An Eldian's Journal

Chapter 9: A Reaping - A Journalist

"Because…he was an Eldian Restorationist."

I was expecting Falco's face to scrunch up in hate, and for him to scream in disgust for his uncle. Rather, words floated out of his mouth as normal, and his face stayed level.
I wanted to ask him the signature question of this journal: 'Do you hate him?'. Instead, I shoved it underneath a moldy rug in my mind.

Something creeped out of the rug when I put the other question in. It was a pained statement from a level 3 devil: Dick the Cabbage man. His malice-filled words from the broadcast night came out from the back closet of my mind and stood as a skeleton on the path ahead of me: "These honorary marleyans, they've seen what's outside these walls! Since when have any of us been allowed to do that?"

'This kid knows what lies outside these walls', I thought as I stared at the black caves that occupied the skeleton's face. I looked at the cursed cloth on Falco's arm and then mine. Both of our armbands were red, albeit in different ways. His was made of red cloth, and mine used to be soaked with my papa's blood. Either way, his armband would probably be soaked with blood one day as well. Isn't that the fate of us Eldians?

"You kind of remind me of my brother," Falco said.
"Huh?" I dropped a newspaper.
"Yea! You look almost the same except he never wears newsboy hats or ivy hats like working people do."
An overcast of glumness clouded his face.
"I wish I could see him more… but he's always somewhere training. I wish I could help him—"
He kicked a defenseless pebble on the sidewalk. "—I felt like I would be helping him out in a way…if I helped you out."

"Falco…" I shoved past the skeleton, letting it tumble to the ground where it belonged. For a moment there, the passing smoke carried a hint of sweetness and my nasal cavity took a break from its sobbing.
"…Trust me, Falco. You helped more than you could know."

I wanted to wallow in that uncharacteristic moment of gratitude for as long as I could. So, hoping it would capture the sweet emotion, I closed my eyes. I thought that would make it last. Yet, that drop of warmth glided away into the vibrant darkness.

Don't go away.
Don't go away.
Please, don't remind me
Don't remind me…

A downpour of force slammed into the right side of my body knocking the newspapers out of my hands. "Watch where you're going, kid!"
I opened my eyes to a man with a vintage camera strapped around his back. A journalist?

As the man passed by, I was re-introduced to the carbon-breathing vehicles as they rumbled about impatiently on the roads. Women and their veils shuffled through the spotty crowd. Dusty men in dusty suits looked like they were in desperate need of repair. They stained the path. Despite their depraved attire, they all wore grey armbands.
We lived in an industrial revolution. The industry was farming us, devils.

Some of these devils handed us a few smiles, others handed out some sneers.

Falco's red armband stuck out from all the others.
He was a red rose in a field of dead flowers.
Or maybe,
a dot of blood on a white shirt.

(That's my daily dose of pessimism. Let's go back to something wholesome, shall we?)

As me and Falco kept walking on our shared path, a fragrance intervened with the faint smoky flavor of section E. It smelled of a yeasty sweet aroma. The cartoon vapor swirled through the air and snuggled as a blanket in my nose. I was pleasantly surprised despite it being a common smell. It always made a newsboy's day that more bearable.

A simple bakery.

I looked at the blank slate of innocence floating next to me.

"Let's get some pastries, Falco."
"But I have to get to training."

After walking a short distance, we arrived at a local bakery. I told Falco to wait outside before I entered the hunched building through the slightly unhinged wooden door. I called to the lonely counter on the other side of the room, "Hello Mrs. Diller."

A stout woman peered over the counter and a smile grew patiently on the ample folds of her face. "Oh Heinrich, you don't look sad today! A few days ago, you were moping around like a lost puppy."

She must have noticed the backside of Falco's head through the window. "Is that a new friend of yours out there?"

"…I guess…"
"I assume you want the usual?"
"Double the usual actually."
"I'm cooking up a fresh batch, so you'll have to wait a little bit."

Mrs. Diller waddled over to one of her vintage furnaces. I looked back at the window to make sure Falco wasn't trying to end poverty by helping the hobos on the sidewalk.

