An Eldian's Journal

Chapter 12: A Journalist's Tightrope

The journalist was intent on crossing. Something he yearned for must have been trapped inside the bones, veins, and blonde hairs of the devil he was chasing. It wouldn't be a big leap to say that he looked determined. It was written in many fonts across the mechanisms that encompassed his facial expressions—but also in his mannerisms, in the way he clenched his fists, and the way he balanced his cigarettes on those large, knuckled claws.

He was so determined in fact, that he wanted us to cross the street right there and then.

He also made it quite clear he wasn't going to hold my hand when doing it. (He kept both his hands in his pockets)

The street itself was alive as one would expect. It wheezed through the morning hours with combustion from a variety of vehicles and cigarettes. As an added layer of noise pollution, people were floundering about as usual on the sidewalks. It looked like the journalist's plan with lighting the trash on fire and thereby distracting people went up in flames (I have no shame for that pun).

I emphasize people on sidewalks. There weren't people walking on the streets.

That fact would soon change.

We stood still and I took one look at the cars and vehicles passing by. They were moving at considerable (devil-killing) speeds and they didn't seem to be in the mood to let pedestrians pass by. The journalist also shut down the idea of waiting to cross safely when I brought it up. He took my request and stamped it underneath his foot.

In a sort of preparation motion, he adjusted his shoulders and then looked down at me. He said once more, "When I say run, start running."
"Wait—"

The journalist took one last drag from his cigarette and banished it the pavement next to where he had smothered my request. Was it a sign of good luck?

"Run."

I attempted to run into the street, however, the sudden dip in height confused my body after I had stepped out onto it. The next thing I knew, all four limbs had graced the street. My body went to hug the pavement as I had already done that morning. The weight of the camera felt like a club to my back.

I had the intent to run.

However, my legs…they had chosen to trip.

The right side of my head 'rested' on the ground. In that position, I was able to see a vegetable truck approaching me with its horn roaring. I could feel its ominous trembles lick the bones throughout my body.

I produced nothing of substance at that moment except a pitiful squeal.

"AHHHHH"

In those few elongated seconds, I looked across the street to see the journalist. Indecision gripped onto his face; its grime-filled fingers latched onto his eyes and wrinkles. His gaze was positioned towards me, but his body faced our target.

In that one moment, my eyes constructed tears as fast as they could and shoveled them out only for them to drip onto the road. Many unanswered questions cut through my head along with the newly manufactured pain. I saw no memories. No emotions. Only the emptiness of preparing for death.

I was expecting the journalist to take his camera/tripod from me before being crushed.

Instead, I felt my arm raise with strength, not of my own.
Next came my upper body.
Then my legs.

It was the journalist's strength.

He came back to pick me up and bolted me across. We didn't go about unabused, however. A car from a different direction swore at us through its aggressive honking and its driver matched the aggressiveness by chucking a tomato at us as well. I felt the air the car sliced through press against my back when we brushed past it.

The journalist let go of me when we reached the other sidewalk; the same side our target was walking in. My fear-saturated legs were not prepared for the art of standing yet so I dropped to the sidewalk. Even though they worked earlier after I had crashed into the ice-cream man, their functionality was as reliable as a typical Eldian.

Rather than helping me stand up as a decent person would, the journalist wore a malevolent stare without an attempt to mask it. He just watched as I wobbled about trying to stand up. On top of that, he was akin to tea at the rim of a cup just barely spilling over.

This tea was not room temperature however,
it was a pint of scorching tar.

Alas, his temperament stayed in the cup as he looked out for our target.

With a light sizzle, he muttered, "Dammit, we lost him already."

We weren't alone on the sidewalk; there were people around us. They made themselves quite apparent for a few devils opened their mouths in shock. Each one failed to hide the reactions that curled atop their tongues. When I looked at my reflection in the glass window of a store nearby, my face looked as if minuscule claws made of gravel brushed the right side.

I felt like I was scorching as well.

