Between two worlds

by Angie296

Mizuki ends up inside the walls without remembering where she came from. All she knows is that she does not belong to that world, and that she wants to return home. To do so, she has no choice but to rely on the Survey Corps, and on her golden eyes capable of tinging the color of blood, inherited from her father, the last descendant of the Uchiha clan. Levi X OC

8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Have faith in me, 'cause there are things that I've seen I don't believe - part 1

A Day To Remember - Have faith in me

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February 849

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"Ahhh, geez!" Hanje threw her head back, resting her neck on the back of the chair and letting her body slide down slightly. With a weary gesture, she raised her glasses until they stopped on her forehead and then ran a finger over her eyes. "How can you possibly be so stubborn, Erwin?"

"The same can be said of you." The commander gave her an annoyed look from over the scattered papers he was tidying up.

The two peered at each other in silence for a few moments.

"If only you..."

"If only you showered, instead of being such a pain in the ass," Levi interjected, slumped as usual on the small sofa. He appeared more irritated than normal that day, with all that followed in terms of his level of tolerance for Hanje's antics. "Even if we captured a giant, he would commit suicide rather than stand next to you."

Mike - standing behind Erwin - twisted his mouth in approval. Only his nose hypersensitive to smells could possibly describe the hell it had been to spend the nearly three hours meeting in the same space with Hanje.

She rolled her eyes. "Stop bothering me, Levi! You know too that I barely have time to sleep, with all I have to take care of for the new project; let alone have any time to embellish! If only you..."

"Hanje." Erwin blocked her with an imperious tone, standing up. "That is my last word, on the subject."

But everyone present knew that this would not be his last word, for Hanje would never give up. "How obtuse you are!" Swearing like a carter, the woman rushed out of the room, slamming the door violently against the inner wall of the office.

The commander sighed. "The meeting is dismissed."

The moment when Hanje - before they parted - desperately and heroically tried to plead her case and - getting a flat no for an answer - rushed furiously out of the room invariably marked the end of the weekly meeting of the upper echelons of the Survey Corps.

As the captains hurried out and headed to the canteen for lunch, Levi, still sitting languidly on the settee, clicked his tongue. "Open that window, Erwin. It really smells like death in here."

The commander carried out the request, and the chill of a clear February morning penetrated the room.

That year, the weather had proved particularly mild to the human race barricaded inside the walls: the snow was already melting, in the flat areas and in the towns near the outermost wall, and for almost two weeks the sun had been shining high in the sky warming the land and its inhabitants. Which meant, for the Survey Corps, that the first scouting of the year - planned for mid-March - could perhaps be anticipated by a week or two, an eventuality on which that morning's meeting had focused, precisely.

"Is it really necessary for me to come too?" Levi was asking Erwin, hands entwined between his legs and his torso bent forward. "You know I'm not good at these things."

"I know, and in fact I usually take Hanje or Mike with me for these kinds of activities... But this time you're needed." Erwin had returned to sit at his desk and, while continuing to converse with him, was reviewing some of the numbers they had jotted down in the meeting. "He's a big funder, Levi. He specifically asked for you, and you know why. We cannot afford to lose his financial support."

At that moment, a slight knock forestalled the captain's response.

Mizuki stood in the doorway of the office with a bundle of papers clutched to her chest and her head slightly bent to the side. "Am I intruding?" she asked, after letting her usual insolent gaze wander over the two men. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Tsk."

Levi brought his attention to the bookshelf wedged against the opposite wall because, after six months of forced frequentation, by now he knew how much she was delighted by the expressions that her outputs always managed to snatch from him, and he at least did not want to make it easy for her to contemplate his annoyed face, staring at her as she waited for an invitation to enter the threshold of the room.

She had lost a lot of weight since that distant day in Tiburtina. Not that she had ever been particularly fleshy, but now her upper body had thinned and her legs slenderened even more. The military uniform, composed of a very durable elastic material, adhered perfectly to her lanky figure, accentuating its slenderness. Well, not that there was any wonder about that weight loss, considering the strict rationing of supplies in force at the Survey Corps, which often forced soldiers to crawl into bed with half-empty stomachs.

"No, the meeting is over. Come in." Erwin greeted her with a benevolent smile, inviting her in with a nod.

"I figured as much. I saw my boss ranting away. Made her mad again, huh?" As she spoke, Mizuki advanced to lay on the desk the papers she had been holding tight to her chest. "These are from Nanaba, she asked me to give them to you when I told her I was coming here to your office, commander. I need to ask you something."

Levi clicked his tongue and prepared to leave the room, standing up. He knew by now that it would always end up that way with her, but he still couldn't get used to it: that brat possessed the incredible ability to come up with some new nonsense practically every week and, what was worse, to convince the adults around her to go along with her gimmicks, and he had no intention of hanging around to listen to the bullshit of the day.

"Ah, sunshine!" she called him back all cheerful, noticing that he was heading for the door. "I defeated Captain Mike again yesterday, so I'm ready for the round with you!"

Here she is.

As promised to Erwin, a couple of times a week Levi took care of her training in the use of the three-dimensional device and more advanced fighting techniques to take down giants. He hated to admit it, and he certainly never would with her, but the brat had turned out to be a very good pupil; or at least, he considered her to be one when she kept quiet and observed him without engaging in inappropriate comments, which, unfortunately, happened more rarely than he would have liked.

Even without any concrete evidence, Levi had soon come to the conclusion that the explanation for her overpowering and astonishing ability to learn lay in the secret of her red eyes.

Sharingan.

Revealing to him the name of the innate technique had been Erwin, who must have discovered it, in all likelihood, through the usual means by which he obtained the information he was interested in. Giving substance to that somewhat sinister world, however, had been the captain, after careful observation of the brat's attitudes during training: her red eyes, according to him, enabled her to study and fragment the movements of her opponent's body, so that she could anticipate and, if necessary, replicate them.

He found confirmation of his own theory when he noticed that Mizuki was trying to copy the technique with which he wielded and swrlied swords when knocking down targets. He hated to admit it, and he certainly never would with her, but he was impressed by how quickly she was able to replicate his movements accurately; for some time, he even considered the idea of letting her do it, but finally decided to order her to give it a rest. The brat's gestures almost impressively replicated his own, but for them to be considered effective against the giants, they had to be made with great strength in lunge and speed of movement; however gifted she was with both, her skills did not even remotely match Levi's, and he did not intend to have her on his conscience if anything went wrong outside the walls.

Before he could say anything to her, however, Mizuki - clearly having made the same assessment as Levi - abandoned her attempts to copy him of her own accord.

Thus, since that distant day in November, the captain and the brat had shared two very long and very intense mornings a week with no deaths occurring until then, by some sort of inexplicable miracle.

From the very beginning, however, Mizuki had tried to get more out of him. Her requests for him to train her even in hand-to-hand combat had reached the same frequency as Hanje's requests for the capture of a new giant, and at some point, Levi - who did not have the time, the nerves, or the intention to put up with her any more than was strictly necessary - had simply stopped answering her, ignoring her if they passed each other in the hallway or kicking her out of the room by weight if they were in an enclosed environment.

But this, of course, had not stopped her, except for the time it took to devise a system aimed at getting around the problem, which, finally, resulted in one of the most absurd gimmicks she had come up with since their first meeting: she began to claim that whenever she managed to land the gigantic and massive Mike - who held the title of second-strongest soldier in the Survey Corps - she would gain the right to wrestle with Levi to snatch the podium from him. The bullshit so delighted the silent Mike that it prompted him to plead the case to his surly friend, who finally capitulated, more to get his two tormentors off his back than anything else.

