The Diary of a Young Girl
By Ymir Fritz
Entry #2
Dear Diary,
The sight of joy rampant in Heinrich's home would be a heartwarming sight to an average passing stranger, but I only tasted an aching bitterness.
In the olden days, I did not know my father, but I had a mother and a few siblings, and we tended to simple tasks like gathering water and overlooking a small farm. We were not particularly happy then or particularly disappointed either. Those concepts were luxuries for people who had time on their hands. The only things on our hands were sticks and dirt.
This little family was sliced when a group of Eldians and their flying spears ravaged my village. Even with the terrifying abilities granted to me by the unknown organism from under the tree, I could not get my family back or search for a worthwhile replacement.
The replacement I had to accept was King Fritz. The man who enslaved me. The father of my cannibal children.
After receiving my abilities, I succumbed to King Fritz's will, not out of rational thinking, but with desperation and gratitude that he would provide me a bed. The gift of feeling like you belong, yet fake in every sense of the word, was rattled like a toy in front of me, and I played with it. But those times, there were no rattle toys. Only wooden figures with hay for hair.
This baggage in my old life flaunts itself every time I watch the beginning chapters of these Eldians' memories.
Heinrich looked to be around two years of age in this current memory. Memories from then do not have a long duration, so I prepared to move to a different age.
I took a final peek at the blue-eyed infant, its blue-eyed parent, and its cool-eyed parent. Even with over a year of experience in parenting, Rosa Steiner could not hold her child right. The little one wailed, and the three relatives behind the sofa swooned in to comfort the babe. Even I could have done better than her…although that may be a rather outlandish claim.
I digress. This was Heinrich's most peaceful memory, the purest in intent, and even the plagues of society could not tamper with it. Admittedly, the needless crying was disruptive.
A blinding light overtook me, and I was whisked away to a different year with an older Heinrich.
I spawned on the same sidewalk as the first time. I passed through the street and approached the house's window. The girl and her knee-complaining father from before did not pass by, and the daytime ended for the nighttime to commence.
Frederick Jr. rushed through the door like a gust of wind and slumped, sitting on a chair in the main room. There was defeat in him, and his body quacked in despair. A still slim Rosa approached her husband and put her hand over his back, leaning in, trying to provide comfort.
"What's wrong?" Rosa asked.
"The Marleyan security arrested my father." He sniffled, "All he did was write those silly notes with jokes on them. It was stupid but…"
The young man babbled like a child, devolved to the stage of an infant much like his son was in the previous memory. Having a relative arrested for these Eldians was a death sentence before the police even gave a death sentence.
Speaking of a son, a four-year-old Heinrich stared at his parents from a nearby hallway with a toy block in his hands. He massaged the block with his supple hands and squeezed it like he knew something was wrong.
"Papa?" he called.
"Heinrich…" Frederick Jr's cries ceased momentarily, "Your grandpa…he's…"
Rosa took her hand off her husband and rushed to her son. She herded him into a bedroom, almost hiding him from the truth and the sorrow of seeing a parent cry. It was unnecessary of her. Little Heinrich would find out anyway and scratch it in his journal over a decade down the line.
A parallel incident occurred in a future memory, where the tragedy unfolded on the opposite side of the family.
Peering into the Steiners' home when Heinrich was six years of age, a bloated Frederick Jr. sat on the couch mentioned before. The furniture piece was begging to be thrown out while the aging man begged the mystery of the fate of his arrested father to silence itself. He routinely filled himself with more food than required, hoping it would suffocate the life of a middle-aged man overtook his youth.
Rosa burst through the door, shaken by something. She sat next to her husband, her voice still trapped in the security station she came from.
"What's wrong?" Frederick Jr. asked, suddenly alert.
"The Marleyan security arrested my sister." She stood up and yelled at no one in particular, "Our family is a bunch of idiots."
Heinrich's aunt, Karin Hauser, was fighting for woman's rights. She wanted to make it acceptable for women to participate in trades other than factory work, managing a business with a spouse, and housework. Rosa questioned the realism of this suffrage since every Eldian, man or woman, did not have many rights. Karin's goal could carry more value in a future setting…if there was a future for anyone in the internment zone.
