Levi
Something is on my foot. It's a dainty, light article of clothing, something that can easily get snagged around my ankle.
I finish folding up the pants that I found scrunched in the cushions of the couch, and I place them with the jacket, shirt, and socks. The shirt had lost a button, so I pulled a sewing kit and gave it some TLC. There's a second stack of folded clothes, a collection of less elegant garments: a black, lacy bra, a short jean skirt, and a white crop-top. Something you'd throw on before hitting up a frat party. But there's a missing piece to the puzzle.
I lift my leg. Lo and behold, there it is: a skimpy, lonesome thong, hanging from my foot.
Whenever Jean comes over, Mikasa's fairly considerate. Most of the action gets drowned out by music from her computer speakers, and even when he spends the night, I barely hear a thing, apart from occasional laughter.
But last night, Mikasa abandoned all courtesy. I tried to put in earplugs, but they did jack shit in muffling the horrific noises from the other room. The walls shook. Even the glass of water on my nightstand seemed to quiver. On one hand, it was commendable that they were able to keep it up for so long, but on the other hand, I just wanted to get my z's, for fuck's sake. The surprise gathering at our house had thrown off my writing progress, so I was counting on regaining lost ground today. However, going into turbo-mode requires getting a good night's sleep—which just so happened to evade me.
Footsteps pad down the stairs. They hesitate midway, pausing at the last step concealed by the living room wall.
"I know you're there," I say. "There's no point playing hide-and-seek."
Eren skulks down the rest of the steps. He has Mikasa's purple bath towel wrapped around his waist. His back is mauled by scratch marks, and a set of teeth have left a faint imprint on his shoulder. I hand him his clothes, and he takes them, mumbling an abashed, "Thanks." He's about to walk-of-shame back upstairs to change, but then he blinks wearily at me. "Uh, Levi. Are my, um…" He swallows, struggling.
"Your boxers are tucked inside of your pants, nice and neat," I inform him.
"Thanks," he forces out.
He scampers away, and I put the kitchen sink on full blast and douse my palms with antibacterial soap. The Center of Disease Control would applaud my hand washing technique.
When Eren comes back—fully-dressed this time—he lingers at the bottom of the stairs, debating whether to engage in small-talk with me or to simply make a break for it. Stiffly, he joins me at the kitchen table, where I have a steaming cup of coffee waiting for him.
"How was prom?" I ask, taking a sip from my own mug.
"Eventful," he says. And quickly, he blubbers out, "I'm sorry for, um, err—"
"For depriving me of my beauty rest?"
"Yeah. That. And, well, you know, like—"
"And for leaving me all your laundry?"
"Sorry," he says, cringing. "Thanks for cleaning that up. You didn't have to."
"It was an eyesore. I was doing myself a favor more than anything." I sigh. The coffee is too sour. One of the girls—the boisterous, freckly one who had a strange name—had left my package of French roast arabica beans open yesterday, effectively ruining one of my few pleasures in life. Those lax girls were truly a scourge. I spent a good portion of the evening vacuuming up after stray hairs in the bathrooms and Febreezing the shit out of the house. I gesture for Eren to drink his coffee. "Any plans for the rest of the day?" I ask him.
"I need to go to Jean's house." His face twists up in disgust after his first sip. He looks tormented, uneasy. "I need to talk to him."
"Do you know what you're gonna say?"
"Look, I know! I fucked up, Levi!" Eren barks, bristling.
But I just shrug. "Relax, I'm not blaming you for anything. Well, except for being a sloppy degenerate due to the two reasons we just discussed."
"You're not mad about… the whole Jean situation?"
"That's for you to figure out. Do you have a game plan?"
Eren rubs his temples. He would benefit from a trip to a confessional booth. "I don't know, Levi. Be straightforward about what I did last night, I guess?" he says. "If he wants to take a swing at me, I should let him."
"He might also wanna knee you in the crotch. You should let him do that too."
"This conversation is so incredibly helpful," he snaps, rising to his feet. He slings his tailored coat over his shoulder, and he's almost out the door when I call his name.
"Do you need a ride?" I offer.
"I should walk. I need to figure out… words and stuff."
"Good luck, kid."