The journalist's eyes wandered a bit before he finally squinted and narrowed on something. "We need to keep walking in the same direction."

He looked at me once again with the left side of his mouth perking up a bit. Probably not for a smile, but a different look. Disgust? Superiority maybe?

"Cover that face up a little, wouldya?"

Fortunately, the journalist hadn't thrown out all the newspapers and I had one in my pocket. I held it up as if I was reading it.

We kept walking in the same direction as our target was before we had lost him. As we walked, I noticed that the morning sun finally overpowered the parasitic fog that overstayed its welcome. The coal dust from chapter 10's chase started to fade on my hands.

The journalist asked me a question while he was holding up a spare newspaper like I was.

"When we saw the target before crossing the street, did you notice how he tried so hard to look normal?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about the way he was holding his newspaper up while walking. Actual regular people don't do that unless they want to crash into somethin'. "

We were doing the same thing as he was talking about.

I replied with a question, "We're trying to act like regular people, right?"
"Yea"
"In that case, how come we're holding newspapers like this?"

He stopped walking. After a few seconds, he pointed a finger out at me.
"You think I'm an idiot, kid? Keep in mind you're the one that almost became an omelet on the street."

My mind grasped onto that moment and pondered about it for a while since my impression of journalists then was that they were intelligent people. I thought they would be able to recognize their hypocrisies by themselves. I thought they would be more careful than that.

Yet, it took my question for him to realize it.

A seed was planted right there and then. A seed made of fresh doubt. Doubt about who this man really was.

After we put our newspapers down, he continued with his questions:

"Did you see his armband? It was grey but it was inside out."
"It was inside out?"
"I got keen eyes ya know. I think all armbands, even yellow and red, look grey when inside out."

His voice started to change for a pinch of growling was thrown in. "People that would hide like that…" He gritted his teeth and continued, "Someone like that must be so fascinating right?"

The way his face contorted with the words didn't seem like fascination…it was something more disdainful. I wasn't entirely sure then if that was the expression someone fascinated would make.

My thought process was interrupted when we noticed our second obstacle.

***OBSTACLE 2***

Roadblocks for construction

Our target came back into range as we kept walking down the blocks. He was further down the sidewalk then we were.

However, the only issue was that construction workers were putting up roadblocks even for the sidewalks. One of these mustached workers was letting only a certain number of people past the roadblock.

Our target appeared to be one of these 'certain people.

When we were about a block away from the roadblocks, the journalist noticed the situation at hand:

"That mustache worker is letting only a certain number of people past the roadblock. You can tell he's counting by his mouth movements." He looked down at me. "Quick. Start crying."
"W-Why?"
"You did it before. Now, do it again!"
"I could do it before because I was about to die!"

His face contorted into a true devil face: the mechanical wrinkles focused in and his lips contorted. That scorching pint of tar was about to pour but this time he took a drag on his cigarette and returned to his usual state. "Your face looks like shit... If you cry, it will look like you are in a lot of pain and we can tell the guy that we are heading 'back home' to fix you up."

I tried creasing my face, manipulating it in all the ways possible to coerce a tear.

Nothing.

As the seconds passed by, the journalist's face grew more and more animated. He unsheathed his teeth with a raw grimace.

My face was a desert deprived of tears. It looked like all my crying from the previous events in the morning dried up the tear faucet.

The journalist took his large-knuckled claws and put them into a fist.

He then threw that fist at my nose.

The sudden shock vibrated through my face. My nose throbbed and the raw pain didn't result in tears from crying, but rather tears of blood.

After a short yell, I grasped at my nose as if that would help me catch the blood.

"It's good enough." He dropped that sentence towards me without a bit of remorse as if I was a dog on a leash.

I was contemplating whether to escape from him and go back home. I thought I had enough disaster for one morning. Yet, I just kept following him. Even when I'm writing this (4 years after all this crap actually happened) I still don't have the vocab words to describe that feeling in its complexity.

He clawed onto my arm and pulled me along.

