The tavern was a lively place where people gathered. Couples on dates sat at little intimate tables. Lonely singles looking for love sat at the bar. A band played live music. The singer wore a tight red dress and gloves that went past her elbows.
The florist's name was Rita and she had a mole by her mouth. Her hair was in a single plait down her back and she wore a simple pretty dress. She was a couple years older than Eren and afraid of passing her prime. Flowers so easily passed their prime, she said. They bloom, fresh with color, their petals so taut and new, giving off beautiful fragrances. Soon the flowers start to quiver at the stem and erupt even stronger, more potent scents, aching and desperate. That's when the flowers are harvested to be sold. The florist sighed. She put her chin in her hands with her elbows on the table. They ordered another round of drinks.
The man at the piano played trills and filled up empty spaces in the music. The florist started to snap her fingers along with the other regular customers who knew what to do. Eren snapped his fingers, following everybody else. Feeling the rhythm, the singer swayed her hips, slowly, and sang about all the woes of lost love. Her voice was deep and raspy.
"She's good, isn't she? She's famous around here. She's not even married. We call her Miss Velvet."
Couples rose from the tables to dance. Lonely people at the bar watched the dancing couples for a while before ordering more drinks. Eren finished his and drained a third. He ordered a fourth. The florist kept looking at him with eager expectant eyes. He didn't know what it meant. Eren got up and headed to the restroom. At the end of the bar, he knocked into a hatted man sitting alone on a stool and apologized. After he finished, Eren returned and saw an unfamiliar bare-headed man standing by the florist. The florist stared up at the man with an annoyed frown.
"Can I help you with something?" Eren said.
The man was mildly drunk and measured Eren lengthwise and then sidewise. "How come you don't dance with her? Can't you tell she wants to dance?"
"Oh." Eren turned to the florist. "Do you want to dance?"
The florist sighed. She angled away from him, putting her chin in her hands. "No."
"Look what you did. You made her upset. Where'd you find this guy? Under a rock? Let me take you—"
Eren lengthened his backbone and threw his shadow over the man. "Leave." The man didn't leave. Eren looked down at him, curious about what the man would do next. Eren closely watched the muscles in the man's arms and hands, the way they gathered and produced heat. He felt a ticking in his own body and a production of heat as his blood pooled in various muscles. Reconsidering at the final moment, the man lost his nerve and, without another word, blundered away, grabbing to tables and chairs to keep himself standing.
Eren sat down in his seat. "I'm sorry."
"This is the worst date I've ever been on."
"Do you want me to take you home?"
The florist put her face in her hands. Eren realized she was crying. "How could you say that?"
"I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to do."
"Have you really been living under a rock? I shouldn't have to tell you."
Eren squeezed his seat next to her. They brushed shoulders. He lifted her face from her hands and used a handkerchief to dry her cheeks. "Will you dance with me?"
"No."
"No?"
"Were you going to fight that man if he wasn't going to leave?"
"Probably."
"You would've knocked his teeth out?"
"If that's what it took."
"Don't ask it. Say it again, but tell me to this time."
"Dance with me," Eren said. Then he grabbed both her wrists and whirled her onto the dance floor. The band was still playing their instruments and couples were still dancing. But the singer in the tight red dress had stopped singing, taking a break. She leaned against the bar, drinking something clear and pure from a delicate glass. She stirred her drink with a toothpick stuck with green olives. She peered at the hatted man sitting at the end of the bar.
"You look like a man who's got something to hide."
Totally silent, the man didn't break his stationary posture. The bandages around his face hid him from sight, a muffler around his chin.
"Want a drink?" Miss Velvet sucked a green olive off her toothpick, holding it between her teeth. She wrapped it in her tongue. "My treat."
"I don't drink," the man replied, speaking into the muffler around his chin. Miss Velvet understood him, though his voice was no more than a whisper.
She licked her lips.
"A man who doesn't drink, alone at a bar. How do you survive?"
Eren and the florist danced to the music the band played until Eren started to lose focus again, his attention drawn to the bar. The florist noticed.
"It's rare for Miss Velvet to engage with men at the bar. They too easily fall in love and that creates problems for her." The music moved Eren and it moved the florist and he watched the bar, holding the florist's back as the music turned them and spun them, him watching the bar more and more, twisting his head as Miss Velvet brushed her soft hand across the hatted man and put a whisper in his ear. The florist touched Eren's face. She forced his eyes to hers. "You're so distracted."
"Let's go on a walk."
Eren took the florist's hand and paid their tab and led her out the door. The air gusted over them. He looked over his shoulder. The hatted man moved out from under Miss Velvet's hand and started to leave the bar.
