An Eldian's Journal

The Soul of War

Chapter 31: The Other Side of the Wall

Viktor, Kurt, and I sat at the back of the bus soaking up the new surroundings through the bus's windows. We were deprived sponges soaking up the ocean of sensory information that was displayed to us so nakedly. Viktor attempted to open the window but was greeted by the rude handshake of the cold.

I guess no matter where you go, the cold is always there to comfort you with its icicle-laden arms.

Kurt sat with his face twitching as usual while I contemplated whether I should read Mr. Kruger's journal or not. It was given to me to read, but something in me wanted to read it with Mr. Kruger himself. The self-imposed suspense was paradoxical, but that's what I do so well.

I cut through the suspense and joined Viktor in his sightseeing.

"The trees are so...naked." Viktor murmured. His chocolate hair was chopped finely like a vegetable and no longer contained the springiness it once had (thanks to Lina, of course.)

I observed my breath fogging the window. "Trees are trees wherever you go, I guess." For some reason, I thought that the trees in the world outside the walls would be different, more resilient. Why would I believe that? Sure, the people looked plumper and more dressed, but the world outside the wall was no heaven.

A factory was moaning like an angry child in the distance. In contrast, actual children competed with the sound as an elementary make-people-angry-as-possible contest. It was working quite well on me. On the other hand, there was a long bathtub intersecting the fields—a river. Armband-less humans road on the bathtub with their reinforced paper boats.

I took a break from the sightseeing and sat back down. I murmured to Kurt while being cognizant of the other older and more mature recruits in the vehicle. "Everything looks different than I thought."

"What were you expecting?"

"I expected the world outside the wall to be...better."

He took a break from his uncontrollable twitching and said. "This is why you have to keep expectations low." The freckles on his face quaked when he ended up twitching again. I found it amusing how someone so screwed up physically spoke so realistically.

Our thoughts wear stabbed when a voice thundered through the walking path in the vehicle. "Look up here, subordinate mutts!"

Everyone replied with a synchronized, "Yes, Sergeant!"

"My name's Sergeant Kaslow and I'm in charge of training you all for the next three months!" The fat cloud that made the "thunderous" voice happened to be a Marleyan officer whose stomach mimicked a flour bag. Despite the mediocre appearance, we later learned that he worked underneath commander Magath with the warrior unit. "We are leaving Liberio and heading to the training camps in a remote part of the country. It'll be long drive, but who said you devils need comfort?"

The wall-keeper pulled out a cigarette and slipped it into the crease his lips made. He wore a green uniform rather than his typical dry blue public security uniform. He stood up from his seat, and he stood like a tree similar to Mr. Kruger. But this tree was much more stable, and it carried a measured sternness. After all the times I knocked coffee onto his feet (and the time Viktor kicked the guy in the balls), who would've thought he would come along with me into training?

Kaslow looked up at the wall-keeper like he was offended by the man before giving an introduction. "This is Hubert Hausenburger. Hausenbooger...Huber Hausendork?"

The cigarette gave a nod while the tip morphed into grey. "It's Hubert Hausenbergerdorff."

I kept an eye on Hubert, the so-called wall-keeper, for a while, but I tried to shut down the blinds on the world around me. However, I couldn't fall asleep underneath the stew of uneasiness that swirled around. It also didn't help that our trip was shorter than I expected. For some reason, I assumed that the army vehicle would take me to the middle east in 20 mins, but it turned out we were just traveling to the train station.

When we arrived at the train station, I grew lost in the sound of roaring tubes crawling horizontally on metal straws. They breathed steam like dragons while passengers poured out of the bellies of the beasts. The tubes kept moving along until a new batch followed up.

The other military personnel and I all shoved ourselves into the trains. The officers stayed in a luxury coach, of course, while us Eldians stayed in something more suited for people of less than favorable standing (rats...and Viktor.)

We kept at this transportation exchange for a day or two until we got onto the final train, leading to our destination.

Viktor: "Why is this place so warm? And why do the trees look so weird?" The fighter opened the window of the coach we were in, and the wind slapped him in the face. Viktor had looked at the wind's bare body; he deserved his punishment.

His question was relevant, though. The world morphed like the faces of a pair of dice throughout the trip. The trees had different hair-does and facial hair; the ground had an unorthodox stubbly beard. People seemed to have different skins, like a varied shade of paint. And most interestingly, the smell of coal wasn't dancing in the air like in the internment zone. None of our textbooks taught this. All they did was whine about Ymir and how she was a bully.

