The letters came in an elegant, red envelope that was closed with a beautifully crafted wax seal. Imprinted in the wax was an equally beautiful cursive letter "S". He thought it looked like something a prince from a far away kingdom would send as an invitation to a fancy ball that took place in his far away castle. Of course, that couldn't be right, because why would Eren ever receive such an invitation? It's not like he had many friends, especially ones that could ever be held in such a high regard.

"There it is again," he mumbled, exasperated.

"What was that?" His mom. "You know what I've told you about mumbling."

Yes, he did know, because no matter how many times she made him commit it to memory, he did it anyways and that earned him yet another reminder. Don't mumble.

He could already see the outline of the red envelope in the stack of mail his mother had just brought in from outside. Again. It was like a nightmare that had gone wrong and accidentally leaked into the real world. Maybe he was schizophrenic. No one else could see these letters after all.

"Nothing, mom. I just . . . noticed that they've sent us the same advertisement for the second day in the row. What a waste of oil, am I right?" he joked.

These letters had begun to press down upon his mood. It seemed he was never happy these days. Even worse, there was a sense that he was supposed to get back to something—something important. There was something he had to do but he just couldn't remember it. It was a constant nagging in the back of his skull.

Have you ever thought of something but when you went to say it, you found that you couldn't remember what it was? That's what this felt like but on a grander scale. It wasn't just once, it was all the time everyday. It wears down on a soul. Eren felt older than his mother at the age of fifteen. Somehow wiser with the weight of this secret on his shoulders. It wasn't pleasant.

"Hey, are you alright?" his mother suddenly asked. He looked up from the mail that was messily splayed across the kitchen table to find her eyebrows pushed up in concern. Oh, right, he thought. I can't let her know.

He forced a smile that he was sure his mom's beady eyes could see through. "I'm fine!" He attempted a slight chuckle but it ended up sounding somewhat like a cough.

Eren remembered seeing the same type of expression before—very recently, in fact—when he'd done the unthinkable and actually asked her if she could see them, too. The prospect of that now seems silly, but back then he was just a newbie and didn't know the consequences. He has to remind himself of that often.

"What do you mean?" she'd asked, laughing a little. "There's no fancy red envelope."

"What? But . . . it's laying right there!" he'd protested.

"There's nothing there!"

"Yes there is! It's big and red with a fancy seal!"

That time, his mother had chuckled and waived it off with an "If you say so," before returning to her laptop, but Eren insisted. This wasn't a joke to him. If he was legitimately seeing things, then he was truly, utterly scared. Thus, he was insistent and continued to ask his mom the same question. After the third time, she'd said, "The joke stopped being funny last week."

He'd stopped then, afraid that her next answer might be something along the lines of sending him to get psychiatric help. Yes, doctors are there for that exact reason, but he was doing fine otherwise despite a small bout of depression. On some level, however, the prospect was appealing because once they'd see the results that he was mentally sound, perhaps people would start to believe him. The only thing that stopped him was that the other possibility was worse.

He hadn't just showed his mom; he showed it to his teachers as well since they never lied to him—not even to make him slightly happier. They had the same reaction.

Maybe he was crazy. The stress of that seemed to be getting to him these days and only his mom noticed. He had to be honest with himself at some point—he sometimes skipped school because depression hit him like a brick in the forehead and he didn't want to get up, do anything, see anyone. Those were the truly awful times. He wished things like depression would just go away, but what he really wanted was for the letters to stop coming. Even better, he wanted somebody else to be able to see them.

He stopped hoping. He never bothered to ask anyone anymore, sure that if he did it too often people would spread rumors that he really did have something wrong with him.

"Eren?"

What?

"Oh, yeah, mom?" Back to the present. He's in the kitchen with his mom as she makes something that smells really good. This is where he is, not the past.

"Are you sure you're okay? If you're not, just tell me."

"Jesus, yes! I'm okay!" he snapped at her.

This kind of behavior from him was normal.

"Eren," she began, "you can get upset at me for a lot of things, but don't ever get upset with me for caring about you!"

He'd hurt her feelings. Everyday she felt like she was losing contact with her son—he was drifting and soon he'd be too far along for her to catch—and the snapping didn't help her worried mind.

Eren hung his head in what seemed to be shame. "Sorry."

