Mikasa
Every day, after practice, I smoke with the other upperclassmen girls. One by one, each of them brings a piece of gossip and/or a complaint about their day.
Ymir usually takes the lion's share of our time. The beginning of her spiel gets stale after a while. Historia this, Historia that. She hasn't even had a face-to-face interaction with her target yet, claiming that she's waiting for "an opening." After she temporarily gets over her infatuation, Ymir has a remarkable talent for prying secrets out of people. She always manages to bring a piece of jaw-dropping news, news that really shouldn't be circulating in public—be that as it may, she still manages to catch wind of it. And if she can't extract the information with her own hands, she's equally nimble with working the network, mapping out the connections that can bring her the information she wants. Her grades will tell you otherwise, but ultimately, her street smarts shape her infamous reputation. Nobody messes with her.
Except Reiner.
For some reason not yet known to me, Ymir has this bitter, competitive relationship with Reiner Braun, a double varsity senior athlete. He committed to Alabama for football, a tough choice considering he had to decide between that option and soccer for UNC-Chapel Hill The strain between them only magnified when Historia was thrown into the mix. Just Wednesday, Reiner successful snagged her as his homecoming date, and Ymir was ablaze for a good fifteen.
Sasha usually goes next. Her primary issue centers on Keith Shardis, the AP US History teacher, as well as the varsity boys soccer coach. As a former Navy SEAL, Shardis teaches by staunch discipline and crippling intimidation. As an unaware eccentric, Sasha is the bane of his existence. He has a strict "no eating" rule in class, which, Sasha is naturally bound to break by sneaking a bite of her bizarre snacks during his lectures. On the first day of junior year, after screaming his lungs out at her, he went out of his way to find Coach Rico and request that she force Sasha to run an extra two miles on the track after practice. The punishments have only skyrocketed in length and severity.
Hannah annoys me. She shows up from time to time, and whenever she does, she goes on and on about her "lovely" knight-in-shining-armor, Franz. Luckily, Ymir and Annie make snarky cracks throughout her sickly-sweet litany of love to keep the rest of us more polite cynics from leaving, but in the end, we can stomach small doses of Hannah. She comes over only when Franz has something going on, otherwise she directly bolts for Franz's house after practice.
Mina occasionally runs into some boy troubles, but the bulk of her turn involves being Annie's silence translator. Even so, Annie doesn't say much to anyone about the inner workings of her life, something I find both relieving and agonizing. On one hand, I don't have to hear the grisly details between her and Eren; but on the other hand, I don't get to hear the grisly details between her and Eren. A part of me itches to know; another part of me gags at the thought of it.
When it's my turn to come around, I struggle to find something to contribute. There's no shame in passing—after all, that's Annie's default response—but the atmosphere of this warm, boisterous, marijuana-addled is something of itself. Every complaint, every thought, every concern is accepted and stamped with validation (well, maybe with the exception of Hannah's gushing). Ymir's rantings—acknowledged by groans, cheers, and/or laughs. Sasha's traumas with Shardis—recognized with pats on the back and comments of reassurance. Mina's boy problems—analyzed and dissected with plenty of outbursts of "Fucking asshole!" Annie's silence—embraced nonetheless.
Yet I can't bring the words to the surface of my lips. They're trapped in a safe, sealed behind a lock, its combination code unbeknownst to me.
Ymir has no inhibitions throwing me a line. Today's topic: "Boys," she states. "Or maybe even girls. Whatever you're into—go."
"There's… no one," I mutter, flushing.
Ymir reaches behind her, and before I know it, she flings a handful of snow in my direction with her bare hand. "Mikasa-fucking-Ackerman, this is fucking unacceptable! You, girl, are so hot. I'd say, hottest one out of all of us."
"No, that's not true," I stammer.
"Mikasa, you're a catch," Sasha says, nodding vigorously.
"Amen, sista," Mina adds.
"Guys, seriously. I'm really not—"
"Listen," Annie cuts me off. She leans forward in her chair. "Out of all my years getting high with Ymir, I can guarantee you that praise doesn't come easily out of that motor-mouth. So when it does, it's creed."
"Full disclosure here, if Historia wasn't on my radar, I'd have zero objections going after you!" Ymir reaffirms. "Question, though. Have you gotten your first kiss yet?"
I swallow nervously. Everyone's eyes are pinned onto me. "No," I say, almost a whisper.
