Rau Le Creuset's Resolve

It was a faint loneliness, like watching a possibility that had brushed past him. But more than that, it was an emotion that surprised even him—something close to joy.

"Heh..." A soft exhalation laden with complicated meaning escaped from beneath his mask. "To think... such feelings still remained in my heart."

Rau Le Creuset had always believed he had long since become utterly disillusioned with this world ruled by desire and hatred, that his heart had already become a wasteland burned to ash.

Yet just moments ago, because of that boy's answer, a tiny spring called "hope" had miraculously welled up upon that wasteland.

But the tiny light of hope that had emerged was almost instantly swallowed by the deeper, vaster darkness of hatred within Rau Le Creuset's heart.

Like a drop of clear water falling into an ink pool, vanishing without a trace in an instant; like a meteor streaking across an eternal night, its brief light only made the darkness that followed seem even deeper.

He thought of humanity's endless history of war, of the insatiable desires behind those high-sounding justifications, of the foolishness and betrayals repeated time and again, and of his own life, soon to end.

What could one Shinn Asuka possibly change?

Even if there were two, ten, a hundred people like him, what then?

Before the immense, self-devouring tidal wave known as "humanity," their meager kindness and will would ultimately only be mercilessly swept away,

torn apart, then turned into another drop of water driving that tidal wave onward.

...Then let me pass judgment. And let me see through it. You humans struggling to survive—do you truly possess the worth to be saved?

That light swallowed by darkness, which he had thought would vanish completely, had not gone out after all.

It became a