roses. | eren x levi

roses. | seventy-five

alena cheered when i stepped into her department.

"hello, eren! how has your week been?"

action-packed, to say the least.

"oh? would you like to talk about it?"

of course, i would, alena. why else would i be sitting down here if i wasn't ready to spill all my problems?

she grinned. "it's common courtesy, eren."

picking up my pencil, i informed her of the many things i had discovered. halfway through drafting it, however, she sighed.

"if it's about mr. rose again, i think you should stop worrying about it. mr. rose is mr. rose and eren is eren. they do not intertwine, so please stop taking their problems and hoisting them on your shoulders if they are not doing the same."

i'm afraid i can't do that, alena. it's all in the curse of unrequited love.

she groaned and shook her head.

"anyway, did you ask the thing i requested for you to do? it's fine if you didn't, but i think it would be great if you could stop calling the man mr. rose."

i would open my mouth to gasp, but the vines kept it stringently in place. i exhaled.

i totally forgot, alena. i'm sorry.

"no, no, of course not! there's no need to apologize, it's your life after all. take your time. it was wrong of me to get so unprofessional and ask you to do something like that."

isn't it your job to get unprofessional to me? i wouldn't angrily rant to someone who's choked up in their fancy lettering all the time.

"eren, is the only reason you're so hysterically angry about this is the fact that you saw yourself in erwin smith? perhaps, you've been imagining yourself to be erwin smith, in some way?"

alena torres is an intelligent woman, but for the first time, she was incorrect.

how could i ever envision myself to be erwin smith, when the most essential ingredient of him was missing from my individuality? how could i ever even be associated with erwin smith, when i did not cherish tulips?

in some esoteric scheme of probity that i would never admit to alena torres, the feasibility of a connection with mr. rose would never become an actuality. i had experienced all too well the discrepancy linking a tulip and a rose.