It was a cool night. The florist tugged a shawl around her shoulders. As she and Eren walked together, she snuggled into him, keeping warm. Few people were out at this time. Snuggled-up couples like Eren and the florist would float by like quiet dreams. There was no destination anybody was headed to. No place in mind, just strolling down street after street. Every now and then the florist would tell a little story about a shop or a shop owner and Eren would listen, glancing back over his shoulder, his rubber soles quiet on the pavement.
"I like how warm you are," the florist said, her head on his arm. Eren snuggled her in closer because he figured it's what he was supposed to do. He felt her breath warming the fabric of his shirt and then cooling it.
"Why do you keep looking behind us? Are we being followed?"
Eren faced forward. "Are you warm enough?"
"I could feel warmer." The florist stopped walking and Eren ceased the movement under him. The florist looked up with those expectant eyes, alerting him that he needed to do something, but he knew he wasn't allowed to ask her what. He held her hands between their bodies and put his warmth in them. The florist smiled.
"Miss Velvet thinks I'm a lost cause. I show up at that tavern every other weekend with a new man and every other weekend, she's always performing and sees me, and she gets this look of pity in her eye. I never have any hope about the men I take there. But maybe it would be okay to settle with one of them. I won't be pretty for much longer. If I were a flower, I would already have been cut and harvested. I should be happy with any man who'd agree to have me. Don't you think?"
It was a strange concept for Eren. To understand it, he had to occupy a foreign life, a foreign world, which he took some time to do. He put himself in her shoes. "No, I don't think that's enough," he said after living what he imagined her life to be for a moment.
The florist looked at Eren's eyes and Eren imagined he could see her future. She glanced away nervously, as if she could feel him unraveling her lifespan, mapping it out.
"Do you know what's past the walls?" Eren said.
"Everybody knows," said the florist. "It was in the newspapers."
"It's not like what they say in the newspapers."
They began walking again and Eren told her about the ocean; about the vast deserts; about glaciers and volcanic islands. He told her about all the things she could never have imagined on her own. Everything was impossible and real — somewhere. She listened to each word, enthralled, conceiving in her mind the places he described, adding color and heat and moisture and wind. She held onto his stories, tucking them close to her heart. When he was through telling her about the world, he stopped walking. It made her stop too.
"Outside this island, the world is inhabited by millions and millions of people. They all have different cultures and different beliefs. Compared to that number, an individual is insignificant and meaningless. When I learned the truth about this world . . . I was disappointed." He turned to the florist. "In your mind, you've seen a future life for yourself. I don't think you should settle for anything less than the ideal you've envisioned."
A shine spread in the florist's eyes, and her voice became a longing sigh. "I want a man whose only purpose in life is to love me. I want him to love me that he can't feel anything other than his love for me. He has no imagination or thoughts, just his desire and love for everything involved with me. He would look at me and nobody else and if another man even attracted a second of my attention, he'd go crazy with jealousy. Most of all, he'd never buy me flowers. He'd just put his body on mine and reap what he sowed."
"Is that what it means to be in love with somebody?"
"To me it is. Have you ever been in love?"
"I don't think I've understood it in the way that you mean. For some reason, I don't think I've understood it in the way anybody else means." He looked away at a point of space far away from where they were standing, pulling at the night to piece together the elusive image of the dream that forever slipped his memory. "But there's somebody always on my mind. And I think I'd like to meet her again."
"Meet her? You mean, you don't know her?"
"I did. I do. It's . . ." He fell silent, unable to find the words.
"Sounds complicated." The florist looked at his face. She cupped his cheek. "I didn't mean to get you down. How about we keep walking?" She linked her arm with his. They put their legs out and quietly set them on the street.
The pavement reflected a thin glow, absorbing the light of the streetlights and scattering it above the ground. Eren perked his ears and threw his hearing in all directions behind him. He felt at the atmosphere with his senses, searching. Even the little hairs on the back of his neck were alert with attention. There was only the audience of shadows and darkness. Nothing more. Eren went blind, trying to perceive a presence behind him that kept an eye out, forming an invisible shell of protection around him. He grew anxious to feel it. The florist draped her plaited hair over her shoulder. She stroked it in her hand like a feather. Eren stopped suddenly. The florist made a surprised noise and halted mid-step.
"What's down that way?" Eren pointed at the entrance of an alley.
"It leads to the next block over."
"A shortcut?"
"Everybody knows not to walk down a dark alleyway."
Eren turned over his shoulder and searched the dark buildings. "Don't worry," he said, distracted. "No one will bother you as long as you're with me. It's just a little shortcut." He turned. He smiled. He moved toward the dark cold mouth of the alleyway like approaching the door to a nightmare. The florist tensed with apprehension. She pressed into his side.
"You're a little bit crazy, aren't you?"
They stepped into the alley.