When we arrived at the roadblock the mustached man held his arm out into the sidewalk so we wouldn't pass.

"We can't let any more people pass," he said.

Before the journalist replied, his eyes softened into something cooler as if he domesticated his cynical demeanor in a second. He almost became a theatre actor.

Was he an actor?

He quivered his voice on command. "Please…look at my son. Look at his face. Our home is just down there. It's not far! Please.."
"I'm sorry, you're going to have to take the long way around."
I expected the journalist to grovel more. Instead, he turned off his sniffling and returned to his regular course, gravel voice. He said, "Here take this."

He displayed a pouch of money, very similar to mine. It had the same shit-brown color, had a half-unstitched bit at the bottom. It could have been exactly mine…

In fact, it was mine.

The journalist appeared to have more skills akin to a thief than a journalist.

The mustache man let out a sigh as if he was disappointed that someone was trying to bribe him.

"Look sir—", he said.
The journalist insisted. "Take the whole thing."

I just watched in awe as I saw the journalist give my money away. I didn't even try to take my money back; I didn't even utter a word. Instead, my stomach sank to the sidewalk and my skin tingled.

The mustache worker scratched the back of his head and pasted a cut-out grin on his face. "Well…we haven't brought out the actual tools yet—" He then scooped up the pouch. "—so I guess it's safe to let you two go."
"Excellent"

Excellent. Indeed. Everything that morning was 'excellent': I fell on the ground two times. I was chased for two different situations. I cried two times. I was stolen from.

Anyway, what you're about to read soon is quite 'excellent'.

After walking a short distance past the roadblock, I stood my ground against the so-called 'journalist'.

I rubbed the blood off my face with my coal haunted sleeve. "I'm done with this."
The journalist's eyebrows closed in as if he was in disbelief.
I closed both my fists. "You threw out my newspapers. You punched me in the face. You stole my money. I'm done with this shit…you've treated me worse than a Marleyan probably ever will."

The last sentence stung as it leaped off my mouth. Yet, it's true. At that age, I was hurt more directly by Eldians than Marleyans themselves.

He grabbed my shirt. It looked as if he was about to spew out seething lava in the form of insults. Instead, he took his hand off me and looked over at the target who was heading into an alley. "We finally cornered him," he said.

He then looked straight at me. "When I walk away, you're going to follow me. I know that for a fact."
"Why do you think that?!"

***THE JOURNALIST'S STAINED WORDS ***

"You're only a kid…but you're already a slave to a goal."

That sentence didn't register with me upon my first time hearing it. It was as if my brain hadn't assigned a meaning to the calculated arrangement of nouns and verbs. Thus, I stored it in the back of my head to be revisited another day. Yet, it stained my ears.

The journalist walked away towards the alley that our target went into whereas I stood still.

I went through so much crap that morning that my dignity was a piece of coal that chipped away with each incident. It added to the smoke-flavored atmosphere.

But why did I keep letting it get chipped away? I asked myself something around those lines.

Alas, my feet began moving…

I had all the power in the situation. I had his accordion-like camera on my back, his prized possession all to myself. Despite that reality, my feet walked upon the tightrope the journalist tread ever since I met him.

These feet, they knew where they wanted to go so, I let them take me where they saw fit. I let them pull me through the sudden salty storm of indecisiveness. With each step, I continued to chip the coal that was my dignity. This coal fed the heat in my stomach.

When I managed to catch up with the journalist, the left side of his mouth perked up like before. He didn't say anything, but it was as if he looked down at me in more ways than physical stature.

Then came the climax of our adventures; we finally approached the last meter of the tightrope constructed with strands made of bizarre misfortune. We walked into the alley and greeted the back of the man 'with a torso made of newspaper'.

"Why've you been following me?", the man 'asked'. It didn't really sound like a question; it was as if he wasn't enthusiastic enough or scared enough to make it sound like one.

"That inside-out armband didn't fool us—" the journalist said with a sly smile in his voice. The journalist continued. "—Vice Chief Braun."

