Love was an emotion I never thought someone like myself would fall into. Fantasies and romances that involve the "L" word are so hyped up by the media and society that I feel nauseated just thinking about them. Then again, if there isn't love, what else is there? Oh, there's hatred. Love and hatred have always been the two, prime emotions that every other feeling or sense has stemmed from. From love, there is like, happiness, pain, etc. From hatred, there is fear, jealousy, anger, and so on and so forth. To be in love with someone means you want to give them the world; to hate them means that you want nothing more than to take their world away.

Was I falling in love with Eren? That's a good question. I sure as Hell better not be.

"Why would you ask something like that?" I questioned calmly, collectively. Lashing out at Hanji for stating an innocent question would have made me look stupid.

Sighing, Hanji curled her fingers against the counter and hung her head. For a moment or so, she didn't say anything, but when she opened her mouth, it was only to ask another question. "Do you remember what happened the last time you started painting this passionately, Levi? Actually, it might be better to ask if you remember why you were painting so passionately. Do you?"

I'd done something like this before? When? If Hanji was the one bringing it up, then it had to be true. But why couldn't I remember...?

Oh. That's why.

"Yeah," I whispered. "I remember."


It was over a decade ago, back when Hanji and I were still in college. She had just started bothering me about pursuing a major in art with minute success. From an estimated distance, I would see her working on colorful projects that involved cotton balls and sidewalk chalk, while I worked on my lame, common core assignments. I envied her because of that. When I saw her smiling with pride because she had created something wonderful, I wanted to be her. Why couldn't I be an artist like her? Why couldn't I indulge myself in my passions like her? Why couldn't I accept myself like her?

There was no turning back from there. The itches and the tingles were already crawling up my arms, and they wouldn't disappear until I did what had to be done.

I needed to paint.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, or how it happened, but all I can remember is that one moment, I was lying lethargically on a firm mattress in my dorm room, and then the next, I was standing in the corner of one of the art galleries on campus, staring wondrously at the mess I'd made.

My fingers were dripping with orange; my heart, a fiery inferno. I wanted to keep going. I wanted to do more. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so good.

"It's beautiful." That was the voice I'd heard. I'd convinced myself that it was just a figment from inside my head, but then I felt hands. Arms. Breasts. "It's really very beautiful."

Hanji held me from behind, stroking my slick arms, as we marveled at my mistake of a masterpiece. What did she see in it that I wasn't seeing? How was something that looked like carrot vomit beautiful? Without thinking, I asked her to explain her reasoning to me. "Why do you think it's beautiful? It's hideous."

Humming a soft tune while she continued to rub my arms, she whispered, "Why do you think it's hideous?"

"I asked you first." It was a childish response, I knew that, but I had an alibi. I wasn't thinking straight.

Hanji was still humming along to her unknown song as she let go of me. No longer was I caged by her suffocatingly warm hold. Instead, she stalked up to the corner wall and began to inspect it. Soon enough, I was certain, she would change her mind and deem it a hideous mess after all.

After painfully silent seconds of surveying had passed, Hanji turned back to me and shook her head. "It's really no good." There it was. "I just can't seem to give you a proper answer to your question, unless you give me an answer to mine first." Wait, what?

Quickly becoming irritated with her puzzling logic, I irritably asked, "Why does it matter why I think it's hideous? I'm the one who painted it, so I'm free to think whatever I want. I want to know why you think it's beautiful."

She folded her arms and nodded. "Fair enough. And with that, you've answered my question."

I had no idea how any of that had answered her question. All I'd done was state what I thought about my mess and how she was deliberately avoiding giving me an answer, but to her, I'd said so much more than that.

Looking wistfully at the corner wall, Hanji sighed. Slowly approaching it like she had done before during her inspection, this time around, she rested her palm against a particularly dense area of activity and inhaled deeply. "I can see the years of pain you've been forced to go through. This small section right here really highlights how bottled up you must have felt, hm? As most artists are, you've been conditioned to believe that you're not going to get anywhere in life by pursuing your beloved talents. You'll end up broke, you'll be living out of a soda can, and you won't have the means necessary to live a cushy, comfortable life."

Hanji's hands began to follow a smooth curve in the paint, a curve I hadn't noticed until she drew my attention to it. "This is all you've been hearing for the past, I don't know, five? Six? Seven years of your life? It's been drilled into your brain so much that you've started to accept it. I won't be an artist. I can't be an artist. I'll be a failure if I am an artist. Does this sound familiar to you? It should, because it's exactly what I'm reading right here."

