Six Feet Under

It was just bothersome, like those ridiculously difficult to open shampoo bottles and tall, shitty bookshelves.

Fucking impossible.

It wasn't that bad though, because I could grab a napkin to get a better grip and grab one of my stepladders. Those are the useless things I'm annoyed at.

Those and the loud cacophony of opening a closet door at night, tripping over the same stair over and over again, fruit flies, and that sudden weird, cramping feeling that would not go away until tomorrow comes.

I am not a calm person, nor am I introverted, I just express myself differently,

And if you haven't figured it out yet, brat, I'm afraid you're going to need to stick your head in your bed covers and cry because there's no cure for stupidity.

I'm mute.

My life isn't that different from yours, or maybe it is. I wouldn't know.

Perhaps I was naturally born void of human ways of expression, for there are ways to express oneself without speaking (I fail at those too). I could smile, or cry, or wave, or hit. But I don't. According to my late older brother, I just looked angry all the time.

To hell with that.

I do like my fun though.

As a kid, I used to take a hot dog before the distribution of hot lunches. I didn't eat it, but the teacher would panic since one wimpy kid didn't get their heavenly hot dog.

(I did return the hot dog… eventually)

Nobody blamed me though, they blamed each other, they blamed the ones who already got their hot dogs, their eyes would dim with envy and anger and nobody would blame me.

So it was all-good.

Nobody ever saw me.

As a young child, I disliked sign language and therefore rarely used it. It's not the same anyway.

But perhaps it is just that, or maybe it's because I've always been like this, that I've never said flat out to anyone that I loved them. So sometimes, wryly and emptily, I'd figure out with my more developed brain that they probably never knew. Of course, you would say, "go tell them now." And I would tell you, as I am telling you now, "whoever said that it's never too late, whoever that bastard is… they're wrong."

Life doesn't wait for the weak, it doesn't take your hands and lead you on with a smile on its face, and if you think so, then maybe it's time to step out of your forest surrounded by unicorns and big ass trees and smell the flowers growing out of cow shit.

I'm not a particularly interesting person, and because school children knew enough by then to not bother the sad, weird kid and to include him in their activities… nobody really did bother me.

So, I spent recess settled by the black berry bushes occupied by my own thoughts as the other children giggled and screamed and cried.

I'm a hypocrite. I want them all to shut up because something about their happiness crawls in the depth of my gut in a grotesque way. It makes me light-headed and filled to the brim with violent thoughts. When I'm at home, though, alone and staring out my window in the dead of the night, I just want someone to wreak havoc around me. I want them to drown out my thoughts with a spectacle of the worst. Because my own thoughts scared me and I don't know whose voice they are in because it's definitely not mine. It becomes confusing and I just want to lie down and sleep but my bed is a mountain of thorns and vines like the black berry bushes I sit beside during recess mingled with the taste of blood and death.

It's a bed where I can't sleep on without dreaming.

They used to be beautiful, dreams. But I think I've forgotten what that means.

When I was fifteen, a boy and his mother moved in next door after a widow who lost his wife left.

I didn't have anything better to do, so I made tea and watched from my bedroom window.

The boy looked no older than I, with a warm pretty face decorated by emerald gems shining under the sun. He was bickering with his mother, a stunning woman who looked not much older than the boy, decorated with trimmed ebony hair and cold, ice-grey eyes. I know those eyes. They were the same as those who has seen through too much pain, too much torment. They were the eyes of those who truly understood happiness, for they experienced the horrors and sorrows of torment beyond of which that can be nullified by the flow of time and tears.

She was interesting.

If I had known back then, maybe I would have looked away, gone back to my blackberry bush and watched the bees buzz around instead. But no, I stayed and watched the shine of light on her alabaster skin.

For weeks, I just stared at her, going to school, coming back from school, and sitting by my window, just staring.

I'm sure she would have noticed if she just looked up. I felt anxious at the thought, because I don't really know if I want her to look up or not.

She was beautiful.

She didn't hold a subtle beauty. It wasn't the kind that you could be exposed to for your whole life and only notice at your dying moment. It was fiery, intense, and more in-your-face than all the other beautiful women I have seen. As a hobbyist who enjoys drawing nude humans, I have seen a rather lot of them.

I can only imagine, with pure curiosity and anticipation, how beautiful it would be if I could look at her just a bit closer.

The second thing I noticed was the wool muffler that she wore year round. Through my window, there was not a day where her neck shined as bare as her face.

The third thing was the fact that she loved that brat so goddamn much that it is beyond my understanding.

She was positively obsessed over the boy.

It wasn't until three quarters of a year passed that I realized she wasn't the only one with an obsession.

