Life happened so this took me a while to upload here.
To Kry: Thank you for reading this! After reading your review, I reread my story and realized that yeah, Levi and Hange did sound a lot older than eight. I've always had problems about writing dialogues for kids (they're a lot harder than I thought), so I'll work on that. I hope in this chapter, though, they sound a little more than their age. I hope. Hahaha! Thanks for reviewing, and I hope you continue to follow this story. :D
Once again, thank you for reviewing/following/adding this to your favourites list. I'm honestly all smiles each time I'm notified that people follow/review/add this story to their favourites list because with a lot of SnK fics featuring this pairing that have really amazing and exciting plot, people actually take time to read this, and it makes me happy. :D I feel the love.
Chapter Four: Twelve – Changes
One of the few things that Levi agreed strongly with the rest of the world was how puberty could be so cruel or godsend, depending whether it favoured you or found your life as some sick joke or something. For the most part, puberty had been kind to young Levi. Though he never concerned himself with looks, he thought he didn't really look so bad. Sure, there were zits here and there, but they were never so noticeable that he'd actually be self-conscious about it. His face wasn't oily, too, but then again, Levi was very clean when it came to his body. Generally, Levi was quite happy with puberty so far, except for one thing.
"May we request the students of 6-4 to line up outside the clinic for the annual medical check-up. Thank you."
The young lad groaned. It was that time of the month again. Levi grumbled as he replaced his chair under his desk.
At least he'd get this over with almost immediately since his surname started with the letter A, and he was student number 1 in his class. The rest of his classmates lined up according to their class number, with Levi in front, which was incidentally very fitting with his stature. He groaned even more and rolled his eyes.
"Can Levi Ackerman please come inside?" The school nurse called out as she poked her head out of the clinic's door.
The young boy nodded in acknowledgement, and slid the door close behind him as soon as he was in. Levi sighed dejectedly as he began removing his school shoes before getting on the weighing scale. The school nurse flashed him a gentle smile as she started adjusting the metal until the scale stopped wobbling. She briefly wrote his weight down on his health sheet before setting up the rod attached to the scale to measure his height. Much to the young lad's chagrin, the school nurse didn't have to extend it so much since his height didn't change much since last year. He was still bleeping 4'10" thank you very much.
Levi was very aware that he was vertically-challenged, and he'd be lying if he denied that it was a source of his frustration. This stupid weighing scale didn't have to remind him. This stupid annual medical exam surely didn't have to rub it in his face. His peers didn't have to make it obvious by towering over him oh my goodness. Of all the things that he could lack, it had to be height.
Which actually bothered him, with all frankness. Levi made sure he slept enough, drank his milk, and ate healthily, but it seemed like it didn't do anything to make him grow like the others. He remembered Hange talking about genes, some smart science crap she learned from her dad apparently, and how it affected kids when they were born. Levi didn't have such rich memories with his mother since she died at a very young age, which was why he was now under the custody of his uncle, but from the little he remembered about her, he was dead certain that she was slim and tall (and pretty, too, he recalled). Even his uncle Kenny was slender and tall as well. So what happened to him?
Perhaps he got it from his father? He never met nor knew his father after all.
"Hm? You wanna know how your dad looks like?" Kenny repeated his query just to make sure he heard the kid right.
Levi nodded. "Do you know how he looks like? How tall was he?"
Kenny snorted and shrugged his shoulders. "Never met him so we'll never know."
Levi just assumed he got his awful height from his dad. Who else could he blame?
Hange, on the other hand, was smiled upon by the universe when it came to growth. For the longest time, Levi only had to look at his eye level to meet Hange's eyes, but now he had to tilt his head at an angle of about 20 degrees just to look her in the eye. He found it so embarrassing most of the time.
