Chapter 1 My name is...

My name is... well, I don't know.

To everyone, I'm Shinji, which is a name that means death in Japanese. There are other meanings there, of course, but that's what I was named after.

Why don't I know my name even when I have one? I don't.

It all started four years ago.

At some point, I just woke up. I opened my eyes and realized I was in water. My body was paralyzed. I saw a snake or a silhouette of a snake around me, everything was shaking, and the snake-like thing started getting closer and closer.

At some point my body involuntarily twitched. Or it should have twitched... either way, I sort of dove even deeper. This silhouette of a snake tightened right above my chest.

I just watched this picture, not realizing who I was, what I was, or why.

The body soon started to go somewhere down below.

At the same time I felt an unpleasant sensation. Yes, that something started to tighten around my neck.

I had absolutely no thoughts in my head at the time. Well, you can't blame me, can you?

Why am I mentioning guilt... well, there's a reason.

Next, as my body reached down and the one at my neck wouldn't let go, I felt a great pain.

"Bad! The fetus is stuck!"

...

There seemed to be some shouting outside, but those seemingly loud screams, which could have possibly rattled the entire hospital, were barely audible to me.It was very quiet in here.My eyes were slowly closing.

And then, at the very moment when everything seemed to be over, I... I felt hot.

Abruptly and instinctively opening my eyes, I saw that everything pinkish around me suddenly turned green.It was very beautiful, bright green sparks flashed and rose upwards.Truly, the beauty for one turned to the horror of the others.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" came a terrifying scream from the chamber.

"W-what's going on?!" wailed the midwife, unable to withstand the pressure.

"She's...she's...she has a high fever!" said a nurse nearby.

"Silence, we need to act fast!" said a groggy male voice.It sounded like some kind of doctor.

The woman's screams were quite unlike those of a normal woman in labor. It was as if she wasn't in labor, but rather something was tearing her from the inside out.Well.She did have something like that inside her.

Literally after about 5 seconds, the woman's belly burst, spreading a very hot liquid outward.With that, she let out a hoarse "oh" and simply fell asleep.Being already exhausted, the woman could not endure such pain and... passed out forever.....A baby boy, whose skin was suspiciously red and whose torn umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, came into the light.Of the three women in the room, two fainted. The man then cursed at them and quickly told the last one to take the child away, while he himself began to examine the mother.

...I myself remembered nothing more.In fact, when I saw the blinding light, I blacked out. To be more precise, the body, how to say it, began to live its own life, and I could only be an observer of it.

It cried and started screaming loudly.

It was for the best, because the abnormality was less.

After the nurse took the baby out of the room, going somewhere where newborns are laid, she was blocked by a man who, as I found out later, was my father.

He asked about what had happened there.....

...

I didn't know the details. Specifically this adventure ended there for me.

"You will be called Shinji," my maternal grandmother said with tears in her eyes.

I was taken from the maternity hospital, and then I started living with my father. Grandma was old and had her own household, but she helped in any way she could.

I could control my body, or I could just let my instincts act like a normal child.

To be honest, it was the latter that I practiced often.

It was very difficult to make a small and incapable body move, and my instincts didn't bother it much, slowly exploring the surroundings.That's how I lived, exploring the neighborhood, the world, people and so on.They didn't let me go to day care, because it was only for well-to-do families... okay, I'm lying... they just forgot about me.I forgot to mention one very important detail.My father, ever since I saw him, looked very... strange.To be more precise, he became that way after Isabelle, my mother, died.

His name was Haru, a typical dark-haired and brown-eyed Japanese man, with average looks. An office job, few days off, two drinking buddies, and a smattering of time for family life. That was it.

The thing was, the look in his cloudy eyes seemed dead.It was as if his eyes themselves never moved, and he didn't shift his gaze when he needed to look at something off to the side, but turned his head.Further, his movements gave off a kind of sluggishness, as if he did everything on automatic.

Of course, there was also some uncertainty in his movements, as if his gait lacked stability.The most important thing was his attitude towards me, he didn't love me.He cared for me, but not to the extent that I didn't interfere, nothing more.In fact, I was brought up by my grandmother.The only strange thing is that no one scandalized and the whole house was eerily quiet.The only thing that was perhaps unpleasant was the headaches.Sometimes I felt something like this, that I was just walking or crawling somewhere, when suddenly someone would take a bell and put it on my head and then hit it.At this time, various vivid scenes flashed in front of me through the pain.

Frankly speaking, it had a constant character and soon the picture began to take the form of shards of a mirror in which I saw something which... which was definitely not in this life!

Somewhere I'm giving out some quiet composition on the piano.

In some image, I'm running and fighting something that looks like a mere silhouette, which is made entirely of darkness.

Also somewhere I'm sitting and playing on a computer, even though I didn't know how to work in it.

This kind of thing haunted me every week.

I was scared, I cried, I asked for help, but nothing helped. Each time I just lay there and cried, looking up at the sky.

Only occasionally a passing breeze would ease my pain, as if taking it away with it and these incomprehensible, completely unnecessary scenes.

Back to the beginning... I'm four years old, I'm Shinji.

It's the name I was given, I realize it and... it's kind of supposed to be me, but I feel like I should have something else....

The headache hits me again. This time, in addition to the usual shards, something else green appears, blocking the view in my head.

I got scared and ran to ask my grandmother, who just decided to move here for 2 years, to give me some pills, call an ambulance or something.

She got excited and started to attend to my distress.

Suddenly this happened.

Something green suddenly appeared on my right arm - the same color as in my head.

Not knowing at all what it was or how, I decided to ask my grandmother, who was diligently searching for the right pills in my locker.

I proudly put my hand with the flame burning on it forward. What a fool.

The fire itself didn't hurt me, so I was cool with asking about it....

"Grandma, what's that?"

The one turned around and... stunned. It wasn't surprise on her face. He didn't know what exactly it was, but it... it was something evil.

Feeling that it was strange, I decided to ask....

"Grandma, is something wrong?"

"Y-you..."

"Grandma?" timidly asked Shinji.

I thought she was angry then, so I took a step back.

"B-brat, it was all you...

"G-grandmother?" I didn't understand.

"It's because of you my Isabel!.." without finishing, she quickly gave him a scathing slap with her right hand.

She became hysterical.

The boy fell.

It couldn't have been otherwise.

Then two things happened.

One, my grandmother hit me twice on the head with her fist.

The second, after those blows, my 'talent' in controlling flames, or my fire resistance, but whatever it was, they ended - my palm began to burn.

"Aaaaaaahhhh!!!" I screamed loudly then, and my grandmother stopped.

Her eyes rounded and it was as if she had sobered up dramatically, starting to run for the bottled water.

Along with that, my headache only got worse.

Soon I was being pelted with ice water under shouts along the lines of "how come", "you'll take him too", "but what is this".

Alas, this flame seemed to be on a whole different level. Water was no match for it.

Green tongues began to devour flesh.

"N-no! Enough! Stop! STOP!!!" I shouted, feeling myself being torn apart by sharp physical and mental pain.

Surprisingly, the flames began to fade and soon disappeared altogether.

...