A/N: After two days in front of the laptop, refusing to go out, and constantly dosing myself on canned coffee and hot chocolate (and feeling as though my brain has been fried), I proudly present to you an update of this fic!
Thanks to Brandon who constantly remind me and kick my ass whenever I've been slacking off and not doing my job (exactly an editor's work), and to my friend Adrian for his great, great help in rephrasing some of the stuff in this chapter.
And of course, thank you to ALL who reviewed, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH for reviewing, for reading, for even considering that my work is worth reading. You don't know how you guys can REALLY boost up my mood and keep me motivated to write more! So don't forget, if you enjoy my works, please, please, please drop me your reviews. It's OK too to share your ideas with me, if you want 'so and so' to do some stuff... well, if you know what I mean *smirk*
Without further ado, I present to you chapter 2 of Hourglass!
PS: I'm just a review whore.
Edited slightly on 4/1 to change some of the words/conversations based on Ashley's suggestion. Thank you so much girl, I love you xoxo.
Cheerios.
Last chapter: Mikasa had a strange dream about a dystopian earth where one side of the wall was heavily occupied, while the other side of it was strangely empty. She saw a boy in her dream, but was woken up before she could see his face, and found out that she was actually crying because of her dream. Ishijima Ayako, Mikasa's classmate, suddenly felt ill for the third time of the month and told Mikasa that she might be pregnant. However, Mikasa, having heard too much of the same tale from Ayako, felt rather irritated with the girl who never seemed to learn to take responsibilities, and didn't really pay attention to her. Meanwhile, Mikasa's class welcomed a new transfer student, who was rumored to be a heavy delinquent and expelled from his previous school: Eren Yeager.
-Repetoire-
Life is an hourglass.
It wasn't the first time she had thought of that. Life was a mere container filled with the golden sands of time. When one observed the hourglass, they could see the tiny grains of sands slowly falling – passing through the bottleneck to the other side of an identical shape – until the part above was cleared, and its other half part below finally look like what its twin once looked like – full with the sands that marked time. And then, feeling the need to fill in the empty part once more – the device would be turned, and the same repetition would occur... over and over again.
But she – she was not the observer. She was trapped inside, experiencing the same repetition of things as the hourglass was turned over, and the sands of time rushed through her. It was always a repetoire – this town, the people she met, the places she went to... They were all fragments of a life she had been too familiar with. She had grown up here – all the past seventeen years of her life had been spent here – in this small town. She entered elementary school, and left it to attend middle school. Only three years after that, she entered high school. Soon she would graduate from high school and enter college – and then she would finally be thrown in the world of adults.
And those were the stepping stones that marked the beginnings of new chapters in her life, were they not? The beginnings that – she realized, were nothing more than her own illusions. Every time it happened, it was as if she was given a fresh start, until she experienced the things that were all too familiar… And then she realized that it wasn't a fresh start after all – it was her prison turning, the giant hourglass – and she was forced to repeat the same routine once more – new schools, new people, same old problems, and same old things.
Nothing had changed in her life, and probably nothing ever would. It seemed like her path had already been set even before she was able to open up her eyes. She will be trapped inside the hourglass forever, unable to escape, though this life was choking her to death. And the only thing that constantly moved in her life was the flow of sands – marking the ticking of the clock, and the passing of time.
-Of the Beginning and False Hopes-
"Mikasa. Mikasa. Mikasa!"
Mikasa snapped out of her thoughts. Nanako's face was staring at her from across the table, her hand was on Mikasa's shoulder, shaking it rather vigorously to return her to reality.
"Are you OK?" she said, looking concerned.
"Sorry," Mikasa muttered. She must have been spacing out for a while now. Nanako was in the middle of chattering happily about the new transfer student, when Mikasa suddenly remembered her strange dream this morning. Most dreams she forgot as soon as she woke up, but some dreams seemed to be filled with something strange – something surreal, almost magical, that entice her to keep thinking about it. This dream was something like that. As soon as she started thinking about it, she was immersed immediately, and she forgot all other thoughts.
"I wasn't – I wasn't listening," said Mikasa apologetically, trying to brush off the worries from her friend's face. "What is it?"
"You've been staring at your croquette for three minutes without eating it," Nanako pointed to Mikasa's lunch box, reminding her of what she was doing before she was lost in her thoughts. The blue box was lying open in front of her, the food inside it barely eaten. Mikasa sighed. "I'm not hungry," she said, and it was true. For some reason, she really didn't feel like eating today. Nanako continued to stare at her – looking unconvinced.
