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Naturally, Eren Jaeger was a cautious guy. He worked at his family’s convenience store for the summer, having nothing better to do when Armin and Mikasa weren’t around. Thieves weren’t easy to catch unless you suspected everyone. It was a black and white concept but it had stopped the local hooligans from messing with Eren Jaeger (really, Mikasa had been present all those times that twelve year olds tried to steal some soda cans and scared them out of the shop without his help.) The point was that Eren lived under one motto: trust no bitch or bastard or anyone, really.
So, naturally, when Jean Kirschtein first walked into Jaeger Convenience Store, sporting an undercut, plucked eyebrows (probably) and high top sport shoes, Eren Jaeger didn’t trust him (it was to be noted that Eren had never before in his life seen this guy and their neighbourhood was the type that wasn’t blessed/cursed with newcomers often so that made him double cautious.)
Eren watched Jean – who, at the time, was simply referred to as long faced guy with good choice in shoes but bad choice in hair dye – from behind the counter, ready to grab the nearby broom and hit him with it if he had to- not that he couldn’t handle this guy without a broom but Eren was shorter and it would be an unfair fight. Yeah, he’d definitely bring the broom.
Often, Eren had been told that he had a glare that could pierce through metal and would probably give him forehead wrinkles by the time he hit his thirties. In all honestly, he was surprised Jean hadn’t felt it sooner. He was stood by the fruits and vegetable aisle, half turned away from the cashier desk, one hand in the pocket of his varsity jacket (I bet this kid was into sports – maybe I should grab a slab of heavy meat, in case the broom isn’t enough) and the other on his chin, an image of thoughtfulness – or at least it would have been if his hip wasn’t sticking out awkwardly. Was he trying to draw attention to his khakis or something? Eren only glared harder.
And then, slowly, Jean turned to meet his eyes with his own narrowed ones. Eren had a hard time telling if he was deliberately glaring back at him or if Jean’s bad eyebrow job just made him look angry all the time. A mini Armin in his head snorted. You’re one to talk, Eren.
Go away, Armin.
So, here they were, Jean Kirschtein and Eren Jaeger, a couple of metres from each other, a cashier’s desk the only thing that separated them, initiating a stare contest that would probably induce a cold sweat. A minute passed. Neither was backing down. And then Jean moved, without taking his eyes off Eren’s, to reach down and grab a single head of lettuce.
Eren told himself later, when he was thinking about the complete bizarreness of the situation before he slept, that he would have said something had his mom not called out for him to unpack some boxes of cereal. Maybe because Jean had a glare to rival Eren’s but mostly because the long faced guy with good choice in shoes but bad choice in hair dye didn’t even buy the lettuce. When Eren resurfaced from the back of the shop, he found the lettuce propped on an aisle full of iPhone chargers and double A batteries.
Jean didn’t buy anything.
*
“Jean Kirschtein,” Armin had informed Eren, without even looking up from his book. Summer was both a good and a bad time for Armin. With his learning momentum thrown off, he spent most of it buried in a book to keep his mind going. Eren got tired just looking at him. “He’s been here for two or three days now. His mom sent him over with cookies. He seems nice.”
Nice people don’t just leave lettuces lying around, Eren wanted to hiss but then Armin looked at him from above the frame of his reading glasses and said sternly, “You’re doing the thing again, Eren.”
The thing was Eren’s glare. He couldn’t help it. Jean Kirschtein and his damn lettuce head.
When Eren only glared harder, Armin simply sighed and went back to reading Game of Thrones.
*
A couple of peaceful, lettuce-free days later, Jean Kirschtein was back. He wore black board shorts, a red plaid shirt and the same sneakers. Eren’s mom greeted him as she greeted everyone, with a bright smile that no one could ignore. Jean smiled back at her, without looking at Eren, who was kneeled half out of sight and tackling too many Pot Noodles. In theory, his face shape should not have cooperated with a smile but it did. Eren was half impressed, half jealous. Mikasa had once said that Eren had a smile that looked like he was ready to tear off heads with his teeth. He had inherited his mom’s glare but not her smile. Life was unfair.
Eren could hear Jean’s shoes squeak against the floor but the other boy wasn’t coming anywhere near him. Eren was relieved but curious. Who was Jean Kirschtein and what was his agenda with lettuce?
