The Diary of A Young Girl
By Ymir Fritz
Entry #4
Heinrich's days of bullying peaked when he was twelve years of age. He may have been a few inches taller and a few inches wiser than his eight-year-old self, but he was disrespected just as much as always.
It was a Friday in the final weeks of Heinrich's sixth school year. Fridays in these weeks were deemed the most "educational" since teachers would bring in workers to introduce the children to the trades they could pursue in the near laughable job market, all to satisfy their Marleyan over-bearers. On this abundantly grey Friday afternoon, a factory manager entered Heinrich's class wearing a suspiciously spotless uniform. He was a blockish man, almost handcrafted to function in a laborious industrial setting. The teacher welcomed him in after sharply clapping the class into submission.
"Okay, class. Now that lunch is over, we will be having our weekly career session…." The teacher uncharismatically moved her hands to her lines, like an overperformance that was too forced. "Mr. Abel is a manager at the Aldo Industrial Company, a factory set outside the internment zone. He manages a strong group of Eldians to produce the products you all may take for granted." She nodded to the factory man, "I'll leave it to him to explain the rest."
The tub-like man said his overly polite greetings and spoke in a voice coated with pollution, "As your teacher mentioned, I am a manager at Aldo..." I read between the lines of this man's appearance. His wrinkles were firm and pointed like his forehead would constantly crease at whatever surprise death he would come across at work. In contrast to the unusually fresh set of overalls, Mr. Abel's voice sounded like a cigarette if tobacco could verbalize its opinions.
Mr. Abel continued, "As you children can tell from the vehicles on the street, Marley is well into the industrial period. What I mean is that the era of engines and automotives are replacing steam and horses. I know you kids will miss the horses, but this new period in human evolution means more jobs for everyone! The demand for work is only rising as the days pass!..." He paused, "Any questions?"
No one responded.
Something about Mr. Abel led me to believe he had a symbolic bow and arrow holding him hostage for the duration of his speech. Or rather, a metaphorical gun as that is more suited to the times. He avoided discussing his job tasks transparently, tip-toeing around the truths like they were needles, and his choice to use a fresh uniform must have meant his usual one would be too disgusting for children. He was walking propaganda.
Some scientists fantasize about automaton machines, but they already had plenty in their society driven by bio-skeletons and hardwired with misinformation.
The realities of factory jobs were visible to me in many instances. Some Eldians I have walked alongside worked at Aldo Industrial Company, and their misery was inescapable—these people were not people—once clocked in, they devolved into cogs that became extensions of the machines they managed. Their expressions carried an unbroken stillness, contrasting the rattling noises of constantly breaking transmission belts. Much like how one does not apologize to the machine if they hurt it, no one apologizes to the workers when mistreated.
The factory's unnatural habitat, unpolished on every level yet composed like a contained inferno, is a fine example that the world's evolution was not solely based on countering the existence of titans. I realized here the world had ambitions beyond the Eldian racial tensions, even to the point that the Marleyan workers appeared equally miserable and mistreated.
The products did not care what race you belonged to as long as you made them well.
Mr. Abel continued his verbal presentation, and in his conclusion, he mentioned, "Marley's government has recently made it legal for children ages five to fifteen to work in the factories. Help your families in ways you haven't before and join the effort. It is hard work, I admit. People have lost their—"
The teacher glared at Mr. Abel like he was encroaching on subjects that he must not discuss, not due to their violence, but how it would spoil the "advertising" to the young pupils.
"A-Anyways," Mr. Abel stuttered. "Looks like I'm running low on time here. Keep this in mind, children, each of you can be making fifty extra cents per day working for the factory after school that your families can put towards living expenses. Isn't that great?"
The crowd of students was wordless once more, and they clapped blindly for their guest like the very act was a chore, uninspired and unenthused. Mr. Abel's blocky presence left, and murmurs sparked throughout the room while the teacher briefly stepped outside.
Heinrich was sitting by the windows through the entire presentation. The clique of students around him did not spare the silent moment following Mr. Abel's leaving and aired their thoughts.