"You're on PMS?"
"No, it's just finished."
"Stressed?"
"Not quite."
"Boy problem, maybe?"
"No, I'm just not hungry."
Mikasa put down her chopsticks and started to pack her lunch box. Her mom's not going to be happy she didn't finish lunch, and to tell the truth neither was she, as well. She hated wasting food, especially with her mom frequently lecturing her about how there were starving children on the other parts of the world – and how they were blessed to be able to eat every day.
"Oh yeah, Mikasa," said Nanako again, pressing her chopsticks to her lips and biting the end of them slightly as she watched Mikasa pack her things. "I heard Jean asked you out again the other day."
Mikasa's fingers slipped and her chopsticks cluttered to the surface of her wooden table. This school sure had a fast information network, she thought irritably.
"Not exactly, he only asked if I wanted to go watch a movie this Saturday," said Mikasa, trying to keep a cool face as she collected her pair of chopsticks and carefully wrapped them.
"Did you give him an answer?" asked Nanako. Mikasa continued to sort her things inside the lunch box and didn't utter a word, a gesture that Nanako understood immediately. She didn't answer Jean.
"He's had a thing for you ever since our first year," Nanako continued. "Don't you think you're being too harsh on him, Mikasa?"
"It's not that… I'm just not interested in that kind of thing," Mikasa replied, wrapping her lunch box and putting them inside her drawer.
"You're not interested in boys?"
"Not for now."
"Don't tell me, you're interested in girls?" Nanako shrieked and Mikasa had just opened her mouth to answer her best friend's far-fetched speculation, when she heard a voice calling out her name.
She turned to see her caller, and saw a guy with slightly messy light-brown hair, fair skin, and light-colored eyes standing outside her classroom, looking at her through the open glass window.
Speak of the devil.
"Excuse me for a while," said Mikasa, rising up from her seat and walking out of her classroom to greet the boy – the very same boy that she and Nanako was just talking about – Jean Kirstein. "Hi," he said nervously when Mikasa approached him. She replied with a slight nod. "So uhm… Ackerman, about the other day…"
"I'm… I'm afraid I can't make it," she said, and Jean's face fell. "Oh," he said grimly. "Right, sorry. Uhm…"
"I need to… go to the library on Saturday," said Mikasa, trying to make up a believable excuse, but even by the second she made it she realized how lame it sounded. "Maybe… Jean, you want to go with me?"
Even she couldn't be more surprised by her own words. Jean's eyes grew wide at her unexpected invitation, and she bit her lips, unable to believe herself. She should have flat-out turned him down. But instead she asked him to go with her to the library, which was just as good as asking him out on a date. What the hell was she doing?
If this wasn't what they called 'giving a false hope' then she didn't know what was.
"But that place is boring," she said quickly, half hoping that Jean would turn down her invitation. "If-if you don't want to go, then…"
"No, I'd like to go," he said, and Mikasa's heart sink. It's too late to back off now. "So… I'll see you on Saturday?"
She nodded, finding herself deprived of words to reply. Drifting back to her seat, she found Nanako staring at her with a pair of wide, puzzled eyes.
"What was that, Mikasa?"
Mikasa shook her head. She didn't understand it either.
-The Witch and The Harlot-
The afternoon bell rang, and Mr. Levi – the Math teacher and their homeroom teacher, quickly wrapped up his lessons for today.
"That's it for today about Trigonometry. Toda and Sato, you are on classroom cleaning duty – make sure the class is clean tomorrow, or else I'll double your shift next week. Ackerman, I need you to submit the attendance list on my desk straight after this."
"Yes sir," said Mikasa, and swiftly packed her stuff inside her school bag. "See you tomorrow," said Nanako, waving lazily as Mikasa briskly made her way out of the classroom. Mikasa nodded, returning her friend's greeting. As she hurriedly walk to the teacher's room, she sent a sideway glance toward the new transfer student's chair - second row from the back of the classroom. She hadn't seen the transfer boy all day long. His chair was empty – it had been unoccupied since lunch. Seemed like Eren Yeager had decided to skip class and go off somewhere on his first day in the new school. She had to admit, it was a pretty effective way to show the teachers and the entire class a piece of his mind.
Sometimes, life had its ways to put you through the most painful, uncomfortable, and crushing situations.