I hadn't painted words; there were none. Hanji was reading the splotches. She was reading the lines, she was reading between the lines. What Hanji was doing went even further than that, and it both amazed and terrified me.

She was reading directly from my heart.

Slamming her first against the central point of the painting, Hanji threw her hands back made a ghastly Pew! sound to emphasize just how chaotic the disaster had gone from there. Outlining as many of the details as she could, she was gasping for air by the time she turned her attention back to me again.

I saw it immediately; there was no doubt about it. Hanji was different. Save for the obvious of how she'd managed to get orange paint all over her face, hands, and glasses, there was a comparable distinction between how she'd looked at me before she began analyzing the corner wall and how she looked at me now. "You've done it all on your own, Levi. You've freed yourself from your worst enemy, and the proof of that is right here." She paused for the sake of inquisition. "When was the last time you painted like this?" Years. "Did it feel good?" Very. "Do you want to do it again?" Yes. "You want to do it again, don't you?" Yes. Yes. She could have asked me a thousand times, and my answer wouldn't waver. I was already in too deep, and she made me realize that.

I wanted to paint again.

Not so surprisingly, the art professor wasn't too thrilled about my unannounced vandalism of his gallery, but on the same token, he wasn't entirely upset by it, either. Just like Hanji, he had been able to read through the smears and the smudges and see the struggles I had endured. It was because of that, plus a few added factors, that he encouraged me to pursue art as my major. I had a gift, he said. It would have been a waste not to use it.

Three days later, I handed in my withdrawal forms and took up six new courses, all of them focused solely on the creation of art and art history.


Standing up from the chair, I shook my head. I understood the point that Hanji was trying to make, about how my black-out style of painting was only invoked when I was undergoing excessively intense emotions, but why did she think that my paintings of Eren were equated with love? I could have been experiencing many different feelings when those canvases were created. I could have just as well been annoyed out of my mind when I'd shoved my hands into those jars of paint. I could have been filled with hatred or anger. What made her come to the conclusion that it was love?

"Levi, please don't get upset," Hanji pleaded. "It was just a question. You don't have to answer it."

Good, because I wasn't planning on it. Walking out from behind the front counter, I stretched my arms high above my head, cussing pleasurably when the kinks in my lower back gave way. I was not looking forward to the long morning we had ahead of us. If only there was something we could do to pass the time.

And that's when I had an idea.

"Hey, wanna work on some new sketches?"

At first, Hanji seemed surprised by my suggestion. It had been quite some time since we'd sketched together, and the last time we were working on new designs, we both ended up getting frustrated an quit. "I mean, only if you're up for it," she said.

I shrugged. "I wouldn't have said anything if I wasn't."

"True, very true. Well, let's break out our sketch books, then."

When I said that it'd been a while since Hanji and I had sketched, I hadn't been exaggerating. The sketch books that we kept in the back room were covered in dust, and our drawing pencils were nowhere to be found. Almost giving up before we'd even started, Hanji made the suggestion that we use pens instead of pencils. We had plenty of pens. We used them to mark down costumer information and schedule appointments. However, there was an issue with sketching with pens. Because of their permanency, they stripped you of your freedom to make mistakes. Every stroke and every curve had to be outlined to perfection. One wrong move and you were done.

We sat in the back room in silence, our pens scratching away at our papers. Hanji was the first to crumple up one of her drawings and start over, but I held strong. I was determined to make the perfect sketch on my first attempt. I strove to craft something beautiful without having to tear it apart and start all over again. I wanted perfection.

"How's your sketch coming along, Levi?" Hanji asked out of curiosity, after a few minutes of working on her new sketch. Peeking over my shoulder, her eyes immediately widened and she gasped.

I screwed up. Her reaction caused me to screw up. Not like it mattered, though. Hearing her sharp inhale made me realize just what the Hell I had been doing. "Damn it," I cursed. "Ugh, damn it, damn it."

"Levi, you...?"

Drawing my pen away from the sketch book, I jabbed the ball-point onto her nose and warned her not to say anything further than that. "Don't."

"But, Levi-"

I applied more pressure into the point of the pen. "I said don't."

Complaining about it hurting her, Hanji swatted my hands away and promised that she'd keep her big mouth shut. When I pulled the pen away, she punched my shoulder with one hand and rubbed her nose with the other. "That was really uncalled for, you know that? Now I'm going to have a mark on my nose for the rest of the day!"

