An Eldian's Journal

Chapter 4: A street dweller - a man in overalls - a Reiner

Two weeks after the news headline, "The Warrior's Return", Reiner Braun and his depression returned to Liberio. This sparked commotion and fear among Marley's residents including the ones in the internment zones. They feared a war. Since Marley's military lost two of its Titan powers (leaving them five in total if I count my fingers properly) to the islanders over the four-year-period, this made the "great nation" appear vulnerable. This drastic change in Marley's fighting force also marked a change in the country's residents: optimists became pessimists, fat people became fatter, skinny people started disappearing. And how was the military's way to solve the commotion and return things to normal? A radio broadcast starring the one who failed in the first place. Spoiler Alert: it won't help.

On the morning of the press conference, a Saturday, I was in the back of my parents' bar doing child labor. Saturdays were my 'break days' from my illustrious newspaper career. While I was washing beer stains away (along with my hopes for a decent future), I came up with three possible outcomes for the years that would follow.

***THREE POSSIBLE OUTCOMES***

We're screwed

We're fucked

We're double fucked

I didn't know it then, but they all turned out to be correct.

For some reason, whenever Marley wants to do something violent the first people they come to for artillery are us Eldians. We are the artillery. And then when new countries begin hating Eldians since we can transform into overgrown nudists, these Marleyans have the audacity to spit at us even though they are the ones making some of us do this.

I swear, this is why we can't have nice things.

When I was in my trance of deep thought, I was interrupted by my mama's order to throw away the trash. I picked up the bag of assorted stenches from the giant trash can near me and left through the back door. I was greeted by another stench.

A street dweller's to be exact.

On the damp gravel sidewalk, a good 12 feet away from me, laid a homeless bum and a wise-looking guitar. His face was a beard and he clothed himself in poverty. He was a weed on the sidewalk, slurping away at the already minimal positive energy in the people around him. But he also had keen eyes; some would say, an owl's eyes. I could feel his stench itching at my nasal cavity.

That was not my first encounter with the bum. My first time seeing him was on the day Viktor gave me a tour of the section and I've seen him cluttering the streets ever since. The day of the broadcast was the first of many interactions with him; I must say, he was surprisingly friendly.

"What're you looking at you little prick?! You haven't seen a homeless guy before?"

"I-" The bum didn't even give me a chance to breathe.

"If you aren't going to give me food or money, fuck off!"

I too was trained in the art of the "ass-hole" language. "Shouldn't you be begging me for money? On your knees?"

"I have dignity." The street-dweller breathed out exhaust. His weightless words turned to mist in the morning air.

The tiredness in my left arm grew while holding the trash and the morning drizzle started to escalate to a downpour. I had to breach the wall of stench in front of me to get to the dumpster. I glanced at the wise-looking guitar to the left of him. Pearls of water were rolling down its aging curves. It was the same one I saw him with years before.

"Do you know how to play guitar?" I asked.

A reserved shock arose in the bum's face. "It's for firewood."

"But I've seen you with it for years. Why haven't you burned it already?"

"Buzz off, will you?"

I held a light spark of pity for the man but his top-tier ass-hole behavior made it hard to keep lit. It was even worse than Ymir's. "I'll make a deal with you. Play something for me and I'll bring you some food."

The rain hung in the air for a heavy second.

"Just leave me alone."

"What?"

The skeleton began clawing at the loose, damp gravel around his feet. After gaining a handful, he lugged it in my direction, but it barely got within a meter of me. He did it again and again, while gibberish spun from his mouth. A grimace was etched on his face. Not a grimace of hatred, but pain.

I approached the wall of musk, dodging the bum's pitiful attempts at shooing me away. The pungent scent began crawling up my nasal cavity. With each step, it crawled further and further up.

As the bum continued his "assault", his muttering grew louder than the light rain circling us. "…pity…pity"

I kept walking towards him with consistent crunching from stepping on already fired gravel. The bum's stench burned on my tongue, but he finally launched the words from his mouth in high clarity. "I don't need your pity!"

A mute sob hung heavy in the blue air.

The trash fell to the ground. I held his forearm and I saw his eyes clear as fog. My left hand held humid air and my right hand held bone—A living skeleton. Without another syllable, I launched myself back to the door while wearing a ghost's face. I took a stabbing glance at the old bum; his crusty and rusty colored armband seemed to have a long history just like his guitar. I went back inside the bar while shoving dread into my pant pockets. It was too full.