"You're starting to land him a little too often."

"Are you calling me a liar?! I would never lie, about such a thing! Captain Mike was also in the meeting: he certainly informed you, didn't he?"

"Fortunately, we have better things to talk about than you and your bullshit."

Mizuki planted her hands on her hips and, giggling, continued to tease him mercilessly. "Oh, don't tell me you're afraid, huh! Actually, last time I came very close to..."

Levi didn't let her finish the sentence: after reaching her with two strides, he tapped with his finger on her forehead. "At two o'clock be in the garden. I'll make sure to remind you how hard the ground is for brats who talk too much."

"You'd better stop calling me a brat, since I'm almost nineteen years old now!" protested Mizuki to the captain's back as she rubbed her reddened forehead with one hand.

Erwin observed with a smile the exchange of lines between the two.

First, he smiled because Mizuki, although she had finally reached the long-announced eighteen years of age in early December, had immediately begun to claim that she was about to turn nineteen, causing no small amount of confusion among her fellow soldiers, seemingly unable to find an explanation for her incessant and never-satisfied eagerness to grow up.

Secondly because, although he had known Levi for years now, he had never had the pleasure of seeing someone twist his grumpy captain around in the palm of a hand the way she did, leading him by cunning and impenetrable ploys to always go along with her ideas, and consciously exasperating him in that way out of sheer delight.

Still, the commander could not get rid of the curious feeling that, in spite of everything, Levi did not dislike Mizuki at all; and that at least he did not despise her in the same way that he hated, fiercely and sincerely, the gendarmes and the nobles, for otherwise she would have suffered retaliation far worse than the ear-pulling he gave her from time to time.

When Levi had left the room, Erwin called the girl's attention back by clearing his throat. "Did you need me too, Mizuki?"

"Ah, yes! I wanted to know if... well, how should I put it? Here, would it be a problem for you if next week, on my day off, I traveled alone to one of the nearby towns? The person who promised to accompany me had something unexpected come up, and I haven't found a replacement yet." Mizuki took to fiddling with a lock of hair, letting her gaze wander over the room. "I mean, I realize it may be strange to ask your permission for something so trivial, however, I thought it best. Maybe ... yes, I mean, she may not like such an initiative on my part."

Erwin furrowed his brow and rested his chin on his intertwined hands.

One of Mizuki's favorite pastimes on her days off was to go exploring. Not that she launched into who knows what rambling adventures; of those, she seemed to have had more than enough in her only scouting. As a rule, in fact, she was satisfied with wandering the streets of Trost, where the Survey Corps was based, and the surrounding area. Only once had she ventured into a nearby district because she was accompanied by one of the vice-captains, Frank Sanders.

That same Frank Sanders who, during breakfast a few days earlier, had made a certain request to the officers seated at the table. In case Mizuki had asked if Captain Sanders had been assigned an unavoidable and sudden job for the following Wednesday - which prevented him, with much regret, from escorting her as promised to that very picturesque village in the mountains of the Karanes district - they would have had to stick up for him.

"Why won't you accompany her?" exclaimed Hanje in amazement, in a voice loud enough to provoke a growl from Levi, who sat beside her ravaged by a headache. "You've already been on a trip together, haven't you? She was so enthusiastic when she came back!"

"Exactly, she was enthusiastic. When we went to Karanes, she took the mute brat with her and we did nothing but run from side to side all day!"

"And why, what did you want to do with her that couldn't be done in front of Theo?" urged Gelgar, planting an elbow in his stomach.

"Yeah, what did you want to do with a subordinate, who is obviously a virgin to boot?" inserted Nanaba, scrutinizing him sternly. "Come on, we're all curious. The commander in particular."

Erwin bent his head over the plate, pretending not to hear so as not to be drawn into the diatribe. The less he knew about his officers' sexual tastes, the easier it would be to pretend not to notice certain looks and gestures that were all too eloquent.

"Ah, no... commander, it's not what it looks like!

I meant... It's just that I wanted to rest, during my day off, that's all! Nothing improper, I assure you!"

"Rest and Mizuki do not go in the same sentence." Completing the work begun just before, Hanje slammed her hand firmly down on the table as if to point out that the topic was closed, whereupon Levi squinted his eyes, irritated, and got up to leave the table which was too noisy for the daily level of his headache.

Mindful of the discussion between his captains, Erwin cleared his throat and stared at the girl standing in front of the desk. An idea occurred to him. "It's okay with me, of course. You're not a prisoner, and you can do whatever you like on your day off. However, if you are interested, I have another proposal for you."

She immediately pricked up her ears. "What?"

"Team Hanje's rest day is Wednesday, right?"

"Yes!"

"Well, next Wednesday I have to go to one of the inner districts of Wall Sina for a couple of days. There is something ... that I would like to show you. Would you like to come?"

Mizuki's eyes lit up with excitement. "In the innermost walls?! Absolutely yes! I've never been there! That would be great!"

Erwin smiled at the addition of that superfluous clarification. "Great, I'll let you know the details shortly. Be aware, though, that we are going to work, so I want you in uniform, and without Theo. Could this be a problem, considering that we will be away for a night?"

Mizuki shook her head firmly. "No, no. He can sleep by himself now, although he prefers to do it with me. It's enough to leave a light on. Besides, in case of need there's always the captain, although he won't like the prospect!"

The commander decided not to correct that final aside, and dismissed her to allow her to have an early lunch and prepare for the "decisive confrontation," as she solemnly called it on the threshold of the office. However, as he watched her bring a hand to her chest to take leave, he could not suppress a smile at the thought that, although there were at least sixteen captains in the Corps, for Mizuki there was only one who could be summoned without his name.

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At two o'clock, Erwin arranged to be on the terrace of his office, which overlooked the HQ garden, to watch the "decisive confrontation"; which, to be fair, did not even go on for five minutes.

Mizuki fought as usual with her hood lowered over her face, following the only reasonable pattern if one faced an opponent like Levi, the same one she had adopted in Tiburtina: she played in defense, dodging his blows - in this aided by the sharingan - and waiting for a moment of distraction to create an opening for herself, which, however, never seemed to come. She was doing okay, the commander considered: aware that she did not have enough strength in her slender arms to attack effectively, she took advantage of her legs with particularly developed muscles and abdominals, and moved with speed and precision; but - in spite of everything - her level was nowhere near Levi's. For the commander, who had seen him in action and had clashed against him, it was glaringly obvious that the captain was holding back: he struck her and threw her to the ground mercilessly, but he held back his strength to avoid hurting her, and make the confrontation last a little longer.

After yet another ruin on the ground, belly-first, Mizuki bent over herself, tucking her head between her legs. "Oh, my nose!"

"On your feet, you brat! Is this all you can do?"

"Blood... this is blood."

Levi immediately approached the squatting, trembling figure and reached a hand towards her back. "Ohi, cut the crap... Let me check it out."

At that moment, Mizuki launched herself at him with a roar of triumph, grabbing his chest with both arms; leveraging her own weight, she tried to drag him toward the ground with her, but Levi grabbed her by the waist, unperturbed: with a yank, he shrugged her off as if she weighed but a few ounces and had not been clinging to him with all her might, and toppled her back onto the ground, belly-first. He then positioned himself standing over her, with one foot at the level of each hip, and sat on her back.