The dark was darker than the dark behind them; the cold colder than the cold. Nothing like fear resided in Eren. The florist discerned in him something like its complete and total opposite. She clung to him, digging her fingers in the muscle expanding from his arm. Through the cold dark passage, they treaded on careful feet, huddled together. Eren moved forward with a quality that was the opposite of fear, but wasn't bravery or courage, either. The florist tried to understand what it was while watching the niches of the alley. She traced the shadows with her eyes. Apprehension compelled her to start talking.
"I can tell you what's going to happen," she said tensely. "This is what's going to happen: Muggers will come out and attack us. They always lurk in alleys, so it's bound to happen. They live to spring on unarmed people with knives. You know what they'll do? They'll rip me away from you. They'll be nasty about it. Despicable. They'll taunt you, 'don't you want your pretty girlfriend back?' Then they'll torture me and wring tears from my eyes. It'll make you lose your mind with rage. You won't even be human anymore because of the rage it stirs up inside you."
"Is that what I'd do?"
"Yes. For now, you're the man in my imagination. I hope you don't mind."
Eren led her further. The other street was close now. Almost in the clear, he could see a lamppost and a bakery. The bakery was closed for the night. Eren put his legs out, slower. He held his breath, straining his hearing, listening, sensing. His legs grew heavy. They filled with wet sand. His mind spun outward, feeling around, but his body went nowhere.
A niche of shadows started to move. Eren couldn't raise his legs from the ground. He couldn't put the blood to the right muscles. He couldn't move at all. The darkness exhaled — and a man was breathed out into the alley in front of him. More darkness jumbled around and two other men emerged. Behind the three men, the next street over was a distant vision now.
"You got to pay to get past," a voice said. "Turn out your pockets."
A flash like a silver fish glimmered in his hand. A whistling pebble fell down a black well in Eren's mind. The florist dragged on Eren's arm. Eren let her jerk on his arm, the rest of his body held fixed.
"Eren. Eren. Why are you just standing there?"
"Don't you hear her?" the voices said. "She's scared. What's it gonna be?"
The three men crept closer. There were three flashes now. Three silver fish in three coiled fists. They searched Eren's face for the fear he should feel.
"Are you smiling right now?"
"Is this a joke to you?"
The men flashed their glimmering knives again and Eren shook. They watched him shaking. Eren bent a little at the waist and pressed his hands over his mouth like he was about to be sick.
"Are you laughing?"
Eren tried to catch his breath, holding his mouth. One man lunged and the sky instantly dropped out a figure dressed in black. Nimble feet landed on the pavement. A knife soared free, spinning. The man who'd been holding it crashed on his back. Upended, he scrambled away in terror.
"Mikasa."
Eren watched Mikasa fight off the men, amazed. The other knives flew out of hands, flashing silently away into nothingness. None of the men could land a blow on her, as if they were fighting a shadow, grasping at darkness. The men were hurled into the next street, bleeding from their eyes and noses and mouths where they'd been walloped by Mikasa. The streetlight hit their tensing legs flickering up and down. Their howling voices faded into silence.
Mikasa removed her hat and let out her short hair.
"Eren, are you all right? You've been standing frozen in this alley for a while now."
"What?" Eren woke up from a dream. The awareness in his eyes snapped back on. He searched the ground. He looked for the knives, for the blood he'd seen. He looked for a sign of the fight that had transpired. There was no sign of anything like that. The florist was still holding onto him, her mouth still open from calling his name.
"So . . . there weren't any muggers?" Eren said.
"Did you see muggers?" Mikasa said.
Eren couldn't meet her eye directly. "I guess it was just my imagination."
Mikasa moved into his view. She looked into his face. Eren could see one eye under the bandages covering her features. "Is it because of the medicine?"
"I don't know."
Mikasa gave him a soft worried look. Then she regarded the florist. "Eren will take you home now."
After Eren's confused episode in the alley, the date ended with him taking the florist home. She lived above the flower shop. When they arrived, the second story lights were already on and cast shadows across the street. They paused outside the shop's front door. A wind blew and sent whispers and echoes through the blue flowers along the window. Eren closed his eyes and put his bare feet in green grass and laid his body under warm sunshine, the flowers rustling around him and the birds chittering overhead, everything sleepy and familiar and sad.
"You're listening to the flowers," the florist said. "I like that about you."
Eren opened his eyes. The florist smiled a kind smile.
"I wish you hadn't let me take you out tonight," she told him. "Even though I hardly know anything about you, I know what you were trying to do. And that's because I'm probably the only person on this island who can understand that way of thinking. It's similar to my way of thinking."
Eren was ashamed to think that his way of thinking might be similar to her way of thinking.
"You sought out a lion's den and climbed yourself into it. Too bad there weren't any lions home." The florist lifted onto the tips of her toes and placed a small peck on his cheek. "I wonder, how far will you go to see that concerned look on her face again?"
She relaxed her toes and started to turn.
"My doctor says I'm in love," Eren blurted.
"You didn't know?"