Maybe it was about the moments – simply put – or about time, or conversations – the words spoken from one individual to another that could mark and form the bonds between people.
There are, however, some times and situations that Mikasa wished she never put herself in.
And there are some conversations that she wished she had never heard at all.
Mikasa pulled the metal lever and the sound of gurgling water filled in the cramped toilet cubicle. After handing the attendance list to Mr. Levi and forced to explain why she had to miss an entire half a day of school (while enduring his glare all the while), she had to stop and make a detour to the restroom. She was about to open the cubicle door, when suddenly she heard the familiar chirping voice – high-pitched, fast-paced, the voice of a certain brown-haired girl that happened to be her best friend since middle school.
Nanako.
And surprisingly, she heard her best friend saying her name.
"That Mikasa," she said with such malicious tone that Mikasa had to wince. She had never heard her name being spoken like that. "She is such a bitch."
"What happened this time?" said a girl voice that Mikasa didn't recognize.
"All of this time she has been pretty much casting Jean off her sight – you know how he has a long-time crush on her, and how she ignores him all the while – God knows why, that snob probably thinks she's better than all the creatures in the planet!" Nanako slammed her bag angrily to the surface of the washbasin, as she continued to speak furiously. "And now… now she suddenly asked him to go on a date with her! That freaking slut! After all the time I've spent to at least get Jean to at look at me, she just had to jump in!"
"What? Are you serious?" her friend shrieked, a little bit too excited and too loud to be considered normal. "Wow… sucks. Must be tough for you. We all know Jean only wants Mikasa."
"Shut it, Emi!" replied Nanako fiercely to her friend. Mikasa now realized who she was. Akiyama Emi from Class 2-3.
"That bitch, just what does she want? If she thinks she can walk in and steal away Jean just when he started to warm up to me…," Nanako's hateful voice continued to chatter.
"But Mikasa doesn't know you're into Jean, does she, Nanako?" Emi cut Nanako before she was finished. Inside the cubicle, Mikasa suddenly felt very, very sick. She wanted to throw up all her lunch. Nanako, crushing over Jean? She didn't realize it. She didn't even think that Nanako would feel that way about him – not until now.
"She's too thick to even know it, that's why!" came Nanako's cruel words. Mikasa raised her palms to block her ears so that she didn't have to hear them any longer – but such strong words of hatred bear the deadliest poison, and though she tried to close it off, they still come pouring in.
"That girl probably thinks she's the only creature in the planet to ever deserve attention – that whore – if she had even realized for just a bit how much I hated her – I wouldn't have to pretend we're best friends now." Mikasa felt as though she had been slapped.
"Haha! You're pretty mean then for someone she considers a best friend, aren't you, Nanako?" her friend replied, laughing cheerily at Nanako's malicious words.
"Oh don't worry – I play my part well. I listen every time she has problems and takes care of her, you see. She is glad to have me," Nanako clapped her makeup case closed after carefully applying lipstick on her plain lips. "And being with her does give me benefit – at least my grades are getting higher."
"You're such a witch, Nanako."
"Well… I'm not even started."
Nanako dragged her bag off the washbasin and soon after Mikasa heard the sound of footsteps slowly fading away – telling her that both of the girls had gone out of the restroom. For a while, she just stared emptily at the dark grey cubicle wall. It was difficult for her to breathe. She could hardly – if ever – believe it. Was that really Nanako? Lovely, faithful Nanako, to whom she had shared stories, moments, conversations – with whom she had had sleepovers together, crammed when it was the time for exams, and gone to watch movies or stroll the malls on weekends?
Was that really Nanako, the girl who didn't like too much sugar in her tea, yet could eat almost a whole cake by herself? The plain but kind-hearted girl who always ordered extra caramel and whipped cream on her Frappuccino, even though Mikasa had already warned her about her diabetical tendencies?
How could that girl be the same girl that just spit out all the mean, horrible things about her? She felt as though a different person had taken over Nanako's body, and spoken with Nanako's voice.
Or maybe, she realized as she continued to stare emptily, it wasn't a different person at all. It was Nanako, the same person she had known for four and a half years – only now, she had to see her a little better.
Her body began to tremble. Sometimes, life had its ways to put you through the most horrendous things.
And this time, she wished she had never trusted anyone at all.
She clapped her hands to her mouth and silently, her tears began to pour out.