I never liked picking the low-hanging fruit. It's just nowhere as satisfying as scoring a victory after a hard-fought argument. And so I leave Mikasa in peace as she struggles to eat her waffles. Nursing a vicious hangover, she's not in the mood to talk, so I put the news on the TV. And when she hugs the toilet bowl, throwing those waffles right back up, I stop myself from offering my regularly-scheduled commentary. Instead, I scoop her hair back into a ponytail and fetch her a glass of water.
She sleeps away most of the day. When she's not napping, she drifts through the house, aimlessly, saying nothing, doing nothing. A storm cloud of gloom hangs over her, and every so often, she checks her phone, as if she's waiting for a phone call or a text message.
She wants a distraction, so she sits across from me as I draft a chapter of my book. I slide her a stack of pages, and wordlessly, she picks through my sentences, while I type. When she's done, she busies herself with laundry. She sprays down the kitchen counters. She offers to make dinner. She even willingly does the dishes. When we watch the sunset on the patio, she passes on the beer tonight, as expected. I wait for her to break the silence, but she stares off into the distance, stewing over something.
And then the doorbell rings.
She looks like a wilted rag doll when she stands up, dragging herself to answer it. Quietly, I head to my room. It's conveniently positioned right over the porch. I crack open the window, and I can see Mikasa and Jean sitting on the front step. There's several feet of space between them.
He tries to fire off a series of questions, but Mikasa answers none of them. She just sits there with her head buried in her huddled knees. Jean gives up on the interrogation, and he just starts talking. He tells her how Eren came to pick up his car and fessed up, admitting that he initiated everything. Mikasa tries to interject here, but Jean cuts her off.
"Of course I know that's B.S.!" he shouts. "You don't have to tell me he was trying to cover for you because I hope you know I heard everything you said. You invited him to your house, didn't you? So tell me, Mikasa, what movie did you end up watching?"
He goes on about how humiliated and betrayed he feels. At some point, his voice cracks, and the poor chap is on the verge of crying. He asks her if she loves him. A long silence follows.
"You know what, Mikasa?" Jean says. "I can't stand that asshole, but at least, Eren's decent enough to be honest about things. I'll never forgive him, but he has the balls to admit that he fucked up—unlike you."
And then he breaks up with her.
A day later, Eren comes over. Mikasa invites him to come in, but he insists they keep their conversation outside. It seems Jean let him off easy. From my perch by the window, I see no full-body cast, no limp to Eren's step, not even a black-eye. The only injury he seems to have sustained is the maiming of his own dignity.
"Mikasa," he says. "What we did was really, really shitty."
"I don't regret anything," she says, stepping towards him, reaching for him.
But he backs away. "I regret everything. I know exactly what Jean's feeling right now because my mom is going through it right now, Mikasa! And it's a sucky, awful, terrible feeling that no one deserves—even Jean. You cheated on him, and I took part in it. That's really fucked up. I can't look my mom in the eye anymore—"
"I'm sorry," she tries to say, but Eren shakes his head.
"That was so selfish."
"But you wanted to, didn't you?" she protests.
"Not like this, though."
"I never loved him, Eren. I never wanted that to happen—"
"Jesus, Mikasa. Are you fucking serious right now? Then why the hell did you get wrapped up in a whole, goddamned relationship with him?"
"I don't know—"
"Stop it. That's such a bullshit answer. For once, can you just fucking be honest with yourself? Like, I get it. It's not easy talking about things, but avoiding shit hurts everyone, Mikasa. Me. Jean. Yourself. No one wins when you keep on lying to yourself like this."
"I'm sorry." She's crying, hiccuping over her sobs.
"I need some space, Mikasa," Eren says, his voice shaking. "Don't get me wrong. I care a lot about you, but I just need some space from you right now."
He walks back to his house with his hands shoved into his pockets. When Mikasa comes back inside, she slams the door to her room.
She skips several consecutive days of school, holing up in her bedroom, coming down only to get a plate of food or to refill her water bottle. She doesn't join me for beers on the patio. Nor does she offer to mark up any drafts.
I ask Hanji to forge some doctor's notes, but eventually, Mikasa's teachers will catch on to the fact that this so-called "Dr. Zoe" is not a licensed doctor of medicine but rather a Ph.D. in the field of molecular biology. I fabricate some excuses when Mikasa's lacrosse coach calls, wondering about her whereabouts. This Coach Rico, however, has a keen nose for flimsy answers, and she reminds me that the girls' state championships are right around the corner, stressing the importance of attending practice. On two separate occasions, her friends Sasha and Armin swing by, but Mikasa tells me that she just wants to be left alone.
