CHAPTER 1
Levi's POV
"Hey, slow poke!" I heard Jean Kirschtein call. She didn't even turn around, even though I knew she was aware Kirschtein was calling her. "I'm talking to you, Reaper!"
"I know," she said evenly, continuing to walk away from him and his little group and towards the opposite wall of the gymnasium.
Zoralee Durmango – better known around the school as Reaper – wasn't necessarily the most popular student. She was smart, sure. She was extraordinarily intelligent, so my colleagues had told me, but that didn't get you very far in high school. She was almost completely indifferent to all school happenings, she wore loose black clothes even in the heat of almost-summer, she never attended a school dance, and the few words that ever came out of her mouth were bitterly sarcastic. She wasn't exactly the kind of girl that people fell all over themselves for, so it didn't surprise me when I caught Kirschtein bullying her on the first day of her junior year and every day since.
"Running away from me? Oh wait. You can't run!"
"If that's all that you have to ridicule me about then I guess I'm not messing my life up too badly," she said. I suppressed the urge to chuckle.
Kirschtein rolled his eyes and was about to call out again, but his friend Bodt put a hand on his shoulder.
"Stop being mean to her, Jean," he said gently.
"Listen to your friend, Kirschtein," I said from my seat on the bleachers, hopefully sounding a lot less pissed off than I actually was. The boy probably looked mortified, but I was too busy seething and watching my students attempt a 40 yard dash to pay attention to him.
Reaper lined up behind Krista Lenz and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her basketball shorts. When it was her turn she did pitifully, as I had come to expect from her. She really was slow.
"Durmango!" I called. She whipped around to see who the call had come from, and when her eyes lit on me she grimaced. Jogging at the speed of a walk over to me, she stood in front of me with her hands in her pockets. I wondered if she was crossing her fingers.
"Yes, Coach Ackerman?" she asked, not out of breath.
"Care to tell me about your shit performance?"
She sighed and ran a hand over her hair. It was pulled up in a bun at the back of her head, but little dark wisps were starting to pull out of it and float around her head like a halo.
"Honestly Coach, haven't you come to expect it after all this time with me?"
I hummed in recognition.
"I suppose," I said. "It still doesn't explain why you're so slow yet you hardly ever break a sweat."
"I'm just slow."
I hummed again and waved her on, making her do the dash again.
That was the last class of the day, so when it was over so was school. I sighed in relief. I hated that place just as much as any of the brats that attended it, even if I was a faculty member. When the bell rang I yelled at the brats to go to the locker rooms and head home before going to the coaches' lounge and sitting behind my desk. As usual I saw Reaper walk out of the gymnasium without showering – she passed my office door. I wasn't stalking. I looked back down at my desk and ran my fingers through my hair.
My name is Levi Ackerman. At the time I was thirty-four, five-foot-three, and the director of athletics at Maria High, a shitty public school in a backwards shitstain of a town called Shiganshina. My salary was shit, but I managed to get a house in a decent neighborhood with the assistance of Hanji, the head of the science department, on the condition that she moved in with me. All in all my life wasn't that bad. I had a cat named Sawney who was too fat to claw up my drapes, I had a stable job, I had a house in a neighborhood not known for break-ins or drive-by's, and I had all my limbs. But I did have a slight problem.
I looked out of my window and saw Reaper walking back to the building which housed her locker. I followed the sway of her hips with my eyes and then slammed my eyelids shut, shaking my head.
I was hopelessly attracted to one of my students, and had been for a month.
Reaper's POV
I got my bike and pedaled, pedaled, pedaled until I was off of campus, heading towards the edge of town. I passed several grocers and drug stores, a side-of-the-road watermelon stand, a homeless man with a fairly full cup of change, and the private school, Sina Academy. I knew I was almost at the edge of town when I noticed the houses starting to be built on stilts.
When I said "edge" I meant it. Shiganshina was a seaside town, bordered on the east by a strip of the Atlantic Ocean.
I ditched my bike on a grassy sand dune before chucking off my shoes and socks and tucking them into the basket. I dumped my backpack beside my bike and didn't look out at the water, instead staring down at my bare feet as they shuffled through the sand. Once I noticed the sand becoming more compact and smooth I looked up, gazing out at the water.
That day it was beautiful. The sky was crystal blue and endless, dotted with wispy white clouds and a bright sun; the sand was coarse and tan and warm against my feet; and the water… they water rippled with fine, faceted waves whose texture reminded me of cut glass. It was dark blue and gorgeous, but clear when it came up to the shore and tried to lap at my toes. I kept my feet rooted in the loose sand, protected from any unwanted wetness. Plopping down, I rolled back for a moment before coming to firmly sit on my ass, my legs splayed and elbows resting on my bent knees.
"Thought you'd be here," said a voice. I looked up and saw Eren, Armin, and Mikasa standing near me, though Eren was the nearest. He must have been the one who spoke.
"Yeah," I said, looking back out at the water. Three loose plops in the sand. The trio must have sat down.
There was a time when they would have asked me why I was out here all the time, but that time was a two and a half years earlier, when they were still in the shelter and I was still green there. We would come out to the beach together and play in the ocean. That was when we were all still expecting our parents to come pick us up any day. That was when it was still a skin condition.
But now the trio was out of the shelter and living with Armin's grandfather. Now all of us had stopped wishing for our parents to come back and my little problem was a hell of a lot more than a skin condition.
Eren, Armin, and Mikasa talked beside me, exchanging little stories about how school had gone and how much homework they had and how Eren wanted to punch Kirschtein in his stupid horse-like face (I did too, but that was beside the point). I dug my hands into the sand before lifting them and watching the coarse grains pour through the gaps in my fingers.
"Hey! Let's all play in the water!"
I tensed up at Eren's words. There was no way I was getting in that water, but there was also no way Eren would take no for an answer. After all, I had loved it when I was younger. Why wouldn't I love it now?
Armin and Mikasa agreed enthusiastically. Eren turned to me and found that my jaw was clenched.
"Are you okay, Reaper?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I lied. "I just don't want to play in the water."
"Why not? It'll be fun!" smiled Armin sunnily. I thought he was one of the cutest creatures on the planet, and it hurt to say no.
"I don't really like getting wet much anymore," I answered. Eren rolled his eyes and tugged Armin up to standing and dragged him out into the water, the blonde complaining that the bottoms of his jeans were getting wet but laughing anyway. Mikasa soon followed the two and joined in the fun.
And it did look like fun. It really did, and I was sad that I couldn't participate. But I had to look out for myself, and one little mess-up could have me in a holding tank and my friends running. So I stayed put, watching my friends splash and kick and shove each other in the water until I couldn't take it anymore.
"I'm gonna head out, guys!" I called. They were so immersed in each other that they didn't even notice. I called out again only to face the same reaction. I sighed and shrugged, pulling myself up to standing and brushing sand off my shorts.
I left them playing in the ocean, happy and carefree, taken care of and not freaks.
Everything I wasn't.