Of course, there was a high chance that Jean simply had no common courtesy and left lettuces willy-nilly. Maybe Jean’s mom had called asking for lettuce so she could make him bite size sandwiches and Jean had picked him a head up until he realised his mom making his packed lunches when he was in his last year of high school would reveal how lame he truly was. In panic, he dropped the lettuce at the nearest aisle and bolted. It was plausible.
Eren was so engrossed in his theory that he didn’t realise his pyramid of noodles was uneven. Eren’s mom, whose eyes were even more alert than Eren’s, called out his name in warning but it was too late. Eren lost his balance and fell back as his twenty-minute masterpiece came apart, raining pots upon him.
In midst of the beef/vegetable flavoured chaos, Eren heard the bell above the door ring, signalling either an arrival or departure of a customer. Eren hadn’t been quick enough and Jean had run out of the shop again but it was now confirmed: Jean Kirschtein was a lettuce fiend. This time, he left it in the boxed sweets section, cozied up with some Belgian milk chocolates.
Eren took one look at the lonely head of lettuce before dropped back to the ground with a groan. His world was black and white and he liked it that way. Shades of grey – or green – weren’t welcome.
“Eren, what are you doing?” Carla Jaeger asked, blinking at her son who was laid on the shop floor, surrounded by pots of noodles.
He had no idea what kind of prank Jean was playing but he wasn’t going to win.
*
Carla didn’t even bother to question why Eren had started grinning in the spot he had fallen. She left him to cackle to himself and blamed her mother-in-law for this side of her son. It was a shame Old Lady Jaeger hadn’t lived long enough to see her grandson follow in her footsteps to become an evil mastermind.
*
“It’s okay, Dad! I’ll open up!” Eren called out as he ran down the stairs, pushing past Grisha Jaeger, who blinked blearily behind glasses at his energetic son (before it hit him that it was his energetic son hurtling out of the house with a toast between his teeth to open up the shop and this was nothing short of a miracle because the Jaeger’s only child had to be physically pulled out of bed by his ear most school mornings.)
Eren had declined a trip to the beach with Mikasa and Armin to spend the day at the shop. They had offered to help but he had told them to go ahead without him. It was a nice day out, the sun shining and the birds singing. It was days like this where people opted for trips out of the neighbourhood. He faltered in his step towards the shop, wondering if Jean would be one of those people, but then steeled himself and strode on with purpose. Jean Kirschtein could show up today or tomorrow or a week later but Eren had to be ready.
He moved the lettuces from the shelf they normally resided to the back, hidden away besides dog biscuits and pink cat collars. When his mom found out, she would have his ear but it would be worth it to see Jean stumbling around the shop, lettuce-less.
For a moment, he was struck by how low his life had got. His summer entertainment was a lettuce war, over sun, sand and the sea. Jean Kirschtein was ruining his life.
*
Eren wiped his wet hands on his work apron as he came back into the shop through the store room door, after using the back bathroom. The day had passed without Jean showing up and his mom hadn’t even noticed the missing lettuces. She was staring intently at her clipboard but raised her head to call out, “You better call your dad. Mrs Kirschtein will need all her stuff delivered. Jean got quite a lot.”
“Jean?”
“He popped in while you were at the back.” Mrs Jaeger smiled absentmindedly. “Such a polite young man.”
Eren refused to lose his cool in the middle of the shop on a day he should have been enjoying at the beach. Instead, he looked around carefully. If Jean had been here then…
He put a head of lettuce on top of a banquet of flowers.
Not only had he ruined Eren’s life but he also ruined a perfectly good lettuce and killed some tulips in the process. Jean Kirschtein was a dangerous boy.
However, at this point, Eren wasn’t the only one who had noticed misplaced green veg.
“Eren…” He gulped. He didn’t even need to look at his mom to know she was giving him the glare he had inherited. “Why are there lettuces next to the dog food?”
*
Eren was laid back on Armin’s bedroom floor before he rolled over to his stomach to call out to his friend, who replied with his usual distant, “Hm?”
“You know how flowers have meanings?” Eren asked slowly.
“Uh-huh.”
He took a deep breath and then let it out with a question. “Is it the same with fruit?”
It took a moment but Armin’s face lit up, the way it did when he talked about Harry Potter. He was just happy to know things and then be asked to talk about things. The dynamic of Hogwarts houses was Armin’s speciality. “Actually, yes! You can see it through history, in literature and art, how apples were used to symbolise-”
Eren hated to rain on his parade, he really did, but he was running out of time and options. He couldn’t get Jean out of his head. Yesterday, he saw some lettuce in his kitchen and expected Jean to have carved a sinister message into the leaves like, ‘I know where you live. I put a tracking device in all your lettuces.’ “What about vegetables?”
