"Oh."

Armin and I walked back to Mom's room but as we pushed the door open, we saw a bunch of people inside. All wearing white and carrying some brown paper in hand. They put down the paper and looked at us.

Mikasa was cleaning up the mess I made.

It was a weird scenery but I walked inside.

"Are you the son?" A quaint old man walked up to me.

"Yes." The entire group started murmuring to one another. "What's going on here?"

"We are sorry to tell this to you, but we cannot support her here anymore."

"What do you mean you can't support her?" Armin spoke up from behind me.

"The capital asked us to limit the patients to the ones that have a chance of surviving. At this rate, this woman can't even see the end of this month. So we have to let her go."

"Oi! Oi! What are you on about?! You guys are the one's who are supposed to take care of this sort of stuff. What do you mean to let her go? She's not some dying cattle!" I lashed out.

"This is simply beyond our capabilities. We kept her here because we owed your father a favour and because he was a great man. But she has severed legs and her blood isn't coagulating even after bandaging. Doctors aren't capable of treating wounds like these."

"Stop trying to make excuses. My old man would patch up scouts like these all the-" I stopped myself from speaking.

I hated him so much, but if he were here he could have saved Mom. Was it my fault again?

"I'm sorry but we haven't been trained to treat injuries like those. Inside wall Rose, we only study sophisticated medicine."

"You can't be serious." What did this fogey mean by sophisticated medicine?!

"I'm sorry. But please prepare for her discharge by tomorrow night."

My mind wasn't working anymore. How much more did I have to go through to save her? This wasn't something I could give up on either.

"YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! IF NOT THAT AT LEAST LET HER STAY HERE!" I got down on my knees and begged. I didn't need a shred of my non-existant pride if it meant we could all survive.

"We're truly sorry." But they didn't move.

""PLEASE!"" Mikasa and Armin joined me but the doctors left without even sparing a single glance.

Devastated is the tamest adjective I could use to describe our state.

We just sat there on our knees silently with a storm brewing in our minds. Helpless is what we really were.

::XXX::

"We'll get some food, stay here." Mikasa and Armin were the first to speak since the incident.

Thinking back, I hadn't eaten since I got up. That made it four days without a meal, huh? I wonder how I'm still alive. These thoughts were only temporary before my mind wandered back into place.

'What can I even do now? There is no way for me to save her. What will happen after she's gone? NO! I can't be thinking that. I should find a way for her to make it to the day after tomorrow.

Should I lock the doors when they come tomorrow? That's pointless, they have the keys.

Look for other doctors? But I don't know where to look. Even if I find one, I don't have the money to pay them.

Why did that bastard have to turn on us? We wouldn't be in this mess if he was here. Only if he didn't-'

"We're back." They were carrying the bread I left in the hall. I couldn't complain, judging our situation. But I was reminded of the lunch we had four days ago. Laughing around the dining table.

I took a piece and ripped a bite off.

My body immediately spat it out.

"BWEGH!"

"Eren, this you can't waste food like that, we only get two pieces of bread a day."

"I can't help it, it tastes disgusting!"

"It is a little dry, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it disgusting..." They continued eating their bread without a single problem.

Maybe I tasted something wrong since I haven't eaten in a while. I took another bite and it came out even quicker than the last one.

It tasted rotten! It tasted like raw meat that had been sitting out for months. It was not food!

"What's up with you?"

"I can't stomach this. Maybe it's this piece. Mikasa let me try yours." I grabbed her loaf.

One bite, and it came out immediately again.

It was not the food. It was me.

"I need to go to the bathroom."

"Out of nowhere?"

"I haven't gone for four days now. It's urgent." I lied. I already let out the last remaining bit of food I had in me when I puked. I was starving.

"Ah..." Armin sighed.

I rushed outside and to the streets. There were stalls filled with food I would always fantasize about back in our town. But everything around me smelled rancid.

Skewers, candied apples, fish, the smell of these was making my stomach turn. Everyone else seemed normal. They were running around eating the same food joyfully.

So why was this happening to me? Was I going insane?

While I scavenged through the streets trying to find something that smelled edible, a sweet scent reached my nose. I traced the sent the best I could and-

The back alley!

My mouth started salivating as my stomach filled with roaring starvation. I ran towards the source of the scent.

It was like my body didn't belong to me anymore. I knocked into people along the way but my body picked itself up.

Barely a moment later I arrived at a back alley. And there it was, the source of the scent-

?!

A man was lying on the ground holding his bleeding stomach, and a girl was at the back holding a broken bottle. Her arms were shivering and her dress was torn.

"Help." The man reached his arm out after seeing me, but no matter how you looked at it he's the criminal here.

My morality and will to do something was impeded by this pang of hunger originating in my body.

Drool was dripping out of my mouth and I was doing my best to hold myself back.

"Do you want to eat him?" Some words suddenly resonated in the deep chasms of my mind as a warm embrace grabbed me from the back. I turned around and found a girl, the girl from the dream. "Eren, do you want to eat the man?"

Her words make me understand the sort of situation I was in. They described the previously indescribable feeling I had when I was gazing at the man.

Everything was all too sudden. Nothing made sense.

'I want to eat this man.'

WHY?

I crouched down and covered my head.

"Why do I want to eat him?!"

"Even if you ask me, I couldn't tell you the specifics. I am a part of your psyche after all. But I guess this is what you get when you try to turn a titan into a human."

"Titan into a human?! What the hell are you talking about?! Just make this feeling stop!"

"I can't, it's a titan's nature to want to eat humans. And as for converting a titan into a human, it was your father's experiment, no?"

"I'm not a titan!"

"You're right about that. You are more like someone tried to shove the powers of a titan into the body of a human. A human-titan? Nah... that sounds dull... how about a ghoul?"

"DON'T BULLSHIT ME, I'M A HUMAN!"

I was not a monster!

"Don't bullshit yourself. Ahem. How could you call yourself a human? I mean just look at yourself."

An intangible force pushed my head down towards a shard of glass. One black eye with a red point glowing in the middle. The skin beside my eye is riddled with radiating red streeks. This is me, but it was not me in the slightest.

"So, Eren... let me ask you this again... do you want to eat that man?"