Chasing Stars {Ereri/Riren}

13.5

[Video:「Shingeki No Kyojin」 Amazing AMV OST Eye Water ᴴᴰ by Shahem Zooldyc]

[Edit: I don't know where the video is, if it shows up on your screen, good, but if not, just paste it into YouTube and you're good to go, bro]

Sometimes, in the summer, it's so hot one can barely breathe. The air is fat with humidity, and the trees are still, barely moving, waiting for even the slightest breeze to run through its clawed grip. One can hardly breathe, so one can hardly move. Even blinking felt difficult.

Eren's eyes drooped lower and lower as he fell back against a fat oak with quiet leaves. He sat outside of his strangely deserted campus- the nearest community college in Garrett, Indiana. It was practically in the middle of nowhere, so maybe that explained the thick wall of heat appearing to block all noise.

Still, he leaned away from the scratchy bark and forced his eyes open and fatigue away. A feeling that he was being watched eventually caused drops of sweat to form and slide down Eren's temple. His eyes darted to and fro, and in his mind, the boy thought, Where is all this anxiety coming from? Eren grabbed ahold of the tree and glanced around it, his breathing starting to become shallow.

Instead of seeing the usual road and zooming cars, he saw a night over ten years ago. The sun was warm and bright on Eren's back, but somehow the scene he eyes upon looked dark and chilly. Directly across the brunet was a car, absolutely totaled. Off to the side were a few police cars, parked haphazardly on the side of a wide, blocked-off highway.

Two children, a boy and a girl, huddled behind one of the cars. In the spotlight of one of the police beams, a bearded man gestured frantically to a note-taking officer. Eren blanched as he took in an ambulance off the side. Its back doors were open, and a stretcher was being lifted into the car. On the stretcher...

Eren screamed as the hand of his dead mother slipped off the edge of her cot when it was bumped into. He shut his eyes and twisted away, slamming his back against the tree blindly. He gasped for breath, chest heaving as if he'd never taken in oxygen before. "Not again... Not this again," he hyperventilated.

When Eren had calmed down, he dropped his hands from the tree and opened his eyes slowly. Again, a deceitful trick. Eren's eyebrows furrowed at the grainy image around him.

It must have been a green-screen, because the campus was right there a second ago. Only, green-screens didn't work like that, did they? This must be some dream, Eren figured. No- a nightmare. "Yes," he breathed, "a horrible, horrible nightmare."

The image seemed to be of a sky. At the bottom were hints of a countryside with lush green fields of grass and no trees in sight. Two people, a man and woman with unfamiliar faces, dressed nicely as if for a wedding, smiled at Eren- at a camera?

Eren leaned in, mesmorized. An airplane crept into the upper corner, louder than he remembered them being when he would gaze at the sky as a little boy. Still grinning vaguely, the woman half turned around and looked up. She froze for a moment. Eren did the same.

And then she screamed.

As the brunet watched in stunned silence, the airplane took a nosedive, headed straight for the grassy area miles away from the couple. Eren's eyes widened. The crappy quality showed the plane swerving slowly.

Obviously, Eren reasoned. the plane was being hijacked or something happened to the pilot and co-pilot. But which one, and if the latter, what? And why was he seeing the images? Was this real?

And on top of it all; the horrible screeching sound from the lady filling Eren's ears. He staggered back until the reassuring touch of the oak stopped him. Right before the airplane made contact, a large object obscured Eren's view. The boy blinked and readjusted his view.

A paintbrush whisked orange across a white canvas over the video, then yellow and black. After a moment, Eren realized it was a painting of the airplane crash- and his hands were painting it.

What is this horror?! Eren thought frantically. Blood rushed in his ears, mimicking the crashing waves of a restless ocean. He begun to breathe heavily again, small whimpers escaping the brunet. Then, like Moses parted the Red Sea, a voice from behind pushed back the waves of panic and white noise.

"Chill, Eren."

Gasping, Eren twisted around, looking out of the side of his oak. Somehow, it was not the replay of Carla's ominous death. Before him was the hot afternoon at Eren's college- was he hallucinating then? "I-is this a dream?" Eren murmured, stepping forward.

The voice of those settling words crossed his arms. Levi, of all people (the same exact thoughts from when he gave Eren his textbooks and jacket, the boy recalled). He gazed up at Eren through dark locks of his undercut and sighed. "No, it's a fucking tea party. Why else would everything be so confusing?"

Eren ignored the snide remark. "Hey- you always run into me. Everywhere. Why?" When Levi smirked and refused to offer any explanation, Eren added hastily, "What are those videos? Memories?"

At that, Levi's lips drooped. "Tch. Ignorance is bliss, you stubborn brat." He turned to leave- where, Eren couldn't figure, for all that lay ahead where roads of busy cars, fields of grass, wide expanses of forest and probably drugs that made you see different things.

Eren sat up in bed at his campus dorm then, the cry, "Wait!" still on his lips. Groggy, he rubbed his eyes for a minute in confusion. So it was all a dream...

Before he could forget, Eren jumped to his laptop and flipped it on. Airplane crashes, he searched in the toolbar. Perhaps Google would explain some questions dream Levi couldn't. And after scrolling through Wikipedia, CNN, World News and countless others, Eren couldn't deny it any longer.

There weren't any recent airplane crashes.