I'd rather not dwell on that thought, though.

(*)

I thought she might be like me, with the constant begrudging expression plastered over her face in a mask that I was sure would never fade away.

I was wrong.

She juggled the fight against everything forcing her into the ground. She believes and she accepts.

And I'm just a coward.

My existence is not worth the dust on her shoes.

Because I had nothing to do, I aimed all my thoughts at her. I directed away all the tension to occupy the space instead with her.

I started sketching her, the distinctively foreign curve of her lips to the proud bump of her nose to her concave cheeks and those silently strong, silently fragile ice-grey eyes to every strand of her immaculate ebony hair.

So damn beautiful.

Addiction wasn't quite it. She became my fantasy.

In my sketchbook, I recorded my wry thoughts of the upcurving of her lips, and the crease between her brows that held little of the flow of time. The river that was her hair was pieces of chopped rain, and the alabaster snow-white skin shined under the light, void of all other colours.

Pale and smooth.

Did the curve of her neck look that way under its greatest protector? Her blood red scarf?

To feel her ivory skin under my fingertips, the smooth, lean muscles on her arms to the stretched impervious ones on her legs. To dig into her thighs and make those muscles bend to my will, to melt that impassive gaze into something more instinctive… more animal like –

But most of all, I wanted her voice.

What tingle would she make in my eardrums? Would they be more beautiful than the ugly cacophony around me or would it shatter all the beams of light that sauntered me into darkness?

I filled the sketchbook full of the lemony, acidic gaze that she had on early mornings and the soft, melted marshmallow dip of late night returns. With each drawing, I took half a step closer to the beauty of the entity on the other side of my window. With each stroke of my pencil, each smudge, the dull grey tainted my body with the overpowering sensation of her. At the same time, with each drawing, I am alerted abruptly of the beauty I will never be able to capture.

(*)

It was the middle of winter, and I, with a fever and as obstinate as always, laid my head down on the cool kitchen table top and refused to drag my feet to get the shitty heater going.

The doorbell rang.

I swore in my head.

When I stuffed my head down into my arms and tried to ignore the noise, the bell rang again, and again, and again, and again.

Until I was agitated enough to take off the blanket around my shoulders and embrace the numbness in my legs.

I would have liked to say 'what the hell, you dumb idiot?' but was greeted by a field of bright green.

"U-um, hi. I'm from next door." The boy said lamely, a half-smile stretched out on his tanned face.

There was a few moment of silence. What? I wasn't going to answer him.

"I thought I should give you the homework. We're in the same biology class." He said, his voice shaking with what felt like anticipation. I nodded at him, sticking out my hand.

He stuffed a neat pile of paper complete with sticky notes and tabs into my waiting hand, but when I tried to close the door in his face, he stopped me.

"W-wait! You're Levi, right? I saw you at the last track meet. You were incredible." He smiled encouragingly, in a way that didn't mask his uncertainty.

"Would you like to come over for dinner?"

I held my breath.

What the fuck, idiot? Of course I would like to go and check out your mom.

I shook my head.

He looked beaten down, with downcast eyes and closely knitted eyebrows, but looked reluctant to give up, "My sister's a really good cook." He said again, this time in a smaller voice, and fiddled with his feet, like a penguin.

Just as I was about to reject him again, this time in a more final manner that consisted with the thoughts of stuffing him in a garbage can without actually touching him, another figure stepped up behind him, and I felt my face burn.

She didn't look at me, and I tried to not meet her gaze, she only had eyes for her brother. (So she was his sister, well then, that makes things less awkward)

I nodded.

(*)

Their house was well kept, classy and expensive looking. It was neat and orderly, fairly clean and smelled of spaghetti.

Sitting atop the fireplace were pictures, photosets, and albums, most of them consisted of her, a blonde boy, and of a younger Eren.

"Oh!" Eren smiled hesitantly, emerald eyes gleaming as he walked towards the fireplace, "this is me." He finished lamely, pointing at one of the photos of a baby in the arms of a young black haired girl and the blonde standing beside her.

What, does he think I can't even recognize that?

"That's my sister, Mikasa," he continued, the name rolling off his tongue in a vague manner.

I wanted to try saying it, curious of what sort of chime it would make in the voice I knew not of. I wondered if it would be just as sweet and equally mesmerizing.

I don't know how.

"… and this one has my parents in them…" he pointed at an older photograph with faded colours and damp smiles. Through the faces, there was no trace of Mikasa.

"My parents died when I was five, I don't remember them well…" he smiled tightly, matter-of-factly, squinting his eyes in an apologetic way as Mikasa's voice greeted my ears.