"Ugh!"

"The bullshit is over for today. I didn't think you were the type to use such tricks. Now I'm full of dust from head to toe. Do you think that's pleasant?"

"Captain, I won't do it again, I swear, but get up. You're heavy."

But he, if possible, accommodated himself even better, and took to running a hand over his shirt smeared with the footprints left by the last attack. "You don't want one of your superiors to sit in the dirt, I hope."

"Of course not. Of course not, sir."

After snatching those words from her, Levi nodded his head, as if to invite someone to come closer, and Theo came scampering into the commander's field of vision: after throwing himself on the ground beside the girl, the child began to play with the curly strands of hair scattered on the ground, gently caressing them with one of his small hands.

Mizuki sighed and, perhaps understanding that they would stay there for a long time, raised her bust slightly so that she rested an elbow on the ground and held up her head with her hand. "So how was I?"

"Lousy. Much worse than the other times. You're distracted."

"Ah, excuse me. Earlier the commander gave me a nice surprise, and I can't help but think about it..."

Erwin watched Levi's hands, abandoned above his knees, twitch in irritation. "So you wasted my time."

"No, no! I swear! I was giving you all the attention I could while trying to fool you!"

The captain, after a moment of silence, stretched out his fingers, and sighed imperceptibly. "You really would have gotten along..." he muttered to himself in a hushed voice.

Mizuki turned her head as far as she could to cast him a glance over her shoulder. "With whom?"

But Levi did not reply to that remark and began, instead, to list her countless mistakes in an impassive and precise voice. "You rely too much on your eyes. You are arrogant in this. You may be able to predict your opponent's moves, but if you are not fast enough to always dodge them, you have to prevent them by playing ahead. And you never do that. You always leave too many openings in your defense, and you never fight with a plan in mind, you follow what your instincts suggest second by second. For you, a fight is made up of individual attacks that follow one another: you counter them one after another, individually, but that's not how it works."

"I'm not the one in charge of strategy in our group."

"Yes, but when you're fighting there's not your little fucking friend whispering in your ear what to do. There's you, and there's your head that has to learn to think for itself. Up to a certain point it's okay to fight the way you do, mind you. If you're fighting idiots, trying too hard would even be a waste of energy. But it doesn't work for opponents of another kind, or if you're at a disadvantage because you're fighting in adverse conditions or with opponents stronger than you... and there are others, besides me, trust me. I would like to remind you that you are still a brat, and you cannot hope to defeat a man by relying on physical strength. If you take care of the single move, but don't see the bigger picture, you're bound to lose. With that punch you dodge, your opponent is surely trying to lure you into a trap. It's up to you to figure out which one, and not let yourself be fooled. Kind of like you tried to do with Erwin, only you chose to take on the wrong player."

Mizuki listened to him attentively. At one point, annoyed by the hair falling back on her face, she shook it off, throwing it behind her back; the gesture provoked a grunt from Theo, who moved so that he could resume his activity. The strand pushed back hit Levi's hand, left dangling between his legs, and he, almost with an automatic gesture, grabbed it and fiddled with it, wrapping the curls along his index finger.

"You're right, I still have a long way to go," Mizuki sighed, lowering her head in defeat. "Although I feel like breaking a spear in my favor, considering that I fought with you. Your style is really phenomenal; my father would go crazy if he could see you in action."

"I see you are getting better, in the ass-licking."

" I mean it!"

"..."

Mizuki let out a giggle. "... Although I can't deny that I was kind of hoping to persuade you to stand up, with a few compliments."

"I'm comfortable like this for now."

"What if I proposed another round?"

The captain did not reply except with a sigh that, in all probability, was intended to emphasize how obvious the answer to such a question was; but, nevertheless, he continued to fiddle with the lock he held between his fingers, staring at an indefinite point in the sky. Erwin, leaning with his elbows on the balcony balustrade, wondered when and if Levi would notice the seemingly unconscious gesture of his own hand; a gesture that reminded the commander very much of the one with which the captain sometimes, during the first months of his stay in the Corps and at times when he believed he was not being observed, stroked his fingers over the blade of the knife he kept hidden in an inside pocket of his uniform.

Mizuki raised her free hand to greet lazily some soldiers who were crossing the garden a short distance away.

Some of them returned the greeting, not without a good-natured laugh: by now, almost everyone at HQ had become accustomed to finding Mizuki involved in situations bordering on the absurd without the slightest warning, so to find her being used as a chair for humanity's strongest soldier was not particularly surprising.

"There, now they will think you are a heartless man who torments his subordinates," she said.

"Or that you've been pissing me off as usual, and I'm teaching you the lesson you deserve."

"To a model subordinate like me? Impossible! Ah! Captain Sanders is here, too! Hey, Captain Sanders!"

The aforementioned Frank Sanders, summoned by Mizuki's shout, gave her a barely hinted gesture of greeting, and then hurriedly averted his eyes and walked away.

"Poor Captain Sanders! Our trip to the mountains is off, and I'm so sorry. I think he was really excited, to the prospect!"

Under Erwin's watchful gaze, Levi's eyes narrowed into two slits and his brow furrowed in irritation. "Another thing you need to learn to do is judge people, you brat. You suck more at that than you do at cleaning."

In response, she chuckled and dismissed the subject with a wave of her hand. "Yes, you are quite right. I take back everything I said about your being hard bark, soft interior."

At that point, Levi's gray irises slid downward, until they lapped at the strands of hair rustling between her fingers; she contemplated them for a few moments, impassive as ever, then, without her expression changing, clenched a fist around them, and pulled.

"Ouch!"

"You are too trusting. If they don't try to blatantly kill you within the first five seconds of conversation, you always think others are approaching you with the best of intentions. Worse than a five-year-old brat being approached with the promise of candy."

Mizuki massaged her scalp, casting a grim glance over her shoulder at him. "You tried to kill me, within the first five seconds of acquaintance, and without even making conversation."

"Too bad you didn't learn anything from that experience: look what just happened to you. We were fighting, you let me put you under me, and you offered me your back. You felt me touching your hair, and I bet you thought I was playing with it while we were talking as a pastime, like I was your little fucking friend enjoying braiding it. And then, what happened?" Levi again tugged at the lock he was holding, lightly, as if to exemplify the concept. "Get a grip on yourself. The world is full of bastards. Have I made myself clear?"

"But I trust you!" exclaimed Mizuki a little piqued; soon after, she reached out a hand, twisting her torso, to grasp her untamed hair at the nape of the neck, and then slide it forward. He offered no resistance, and watched the lock enclosed between his relaxed fingers slipping away. "And you too, you talk a lot, but you trust me, don't you? We've already made that point clear, I think."

"I think I've listened to enough dumb remarks for today." Levi sighed, then stood up, finally leaving her free to move. "Go clean yourself up, you're really disgusting."

Mizuki pulled herself to her seat, bringing a hand to her aching back and passing her free arm around Theo's shoulders. "Have I ever told you that I live for your compliments, sunshine?"

"And make sure you don't litter on the way back inside, or I'll elect you as my personal chair for the rest of the week."

Mizuki watched him walk away with his usual fluid walk. After a few moments of thought, she gave him a foul tongue -immediately imitated by Theo - and then, nodding in satisfaction, stood up. Erwin watched her stumbling back inside the building and, as the show for which he had decided to take a break was now over, he prepared to get back to work; although, as he closed the balcony doors behind him, he could not help but think to himself that the trip to Stohess, for once, was not going to be boring.