"Good," I said. "It'll inform other people of just how nosey you are."

Even though Hanji was still visibly angry, I could tell that she was struggling to keep a straight face after a comment like that. I mean, come on. Even she had to admit that it was a good comeback.

Crumpling up my piece of paper, I tossed it into the corner waste bin and sighed deeply. Maybe sketching wasn't the best way to pass the time after all. Sketching wasn't just for fun; there was a purpose to it. We were supposed to be creating new designs to showcase to our customers who were considering original tattoo ideas.

And I highly doubted that anyone would want an outline of Eren's eyes tattooed onto them.

Lo and behold, after five miraculous hours of waiting around in the back room with nothing other than the rusty smell of old coffee to keep us company, our first client of the day had finally arrived. She was a kindly young girl who was excited to get her very first tattoo: a freckled pattern of stars on the back of her neck.

While I worked on our client, Hanji sat in the chair beside her and chatted her up, in order to get her mind off of the pain. A tattoo like that one should have taken me around an hour or two to complete, but because the girl insisted on taking multiple breaks, I ended up working on her for around three hours. I didn't really mind it, though. She was a good customer and tending to her passed the time, as we continued to wait for the other two clients we had scheduled for that afternoon to show up.

After our second set of customers had made it and were tended to by myself and Hanji, the late afternoon hours were already giving way to the evening. It was hard to believe how a day that had been so centered about the virtue of patience was finally coming to a close. Turning off the window lights and locking the front door had never felt so good.

"Ahh, we made it," Hanji sighed peacefully. Cupping her hands behind her back and pulling them into a stretch, she continued to say, "I thought today would never end! Hopefully tomorrow is a bit more exciting-"

Stopping mid-sentence, both of our heads turned at the sound of the phone as it started to ring. Who would be calling us now? If they had our phone number, they must have also had our hours.

Normally when the phone rings after closing, Hanji and I don't pick it up. It's our way of saying, "You're too late. You should have called earlier." But that was only our motto if the person called once. We didn't have a motto for if the person called twice. I think you can tell where I'm going with this.

After the phone stopped ringing, there was only a moment's reprieve before it started right back up again. Its annoying, technological chirping was giving me a headache. "Answer it, Hanji," I said demandingly.

"Why do I have to answer it?" she whined. "What if it's one of those psycho maniacs that you hear about in the movies?"

"Just answer it."

She sighed and obediently gave in, but not without mumbling something along the lines of, "Why do I always have the be the one? Geez," to herself.

Hanji walked over to the front counter and looked at the phone's blank Caller ID before hesitantly picking it up. "Yes, hello? I'm sorry, but we're already...ah! Eren? Why are you-hey!"

Snatching the phone out of Hanji's hand, I quickly pressed the speaker to my ear. Of course it would have to be Eren. Why didn't I think of him in the first place? "Why are you calling my shop after closing hours?" I asked, in a stern tone. "Do you have no consideration at all?"

I could hear the arrogance in his faint laughter through the phone's speaker. It caused my teeth to grind.

"Actually," Eren began to say, "I have a lot of consideration. I'm calling to let you know that I'm outside. That's pretty considerate of me, don't you think?"

Looking to a very confused Hanji before looking in the direction of the front windows, I stalked my way up to the front door and casually peered out. Upon seeing me, Eren offered two, friendly beeps of his horn - both of which I heard over the phone and through the window - and a wave.

"Why the Hell are you here?" I asked. Hopefully my choice of stronger language would prompt him to give me a short answer. "If it's to schedule your next session, you could have just done that over the phone. Preferably during our working hours, thank you."

Every fiber of my being wanted to hang up on him, when I heard him start laughing again. Who did this kid think he was? Just because we had a nice night together last night, it didn't change the fact that I wasn't going to put up with his crappy attitude.

"That's partly why I'm here," Eren admitted, "but only partly. The real reason is because I have something that I want to show you."

Show me? Show me what? Did he get a new tattoo, or something? Shaking my head, knowing full well that he would be able to see me through the window, I asked, "Why can't you just tell me what it is? Why does everything have to be a guessing game or a bargain with you?"

It was difficult to make out in the darkness, but instead of actually seeing it, I could hear the sly smirk in Eren's voice, when he answered, "Because life's more fun that way."

With that, I hung up on him and threw the phone over at Hanji for her to catch. She missed. The phone hit her on the shoulder. Oops.