"This. Is. Blasphemy," Ymir breathes. "Bitches, you hear that? This is blasphemy!"
"We gotta change that!" Sasha says.
"I'm… not really looking for a relationship right now," I say quickly. "There's a lot going on."
"Sista, lemme paint a picture for you, okay?" Ymir replies, taking a drag from her joint. The firelight flickers over her freckled features, and it might be due to the weed, but I'm entranced. "Life sucks. I don't know what might be the sole cause of it, but whatever the case, life is not fair. Life is a fucking bitch. Life sucks away all things fun, but you know what I think you should do, Mikasa? This Saturday night, right here, we're gonna have some fun. Even if life tells us, no, this week is going to suck for you, we're gonna revolt, we're gonna take charge, rip the fucking reins away from life, and we're gonna have a good time, even if the universe says otherwise, you hear me—"
"Shit, you're ridiculously smacked right now," Annie sighs. "Take it easy, will you?"
"Uh, excuse me, Annie, I was in the middle of my spiel," Ymir snaps. She takes another drag to reorient herself. "So," she says, looking me directly in the eye, "we're gonna find a good kisser for you."
They go on interrogating me, asking me what kind of guys I was into. Bookish types? Jocks? Tall guys? Short guys? When "I don't know" ceases being a passable answer, Annie breaks from her aloof silence yet again asked for a list of celebrities I like.
"How many?" I ask.
She crosses her arms, ponders for a moment. "Three. Right off the top of your head. You have five seconds, go."
"Um, Cristiano Ronaldo, Yoann Gourcuff, Marc Bartra."
"I haven't heard of the last two," Mina says.
"Soccer players," Annie and I say at the exact same time. Her icy gaze lingers on me for a moment before flitting back to the pitfire before us.
It seems we have a shared interest.
Sasha and I have started carpooling for the last two days. We're both on a budget, Sasha especially because she's planning to be a first-generation college student in her family. Her parents were industrial workers from Ohio, until her mom managed to find a white-collar managerial job in this area. Claiming it's for their college funds, she has a "side business" with this bald boy on the soccer team named Connie.
When she drops me off today after Ymir's, she raises the lid of the center console in her car. Hidden in the center console of her car is a heap of plastic baggies, each packed with a gram of marijuana. "Hey, by the way, do you need some more stuff?"
"No, I need a break," I tell her, "but thanks."
I'm getting too hooked on weed. Levi's on to me, and he refuses to clam up about it.
Yet there's still a small amount left in the stash behind my headboard.
Levi's friend Hanji stops by for an hour, and she showers me with the typical questions adults ask. How's school? How are classes? Are you thinking about college yet? Usually, I answer curtly and concisely, but to my surprise, I actually like his friend. Not many people genuinely listen the way she does, and she invites me to come see her lab at the University of Chicago campus sometime. I silently recall a tabloid article title: "Levi Ackerman rumored to have sizzling affair with University of Chicago scientist."
When Hanji leaves, Levi disappears somewhere soon after. I open my desk drawer, take out the hand pipe Levi left on my dresser, open my bedroom window, and crawl out onto the slanted roof of my house. There's a great view of the stars here, and I've taken to spending my evenings here instead of smoking out my window (a world's supply of Febreeze can't deter Levi's keen sense of smell).
I just can't stop thinking about Eren when I'm high. Who is he? I used to have an encyclopedia of all things Eren filed away in head, built from evenings upon evenings of skittering back and forth between our houses. In elementary school, we played soccer together in my backyard, and afterwards, we'd jump the fences to get to his house and watch a movie. We grew close with Armin, and every summer, his grandfather would drive us across the eastern half of the United States, through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and up Long Island until we reached the Arlerts' beachside cottage. We walked together to and from school every single day through middle school and into early high school.
I knew his likes, his dislikes, his guilty pleasures, his deepest secrets; I knew every facet of his from growing up together, from the smoothest planes of his life to the roughest patches. He loved improvising "Rhapsody in Blue" on his mom's old piano, but he still has war flashbacks from learning "Clair de Lune." He couldn't stand anything vegetable-based, but he could wolf down mac-and-cheese in no-time flat. He loved his mother more than a son ever possibly could; in spite of his habit to bicker with her, he always let up in the end and went out of his way to give her a hand. He resented his father for giving his mother so much sadness, but he always kindled a faith that things would work out in the end for their family.