-A Wish that is not Granted-
She didn't remember how she got here.
When she realized, she was already standing here – on the open-air rooftop of the school. It was a nice place. The afternoon wind blew lightly on her face – playing with her shoulder-length black hair. She inhaled deeply. It was a little bit chilly without her sweater, but Mikasa liked it. The cold afternoon air helped her blew off some steam. On the far west, the sun had begun to climb down – bursting its last rays of orange and red colors, distantly through the horizon. She had just had her world crushed under her best friend's – or rather her ex best friend's feet – yet the sun seemed to be completely fine with it. The world still revolved normally, there was nothing different in it – except the pain in her chest that made her wish she could rip it off.
She leaned herself to the stone wall. It felt cold – hard, but at least it was able to support her so that she wouldn't fall straight down the bottomless dark pit that seemed to be threatening to swallow her whole at any moments. Now that she had recovered from her initial shock, this whole situation seemed to be so pitiable, laughable, even. To think that she had spent four years, trusting the wrong person, and never even picking up signs of how wrong their relationship had been. Well, not like it was completely Nanako's fault, was it? She was also to blame. If she had been a better friend, she wouldn't have pretended that everything was alright, while in fact she was just too afraid to take off her mask and let Nanako see her.
The real her – not the golden girl Mikasa Ackerman – top student, class president, and the teacher's favorite.
The lonely, afraid, bitter, but real – her.
It seemed like the more she tried to put up a tough face, the stronger life tried to push her down. She wanted to laugh at herself and the irony that life had put her in, but at the same time, she didn't have the energy anymore to do it.
She only wanted to lie there, and close her eyes, for as long as possible.
But even that wish was not granted, for she soon heard a voice from the back of her head, piercing through the depth of her mind and forcing her to open her eyes.
"That is my place."
Mikasa turned to gaze into a pair of emerald green eyes that stared to her. The owner – a dark-haired boy with average height, lean build, and somewhat dark skin, stared back at her. Deep creases decorated his brows as he watched her through narrowed eyes, clearly none too pleased at her sudden invasion on his privacy.
"I-I'm sorry," she said, getting up immediately. "I thought… no one is sitting here…"
"Well I am, so get off." His words were cold, short and mean. He walked past her as though she was a ghost before leaning against the wall, and reaching into his pocket to pull out a pack of cigarette. He lighted one cigarette and blew a long, heavy puff of smoke. Then it was as though he suddenly remembered he wasn't alone in the vicinity, and his eyes drifted back to her.
"What are you still doing here?" he said, not as much with wonder as was with annoyance, and she recoiled, startled at his harsh tone.
"I…," she started, not quite sure what to say. What should she say? She only wanted to seek solace here, away from the noises, the wandering eyes, the people who only wanted to know but didn't want to help – and to make prejudices when they know they could.
"I just… wanted to rest." It wasn't a complete lie. In this moment, she wasn't sure if she could stand to be around them. Solitude was what she needed, away from people, until she could hear the faint sound of her heart beating. A place where she could be herself, for just a moment, until she could gather her strength and face them again – with the mask that she always wore.
He laughed, none too pleasantly at her answer. "Top student in class, wanted to rest? What do you even need rest for? I thought you're busy chasing up your grades." He drew another long breath from his cig, and puffed the smoke in the cold afternoon air, when her voice answered, colder and sharper than usual.
"You know nothing."
-The Girl with the Mask, and the Boy Who Trespassed-
One day, in a not-so-distant future, they would both stop and look back, with smile on their faces as they were looking at their past selves, to try and figure out the beginning of it all. When did their feelings started to deepen, when did they start caring about one another?
And just when, did one of them started becoming a significant part of the other?
It might be when he realized that Mikasa, despite being an 'elite' student and the teacher's favorite, wasn't such a snob like what he used to think.
Or when she started thinking that Eren, when he wasn't being his mean or cocky self, could actually be a nice friend, who taught her a lot of important things about life, that she had so long chosen to forget.
It might be when he wrapped his scarf around her, a material she still treasured at this very moment. Or when they both shared a kiss for the first time.
However else it might have started, they both knew that it definitely did not start today – on a cold Monday afternoon of September 28th. In fact, no other first meetings could have gone more terribly wrong.
"You know nothing."
He had to be even thicker than a brick to miss the suddenly bitter, sharper note on her tone. For a split second, it caught him off-guard. His cigarette stopped on the way to his lips as he turned to look at the girl in front of him, now giving her his full, undivided attention.