I couldn't even explain to her what was going on when she asked, because I had no idea myself. Eren wanted to show me something, and I had no idea what it was. When I figured it out, she would be the first to know.

Unlocking the front door and heading outside in a huff, I cussed at the drop in temperature. Autumn was definitely on its way. Rubbing my arms as I walked, with the ridges of my boots digging into the gravel, I hurried over to Eren's car where he ever-so-gentlemanly rolled down the window upon my arrival.

"Hi."

"Just show me whatever it is that you have to show me," I said, leaving no room for small talk.

Laying his wrist against the steering wheel, Eren shrugged and said, "I figured you'd be in a rush, so I won't beat around the bush." With his free hand, he reached for what appeared to be a small pouch of some sort. Seconds later, that pouch was in my hands and I was being instructed to open it.

"What is it?" I asked. I didn't like not knowing what was inside of sealed packages.

"I can't believe you're asking that. Just open it," Eren urged. "The answer to your question is literally in your hands."

I sighed in exasperation. What I'd said over the phone hadn't been an exaggeration. Everything really was a game to him.

Eyeing the pouch, I tilted it to get a slightly better view of what I was dealing with. Whatever was inside couldn't have been all that large; the package itself was relatively thin. Without further delay, I stuck my thumb underneath the small flap that sealed the pouch shut and began to tear it. After the seal was completely broken, I pealed away the excess paper and took a peak inside. It was...a picture?

Cupping my hand, I squeezed the outer edges of the pouch and gave it a shake until the singular photograph bumped against my palm. There were no words to accurately describe my confusion, so with a dumbfounded expression, I grabbed the picture and held it up for Eren to see. "Do you mind explaining why you needed to show me this?" I asked him.

Avoiding my question - or at least ignoring it for now - Eren drummed his fingers against the smooth leather of his steering wheel and proceeded to ask, "Do you know what that building is? The building in the photograph, I mean."

I gave the image a quick glance and shrugged. If there was a point to all of this, Eren wasn't making himself very clear. "It's the old library building that closed down about five years ago. You still didn't answer my question, though," I pressed. "Why are you showing me this?"

"Hmm," Eren hummed, as his eyes wandered up to the inner roof of his car. "Let's call it your payment. Your payment...and your homework. Since you don't want me to pay you in cash, I'm paying you with pictures."

"Okay?" I was following what he was saying for the most part, but he obviously still wasn't making any sense. "Then, where does the 'homework' part come in?"

"I'm glad you asked," Eren said, sporting a stupid smile. "That's kind of the catch of this whole thing. You see, that picture that you're holding, you don't get to keep it. You have to give it back to me. Hold on a second, though, I'm getting ahead of myself; that's the second part of your homework. The first part is something that I know you won't object to."

Huh. In saying that, Eren certainly seemed sure of himself. How did he know I wouldn't object? We hardly knew each other.

But then I realized that that wasn't true. It was disturbing enough to gradually become more and more aware of it, but Eren and I already knew more about one another than my stubborn brain would like to admit.

Resting my arm against his car's half-opened window, I stared Eren down as I waited for him to honor me with a response. "Well?" I asked, coaxing him back into the conversation. "Aren't you going to tell me what it is? I would never accept a homework assignment, unless I understood all of its instructions in full and excruciating detail."

I could see it in his grossly gorgeous eyes. Eren was more than delighted that I'd taken to his little game, and started to play along myself. That's what he wanted, right? To have me wrapped around his finger, and tied into a pretty little bow? Yeah. As if.

"Fair enough," he sighed, letting his hand drop from the steering wheel. "Then you may be disappointed to hear that there's only one detail that I can offer you."

I quirked an eyebrow at him. "Oh, yeah? And what's that?"

Emitting an essence of challenge as he purposefully narrowed his gaze, he finally gave an answer. "I want you to paint it."


Hi there! Chappy here! :D

Word count-wise, this chapter was a bit shorter than last week's chapter. But content-wise, I feel like this chapter was a bit more interesting! We got a deeper look into Hanji and Levi's past, and the plot is slowly starting to progress! Hopefully you'll all enjoy where it's heading. (:

As always, thank you for taking the time to read! I greatly appreciate it! And on a side note, thank you for all of the kind reviews and comments you've been leaving thus far! Hearing feedback from you guys definitely gives me the motivation to keep posting these chapters each week. So, again, thank you very much! (:

- Chappy