Carla and I decide to call off our bet, even though I won. We also agree to postpone our hangouts until the circumstances work themselves out. In the evenings, I spot Eren walking his dog in the neighborhood. He always stops for a moment when he passes our house, but within thirty seconds, he moves on when his golden retriever pulls on the leash.
By the fourth day, I've had enough of this nonsense.
I pound on Mikasa's door. When she opens it just a crack, I kick it wide open. She jumps to the side, narrowly avoiding a broken nose. She's been wearing the same oversized white T-shirt for days, and her face looks gaunt, even though I'd imagine she's been getting more than enough sleep.
"What the hell, Levi?" she mutters.
"Get dressed."
"Leave me alone."
"I said, get dressed."
I stand in her room, arms crossed as she shuffles to her drawer, pulling out a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans.
"Can I have some privacy?" she says dully.
I turn around as she changes. I stand over her when she splashes water on her face, when she brushes her teeth, when she yanks a brush through her hair.
"Pack a weekend's worth of clothes," I then instruct her. "Toiletries. Toothbrush. Phone charger."
"Where are we going?" she demands.
"O'Hare."
"Why in the world are we going to the airport?"
"Another biography mission. You're keeping me company."
"To where?"
"New York."
"We don't have tickets."
"As of yesterday, we do."
"How?!"
"Let's just say the publishing company really enjoys sucking the dicks of Pulitzer finalists. Hurry the fuck up or we'll miss our flight."
There is nothing I hate more than Newark Liberty International Airport. First of all, it's in Dirty Jersey, a loathsome state with horrific roads, trashy beaches, and even trashier personalities (for instance, it spawned the former Governor Chris Christie). Second of all, landing here requires an additional leg of travel via the delay-ridden monstrosity known as NJ Transit.
Mikasa and I sit jammed up next to each other on the train into NYC. I'm envious that she owns a pair of earphones and that she claimed the window seat because I'm sandwiched next to a pair of Princeton students. They're smartly-dressed, probably en route to New York for interviews with the big banks—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays—and while they're in town, maybe do a lap around the clubs. They're trying to engage in a debate over moral philosophy, but it's clear that neither of the guys have properly done their readings.
"Don't apply to Princeton," I tell Mikasa, perfectly within earshot of the undergrads. "It's a shithole, and you'll have to wear orange at reunions. Also, they haven't divested from private prisons yet."
The undergrads change seats immediately.
Grand Central Station is the same as ever: a constant game of dodging New Yorkers too busy to get out of your way. Elbows and knees come in handy here, and Mikasa and I push through the crowd.
"This is insane!" she tells me, jerking to the side as a man in a suit almost plows her right over, not bothering to look up from his work phone.
"Chicago is 'rural' compared to this," I reply.
When we make it outside, where we're met by the looming skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan, Mikasa stops, dead in her tracks. Setting foot outside of Grand Central is an experience that will never grow old for me. I had the same wonderstruck expression on my face, years back when I was just about to start my freshman year of college. We head towards the honking, hectic streets. I try to hail a yellow cab, and Mikasa attempts to call an Uber, but after ten minutes, I grow sick of waving my arm in vain at the congested traffic. The closest Uber is more than half an hour away, so we take the Line 1 subway into Morningside Heights. I have to yank at Mikasa's arm to keep her moving when she ogles at a guitarist belting out a Led Zeppelin cover in the 116th Street Station. At last, we make it to an AirBnB just several blocks away from Columbia University.
"So here's the plan," I tell her when she ditches her suitcase by the door of the apartment and skitters out onto the balcony to admire the nighttime view. "HarperCollins wants to get brunch with me tomorrow around noon to talk business, so you're on your own for the day."
"I still can't believe you got a publishing deal with them," she says.
"It's not set in stone yet. I could very well fuck everything up if I say something stupid tomorrow."
"Then try not to be yourself."
"Hah, hah. What a knee-slapper. Anyways, go check out Columbia in the meantime. If I'm not mistaken, college tours count as excused absences as school, are they not? I'll rendezvous with you for dinner, and then it's off to JFK to catch a 9PM flight home, sound good?"
She's too busy staring at the Hudson River skyline to answer.