It turned out we traveled to the very bottom part of the Marleyan empire. The middle eastern region was a boat ride away. Well, a ship ride away.

After a final vehicle ride, I realized we had arrived at the training camp when I saw the fort sign above our heads. Soldiers jogged about in squads, and sergeants were doing their routine yells. Overlooking it all was Marley's flag; the shell logo seared on the blue cloth flapping gallantly in its false glory.

Kaslow rolled out of his seat and adjusted his uniform as if that would fix his proportions. "Those fezh-wearing bastards won't know what's coming to them."

Hauser, the wall-keeper, strolled out the vehicle. I still wondered what he was doing with us. He had a wall-watching job to do, yet he was at a training camp. Was it a haphazard career change?

The boys and I walked off the vehicle with the rest of the recruits leading the way. They towered over us in more ways than one. We were half a foot shorter in height but also in maturity.

As soon as we got off, we were greeted by a line of recruits backing up. We looked ahead of the line to see a table with a military officer sitting by it. When we received our turn, the officer looked at our papers and adjusted the numbers on his stamp. He stabbed a pad of ink with it and pressed it onto my forearm. It was like I was being branded.

"Don't try to wash it off. It's permanent ink," the officer said for the millionth time that day.

The boys and I stood like strays, confused about what to do next. Everyone was just left standing outside for a while until Eldian IDs were screamed. The cloud of recruits was slowly weeded away as people were taken to their barracks—their living quarters.

"F-_-_!"

That was me.

Viktor and Kurt's followed next.

The sun punished us from above as an officer led us to our barracks. The occasional puddle of gravel reminded me occasionally of the internment zone that I had left behind. I was still taken aback by the unique hairstyle this part of the world had chosen, however. Everything seemed sandier, grainier, for the lack of a better description.

Viktor looked at the structure we arrived at and asked the officer, "Is this an outhouse? I have to pee."

"This is your barracks."

"Oh."

The barracks, from the outside, looked like a pile of cheap wooden planks that happened to be in the shape of a long building. A few pieces of glass got stuck in the way and accidentally became windows.

The officer opened the door for us and left without a word of goodbye.

We peered through the doorway to see a swarm of devils occupied with many hobbies—distractions. The barrack was decorated with uncomfortable looking beds; blankets were all over the place like a hurricane had gone through. (Well, a storm probably did come through. Kaslow may have visited in before we did.) The boys and I felt like a few freshmen that accidentally peeked at what the upperclassmen were doing.

Viktor dared me to step in first, but when I caught a glance of one of the guys throwing knives at each other's feet and purposely missing, I felt content with sleeping outside.

One of the people noticed our presence and peeked his head out of whatever he was doing. He hopped off his bed, and it sounded like a log had hit the ground. His blond hair was mowed like a lawn of grass.

"Look who we have here," the log said.

This man seemed familiar to me.

Every room seems to have one of these characters. Someone that antagonizes for no apparent reason. I had seen people like these before in the internment zone regularly during my newspaper run. It's like I meet the same people repeatedly, but they all wear different faces and bodies.

"We knew we were going to get three new recruits, but who knew we were going to get some half-pints?"

The log's statements should have been terrifying when accompanied by his muscular build. Still, once again, I had seen men like this before with different faces.

He must have noticed my lack of fear, so he shifted his line of berating to Kurt. And of course, thanks to the beautiful fortune of chance, his face began twitching again.

The log: "What's wrong with your face, freak?"

"It's not my fault. It just happens on its own," Kurt replied. I stood there hoping that our new friend would not make him run. If he did, he would discover Kurt's asthma issues as well.

The log stood grossed out and walked back to his bunk. That ended more harmlessly than I thought. But from past experiences, I knew that this man would cause some problems down the line.

Me and the boys headed over to the empty bunks in the center of the room. I chose mine, and the "mattress" moaned as I sat down; it ached when I made even the smallest of movements.

I opened my bag to find Mr. Kruger's journal and a few assorted items. The tobacco lying underneath had devolved into seeds of regret for not even saying a "bye" to the cigarette wielder.

I immediately closed it, though, since it was no time to get emotional.

I sat on the edge of the bed and observed my new bunk-mates. They all appeared to be in their late teens and early twenties; this was easy to tell because of the meager excuses for facial hair pasted under their chins. They were full-grown adults, but me and my friends had some work left to do in the growing department.

Luckily, one of them took pity on me.