He left the room solemnly before turning to his right and slumping up the stairs. His socked feet shuffled against the fluffiness of the carpet and calmed him slightly. After all, who doesn't love fluffy carpets?

He'd have to make it up to his mother later. Eren had really meant his apology and he hoped she knew it. He thought she probably did. She'd really only ever gotten mad with him when he'd told her he wanted to join the military when he was old enough. She'd yelled at him: "You're too young to make such big decisions!"

Of course Eren had understood his mother's concerns, but at the same time he thought that it was his own life and he had a right to make his own decisions. Just because he wasn't eighteen didn't mean he didn't know what he was doing. He hated that about adults—they always think kids don't know anything, yet he already had his life figured out by the time he was ten.

Eren himself had always had large ambitions and people realized very quickly after meeting him that once Eren Jaeger set his mind to something, he would do it. He contained such a sense of tenacity that it would stun people. Their remarks became generic: "You're still working on that?" "When are you gonna give that dream up?" "Haven't you realized that it's not going to happen?"

Eren answered them all the same with message. "Apparently I haven't realized that and at this point if it hasn't happened, then I don't think it's true." It was an admirable quality to most while others found it slightly annoying.

Eren had finally reach his white, wooden door when a splitting migraine ripped through his system, causing him to lurch forward. There was a pounding in his head and suddenly he seemed very dizzy. He sucked in quickly through his teeth in pain.

"Am I allowed to ask if you're okay?" he heard his mom call up.

"Gah!" he croaked. "Migraine!"

"Oh, sorry." His mom went back to cooking dinner.

Eren stumbled into his room, the door accidentally slamming against the wall. His mom hated it when he did that—she said it caused holes (which it did but Eren could care less about the condition of the walls right then). He knew the layout of his room well from spending a considerable amount of time in it and he knew just the right way to fall so he'd plop comfortably down on his bed. Noise hurt. Light hurt. He felt like he might vomit.

Then there was that feeling—that feeling of on the brink of remembering something. It was much stronger now. What was it, what was it, what was it?! What did he have to do?

Then it stopped. The  pain stopped, the feeling stopped, and for the first time in longer than he'd like to admit, Eren felt . . . at peace. He decided he liked this feeling—this calm after a storm. Was this the rainbow after the hurricane? Would this awful feeling finally stop?

Apparently not because just a few moments after that, the feeling came back. The nagging in the back of his skull.

That migraine had been the worst that'd happened so far. Ever since the letters—those damned letters—had starting appearing, they'd  become more frequent and more painful. It felt like someone was taking a hammer to his head, they were that bad.

A tap, tap and a fluttering of wings at his window caused him to turn his head and look over at a bird—a chickadee it seemed—that had . . . an envelope in its beak? Not just any envelope, but an elegant red one with a wax seal imprinted with an S.

This wasn't right. A letter had never come unexpected before.

Eren wondered what would happen if he just didn't open the window and ignored the letter altogether? Would they stop coming? The letters were ruining any semblance of peace and balance he had in his life and he hated them. But there was a stronger reason—a reason he couldn't quite put his finger on. He was angry with them because they have no right to ruin this . . . this life he had! It's not their place.

Was he seriously upset at inanimate objects? No, he was upset with the person behind the letters. Who were they? What were their motives? The content of the letters was an entirely different conversation. As far as Eren was concerned, they were just thoughtless babble . . . but were they? Were they really? He didn't want to believe them, he really didn't, but he also couldn't deny the semblance of truth whenever S spoke of that urge, that urge he had to do something. It was getting so annoying and stressful.

He was constantly tapping on things, as if tapping was what he really needed to do. He all of sudden had an overwhelming amount of nervous energy with no way to channel it. The tapping helped, but he knew in the end that the only way to make the feeling go away was to finally figure out what he was missing. He was missing something . . . someone? Who was he missing? What was he missing?

All this adversity to the turn of events caused him to take notice of the bird with the envelope in its beak, stand up, walk over to the window, and promptly punch it with all his might, effectively  scaring away the bird and creating a small crack in the otherwise smooth glass.

His first reaction was: Shit, that hurt!

His second reaction was: Maybe I could cover that crack with . . . I don't know . . . Does glass filler exist? I think I've seen commercials for things that fix cracks in your windshield, but would that work on windows?

And finally his third was: Hopefully that bird won't come back.