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Nifa and Moblit darted through the trees with the three-dimensional movement. The girl masterfully dodged a branch that was in her path, gave gas, hovered in the air for a few moments, and then let herself plummet until she almost touched the ground. Moments before impact, she hooked the grappling hooks onto two logs not far away, gave gas, and the dance began anew.

Not far from the pair, Amado, Klaus, and Keji were crossing each other in the air, engaged in the same deadly dance as their comrades.

Mizuki and Hanje, huddled on a branch - the first leaning against the trunk and with her legs dangling in the air, and the second standing beside her - were drinking from leather flasks, with short, broken sips due to labored breathing.

"... And so, this is what Moblit, Amado and I are working on at the moment," Hanje concluded, tightening the cap of her flask again. "Let's be clear, Mizuki. I only shared this because it's you, but the project is covered by military secret. Heaven forbid that some bastard competitor steals our idea. There's still a lot of work to be done before those wonderful little cannons are finished."

Mizuki squinted her eyes, hoping that this would help her picture the machinery that her captain had just described and the features of the possible competitor to such folly. "And so ... so with these cannons capable of firing ..."

"... cables composed of anti-giant metal!"

"...yes, those, will we really be able to capture a giant?"

"If you ask me, yes. If you ask Erwin, he'll tell you that they will only be used to defend the supply stations for the reconquest plan. Ahhh, geez!" The team leader ran her hands through her hair in a barely suppressed act of annoyance; the topic of "capturing giants" constituted, as always, a pretty sensitive button for her. "How he drives me crazy, that man!"

"I'm sure he'll give in sooner or later," Mizuki commented laconically even though, for what little she knew of Erwin Smith, she did not believe her own words herself. Indeed, her attempts at comfort managed to be sincere and pure precisely because, underneath, she counted on the fact that the commander would never lend his consent to capture another Albert.

"You, Amado and Moblit are the only ones who understand me. If only some of the other captains shared your views ... yet instead they are all boring, conventional old men!"

"We could start pulling them on our side, though. Some of them seem to me more malleable than the commander. Maybe..."

"Malleable?" Hanje let out a wry laugh. " 'Who, exactly? The giant bear Mike or the dwarf bear Levi?"

Mizuki could not keep a straight face. "Those two would perhaps be the easiest, to bribe, and also the most necessary, given their abilities. All it would take is a promise to pay a little more attention to cleanliness, and..."

The team leader's face grew gloomy. "Oh! Don't you start with this story too, Mizuki, I couldn't handle it! Those two... bears have no idea how hellish my life has been lately. I don't have a moment to spare, between filing reports, training with you, and tight deadlines for submitting the cannon project to Zackly, and they really expect me to bother cleaning my room?!"

"Well..."

"Or that I'd think about showering? Ah, let's not talk about that! Two nights ago something really terrible happened!"

Mizuki closed her mouth again, deciding not to rub it in any further on what was still, in all evidence, an open wound. Hanje's fierce screams as captain Levi forcibly pulled her away from the edges of her office desk and dragged her to the bathroom, according to her cries in the midst of designing the most delicate mechanism of the giant-catching cannon that, thus, had ceased to be covered by military secrecy, had haunted the entire HQ for at least half an hour.

Mizuki adored Hanje. The feeling of intellectual respect for her full, passionate, unyielding dedication to the mission, which had already blossomed over the two weeks they had spent at the castle, had grown as they had continued to work together. When a certain issue, a quest, or a mystery about giants captured Hanje Zoe's attention, any other event or problem, no matter how pressing or vital, not only faded into the background but was totally obliterated by the reality her brain perceived and registered.

However...

"That dwarf has been too irritable lately."

"Has he? I find him about as grumpy as usual; which, by the way, means a pretty high level of grumpiness."

"'Listen to this! The other morning, in the canteen, I was reading one of the reports of one of the last scoutinga, because there was one detail that didn't convince me: a giant that, all of a sudden, started..."

"Hanje." Mizuki called her back with a smile, as soon as she noticed that the team leader's eyes were lighting up with the glow that always foreshadowed a dissertation on giants.

"Ah, yes! I mean, I was immersed in this most interesting reading, and suddenly the torch above me went out. So what do you expect me to have done? I got on the table to turn it back on, of course! And that bear threw a bowl at my head, all because I hadn't taken off my boots before I did. Can you believe that?"

Mizuki merely nodded, because she knew she was not shameless enough to fake an indignation she did not feel.

She adored Hanje, but not enough to completely obliterate her total lack of the sense of civilized living that manifested itself whenever the giants ignited her visceral and insatiable thirst for knowledge.

"But in the end it's always like that at this time of the year."

The girl, lifting her back an inch from the trunk, looked up at Hanje. "This time of the year?"

"You must have heard about it, right? About the way Levi joined the army."

Yes, indeed she had heard of it. And how could it have been any different, given that the captain's past was one of the most endearing and discussed topics among the young female soldiers?

The information that the latest recruits whispered in each other's ears after curfew was gossip, put out by fellow soldiers who were not in the Corps at the time of the event, and who, in turn, had learned it from older comrades; rumors exaggeratedly inflated and bent, with the passage of time and the intermediaries involved, to absurd theories.

The only point on which the various versions agreed was that Captain Levi had been, at some point in his life, a well-known criminal from the "Underground City", a place conjured up with excited, fearful whispering and condescending laughter as soon as Mizuki had expressed the odd curiosity to go there one day.

Then Petra, taking her aside, explained to her what a place the Underground City was, and especially the living conditions that reigned there: the darkness, the filth, the pervasive poverty, the little girls who prostituted themselves and the boys who killed for pennies, the piles of skeletal corpses that piled up on the sides of the streets until nature, some soul not quite lost or too hungry provided for them.

Even that was second-hand information, but it was enough to silence Mizuki. She no longer said that she wished to visit the Underground City, but she kept thinking, inwardly, that she would like to know more, about that place and about...

But, having reached that point of reflection, her brain refused to complete the sentence.

It was Commander Erwin - at the time only a captain - who had pulled him out of that hell.

"In the beginning he had an even worse character than now. He is much improved from those days. Back then he didn't trust anyone, and he walked around with a knife hidden in his uniform. For a long time he has been like that. Just consider that he spent months without speaking to me, except by nods or through short written messages, when he just couldn't help himself!"

Mizuki's lips stretched into a barely noticeable smile. As much as she did not find it hard to believe or imagine the scene Hanje had just described, more and more she found herself reflecting on how close-knit her squad leader and the captain actually were, to the point that she could not make up her mind about whose company, between her's or Erwin's, Levi valued more; perhaps of neither of the two, perhaps of both, perhaps each responded to different needs, which only surfaced in the presence of those two people who had known him all his life; from when he was still a criminal in the Underground City; from before he became humanity's strongest soldier.

It was true, the captain constantly complained about Hanje, and targeted her with teasing jokes and caustic remarks; but, on the other hand, so he did with most of the soldiers in the Corps and, more generally, the inhabitants within the walls. It was equally true, however, that when something upset him, he usually took refuge in search of understanding in Hanje's office, even though he would never admit it; but Mizuki had studied him enough over those months to have no doubt that the captain really relaxed only in the presence of Hanje or Erwin.

"Well, I said his character was much worse in 844. In a way that's true, and it's not." Hanje opened the flask again and took a couple of sips. "When he arrived here he was not alone, but in the company of two friends. I say friends, but I think they were more like family to him. Isabel and Furlan."

