being grateful and kind.

I put my arms at my sides and tried to look as thankful as possible, and pretty innocent and clumsy. Like how everyone thinks of Armin around the school. Some cheap-ass wuss. "Hehe, thanks, Mikasa. I can always count on you to save my ass, huh?" It sounded kind of natural. She smiled somewhat genuinely. I saw heads turn away and people start to ignore me again. I then turned to the group of girls and apologized as sincerely as possible. But it was hard. I wanted to know who humiliated me. I could feel my blood boiling. Jean… That horse faced bastard…

I then started walking with Mikasa. She looked calm and didn't even make eye contact with me when she spoke, "So, who pushed you, Eren?" She could always tell when something was wrong. What had happened. I was a real klutz, but not to such an extent where I would fall backwards into a group of girls carelessly.

"Jean…" I muttered. I hated him. He kept trying to make my high school life a living nightmare. Of course, it didn't work. I had better things to do than get pushed around by that gay-ass piece of horse crap. Jean wasn't gay or anything, but I could just feel that he had a thing for Marco. Their bromance was just too real for me to not think that either one of them was gay. But then again, Marco wasn't interested in any sort of romantic relationship with anyone, as he had stated before, and Jean was obviously head over heels for Mikasa. It made me wonder what sort of process went on in his brain. Couldn't he see that Mikasa didn't like him? And that kicking my ass would just make his "dream girl" hate him to the bone? I guess not.

"I see," she responded. We continued to walk through the hallway and eventually found Armin and his He-Man haircut.

Immediately he began talking about what he was going to do after he left high school. It was all really lame stuff. I just kept nodding, my face still rosy red from the entire hallway incident. I felt a jab in my rib cage and slammed myself into the lockers in shock. Armin was looking at me with an indistinguishable expression. He looked half angry and half concerned, his blue eyes burning through my skin and into my soul.

"Eren, you look upset," he noted.

"I'm not upset," I retorted. I could feel my ears turn warmer. Lying. Now Armin would know for sure that it was a lie. His smart ass could figure if I'm lying even if this red ears bullshit didn't exist.

"Cut the crap," Armin snapped back. "Seriously, you can tell me." His voice quickly got softer to assure me that I could trust him with whatever was bothering me.

Mikasa tugged Armin and I from behind and steered us down the stairs while we kept talking. Mikasa didn't stop Armin from asking me anything. She was an orphan that my parents took in after her parents were brutally murdered in a human trafficking event. Apparently, young asian girls were popular in illegal child pornography. Disgusting pedophiles. But I still didn't know what Mikasa was to me. She wasn't in any way my sister. Or at least, I didn't think of her like that to an extent where I did think full on that she was my sibling. I wasn't really sure, but I could date her if I wanted to and not feel awkward about it at all. It was like dating your best friend that you knew forever. I really wasn't ever sure how to feel about Mikasa.

She steered me and Armin to the front of the school faster than we realized. I still hadn't spoken to blondy here about anything, not even related to me being upset. I sat on the flat stone railing of the front stairs and Mikasa and Armin made themselves comfortable on the steps. I didn't even think that any of the staff or employees or really anyone cared about us sitting right there in the front of the school and eating lunch.

Finally, I decided to say something. There had been an unsettling silence for too long between the three of us. "That punk ass horse face-"

"Jean?" Armin asked.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. He pushed me down into a group of girls. And-"

"And Mikasa saved your ass," he said. Armin knew of course. Almost every single one of my complaints that had to do with Jean, also included Mikasa saving my butt from BS I don't even start, most of the time.

After that, we stopped talking about the subject. Instead we started eating our last lunch on the school grounds. I took out of my backpack a small paper "Bath and Body Works" bag that's bottom was a little damp. I took out of the paper bag a plastic container filled with white rice and on top of that, a piece of salmon covered in shoyu sauce. I could only decipher this as Mikasa's cooking. When I looked in her direction, I just saw her smile at me and open her own container with the same thing. I grinned towards her.

Armin took out his own meal which was rice, breaded chicken, and some tofu on the side. And a fork. Mikasa had packed my lunch today, and my utensils so I struggled with my chopsticks. What was it with her and chopsticks? I got that she was Japanese and all, but she really took it to a new level with the chopsticks. This wasn't Hawaii where pretty much everyone knew how to at least properly hold chopsticks. We weren't on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere with stupid ideals like tiny waist girls with half of a nut shell to cover up each boob. I don't know if I was being racist by thinking that, but it felt true, in a way.

We all ate in silence, as usual. I guess it was something we picked up from a stupid little kid's book back when we were in third or fourth grade when we read a book about princesses and manners. That would also be the year that Mikasa would be taken in by my family. Armin and I pretended to follow to the rules for a day, like always be polite, help others, and some other junk that I didn't care about. And then there was no talking while you ate. I guess that one sticked and either Mikasa always knew to do that, or copied us and learned.

Once we were all finished eating, we took out snacks that we considered an exception to this rule, not by conversation, but by simply doing it all the time. Snacks that we could gamble with like skinny choco biscuits and soda flavoured hard candy. We also had watermelon slices that were a little warm, and squid chips that were a little crushed. But we started to eat them all anyway, passing around the bag of chips, and putting the biscuits into our mouths like a stereotypical farmer and a piece of grass, I think, except the biscuits disappeared, and I'm sure the piece of grass wouldn't get eaten by the farmer.

"So," I said while I had four choco biscuits shoved onto one side of my mouth, sticking out a little, "What were your senior quotes?" I'm sure that Mikasa and Armin could make out what I said, and it was shortly made clear that they understood.

Armin swallowed his watermelon piece and replied clearly, " Mine was, 'Knowledge is power, so if you don't know a whole lot, I'm sure even I could Judo flip you, and I don't even know Judo.' I tried to incorporate the message not to do stupid things, and make it humorous." We all laughed a little.

"Mine was, 'Roses are red, violets are blue, y'know violets are violet, right? I can't believe you,'" Mikasa told us. We all laughed. Mikasa wasn't any type of lyricist nor very talented in any type of poetry, but I guess she thought that her Valentine's day mockery was so funny, it just had to be her senior quote. She didn't believe in Valentine's day because she thought that you could proclaim your love to someone any day, and it would still be as special, and that Valentine's day was just some "random as hell" day chosen to be a day to show your affection to someone.

The day was going really well, and I shared my senior quote stiffly. Neither one of my friends laughed.

"Eren, that's actually a really good quote to leave behind you. You really took this seriously, huh?" said Armin. I denied it.

"Nah, I just was just pumped with anger or adrenaline or something. I did write it down after a bunch of idiots just decided to go on calling me a titan-shifter again," I tried to sound reassuring just to make sure that Mikasa wouldn't get pissed off or anything like that. I wouldn't know if she would have gotten pissed off because our conversation was interrupted…

Interrupted by Jean.