"Hey, what work do you think they do in factories?"
"They probably make toothbrushes. I can't imagine where else toothbrushes would be made."
"Don't be silly. The work there is difficult. Mr. Abel didn't mention on all the details."
Heinrich ignored this low-intelligence conversation and looked out the window in hopes his benign existence would not be the object of disdain again. The windows were like bright-translucent leaves imprinted to the wall that would fall if pricked at too harshly. The school budgeting was not great, even with only two schools in the internment zone. It did not take memory searching to observe that.
A kid with a bent nose commented, "Heinrich, would make for a great factory worker. He's obedient. Doesn't complain. Just watch." He put his hand on Heinrich's head, rummaging through his hair. "See? He won't do anything to stop me. He doesn't complain about things."
Classic bullies. Incapable of depth in character and simple in their stupidity.
Heinrich, at first, did not flinch to the bent-nose boy's attempts at angering him. To Heinrich's credit, he built the mental fortitude to withstand pettiness from others at such a young age, but that is to be expected after a childhood shadowed with condescension.
The bent-nose bully went great leaps with his patronizing behavior towards Heinrich. He tugged Heinrich's hairs like a patch of weeds needing to be plucked and moved it around like a stick-shift of a manual vehicle. Gears were most definitely grinding in Heinrich's head.
Heinrich's eyebrows blinked like feet tapping underneath a desk, waiting for this humiliation to be over. He cracked his knuckles, not in preparation for a punch, but as a distraction to cool himself from doing anything rash.
Heinrich grabbed the bully's forearm and moved it aside carefully, not so forcefully as to rouse another serving of embarrassment. The bully acted appalled but not as appalled as the teacher was from the front of the class.
"We're going to finish this outside." The bully said to Heinrich, turning his back to his desk.
"The only thing you're finishing young man," the teacher intruded, "is the rest of the school day in the back with a dunce cap on."
The other students laughed, but it stopped when the teacher slapped a ruler on the chalkboard, scaring the chalk and the young pupils. With childish ire rising from his heart, the bully stomped to the back of the class and took the dunce cap off the previous naughty child. He assumed his position, arms crossed, waiting for the class dismissal to begin some goonish behavior.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Heinrich left the school building at the end of the school day, paying mind to any loose slabs planted to cause his downfall. He then sat on a bench with his backpack in his lap. The bent-nose bully and his squad held back their thuggery until the number of kids and teachers thinned.
Heinrich shared with me an uncharacteristic motivation. "You know what, useless Ymir? I'm curious to see what that bully wants to do to me."
"Why are you acting so confident all of a sudden?" I responded, aware of the tactics the bully would pull on him soon. "Confidence on you is like adding sugar to dirt."
"I've been bullied for so long that I think I've seen pretty much anything. There shouldn't be much to worry about now." He gripped his backpack tighter, "You've seen every one of those tactics when you just stand there watching."
"There's not much else I can do but watch."
"True. You are very useless, after all."
"Maybe if you weren't such a loser, people would stop picking on you."
The bent-nose bully and his squad of button-shaped scoundrels arrived on cue with a hurry in their steps. The main bully, whose name is undeserving of being mentioned, grabbed Heinrich by his collar, jerking his torso around.
"Oh no," Heinrich said sarcastically, "my collar. You ruined it."
The bully lowered to Heinrich's face, punching with his breath. "I'm going to ruin you next."
"Okay."
The group of four and I gathered by a secluded wall with more kids crowded around than expected. Despite classes ending for the day, the school was the hub for children to linger and delay coming home to abusive parents, non-existent parents, and boring parents.
Heinrich favored doing this in his journal in his later years. I will try it:
***HOW TO BE A GENERIC BULLY***
Find a wall, and throw the victim against it.
Taunt the victim until he or she cries.
Apply physical torment if desired.
Run away.
The bent-nose bully hurled Heinrich against the wall, causing some children in the area to scurry away. A grunt was ripped from Heinrich before the bullying squad crouched around him and giggled like villainous imps.
