Turning Page || Levi Ackerman

5: Olive Cloaks and Helpless Eyes

AUG 845

Levi leans back onto the door of Mae's house, as he sits on the steps waiting for her to return.

A fight brews in front of him. A scrawny man gets caught red-handed, trying to steal bread from the vendor, who sits with baskets of bread on the floor.

The passersby don't even bat an eye, as punches are thrown around. And the homeless men, lined on the street, peek through the blanket they sit huddled in. Watching how things unfold.

Earlier fights like these would only happen in the evacuation centers, but these days they happens on the streets as well.

The scrawny man is thrown to the ground with a jab to his stomach. He is weak and Levi can see his spine popping through the shirt as he tries to get up. His lanky arms shake in rage as he fists some soil in his hands. He lifts his rand up and throws it on the vendor's face.

It's a lousy technique quite really, but also effective if you're lucky.

The vendor staggers back, as the soil prickles in his eyes.

In an instant the homeless men spring to their feet. Gathering around the vendor, grabbing as much bread as possible. And he can only scream, as people rob him of his only hope of earning some money.

People stop, as they see the vendor stumbling around helpless and anguished, rubbing his watery eyes that burn in pain.

They swallow thickly, should they help him? Or steal a piece for themselves? Because god knows they need it.

Wall Rose is on the brink of destruction. The land has been milked dry, the wastelands are barren and infertile, hardly producing much crop for consumption.

People are starving on the streets, begging for a morsel of food. The price of which has increased so much that it has become unaffordable to the middle class as well. The taxes are skyrocketing and earning even a single penny has become equivalent to finding a drop of water in a dried up well.

And since the Operation to reclaim Wall Maria has come out, the chaos has only tripled in number.

The economy is at an all-time low, and people know that sending the evacuees outside will only make their lives easier.
But most families have someone or another, who once resided in Wall Maria. An Uncle, a friend, a sibling or just a friend, who they learned in school with.

And no matter what the benefits entail, they are still losing their loved ones. And how can they openly agree to lead their loved ones to their own death?

So they riot and cry, banging their fists against the doors of the civilian court. They plead against this unfair system, desperate to somehow get their relatives out of that horrid operation.

The Royal Government listens to them. They set a fee, a price to get a person out of those evacuation centers. A price to let them live as a regular citizen.

But Levi know it's all a pretense, just some shitty policy, to give people hope, but only until they break down and realize that it's all fucking impossible.

It's just like the surface citizenship fee in the underground, so high that you won't be able to make up for it even if you worked your entire life.

He sighs quietly, as he looks ahead. It's hell everywhere. Sometimes he wonders if it's even better than the Underground. Sure the sky looks bright and pretty. But in the end it's all the same. The same bullshit again and again.

The crowd in front of him gets bigger, as people push and pull, yank each other's hair. Fighting for the resolution that has settled in their mind.

Far towards the end of the street, he catches her silhouette.