Prologue: Name
Erwin Smith beckoned to her to take a seat, and she did so, although reluctantly. Every thought in her mind had her head spinning round and round in nauseating circles, and so to avoid being caught up and carried away, she tried to focus her attention on the man's eyes. They looked cold, unreadable.
Did he call her in order to condemn her for what she had done? Would she be banished from the military as the result of her actions? Had she brought shame upon the Lance Corporal? Or was she only the victim of her own heart, and a cruel man's will?
"Mikasa." When Erwin addressed her, it was in the voice of a gentle, forbearing father, so much in contrast of what she had expected that she suddenly felt confused again.
The man slid a piece of paper in front of her, and she looked at it, recognizing it as a report on the operations and information gathered in the Capital.
"After all those years of comradeship, I'm well aware that there still remain a lot of facts I don't know about him," Erwin said. "And there are some things even he might not know about himself."
"Because his memories were wiped clean," Mikasa spoke, her voice sounding hollow and distant as she kept her eyes fixed upon a single word on the page: a name she had so far been treasuring as a precious gift from the family she lost as a child. Never did she imagine that one day, learning about that name would cause her to feel terror. Never could she expect that seeing it now as the name of someone she had only known by first name and title would cause her such distress.
"Now you might understand his dilemma," Erwin told her in a quiet voice.