He felt a strange sense of accomplishment after he'd scared the bird off like, "Yes! Take that, S!" With that taken care of, he was left with an empty room and nothing to do. That familiar feeling of pressure at the back of his head started again—stress.

The rush of adrenaline he'd gotten wore off almost instantly and he fell tiredly atop his comforter and snuggled with the blanket that happened to be lying there. His sheets were of a plain design—the calm colors of green and blue stripes—and they were his favorite he'd ever had. Eren willed the throbbing in his head to go away.  Go away, go away, go away . . . please? His begging didn't work and the ache remained.

He thought of happier, less stressful times—times where his father and mother were younger and richer and didn't work so much and they spent more time together. He thought of one scene in particular from his childhood. They—his mom and himself—were walking along a park path in the woods. It was cold out, perhaps sometimes in January, and the freezing temperatures had finally reached the small digits of Eren's hands. He was equipped with only cloth mittens and a small, spring jacket. Eren's mother knew full well that the dress wasn't exactly appropriate, but then again, she'd always been about "roughing it" and "toughening up" because she apparently thought it built character.

Eren from the past held his small, freezing hands—he had to've been only five-years-old—before whining, "Mommy, my hands are cold!"

His mom looked down at him and smiled as she shivered. "I know but when we catch up with your dad, I'm sure we'll be able to warm them up."

His dad had gone ahead of them with the excuse that he was planning some special surprise they couldn't see yet. He never did things like this so while his mom had been suspicious, she went along with it.

Fast forward a few minutes when Eren complained again and he remembered very clearly her bending down and cupping his hands in her own before bringing them up to her mouth. She breathed into them and rubbed them together. "Wow your hands really are cold," she'd remarked, shivering. "Sorry, Eren. We probably should've dressed you better and given you your winter gloves."

"Yeah," Eren agreed. "We should've."

"Okay, let's hurry up before we freeze to death! Ready to run? There might not be snow on the ground but it could be icy so be careful, okay?"

"Okay, mommy."

And they ran. They ran all the way to an open field where their eyes were greeted with a truly remarkable sight—his father with a picnic blanket spread on the cold, ground and a variety of picnic foods splayed out neatly before him.

"Grisha!" his mom exclaimed loudly.

"Carla!" his father greeted, smiling widely with his cheeks rosy and pink from the cold. "Surprise!"

The plan was for them apparently to have a picnic in January which was even more absurd considering they lived in Michigan. His dad always had been on the odd side, if people were honest. Eren's mom was reluctant to go through with these plans—the cold was already causing all of them discomfort—but she acquiesced and tried to have a picnic with her son and husband. Eren can still remember what his dad looked like—a rosy red tint to his cheeks, shivering, yet smiling wider than he can ever remember him smiling.

Of course, they couldn't survive the cold forever. Barely ten minutes into the impromptu picnic, both his mom and dad packed it up and walked Eren back to the car. Eren remembered feeling a bit disappointed that their family picnic had been cut short until he noticed that they weren't actually leaving. The back door of their van was lifted up and the chairs pushed forward leaving a large space for them to set things back up. They had a picnic in the back of their van and it was admittedly the fondest memory Eren held of his parents.

Eren was broken out of his memories by a noise coming from his computer. He groggily opened his eyes. The computer screen was lit up and open to his email. The page was refreshing . . .

His email exploded with over a thousand new messages, the notification noise he'd sent filling up the entire room.

DING

DING

DING

DING

DING

DING

DING

Then his computer crashed.

Eren shot out of bed and ran over to the desktop, trying fruitlessly to get it to work again. He just kept getting the same annoying, blue screen.

"Crap," he muttered. How was he supposed to explain this? Was this one of those scams? Was all his personal information gonna be stolen? He was only fifteen; what could they have possibly gained? Nothing important, so nothing to worry about besides the fact he couldn't use his computer now. Maybe the problem would fix itself if he waited.

"Eren!" That was his mom. "Dinner's ready!"

"Coming!"

The air was heavy with the scent of freshly baked, buttery roles and he could even taste it on his tongue, already salivating at the thought. To put it bluntly, his mother could cook.

Not too soon after she'd called him, he found himself slumping back down the stairs and sitting at the kitchen table, a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup and biscuits in front of him. Just as he was about to lift the spoon to his mouth, he took a last glance at his soup and saw something definitely out of the ordinary.