He raised an eyebrow, and with a corner of his lips pulled up to form a rather taunting grin, he cocked his head a little to the side, and replied to her words.
"Maybe," he said. "So, what don't I know about the lady? Care to teach me?"
"It's not your business," said Mikasa with an air of clear disdain, which made him halt even further. She eyed the boy, from the cigarette on his hand, his messy uniform which had probably never been ironed, and his dark brown hair which was not in a better state than his outfit. This boy clearly needed some heavy grooming. And she had never seen someone with such a heavy air of delinquent. Every fiber of his being seemed to have screamed 'rebel'. Clearly, he didn't belong in this school – she had never seen him before.
"Are you the transfer student – Eren… Eren Yeager?" she asked, trying to memorize the name.
"Yep. That's me," the boy replied, puffing on his cigarette a little bit off-mindedly. "So, what business you have with me, Ackerman…?"
Mikasa blinked. She was just about to ask how the transfer student even knew her name, but Eren merely laughed at her confusion. "I have my ways," he said. "Not like it's hard to find out about you."
"Are you a stalker?" she asked before she could help it then bit her lips, afraid if her spontaneous words would offend him.
"Not quite, I'm way above that," he grinned, blowing another round of long, white smoke from between his lips. "So, you're the class president, right? Aren't you going to report me for smoking?"
"I should at least confiscate your cigs – but I'm in no mood for it, so no."
"Sweet, thanks." He replied, his grin becoming wider still. By then his cigarette had made its way to his lips and he drew another long drag from it. "Oh – sorry," he said, realizing that he had been absent-minded for a while. He pulled the cigarette pack and held it in front of Mikasa who was still standing at an arm's length distance from him. "You smoke?"
For a while Mikasa just stood blinking at the question. She stared at the cigarette pack, and to the green-eyed boy who was still holding the pack in front of her, its lids open. And then, realizing what he wanted her to do, she put her palms on the packet and pushed it away. "Sorry. I don't…"
"Is that so? Too bad," he said, withdrawing the pack to his pocket once more. "Why not, though?" Another long blow of smoke from his cig before Mikasa answered. "One, because I'm the class president, and two, because it is illegal, I am underage." He grinned at the emphasis she put on the word 'illegal'. "Doesn't mean you can't do it."
"My family don't like it," came her other answer, and once again his cigarette paused on the way to his lips upon hearing her words.
"I see," he said. It was very subtle, but Mikasa was too sensitive to miss the suddenly harsh tone in his voice. And from the way he avoided looking at her – clearly she had said something to upset him, though she didn't know what.
She didn't want to find out either.
"So… you just… let your family decide whether or not you can do things?" he spoke again, trying to sound carefree but failed, as his words came out sharper than what he'd intended. Acting had never been something he was proud of – and to some kind of people he really didn't feel like hiding his dislike at all. Mikasa furrowed her brows at his sudden passive-aggressive tone. She had no clue at his sudden change of behavior, and she sure didn't feel like being a target of someone's angst, especially not when she herself was in a foul mood. Unsure of his point and where this conversation was going, she only tilted her head a little to the side, still not saying a thing – and waited for his next words.
When Eren looked back at this, months and months after, he couldn't help but regret and wish that he wasn't such a jerk at their first meeting.
But he was a jerk – there was no other way to put it. He wasn't in his best mood – he wasn't happy to be expelled (or, in a more subtle term, asked to drop out and move to another school before the school is forced to take countermeasures on his case). He was angry at the world, the teacher, the school, and all the people around him. He tried to shake it off by smoking – it killed the pain, but only for a while, and it wasn't enough. He wanted to take it out on someone. He had tried to repress his anger for so long, and it didn't work. He wanted someone to feel the same pain as he did. And at that time, Mikasa was the only one in his vicinity.
He had nothing personal against her, but she had run into him at a very wrong time, very wrong time indeed.
So it happened that the first encounter, the first conversation between a boy and a girl who will come to love one another in the future, was very far-off from what you would call 'a fated encounter'.
"Do you ever decide anything for yourself at all – or you just blindly follow everything that people tell you?" For some reason, her silence provoked him even further. He was getting angrier, yet she seemed unfazed despite his fit of rage. Her calm face was unchanging, like the surface of a deep pond – he couldn't tell what's in her mind. He couldn't even tell if she had emotions at all.
