Shinji, witnessing Unit-02’s death, screams. Eva-01 goes berserk, ascending into a quasi-divine form—a tree of life. SEELE, observing from orbit, declares the beginning of the Human Instrumentality Project. Their goal: to break down the AT Fields (the walls of the heart that separate one soul from another), turning all of humanity into a single, orange sea of primordial goo (LCL). No pain. No rejection. Just a lukewarm ocean of collective loneliness.
He chooses to suffer.
And he realizes: in a world without pain, there is no comfort. In a world without rejection, there is no love. To feel the warmth of another, you must risk their cold. To be held, you must risk being let go.