Six-year-old Heinrich observed from a hallway again, but in place of the toy block was a stuffed bear missing a few limbs. He was a few inches taller and a few inches wiser than his four-year-old counterpart.
"Mama?" he called.
"Heinrich, your aunt…" She was too swept away by her emotions to finish her sentence.
Frederick Jr. wrapped his wife with all the warmth he could provide, comforting her to the best of his ability. He did not utter a single word, but his hug and slow rocking put the woman at ease. This nurturing for another human being was a door into his soul, and his love was the antidote to his wife's wavering emotions. But love is a fickle thing. I have been trapped by it for centuries.
No one ever held me the way Frederick Jr held Rosa. I was never consoled the same way. But I am an observer, so I should refrain from making this memory about myself.
Frederick Jr. looked over his wife's shoulder to see Heinrich watching from the hallway entrance. He did not stop his son from observing the pain despite Heinrich understanding what happened without the explanation given to him. Heinrich wore that understanding on his cheap cotton sleeves, and it trickled from the pores on his face. Those two years that passed since the previous memory taught the boy more about the world he was born into.
The sweet boy with plump, pinch-worthy cheeks and eyes like pearls reciprocated his mother's weeping. His crying was also a door to his soul, revealing his vulnerable self, which would only expand in the years to follow.
Heinrich's extended family was relatively meaningless to the trajectory of his life, but how he talked about them in his journal proved concerning. He mentioned these events in the early chapters but in a cursory light. He joked about their absurdity and how his family used to be filled with "characters," and he lessened their struggles in favor of humor. What was the purpose of this? Was it to reduce the pain of the events? Or had they not impacted him fully since he was so young when they occurred?
Even with the remarkable abilities I used to possess, the greatest puzzle is what a person thinks. I could communicate with Heinrich mentally in later years, but I could not read his thoughts. I had to read his facial expressions to understand him when he did not say anything, and his face only held so many truthsin that sense, I was not an "omnipotent" and "all-knowing" deity but an average person.
But one truth I knew that Heinrich and his parents never figured out was the fate of the extended family. They did not get trampled in the rumbling years later while held in the jail cells.
They got turned into titans.
How do I know? I made their secondary bodies myself with white sand and buckets of water.
-X-X-X-X-X-
I left the memories of relatives getting arrested and moved on to future ones. It was around six years of age that Heinrich had more frequent and more meaningful memories.
Heinrich had been attending the local school, uncreatively named "Section B-School 1"; it taught all years of children five to eighteen and was funded by the spare change that dropped from people's pockets on the streets. Not every Eldian in the internment zone attended due to two prominent education paths: standard schooling and homeschooling. The second would be accomplished by parents or guardians teaching lessons from the textbooks delivered to their homes. The schooling option was costlier, but it kept children out of trouble—in favor of troublesome Marleyan teachers—and taught discipline.
Heinrich's parents forked up the extra money for standard schooling. It helped that Heinrich was an only child, so fewer mouths to feed meant more resources for him.
The Eldian youth did not understand how fortunate they were to receive an education, even considering its glaring flaws. No one received literary education during my time since it did not exist. We were a society of barbarians, but "society" would be too structured of a word to describe people then. The only reason I can think with the words I use now is that these walk-throughs in memories serve as my education on culture, behavior, language, and the like.
Regarding flaws in education, there were too many to overlook. I do not have the expertise to judge mathematics and the sciences, but I do know some of history. I lived it for twenty-three years and was the subject of some of the narrative itself.
One afternoon, after Heinrich got bullied during his lunch period, he arrived at his primary classroom with his peers for a questionable history lesson. He was eight years old in this memory.
As the children filed into their wooden chairs and desks, an even more wooden teacher tapped on a board with white chalk. The writing tool served as an extra finger that wore down over time. I stood in the corner of the room, a spot reserved for dunce-cap-wearing hooligans and, unintentionally, invisible goddesses. It was a spot that did not deserve much light and was hidden away from the windows.
