▸ Column · Survey Corps garrison life and the underground city of Paradis
LEVI ACKERMAN replies.
Replied to by Levi Ackerman, with a rebuttal from Eren Yeager.
The letter
I've been with Luca for eight months, and the lies started small — he claimed he'd already eaten when I found mess-hall rations stashed in his bunk, said he was on watch rotation when I knew his name wasn't on the board. Last week I found out he'd told me he was stuck on a supply run the same afternoon his brother posted from a unit gathering I was never mentioned. None of it is worth filing a report over, which is exactly what unsettles me. He lies when the truth would cost him nothing. I've started verifying everything he tells me and I hate who I'm becoming. Is a pattern of small, pointless lies real cause to end things, or am I treating a bad habit like a court-martial offense?
Levi Ackerman replies
The question isn't whether the lies are big enough. That's the wrong question, and if you were being honest with yourself, you'd already know it.
I came up from the underground. You learn fast down there which people you can put your back to. It's never the big thing that tells you — it's the small stuff. Who ate your rations and swore they didn't. Who said they'd covered your watch and hadn't been there. The small lie costs nothing to tell and nothing to catch, so people get sloppy. And then you find out what they're actually made of when the cost goes up.
A person who lies when there's nothing to protect will lie harder when there is something. That's not a quirk. That's the preview.
Here's the question you're actually circling: you're already doing the math. Already checking everything twice. Already turning into someone you don't like. So stop asking whether the pattern's "big enough" and ask which regret fits you. The version who stayed and kept checking everything — can you carry that? The version who walked — can you carry that? Pick the one that fits and commit to it completely. Half a decision just means you're miserable in both directions at once.
I've trusted people with my life in places worse than a relationship. The one quality that mattered above everything else was that I never had to wonder where they were.
— Levi Ackerman
Eren Yeager weighs in
Levi's asking you to pick your regret like you haven't already. Look at what you wrote: every lie catalogued, everything verified twice, already becoming someone you don't recognize. That's not indecision. That's someone who answered and is still waiting for permission to believe themselves.
The cage isn't him. The cage is staying past the moment you already know. I kept moving past that moment my whole life — that part I'd do again. What I let the moving turn me into is something else, and I won't ask you to follow it that far.
You're not treating a bad habit like a court-martial offense. You're treating it like you need a tribunal to confirm what you already convicted yourself.
— Eren Yeager
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