The street fights Gabi imagined never actually happened.
Although the pro-war faction and the pro-peace faction could not agree on strategic goals, they all understood one reality clearly: since they were being oppressed together, turning their blades on each other was not the best choice right now. If their infighting led to the total extinction of their people, then the Marleyans outside the walls would be laughing at them.
This wasn't some conclusion they had only reached now.
They had been divided before.
When people are oppressed, when they need somewhere to vent, two factions will inevitably form—one that favors war, and one that favors peace.
On the surface, the pro-war and pro-peace sides seemed full of contradictions.
But in truth, it was a show put on for the Marleyans outside.
If the Eldians looked like they were wholeheartedly resisting, and they couldn't "handle it" themselves, then Marley would send an even harsher suppression force.
And when that happened, everyone would be treated without distinction—old people, children, all harmed together.
That was a loss that wasn't worth it.
So they fought publicly, but privately it was only performance—acting.
The only ones who took it seriously were the people who talked big, but didn't actually dare to step into a real fight.
They didn't even know why they were fighting. They only knew they must not anger the Marleyans.
Most of those people existed in the pro-peace faction.
And because they were pro-peace, their leaders would protect them from being harassed by the pro-war side.
The pro-war leaders understood too: the "fight" was just theater. They didn't truly intend to go all out. They were simply trying to preserve their people—giving the young a place to vent their hot blood so it wouldn't fester under Marley's oppression, with nowhere to go, until crime rates spiked and the harm fell on their own.
But Gabi didn't know any of this.
On the surface, she had received Marley's militarized training—but in reality, she knew very little about international politics or the true history of the world.
In other words, her cultural-education scores weren't even half of what they had been in Roger's era.
That wasn't because she lacked the ability to learn.
It was because Marley had watched Roger defect—taking a Titan with him and fleeing Marley—and decided that the training of warrior candidates had to be tightened.
They could not let them learn truer information.
They could not let them be influenced by the world.
In simpler terms: they could not allow hatred to take root in their hearts.
They could not allow them to understand that the object of their hatred was the Marleyan military.
Instead, they had to make them hate themselves—make them feel guilty.
So Marley changed its training policy.
After Roger left, the待遇 of the warrior candidates became better than the待遇 of anyone inside the Walls.
And because they were warrior candidates, their families received the same privileges.
That way, in their surroundings—in the environment they lived in—everyone was "favored."
No discrimination.
No bias.
Only by "protecting" Eldians could Marley reduce Eldian hatred toward them.
On the surface, it looked friendly.
In reality, it was boiling a frog in warm water.
Marley knew only Eldians could inherit Titans—so treating these "vessels" well was treating themselves well.
They'd been drooling over frog meat for a long time.
It was like raising livestock inside a pen.
If you tell them outright, "You are livestock. You have no rights. You were born to be slaughtered," then they will resist violently, resist desperately, and in their hearts they will hate you, curse you, poison you with their eyes.
But if you tell them, "If you want to run, go ahead. But I have to warn you—the outside is dangerous. Everywhere is filled with people who hate you. The world hates Eldians. Even if you escape, you'll have nowhere to survive,"
Then they will thank you from the bottom of their hearts—thank you for penning them up and "protecting" them.
And then, in their eyes, the walls are no longer a prison.
They are protection.
It's not that they can't go out.
It's that they don't want to go out.
That's all.
Give them the right to "freedom," make them believe they're safely hiding inside rather than being imprisoned—
And that's enough.
Gabi's generation had been raised under that kind of education.
So when she saw her own people still harboring such hatred toward Marley, she couldn't understand it at all. She even felt her compatriots had no sense of the bigger picture—thinking only about a little discrimination and abuse, and tossing aside the fate of the entire Eldian people.
But the reality was this:
Other than the warrior candidates, the discrimination endured by ordinary Eldians was beyond counting.
It was just something the candidates would never be allowed to see.
Or rather—
Only now were they finally beginning to see it.
Gabi carried a switchblade.
She had won it as a prize—first place in a training mission—and her instructor had personally given it to her.
Back then, the instructor had told her: never point it at Marleyans.
She remembered that clearly.
But now, the people she wanted to stab were her own compatriots—not Marleyans.
So it didn't count as violating the instructor's warning.
If anything, she felt a sense of honorable duty.
Only by letting Marleyans see with their own eyes that Eldians truly did not want to be enemies of the world—that they had hearts, that they had conscience, that they were not the monsters Marley imagined—
Only then could they finally enjoy real peace.
So she decided she would kill every heretic.
A joke adults played—yet a child like Gabi took it seriously, and stubbornly refused to turn back.
Walking the streets, she intended to stab every "troublemaking" Eldian.
But after thinking it over… she still didn't strike.
She had never killed anyone.
Even with the knife clenched tight in her hand, even with the "heretic" she swore to eliminate standing right in front of her, she still couldn't bring herself to let her hands take that first drop of blood.
She didn't understand why.
So she blamed it on her own cowardice—yet that cowardice was a wall she couldn't cross.
"Do you want to kill your own people?"
A voice suddenly cut through, snapping her fully awake.
She turned—and saw it was her companion.
Falco.
Also a warrior candidate, yet at this moment, not only was he failing to think about Eldians as a whole—he was standing here like a useless idiot, doing nothing that deserved praise.
"What are you doing here, Falco?"
Gabi barked, thinking: he's here to steal credit.
She hadn't even done anything yet, and this tagalong had already rushed over.
"I'm here to stop you," Falco said, reaching for the dagger in her hand.
But Gabi's hand-to-hand combat scores were far above Falco's.
In only a few exchanges, she threw Falco hard to the ground.
Spinning the dagger in her hand, she looked down at Falco with contempt—and said a single sentence to him.
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