"I don't! I don't want to eat this man!" I mustered up every bit of my strength before shouting. I wanted to eat him, I wanted to eat him so bad. But I won't.

"Then run." The white-haired translucent girl skipped in front of me. "Get as far away from humans as possible."

Do I believe her?

"Of course you do. Or do you want to eat someone in the middle of the city?"

"I will run!"

Her words brought a little sanity to me. But not enough for me to abandon my urges. The crime scene in front of me started to make sense.

The man was gripping on my pants.

Out of my sense of responsibility, I kicked him unconscious and ran away.

I ran and ran and ran. The scent of blood that drew me in was now replaced by the scent of humans. After I realised that I wanted to eat human flesh, not just blood, every human turned into a delicacy in my mind.

So I ran.

Every bump, every contact made me hurt with hunger.

So I ran.

I ran far out towards the wall and reached the orchard surrounding the interiors of Wall Rose. Even after a quarter-hour of running, I wasn't panting for my breath. But I felt like I could die of starvation any moment now.

I sat down next to a tree in this secluded area.

"You sure got yourself into trouble." The little girl appeared in front of me again. "There were so many better ways to encounter your urge to eat humans, but you had to come across a dying man."

Her words were taunts and I was curious.

"Who are you?"

"Ah, I didn't introduce myself yet. In terms of relation, I'd be something like your great-great-great-great-great-grandmother or something. But you don't need to know about me! What I want to know is how you're feeling right now."

"Why? Are you enjoying seeing me like this?" I scoffed. I had resigned. I was completely in the unknown.

"No. I'm just curious about my descendant is all."

"I'm feeling terrible. My brain is turning into mush from all this hunger."

"Well, that's expected. When you combine a titan's desire to eat humans, their bloodlust, with the human need to consume food for survival you get the need to consume humans as food for survival. It's a marvel to watch this happen, honestly."

"I'm not here for you to marvel at, though. Do you know how I can fix this?"

"The answer is simple... you eat humans." She shrugged as if she stated the obvious. Except it was not obvious at all.

"Are you insane? There's no way I can eat humans!"

Her mouth stayed shut for a bit.

"So are you planning to starve yourself?"

"If it means that I don't have to eat a human!" My stern eyes met her. Was this conviction?

"You almost lost control over yourself today."

"..."

"What if that happened when you were with those two friends of yours? Mikasa and Armin was it?"

Eh? What did she say?

Eating Armin and Mikasa?

The sight of that titan biting Mom's legs off invaded my mind. I had to-

I pressed my palm against my eyes to get the image out, but it didn't work.

Her words made me lose a little bit of my mind as reality sank in. I needed to eat humans now. I didn't want to eat humans. But if I didn't I would die. When I eat them was not under my control. My body was now that of a beast that would turn its brain off in order to survive.

Either out of anger or denial, I jumped on her to try and pin her down to the ground but my body passed right through hers. As expected, she wasn't real.

"This is why you can't trust kids. They are never rational."

"It's not just me, anyone in this situation would be like this! There's nothing I can do anymore. If I live without eating food, I'd start seeing Mikasa and Armin as prey. And I don't have what it takes to eat humans. Since I can't risk their life, should I just end my own? This is the only thing option I'm left with."

"Now... now... don't go jumping to conclusions. Your dying won't solve anything. What do you think would happen to those two after you die? Do you want to let a frail boy and a young girl like them alone in this world? If you die today, what happens to your mother?"

The situation just got muddier as time went on. As if I didn't have enough on my plate already!

"I don't know. I don't know anything anymore! I would do whatever I could to keep them alive!"

"So do everything you can. You can eat humans. Eat them. Then everyone would be safe."

A moment passed with me sniffling.

"I can't just kill people to satisfy my hunger." If I did, I'd be worse than I titan. At least they were insane, I was not.

"Who said anything about killing?"

"Huh?"

"There are already plenty of dead people within these walls."

"Don't tell me."

"And I'm pretty sure a fresh pile got here four days ago too."

::XXX::

I stumbled towards wall Rose holding my stomach which was contracting from gluttony.

As I got closer the smell that should've been that of rotting flesh was replaced with the enticing aroma of food. It smelt like the best food I had had.

Not too long after that, a mountain of corpses came into sight. The victims of the titan invasion.

I wanted to feel disgusted. I wanted to feel angry at myself for even thinking about desecrating the dead. But hunger was the only thing clouding my mind.

'Do I eat this? Can I eat this?' All were questions haunting me, but my rotten mind dived in.

"Feed on this, Eren Yaeger! BECOME A GHOUL!"

The last thread holding my sanity in check broke. The next thing I knew there was a bloodied hand in my mouth.

A momentary pang of disgust, but one that was soon overtaken by sheer euphoria.

After a point, I stopped eating to satiate my stomach, rather I was eating to satiate my bloodlust.

The last gulp ended with the liver of one human.

I could only eat half of the person.

"What have I done?" I got up and step back. With my body satisfied, all I felt was guilt.

"You ate her." The girl in my mind came out again.

"How could I do something as vile as-"

"To survive... It's not like you did anything wrong. They are dead anyway. With no one to respect their passing."

"But I still..."

"Eren. You aren't a human anymore. You did this. And you'll do this again. Your hunger won't go away, neither will these corpses. You just have to fight yourself for your own sake and for the sake of the people who depend on you." She tried to explain. But it just set in stone the fact that-

I was no longer human.

"As your progenitor, I really hope that you get through this." She patted her chest.

"Are you actually concerned about me?"

"Not as much as you'd think, but yes, a little." The little girl danced on the pile of corpses I was sitting on. "Now, clean yourself up and head back!"

I walked to the little stream nearby and dropped in. My body weighed down underwater as I continued to sink, but then water forced me up to float.

Blood trickled away from both my face and my body as the sight of the full moon entranced my eyes.

'What a beautiful night to give up my humanity on.'

Neither a titan nor a human. An amalgamation of both of their worst features. The bloodlust of a titan and gluttony of a human. That's what I was, a ghoul.

::XXX::

I swung the door open with as neutral an expression as I could muster.

"Eren, you're back. What took you so long?! Why're you so wet?"

"I got lost and fell in a pool of water."