. We became not humans, not gods, but something... Empty. Like beasts who lost their instincts.
We had a goal, only it. The ego screamed in the depths of the soul that we didn't want this, that we hated this.
We silenced it. Sealed feelings at the very bottom of our consciousness. Closed the lid. Nailed it shut. Forgot.
But sometimes... Sometimes I wanted to scream. From pain, from this pain I've been dragging behind me all this time. I became a monster in their eyes. Accepted their gaze, accepted my new appearance. Erased myself, created another, the kind they saw me as.
Not for recognition. Not for victory, but to save the lives of those who came to hate me.
Such is the fate of those who seek happiness.
You can follow after it. Can fight to the last, but in the end you'll still find yourself in an abyss.
An abyss you dug yourself.
While you're merely a piece in someone's game, while you're not playing but being played... you've lost.
"How ironic," I growled. "Even now they consider me a killer. A monster. Accuse me of a crime I didn't commit!"
But... to hell with it. To hell with what the others think. I know this isn't my doing, and that's enough for me. I'm not going to crawl before them, begging them to believe my alibi.
Only one youth is on my side. Without proof, without benefit. He continues to believe, continues to prove my innocence to the others.
And that's enough. You really are... an amazing guy, Aragi. I recall he said he came here from the future. From a future where humanity lost. Lost the game for its existence.
He's the only one who survived. Survived among beings unknown to me... X. But there's an inconsistency in this story.
Aragi... Such a world shouldn't exist.
Then who are you, really?