There was no need for Hanje to specify what their fate had been. Mizuki resumed staring at Nifa's and Moblit's stunts; without her noticing, her fingers twitched on the neck of the flask. "When?"

"During their first scouting. In February 844."

Mizuki nodded.

She remembered the expression that hovered in his steel-colored eyes on that night spent side by side on the roof. She remembered his words, his anger, the unspoken thoughts that had filled the silence.

Had they promised him, too, to return alive from their first scouting?

Just how much loneliness, how much despair, how much ... anger and hatred toward the giants, he must have felt, within himself.

"What kind of people were they?"

"Ah, his complete opposite! Furlan was shrewd and skilled at charming people. Isabel, on the other hand ... well, she was a sassy, loud little thing." At that point Hanje gave her an astonished look, as if she had just then become aware of something that, however obvious, had always escaped her attention before. "Actually, now that I think about it, you are a bit alike, in the noise you can produce. Only in that, though."

Mizuki raised her head slightly, a suddenly cautious expression painted on her face.

You really would have gotten along well...

Her fingers ran to her hair standing in a low ponytail and began to torment a lock, while she, uncertain, considered whether to externalize the doubt that had seized her. "Hanje..."

"Hmm?"

"Do you think... do you think we would have gotten along?"

"Who, you and Isabel? For sure! You would have been teaming up to make some mess every day. Although she wouldn't have appreciated the way you amuse yourself at the expanse of the dwarf. She was doting on Levi; her big brother, she called him." Hanje, from the height of her 5'7" height, gave her an intrigued look. "Why do you ask?"

Mizuki hastened to shake her head convulsively, already regretting having asked the question. To remedy and deflect the team leader's deadly curiosity, she decided to feed her a diversion she hoped would be enough to satisfy her, and in any case would allow her to gather some useful information for Petra about their prey's tastes. "Uhm... was the captain in love with her?"

Hanje bent down on her knees, until she was at the same level as Mizuki, and grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands, so fiercely that she risked knocking them both over. "Did you really do that?"

"W-what?"

" Putting the word Levi and love in the same sentence! Cann't you see the heresy of it?! It's like using Mizuki and rest together, or Gelger and sobriety, or..."

Mizuki chuckled, laying her hands on her team leader's shoulders in turn. "Or Hanje and cleanliness. Erwin and capture. And we all hope that these apparent contradictions will also meet sooner or later."

Hanje burst out laughing, running a hand through her hair. "You've got game, Mizuki, I'll give you that. But don't tell me that if you ask such a question, it's because you've...?"

"No, no. Absolutely not!" Mizuki hastened to point out, perhaps with too much conviction. "I'm not asking for me."

"Ah, sure. I see that neurotic munchkin fixated on cleanliness is still super poular. This will never cease to amaze me, if I had time I would really like to carry out an in-depth study on the subject. Who is it, then?"

Mizuki shrugged his shoulders and ran a finger over her closed lips, mimicking the gesture of closing a zipper. "Military secret."

"Go ahead and be mysterious, I'll find out anyway. In any case, I wouldn't really say there was that kind of relationship between them. As for Isabel, I don't feel I can totally rule it out, but I don't have the slightest doubt about him. I've yet to meet the woman who could... in fact, just the thought of Levi in love is quite disturbing. Although maybe a few more fucks might help improve his mood."

Mizuki decided to let the subject drop, partly because she felt fairly certain that Hanje should not worry too much about Levi's sex life, nor, for her part, did she have the slightest intention of delving into that very topic.

Fortunately for her, Hanje stood up again and then invited her to do the same. "Enough chatter, I think we've lost ourselves in gossip enough for today! Mizuki, you go back to training with Moblit and Nifa."

"'Yes, sir! How about you?"

"Ah, I.. I have to go somewhere, but I'll be back soon!"

As she watched her team leader operate the device in the direction of HQ after a quick nod, Mizuki furrowed her brow. She loved Hanje, but sometimes she was really weird. Who knows what had gotten into her.

The girl sighed, shrugged her shoulders, adjusted the hood over her face better, and then, with a feline leap, threw herself into the void.

.

"The canals! There are canals running through the city! And they are all frozen! Captain, do you see that?! Why don't you look?! It's wonderful!"

Mizuki let out a cry, unable to contain her excitement. For about five minutes, she had been running from one side to the other of the pedestrian walkway enclosed between two canals, unable to decide which side to settle on as, with each change, the view in front of her offered wonderful and unexpected glimpses. In scurrying about like a mad splinter, she was constantly cutting off the path of passing people, so the glances of curiosity - the soldiers of the Survey Corps did not often show up in those areas - and mockery to which Erwin and Levi were already accustomed were soon joined by others of intolerance, accompanied by mutterings and impatient improperities.

Levi, Erwin and Mizuki had left Trost before sunrise, traveling in one of the convoy carriages that shuttled between the outer cities of Wall Rose and Stohess. Mizuki was already jumping up and down as they waited for the carriage of which they would be the only passengers. Once on board, she could not keep quiet for a second: she peppered the commander - the only one who considered her, of the two - with questions about Stohess, then engaged him in conversation on the latest books he had lent her. Levi, seated next to Erwin, kept silent for almost the entire journey, arms folded across his chest and an irritated expression on his face, trying with little result to alienate himself from the incessant chatter. Fortunately for his ears, they reached their destination half an hour earlier, and since they had time before the meeting, Erwin suggested that they walk to the Gendarmerie Corps Headquarters instead of taking a car used for internal transportation inside the city so that Mizuki could admire the sights of Stohess.

At that moment, they were walking down one of the main and most charming streets in Stohess, which ran in a straight line through the entire town, packed, at that time of the morning, with nannies and mothers walking around with noisy children. At the sides, near the stone parapets that framed its edges, snow that had fallen during the night had been piled in fluffy heaps to make it easier for pedestrians to walk. While in Trost, both the temperature and the weather had already moderated quite a bit, there in the Wall Sina territories, located at a higher altitude than those further out, winter had not yet loosened its icy grip on the days, which were gradually getting longer. That morning, the sun shone high in the sky, and yet its sick rays could not stand against the frosty air that caressed the bodies wrapped in heavy shawls and coats.

"Erwin, I inform you that I'm this close to shoving the brat and you into the fucking canal with a kick in the ass. I really don't get why on earth you took her with us."

The commander laughed heartily, casting an amused glance at the captain walking beside him. "Come on, don't be like that. Look how happy she is. We're kind of like two fathers walking their daughter, aren't we?"

Levi clicked his tongue. His eyes did not lose sight for an instant of Mizuki's convulsive outbursts, ready to intervene if they turned into a over-the-top exuberance. "I'd rather say we look like two nurses monitoring a squirt's air time."

At that moment, Mizuki, who had gotten quite far away from them by proceeding down the road, hurriedly retraced her steps to approach her superiors again. She was wearing - like Levi and Erwin - the long military green coat provided by the army, which fit far too loose; a pair of black gloves, and a scarf lent to her by Eld. Her long hair was pulled back into a half-neck bun, very different from the tight, severe bun she wore on missions. This - no doubt the work of Lavinia - masterfully let the shorter curly locks escape, softly framing her face and the nape of her neck like a veil.

Overall, she resembled a baby chick wrapped in straw, bundled up and cared for by loving hands to keep it warm.