The bullies showered punches onto Heinrich, and he took it all. As his pre-pubescent body rattled under the punches, I wondered, did he ever know what it was like to be respected? He was just a child of twelve years, but everyone yearns to be respected.
Maybe I am projecting too much…
The bullies finished their punches, and Heinrich said "ouch" casually. He wiped his lips and sighed.
"Why aren't you taking this seriously?" The bent-nosed bully complained.
"You've been bullying me through the entire school year. There is nothing you could do now that would be new."
The bent-nose bully got up and jogged to a brick partially sticking out of the wall. He tugged it out brashly but also made sure not to ruin the structure's integrity.
"Is this new enough for you?" The bully inquired.
The remaining bullies' mischievousness dulled to make way for cautiousness. They moved away like they knew what would transpire. Heinrich, on the contrary, had no quip to return, and a victim's fear overrode his rare hint of confidence. He cowered behind his arms as he dared to get up.
The bent-nose bully bashed the brick against Heinrich's head, knocking the fight out of the boy and dropping his consciousness to the cement.
—the memory sharply climaxed—
-X-X-X-X-X-
"We're Eldians. We don't have insurance!" Rosa Steiner blurted from the side of a comfortless bed.
"Stop shouting. We'll just pay everything up front and get out of here." Frederick Jr. asserted.
Young Heinrich was lying in a white bed with white pillows and white sheets, bright even in the bleak internment zone. He was slowly returning to life. Seven other patients minded their own business in the hospital room, possibly mulling over life mistakes and fighting their pain since their rationed medication must have depleted.
Rosa continued, "We lived with Heinrich's bullying all these years—"
"Ahh!" Heinrich fully returned to life and shut his ears like preventing a horde of insects from entering.
"Heinrich, you're awake!" Frederick Jr. looked over his son.
"Stop talking so loud," Heinrich squirmed. "It hurts my ears." He opened his eyes and shut them shortly after. The room light must have seared his tender senses.
A doctor arrived two hours later, to the Steiners' dismay. Timeliness was a luxury in medical wards since many Eldians were not trained as clinicians, so the demand greatly overshadowed what was available. And because of this stark lack of resources, "just give it some rest" was a popular prescription. That is a noticeable upgrade from the leeching and snail-slime recommendations "doctors" would prescribe shamelessly in the olden times.
The doctor prescribed Heinrich one measly headache pill and a good night's rest. Heinrich had a more pressing question in his mind: "Mr. Doctor, how did I get here?"
"Some boy with an ugly nose carried you here. He said you tripped on something and fell on the ground." He handed the parents a small note and looked back at Heinrich, "Sorry, little one. This is all I can prescribe for your concussion." The doctor simulated remorse. "One mental-health patient yesterday swallowed an entire box of headache medicine thinking it was candy. We have to ration."
"If we needed a headache pill we could have just visited a neighbor..." Mr. and Mrs. Steiner murmured.
The little family left the patient room and went to a small pharmacy in front of the clinic. Frederick Jr. wore a mask of gloom as he scavenged through his money pouch, hoping to discover a few coins that luck would provide him as charity. The lady in the booth-like pharmacy handed Heinrich a pill in a paper bag and grew antsy when she did not receive payment immediately. She tapped her nails like a piano was under her fingers.
Rosa grew desperate. She pointed in the direction of the room and faked surprise, "Hey, look over there, someone's dying."
The pharmacist did not budge. "Ma'am, you're not the first one to try that on me."
"I can believe that." Rosa shrugged. "It was worth a damn try."
Rosa looked at Frederick Jr., and they nodded in unison. The Steiners then made a break for the clinic entrance. They left without paying for the medicine and appointment, officially committing their first public felony in their time in the internment zone. The pharmacist shouted helplessly as the patients in the waiting lobby enjoyed the deception from behind the newspapers crowding their faces like windshields.
The Steiners returned home and rushed Heinrich to his bed, wary of any lights that would worsen his pain. However, that did not mark the end of the day for the parents. They whispered outside the bedroom but not quite enough that Heinrich could sleep in peace.