The aroma of baked goodness teased my unfed stomach all the way from the oven. After a few minutes, a few mediocre pastries landed on the counter. But through the eyes of a mildly misfortuned newspaper boy, it was gold that you get for a few cents.

Along with a broken jingle, a query launched itself from the main entrance.
"Heinrich, what's taking so long?"
Tearing my focus away from the smell, I replied. "Falco, I just got them. They're fresh from the oven!"

I took a few coins from the newspaper profits (the portion of profits for my boss), and placed the rust-flavored metal onto the countertop.

I looked at Mrs. Diller. She aimed herself at Falco but underneath the ample folds of her face, lied a raw, unbaked fury I didn't know could be summoned. Her nose shriveled up and she launched her torment.
"It's that little brat! You think you're better than us just because you're an Honorary Marleyan, huh?-"
I tried interjecting. "—"
"-You think you're better than us just become your brother's a warrior? You know what? He's a murderer. And you're training to become one as well!"

Before the old hag could pick up my 'hard-earned' money, I scooped up the coins and the food and dashed out. Me and Falco ran down the street, past the bums, and past the dusty men. As usual, anger was chasing after me.

We finally sat at an equally dusty corner away from the sight of the woman that was already halfway in the grave. (I'm sure my money was the only thing paying her bills). Our mouths lagged with our thoughts while we waited for our lungs to make their way through the crowd and over to us. There was nothing to be said anyway. But I can fill it in for you now, just as diverse as the way people would spit at each other on the streets, the viewpoints were diverse as well.

Me and Falco gave up trying to be concerned for there were two 'golden' pastries in front of us waiting readily to be ingested. I gave the slighter bigger one to Falco and I took the slightly smaller one.

'Finally, something good', I thought. As my eyes feasted on the sight, my mouth was ready to be satiated by the calorie-dense goodness.

A pigeon in the form of a five-year-old child flew by and plucked the treat right out of my newspaper shadowed hands. It flew away with its tongue stuck out at me. "Dammit!"

I looked over at Falco. He ripped his pastry in half and put one in my thief hands. The one thing a thief such as me wouldn't steal is gold for Falco gave some to me in the express package of a golden smile.

***UNOFFICIAL DICTIONARY DEFINITION #1***

Wholesomeness (noun): Falco Grice

After a few minutes of eating our halves of the 'golden' pastry, Falco's lips were covered in flaky crumbs and chocolate lipstick. A funny sight for a little soldier boy. Despite enjoying the pastry, however, a frosting made of concern was sloppily applied on his face.

The crumb-ridden lips moved along with the young voice. "The girl you saw last week, she's a warrior candidate now. I haven't been selected yet."
"How come?"
He followed with a heavy swallow. His non-existent adam's apple moved up and down. "They think I'm too nice to fight."

Perched atop my crumb-ridden lips was the phrase, "No you aren't". My lips never carried a heavier lie before so, I swallowed it along with my next bite. It was rather salty.

Falco's chocolate-stained lips moved to his self-berating. "My 100-meter dash times are horrible. My endurance is below the others…I can't even aim my rifle properly."
"You ran pretty fast back there though!"
"It's not the same, Heinrich."

What was I supposed to say to him? I was a goddamn newspaper boy whose usual reason for running was to find someone who forgot to pay for their paper. I had no right to talk about dash times, let alone aiming a rifle. I didn't know what to say…so I said something worse.

"Maybe it's better that you don't get accepted."
"How can you say that?!"

I brushed the crumbs off my thighs and stood up with a concrete ache in my legs. oww

I didn't know how to censor the knife I was throwing at the kid, so I let it out unfiltered. "Mrs. Diller wasn't wrong. You're training to kill."

***THE DUPLICITY OF FALCO GRICE***

An innocent soul

Training to reap souls

"I don't want to kill anyone!"
"Then why the hell do you want to become a soldier?!"

Instead of replying, he fidgeted in some odd sense of embarrassment. What was he hiding?

While we drowned ourselves in the silence we manufactured, I couldn't help but listen to the ambient soundtrack of section E. Smoke, children, cars, and even bicycles all made their own sound effects. But in my vision, on the street a few meters away, a decrepit corpse laid still.