To me, he was my best friend. He coaxed out a side of me I was wholly unfamiliar with. A sarcastic tongue, an appreciation of gallows-humor, a low tolerance for bullshit. Every afternoon, when I would escape to his house, I could breathe. I could laugh. I could be human.
But now? Who is he? Eren Jaeger. My neighbor, once my best friend, now a stranger. Which parts of the past Eren, if any, are still intact? And which parts have been strewn away?
Tomorrow night, I'll see him again. I'll see him "hooking up" with Annie on Ymir's, whatever that means.
I shouldn't feel like this—whatever this unsettling queasiness is. I can't diagnose the problem. There shouldn't be a problem in the first place. I shouldn't even be thinking about him right now. He's living his life, freed from the responsibility of taking care of broken, battered Mikasa, and if anything, I should be happy for him. I should be happy for him. He's moving on to bigger, better things, and I suppose "hooking up" with Annie, a girl who bluntly admitted to forgetting his name sometimes, is one such bigger, better thing. I am happy for him. I am happy for him. Of course, I am. No question about it.
Saturday afternoon, Sasha and I trail Ymir through H&M, watching her sniff the disorganized racks like a bloodhound tracking an animal. "No, nope, hell no, no, no, shit, no," she mutters, plastic coat hangers screeching and clanking as she pushes aside each reject after a two-second glance.
"She's good," Sasha whispers.
In no time, Ymir dumps a pile of clothing into my arms and forces me into a changing room. It's baffling how such… minimal strips of clothing can cost so much more than a normal T-shirt, which is probably triple the cloth surface area of a skimpy halter top barely covering the back area. Ymir sits outside of the changing room and orders me to try on various combinations of the clothes she picked out.
"Yes," she answers when I stumble out in a pair of overly-sparkly open-toed heels and a black romper just two inches longer than the bottom hem of my underwear.
"I don't dig the heels," Sasha mumbles, her mouth full of burrito. The screening process is quickly approaching the hour mark, and Sasha took the liberty to make a brief Chipotle run.
"Shut up, Sash. She looks hot."
"Ymir, I can't do this," I protest when she tosses me another ensemble. "I've never worn anything this… revealing."
Ymir reaches for her burrito bowl. Prying the aluminum lid off, she motions with her fork. "About time you started taking advantage of how fly you look," she scoffs. "Great boobs, world-class ass, long, pretty legs—you need to flaunt all that, girl. Also, FYI, we found you a certain someone who might be interested in getting you to first base."
I had never exactly agreed to this whole arrangement. It was kind of foisted upon me, but the more I think I about it, the more I wonder about what it's like, that first base. I've never thought particularly much about kissing, but in a way, it's a rite of passage of adolescence, along with sex, of course. As all rites of passage go, I'm eager to take up the gauntlet—but with whom, I'm still unclear. I always hear that same old nugget of advice, to save everything for the right guy, for someone who means a lot to you. That's what Hannah told me before shifting into a long-winded story about her first kiss with Franz. But on the other hand, the other girls had far less dreamy experiences. Sasha "accidentally" made out with Connie last year. Mina kissed a German exchange student named Thomas, who happened to fly home the very next day. Annie doesn't even remember who her first kiss was. And Ymir blacked out when it happened. None of them feel as if they lost something invaluable by giving their first kisses to a someone instead of the one.
I suppose it's nice to have some experience, so when the one comes along, that first kiss between us goes smoothly.
"Who is it?" I ask warily.
"Good try, but I'm not spilling 'til tonight!" Ymir replies, cackling.
We go through at least four more outfits until Ymir finally compromises with a wine-colored V-neck cami showing some, but not too much, cleavage, paired with ripped black jeans and black strappy heels. "You know, I'll let you off the hook this one time," Ymir tells me, ordering me to spin around with a twirl of her fork. "This is conservative as fuck, honestly, but you're a wee baby hoe right now, so we'll ease you in. But give it a few weeks, and in no time, your confidence will shoot up, and then you're gonna dress sluttier and sluttier, mark my words."
It takes four YouTube videos and a total of thirty minutes to manage some passable winged eyeliner. My trashcan is padded with multiple discarded makeup remover wipes from multiple failed attempts. The first time, my hand jitters too much, leaving a harsh zig-zag across my eyelid. The second time, the eyeliner tip goes on too thickly. The third time, I apply the liner too thinly, but when I try to reline, I, once again, apply it too thickly. The fourth time, I successful line my eyes, but the wing looks like a smudgy blob. The fifth time, the wing looks like a piece of hair that decided to get stuck at the corner of my eye. The sixth time, the wing actually looks kind of okay, but my eyeliner brush accidentally leaves a mark just millimeters from the wing. When I try to surgically erase the mark with a remover wipe, part of the somewhat-acceptable wing gets caught as collateral damage. The seventh time, the universe is kind to me.