"We lived with Heinrich getting bullied all these years and all our embarrassment these past years. I'm tired of this." Rosa complained, "I wish the teachers could manage the students properly. It's their fault this keeps happening, not just our stupid relatives."
"No, it's our fault. We let it keep going for this long. We should have done something about it. Instead, we stayed quiet to not anger anyone." He scoffed, "we're such bad parents, aren't we?"
I am constantly amused by people's tendency to feel regret after something horrible has happened when they blatantly ignore preventative measures.
"Let's move to Section F." Frederick proposed, "It's close to the wall so housing would be cheaper and no one will know us there."
"Why didn't you think of that before?"
"Why're you blaming it on me? Why didn't you think of that before?... Anyway, I didn't say anything because I thought things would change on their own." Frederick Jr. fiddled with a doorknob. "I guess today proves that things don't change unless you do something about them."
"We will have to deal with the government and all that paperwork. Being in a walled ghetto doesn't give us much flexibility to move wherever we please."
"We'll figure it out." Frederick Jr. combed his hair and looked past his wife.
Rosa honed intently and read the lines on her husband's face, "Spill it. You want to say something else."
"Well," he paused, "I've been hiding something from you."
"Those perverted magazines you keep hiding under the bed? I am well aware of those."
"That's not what I was going to say! But I have been trying to hide those…." He smiled, "I want to build a bar, and now seems like the perfect chance to do it. It could be someplace where we can gather people together and forget the troubles of reality over some booze. We could have music as well." He continued blabbering, "You could play guitar!" Odd hopes continued to froth from his mouth.
"... I've been meaning to teach Heinrich that thing."
"Go ahead, teach him! This should work out."
Several things swiftly shot down Mr. and Mrs. Steiner's fantasizing about moving away. Frederick Jr. sent in a request to the housing office at the center of the internment zone, providing the reasoning for the move and what spaces they were interested in. After the submission, a pudgy bloke visited their home one day to ask them how they had the gall to make requests after all the odd things the Steiner family had done. The man was a Marleyan officer. The Steiners' escape attempt at paying for the clinic appointment appeared to catch up with them.
After Frederick Jr. proposed this bar idea, the pudgy officer said the moving would be considered if a portion of the bar's revenue would be graciously donated to the Marleyan government. That would be on top of the demanding taxes that already acted as a giant nuisance.
-X-X-X-X-X-
In August of 848, the Steiners' feet arrived at the doorsteps of their new home in Section F. Their eyes, on the contrary, avoided the footsteps and ogled the glass planes and symmetrically shaped bricks—those were the bare minimum characteristics of a mediocre home, but mediocre is an upgrade from an anemic building that was deprived of nutrients.
After the three pairs of eyes finished hopping between building features, they returned to their owners' skulls and continued observing each other.
"We've already seen this house before. I don't know why I keep staring at it," Frederick Jr. said.
Rosa quipped, "That's because this is the first time in your life that you're going to live in a place that doesn't look like shit."
A pigeon swooped by the sidewalk and bombed its white excrement onto Rosa's boxes. Heinrich said bluntly while pointing at it, "Shit."
"I don't think that's a bad omen, but it feels like one." Rosa grumbled, "Let's go inside."
After Heinrich helped his mother unpack the necessary items on the move-in day, he left his new home to absorb the tantalizing complexities of Section F and produce a credible first impression on the neighbors. These intentions served as the initial chapter of Heinrich's journal and carried a sentimental value only he genuinely understood as the author.
But Heinrich, you did not tell your story in that chapter as it truly happened. Not in the chapters to follow, either.
My observations of your life events are exactly how they passed while your recollections were dulled from the progress of time. Your memories were like papers growing yellow and antiquated due to years passing, a deck of cards with fading symbols, and an eroding rock becoming a sponge. It was difficult for you to remember every line from a conversation, so you constructed lines in your narrative that you never said, your friends never said, I never said, and military people never said.
But I will not attribute that to you lying. It was an attempt to fill in the gaps and inconsistencies in your memories to compensate for the flawed vessel that was your mortal mind.