"Come on, captain, won't you hurry up?! Come and see, there are fish under the ice!" she exclaimed, hands pointed at her hips, interrupting the conversation between the two men. Without waiting for a response, Mizuki turned and sprinted back to one of the parapets, nearly sending a stern-looking housekeeper to the floor.

"I'm beginning to feel sorry for that idiot of Sanders..."

"And you're the favorite father, since she always calls you..."

"Fuck you, Erwin. You know why she's doing it."

"Yeah, she feels guilty about leaving you out of the conversation, in the carriage…"

"And she didn't even realize she was doing me a favor, the little fool."

As she launched herself again into one of her mad spurts, Mizuki slipped and landed in one of the heaps of snow accumulated at the side of the road. After a moment, Levi and Erwin heard her roaring laughter rising from the heap, and the mothers passing by pushed their children away with an outraged look, as if the mere proximity to Mizuki could transmit an incurable disease to their offspring. The captain clicked his tongue for the second time in just two minutes, and hurriedly set off for his subordinate, who was still laughing it off. Erwin watched him grab her by the lapel of her coat and single-handedly put her back on her feet, then unceremoniously tug on her ear.

"A strict father, eh..." he commented to himself, thinking back to Levi's fingers fiddling with her curly hair.

Under Levi's menacing gaze, the three of them arrived at their destination without further incident, although Mizuki's head - forced to walk between the two men - darted in all directions, like a spinning top, and her neck stretched to allow her to discover every hidden nook and cranny of the city. Looking at them from the outside, they formed a rather curious trio, especially considering that Captain Levi and Commander Erwin Smith were among the few Survey Corps soldiers known by sight even in those areas.

They entered the luxurious and lavish marble building after identifying themselves at the entrance. It did not escape Mizuki's notice that, however courteous, the soldiers on guard treated them with a mixture of condescension and not even too veiled mockery.

As she trudged briskly behind her superiors, Mizuki admired the luxurious decor surrounding them and the sumptuousness of the building, somewhere between amused and bewildered. The place looked anything but a military barracks, to the point that she began to assume that she had misunderstood their real destination. However, on every scrap of fabric in sight, be it the uniforms of the soldiers who passed through the corridor taking great pains to avoid them, or the banners posted at regular intervals on the walls, stood proudly the Gendarmerie's coat of arms, a horse's head surmounted by a horn.

"They had to put the horn in to make up for the absence of brains in the skull-box of those idiots," Gelgar told her once when, while they were doing some business in town on behalf of their superiors, some "idiots" tried to pick a fight with them.

The differences between the Gendarmes' HQ and the Survey Corps' HQ were so obvious, glaring and absurd in the eyes of the visitors that Mizuki felt like bursting out laughing, barely restraining herself just to avoid any more reprimands from the captain.

After all, as soon as she had set foot in Stohess, it had seemed to her that everything there was different than in Trost, starting from the city and ending with the people. Everything appeared so ... perfect, and immaculate; and well-behaved people walked around laughing in the streets, and chatting about frivolous topics, almost as if ...

Almost as if the entire known world was not enclosed within two walls, beyond which loomed a frightening threat to its inhabitants. In Stohess, indeed, there was a curious feeling that even mentioning the existence of giants represented an unforgivable sacrilege, a folly, a bad joke.

And they, the three soldiers of the Survey Corps - reminding all those perfect, immaculate citizens that some fools willing to talk about and especially fight giants existed - could only be treated as a dangerous anomaly to the fictitious order so painstakingly constructed.

The hostility - thick, creeping, unconscious, hidden beneath the polite, icy smiles - was felt even by her, who trusted her fellows and always tried to see the positive side of people and situations.

Hanje had told her that some among the residents of Wall Sina did not even believe in the existence of the giants, convinced as they were that it was yet another government stunt to justify the exponential increase in taxes and refugees roaming the streets. "Just think how idiotic they are. They're missing out on an over-the-top show, and just because they don't bother to get out of Wall Sina to take a ride in Trost."

But Mizuki shuddered, upon hearing those words.

If there was another lesson she had drawn from her mother's "bedtime story," which was actually not a bedtime story, it could be summed up in the notion that there are always two versions of the same story, and that reality could be easily distorted.

Placed in front of the same facts, two people who each knew a different version of the story would react differently, develop different values and beliefs, make different decisions, and all this with none of the parties involved being considered wrong. No, in such situations it was not a matter of right or wrong, but of a mere difference in perspectives that could, potentially, result in disastrous and deadly consequences.

For her family, at least, that was how things had turned out.

Mizuki shook her head slightly and, clasping her hands behind her back and trying to appear interested, addressed her superiors. "So what are we going to talk about in this meeting?"

The question managed to wrest from Levi the first look of sufficiency of the day, which, he was sure, would be followed shortly by many more. Within the walls, few people boasted the same ability as Nile Dok to irritate the captain by their mere presence. "Ah, why, you think you're invited? We're going to work, brat, not to sing carols while braiding our hair."

She furrowed her brow, holding back from laughing at the image that had formed in her mind of Levi and the commander engaged in such an activity. "If so, why did you let me in? I could have continued exploring the city, here I'll be bored to death!"

"Just for one thing, to prevent even the last of the lunatics from laughing at us."

"About that..." began Erwin, but was interrupted by the call of an authoritative voice coming from behind them, "Erwin, Levi!"

Before she could turn around, Levi leaned in Mizuki's direction to whisper in her ear: "'Do the military salute. And keep your mouth shut as much as possible."

She obeyed, snapping to attention, facing the two men in uniform who were approaching. The first, about fifty years old, had a bald skull that glistened as if it had just been polished with a cloth, and his wrinkled face was topped with a sizeable mustache; he wore the uniform of the Garrison Corps, and with every movement a sweetish smell of alcohol rose from his body, as if someone had just spilled the contents of an entire bottle of liquor on him.

The second, on the other hand, was a man of indefinable age, with a ferret-like face over which a pair of tiny eyes stood out, black hair and a goatee that immediately aroused Mizuki's attention; on the uniform jacket, which failed to hide the excellent workmanship of the shirt, stood out the horse's head with the horn that was supposed to make up, according to Gelgar's theory, for the void existing in the man's skull box.

"Commander Dot Pixis, Commander Nile Dok. How long." Erwin declaimed, for the benefit and warning of Mizuki alone.

"Since when have you been so formal, Erwin?" Nile Dok cast a suspicious glance at the commander.

"On some occasions perhaps it is better to be..."

Commander Pixis, on the other hand, squared Mizuki, who felt herself being paced from head to toe by those small, sunken eyes, with the nagging belief that they were focusing, rather than on her physical appearance, on the secrets locked in her head. "'Nile's right! What's the point of presenting us two useless old men with some sort of self-referential ritual - we all have known each other for far too long, I dare say - when here among us is a pretty young unknown face?"

It took Mizuki a few moments to realize that the man was talking about and to her, inviting her to identify herself. " Soldier Mizuki Onizuka of the Survey Corps, at your disposal, sir!"

"Oh, so it's you." Pixis nodded thoughtfully and, if possible, his gaze became even more penetrating. "We've heard a lot about you, and your venture with the abnormal."

Nile Dok seemed to notice the girl's presence only then. "And especially about the way you joined the army."

"Supreme Commander Zackly was also very impressed."

Mizuki cleared her throat, and then cast a sidelong glance at her own commander, seeking permission to respond to Pixis, who seemed to expect a remark of some kind from her. Erwin nodded imperceptibly. "In truth, sir, it was a very stupid act on my part, and I also disobeyed an order. I was punished for what I did, and I'm not very proud of it."

