The Diary of A Young Girl
By Ymir Fritz
Entry #13
Section E's Street 1005 was an excellent tablecloth. It ran alongside the military training field that had been awkwardly carved into the internment zone's face decades ago. It was more like a rag, actually. It held up many feet, but the people attached to those feet failed to understand that they were at the mercy of this concrete vein. A pulsing vein that, through construction efforts, was reliable, unlike the people that walked on it.
What if the street suddenly split open and the bowels of the Earth exposed themselves? What if a giant gripped the street by its scruff and shook it like a rug? The people would be flung off like bits of dust, flailing, screaming, and then splattering.
What if the depraved Heinrich Steiner walked upon it?
He wandered through the marriage of bickering sounds blaring on the street. It was a marriage in the typical sense: no resolution to petty qualms. Even in Heinrich's slumped state, he remembered to stay aware with plunging eyes akin to those fastened in a guard dog's reinforced skull, looking at others' hands to ensure they did not conceal mortality-defining tools such as knives.
Heinrich, too, was at the mercy of 1005. The street facilitated a portion of his drudge-filled walk away from Eld the Eldian's newspaper stand. He ignored the street's sculpted intricacies: the stone slabs that had been shoved together like mismatched puzzle pieces and the clunks of wheels adjusting themselves to the different slants of each slab like each piece carried a unique but equally uncalled-for opinion. Chattering overpowered the silent sizzle coming from cigarettes being suckled on like babies on a mother's bosom.
These were standard intricacies of a street, so Street 1005 was banal as they came yet held great importance to Heinrich. This street was a bystander to one of his core memories. However, he ignored those intricacies for less tangible textures like the runniness of the thoughts that must have plagued him. His mind must have been like a runny nose in extreme need of tissues.
Like armored horses marching through the town, military vehicles with ammo in tow marched through street 1005, brushing past Heinrich but startling awake even more memories of old—undelightful ones. He allotted one glance to the trucks before returning to the hand-watching. These grey steads blundered out of sight, but their sounds must have still lingered in people's ears even with their diminishing presence.
The fence walking alongside Heinrich's left side separated civilian life and another facet of his previous existence that he wanted to ignore: a training field. The soil was flat and well-packed. It appeared so well maintained that it could have been an arrangement of tiles of a restaurant kitchen floor but without the opposite spectrums of colors. Drabness was all a training field needed since the trainees had to be the focus of each others' glares, not a pretty floor. Although, a field with scooped-out dirt would be more faithful to the mishappen face of a No Man's Land.
But no trainees were frolicking along the drab tile on that morning. The military trucks that approached likely held privates that were scheduled to train, but they had not filed into the field yet, allowing Heinrich's memories of old to populate.
Heinrich slumped over that fence with a looming gaze. I wish I could have seen through his eyes and known how each note of his memories attached to each corner of this field.
But I can imagine. It is a new skill.
Heinrich, at fourteen years of age, had been in a similar place many years prior. On his way back home from Eld, young children were preparing for the cutthroat competition to be awarded the warrior candidate opportunity. Wooden bayonets clunked while trainers blew whistles. The collective panting caused by an extreme effort could be heard by an observer from afar, even from the position fourteen-year-old Heinrich assumed by a tree to avoid a friendly face.
This friendly face belonged to Falco Grice. He was one of those young children who sought the acclaim the warrior candidate position would bestow him if he received it. He needed it to redeem his family rather than for personal interests and ego.
Falco was a gentle twelve-year-old boy with kind eyes sheltered by a standard bed of blonde hair. Fourteen-year-old Heinrich had grown attached to Falco after the child's altruism in not requesting any payment after helping distribute the newspapers. So, the young Heinrich felt little desire to see his new friend's innocence marred by military men that required hardened people in their ranks.
The homeless Heinrich must have viewed the military field laden with ghosts as he gazed upon it. One of these ghosts could have mimicked Falco too, but its cavernous eyes would not match the joviality that Falco carried in his.
In that memory, however, fourteen-year-old Heinrich could not dodge Falco. Like a keen bird, the young one recognized him while rushing out of the training field with those he competed against. Falco approached Heinrich, and with him was a young girl with brown hair that was imprisoned in a bun. She resembled very little to her widely well-known cousin, Reiner Braun, but her unyielding admiration of him made the connection seem less preposterous. She held all warriors in high regard, in fact.
She did not hold high regard for most people, however.