In essence, I have the definitive knowledge of what Heinrich did even when he did not know when recounting his life.
With that, I will introduce Heinrich properly, not as the narrator, but as the flesh-filled being that lived a life that was forgotten.
Twelve-year-old Heinrich Steiner was a standard school boy whose appearance did not need a second glance to understand. His head was topped with a dirty blonde collection of hairs, always combed over and tapered down to the neck. He would walk peculiarly, with his left arm always swinging farther than the other like a malfunctioning pendulum. His left shoulder would be raised an inch higher than his right as if a stone was stuck in his left shoe. He would crack his index finger knuckle at any moment of stress like it was a release of the hunger to break the bones of someone who may have angered him.
A look of wariness was his face's choice of expression, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in those difficult times.
On the way to greet the closest neighbor, Heinrich passed by a bike whose tires were crescents instead of full moons. He could not ignore the black skid marks around the windows of the closest house; they were like the shit stains on an undergarment. It was a sign of poor maintenance. The neighbors were not making a solid impression on him.
Heinrich knocked on the door and waited a minute for a response, but in place of the door creaking open, a bizarre child materialized behind him. This boy was a similar age to Heinrich. An assortment of brown hairs, a brown deeper than his eyes, sat atop his head, and a rebellious lock of strands curled over his forehead. They refused to stay combed. A bit of his lunch coated his teeth as a new layer of plaque.
This boy, another protagonist of Heinrich's story, was introduced in a box mimicking the armored titan. The abdominal musculature was penciled in sloppily with a disregard for symmetry. It is pretty baffling to know that the titans descended from my powers were little more than idols to the Eldian youth, even to the point of centering games around them.
The two children made their introductions:
"Are you the new neighbor? I, Viktor Dassler, want you to play Titans with me."
"I, Heinrich Steiner, don't know you."
"I, Viktor Dassler, don't care."
Heinrich wrote their interaction that way, but that is not how it happened. It seemed much more enjoyable than the real interaction, which involved more words and awkwardness.
Viktor and Heinrich continued their bizarre conversation with the inclusion of seven children who were initially hiding behind a dumpster. They were dressed embarrassingly in homemade titan costumes:
'One wore a white tablecloth with two holes cut out for the eyes and a broomstick in his right hand - The Warhammer Titan. Another wore regular clothes but there's a twist. He had a shaggy, black wig - The Attack Titan.'
Heinrich was handed a woman's brassiere to play the female titan, and all the children dubbed themselves "The Great Titans of Ymir." These nitwits were no titans of mine, but I wonder, did they desire to be titans themselves? Did they not understand the tragedy and destruction each one of the nine brought upon the world? What was the objective of these idiotic games?
The minds of children will forever be beyond my comprehension.
Thankfully, the play fighting that followed was much more comprehensible to me. It was common in the olden times to roughhouse with your peers, and violent traditions were often used to initiate someone into a group.
Heinrich and Viktor tossed fists while Kurt stayed on stand-by with the others, playing the only voice of reason in this odd mingling of personalities. They had no clue of the dynamic they would form together in the coming years, but I did.
Viktor was the first person to give Heinrich a fresh start on being a kid. He gave him a friend group that may not have been the most responsible, but it was still a friend group. To me, a rowdy friend is better than none at all. Viktor seemed to have wanted more from his time on this earth. Thus, he pushed for many eccentric activities parents would deem irresponsible.
Kurt, "The Warhammer," was standing on the sidelines, twitching in his tablecloth uniform. He likely thought he would never amount to anything, which was untrue. He was unexpectedly the bravest individual out of his trio with Heinrich and Viktor. It is unlucky that the war was the call to action that forced him to find this inner bravery instead of a more mundane circumstance.
"Viktor, why does that kid have my bra?"