A devil armband occupied one arm, while ants occupied the exotic dessert of exposed brains. The body laid on the street as an organized mess. Apparently, someone had decided to jump off a building; no one decided to clean it up.

I closed my eyes to see a similar scene, with a different devil. A young boy laid on an empty battlefield with barbs sprinkled around. The air was thick with red. Deceased Eldian soldiers surrounded him as a circle of reaped souls. But they were not of his own reaping, for he too was reaped. The boy's arms were separated. The ground was struggling to drink his vast pool of blood for it was already full. A few meters away, there was a banquet of fresh brains.
The face had lost the gold it once carried.

The ants on the field were the true victors of that battle.

***A NEWSPAPER BOY'S TRUE DESIRE***

I didn't care if Falco was going to kill one day

I didn't want him to be killed

I opened my eyes with my teeth alive and gritting. Two thoughts conducted a boxing match in my brain. One wore blue and didn't want to let Falco go but the other wore black and wanted him to live the way he saw fit (the second one happened to come from an imaginary Ymir).

Falco stopped the boxing match for he cut the silence with a small pair of scissors. "Heinrich, I'm going to be late…"

The boxing match resumed, and the thoughts kept going at it. I wanted to ask, "Falco…why can't you just be a regular kid? You know…play on the streets with friends, annoy the school teachers…one day you can become an honest working man. What's wrong with all that?"

All these people trying to achieve something…it was more acid for my stomach. Yet, I needed someone like Falco; someone just being innocent for no reason.

Unfortunately, the thought wearing the blue conceded and the one in the black took over.

I eyed the rim of my newsboy cap: a prized possession of mine. I lifted it off my troubled head and looked down at it by my waist. I noticed it carrying a few strands of hair (probably all the way back to age 11.) I took in a deep breath of the smoky and blue-flavored air and returned it briefly after.

I placed my hat on the golden boy's golden hair and its edges overflowed his little skull. The chocolate drawn around his lips formed a smile once more.

For a brief second, I was tempted. 'Is this what it feels like to have a little brother?'
But I quickly swept the thought away with a broom. It laid underneath the rug in my mind next to the question of hate.

"You look like a true newspaper boy now, Falco."
I had a ticklish sensation of wanting to giggle and flood the corner with a hearty bit of laughter that laid dormant in me for so long. But the thought of this kid perishing on the battlefield one day itched the back of my neck furiously. 'He could end up just like one of the cabbage man's sons', I thought.

"Heinrich, I want to keep helping you sell your newspapers. It's probably the only thing I can do correctly…for now."
"In that case, here's your first paycheck."

I took a few large value coins (from a portion of my profits this time), and put them in Falco's soon-to-be murderous (or not murderous) hands.

"I won't take it. I'll do it for free."
"Ok, more money for me then."

When Falco turned around, I slipped the coins into the sack he wore on his back making sure he didn't notice.

A bittersweet moment came to a close as the golden boy walked back into the chaos of section E. My hat-less head welcomed the gust of the morning wind.

That would be a poetic way to end the morning, but then again, this is An Eldian's Journal. So, poetic things are typically followed by a disaster.

I picked up the extra stack of newspapers lying next to my pastry crumbs only to be hit by a fact I had forgotten: the printing place was in the same direction as Falco's training location, and I let him walk by himself. That realization of stupidity hit me harder than the ground hit the guy that jumped off the building. (You don't like dark jokes? Get used to it)

After I picked up my things, I was prepared to bolt towards Falco. However, there was a familiar character skimming past the devils on the sidewalk. It was a man hidden in a newspaper, but with a vintage camera strapped around his back.

I wanted to return to Falco, but this journalist was operating on too many levels of shady to be left alone. And as usual, my curiosity got the better of me.

***A MAIN PLOT POINT***

The journalist

It had been a while since I had used my detective sleuthing skills, so I brushed them off and took up the challenge.

I know what you're thinking, lovely person that found this book, 'hOw iS a jOuRnAlist rELevAnt tO tHe stORy?'. Be patient, the object of a journalist's search is often someone controversial, someone who has many secrets.