Of course, the height difference didn't go unnoticed by Hange. In fact, she was the first one who pointed out about his height, or lack thereof. Now, the young lad was subject to the young lass' teasing every now and then, and sometimes when she was feeling really generous with the joking, Hange would affectionately ruffle his hair every time she annoyed him and he would shoot her a glare in response. She would even kid around every time they'd have to share an umbrella (whenever she forgot to bring hers), grabbing it from him and saying, 'the taller one has to hold the umbrella regardless of gender,' followed by sticking her tongue out. Levi swore each time that he would grab and yank her tongue out of her body along with her entrails if she spoke about his short stature ever again.
Of course Hange never listened, and Levi never really followed through with that threat. It was downright disgusting just thinking about it.
"Hange," Levi called out from outside her bedroom door after knocking, "Hange, it's me, Levi. Are you there?"
He heard some sheets shifting and a low groan, probably from Hange herself, from where he stood as he waited for the door to open. The lock clicked, the knob turned, and when the door swung open, the colour of Levi's face left when he saw the sorry state of the young lass.
Her hair was sticking out from all over the place, she was squinting from the lack of spectacles, she looked so pale and dull, far from the usual cheery Hange he was accustomed to, and her clothes were rumpled. Nevertheless, Hange managed to crack her usual kooky grin when she recognized him. "Oh, hi! What's up with the visit? You missed me already? But I was only gone for a day."
The young lad frowned. "Look at you. Have you seen yourself in the mirror?"
She opened the door wider and motioned for him to enter. "I missed you, too, Levi." She said flatly.
It was the first time he had ever been inside Hange's room even though they've been friends for about four years now. Well, it was the first time he'd ever been to a girl's room before, so he really couldn't say something about his friend's room, except it wasn't as sloppy as he expected it to be considering it belonged to Hange. The books on her shelf were actually arranged according to titles and height, her desk might have some crumpled papers on it, though they were swept on the side, and her room actually reeked of citrus smelling spray. So the girl could be clean, too, if she wanted to, huh?
He placed the notebooks he carried all the way to school on the empty spot on her desk as Hange once again climbed back to her bed, groaning and prostrated under the blanket she was holding earlier. Levi raised an eyebrow at the pitiful sight.
"Mr. Shadis told me to bring your homework for you since you didn't come to school today," he began as he pulled Hange's chair to sit on it. "Why were you absent anyway?'
The young lass removed the blanket covering her head and turned to face Levi, still prostrated and her face was contorted to a cross between constipated and grateful. Whichever was appropriate, Levi couldn't really tell because he had no idea what the bloody hell was up with this weird kid.
"It's my first day." She briefly supplied.
Levi shot her a confused look. "First day of what? Of being weirder than you already are?"
The young lass just rolled her eyes and snorted at the insult. "No. I'm bleeding, Levi. I started bleeding on a monthly basis just a few months ago and I can tell you that it's one of the yuckiest and ugliest feeling in the world."
Levi's nose crinkled at her description. Those lessons in their Health and Science classes suddenly flooded his head as he searched for what exactly was going on with the girl. She was on her period.
"That bad?"
She nodded slowly. "It wasn't this bad the first time, though. I don't want to move. Every time I do, I can feel huge chunks of blood come out from where it drips out. It's horrible."
The young lad shook his head even before his mind could even conjure a mental image that would haunt him in his idle times. "The hell, Hange. You didn't need to tell me that, thank you very much."
Hange looked up at Levi, brows furrowed. "But it is, I'm telling you. Of course you'd never understand. And let me tell you, it's probably worse than the pain from having your foreskin peeled considering I have to go through this until I reach my fifties."
"Sucks for you then, I guess."
The girl pouted. "Have a little heart, Levi. I've been lying on my bed like this for almost the entire day."
He stretched his arm out to where he placed the notebooks on her desk. "I do have a little heart. Look."
Hange shot him a blank look before covering her face with her blanket once more and muttering, "Whatever, Levi. Stupid heartless short boy."
"Thanks for the compliment, four eyes." He retorted, smirking, clearly enjoying this exchange.
"I'm not even wearing my glasses, doofus."
This could be an unpopular opinion on Levi's part, but Hange on her period and being all whiny like a kid who didn't get any candy... was actually something he found cute. Adorable even.