The flying fists froze, and the only young female in Heinrich's story thus far strolled out of the scum-ridden shack she and her brother called home. It was Lina Dassler at fifteen years of age. I frankly do not see what Heinrich found so alluring about her. She was a dumb brat like the rest of Heinrich's friends, except she had a shapely chest with a few more years on her, and that was enough to attract the lecherous gazes of the superficial perverts in the area. At least she got attention; it did not matter if it was positive or negative—some attention was better than none.
In the years that followed, Lina would try to mold her words to make herself seem more extraordinary than she was. She did this primarily with Heinrich, with whom she acted mysteriously and tried to appear wise; however, it is much easier to appear cool to a younger person than to your peers. She fooled him every time, but she was a scared girl who did not fit among people her age.
Heinrich practically shoved Lina aside after indulging in Mr. Kruger's oddities, who had a more incredible wealth of lessons to share. Regardless, Lina's problems in the coming years were more practical than those her brother and Heinrich would tussle with during the training camp. She wrestled with keeping food on the table and paying taxes while her little friends avoided becoming corpses to feed the ground.
The Dassler siblings were an unfortunate pair of orphans. Not unique in any sense, but still unfortunate.
After interrupting the game of "Titans," Lina approached her brother, and she threw her anger over him like a heavy rug that suffocated the boy. Her teeth would peak out between words and be somewhat yellow, much like everyone else's. The hygiene of this era, albeit a great improvement from my time, left much to be desired.
'Viktor hollered to me, "Owww. Welcome..to Section F, Heinrich. OWWW. Y-you've just been indoctrinated!"'
'I guess that's how you make friends: a straight hit to the face and a bloody nose.'
The way Heinrich told the story of this scene reinforces how he decided to coat his pre-teenage years with a marinade of absurdism and silliness. That introduces the question, how would he have written about his post-military years if he survived the rumbling? Would he have coated it with a peppery drizzle only hinting at the spice of negativity or a capsaicin-enriched drama doused in misery?
Would he have lied to make himself seem more honorable, or would he have left it as is?
-X-X-X-X-X-
Heinrich spent the late evening the following day with Viktor. It was the "Day of Helos," the holiday to commemorate the slaying of the "devil," and a day to celebrate a Marleyan that likely never existed.
The two friends made their way through the streets, and Viktor provided a tour, telling little anecdotes about the people he met in the area. You could tell how many days Viktor had not taken a bath by the layer of oils on his face. It was so visible that it was measurable.
The two boys crossed through the shadows left behind by the streetlights, almost expertly evading the fissures of the sidewalk hiding in the dark veils. They came across a few critical characters in between anecdotes of cookie-monster Eldians:
'We passed by a shadow near the corner of the street. It was a man with the color of bone. He had a cold beard with specks of white scattered about like snowflakes. His guitar had an even more intriguing character to it: each scratch and chipped edge on it must have had their own stories. The harmonious instrument played a dissonant role in this setting. I had a guitar at home as well but there was something more to this one.'
Heinrich's language use, spelling, and grammar were all at their roughest in these initial chapters, but this description is a gem to me. The wonderfully secretive Mr. Kruger happened to be the object of that paragraph. He was the best homeless man a youth could ask for. While, at first glance, it is not wise to trust a person on a street corner, it is sometimes the people who think they have nothing left to live for who can be the most truthful. Indeed, Walter did not have much left; however, he was not genuine. He buried many things and revealed his secrets like an apple, peeling the ruby-red skin but not all once, much like a great story.
I had the luxury of seeing Walter Kruger's story and a portion of Heinrich's story stored in the same journal. Two homeless men were encapsulated in one assortment of pages before a foot crippled it.
Heinrich and Viktor arrived at a gate in the internment zone wall in time for a fireworks display. Creatively colored bombs plumed in the sky, enveloping the houses below with a radiant light they were unaccustomed to. It was indeed an awe-inspiring and fantastic sight until a Marleyan mother and her daughter arrived at the gate.
An umbrella of rose and lavender spread its wings in the sky and dimmed but was entirely ignored by the mother. She was ripe with anxiety at the sight of the Eldian duo behind the gate, and verbal slander was armed in the cannons in her cheeks. She had nothing to worry about, even if she thought she did. Heinrich did not have an anti-titan rifle yet, nor did Viktor have his grenades.