“What?” Armin blinked behind his glasses.
“Vegetables. Do they have meanings too?”
Armin’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Eren, are you feeling okay?”
“Yes, fine,” he snapped, swatting away the hand that reached to check his forehead temperature. “Do lettuces mean something?”
*
Eventually, enough is enough – except enough isn’t enough before Eren can’t work in the shop without jumping every time the door chimes open and glaring at the lettuces opposite the till. It’s Saturday afternoon and most regulars show up at once, catching up on gossip as they pick out if they want pasta shells or spaghetti for dinner. In the rush hour, Eren is able to forget about his lettuce dilemma. It is both a blessing and a curse.
He waves goodbye to Reiner Braun, the last customer in the shop before closing time, and pulls off his employee apron, heading to the back of the shop to hang it up. He was even whistling cheerily before he saw it.
Somewhere, in between old ladies giggling and school boys running errands, Jean Kirschtein had managed to sneak into the shop, grab a lettuce and dump it in the arms of a teddy bear.
Eren approached the fluffy toy slowly, hands shaking as he reached to lift the awkwardly placed lettuce, to find that the brown bear’s arms originally held a red heart, proudly proclaiming, ‘be mine.’
In all his rage, Eren threw the vegetable in his hands into the bin, uncaring of what his parents would think when they took out the trash. All in all, he wasn’t surprised to find his mom’s search history including her asking Google if a phobia of lettuce could occur.
*
When Jean walked into the shop the next day, Eren was ready, lettuce in hand like he was holding a basketball. Jean didn’t even get a chance to open his mouth.
“If you so much as breathe in the vegies section,” Eren warned, “I’m going to through this lettuce at your head.”
“What the fuck?” Jean blurted out, glancing between Eren and the lettuce he held with the confusion Eren had probably worn for the past week.
“What? Is your head not a weird enough place to put lettuce?” Eren paused to emphasis the sarcasm then chuckled at his own joke. “Literal head of lettuce.”
Unbelievably, Jean looked at him like he was the weird one.
“Don’t look at me like that, you asshole! I have the lettuce in my hand so I have the power.”
“O-kay…”
The shop door opened to Eren’s mom bustling in. “Good morning, Jean! How- Eren… why are you holding a lettuce head?”
For a brief moment, Eren considered answering that he had conquered his fear of salad but instead groaned and pointed a finger hopelessly at the long faced boy, who had stomped into the shop with his pretty shoes and made Eren’s life a misery. “It’s him!”
“Huh?” Jean blinked.
Mrs Jaeger rolled her eyes. “Eren, don’t point. It’s rude.”
“No, you don’t understand! He’s been putting the lettuces in weird places and its just- I don’t- why would-”
“Eren,” Carla interrupted calmly but firmly, “I think you need to calm down.”
Instead, he did the exact opposite and shouted at Jean. “Just buy the damn lettuce already!”
“Okay.” When Eren didn’t do anything except blink pathetically at Jean, the boy looked at Eren’s mom and said, “I’ll buy all the lettuce you have in the shop.”
Eren almost dropped the lettuce he was holding in shock.
Carla opened her mouth before she looked between the two of them – at her son speechless and the new boy in the neighbourhood unwavering – and shook her head. Meanwhile, Eren and Jean stared each other down like they did on the first day they met. Jean was actually serious. He was planning to buy all the lettuces they had.
It took a lot of strength not to hurl the lettuce in Eren’s hands at Jean anyway. First he wouldn’t buy any and now he was going to buy them all. Jean Kirschtein was a joke or a test from God.
The next half an hour involved Carla ringing up the lettuces as Eren brought them out from the back. Jean paid for the lettuces without batting an eyelash. Eren’s mom looked between the two of them, a proud Kirschtein and a quietly raging Jaeger, but said nothing except, “I guess I’ll have my husband deliver them to your house, Jean.” Eren heard her murmur, “I hope your mom likes her salads,” but had no idea if Jean heard her too.
Regardless, he nodded in response but his eyes didn’t leave Eren’s. When his lips tilted up, Eren finally understood the expression on the new boy’s face. Smugness.