Now, that's just the story for my right eye. The saga for my left eye is far more grueling, and basically, it concludes with the realization that perfect symmetry isn't attainable by the human hand.
Mascara and lipstick, thankfully, are much more straightforward. Too winded by the eyeliner, I decide to tackle eyebrow pencil, foundation, and hair curling another day.
A stranger stares at me from my mirror through her (painstakingly) painted eyes. She wobbles in her heels, and her gaze flits towards her V-neck, agonizing over how revealing it is while simultaneously stressing over whether it's revealing enough.
I'm low-hanging fruit for Levi. He taunts, he teases, he forces me to eat an extra slice of pizza.
"I'm not going to drink," I tell him, rising to my unsteady feet.
"That's what I tell myself every night," he replies, making himself another pot of coffee. "News flash, it never works."
"Believe me, I won't."
"I don't want some dipshit officer calling me at 2AM about how liquid courage got you to run a red light, and it just so happens that an incoming fourteen-wheeler comes barreling in and flattens your car into a fucking pancake. Next thing you know, there's guts and pieces—"
"Can you not say that?" I interrupt him hotly, my voice shaking.
Immediately, he knows he's gone too far. For once, there's no snippy comeback from him. He watches the coffee machine dribble espresso into his mug. I glower at him, but he keeps his gaze steady on the coffee. The machine cuts off. He takes a sip of espresso.
"Too soon, I guess," he says, after a long silence.
"The apology of the century. You're an asshole, you know that?" I spit back at him before turning on my heel and marching into the garage.
Before I can yank open the door, his infuriating voice drones from the kitchen, "You left your purse, honey."
I stomp back in. My bag dangles from his fingers while he sips and sips from that goddamned coffee mug that used to be my mother's. I rip my purse out of his hand. "Fuck you," I tell him before storming back into the garage. I've never been particularly liberal with swear words, but since Levi's move-in, I've seen the wonders of the word fuck. It's a missile launcher that can carry unreal astronomical quantities of spite and anger, all densely-packed into a single, explosive syllable.
I'm still fuming by the time I ring Ymir's doorbell.
Parking took forever to find because every open space on her street is already occupied by another person at the party. Walking the two blocks from my parking spot to her house came with almost two sprained ankles, courtesy of these Victorian torture devices of shoes. The back of my heel has been rubbed raw from the faux leather strap.
From her doorstep, I can hear music blasting through the walls. Her house is pulsating. Nearly two minutes pass. No one has come to the front door. I hug my jacket closer around me. This skimpy top provides zero layering against these awful Chicago winters. I'm about to send a text to Sasha or Ymir until I hear footsteps behind me.
"Hey, the door's unlocked." A guy just slightly taller than me shoots me a rakish grin. His light-brown hair is gelled stylishly, and he wears a dark blue shirt tucked into tailored khaki slacks. He steps onto the front porch. A hint of cologne come off of him. "Hey, it's Mikasa, right?" he asks, extending a hand. "I hear about you all the time. You kick ass at lax."
"Uh, thanks. And you are?" I reach out my hand, intending to shake, but he slides his hand across my palm. His fingers curl around mine, and finally, he shakes.
"We gotta dap, Mikasa. That was horrendous. Try again," he says. He smiles before adding in a low voice, "If you nail it this time, I'll tell you my name."
We go for a Take Two. I nail it this time.
"I'm Jean Kirschtein," the guy says. He opens the door for me and gestures for me to go in first. From inside, the pounding music seeps out, echoing across the neighborhood. "After you, Mikasa."
I turn around, and that's when I realize that he's red in the face. "Thanks, Jean."
"You've got some pretty hair, Mikasa," he calls after me.
"Thank you," I reply, turning around once more, but he's disappeared, enveloped by the writhing crowd.
There are people everywhere, all faces I've passed in the hallways of high school but don't exactly know on a personal level. On the main floor, people are mainly talking—or making out on whichever pieces of furniture are available. I pass through the kitchen, and on the countertops are stacks of pizza boxes and rows of various alcohol, ranging from different types of beers to assorted Smirnoff Ice flavors to several handles of vodka and tequila.
