The fifth time it happened, Armin felt that his chances were pretty good.

Bertholdt had chosen to leave things tentative with his specific wording the week prior, and he knew all too well that Armin would catch onto that. He'd left it open with a way for him to back out if he saw fit to do so, so there was a good chance Armin wouldn't see the boy in the library next Friday. It might be a couple of weeks before they talked books again, however long it would take before Bertholdt felt guilty enough to drop by again.

Armin didn't mind, because if they didn't meet again sooner, they would later.

No longer worried about whether or not the taller cadet had abandoned him for good this time, Armin's brain could allocate whichever energy was left after a harsh day of training into combing through his history book instead. Returning to the library on Friday, he yet again found himself alone for most of the evening, but it wasn't the end of the world. His self confidence was growing more resilient to Bertholdt's lack of regularity, figuring it was just how some people's nature worked and not born from a genuine dislike of Armin.

He'd come around eventually, Armin now could say with certainty, and he was prepared to wait until he did.

The solitude gave Armin the chance to read more of Maria. Rose. Sina. without any distractions, and he found his way to the last page just a day before they departed on a week-long exercise in the wilds. He was just in time to pick up a lighter novel for reading material during the evenings instead of having to haul the tome with him, something that would've definitely cost him in the grades department.

Touch of Lie his new book was called, and it detailed the story of a travelling salesman who could manipulate his buyers with the use of a special glove another traveller had once pawned off to him. The worldbuilding was nonsensical and the twist that his glove had stopped working halfway through the story without his knowledge was predictable, but the depth of the interactions with the salesman's clients and the moral lessons were enough to keep Armin captivated. He desperately needed something to distract him from the agony that seared through his muscles after each consecutive day of navigating through the rough terrain.

Maybe he'd recommend this one to Bertholdt next time they met up, but he didn't want to seem obsessive in asking him to read whatever Armin had enjoyed. Maybe he was being too clingy, too straight-forward, but Bertholdt had been the only one who'd so far shown interest in striking a longer conversation with Armin about their shared hobby. Eren had lost interest in Titan's Demise fast to the point of not even opening it and Armin ended up returning it to the library after a month of neglecting it, so his excitement about Bertholdt's reciprocation was hard to contain.

For once, it was Armin who had missed out on their (was it theirs yet?) next library Friday, when the first Friday after the excursion, he stayed in the barracks instead to catch up on rest, as he had most evenings after their excursion.

Worst of all, he'd been too drowsy to check if Bertholdt was also in the barracks or if he'd actually shown up in the library and was met with the same disappointment he'd subjected Armin to several times already now. Not that Armin wished such worries upon him; it was only on the Saturday morning afterwards that he realised that the day before was a Friday and he'd napped through the entire evening and night. When he asked Eren whether or not Bertholdt had been in the barracks, he simply shrugged and said that he never really noticed his presence even if he was sitting next to him so he couldn't say for sure.

He'd have to apologise for it later, whenever they did meet up again.

When Armin finally found himself in the library again, it was after not having been there for three weeks, and he'd already fallen out of the habit. As soon as he entered, the smell of old paper and dust sent a wave of renewed vigor through him, and by three paces in, it was like he'd never been tired in the first place. He carefully placed Touch of Lie on top of the pile of books returned by cadets who couldn't be bothered to return them to their respective shelves and took a look around. The library was a mess, as it had always been — with books strewn about everywhere, no real order within shelves, piles ordered horizontally, vertically, sometimes even diagonally within the shelves, an empty mug or plate placed here and there — and maybe it was Armin's underlying fatigue, but today it really bothered him.

Within minutes, he was on his knees in front of one of the middle alley's bookshelves, emptying it one by one and checking the spine or the first page of each book for a semblance of alphabetical arrangement. Linse, Huwyler, Schillinger, Muylle, Heydrich, Bartels. As expected, there was no order to the way these books had been discarded. He wasn't going to find anything in this chaos if he needed to write an essay or even if he wanted to find something specific to pass his spare time.

A couple of rearranged books turned into a small stack of newly ordered books, which in turn was shaping up to become a whole library restructuring effort of its own. What Armin took out of the shelf, he ordered alphabetically in the hopes that if he pressed on, he'd be able to sort the whole collection and make it possible for cadets to find the book they needed if they knew the author. Maybe he could even separate fiction from non-fiction, if he truly wanted to be ambitious?

He planned out a way to work as efficiently as he could. Placing the books with an author in the back of the alphabet on the floor next to him, while putting the ones on the front of the alphabet back into the shelf to be ordered individually later. As Armin worked, so focused he'd missed it the first time he read it, he suddenly noted the author of the book he held as Huhn, and as soon as he realised it, he'd already flipped open the book to find he'd stumbled upon Tale of Sisters.

