My Job Is Watching A Man Trapped In A Room | ERERI

Chapter Ten

I spent the next five days watching Eren die. From the outside, just watching the monitor, it didn't seem that different than what I had been watching for the past three years. Eren slept, he watched T.V., he read, and he painted. But there were signs if you were looking for them.

He seemed tired and tense, and he had taken to sleeping more. And occasionally, just every once in a while, he would glance up at the camera - at me. It was then that I could see the fear and sadness in his eyes. I tried to not watch, but a part of me knew from the start I was going to. Maybe I would find some clue that they were lying about him being dead. Or Eren could give me some advice or warning about what I needed to do next.

I didn't know. What I did know is that I couldn't miss the chance to see him again. And despite knowing in my heart that he was dead and everything on the video had happened a long time ago, I still felt that by watching I was with him somehow. He had been taken away from everything he knew when he was barely grown, trapped for years just for being special. Experimented on. Treated like property. Kept from ever having friends or family or a life. And yet through all that, he was still beautiful. Not just on the outside, but on the inside too.

I had spent years watching him, getting to know him in a thousand tiny ways that so few people ever truly know each other. I had seen his kindness and grace in his actions, even when he was fighting against the people holding him. I had watched him when he woke up dat after day in his prison and never gave up. And I saw the beauty of his soul in his paintings, full of swirling colours and wonder. He was able to paint these things he saw with such care and love, despite living in a world that had abandoned him so completely.

Well I wasn't abandoning him. I would watch every bit of the video I could manage. Try to burn into my memory every frame of him I saw. Not for them and their stupid project. But for me. And for him. Eren wouldn't die alone. I watched nearly all of it, stopping only to eat quickly and use the bathroom until the last two days. I would ask the guards to pause it, but they would only shake their heads and say Smith said it had to play normally until it was finished.

By the fourth day, I was in a stupor. I had already dozed some the first three days, but when I woke up on the fourth day, I could tell a few hours had passed. There were two trays of food on the bed, one breakfast and another lunch. I looked back at the screen in a panic, worrying if I had missed something, but Eren seemed to be just waking up too. I noticed him putting his hand to his stomach as he got out of bed and felt my own stomach twist.

He was already hurting. Eren glanced at the camera and tried to smile before moving to set up a new canvas for painting. This was the second of three paintings he did in those last days. I found myself scanning the picture for some message or other clue. Eventually I found what might be one, though I didn't understand it either.

Eren must have come to understand they knew what he was doing with the paintings and didn't stop him, because these last three he set up much closer to the camera. I was still squinting and studying the painting closely when I realised the flipped up seats in the next row had brass number plates along the front edge of the seats. Though they were upside down from the viewpoint of the painting, the angle was good enough that once I noticed them I was able to read them.

2...43...26...89

I didn't understand any of it, but I committed it all to memory. Even that early on I could tell painting was taking a lot out him now, and like I had for so long, I found myself talking to him, telling him to go rest before I remembered his body in the next room. The second painting, the one he started after I woke up from falling asleep for a few hours, was stranger than the rest.

It looked like it was a room with curved walls made of tree roots, and in the centre of the room was a little table made out of the same stuff. Some of the roots around the room were a deep red, but other parts, including the table thing, looked burned and black.

I looked closer and saw that I could see a person's shadow over the table - hands holding some long oval-shaped bundle. I studied it for a long time, going over it again and again in my mind after he took it away. I couldn't make sense of it. Of any of it. Eren slept for a long time after that painting.

Then he got up on the fifth day, his last day, and immediately started working again. This time he was painting faster, and I saw him wince occasionally. When he was done, Eren picked up the painting and turned it toward the camera, giving me a small, tired smile as he was blocked from view.

It was looking out from the front porch of a house somewhere. It was out in the country, and the morning view of the yard and the land beyond were wonderful, but closer-up the painting was of two hands. Holding onto each other tightly, their interlocked fingers seemed to glow red and orange in the light of the rising sun.

I found myself crying as I looked at it. Part of it was because I didn't know what it meant, and I felt a growing sense of desperation at the thought that Eren's last works* might be wasted on me. Part was because I knew it had been five days, and I could sense that I was close to the end. To his end. But there was something more to it than all that too.

The last painting... even with everything else in my head and my heart pulling me down... gave me hope. Hope of what, I didn't know. But I started to think that maybe the only message Eren had for me in that last painting was that somehow, somewhere, everything would be okay. Outside the edge of the painting I could see motion in the room. People hurriedly coming in with some kind of medical equipment. And then the monitor went black.

"You've done well, Levi. Very, very well. For the last five days of the video, we had charted one thousand and forty-seven micro-variations in Eren's behaviour that we believed might correspond to your behaviour, your reactions, and your emotional states while watching the video. Like before, the two of you remained in sync as though you were in the same room. It really is remarkable."

I sat staring at Smith. I listened to what he said, but I didn't care. I just wanted it over. Whatever this was, I just wanted it over. Clearing his throat, he went on. "That's why we've decided to move the implant from Eren's body to your own. That's one of the many reasons we've preserved him so. The foreign body was still showing signs of life all this time, but just barely, and we were afraid to attempt removal. Our hope is that, given your connection to Eren, it will accept you. Perhaps even thrive in you more than it even did our boy." I was suddenly on my feet, and it was only the raising of Smith's gun that stopped me from attacking him.

"Don't you talk about him like that. Like any of you cared about him. I'll kill you." Smith's face darkened slightly as his lips thinned.

"No, you won't. But if idle threats make you feel better, go ahead. It will only make things harder, not easier." Feeling a stab of panicked fear, I sat back down.

"What is this thing you're going to put in me?" The man looked at me for several seconds before responding.

"I'm tempted not to tell you after your stupid - and frankly, hurtful - outburst. But I'll be the bigger person." Letting out a small sigh, he went on. "Levi, somewhere there is a tree. A very special tree. We suspect that it is the same tree that Eren painted for you that time, though we cannot say for sure, as we have never been able to find it. It is either hidden away very well or is is able to hide itself from those it wishes.

"In any case, we have the next best thing. An ancient clipping from the tree. Secured at great cost and sacrifice, and studied for a long time without much success. We have, however, in recent years been given... advice, that this clipping could be grown in the right soil. We thought that soil was Eren, but while it did develop further inside of him, he died before the necessary growth was finished." Leaning forward, he smiled at me.

"We have it on fairly good authority, however, that you might succeed where he failed."

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(17/11/2022)

-E_Jaeger12