Levi clucked his tongue. What a filthy little liar.

Nile's face tightened into a mocking smile. "Well, you mustn't blame yourself too much. When you embark on crazy ventures, following the crazy schemes devised by a madman, you know that some unexpected things can happen. That abnormal had broken through the formation, right? I'd say you saved the day by preventing it from penetrating further into the ranks of the soldiers."

Erwin was not quick enough to admonish Mizuki with his eyes to remain silent; and, in any case, any silent admonition from him would prove futile, since his subordinate's attention was entirely on the Gendarmerie Corps commander. "With all due respect, sir, but the formation would have been perfectly safe even without my action. Commander Erwin had already worked out a plan to deal with the situation, and I'm sure it would have been successful."

Nile Dok's suppositional smirk widened to a wide grin. "Ah, I see you have already brainwashed her, Erwin, and she has already become your creature. As has happened to all of yours, for that matter."

This time, Erwin did not even try to hold her back. "Actually, the commander and I don't get along at all. We disagree on everything, and every now and then we argue so heatedly that I feel like slapping him. But I firmly believe that he is a very good commander, and no one else would have been able to save the formation in such a situation," Mizuki asserted with conviction, staring Nile Dok straight in the eyes; then, perhaps sensing the threat mounting at her side, she hastened to add, in a hushed voice, 'With all due respect.'

"I'd say that's enough." Levi's voice tickled her neck like a blade as he grabbed her by the collar lapel and pulled her back. " I will deal with you once we get back."

Dot Pixix, after throwing his head back, caught by a boisterous laugh, pulled a flask from his inner jacket pocket and brought it to his lips. "Very interesting, very interesting indeed! We'll continue our chat later, young lady, over a good glass of wine and without hasslers to interrupt us. I promise."

Nile Dok, however, wore an expression of deep disdain and hostility. Erwin sighed, although he did not seem particularly displeased by the turn of events, and with a fluid gesture handed Mizuki his own identification card. "At the end of this corridor is a staircase and, at its end, a door. There you will find the library of the Gendarmerie Corps. Feel free to wander around."

"Not too much." LEvi hastened to add as he observed Mizuki's face light up with worrying and seemingly unstoppable enthusiasm, shooting her a meaningful look. "You've already messed up enough. Try to get a grip on yourself."

But Mizuki, after a hasty and sloppy military salute, had already sprinted off down the corridor; as she walked away, however, she distinctly heard the last remnants of conversation from the group she had just left behind.

"I'd be really curious to know where you fished out someone like her. This must have something to do with your selection criteria!" commented Dot Pixis, chuckling to himself.

"It seems obvious to me. Fools only attract fools. And you, with your ideas about the outside world, are certainly a fool, Erwin..."

That last sentence just muttered by the Gendarmerie Corps commander - since it was a comment about the much infamous "outside world," Mizuki inevitably felt called into question - forced her to pause, hoping to grasp more details; but he added nothing more, and joined Erwin and Pixis inside one of the rooms overlooking the corridor.

Levi, standing in front of the door, hesitated for a moment before following them.

The captain's gray eyes were fixed on her. An inscrutable expression was on his face, so that it was impossible to make predictions about what was going through his mind; yet Mizuki was certain that they had both just asked themselves the same questions - what crazy ideas did Erwin harbor about the outside world? Were these the source of his interest in Mizuki and co. that transcended the understandable involvement related to the mission of the Survey Corps? - and, for some inexplicable reason, each had looked for an answer in the other.

That sense of complicity she felt as they stared at each other from opposite sides of the hallway made her blush. Lavinia's words, which she normally dismissed with a shrug as baseless speculation, echoed in her head, suddenly appearing a little less improbable.

They both lingered for a single instant, which nevertheless, to the girl troubled by that invisible bond, seemed an eternity.

Then she climbed the staircase, and he entered the room, closing the door behind him.

Soon Mizuki's mind was occupied by far other and more pleasant thoughts. Once she set foot in the library, in fact, she forgot the uncomfortable feeling that had assailed her, her own doubts, the captain, the three commanders, everything, for she became quite convinced that she had finally found a place that she could unreservedly call a heaven on earth. In front of her was a very wide hall, lined with endless rows of books, high to the ceiling and the size of a giant class of three meters - it was a curious but unavoidable occurrence that, working elbow to elbow with Hanje, she had begun to use, in her mind, the unit of measurement favored by her squad leader. The wall opposite the doorway was studded with slender windows, overlooking the building's snow-covered inner garden; matching the stone intervals between the windows, spacious walnut tables gleamed invitingly

The library attendant - a gendarme with a grayish skin and breath that smelled of tobacco and alcohol, to whom Mizuki was about to offer her services as a doctor - listlessly checked the identification card that was handed to her. Her misty eyes contemplated it for a moment, then waved her through. "I'm going on break now. If you need anything ... well, you'll wait for me."

"I ... okay, but what if someone else comes?"

The other squared Mizuki as if she was talking to a mentally handicapped person. "No one ever comes here. And in case...well, you take care of it."

She did not know exactly why, but Mizuki had the strong impression that the woman had just dumped her job on her. This, however, did not particularly bother her. She even began to consider the possibility of a Corps transfer, if being a gendarme would allow her to live in contact with that enchanted place.

She entered ready to lose her way back.

As she explored it - fishing for books at random on the shelves. flipping through them, intoxicated by the scent of paper they gave off, running her fingers over the rough pages - her enthusiasm, however, waned. She quickly realized that most of the texts collected were focused on technical subjects of the most varied kind: medicine, fishing, agriculture, chemistry, and so on; she even found one devoted to tea-making, which she tucked under her arm, deeming it an excellent device to put the captain in a good mood.

On the other hand, novels were few in number, and all of them - at first glance - deadly dull; the great absentees, were adventure books in the style of those stored in large quantities in Hanje's library, while stories of love and personal growth abounded, in which she obviously failed to find any reflection or words about the outside world. The circumstance, however, did not particularly surprise her: the possession of texts dealing with such topics, as the commander had explained to her, was forbidden on pain of arrest, and even Erwin himself had only a couple of them in his private collection.

Since her superiors were working and she was instead having a good time, Mizuki headed for the history books section, reflecting that learning more about the world within the walls certainly would not hurt her, and she could glean some useful information to make her cover story more credible and avoid making any gross mistakes. As she was intent on leafing through the third in a long series of volumes, unsure as to which one to choose, she shook her head and, in a half-hearted voice, muttered, "Gelgar is right: those Gendarmerie Corps people are such idiots. Having this paradise within reach, and not taking advantage of it..."

"I completely agree with you."

Mizuki gasped, widening her eyes. After hastily putting the book away, she emerged from the row of shelves where she stood and let her gaze wander over the room illuminated by the soft light streaming in through the large windows, certain that she had just imagined that comment.

But three tables away sat a figure in backlight.

Her heart began to beat faster. And yet she was certain that, until a minute earlier, there was absolutely no one in the room but her.

Mizuki swallowed, and then cautiously approached.

The elderly gentleman watched her approach the table circumspectly, a faint smile hovering on his pale lips; with one hand he drummed on the tabletop, as if impatiently waiting for someone. Mizuki estimated that he must be between seventy and eighty years old. He wore an elegant, well-made, anthrax-colored suit that matched perfectly with his pale complexion and thick mane of raven hair combed back. The last detail Mizuki's gaze fixed on was the coat of arms that stood out on the gold ring on his annular finger, and on the handle of the staff resting against the back of the chair.