Yes.

We were chasing the bearer of the Armored Titan.

As Reiner's question hung in the air, however, my ears tingled with recognition. They recognized the floating voice that wanted a newspaper from chapter 8; The non-radio coated version of the voice from chapter 4 …the melancholic voice that carried a reminiscent hint of youth … all of these voices made up one being.

"Rein-Reiner?" The name quivered from my mouth and died on the pavement.

Reiner finally turned toward us. He stood against the wall and me/the journalist stood against an opposite wall.

My skin tingled once more. But what I saw was
it was…
it was…

Pitiful.

"I have to get to an intelligence briefing. I can't do this right now," Reiner said. His voice was deprived of any fear. Even surprise.
"Vice Chief Braun—" The journalist summoned his theater skills once more. "—Your image is tarnished. If I take a picture of you dressed as a regular working-class man, as you are right now, everyone will remember you're a normal person just like them. People can start trusting you again!"
"It isn't that simple."
"But it is a start."

The man meant to protect our nation and improve the perception of Eldians throughout the world was roaming around the streets hiding in some coal worker's clothes. Underneath his ivy hat was a face. His facial features were indeed stern, the sharp eyebrows, and a well-defined jawline. These facial features formulated an expression.

His face bled like mine. Not with blood, however. Despite him being around 17 years of age, his expression bled with the currency of desolation and misery. A graveyard where joy or anything synonymous with positivity would get hanged with the rope tightening ever so slowly.

The journalist looked over at me. "Time to use the camera."

I didn't respond for I was possessed by the tentacles of disappointment.

"Get the camera dammit!"

I took the camera and its tripod off my back. I then set it down on the ground of the alley towards Reiner.

"Put your hand underneath the cloth and into the camera body. You should feel a shutter."

I didn't really understand the camera then, but I can describe it for you now. One side was square with a cloth attached where someone would hide their head in to look through the film. There was also a smaller square where the camera lens was. These two squares were connected by a small accordion-like structure. Holding it all up was a tripod stand.

I didn't understand how cameras worked on the day itself, so I just listened to the journalist's instructions. I put my hand underneath the cloth and found the shutter.

The shutter felt like a trigger.

"When I count down to 0, press the shutter."
I replied with the only fact I knew about cameras then. "Wait…there's not much light here though. Don't cameras need light?"
"Just do what I say!"

Sunlight had some difficulty joining our conversation for the alley itself was bathed in a faint grey. The journalist looked out the alley. I assumed he was making sure that people weren't around. I then looked at Reiner. He adjusted his stance but those heavy eyes of his squinted at the camera.

"3..."

As the journalist counted down, I had a short spurt of imagination. An imagination of what I could finally learn about the islanders from Reiner.

"2…"

'I can finally learn who the islanders truly are. People in section F won't fight each other if they learned what they are truly like,' I thought.

I almost smiled.

"1…"

I pulled the trigger.

***A "PHOTO" OF REINER BRAUN***

His abdomen-flesh was bitten by a bullet.

A bullet created a fresh wound that salivated in blood.

Lots of blood.

Pearls of sweat dripped along the depraved face.

Yes.

I shot Reiner Braun.

I was a 14-year old newspaper boy turned assassin.

The clap of the gunshot fractured my smile as fast as it showed up. I knocked the camera over and bolted towards Reiner.

The journalist was nowhere to be found. 'Where did he go?!', I thought.

I kneeled next to Reiner.

"Hey! Why aren't you healing? You're a titan shifter."
My face was greeted by blood doused silence for a few seconds. Afterward, two withered and labored words pried from his lips. "Thank…you…"
"What?"

My thinking wore a mask forged from unclarity. I didn't think about the fact that the camera had a gun hidden in it; the fact that I just got manipulated; the fact that police could find me at any moment. All I managed to think about was how I wouldn't be able to get any answers from him.