Good heavens, he'd been hanging around Hange too much now, her quirkiness was starting to rub on him.
There was something... odd about Hange today, and Levi had been (secretly) obsessing about pinpointing what it was since he saw her at the school gate this morning. He nearly missed his Science teacher asking him a question in class just because he'd been figuring out the one strange thing that made Hange seem a little different than usual.
"Is there something wrong, Levi?" the young girl asked, her face flashing a concerned look.
Levi didn't realize that he had been squinting hard and at Hange of all people, so he cleared his throat and composed himself. "Nothing's wrong."
Hange raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean nothing's wrong? You've been staring at me intently ever since you saw me, and you're doing it again. It's almost creepy."
The young boy frowned. "Did you do something with yourself, Hange?"
She cocked her head to the side and smiled slightly. "Oh, I'm not wearing my pigtails anymore, you mean?"
A lightbulb switched on Levi's mind and his face relaxed. "Yeah, it's the pigtails, I knew it."
"Why? Do you miss them? My pigtails?" She chuckled, bits of her food spurting out, "that's so weird, Levi!"
His scowl deepened. "No, Hange. I just thought something's different about you today."
She shook her head and clucked her tongue in fake disappointment. "But I've been wearing my hair in ponytail since last week, my dear. You just haven't been looking closely, that's all."
The young boy's face was coloured dumbfounded. "Since last week?"
Hange nodded. "So... you like it?"
"Like what?"
"My ponytail," the young girl lightly whipped her hair to let him see. "It's not so hard to tie it up compared to pigtails, plus I can't be wearing pigtails forever now, can I?"
Hange seriously had no idea of the effects she had on Levi ever since, which was both poison and cure for the young lad. Levi had to keep his jaw from dropping slightly at the sight of the young girl blinking prettily and smiling normally (like how people were supposed to smile like, in Levi's opinion) as she waited for his reply. The afternoon sun chose this time to shine through the window to make Hange's face look even more radiant than it normally was. If this were some scene straight off from some manga, Hange would've been surrounded by ridiculously big clumps of roses and those shoujo sparkly bubbles painstakingly pointed by some poor manga assistant in charge of backgrounds.
Levi Ackerman was officially screwed.
When Hange cleared her throat, the young lad was once again back inside the classroom, eating his lunch with her, and still had to tell her if he preferred her ponytail over her tacky pigtails.
"Yeah," he mumbled, looking away coolly, hoping the girl wouldn't sense his embarrassment before continuing, "it suits you better."
"Thank you." Hange cheerily said, her face dusted with pink.
A tiny spark of hope (for what, Levi had yet to figure out) lit inside the young lad when he noticed that Hange had kept her hair tied in a ponytail in the coming days.
The first time Levi cursed in public was when he was twelve.
It happened during one of their Science experiments inside the lab. They were working on the typical volcano project consisting of vinegar, baking soda, and food colour. While he and one of his groupmate, Gunther, were working on building their volcano, Eld had this silly idea of including Mentos in the experiment, claiming that it'd make the eruption look more realistic, as he learned from one of the online videos he watched one time. He just shrugged at the idea, not really minding it so much in favour of creating their scaled model. When they were done with the model, the three boys positioned themselves near their project, all standing on their respective stools and all excited for the result of their experiment. They made a huge mistake, though; all three boys poured the ingredients simultaneously inside their volcano instead of following the instructions that their instructor provided for them. When Eld dropped the Mentos he was able to snake inside the lab, disaster spelled for the whole group.
To summarize, they caused a huge mess inside the lab, they had to endure the rest of the day drenched in vinegar and looking like they just came from a fight because of the red dye, and Levi accidentally yelled "shit," as he stumbled and fell off his stool.
Intentional or not, it didn't go unheard by their Science teacher.
So here he was now, cleaning the entire 6th grade hallway, all for blurting out 'shit' in class. His uncle was summoned that day, too, and was currently inside the guidance office. The young lad sighed tiredly.
