The streetlamps glowed dully, filling the sky above with polluted orange light. The stars were invisible, and yet I still stared up towards the atmosphere, finding an easy excuse to avert my eyes from the trickle of blood running down my upturned wrist. I sat inside my old silver car, parked innocently on the pavement just outside my local convenience store. It was late, almost midnight, and I had just driven back from work. My job is meaningless and repetitive, as most people who are also employed full time by a fast food company would say. I begin my shift at 7am, and continue to serve chips and hamburgers to whoever comes my way until unfortunately late that same night. I've given up trying to be cheerful, that plan went down the drain fifteen years ago when I first took up the job.
As I resided in the driver's seat of my car, pocket knife in hand, I watched the people who ran the convenience store closing up for the night. It was 11pm, a mere hour after I finished my own working shift. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to work for more than 12 hours like this, and I'd be prepared to bet my life that none of the cheerful co-workers exiting the store opposite me had arrived at their workplace just as the sun was making its first appearance this morning.
My life is as pointless as you could imagine. I walk in circles, going to work and then coming home, eating if I can be bothered, and then resentfully sleeping, only to be woken by my 6am alarm after a night of the usual unpleasant insomniac's dreams. This repetition has been my daily life ever since my parents died when I was 16. I was forced to mature and strike out on my own, buying a house after lying my way past lawyers and police officers. Once I had managed to purchase my fifth floor apartment in the dirtiest part of town, I began the hopeless search for work, and lived in poverty and unemployment for 2 long years. It was just after I turned 18 that I passed my driver's test and earned my licence, which then allowed me to expand my daily job-scouting missions into the outskirts of the city. It was there that I stumbled upon a junk food takeaway restaurant who agreed to take me in. Fifteen years later, at my current age of 33, the salary is still horrific, I have had no promotion, and the working conditions and colleagues are as abysmal as one could ever imagine.
As was most likely inevitable, I started self-harming when I was 26, on the tenth anniversary of my parents' deaths. They were brutally stabbed to death whilst walking home from a evening out, so I decided to slit my wrist a little as a kind of tribute to them. It hurt, but it also felt good, indescribably good. After spending 10 years trapped inside my own body, living a life that was rapidly spiralling downhill, it was a relief to be able to take back a certain degree of control. If I wanted to inflict pain upon myself, I could, and that was a luxury I fought for. It quickly became addictive, and I continued cutting myself for many years, up to where I am now: seated in my car, slitting open the thin skin on my wrist. Both of my inner arms have thousands of thin scars, making me look somewhat like a mutilated zebra. But I am proud of them, rather than being repulsed like most people.
I flipped my pocket knife closed and hid it in the glove compartment of my car, just in case a police officer happened to be passing. I didn't fancy being spied on by somebody who had the authority to remove even the little amount of freedom I had left.
I gazed intently out of the window, feeling a pair of eyes watching me closely. The stare belonged to a youthful boy who was standing opposite my car on the other side of the road. He was wrapped tightly in a thick brown coat, possibly made out of leather, with thick faux fur insulating the hood and sleeves. I could not afford such luxuries as warm clothing, so I was clad in my work uniform, with a cheap knitted sweater pulled messily over the top. The boy didn't look any older than 19, but the way he looked at me reminded me of someone much more mature. Curiosity overwhelmed me and I wound down my window, determined to observe his gaze without the interference of dirty glass.
Instead of the accusatory glare I had been expecting, my own dark eyes were met with round green orbs, that looked right back with an expression I had never experienced before: pity. While I was struggling to understand why he would be staring at me with a kind and sorrowful aura, said boy had begun to make his way across the road towards my car. Common sense told me to close the window, but there was something about him that made me certain of the fact that he wasn't a homicidal thug, and that I had nothing to fear from him.
He swiftly crossed the road - that was unusually scant of any traffic - and stopped a few paces away from my car, keeping a respectful distance. I noticed that his eyes had dropped a few inches south of my face, and I silently cursed myself as I hurriedly rolled my sleeve down over my blood spattered wrist.
"Why?" the teenager asked me, shifting his gaze back to my eyes and making me feel as though I was being scrutinized by a schoolteacher.
I shrugged my shoulders in response, stubbornly hiding the secrets of my past. This seemed to anger and frustrate the boy, as an equally defiant expression shrouded his face.
"Why do you do that to yourself?" he insisted, advancing one step closer to the car door.
"It's none of your business," I replied curtly, beginning to wind up the window.