Gritting his teeth, Eren figured he would never have an opportunity as great as this and asked for a break before hurriedly letting himself out of the shop, knowing Jean would follow. The bastard even had a bounce in his step. Eren didn’t wait for him as he charged down the street, not wanting to be near the shop when he called Jean every bad word under the sun.
But first things first- “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Jean skidded to a stop, his grin dropping at Eren’s murderous expression. For a moment, Eren almost felt bad but then he remembered Jean bought thirty-seven heads of lettuce.
As if to prove Eren’s reasoning, Jean replied with, “Nothing?”
No one in his life, ever, had rendered Eren speechless quite like Jean Kirschtein. “Nothing?”
Jean appeared to think about it but Eren doubted her had the brain cells for that. When he grins arrogantly, Eren confirms he wasn’t wrong. Jean was an idiot. Only an idiot would reply with, “Yeah, nothing. I’m perfect.”
Groaning, Eren shielded Jean from his view with his hands to his face. At some point, his shoulders began shaking, the familiar feeling of uncontrollable rage finding home. Who would have thought lettuces could make someone so angry?
Eren heard Jean step closer before calling out a concerned, “Hey, are you okay?”
Jean got his reply when Eren removed his hands from his face to scream. “YOU BOUGHT FIFTY DOLLARS WORTH OF LETTUCE. OF COURSE I’M NOT OKAY. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”
The words hung in the air for a long time. Jean stood across from him, blinking, before he said, “Didn’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
“I just asked you out.”
Eren almost fell over with shock. “In what language?”
Jean scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Romance, I guess?”
“HOW THE HELL ARE LETTUCES ROMANTIC?”
Jean sighed and Eren wondered how he’d survive seeing this guy at school every day. “Remember the first day we met? I put the lettuce next to the phone stuff. It meant I wanted your number.”
“You put it next to a charger. If we’re talking like that then it could mean you want to charge me for attempted murder.”
“But you haven’t-”
Eren’s voice was dark when he snapped, “Not yet, I haven’t.”
Finally, Jean was looking ruffled. He flushed as he angrily said, “Okay, maybe that one wasn’t so obvious. But the next one was next to the chocolates. Chocolates are romantic.”
“Chocolates are food!”
“So is lettuce!”
“What’s your point?” Eren shouted.
Jean threw his hands in frustration. “The flowers, then. There is no way you can deny that flowers are a romantic gift.”
“You ruined a perfectly good lettuce that day. Also you owe me five dollars for those tulips you crushed.”
“The ‘be mine’ teddy bear then.” Jean sounded impatient now. “I mean, it was practically spelt out for you, dumbass.”
“You replaced the ‘be mine’ message with a lettuce. The only thing spelt out was the fact that you’re a complete fucking weirdo.”
Again, Jean pulled a face that made Eren feel guilty. But only a little. He sighed, slumping against the wall he was leaning on, before asking, “Why lettuce?”
Jean shrugged “It was the first thing I picked up when we looked at each other. It was meant to be symbolic.”
“It’s lettuce.”
“I know,” Jean said dryly. “I’ve been throwing it at you for a week.”
“Yeah, well, normal people tend to throw themselves at people they’re into.”
“Well, you know now.” Jean brightened up instantly, suddenly looking very pleased with himself.
Eren didn’t trust the guy. Not one bit. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on!” The taller boy rolls his eyes, even going as far to flick his hair. Eren resisted the urge to hit him by imagining how satisfying it would be to bust his nose with one of his precious romantic lettuces. “I bought a shop full of lettuce for you. You have to go out with me now.”
Eren had been speechless a lot of times because of Jean but this one was truly comical. Part of him wondered if this whole lettuce fiasco was simply a long bad dream. Honestly, he never wanted to see another lettuce head for as long as he lived.
Instead of revealing his incapability of answering, Eren pushed himself off the wall and began walking back to the shop.
Of course, a guy who bought Eren’s weekly wages worth of green stuff to ask someone out wasn’t going to give up that easy. “Hey! So what do you say?”
Eren didn’t reply until he got to the door of the shop. “So you can call our first kid Lettuce? Ha. Choke on it, Kirschtein.”
*
Jean’s mom was really mad about the thirty seven lettuces so the rest of the summer was spent thinking of creative ways to get rid of them. On the last week, Eren set up a Youtube channel under the username, ‘lettucerejoice,’ and videoed Jean eating lettuce until he puked.
Eren didn’t help him eat. He wasn’t that nice of a boyfriend.