Like chimes, they bounced off the walls and reflected to me. It was so strange I didn't make out what she was saying.

That year, I was sixteen.

And I felt like a mountain of ashes because I discovered love.

(*)

Eren Jäger was naïve, he made friends too easily with people whose true nature is masqueraded by his filtered vision.

As a result, I enjoyed her cooking more often than I should.

Nothing to complain about.

There was something foreign about her, something that made me realize the reason behind my attraction towards her.

It was her eyes. Not just her eyes, those half-dead, yet refusing to diminish into the dark orbs, it was in her movement, it was embedded in her strides, in the demeanour of which she carries herself with.

And I find myself more and more inebriated on her ugliness.

Then, like a deer caught in headlights, I wasn't sure what was love anymore. I am immature, my love sprouted from the sudden dizziness of a cold that forged the deception of the angel before me.

I loved her because I needed her.

I needed her to take me away from the loud silence ringing in my eardrums, to take me from the constant pain eating away at what little I have left.

I love her. And what I loved was not her.

(*)

She read quietly. She never read outside.

Her emotions softened when webs of woven magical worlds brought her the vision of childish innocence. They hardened, not changed, just hardened as her imagination untangled from that same web, and soon after, she would close the book and raise an ivory hand to sweep away the contrasting midnight dark hair away from her face.

She would then sigh, disturbing the air particles around her with her parted, honeyed lips, and nod at me, who sat, observing in their living room.

She was still beautiful, enigmatic, and made as much sense to me as she did the moment I saw her features through my window that summer. Now she sat not even a meter away from me, and yet still, some pellucid, untouchable barrier shields her.

Eren was still a shitty little brat, still too naïve, too easily manipulated.

"Is Armin coming over?" He called from the bathroom.

He yelled too loudly.

"Yes." She said, soft and precious, it made me want to catch it in the air.

But I was scared to touch her. Because my ugliness would stain her unusually pure skin black, and the ugliness in her irises would swallow me whole, and I wouldn't know who's who because all the ugliness blended together. I didn't want her asphyxiated.

Not like me.

She was my drug. She somehow convinced my mind to believe that with her presence, the smothering memories would fade away into the background. The reassuring smile that my brother carried, and the more cheerful, darker on of his girlfriend, they haunted me. She saved me from them.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise for me, the disgusting way that he looked at her, that Armin Arlert was the one who forced the green monster of envy out of my system. It didn't work that way though.

Armin reminded me of someone special.

He had blonde hair, partly tied to the back of his head, because it was long and he was a scientist. With penetrating blue azure lights for eyes, he fitted well against the cool, stone beauty. Her lack of expression was fulfilled by his overwhelming amount of emotion.

I wished, yearned for her gaze to land on mine, and I hoped what they saw wasn't just me, but my soul. I wished she would look at me with as much intensity as she looked at that brat. I wished she would look at me and I wished her lips would turn upwards at my presence. I wished she would walk towards me and whisper my name in my ears, since I've forgotten what it sounds like.

I was nineteen; nineteen and I knew I was lying to myself when I said I was only halfway in love with her.

(*)

It was difficult to discover the truth behind sheets of well-woven lies.

For a child, morally up righteousness is defined by the happiness perceived. Whatever sacrifices others made didn't really matter as long as they were happy.

My brother was that way.

Except he wasn't a child.

He was a murderer. Not for bad causes, in his opinion, I can see that. Nevertheless, I can also see the lack of need for of his survival for the greater good. He was better off dead.

If I could only convince myself of that.

It took me a good few years to realize that, it took me all of high school and training, yet only one day as a newbie under her care to understand Eren's undying respect for her.

She was a goddamn genius.

No, a genius isn't enough to describe her.

A phenomenon… the embodiment of everything my brother had wasted his life looking for.

On one strange night, though, lying on my bed and staring up towards the ceiling, it sudden occurred to me…

I didn't love her because I need her; I need her because I love her.

I was twenty-four. It took me a good part of nine years to figure that out.

Except she had been out of reach, never within somewhere I could work towards, never something I could see through the corner of her eyes, never holding my breath because she was right in front of me.

I was twenty-four and she had been married for two years. I was twenty-four and Armin wants a baby. I was twenty-four and I was head over heels in love with her and I was pathetic, because I couldn't stop clinging onto her.

I can't stop clinging onto her.

Falling back into that abyss is much more painful than watching the woman I love in love with another man.

A/N: Thank you for all of the amazing support and feedback, I appreciate all of it. This series is currently under revision, I'm hoping to continue it with new stories very soon. Thank you for bearing with me this past year!