"I heard what happened." a familiar voice echoed through the empty hallway. Levi turned round and found Hange approaching him, mop in one hand. She chuckled as soon as she was standing in front of him. "For someone so allergic to filth, you have a pretty dirty mouth."
He rolled his eyes. "Shut up, four eyes."
She also did the same. "Yeah, yeah, sure." The young girl dismissed, waving her hand at him. "Anyway, let me help you with this. I don't think Mr. Shadis would mind."
Levi only watched as Hange sloppily placed the mop inside the bucket and struggled to maneuver the whole thing in an attempt to clean the floor. After a few minutes of Hange grunting and the horrible screeching sound of metal hitting the tiled floor rhythmically, Levi leaned his mop on the wall and walked towards the young lass who looked ridiculously determined to finish her side of the hallway, tongue sticking out in between her lips and brows furrowed. He almost laughed.
"That's not how it's done. You're going to ruin all the tiles of the 6th grade corridor with what you're doing." He reprimanded, though there wasn't any hint of sharpness in his tone.
The young girl turned to face him, a teasing smirk painted on her face. "Okay then. Show me."
On any normal day, Levi would be fully aware of everything that he was doing and why he was doing things, but this wasn't a normal day for he was being punished for cussing. Levi never gotten into trouble at school no matter how he looked like a troublemaker.
So he did just what she told him to do, which was to show her how mopping was done. He repositioned Hange's hands on the handle and held it in place as he moved to stand behind her. With all honestly, it looked ridiculous to a certain extent because Hange towered over him now and Levi had to really strain his neck to see in front.
On any normal day, Levi would find this cliché horrible. Good thing Hange was such a good sport.
"So, Levi, what really happened back there?" Hange asked, not turning her head to face him. "Someone from your class told me a bit of the story, but of course, it was only up to the part where you yelled, uh, what was it? Shit, right? Yeah, only up to that."
The young boy sighed before answering. "Eld, Gunther, and I were playing around during the experiment then it went wrong. While everything's happening, I yelled, 'shit,' and Mr. Shadis didn't miss it."
Hange clucked her tongue. "Next time, you better make sure there aren't any teachers in the place before you open your dirty mouth."
"The hell was that supposed to mean?"
"I'm saying, if you're gonna get yourself in trouble, you might as well do it without getting caught. Oh, and Levi," the young girl paused, "I think I can manage mopping on my own now."
It was only then that the young lad noticed that he was still holding Hange in position. "Oh," was all he could say as he retracted his hands from hers, as if she was a carrier of some contagious disease. Levi even stepped away from her for added measure. "...I'll finish where I left off." He mumbled as he hurried and grabbed the mop he left leaning on the wall.
The two fell into a friendly kind of quiet as they both finished cleaning the 6th grade hallway. When it came to the windows, Levi made sure that Hange wiped it enough without leaving even a trace of dried dust that could cloud the glass the following day when it dried. Punishment or not, if he had to clean something up, he might as well do a spectacular job of it. The people helping him should do the same, he thought.
"Four eyes, I hope you're kidding when you suggested about not getting caught when causing trouble. You of all people should know better." He said, breaking the silence between them as they arranged the cleaning implements inside the custodian's storage.
Hange let out a silly laugh, one that Levi didn't know she was capable of. But then again, this was Hange, and Hange was capable of a lot of things that surprised him to no end.
"Of course I was only kidding. Goodness, Levi. You think I'd even get myself into trouble?" She said, giggling like an idiot. Levi snorted.
"I hope when they catch you redhanded they'd make you clean this entire place."
Levi nearly kissed the dirty floor of the cramped storage room when Hange jokingly slapped him hard on his left shoulder. "You're such a nice friend, Levi. The bestest friend there is."
He righted himself before facing his companion. "What are you? Three years old? Use words properly."
The young lass only rolled her eyes and grinned. "Sure, Mr. Grumpy Pants."
Levi raised an eyebrow. "How creative... shitty glasses."
"Oooh, I'm so offended." Hange mocked.