One of those people was fourteen-year-old Heinrich. After confronting him with Falco, she humiliated the newspaper boy's nether regions with a kick from a boot that she already used to discipline the ground with her stomps while flaunting her inflated ego.
The homeless Heinrich, like he was playing this story concurrently with me while observing the field, put his hand over his crotch and winced.
This girl, Gabi Braun, had found out about Heinrich's accidental shot at Reiner and boiled in a fury because of it. It took Falco's restraining for her to back down. And after she bolted off, Heinrich and Falco discussed why Reiner was so pathetically depressed and speculated why he wanted to end himself so badly. However, it evolved into Heinrich doing his best to cut ties. To his fourteen-year-old self, war mass-executes innocence, and it is where a productive outlook on life would be put to rest after adopting a novel shelf of horrid experiences.
Fourteen-year-old Heinrich wanted to break his tie with Falco like wanting to sever a frostbitten finger. A similar thing could be said about the adult version with more than just people.
The homeless Heinrich then clicked his tongue before sealing his mouth. He sharply unzipped his pants while standing upright by the training field's fence. In an ultimate act of indecency, Heinrich relieved himself over that metal cage and into the field. The rank scent he created was not apparent to me; neither was he the only one to create it. Many people with less reason to would relieve themselves in public with judging eyes leering over them.
After finishing, Heinrich zipped his pants and wandered away without making a mumble, an apology, or even a sigh.
People in the olden days found benefit in pissing on wounds and whatnot. Maybe the acidity and other components bore medicinal properties. But would it be plausible to piss on an area that carried memories to reduce those old stories to nothing more than a numb lull? Would that make the inflaming memories more easily ignored?
It was as if he was ready to piss on all the memories and pain like the acidity would burn it all away, reducing those old stories to nothing more than a numb lull that could be easily ignored.
-X-X-X-X-X-
Heinrich headed back to the street in Section C that he sat in earlier that morning, and he followed the same streets and alleys to guarantee the same shortcut. Optimization of energy, as always. After arriving at that spot, he patiently lowered himself, and the bricks gently caught the back of his head. He then peered at the sky. No, it was too menacing to be a peer and not focused enough to be a stare; it was just a glare.
Unbeknownst to him, however, the brown-haired girl he shooed away from before watched from around the corner.
Heinrich pulled out the shaving blade he received as a pitiful gift from Eld the Eldian and spun it while his thumb and middle finger held the center. It was a friction-full spin—stiff and labored—it was not fast enough to hypnotize but slow and deliberate enough that it seemed like one was pondering something while they were doing it.
Heinrich set his arm on his thigh and oriented his wrist facing up. With the blade in his right hand, he set it on his left wrist and held it there for a moment. Like Heinrich was in a contest with himself, he grimaced, and the blade wavered, rocking slightly. The sunlight ran like blood between the rust and parts untainted by it.
The blade then became focused and ceased its wavering.
Heinrich pushed the blade down into his skin softly. Some emerging blood formed lips around the metal edge, and he quickly lifted the blade off.
Why did he stop?
Heinrich took a heavy breath and released it sharply.
"Why didn't you do this sooner?" I asked.
Heinrich's focus stayed fastened to his wrist.
"All you needed to do was find a rustier piece of metal from a trash can and stab yourself and get tetanus. But now, you pressed the blade in instead of slashing. Slashing would be quicker," I said. "But you're already aware of that. That's how I know it."
His focus shifted to the blade.
"'Am I not one of you? Do I not suffer under the same armband with the same crest?' That's what you told Eld. I remember that quite well," I said. "A self-hating man would not ask that. So, what are you?"
Heinrich grunted. That sound was the closest response to a coherent answer that he gave me, but his focus remained on the blade and shifted to the wrist as the maroon liquid dripped. His own blood was as bland as his life became. By that point, however, the brown-haired girl ran off for something. Where did she go?
"Why do you play this game, Heinrich?"
His lips stayed shut.
"You haven't ended it all yet, as if you're expecting something. Maybe even someone," I said.
"What?" he asked, finally looking at me.
"You already made your decision."
"Shut up."
"You already made it…but you're playing something."
Heinrich swatted his other hand through me and continued gazing at his wound. His look stayed there as if calculating something, and his head darted around, looking for something. His eyelids spread as the urgency of the situation finally came to him, and beads of sweat emerged from underneath their skin blankets.
Heinrich's hands shook, and he labored to get up. He hobbled around onto the sidewalk and showed his wrist to someone passing by.