Armin was out of the library door before he knew it, his hard work discarded behind him as he dashed towards the barracks with Tale of Sisters in hand as if his muscles weren't screaming at him for pulling such a stunt after today's training, as if he didn't regret leaving into the cold dusk without putting on his coat again first.

He barged into the barracks and made his way straight to a certain top bunk, scaling the ladder to find Reiner and Bertholdt in their respective beds — Reiner lounging with his back turned on the ladder and Bertholdt seated comfortably against the wall he'd propped his pillow against, hugging his legs. Armin froze when he saw the taller of the two's serious expression, carrying over when his eyes darted from Reiner to him. He felt like he'd interrupted something.

Reiner turned his head over the hand it leaned on to follow the trajectory of Bertholdt's eyes, then rolled onto his belly and waved his hand. "Armin! Hey bud, what're you doing up here?" His smile seemed gentle and relaxed, leagues removed from Bertholdt's concerned expression, which he tried to extinguish as soon as Reiner had turned around.

"Am I interrupting something?" Armin carefully asked.

"Of course not!" Reiner laughed, shifting in position to sit down, legs crossed, and scooting back. He patted the space on the mattress he'd just freed up. "Come sit with us."

"Oh, right!" Armin fully climbed up the ladder, crawling over onto the bed and sitting down on his knees before he extended the book towards Bertholdt. "Bertholdt, look, I found this just now!"

"Heh, what is it you've got there? A book?" Reiner inquired as Bertholdt accepted it and examined its cover only for his startled expression to fade into one of intrigue.

"More than that," Armin said, keeping his eyes glued on Bertholdt to catch his reaction to the book, looking attentively for any hint of excitement as he opened to the first page to read its title and then went to the second page. "We're reading this series together but couldn't find anything beyond the first book. I just found one of the books down in the library when cleaning up the place. It's called Tale of Sisters, which might be the second?"

"It says here that there are nine–"

"You didn't tell me you were making friends here, Bertholdt," Reiner interrupted, laying a hand on Armin's shoulder and grinning at Bertholdt, who quickly nodded his head with a wide, unconvincing smile. "That's great! I haven't seen you two talk, are you meeting up anywhere?"

"We've been meeting at the library every Friday for a couple of months now," Armin said. "Or at least, we try, it's not always as easy to make it after a hard day. I couldn't make it last week, for example. Too tired, hah." He hoped that would make for a convincing argument, but Bertholdt didn't particularly react to that comment.

Reiner did chuckle at that. "Don't wear yourself out too much, you deserve your rest. Bertholdt, you should go more often too! You don't have anything to do in the evenings anyway, you might as well go to the library when Armin expects you there instead of sitting here in your corner hiding every night."

Bertholdt looked at Reiner wide-eyed. "I will," he gave in, tightening his fingers' grip on the book just enough for Armin to notice, like he felt unhappy being trapped in the obligation now. Armin should tell him he didn't mind if he skipped a few times.

"And Armin, you can always come hang out at our bunk after a hard day, if you want," he suggested, getting up on his knees. Armin happily nodded at that idea, already thinking of a few occasions he could try that out on. "Sounds like you two have a lot to talk about anyway, so I'll leave you be. Take good care of Bertholdt for me, will you?" he joked at Armin as he lightly punched his shoulder, then went for the ladder.

"Reiner!" Bertholdt hissed, hushed. There was a look of betrayal in his eyes, the way he looked as Reiner went down that ladder, and Armin's heart sank as he once more felt the paralysing sting of rejection.

"You should reach out more, Bertholdt! This'll do you good," Reiner cheered on from the bottom of the ladder, leaving Armin alone with the aforementioned brunet, finding it hard to return his gaze back to him, but he did when Reiner left his sight.

An awkward silence fell over the two, until Bertholdt laid a hand over his forehead, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry. We were talking about something, and I… I hadn't expected Reiner to leave in the middle of it."

"Oh, I can return later! I didn't mean to interrupt anything," Armin suggested, suddenly feeling like an intruder. He got up on his knees as well, ready to leave.

Bertholdt opened his eyes again, looking at Armin confused. "Huh? Oh… No, it's not your fault. Please, stay with me," he politely asked.

That was enough to return the smile to Armin's face. He sat down again, this time with his legs folded next to him. "You said there were nine books?" he asked, remembering what Bertholdt had tried to say before Reiner's excitement over his best friend making new friends got the better of him.

Bertholdt's eyes lit up, even if just subtly so. "That's right. The second page has an overview of the series with all of its titles. Here, look."

He handed Armin the book, who opened it at the second page to feast his eyes. There was a small blurb talking about the series, which Armin avoided in case of spoilers, and beneath it was a list of all the books in the series: nine titles, all numbered and in the same format as the first one.