"You can't die you bastard. I need to know…"

I pushed down on the wound in hopes that could stop the bleeding. But the wound…it was as if his entire body yearned to bleed out right there and then.

"I need to know what the hell is worth beating each other up about! Why did my dad have to get cut like a vegetable!"

Reiner bellowed in pain. "AHHH!"

He then pushed me away.

"What the hell are you doing? Don't you want to live?!", I yelled.

I looked down at my hands. The sight of the crimson liquid poisoned my eyes. Despite seeing my dad bleed before, this was something different for I was tricked into becoming a murderer.

The next few minutes were an eternity.

After the eternal minutes, I heard the cry of a little soldier boy from the entrance of the alley. "Heinrich! I found you again." Falco breathed as if he had lost a lung again. He kept breathing while looking at the ground.

"I followed you…because…the journalist…he dropped…camera film…when you guys were walking away…something felt off—"

He then looked at the damaged 'warrior'.

"Vice Chief Braun!"

Falco ran over next to me and kneeled. The look he provided me squeezed at my emotions: the quiver in his lip and the golden face creased in. "Heinrich…did you shoot him?"
Falco's question was a bullet that patiently pierced me. So much so, it delayed my response.
"Yes…but the journalist tricked me! It wasn't…my fault…"

Falco ignored my defense and looked back at Reiner. "Why do so many people hate him now? He fought for our country!"
He then looked back at me. "Were you using me, Heinrich? So you could get close to him one day?...and kill him?" His voice teetered off with each question. They fell to the ground as light powdered ash.

He took my hat off his head. There was no force in his grip. Instead, he simply dropped it to the ground. Even then, I felt a force, a tug in my heart.

***TWO POSSIBLE DEATHS***

Falco's trust in me

Reiner

A sentence came from the body that wanted to become a corpse.
"Dammit…Falco…Why'd you have to come here… now of all times…"
"Vice Chief!"

I looked down at his wound…I saw the back end of the bullet rising out of the wound ever so slowly. Was he finally healing?

"It wasn't…Heinrich's fault…the guy that ran away…must have manipulated him…"
With a grimace, Reiner sat up against the wall. "Don't worry about me." He then let out a sigh. "I'll be…fine."

Why did he seem so disappointed?

The sweat on Reiner's face ceased production. Despite this, the light depraved face looked right at me. He strung together words more fluidly than before.
"Heinrich, give me the gun. If police find your prints on it…well…I think you know what will happen."

I went over to the camera and found the gun sleeping snug inside the accordion-looking portion. The bullet must have shot through the camera lens for lonely glass pieces were lying next to it.

I handed the gun to Reiner.

"Another thing, other people must have heard that gunshot…it won't be long until—"
"I need to ask you something."
"There's no time. If they find you now, they can get you caught. And if they find me…"

My bloody hands curled into fists. I went through all those crazy things that morning hoping that they would lead to the journalist, which would hopefully help me find Reiner. I had a chance right there and then to get my answers…

Yet, circumstances didn't allow it.

"I can clear your name if it comes down to it …but I can't guarantee it. What's your full name?"

I gave Reiner my full name and the street my house was on.

Falco tugged at my sleeve. A slight frown was forged from wholesomeness. "I'm sorry, Heinrich."
I picked up my hat from the ground and put it back on my head. "It's ok…Falco."
"Thank you for the pastries today!" His sentence had a hint of a smile in it. "But you shouldn't come back here for a while…"

It was interjected with something rougher as Reiner tried to raise himself.

"Run, Heinrich. Run."

I stood for a moment. I didn't want to waste the opportunity that I pulled through so much more. Yet, everything was set against me. Once again, indecisiveness wrapped me in its claws. At the end, however, I did what he said. I ran out of the alley.

But as I ran out, my thoughts split into shards. Each carried a different question.

I had walked into the alley with an agenda of questions, but I left with so many more.

'Why did Reiner only heal when Falco showed up?'

'Why did he say 'thank you' ?'

A newspaper boy turned assassin,
who would've thought?

PART 2

Complete