The current dunce-wearing hooligan perched mournfully on her tall stool, and she covered her face to protect herself from embarrassment. Her face was familiar. It would be splattered under a foot someday in the future. An above-average-sized foot, to be exact.
A wave of conversation and chittering enveloped the room for a few seconds, and a pit re-emerged in my non-existent stomach. It was a pit that connotated a sickening feeling, something humans would deal with daily, something compounded over centuries of solitude and thousands of memory searches: loneliness. I needed a friend, or at the very least, someone to talk to.
Memory searching was a lonely crusade.
The teacher with a mouth surrounded by creases clapped once and the conversations stopped, dropped, and were kicked aside for later. She ordered everyone to take out their textbooks that presented past Eldian and Marleyan conflicts. Myths and fables would be more suitable descriptors of those tales. The mistruths were forged so carefully that a whole family could enjoy them.
I observed Heinrich in the back row of seats pulling out his book. The lies printed from ear to ear in that brown textbook misinformed generations for years, and he looked to be digesting it without complaint.
The creases around the teacher's mouth began to resemble parentheses as she began her lesson: "Today, we are reviewing the first chapter of your textbooks about the history of titans. I assume your parents have gone over this material with you already…."
"Yes, ma'am," the children responded uniformly to the statement like it was a question.
"As I expected. I have done much of the teaching in this class so I would like to take a break for now. One of you children can teach the class today, but I want to choose someone who hasn't answered many questions in our classes so far." She scanned the room like it was a closet with brooms and other unkempt items. "Heinrich?"
"Yes…ma'am?"
"I have yet to see you raise your hand to answer a question today. You will be our teacher for this lesson."
"Okay…" He had no other choice than to accept.
Heinrich's family developed a troubling reputation in Section B because of the embarrassing situations of their relatives, so Heinrich kept his mouth shut in class most of the time. He worried about being ridiculed by his classmates and them not taking his thoughts seriously.
As Heinrich stood up, he looked at all the class bullies ready to pounce on him. They were vile little jackals, prepared to bruise Heinrich after class if he were to make an error. He then walked to the front of the room and opened his textbook, flipping to the first chapter while avoiding the piercing looks of his peers.
I left the company of the dunce-cap girl and walked up to the "temporary teacher," phasing through all the furniture and bodies of the brainwashed pupils. These children did not know that the very girl they were about to discuss was the one haunting them in their class. I wanted to examine Heinrich's expressions while he told Marley's myths of my origins.
Heinrich's eyes widened, and his mouth slackened until some words forced it to move correctly. His skin went pale as the lies dribbled off his lips; the fallacies were like contaminated water he was not comfortable with but were the only things he and the other children could suckle on.
"Many years ago our an…ancestor…Ymir Fritz met the Devil of All Earth. She made a deal with it."
Incorrect. I was not given my abilities by choice. I had fallen into a bed of water containing an organism that latched onto me.
"When she passed away, her powers were split into nine."
Incorrect again. When I passed away, my powers were split into three…when my daughters ingested the fluids of my vertebrae. It divided into nine when their children ate their spines.
"Ymir, alongside the Eldians, conquered the nation of Marley under the name of the Eldian Empire."
…That was correct. That was my doing. No amount of building and construction I aided with belittles that fact.
Heinrich flipped the page. "They did not stop there. They thought all other races were lesser and oppressed them, stealing wealth and land. They wiped out families and other races fully. This ethnic cleansing continued for 1,700 years."
Heinrich looked in my direction. No, he was not looking at me but through me toward the teacher, seeking approval on whether to continue or stop.
The teacher slightly tilted her head to the side and half-smiled, "You are doing well, Heinrich."
"Thank you, ma'am." Heinrich did not appear relieved. "I'm doing well," he whispered to himself, hoping it would relieve his nerves.
When Heinrich finished his summary of the chapter, he took a heavy pause and dropped his arms to his sides with the book still open. The pages poured slowly to the ground; the pictures and lies stayed intact, resisting the pull of gravity. His classmates hid their thoughts of his recital in their forced focus on their desks. The teacher was the only one to acknowledge the performance—she clapped silently. Three underlined claps.