The man was a little shorter than me, surprisingly, and he had some heavily greased hair. He sat on my bunk and gave me a quick run-down on the people in the room. He didn't tell me any names, though, only nicknames as if we were all a bunch of characters. I guess, when we look at each other like characters rather than actual people, it makes it hurt less when one of them dies.

He pointed out the knife-throwing guy that was aiming at some random dude's feet. "That's lucky." Then the story-telling guy. "That's the narrator." The guy with the porn magazine. "That's the bookworm...he loves doing research."

You don't have to remember any of these names, by the way. Some of them are going to die anyway.

I will refer to the guy who pitied me as "The Nice Guy," for the lack of a better name.

He kept going on with the descriptions until a force of nature arrived at the barrack entrance. Behind it was the wall-keeper yelling, "Attention! Line up! Move it! Move it!" That was my first time seeing the wall-keeper yell before.

The force of nature happened to be the almighty Sargent Kaslow, the supposed friend to Commander Magath. He walked with his stomach overflowing his belt buckle and with a dignified look children have after stealing each other's lunch.

He talked to the first target in the line. "Is that a knife in your foot, devil?"

It was Lucky, the guy with the knives. With sweat beading on his forehead, he replied. "Yes, Sergeant."

"Allow me to get it for you, cadet." Kaslow reached down and pushed the knife further into Lucky's foot. "Does that feel better?"

Lucky's eyes bled tears. "Yes, Sergeant. It feels much better."

The next target he approached was Kurt, who happened to be standing next to me. "Does your face always twitch like that, cadet?"

"No, sir."

"Do I look like a 'sir' to you? You call me 'Sarge' or 'Sergeant'"

"Yes, sir." Kurt knew he made a mistake right there and immediately looked down. Kaslow slapped him and reiterated. "Sergeant, you subordinate mutt! Now, stop twitching."

"I can't control my face, sir—Sarge."

"Your face is a part of you, isn't it? Why can't you control it?"

"Because my nerves are weird."

"Why are your nerves weird? You can smile, can't you? Give me a smile." Kurt attempted one, but he ended up looking like a demented circus monkey. "You look like a monkey, you know that?"

"No, Sarge...thank you for telling me, Sarge."

"Good." Kaslow looked over at the wall-keeper. "Hausenbooglerdorff...Hausen..I hate your name...anyway...make sure to get the cadet here a unicycle when he gets in the trenches. He's our Eldian circus monkey."

Sergeant Kaslow continued to berate us for the rest of the hour until he gave us some actual announcements. Apparently, we were set to begin training the next day. He told us to "enjoy" the rest of the evening before relentlessly getting drilled the next day.

That evening, the guy who tried to pick a fight with us (everyone called Milo) came to me and the boys with a proposition. "I have a simple question. If you answer correctly, I won't beat you guys up. If you answer incorrectly, I'll make sure that the next three months is hell for you."

"What's the question?" Viktor asked, acting more confident than he could justify.

Milo walked over to his bunk with his arms out wide as if his arm muscles were too big to rest at his side. He pulled out a small piece of paper from underneath his pillow, but it looked more like a photo as he approached us. "It's a simple question, really..." He raised the picture to our faces; it looked like it was cut from a newspaper. "Is she attractive?"

The picture contained a girl, likely around 18 years of age, with black hair and petite features. I felt like I had seen her in the newspapers before.

Milo clarified with a softer tone in his voice. "This is Pieck Finger. She holds the Cart titan. You guys should already know that though."

Viktor was swift to reply, but Milo rejected it. "Uh-uh. I want the twitching monkey kid to answer it."

Kurt stared hard at the picture, and his face focused in as well. "I don't think she's attractive."

The whole room reacted as if Marley had already lost the war.

Milo acted as if his reason for being a soldier was invalidated right there and then. "What?! How is she not attractive?!"

"I just don't think she's attractive. I like girls with more class." Kurt was the kind of guy to think with his head instead of his dick.

"It doesn't matter what you think. What matters is the truth, and the truth is that she is attractive."

Viktor threw in, "I don't wanna know what you do with that picture in the bathroom, Milo."

Milo seethed through his crooked teeth. "Well, I know what you're gonna do tonight. You're not gonna be sleeping in here that's for sure."

In summary, me and the boys slept in the medical tent for the night. Our eyes became potholes of purple, and we prepared ourselves for more nights like these. We became familiar with the nurses; we knew those were the only females we would see in the following months.