"My wrist…my wrist," he mumbled frantically.
A confused man pulled away and steered around Heinrich.
"Please…"
The brown-haired girl rushed around the corner while waving a small hand towel. Each step of her sprint was coherent, almost too healthy. She broke the sprint within a meter in front of Heinrich and raised the towel to him while panting, "Here….use this…you can wrap it around your wrist…. It's washed."
Heinrich pointed his attention toward the little girl. His frantic eyes narrowed, "You?"
"It's me!" She forced excitement through the panting.
"Why?..." Heinrich took a step back, looking at the hand towel and then up at the girl again. He did not even touch the item.
The girl swiftly reached for Heinrich's wrist and wrapped it with the towel, but her first attempt ended with the limp rag slipping to the ground. She bent ever to pick it up again. She sprung up and applied it one more time while her upper teeth pressing on her bottom lip. The towel unraveled again.
"Are you expecting something in return? Huh?" Heinrich yelled. "Do you want to steal some food from me? Well, I don't have anything. I don't have anything to give."
"I don't want any—"
"Leave me alone! I-I didn't ask for your help!"
"But—"
"Go away!"
The girl left the towel and bolted off without a single tear-filled look back. Heinrich sat back down and examined the cloth as if searching for something in it. That map of stitches held no essays, life lessons, or clues of the future, nor were there any fingerprints.
"No homeless person has clean towels," Heinrich muttered out loud. "Neither does any one of us share anything."
Heinrich wrapped the small towel around his wrist and fastened a corner of it underneath the cloth bracelet he formed to keep the wrapping stable. His other hand wandered into his jacket, pulling out the journal. His right thumb gently brushed the vomit-green colored cover as one would do with a child's cheek, but the brushing bristled like he sharply remembered to whom this journal initially belonged. His thumb pressed in. A hue of dark pink emerged underneath his fingernail as his thumb pressed in.
"She didn't give me a crossword puzzle," he muttered. "This towel was more than I ever gave…him."
"All I ever gave…him…was a crossword puzzle," he muttered. "But she gave me a towel."
-X-X-X-X-X-
The brown-haired girl sat on the sidewalk around the corner from Heinrich with her back curved, and head bowed as if separating herself from her environment. Unfortunately, there is little else available to describe her other than "the brown-haired" girl since she had no remarkable qualities to label her by. She did have a name, though, but who cared for that?
Ignoring naming conundrums, the girl was a pubescent child behaving like a frightened tortoise but with speed and agility that the creature would deeply envy. Furthermore, regardless of filth nipping at her gradually, her lack of grime-infested limbs bestowed her purity in the sea of wounded sidewalks. She had no boat or rows to sail that great sea, but like most street-dwellers, why would she need them when she already had bones that coordinated to carry her torso wherever she pleased?
This specific sidewalk square that held the girl had a stain in the upper right corner like a snot-nosed kid's shirt. The girl sat to the left of it, as an average person would do to avoid unpleasant contact with fossilized urine, but an established street-dweller would care minimally about that. They would happily sit on any part of a square that would not kick their behinds. The rest of the square had an average texture: coarse and rough, like an eroding dish with rain pouring and footsteps roughhousing it simultaneously.
The brown-haired girl lifted her head from her cocoon-like position and glimpsed to her right. If the street were a clock, she would be peering at the two o'clock place. A house sat there, hollow.
'The two o' clock house,' it shall be dubbed.
The girl dusted off her knees and sprung up. Her body faced ten o'clock while her gaze remained on two o'clock. The hollowness of that house must have lured her in to replenish itself with a tenant, hopefully. Yet, her head aligned with her body, and the little girl proceeded to the corner she would view Heinrich from during that week.
She pulled out a bread slice whose only crime was its staleness, but its fullness, its lack of holes or mold, could peak the attention of nearby street-dwellers. Their breed of bread required some impurities; it needed to disgust at least one civil person before they could cram it into their mouths. Nevertheless, this specific slice would only mildly upset a middle-class individual instead of nauseating them.
Regardless, the little girl ate the food pleasantly with her mouth closed. However, her chewing halted upon realizing that Heinrich was replaced by a mannequin of air on his filthy sidewalk square. The disgruntled man himself was nowhere to be seen. The girl's jaws clenched, and her head appeared as round as an enlarged coconut but with hair.