"She says I'm in love with a woman who lives far away."
"Oh." The florist used her keys to unlock the flower shop. She opened the door. "Well, I'm no doctor. I'm no patient, either. But it seems like there are too many voices around, telling you different stories. The flowers won't lie to you, though. You can trust them."
# # #
Early morning filled Armin's window. He dressed and looked at himself in the mirror. His reflection reverberated and he winced, feeling his spine stab him down the middle like an enemy. The door opened without a knock or warning. By the commanding sound of the falling shoes, Armin knew it was Jean and without turning away from the mirror, he started talking to him.
"I can't imagine how it'd feel holding two titans. Bertholdt is always following me. I hear his voice. Right here." Armin touched the tip of his spinal column.
"Armin . . ."
Jean watched the glass image of Armin, worried.
"Don't mind me. I was just thinking, though. That doctor doesn't know anything about Eren, at all. How could she understand what it's like to inherit someone else's memories? She wants to diagnose Eren's condition as a personality disorder. But doesn't that oversimplify things?" Armin turned. "Last night you did some investigating underground. Did you find anything?"
Jean slipped his hand in his pocket and took out a vial. It was filled with red liquid. "I found this. I could only snag one. But there's a whole cabinetful in the basement." He handed it to Armin. Armin turned the vial in his fingers, inspecting it.
"It's unlabeled."
"They gotta be taking Eren's blood during the night and storing it for experimentation. That explains the stains."
"I suppose that would explain it. But why would they want to experiment with Eren's blood? What's the purpose?"
"I don't know. But at least we can prove something's going on."
Armin thanked Jean for the vial. "I'm going to hold onto this. Is that okay?"
Jean shrugged. "I don't want it."
# # #
Eren was wearing the oversized plain T-shirt again and the undersized pants again, his bare ankles visible again. He appeared even slenderer which may have been an illusion of the shirt or a gradual shrinking of his body. The Military Police allowed Eren to water and attend to the plants in the botanical garden. He rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt. His arms shined as he closed a pair of shears on a grown-out bush. Mikasa was there too, helping with the garden.
"Do you think you'll go out on a date again?" she said, watering a tree with a hose.
"No."
"You don't want to?"
Eren rested the shears on the ground. He wiped his forehead. "How about the next time I go out, you don't linger behind? You should just walk beside me."
"Did you feel unsafe?"
"That's not it . . ."
Mikasa shut off the hose. There was no wind in the garden. With the hose shut off, it was as silent as being submerged underwater. Eren thought he could hear the light striking the leaves around him and the trees drinking the water Mikasa had given them. He put a hand on his eyebrows, shadowing his view, and gazed up through the greenhouse ceiling at the sky. It seemed very high up and far from the earth. A whorl of clouds raced by. The small shape of the sun was past its vertical.
Eren looked at Mikasa. Her skin was illuminated, and her muscles were smooth. Each simple motion she made was performed with the ease of a recently oiled machine. "Did you get to exercise a lot today?" he said.
"Yes."
"You look refreshed." Eren smiled. "I'm glad."
"The Military Police should let you outside more. You spend too much time underground."
"I can come to this garden anytime I want. But I think I'd like to feel the wind or taste the rain again." He took up the shears and carried them toward another overgrown bush. "The next time it rains, let's sneak outside together."
# # #
It was night now and the cellar of Eren's mind opened a crack. Smoke and flakes of ash whirled out. Eren tried to grasp the gray things trickling loose from the opening in his deeper mind and hold it all in his hands like palmfuls of sand. Everything always seemed to slip from his fingers.
"The Military Police will come looking for you soon," Armin said.
They were in a lounge standing by the fireplace. Eren wanted to be near light and heat and soak it in before returning to his underground bedroom. Then he could sleep with the warmth of fire still living in him.
Eren and Armin watched the fire burning in the fireplace. It burned them with thoughts that were so boundless and drifting that their bodies grew vague and detached and they could only continue watching the fire and exist inside their minds and be filled with boundless thoughts. When Eren decided to speak, his voice seemed awkward and invasive. He was almost embarrassed to have spoken at all.
"Armin, before my memories were tampered with, was I a cruel person?"
They felt their own bodies re-claim possession over their minds and channel them back from their inner purposelessness. Armin glanced at Eren's profile, at the long hair that the fire made into long shadows down his neck.
"I think sometimes you could be cruel because of how kind you were."
"That doesn't seem like an answer."
"You shouldn't worry about these things. You've been freed from the knowledge you had. I think you should let yourself live in that peaceful reality for a while. Ignorance has released you from a nightmare. Maybe you can learn to appreciate it some."
It wasn't long before a Military Police officer entered and seized Eren. He escorted Eren underground, walking behind him. Turning back over his shoulder, Eren hung onto the dark-filled outline of Armin for as long as he could manage.