***THE STREET-DWELLER***

Destined to author a book

Destined to fall from the sky

For most of the day, my dread remained as a post-it note attached to the back of my skull. A quiver possessed my right hand.

During the rest of the day, me and my parents had prepared the bar for a crowd. Our fine whiskey and sparkling champagne lured in many customers on evenings. Well, that's what my dad used to think but I think it's because we had a radio and barely anyone else had one.

My parents would pour drinks and whatnot and I would be the entertainment. On busy nights, they would make me stand in the corner of the establishment near the window-that-never-fully-closes and play on our guitar (In the two years or so time skip I had become somewhat of a household name). I would strum away as the air would seep through the window and kiss my neck. My compensation for doing all this was that my parents wouldn't whoop me.

By the late evening of the broadcast day, our bar was half full but customers continued trickling in. (Including a familiar face. But I hadn't noticed them until later). As usual, I was told to play some songs. But unique to the day, my right hand was quivering. How in the world can someone strum if they can't control their hand?

Lucky for me, there was a distraction.

After 20 minutes of unconcise strumming, a character had entered through the main door and blessed us with his appearance. It was Section F's finest cabbage seller: Dick the Cabbage Man. The cartoon character wore overalls, reeked of rotten produce, and was ready to cause mayhem. But before he was able to make so much as a step, a dart silently sliced the air and stabbed the unlucky wooden plank near his foot. The thrower: my papa from behind the counter.

My dad's voice carried a pint of malice. "Frederick! I told you that you were banned from this place…because of you know what…"
"Come on, Frederick. It just happened once—"

***A GUESS-TIMATED STATISTIC***

20% of Eldians around here are named Frederick

"Get out of here before you make me do it again!"

The cabbage man let out an exaggerated sigh, "Look, I don't want any trouble…"

"That's what everyone says before they cause trouble."

"…I just want a drink and to listen to the broadcast."

All the customers latched their eyes onto papa. His oval face and his always combed thinning hair frowned in submission. "Fine"

The cabbage wobbled over to a table near me and took a seat. Predatory vibes emanated from his grin. Luckily, my papa came over with a drink and whispered to the cabbage; it was something along the lines of, "If you need to use the bathroom, the bushes are wide open."

The cabbage man roared in laughter and continued using his tinny-brass vocal cords. "Freddy, why so serious?... You still reading those magazines?"

An aura of heat sizzled from papa and the commotion from the other customers resumed. The tension in the room for the next 20 minutes was denser than bone. It was like a chord with one of the notes ever so slightly off. For most of it, my papa wandered about his duties with a blue eye pasted on the cabbage man. When it was about time for the broadcast, I put my guitar away and headed over to the bar counter to awaken the magical noise emitting box dubbed, a "radio". Customers chimed in with their enlightening thoughts while I was twisting the adjustment knobs.

"I strongly believe that the government wants to pacify us with this broadcast by saying 'everything's okay'. I advocate storming the government buildings."

"Be quiet, Karl. You're five years old, act like one."

"I don't blame that Reiner kid for failing the mission. After all, those island devils must have been brutal."

"I wonder what it's like to eat people."

"Shuddup!", my mama said kindly towards the customers. "I think it's about to start."

After a few seconds of knob twisting, a faint human-like sound wiggled out of the contraption. The customers were at the edge of their seats. Karl the communist nearly fell off his booster seat. Dick the Cabbage man continued with his line of drinks.

Never mind. It was just static.

Customers kept chiming in:

"Hey, is that thing going to explode?"
"Back in my day, when we heard someone's voice, we would see their faces with it."
"Kid's nowadays. They don't understand how good they have—"

"My fellow Marleyans."

The plethora of shrieks and buzzes from the radio narrowed to an audible yet scratchy sound. The words reached out and shut the lips of the customers in the room.

"As I'm sure you've all received word by now, two weeks ago marked the failure of the Founding Titan retrieval mission conducted by the Marleyan military. However, I have no doubt we can recoup from this moment as we are the nation of heroes that defeated the wretched Eldian empire years ago… But these words mean little coming from me…So today, I have a special guest with us. Introduce yourself."

"…This is Reiner Braun."

The customers' thoughts began cluttering the room and a certain cabbage man made his comments very clear. "There's the shithead himself. Hey Freddy! Give me another drink. I'm gonna need one to listen to his bullshit."