The young coconut spun. She looked in every direction of the numbers on a clock, and her lips pressed together when she could not detect the homeless fool whose oddities frequently seized her attention. She gathered her shards of resolve—she did not need a broom for that, though, since the shards were not sharp enough—she then put away the other half of the bread slice and wandered to Heinrich's old square.
Heinrich's sidewalk square was a portrait of a bleak sky with abundant stains pinned onto it that sat as ominous as thunderclouds.
Unbeknownst to the girl, Heinrich was across the street in an alley diagonal to his square. A dumpster shielded him. He rummaged through that miserable stench box for anything edible to satiate himself, which was ironically easier than expected. An Eldian home would likely not throw food out due to unsatisfactory financial situations, but restaurants abided by other conduct to keep customers satisfied. He sat by one of the latter.
The girl spun around again for another quick search, but when that failed her, she ran through the square so fast that one could imagine her making a concrete splash behind her with each step.
Heinrich observed from afar while crouched, gnawing on a stale roll. The criteria he followed for distinguishing edible items from not was simple: the item should only have a few bruises. Even if there were a single eye-shaped bruise in fruit with black for the pupil and the fungus as the outside part, Heinrich would eat around it. However, if there were too many of these eyes, he would disregard the item.
The last corner of the bread disappeared into Heinrich's mouth as he finished eating his scraps and observed the girl running down the street. His head was tilted to the side, and his eyes narrowed. He also made sure to stuff some more scraps in his coat but not enough to make it look like he carried anything. Looking like you were carrying baggage within your clothing would attract pathetically hungry street-dwellers.
He left his knees covered with dust and stood up.
-X-X-X-X-X-
"Where are you going, Heinrich?" I asked, well aware of what the answer would be.
The homeless fool perpetuated the look of confusion he had before while watching the little girl from afar. His head was still tilted to the side, and his brows were still furrowed. It was almost like his face carried memories more effectively than his mind.
"Where does it look like I'm going?" he replied sourly.
Heinrich had been walking through the mirrored streets of Section C, but a few blocks away from the little spot he camped on earlier that day.
"That girl has manners," he muttered.
"What's wrong with that?"
"Manners is the last thing people care to keep when they're sleeping on the streets."
Heinrich turned left at an alley to find a dumpster with two dents that resembled nostrils. No "boogers," as the children call it, were present in those impressions. The only thing present was chipping paint; however, the rest of the can was bald. A covered crate sat next to it out of view, and in between its wooden planks were the looks of assorted items. A baseball stared rudely with its red stitches, a pen had its back faced toward Heinrich, and the damaged wood inside would make no looks of disdain for its depraved state was pain enough.
"It's great to see you guys," Heinrich said to the items. He tapped the nostrils of the garbage can like a greeting. The mutt nearby nestled its head into Heinrich's knees, and the stripes of filth in its fur waved in a greeting.
Heinrich sat down, and the mutt's tail wiggled like a nose-picking finger.
That alley in Section C was his makeshift home.
The mutt's tail straightened when the afternoon sun shooting into the alley was blocked by a brown-haired girl's outline. The girl smiled more intently than she ought to be given her situation, but it was forced enough for others to recognize ulterior motives.
"Hi," the girl said. She did her best to make the word gleam.
The mutt barked.
"Why do you keep bugging me, huh?" Heinrich asked. "Did you follow me all the way here?"
The girl put her hand above the mutt's nose, and the stray sniffed it intently before licking it. The barks ceased, and the girl sat across from Heinrich, uninvited. She shoved off a trash bag, and her nose shriveled with the scent that was likely floating around before returning to normal.
"I keep bugging you because you confuse me," the girl said.
Heinrich swallowed, "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He looked left at me for some reason, but the girl tracked that shift in focus.
"You always look to your left. Is there someone over there?"
"No! And why do you think I always look to my left?"
"You've been doing it a lot today, but not for the past few days."
"You've been watching me the past few days?"
She gulped, "No…."
"You're lying. People avoid eye contact and look to the left when they lie."
"You look to your left as well!"
Heinrich dodged the statement and continued, "Me looking left all the time is not enough to warrant you following me everywhere."
"'Warrant' I don't hear any other homeless people using that word…but you do."
"That still isn't enough of a reason for you to be doing this."
The girl took a deep breath and pulled her legs into her body, closing herself off. "After Eren Jaeger's attack last week, I walked past that street you were in this morning, and I saw you…laughing…." She attempted to mimic the laugh but quickly gave up, "You said, 'I can finally die.'"