I venture into the basement, the source of the ear-shattering music. Downstairs, dozens of people are dancing, grinding on each other in a dim, purplish light. I find Ymir there, dancing with, to my surprise, Historia. Historia's dressed modestly, in a cute dress and Converse, and she's actually quite the dancer. She waves to me—talking is pretty futile in the deafening basement—and any weird, negative sentiment between us over #prayforAckerman seems to have dissipated completely. Ymir yells something at me, pointing at me up and down and giving me a thumb's up. I give her a thumb's up back.
Somewhere in the crowd, I run into Sasha, and she tackles me in an embrace. Wildly, she gestures for me to dance. Stiffly, I mimic her movements, but she only shakes her head, grabs my arm, and pulls me upstairs. My ears ring when we ascend into the quieter kitchen space.
"Hey! You made it!" Sasha exclaims. "You are sober right now? You better not be, Mikasa. We're gonna have a lot of fun, and you can't have fun being sober as a brick! You ready for a round of pong?"
"Of what?"
"Beer pong! Let's go! The table's outside!"
"Sash, I don't drink," I say quickly.
"C'mon, Mikasa. It's just a little bit of beer!"
"Sasha, seriously," I plead.
"Oh, alright," she concedes grumpily. She rummages around the pockets of her dress until she finds a lighter and a plastic baggie. "Then you gotta catch up," she tells me, shaking the baggie of weed in my face. She doesn't let up until I take my hand-pipe out of my purse and get at least five good hits.
As always, I'm thankful for the marijuana. The whirl of the party slows, and I feel much more at ease than I did before, wandering aimlessly through the chaos. Sasha instructs me to gather as many beer bottles I can carry, as well as a stack of red cups.
Meanwhile, she peers through the crowd, into the living room. Suddenly, she cups her hands around her mouth and hollers, at the top of her lungs, "CONNIE SPRINGER, YOU FUCKING LOSER. GET OVER HERE. I WANT A REMATCH, YOU HEAR ME?"
A bald head drunkenly wades through the living room crowd. Connie emerges, beer stains spotting his shirt. Behind him, it's Jean. His face has taken on a reddish hue, probably thanks to whatever's in the cup in his hand.
"Oh, hey, Sash," Connie drawls, careening into the kitchen. "Ready to get wrecked again?"
"Nope," Sasha responds indignantly. Roughly, she cuffs an arm around me. "Because I've got Mikasa on me side this time! No more dumb, plastered Ymir!"
We move outside into the chilly weather. There's a few people gathered around the campfire. I can see Mina making out with someone in a lawnchair. We gather around a ping-pong table set up on the patio.
"Mikasa, huh?" Connie replies, peering at me with his large eyes. He arranges the cups in a pyramid formation on their side. I do the same for ours. "You seem like a worthy foe, but you guys won't be able to come close to the dream team. Right, Jean-boy?"
"Hey, fuck you," Jean growls, flushing on top of his alcohol-induced glow. One by one, he pops the caps off of the beer bottles and pours its contents into the empty red cups on our side. "Call me that one more time, and you're stuck with that sonuvabitch Jaeger as your partner."
Connie snorts. "He's busy getting laid upstairs, so you're my only bet, Jean-boy."
My gut lurches.
"Who the hell actually wants to fuck Jaeger? He's a tactless moron!"
"Hey, to be fair, Eren's actually pretty good with the ladies," Conne replies. "If anything, you seem jealous."
"No, I'm not," I say immediately—at the exact same time as Jean.
I can't breathe. I take a step backwards. I stumble a bit in my heels. Jean catches my arm before my ankle takes the bulk of my weight. "Hey, careful there, Mikasa. You okay? A little too smacked?"
"I need a drink," I mutter.
"I gotcha," Jean says. "What do you like?"
"Just a coke."
"With vodka?"
"No, just a coke."
Jean looks at me funny, but within a minute, he zips into the house and zips back out with my coke. I thank him and take huge gulps from the cup. Luckily, nobody makes much out of my outburst. Internally, I steel myself. I am happy for him. I am so fucking happy for him.
Jean fills up the cups on his and Connie's side, and it's game time.
Sasha makes the first toss. The ping-pong ball sails through the air and plunks into center cup in the boys' pyramid. "Drink, bitch," she orders Connie.