I had seen Heinrich's scenario acted out hundreds of times before, where the youth presenting would go pale, and their voices would grow monotone. The guilt for carrying the blood of vile conquerors was more tangible than my presence in the room.
The real intent of schooling unsheathed itself to me long before coming across Heinrich's memories. This education was not educational. It seemed more like indoctrination—these children had to accept the forcefeeding of carefully constructed lies without protest.
"That was a good break." The teacher prompted Heinrich back to his seat and added. "Yes, our founder Ymir was a horrible soul who troubled many, and her deed to make a contract with the devil benefitted our Eldian ancestors but at the cost of others. Her greed and our forebearers' greed were endless." She looked down at her wrist, specifically the veins, possibly contemplating the Eldian blood flowing through her.
Greed affects every level of wealth, but I cannot apply that concept to myself. All my life was giving myself to others' commands.
The teacher continued: "But the Marleyans are making room for us now. They have adopted us even when our race has committed so much tragedy. For that, we should be eternally grateful."
The group of children, sponges to the world around them, nodded to their teacher's words. Little did they understand that their mentor behaved like a whipped dog that fell so far into the propaganda of the time that she tricked herself into feeling guilty for actions she never committed. She must have found a twisted value in her teaching position, ensuring her people understood guilt in all its nuances.
I became familiar with this historical propaganda in previous Eldians' memories. By the time I arrived at Heinrich's, these inaccuracies had resembled dull knives that failed to cut deep into me. I was trained to accept these things. After all, the plethora of insults people would hurl onto me during the olden times calloused my mind, and their whips reinforced that.
I could not tell at times if my existing scars were from the words or the labor.
One pain that persisted in me in all the slanderous reincarnations of this history lesson is the inability for me to express the truth of what happened. I could not plead my case to overturn my eternally fearsome reputation. Yet, it did not matter. Why do you care so much, Ymir, about what these worms think of you? They will all perish in due time anyway.
Maybe Heinrich wrote his journal to plead his case, albeit unsuccessfully. He reveled in words, baked in his curiosity for them, and toyed with them on pages. On the other hand, words were weaponized against me, and even if I did use them to communicate, no one would want to listen…
What a fascinating difference.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Heinrich's teacher conducted the rest of the history class after Heinrich sat down. Each word she blindly told drained the pupils of the kindling energy they carried earlier in the day.
The hours passed, and different subject material flew in and out of the classroom and through one ear of a child and out of another. By late afternoon, the children gathered into a single line and marched out of their homeroom—other lines with other energy-drained youth crossed by.
Heinrich stepped out the main entrance, stuffing his thumbs under his backpack straps, and lowering his head like he was trying to make himself seem small and unassuming. That would be a valuable tactic against bullies, but he was so focused on making himself appear smaller that he forgot to maneuver around a loose slab in a short staircase outside.
Heinrich slipped on the slab, and the stone steps hit his back harder than the afternoon sun hit his body. Other kids shifted around him like he was a moldy banana on the road. There was not a Viktor present yet to help him up either.
But there were some bullies.
"Everyone knows that slab is loose," said a kid with a 'W' for a hairline.
"You spoke so great today, Heinrich, but I'm still glad I'm not you," said a kid with spaces for teeth.
Classic bullies. I have seen their type thousands of times now.
The two delinquents lifted Heinrich by both his arms and moved him to a back corner of the school, scraping his shoes along the pavement. The brick wall in this area was untouched by teachers but touched by silly children playing a game of intimidation over their classmates.
The duo dropped Heinrich on the ground by the edge of the wall and chucked his backpack aside. The young lad was unphased by the condescending behavior acted toward him. A stiff lip kept his mouth from shouting what he must have wanted to say, and he lowered his chin, looking away from the aggressors.
"Your grandpa was a freak, you know that? I'm glad he got arrested," said the boy with the degenerate hairline.
The boy with spaced teeth attempted to spit, but the lack of front teeth made it difficult. A wad of saliva fell limp onto the pavement. He opened his mouth to comment but looked over his shoulder to a ramp instead.