We order dinner from one of my favorite taquerias nearby, and with plastic bags heaped full of enchiladas, I lead us up the street, to a familiar haunt of mine back in the day. As one of my part-time college jobs, I used to work at Riverside Park as a food stand vendor. That's where I met Hanji.
Being the charismatic one, she worked the cashier while I manned the deep-fryer in the back. After closing down in the evenings, we'd sit together on top of a picnic table, digging into the unsold food and complaining about our majors. We picked up a cigarette habit during our sophomore years, but by our senior years, we kicked it. Somewhere in the conversation, we'd look out across the Hudson at a glimmering New Jersey waterfront, and we'd come up with a million new ways to shit on our neighboring state.
The picnic table is still here, even after all these years. Mikasa and I settle down, and we dig into our orders. We haven't talked much all day, as in really talked. We spent the drive to O'Hare in silence, and we bickered the whole time in the airport after I refused to turn over my pocket knife to the TSA. She spent the majority of the plane ride cranking out math problems for school. Even having missed so much class, she's still somehow on top of her work. As for me, I scribbled furiously in my notebook. I switch to writing with paper and pen when a bout of writer's block hits.
I hand Mikasa a packet of hot sauce. "So," I say.
"So," she replies, passing me one of the beers I ordered.
"You sure you don't wanna drink one with me?"
She's hesitant when I pop the can and offer her a lager.
"Come on," I insist. "This is tasteful drinking—not like the way you kids do those shots." Within moments, we're tapping beer cans and polishing off the enchiladas.
"You know," I remark. "The skyline looks nice across the waterfront, but at the end of the day, it's good, ol' Dirty Jersey—"
"Levi," she interrupts.
"What?"
"Can you do that thing?"
"What thing?"
'That thing where you interview me about how I'm feeling. Where you call me out on my B.S." She turns to me, and I'm startled to find that her eyes are brimming with tears. I give her a napkin, and she dabs at her face, sniffling. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I feel so lost right now," she mumbles. More tears spill down her cheeks.
"At last, we address the elephant in the room."
"I thought you would've done this sooner," she says.
"I was trying to be nice about it."
"I don't deserve that."
"Oh, shut up. This self-loathing thing gets old, okay?" I groan, wringing my hands. "Mikasa, you fucked up, alright? You cheated on your boyfriend—sorry, I mean, your plaything—and you toyed around with the boy-next-door who's been head-over-heels for you for God knows how long. That's a big ouch, by the way. But that doesn't fucking mean you've signed a lease for the ninth circle of Hell, you hear me? You're a human being, and human beings fuck up from time to time. But you learn from it. You become a better person. It's that simple, Mikasa."
This makes her cry even more, and I can imagine an mini-Hanji sitting on my shoulder, hollering at me to be more compassionate. I let out a deep breath, and I pat circles on her back. But I soon realize this is a mistake because she leans over to sob into my shoulder, and I can feel her tears seeping through the fibers of my clothing. Hanji was always better at this people-person stuff.
I wait for Mikasa's ragged sobs to die down before I go for a Take II.
"Sorry, that was harsh," I say.
"I needed to hear it," she manages to get out.
"Do you still wanna try that interview thing?"
"Y-yeah."
"Okay. Let's start with this one. You always dodge this question: Do you even like Jean in that kinda way?"
"No, I don't." Her direct answer surprises me, and when I glance over at her, she's clenching the empty lager can, forming dents in the aluminum. "He's so sweet, and he's a great guy, and I told him I loved him, but…"
"But what?"
"I didn't mean it."
"Why did you say it, though?" I inquire.
"I felt bad to not say it back, especially to someone who's just so..." Her voice cracks on the last syllable, and more tears stream out. "Someone so nice and considerate to me."
"There's a ton of dudes in the world who are nice and considerate, though. That doesn't mean you have to be in love with them. Your logic is utter garbage, Mikasa. How did you even get involved with him in the first place? Lemme guess. He hit on you, you loved the attention, and you thought, 'Why not?', because you were bored and because you were curious about what sex was? I'm pretty sure most first relationships in high school start that way—"
"That's not the whole story," she says, shaking her head. "There was a day… I was at Ymir's party. And I saw Eren with Annie, and I don't know, Levi. Seeing that hurt so much, and I had too much weed. I just kept seeing all these hickeys on Annie's neck, and it made me realize that…" She waves around her hands, struggling to find the words.
"You were jealous?" I suggest.