"I have no money, no home, and no food," he spoke through clenched teeth as if practicing restraint. "I tend to laugh like that when things seem hopeless enough."
"But that makes no sense."
"When someone falls awkwardly or for some silly reason, they laugh. I've fallen down a lot in my life so far, but I've never laughed after each time. So, I might as well do it now so I've fallen badly enough to be in this situation."
"That still doesn't make sense…."
"Neither does you following me—"
"That's not what laughing means to me!" the girl cut him off. Her small hand formed fists but stayed at their sides.
Heinrich stuck his hand in the pocket with the glass shard, "I'll ask you something now. Why do you make that pathetic smile when you are living like…this? Like me."
This conversation's directness and blunt nature would seem unusual to people with homes. But people without homes would not need the social lubrication of small talk unless they wanted to please someone or to manipulate. Neither Heinrich nor the little girl appeared to be pleasing each other. The girl was so unabashed about her questions like they were logical things to ask random strangers.
The little girl shook her head. She did not leak a single word.
"You come here asking me questions. The least you could do is answer mine."
"I won't say," she replied.
Heinrich's fingers rested on the shard for a few seconds longer, but he pulled his hand out and rested it on his thigh when the girl decided to speak up.
"I smile because that's what my parents wanted me to do as often as I can."
"Wanted?"
"They can't want that from me anymore because they're not around anymore."
Heinrich blinked rapidly and broke eye contact.
"They were performers for the play at Willy Tyber's speech. They were found in the stage wreckage," she wiped at her nose and her lips trembled at each word. The running of mucus escalated into soft cries, and she then covered her face with her hands, ignoring the thin layer of muck on them.
Heinrich continued to blink rapidly and kept his hands in his lap as he looked down. He did not offer a look nor a word of sympathy.
"They told me to laugh every day because if I don't, I would be taking life too seriously. "
"..."
"It's also the medicine that cures all. So, for my memory of my parents, I'll laugh. I'll keep doing it. I'll keep smiling too." The little girl sniffled and took her hands off her face. Her eyes were puffed with faint red. The corners of her mouth labored to rise, and the corners of her eyes failed to crinkle.
It was a futile attempt to make a smile.
All the pieces involved in making it dropped, and the girl's lips stayed neutral like a dash. "That's why I try to laugh. I just wanted to know why you did it," she stood up slowly, forgetting a spring in her step.
"...did you want me to have the same reason?" Heinrich returned.
"I don't know what I wanted, really….but I guess I did. Just a little bit."
"W-Why would you tell me that your parents died?"
"Because…." she paused to think. "It's easier to talk to strangers about things sometimes since I won't see them again."
Heinrich's gaze stooped to the mini-towel wrapped around his left wrist. He squeezed his left palm, watching the veins grow more accentuated than they already were.
"But…humor doesn't mean anything. It comes and goes and never stays," Heinrich paused his words after realizing the girl had already made her leave. "Humor is a lie. What's so funny…about all of this?" Heinrich looked up at a lone cloud crawling through the sky. He then pulled out the journal and flipped through Walter Kruger's story. "There's nothing funny here," Heinrich muttered. He then got up and looked out the alley to peer at the walking scars some may call people, "There's nothing funny out here either."
He looked at me, "What could she ever find funny?"
"I don't know, Heinrich."
He let out a hard sigh and hung his chest while keeping his eyes closed. He then opened them and flipped each journal page as if sauntering through the book until he reached his prologue. He could have flipped immediately to his writing, though, since he folded a page corner on the first page of it.
He read the first paragraph out loud:
'My Memoir
By Heinrich Steiner
I was a kid when I moved into Section F of the Eldian Internment zone. It was not different from my old section B except for the wall being closer. It was here that I met my first real friend, Viktor. He made me dress up….'
Heinrich looked at me, "Should I lie too? With humor?"
I shrugged.
"Ill try. Maybe it'll be the medicine that'll save this thing."
The young man flipped to the following page and rummaged through his crate for a pen. He shook the pen vigorously to wake it up and wrote on his skin to see if the ink worked. He then set the tip on the page and drew the letters instead of writing them:
'An Eldian's Journal
Prologue
The narrator. Heinrich Steiner. Me.
*** HERE'S A SMALL FACT***
I'm going to die'
A small blotch formed at the end of creating the letter 'e' as Heinrich left the pen on the page. He lifted the tool and scoffed, "It's not that much better. What do you think, useless Ymir?"
"You have a new title. It's better than your first."