"As I'm sure you very well know, your failure to fulfill your duty as a warrior has caused many of our country's residents, including your people, to fear for their safety."

"I'm aware of that fact."

"I am sure your time's precious, so I shall cut to the chase and ask you the question everyone is so eager to hear the answer for. What went wrong?"

"…" A ball of depression seemed to have clogged Reiner's throat.

"Oh look at that, he's hiding something from us!"
"Oh come on, he probably just had a rough time over there and doesn't wanna talk about it."
"Hey, let's take a shot every time he lies."

"…Are you hiding something from us, soldier? Tell the people of Marley what we need to hear. We need to hear it right from you."

The customers sat glued to their chairs with their beer glasses molded to their hands. They stared a hole into the radio as if it was the face of Reiner himself.

"…They were monsters…Every last one of them carried a lust for blood…"

"Oh come on! We already knew that!"
"What'd you expect?"
"Did you think he was going to say they were just like us? That'd be ridiculous."

Something about Reiner's words itched me then. He used the correct vocab: monsters, devils, blood, etc. But no amount of staticky, muffled, audio quality could hide that his words were dressed in a veil of air. Unlike your typical internment zone Eldian, or Marleyan, his words regarding the islanders were not drenched in acid.

"Reiner, thank you for supporting what we already know but I am going to need more than that. Why did you fail? I want something specific…something raw…I want details."

For the next few minutes, Reiner expanded on his thoughts. The broadcast sounded like a conversation between two men; not a man and teenager. When Reiner spoke, I remember listening to a sulky, melancholic voice yet it was fragile, like a boy's, and it quivered from time to time. The radio host talked in a manner far from a regular conversational tone. Every word was pointed with a clear start and end. It was the voice of an elitist.

While Reiner tried his best to describe what he could, the radio host would pierce holes in it. It was obvious that the host was milking everything he could out of Reiner. He didn't care about trying to restore Marley's faith. On top of that, the suspiciousness in his voice and tone piled up like the ever-rising death count.

It reached its peak with a query that was already stapled in my mind.

"Reiner, I couldn't help but notice something earlier. When you first described the island devils, I can't believe I'm even saying this, you said the right words but you didn't seem to…hate them."

"I knew it! He was lying the whole time."
"Hold on, he must still be shaken up, that's all."
"He's not one of us anymore. He's…an Island devil now."

Reiner let out a droopy sigh as a response. Did he expect to be asked that?

"A few weeks before I came back to Liberio, me and Bertholdt fought for our lives."

With that, the customers returned to their default state: they leaned towards the radio in undisturbed anticipation. Mouths quiet and shut but eyes loud and open.

"after the flying…freaks… mercilessly attacked me with their savage weapons, they ripped me out of my titan. I lied on the ground helpless, without my limbs, waiting for them to gut me alive. I'm sure they would have enjoyed butchering me to an inch of death only for me to reheal so they could do it again. But then…"

"Then what?"

What came next was a voice coated in faint tears. "…Bertholdt was ripped out of his titan."

I looked around me to see that everyone's jaws were dropping like flies. Fingers loosened and glasses dropped to the ground in slow-motion.
"No way, they were able to take down the colossal titan? the god of destruction?"

"While my comrade, my friend, laid next to them like a vegetable, they fought among themselves over who should steal his power. Even in a battle, all they cared about were their own self-interests."

"They truly have no regard for life."

"One of the devils transformed into a pure titan and held Bertholdt with its bare hands. You know what his last words were?"

"…"

" 'Annie' and 'Reiner'…Did he think I could save him? My last memory of him… are his screams as he was crying for help while getting mauled alive…I still hear them now, every time I transform."

The customers sat quietly with their eyes stretched open. Those that had anger written on their faces, transitioned to a piercing fear. What was meant to be a reassuring broadcast, morphed into a nighttime horror-story.

"Of course I hate…"

"I'm sorry I questioned you. Of course, you hate them. They're devils indeed."

*** AN OVERLOOKED DETAIL***

Reiner didn't specify who he hated

"I'm only loyal to Marley."

"Soldier, no one said you weren't—"

"I have to prove my worth. Our country's people deserve better…" Whatever tears that were in his voice dried up. Underneath it was a magically summoned stoicism. "I will show everyone that I deserve the honor of carrying one of the nine."

" Thank you, and one more thing-"

But just then, a glass dotted in liquid brown ungracefully spun through the air and struck the radio. The thrower: a drunken cabbage from across the room.