There was a freaking red envelope in his soup bowl. In his soup bowl.

"Hey, mom," he began before he remembered she couldn't see these. "Never mind. Soup's good, by the way."

"Thank you very much," and she went on with preparing her own plate, completely oblivious to the monstrosity in his bowl.

Slowly, he pulled the letter out of the liquid and placed it down on the table where it dripped soup everywhere.

"Eren, if the soup's going to spill out of your spoon, eat over the bowl, please," his mom reprimanded. Was that what it looked like he was doing?

"Uh, sorry."

Carefully, he broke the wax seal and pulled out the letter hidden in the envelope.

Dear Eren Jaeger,

Hello. I'm not happy with you and that is something you don't want to happen. From this point on, it's imperative that you take extra care with my letters. We've no time for schedules anymore. The only point of that was to give you the illusion that you had at least a little bit of control over your life.

If you keep doing this, the consequences will be far worse than just your computer crashing.

There's someone I'd like you to meet. I can't tell you her name; that'd be too quick of a step forward. If you want these letters to stop and your life to return to normal, I would follow my directions.

Directions are in the letter that the bird dropped after you scared it off.

Better hurry. Daylight's fading fast.

Your Friend,
S

Eren didn't appreciate being threatened and in the face of a much larger force, instead of being intimidated, he was angry and ready for a fight. His frustration with this mysterious person was rising. What made it even worse was that he could do nothing back to him. Eren was completely powerless under the watchful eye of this anonymous being.

He hadn't even figured out their intentions yet. Were they good? Were they bad? He had no clue. It seemed as if he were just being manipulated to do whatever S told him to. If it was for Eren's benefit or not, at this point he couldn't really tell. But what he did know was that he was being threatened and him being powerless, had to go along with it. He had no other choice.

Conversation was sparse during dinner. Neither of them had anything really interesting to talk about so for most of it they made insignificant small talk. Eren eventually asked something.

"Hey, mom, . . . when's dad coming home? Isn't he supposed to be back tonight?" Eren already had an answer in his mind, but he retained a slight hope that perhaps things would be different today.

The tension in the air was palpable.

"Well, his airplane landed. He's just . . . with some friends before he comes home. He'll be back soon."

Eren had always been under the impression that his mother and father loved each other, but recently things seemed to be rocky. His father and mother didn't spend lots of time together these days since his dad's work caused him to move around a lot. They were making quite a bit of money from his job, but was it really worth it if they never got to see each other? The last time Eren and his dad had done something—just the two of them—had been maybe two years ago and even that had only been clothes shopping (something Eren insisted he do without his mother).

Oh well, Eren thought solemnly. We don't need him here anyways.

Afterwards, Eren did the dishes and waited until his mom went up to her room. Then, he bolted outside and around the house. He stopped underneath his bedroom window and looked around. Perhaps it would've been too good to be true had the letter just been directly beneath his window and if it were there, Eren's positive he would've seen it. After all, how do you not see a bright red envelope when everything around you is a muted gray?

S had been right—there wasn't much daylight left. The sun had already set and now they were in the odd half-light between night and day. Eren searched until there was no light left to see by and the cold really set into his fingers. The weather was always sketchy in Michigan so despite it being summer vacation, it still got freezing at night. He would've just taken his phone out and use its flashlight once it had gotten too dark, but his mother had called him inside already. He thought that was an especially stupid reason to be pulled away from finding this envelope, but getting grounded certainly wouldn't have helped him in this situation. He moped back inside, feeling defeated and exhausted.

What he saw lying on his pillow once he made it to his room made him extremely pissed off.

It was the red envelope except this time it had a sticky not on it. The sticky note read:

Did you not read the back of the letter? It said I was just kidding! It's been here the whole time.

He probably would've cussed S out had the walls been soundproof.

Hastily, Eren ripped open the letter.

Dear Eren Jaeger,

Hello. You probably didn't read the back of the previous letter and now you're upset. Well done. At least you listened and actually did what you're told for once.

But you're looking for directions, aren't you.

All I'll say is this:

Why don't you go grocery shopping at around . . . oh, let's say 3 o'clock in the afternoon? I already know tomorrow works for you.

The girl you're looking for will look sad.

Your Friend,
S