I. Tale of Allumia
II. Tale of War
III. Tale of Valor
IV. Tale of Armistice
V. Tale of Sisters
VI. Tale of Ardor
VII. Tale of Calamity
VIII. Tale of Midnight
IX. Tale of Dawn

Armin curled his toes. So many books with titles that spoke to his imagination, eight of which he'd yet have to comb through. He looked back up to Bertholdt, who was gauging Armin's reaction just as carefully as Armin had been Bertholdt's a minute ago. Armin must've started smiling wide reading over the list, because right as he looked up, Bertholdt returned the expression.

"Do you think the series is complete with those books, or are there more?"

"It says this is it in the blurb at the start," Bertholdt said with a shrug.

"You've read it?"

Bertholdt nodded.

"And there was nothing about the contents of book five in it?"

Bertholdt shook his head this time. "It's just a little info about the author and the series."

"Oh. That's good." Armin looked back at the page, this time reading the text. It was indeed a harmless little paragraph about the author's journey in completing the series and a note expressing his gratitude for readership, wishing the reader a good time. "Nine books… That's really good news."

"Is it?"

"Is it not?" Armin chuckled back.

Bertholdt pulled his legs closer to his chest, crossing his arms on top of them. "It's more to read, yes. But it's also more to find. I doubt that our library has them all."

"Hmm." Armin brought a hand up to his chin. "Well, there's a good amount of fiction in the library. I won't stop looking just because of that."

"Right!" Bertholdt said, apprehensively tapping his fingers on his arm. "I didn't mean to discourage you. Maybe we can find some of the volumes in a bookstore if they're not all here? If nine books were written, then it sounds like something you'd find in most conventional bookstores."

Did the country boy have experience with the things traditionally found in the city? "You had bookstores in your village?"

Bertholdt froze, opening his mouth slightly for a moment before closing it again, then averting his eyes. "Um… Yes." His voice cracked at that. "Well, no, not in my village!" he hastily corrected. "Actually, we evacuated to Trost the first weeks before we were sent out to work in the fields. I came across a few bookstores and was curious. During that period, we sometimes went to the city to help export goods and livestock and I had some time to roam around while we waited. It sorta makes sense that a popular series that completed its run would be widely available and popular enough to be sustainable to publish nine books of," he explained, looking back at Armin expectantly when he was done.

"Oh, of course! Shiganshina had a couple of stores but most of my parents' books were imported from other places. We can always go looking for the rest once the library has been cleaned up." He folded his hands over the book. "Still, maybe the author just had money to publish it all but didn't earn much from it to reprint. Hopefully, it's not a one-off series that's hard to find."

"It's not," Bertholdt reassured him, pointing at the book in Armin's lap. "If you look at the bottom of the page, this copy was reprinted in 844. It looks like the series has been finished for some time now. And if it's been reprinted, it may be popular enough to be a common series."

Armin had noticed, but he hadn't processed the information to be so applicable. Bertholdt had taken in all of this from just a couple of moments of looking at this page. He must've had sharp eyes and a good sense of scouting out information, just like Armin had speculated weeks ago.

"So we'll go looking together once we know what's in the library, then?" Armin asked, aware that he was creating expectations for Bertholdt to say yes by adapting a hopeful tone.

Bertholdt nodded. "Of course, Armin." The usual hesitation that was present whenever the taller cadet was uncertain was absent from his response this time. Warmth spread through Armin's chest at getting to taste such success.

With this approval and Reiner's encouragement for Bertholdt to pursue it, Armin marked this the official start of their sustained mutually-desired friendship. Armin repositioned himself so that his legs were now in front of him, setting Tale of Sisters aside. "Can you come help me on Fridays, after dinner? With the cleanup efforts, I mean. We may be done more quickly if there's two of us instead of just me." Maybe it was a little transparent, but Armin really needed to give Bertholdt that push to show up.

Bertholdt didn't seem to mind, because he tilted his head with that typical warm smile of his, then nodded. "Yeah, I will help out."

Great! Perfect! Armin tapped his hands on his knees alternating, doing his best not to look too excited. Things were going swimmingly. He thanked whichever cadet had left Tale of Sisters in that exact spot to create the perfect ice breaker for him.

With a good hour left before lights out, the two of them stayed up in the bunk, talking through the commotion of the barracks about Tale of Allumia. Now that he'd finally caught Bertholdt this early and without the intention of leaving, he found the time to explain in full what he enjoyed so much about the story, to further discuss their theories, how he'd gotten into reading, and what his parents had done to fuel this hobby. Bertholdt mostly listened, but never looked like he was bored or annoyed or unwilling to reciprocate in the conversation, even after Armin realised he'd just spent the larger portion of the past hour taking the floor.

When Reiner greeted them again as his head poked over the side of the bed, it was to Armin's displeasure. He wasn't nearly done talking, but lights out was soon and Reiner had the solid argument that they'd get in trouble if Reiner followed Armin's request to switch bunks with him for the night because they'd spend the whole night whispering to each other.

There would always be a next time, he reminded himself as he made his way back to his own bunk after reminding Bertholdt one last time what they would do next week. Within the next three years, there would always be a next time.