"Yes!" she cries out. "I hate that you were right all along, Levi, but yes! I was jealous, and I felt like he had moved on and that he'd turned into a completely different person. I felt like I'd lost him."
"And so you used Jean to get back at him, like I've said, over and over again. To make him the jealous one and to make him want you back."
"Yes." She crushes the can in her hands and wrings it onto the ground.
"As a former employee of this lovely park, I'd appreciate it if you picked that up."
Grudgingly, Mikasa slides off of the surface of the picnic table and plucks the litter from the ground. When she rejoins me, I pass her a fresh napkin. She covers her face with it, and I sigh. "We were all once petty teenagers. Don't be so hard on yourself." I glance out at the Dirty Jersey skyline. It blinks back at me innocently. "Do you really think you lost him, though? Even though he was with whatsername?"
"What do you mean?" she says, lifting her face.
"I really meant it when I say that he's always been heads-over-heels for you. It's actually quite endearing. I could tell from that time I spanked him for shoveling our driveway. Except that it was just so frustrating to watch you push him away like that in the beginning. Fucker woke up at the asscrack of dawn to do you a favor, and you tipped him like he was your waiter instead of your best friend. It was like you didn't give a damn about him until he appeared to move on—"
"That's not true!" Mikasa says sharply. "That can't be further from the truth, Levi! I told you this before. I was pushing him away because I care so much about him. I don't want him sucked into this awful whirlpool that's my life. I'm damaged goods. I don't want him to put himself at risk again—like the time this happened." She brushes aside her hair and shows me a healed gash in her cheek.
"Have you ever wondered whether in the process of trying to protect him from your shit, you're actually doing the opposite and hurting him?" I ask.
"That makes no sense."
"Hear me out. Your best friend wants to help you, but you shrug them aside. That shit can be bruising, Mikasa. It's like you threw a boomerang at him, and that was the first whack in the face. The second whack comes swinging around when our friends see us struggling. It hurts them to see us hurting because they care so fucking much. So congrats, when we shove our friends away, we deal them a two-fer."
Mikasa is quiet for a moment. Absently, she rips her napkin into smaller shreds, and when an evening breeze sweeps across Riverside Park, those pieces flutter upwards and away. I bite back another comment about littering.
"Levi," she says slowly. "I really suck."
"No, you don't," I tell her.
"Hearing you say all these things…" She digs her fingers through her hair. "Oh my God, I've been so misguided all these years. I can't believe I've been doing that to him, and now that you mention it, it just—it's so obvious now! How did I not realize I was hurting him all these years? I honestly thought I was protecting him from, well, me! I can't blame him for going to Annie. I'd basically turned my back on him! How can I expect him to—oh jeez, Levi, what've I been thinking?"
"You were just trying to process things in one dimension, but life is multi-dimensional, and you gotta surround yourself with other perspectives to get the whole picture," I say, leaning my head back and looking at the sky. The stars are clearer back in Evanston.
"Like for me, there's a reason why you're my editor and Hanji's my agent for this book on Erwin. You know, for the longest time, I thought of that man as the end of my writing career. When he died, I was convinced everything that we did was pointless. He died because we were trying to publish a story on a corrupt government. We published, wrote a book, got nominated for a fancy Pulitzer Prize, but that government is still rotten to the core, disenfranchising so many fucking people. By the time Erwin died, we had hardly made a dent. The news cycle moves onto the next big scoop."
I clap a hand on her shoulder. "But here's the thing," I continue. "It's all coming into full resolution now. Hanji steered me in the right direction, and you're bringing things into focus. You guys have made me realize this: Erwin didn't die a pointless death. He was entrusting the future of journalism to those who come after him. By offering up his heart, he passed the torch onto that kid who helped me fax the documents, for instance. And that's the thing. It's called a news 'cycle' for a reason. And who knows? Maybe one day, you'll take the wheel from me if you so choose this path. No pressure, though. Journalism is a thankless job, but whatever the case, I can't kick it until I hand the baton off to someone I can trust. Mikasa, you helped knock that into my head."
"I still can't believe you threw a doorknob at your editor," she says after a long moment of silence. "Under the reasoning that it was more efficient to get fired than to give him your two weeks' notice. How's it even possible to rip a doorknob off of its socket thing?"
"That's your main takeaway from my big-ass, heartfelt epiphany?" I huff. "Unbelievable."