The presence of a mustached Marleyan teacher grabbed the chins of the children and turned their attention towards him. The bullies froze their actions, but the teacher blew a cigarette while strolling down the ramp and barely batted an eye. He moved away. He likely noticed the bullying but decided against doing anything about it. He must have been used to devil infighting.
The bullies shrugged, and their counterfeit sense of dominance flew back into their hollow skulls. One could tell that from the punchable smirks skipping around their cheeks.
The boy with a degenerate hairline knocked off Heinrich's flat cap, revealing an embarrassing haircut one would give a sheep instead of a human.
"Did your mama give you that haircut?" The tooth-challenged boy chortled.
"No, yours did. She said she wanted a new son and was holding auditions." (Heinrich had been whispering that comeback to himself the entire day.)
"Why you—" The punchable smirk was rinsed away with the back of a sleeve. The missing-tooth delinquent grabbed Heinrich's flat cap and went on a scavenger hunt for something abusive that his limited vocabulary could not match.
The hairline-challenged boy tugged on Heinrich's hair like a mop until the missing-tooth boy returned with some brown excrement in the hat. I could not smell the foul scent wafting through the vicinity, but its appearance compensated for it. The entire food chain was in these rancid little sausages.
"You're a piece of shit, Heinrich," the tooth-challenged boy insisted.
"Hmm, okay."
The boy put the dog-shit-filled hat onto Heinrich's mowed head, and a silent squish followed. The bully duo plugged their noses and pointed fingers at Heinrich, exclaiming "Poopy head" like toddlers.
They said it loud enough that other children ready to head home caught wind of the scent and caught an ear of the degrading name.
One extra bystander became two. Two become three. Three became four.
They all pointed one finger each at Heinrich and sang with mockery-ridden lyrics.
Heinrich is a poopy head. Poopy head. Poopy head. Heinrich is a poopy head. Poopy head. Poopy head.
I know what it is like to be blamed and pointed at. At least Heinrich did not get hunted down by dogs and arrows.
But I was furious.
Heinrich's chin sunk further into his chest, and I kneeled next to him, almost grabbing his shoulder before reminding myself I could not touch him. I wanted to whisper in his ear, "Fight, just fight. Do not submit."
But introducing myself that way would be problematic, not to mention that I would speak to him later anyway.
I stayed silent and rose, waiting for Heinrich to stand up for himself. When he stood up, he automatically scanned the people making a mockery of him. He gripped the small visor of his hat, took the whole cap off his head, and threw it at the face of one of his bullies. The brown excrement painted the bully's degenerate hairline like an extremely foul dye as the hat slid down. Good riddance.
Heinrich did not overstay his welcome and scooped up his backpack. He ran around the school and made a break for the entrance gate.
Run, Heinrich. Run. You have always been good at that, even if you could not run away from your death…
Panting like a dog, Heinrich slipped past the distracted security guards and scrammed down the streets of Section B, past the light poles, more excrement on the ground, and citizens closing their noses from the smell.
I stayed back at the school to observe the small mob of children. They were running to the security guards, and one of the girls with pigtails asked:
"Mr. security man, did you see a boy with shit on his head?"
"Watch your language." He looked at the bully with a screwed-up hairline. "This kid?"
Heinrich was getting too far away from me, which I could not allow, so I left the school children and teleported back to where he was.
Heinrich was sitting in an alley, the excrement still covering the center of his hair, and he was huffing, still catching his breath. It is unfortunate that one's breath does not have a handle. That could aid in catching it.
"That's the twentieth time this month, huh?" Heinrich took a pocket-sized notepad out and a cheap pencil from his bag. The pad was covered with tally marks underneath month names.
Under "March," he made a diagonal mark across four vertical ones. "I've been bullied twenty times in ten days? That's a new record."
Heinrich put the notepad back in his backpack and proceeded to return home. He must have accepted his "victim among victim status" since he walked normally with one foot in front of the other, not one complaint in front of the other like typically bullied children would do. He seemed desensitized, for good or for worse.
The Real Author's Note
I'm back guys! There will be three more chapters like this one before we return to when "An Eldian's Journal" left off, so hang in there! I felt it was important to establish Ymir more as the narrator before going back into Heinrich's military chase.