I had been mistaken, there was nothing special about this boy. He was just another busybody who was up to no good. But even as I convinced myself of this, he astounded me yet again. As the glass had begun to rise up he had sprung forward, halting it immediately with his hands and forcing it down. I wound it back again, slightly alarmed by this sudden show of strength. The boy's sleeves had ridden up his wrists slightly, exposing his well toned, muscled arms.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I growled, shifting forward threateningly in my seat. "You could have broken my car. Do I look like the kind of person who could afford repairs?"
The boy gulped, apparently steadying or preparing himself, before he replied. His voice remained as calm and caring as it had been when he had first approached me, despite my loss of temper. Then again, you can't expect an introvert like me to hold my patience with intruding teenagers.
"No," he said simply, averting his eyes to the floor for the first time. "You look like the kind of person who needs someone to love them. You are tired, with dark bags under your eyes and an unhealthily pale complexion. Your hair is overlong and your clothes are untidy. That, along with the fact that your car is in need of a service, tells me that you don't have much money and probably a trying job. You are skinny and you look depressed, not to mention the fact that you have clearly been self harming for a long time. Please, let me help you."
I let out a strangled laugh, trying to stomach the fact that he knew almost everything about me. Was he some kind of stalker?
"What kind of a fool would I be if I just invited you into my life?" I asked sceptically, trying to regain some of my edge over the kid. "Look. I don't know why you felt the need to come over here, and as you can probably tell, I don't overly appreciate it. But, do you need a lift somewhere? If so, just ask next time, don't try all the heart-to-heart nonsense to win me over. I'm a reasonable man."
The boy shook his head, infuriating me considerably. But as I prepared myself to swear and drive away, he looked up into my face, and this time his gaze was imploring.
"Could you please show me the way to a convenience store?" he asked, acting strangely clueless despite his previously intelligent advances. "I need to pick something up."
"You left it a bit late," I scoffed, gesturing behind me to the now closed shop. "But sure, there's one about a mile away. But I have to ask you this: why do you feel like you can trust me, a stranger?"
"I don't know, but I just can," he replied, making to open the rear car door.
"At least ride shotgun," I offered. "That way I can keep an eye on you."
The teenager grinned amusedly as he climbed into the seat beside me, fastening his seatbelt and turning to face me.
"I'm Eren," he said extending his hand towards me. "Eren Jaeger. I'm 19 years old and I live a couple of streets away from here. My parents were both killed when I was very young, so I live with my adoptive sister, Mikasa, who is 21."
"I don't do handshakes," I said, declining his offer as politely as I knew how. "They call me Levi Ackerman. I'm 33 and I live alone in an apartment just around the corner. My parents were killed when I was about your age, so we have something in common there."
Eren appeared to be slightly in shock.
"Mikasa's surname is Ackerman as well!" he exclaimed, in my opinion, quite overly excited by the coincidence.
I decided to ignore this and drive him to the store, so that I could be rid of this irritating boy as quickly as possible. I turned the key and started the ignition, pressed my foot down onto the accelerator and drove down the kerb and onto the road with a gentle clunk. Once successfully onto the road, I picked up the pace, changing gear with a skilled movement of my bony hand, and spinning the steering wheel to take us around the corner. I spared a quick glance over my shoulder towards Eren, who was staring glassy-eyed out of the window, his mouth open in an exhilarated grin, apparently enjoying the speed at which I was driving.
I skidded around the final bend, possibly a little too cockily, and brought the car to an abrupt halt, almost sending Eren flying into the dashboard. He regained his composure and let himself out of the vehicle, carefully closing the door before turning around to speak to me.
"Thank you for the lift," he said, smiling in an almost pitiful manor. "I should be able to make it on my own from here."
I was about to nod in agreement and swiftly drive away, after all, it was past midnight, and my morning alarm would be rousing me in just six hours. However, something deep inside me prevented my foot from moving to the accelerator, and I felt a strangely unwelcome need to help the boy. But just as I was about to open my mouth and call him back, the shop doors closed behind him and I was left sitting in the middle of a dark, empty street. I was free to leave and resume my monotonous existence, yet something was holding me back. I stubbornly shook my head, ridding my head of even the mere thought that I cared for the boy. I was not the kind of person to form attachments, and certainly not just after meeting them. I knew nothing about this teenager! Even so, he was the first person in fifteen years to take any interest in my life... But that meant nothing. He had his own jobs to take care of, and he had yet to properly grow up. He had his sister to care for, in other words, he had something to live for. What did I have to live for? Wasn't I just clutter upon the earth's surface?
As these thoughts were racing through my mind, I glanced towards the shop again, searching for a distraction from the depression that was fast closing in. Surprisingly enough, I found one.