Connie gives her the finger and chugs the beer. He chucks the ping-pong ball back over in our direction. Sasha catches it deftly over her head.
"Your turn, Mikasa!" Sasha drops the ball in my hand.
It takes me a minute to orient myself. Everything's hazy from the weed, but when I toss the ball, it falls into the frontmost cup.
"Bottoms up, Jean," I call over the table.
Jean lifts his cup to me, shooting me a look of mock derision. He downs it and returns the ball to our side. I catch it.
"We get another turn because we both got it into the cup," Sasha tells me. I hand her the ball. She dribbles it against the surface of the table before flinging it over to the other side. It bounces against the rim of a corner cup, but it bounces away, landing onto the ground.
Connie makes a shot. "Y'know, I wanna see a drunk Mikasa—"
"You won't see a drunk Mikasa, but you can see a Mikasa high off her ass!" Sasha cuts in for me. She drinks the cup for me, while I get another hit off of the pipe. "She'll blaze up, and I'll drink for her."
"Wait that's not equal then," Jean protests. "If anything, that's fucking condescending because you guys doubly incapacitated each time we make it in. It's like you're handicapping yourselves."
"Yo, I don't fucking care!" Connie howls, shoving Jean to make a toss. "As long as we fucking win, right?"
Jean shoves him back. "No, you little shit, we need to make this a fair fight, otherwise the win doesn't feel as legitimate in the end."
"But the thing is, things are fair," a drunk voice calls from behind us. "Jean-boy, you're this pathetic-ass dead-weight dragging Connie down, so they're handicapping themselves to even the playing field."
Footsteps shuffle from the kitchen backdoor. Every nerve in my body freezes over when I turn around—to find Eren swaying towards us, red cup in hand, a huge, goofy grin on his face. His hair is ruffled, his clothes wrinkled, and I can only guess from what. He gives Sasha a fist bump. He salutes Connie. When Jean tells him to fuck off, he responds by telling him to suck a dick.
When he turns towards me, a strange moment passes between us. It's a familiar pattern that I've seen time and again throughout our friendship, in which somehow, we find ourselves entangled in an argument. Elevated voices, harsh words, pointed accusations. We don't speak for up to half an hour. But that was the maximum silent period between us—because always, Eren's the first one to crack. With each other, we were terrible at holding grudges. He breaks, and inevitably, I break soon after. If we're enduring each other in the same room, within ten minutes of our tense silence, he makes eye contact with me, I glare back, and next thing we know, he's laughing, a completely inappropriate reaction, but slowly, my defenses disintegrate, and I can't help but join him.
Old habits die hard is what they say, right?
Especially when one's under the influence.
Sure enough, he lumbers towards me with a familiar, unchanging, smile. It's a radiant smile that never fails to reach you with its warmth, no matter how armored your defenses are, because it's guaranteed to be genuine. It's the smile of my best friend.
"Hey, Mikasa."
A/N: GUYS, I'M SCREAMING AT THE RESPONSE THIS FIC GOT FOR THE LAST CHAPTER. Remember that deal we made about getting to triple digits for reviews? Y'all FUCKING delivered—not only on FF, but on AO3 as well! I opened my email yesterday to find so many kind, encouraging comments. Much love to Eien no Moonlight, Elivra26, omnipotent13, CaptainHuggyface3218, Pinwheely, Gokuu the Carrot, KarinaAltDied, clara22sanderson, SeptarSenior, pterodachili, and you kind Guest for taking the time to leave some much-appreciated thoughts on FF and getting us to 100! And on AO3, I'd like to thank Jungianca6, bersange, Nauti, Elis, Arya_Silvertongue, Calla19, ChocoRoyale, Panko, and Rogmes for your kind words and encouragement! Asdfasd you guys really rock :') Also, if I accidentally left anyone out by accident, pls lmk!
This chapter turned out a bit longer than I had expected it to be… and the story of Mikasa's first party clearly isn't over yet, so I'm planning on splitting this into two parts. But damn, this fic is getting really, really fun to write. It's kinda like a walk down memory lane for me, back to those trashy high school house parties on Saturday nights :') You know, I've been thinking. Even though I was saying that I'm going on hiatus when school starts, I'd really like to keep it up, kind of as a fun thing to let off some steam when the going gets rough.
I'll try to get Chapter 13 out soon, but this week's a little crazy with preparations, packing, etc., so I'm afraid the updating spree's gonna have to take a breather for a bit. See y'all later!