"I'm Levi's" (Ereri/Riren)

Side Chapter 3 - Levi's Past

"I had planned to go in half an hour." Eren rested his chin on my shoulder.

The soft serenity of his presence blending together with my soul, hazily, soothed the inner of my chest.

"All right. Well then, I shall leave about the same time."

Each of us got ready for our visits and when the time had come, we parted by the entrance door. On request, I should send my parents greetings that came from Eren, however the other way around it wasn't the same. Eren had suggested that he'd let his parents know about me when I'd visit them in the future for the very first time, just so that his parents hadn't had the chance to annoy Eren with prying questions today or any day where I wouldn't have met them yet. To that, I had agreed, unhesitating. All that had mattered to me was for Eren to have it the easiest with this issue.

I hopped inside my car and put the key in the ignition. Since Eren's parents lived in the east side of the city, the opposite direction of my family's home, I couldn't give him a drive without having had to make the biggest detour ever.

Meaning that Eren was taking the bus while I sat in my car, turning the key to roar the engine to life. The only perk I had been granted with was the lack of resistance coming from Eren who would start a discussion with me whenever I lit up a cigarette while he was close to me and also bore the fact that it hadn't exactly been my first smoke today.

So with a blithe, eased feeling I put a cigarette between my lips, lit it up, took a drag, turned on the radio where a random song was playing and eventually pulled out of the driveway.

The ride wasn't short but it wasn't long either. On my way, halting in front of a traffic light, I leant my arm on the steering wheel and took a long drag. The smoke was released slowly, as slowly as my thoughts processed in my mind right then. Thinking about something that was apparently important in life but I had never seen it as such.

Eren went to visit his family. His family. My family. Family.

I never put much thinking into that before, viewed my own one as no more than people I had been fine with having around me for a span of time (although even that had needed efforts to reach because it hadn't always been like this).

It was luck for me that I ended up having such a nice family who'd supported me. Living that decent life together with them when back then, before Cassie and Richard adopted me, everything had been worse.

***

Numbness. Freeze. Death.

The only three emotions and thoughts that I had been a vicitim to. Knees pulled to my chest, arms hooked around my legs and becoming stiff; sitting on the cold floor, breathing shallowly, I barely kept myself alive, didn't do anything to prevent myself from facing death soon. Just like... her.

I had already shed all tears that had been in my body. No matter how hard I tried, how many times the one image of her head hitting the surface and of her body dropping to the floor, of her life slipping out of her right in front of my eyes played in my head, I couldn't produce tears anymore to mourn over it.

It was as if I was robbed of a thing that was a necessary part of misery. And therefore the result had been numb sorrow coursing through my body. Nothing hurt, nothing felt like anything.

The approach of death hovering above me weighed me further down to sickening agony.

How much time had passed since then? How many hours, days, was I sitting on the floor, trembling terribly, starving, gradually rotting alive. How many days since that guy had... to her.