Probably she didn't, he realized. Probably she was just one of the typical good girls, the lifeless marionette dolls living in their glass palace, who looked at everything outside of her walls through her windows of stained-glass. They were always safely kept inside, not knowing anything except their own flat, white-bread world. Sometimes, you can see life in them, but only when their strings are being pulled. And yet, those are not their lives – those are the lives of their puppeteer. They are the good girls - the beautiful, but lifeless containers of human souls. They never decided anything for themselves, never standing up for their cause. They were type of people he really, really hate.
And for a brief moment there, when she talked back to him in that bitter tone, he had started to think that he was wrong about her. He had even begun to think that he might like her.
But now, his dislike for her grew even further, and before he realized it, he had spoken in a higher tone. He leaned himself forward, toward that girl, who drew a few steps back, startled at his sudden aggressive move.
"So I guess a good girl like you only does what her family likes her to do, yeah?" he said to her rather mockingly.
Mikasa's didn't say anything to counter the argument. He dropped the cigarette butt on the floor and crushed it under his feet, taking a few steps again toward her, this time cornering her against the wall.
"Back off, Yeager," she said with a warning tone. She didn't understand him at all. First he was a jerk. Then he turned into a fine, nice conversing partner albeit still being a little cocky. But now, he was back to his harsh, mean self. It wasn't just his voice and the way he spoke, which was getting increasingly hostile by the second, but rather his eyes – the way they flared as he stared at her with a sour expression – that told her she would better not involve herself with this boy.
"Some good girl you are, aren't you, Ackerman? You have the best grades, the teachers all love you. You are surrounded by friends, and your parents are proud of you." She sent him a disdainful look at his words – but he ignored the warning and went on, wanting to let the pressing anger off his chest.
"You want everyone to love you, don't you, Ackerman? You're playing it nice at being the good girl. You laugh when you were told to laugh, shed tears when it was time for you to show your sympathy, yet you are completely fake. Have you ever felt any kinds of emotions at all, Ackerman?"
"Yeager."
It was clear what she had meant from the way she said his name. Stop it. Stop right there. I'm in an awful mood, I've had a bad day, I can't tolerate your bullshit. I know you're angry for some reason but for God's sake don't take it out on me.
He had touched some kind of a sore spot – he knew it. He could see it from the expression on her face. And for a moment, it actually gave him a kind of bizarre, twisted pleasure to see emotions replacing her never-ending stone cold expression.
So she wasn't a completely devoid, fake, lifeless doll after all.
"Aren't you daddy's good girl, Ackerman? Your daddy must be very happy to have a daughter like you," he said in a mock voice. He wasn't proud of it, he really wasn't. But at that time he only wanted to upset that girl for just a moment longer, for no other reason except to be mean and blow off his anger.
However, he happened to choose a very wrong thing to say to the wrong person, in a very wrong time.
Mikasa's face grew very, very pale at his words. Her lips were pursed so thin that they were almost invisible. If he had been just a little bit more considerate, he would have picked the signs to stop. He was taking a big risk, trespassing on a major boundary that should not be touched. But he was too oblivious to pay attention to such details. He didn't care about her, he didn't care about her feelings. He only wanted to press on.
"Do you know what they call a girl whose only job is to make others happy?"
"Stop it."
But he did not stop – instead he continued, loudly, "A slut."
That was the last straw that broke her patience. She raised her free arm, and a split second later, the surface of her palm had met the skin of his cheek as she smacked him flat across his face.
"You are a complete jerk, Yeager," she said, her voice trembled as she struggled to keep her emotions under control. It gave her a sense of satisfaction, to see his surprised face as he rubbed his cheek in obvious discomfort, not returning her gaze to him. She wasn't sorry at all. "You have such a big mouth for someone who knows so little."
Shoving past him, she opened the door to the stairway and began to climb down, not turning to see if Eren would bother to call her and apologize. Between Ayako's pregnancy issues, Nanako's hurtful stab-in-the-back, and the new transfer student's horrible attitudes toward her – this had not been a good day at all. Tired and frustrated, she headed home – walking as fast as both of her legs could bring her.
Wow, this is one long chapter - and Eren is really jerky. But brace yourselves for he is going to be... worse. Lol. Don't worry, he's going to be sweet later!
What do you think of this chapter? Tell me your thoughts! :)
Cookies and xoxo for all who reviews.
Thank you so much!