"Levi," she says, squeezing my hand. "Thank you for telling me that."
"To answer your question about the doorknob: brute-force it."
"Noted." Mikasa leans back on the picnic table, closing her eyes, and another breeze comes along, whipping around her dark hair. When she opens her eyes, she sighs. "Thanks for everything, Levi. I'm bad at expressing myself, but I hope you know that I appreciate how you force me to see things from another angle."
"Now we're just getting sappy."
I score a laugh from her, but it quickly fades away. "I need to apologize to both of them, don't I?" she says quietly.
"That would be a good first step."
"For Jean, will a text message suffice?"
"Wow."
"Fine, fine, I'll go to his house or something. Eren, on the other hand… He wants space from me, that's what he said." She squeezes her eyes shut again. "Levi, if only I could do things over again. I'd lean on him the way you lean on Hanji. I'm not good at talking about the things I'm feeling, but I'd try my hardest to be open with him. It's just that I'm nowhere as…" She pauses to sift for the words. "I'm nowhere as emotionally articulate as he is."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I snort. "You're literally proofreading my writing. I'd never put that responsibility in the hands of an inarticulate person."
"But that's writing. That's different."
"Is it, though?" I twist around to peer at the city behind us, wondering if I can spot The Heights, that rooftop bar where Columbia students gather to destroy our livers and indulge in regretful decisions. "Have I ever told you about Furlan Church?"
"Who is that?"
"A college hookup-turned-roommate-turned-first real love. I never got a chance to tell him that last bit, though. He and my other roommate Isabel died reporting with Erwin. But every single day we were apart, he wrote me a letter, and as I read these, I responded to each one, even though he was long dead. It made me realize how paper and pen have a way of teasing out stubborn thoughts from your head. It's a good writer's block remedy for me—and maybe that'll help you sort things out with Eren."
She crosses her arms. "How's that any different than sending a text message?"
I wish I could smack her with a rolled up magazine. "It's the sentiment, you fucking millennial."
"You're technically a millennial too, you know—"
"Whatever."
"What was Erwin to you?" she asks softly. "You were involved with him after Furlan passed, right?"
Her question whisks me back to those nights spent passing a cigarette back and forth with Erwin as I pushed him around Hyde Park in his squeaky wheelchair. He wheedled me back into the nicotine habit I had long-buried with Hanji. I never understood why he abused his lungs like this, especially after coming back from Syria paralyzed from the waist down and severely immunocompromised.
We'd discuss our book. Most of the time, these discussions devolved into arguments. I've always held the conviction that books are the emblem of the narcissistic writer, one who's not satisfied by the crisp brevity of a news article, one who seethes when the forty-eight-hour news cycle buries their months of reporting—so they clamor for more pages, hundreds more. But Erwin would always conclude these arguments by beckoning me to lean in close to him, closer and closer, until he could crane his head forward and peck me on the lips.
I'd always give in because Erwin Smith has my full faith. His optimism had a way of vanquishing my pessimism. To him, a book did greater justice to the stories we gathered than a magazine feature did. And to him, losing his ability to walk barely diminished his commitment to the news. "A mere hiccup," he called it.
"I've experienced three kinds of love," I tell Mikasa. "The first is what I have with Hanji Zoe. It's this bone-deep appreciation for someone who just always has my fucking back, no matter how much of a raging bitch I'm being.
"The second one was with Furlan. It's the kind of love where we were on the same, exact wavelength. We might not have been good at communication—well, that was largely on me—but we had this intuition on each other's feelings. Sometimes, we could have a whole conversation without even talking, you know?
"As for the third," I crack a smile. "The third kind happened when I met someone who transformed me for the better."
A/N: Sooooo, Chapter 25 is written and ready, but I think I might wait until Friday to publish it. I'm really, really trying to space out updates more so that I can have more days to look at it with fresh eyes, but I'm just so excited to share these chapters with you guys, UGH. Like, this one wasn't supposed to come out on Friday, but you guys have been REALLY hyping me up with the kind reviews and DM's, and I just can't help but WANNA feed you all more! Like, Jartz120 on Twitter made me a whole FUCKING WUARD fanart?! Y'all should check it out. It's dope as hell. So see ya in the next one. This chapter also makes me miss college. A lot. I hope we can go back in the fall… As always, thank you for the support. Each and every one of you.