I could not have done much to stop the situation, but like how one can say inappropriate words without thinking, I revealed myself without thinking.
This woman followed the typical archetype of a Marleyan coming across an Eldian. Her mouth cannon blasted as much slander she could pack into the shape of a round cannonball. The words were simple, but sometimes the most primitive phrases fragment and burn the most. A community dictionary could be written from the insults an Eldian would receive while walking outside the internment zone for a day.
Heinrich and Viktor most likely experienced a racist moment like that before, so they had underlying invisible wounds, but coming across the mother unclotted the damage, letting some blood flow free. For Viktor, the blood that flowed was his ambitions and goals spilling ahead of him.
As the mother and daughter left, Viktor poured, "I'm going to get everyone one day to fight to get out of this wall…"
Before Kurt's death, Viktor was never someone I considered to be a multi-faceted human being: he was straightforward with his ambitions. I did not march through Kurt and Viktor's memories, but while Heinrich would be self-centered and worry about himself in his memories, I would watch Viktor from a side glance. His role as the leader of some tame scoundrels provided him a soapbox to bluff. He bluffed about being strong, as seen in his military missions—he bluffed like his sister with a different style, but they both spoke to manipulate what people thought of them. These orphans must have wanted people to think highly of them for survival's sake.
In truth, the gang Viktor started was not about gathering the bullied kids together to make themselves more robust. It was to keep himself from feeling lonely. It was to make himself feel safe.
Unfortunately, Viktor's time to grow would take a friend's death to start.
"Are you going to help me out, or will you just be like everyone else here, thinking so little of themselves that they don't do anything?"
A decent distance away, an officer with an oval yet iron face rose from his chair on a street corner with a cough punching out of his mouth. His cigarettes siphoned moisture out of him, making his face look like a dry yet metallic leaf. He was poorly named Hubert Hausenbergerdorff, a name the educated and the uneducated could agree was only meant to be written instead of said. He approached the commotion.
"What are you two doing out here? It's past the curfew," Hubert said to the boys, adjusting his rifle and making slight intimidation.
Hubert would be jokingly nicknamed "The Wallkeeper" by Heinrich and Viktor, but knowing he was half-Eldian/half-Marleyan provided insight into the ambiguity of his actions. I had a context to these situations that Heinrich himself never had. This gave me a lens that was a few focal lengths more focused.
Later in the conversation, Hubert said with a mild firmness, not to be mistaken with kindness: "Recite the pledge to me."
Hubert's disinterest in physically harming the boys highlighted the shame he could not escape. The most fascinating thing was he had more guilt in his eyes when harming Eldian citizens than full-blooded Eldians had for other Eldians. With all his cruel acts of punishing rule-breakers, minor dissenters, and homeless men in his job as a Marleyan security guard and wall-soldier, his face would never display the guilt in all its dejectedness. He hid behind the whiskey, and his face became a silver, dead leaf while his eyes contained the last ounces of life, balming with pleas.
Things did not add up. His place as half-oppressor and half-victim blurred so many lines that both halves would often switch roles. He was a sniper's round in a pistol—the double coat of a zebra—a canvas board of opposing colors. And his true profession, beyond the wall-soldier duty, acted as a wax stamp that sealed his confusion into an iron cage, never allowing it to resolve.
Section F harbored these humans; it was a pen of characters to Heinrich. It was an establishment of chipped pavements, grating voices, bland sustenance, and an enduring stream of troubles. In my perspective, it was a poem with flawed rhythmic structures, a discombobulated corner of a pig pen with slop that generated daily drama, and a crate with canned food that Marleyans would open over their enemies on a battlefield.
Heinrich's cheerful, turbulent, lively, and bitter moments occurred in this corner of the internment zone.
The Real Author's Note
This chapter has been kind of a re-hashing of chapter 2 and chapter 3 of "An Eldian's Journal" through Ymir's eyes. The next chapter or the one after that should be the last rehashing and we will return to the main plot.