Freefall | Eren x OC

Chapter 69: The Price of Fame

You walk through the streets of Liberio as a light snow falls from the sky to melt on the sidewalks and road. You turn your head up and let the flakes fall on your face, smiling as you enjoy the small patches of cold on your warm skin. If there's one thing you're looking forward to, it's experiencing the season change between a full winter and spring, something you don't experience on the always mildly temperate Paradis Island.

You hail a cab and get in, asking the driver to take you to one of Liberio's shopping districts, one where you can find gaming systems. The driver drives off and makes a move to turn down the street of the hotel. 

"Ahh you don't want to go down there," you laugh lightly. "There's a crowd of people on the road for some band."

"Oh god, I forgot about that," the cabbie grumbles, "I had to put an extra 15 minutes on my route this morning cause the detour was so backed up,"

"Gotta love it," you say as your eyes trail the crowd down the road as you drive past. "These guys come in from outta town and everyone drops everything to see them."

"Tell me about it," the cabbie agrees, "my teenage daughter's down there."

"Oh, is she a fan?"

"Ohh yeah, she's been following those guys since she saw them on Youtube. Got a big crush on one of the guys? Alan Jagger? Some dumb name like that." You nod slowly and grin. 

"Of course she does..." you say.

"What was that?"

"Oh nothing," you laugh lightly, "it's just I heard he's the popular one." 

The cabbie gruffly hums in agreement. He lets you off at a shopping district and you spend the next few hours window shopping between grabbing a gift for Mikasa, a pair of kickboxing gloves and a gift for Zeke, a baseball signed by the Marleyan Might, one of his favorite teams. You send off Zeke's gift at a post office, paying a high cost to have it shipped to his address by tomorrow night. You also have to grab a gift for Reiner, the recipient of your Secret Santa gift. You sigh as you decide to think over what to get him and start shopping for Eren, not exactly your favorite person on the planet right now.

You make your way over to a gaming store and pick him up a new Nintendo Switch Lite that he's been making noise about for weeks as well as a Super Smash Brothers game. You also grab him some noise cancelling headphones for the road. Finally you head into a bookstore and pick up a book on Rolling Stone's 500 Best Albums for him. Your eye catches a comedy book called The Hopeless Romantic's Guide to Modern Dating. You grin and buy it as well.

Finally, you stop by an erotic sex shop, walking in with your bags, sighing as you do. You greet and bow to a salesclerk and awkwardly shuffle your bags around as you try to grab your phone. 

"Hello, I've been asked to get this for Christmas. Do you have something like this?" you ask as you show the clerk your phone screen. She grins and nods and walks you over to the appropriate section.

You sigh as you're leave the shop, black bag in hand and weighed down by all your other bags. You've done everything you could for Christmas. No one can tell you you're not a great gift giver for the people you care about.

You shuffle the bags awkwardly through the door of a small sandwich shop and order a small minestrone soup and biscuits. You sigh as you settle into your table and quietly stir the spoon around your soup and sip on it. You take small bites from your biscuit, not feeling terribly hungry despite not eating since breakfast. Your phone vibrates with a message from Mikasa.

MIKASA

Hey lady, Eren said u had 2 take off to Xmas shop and u 2 had a fight. Everything ok?