Damn, he's a noble. A real noble.

The discovery threw her into panic for a moment.

The information on nobles in Mizuki's possession did not exactly benefit the old man who peered at her quietly and good-naturedly.

Although until then she had never met anyone belonging to his social class, tales centered on the cruelty and dissipation among the nobles abounded among the soldiers of the Survey Corps, and her fellow soldiers - especially the superiors - not even tried to hide their contempt for them. Mizuki had always listened to those invectives taking them for good only halfway, and imputing the rest to the exaggerations that were inherent in those kinds of tales. If she had been able to afford such a disinterested attitude towards the subject, however, it was only because she had been confident, deep down, that she would never have to interact with one of them. Just as many Wall Sina residents did not believe in the existence of giants, Mizuki too had always conceived of the existence of selfish and tyrannical nobles as a problem completely unrelated to her everyday life.

And now she had just met one who seemed to have every intention of interacting with her.

Why did things always end this way?

Mizuki brought her hand to the heart with a gasp. "Excuse me, I didn't mean..."

"Oh, you didn't? That's too bad. Because I, on the other hand, found yours quite an intelligent remark, an eventuality that is quite difficult to run into, within these walls." The man shook his head imperceptibly, and his smile widened. Upon closer observation, Mizuki noticed that his pale face, with its elegant features, was furrowed with very few wrinkles, to the point that she had to wonder why she had been convinced almost immediately that he was an old man, and she had to answer herself that the reason lay, in all likelihood, in his authoritative attitude, in the languid pride of his gestures, and in an ancient something that shone in his coal-black eyes. "You can relax. I don't particularly like the army and its absurd rules. Why don't you take a seat, and have a little chat?"

The captain's words trilled through her mind like a wake-up call.

You are too trusting. Get a grip on yourself. The world is full of bastards.

She called herself stupid. She was really exaggerating now: the man may be a noble, but until proven otherwise he had done nothing to her and, indeed, evoked in her a sense of familiarity that, though of obscure origins and motivations, made her feel protected. So, pushing Levi's warnings back into the depths of her thoughts, she sat down.

The old man observed her for a few moments, and Mizuki took the opportunity to do the same.

"The Survey Corps, huh?"

"Yeah."

"A challenging choice."

"It's a job like any other, and someone has to do it."

"Not everyone thinks that way."

"Not everyone thinks giants exist. You, on the other hand... a noble?"

"Yeah."

"A challenging choice."

A flash of mischief lit up in the elderly man's gaze; then, apparently satisfied with the early developments of the conversation, he held out his hand to her, extending his arm above the table. "I am Earl Arthur Wilinski. Pleased to make your acquaintance..."

"Mizuki Onizuka." Arthur Wilinski's hand, dry, incredibly soft and smooth, enveloped the girl's icy one in a firm grip, though devoid of any threatening intention.

"Mizuki Onizuka. A rather unusual name."

"My parents are a bit strange." replied the girl seriously, repeating the same, laconic justification she had refiled to the other braves who had made a similar remark. "When did you enter? I didn't hear you come in..."

"Because I was here before you were. Long before, and I know this little universe like the back of my hand. All its secret passages, the ins and outs, and the way to move around so as not to get lost."

"Is it really so obvious that this is my first time at Gendarmerie Headquarters?"

"And in Stohess, I would say."

Mizuki bent her head to turn her gaze towards the whitewashed garden - she would never get tired of contemplating such scenery. Although she knew the abstract meaning of the word, she could not remember ever seeing snow, at the Hidden Leaf Village. The first time, in December, she had observed tiny icy flakes plummeting, swirling, over the streets of Trost, with heart swollen with wonderment, she thought, for a moment, that such a spectacle was fully compensating for the existence of giants. "Before I joined the army, I had never left my village."

The Earl, contrary to her expectation, did not ask questions about his place of origin, merely welcoming the information with a nod, and turning his gaze to the garden in his turn. The silence stretched on, and Mizuki wondered how long it was appropriate to wait before taking leave in order to not offend a noble.

"You know, one of the merits of this library is that everything is in perfect order. Have you noticed that? There's not a single back that sticks out, or a book that's not placed back on the shelf where it's catalogued. Nile Dok has always been quite scrupulous about it. Even though none of those jerks of his subordinates use the place, he cares that it's always neat and clean; once a week the recruits are obliged to pull the library to a shine, unless, showing off outstanding skills to work their way up in the gendarmerie, they find some poor victim to dump the work on. You know, in case the king ever gets the urge to take a tour around here. That strikes me as a commendable rule, don't you think?"

"There are some who would appreciate it very much..." A smirk escaped Mizuki. She wasn't sure, really, that one cleaning cycle a week would satisfy the captain's obvious neurosis, but it was still a good start.

"Still, it's like something in here isn't working." The ringed hand that previously drummed on the tabletop crawled up to caress the cover of a small booklet bound in dark green leather. "Like a perfectly oiled clock, from which, however, a gear vital to its functioning has been removed. Don't you think?"

Mizuki did not reply, and raised a hand to fiddle with one of the locks escaping from the bun. Suddenly, the phrases her interlocutor spoke lined up one after another to lead her, softly and secretly, to a dangerous destination; and the captain's sharp words again began to creep down her spine.

" I mean, what makes a human being such, in the end, is his capacity for imagination. The ability to create out of nothing something that does not exist. And the favorite tool with which weak humans have expressed this fundamental ability is writing. Writing is not only communication, and memory. Writing is ... something that makes possible what is not normally possible. It concretizes and feeds the dream of each of us. Ultimately, it expresses what is worth living for, right?" Arthur Wilinski took a deep, measured breath as his fingers continued to caress the book's cover as if it were a cuddled cat. "Yet, in this very clean and neat room you can find everything - everything, I mean it - except imagination. And this undoubtedly constitutes a huge flaw, for a library."

For the second time, Mizuki remained silent, both because she did not think he expected a response and because it was not perfectly clear to her where the Earl was going with that speech. Most importantly... was he really talking - or talking only - about the library? Or, could the speech have attached perfectly - as it seemed to her - also to Stohess and, more generally, to the world within the walls?

Arthur Wilinski cleared his throat. "You know, a few years ago, while going through the library shelves, I found this two-volume story by an unknown author. The circumstances under which this happened are not particularly interesting, nor are they relevant to the solution of my problem, so let me gloss over it." The man interrupted the circular motion of his fingers on the cover, then tapped on it. "I don't know why, but the story this book tells has me very passionate about it."

Mizuki thrust her head out to take a closer look at the small booklet, unable to resist curiosity despite her intention to stick to her instincts and the captain's warnings. "What's the title?" she asked, unable to discern the title.

"Good question. It doesn't have a title, and in my heart I've always called it... well, why don't you tell me, how would you call it?" With a flick, Arthur slid the object towards Mizuki. "I'll tell you in brief what it's about. The story is set in a small village, and it's about a happy family. At the beginning of the book, at least, it is."

Mizuki lifted the small booklet, weighing it as if trying to guess its contents.

Earl Wilinski studied her gesture carefully. "The protagonist of the story is the son of the family. An intelligent, educated boy with a serene and promising future before him; the light of his father's eyes, his pride, his life. The family's days passed happily; like that of all the villagers, for that matter. The place we are talking about, in fact, is small, and somewhat folded in on itself; perhaps characterized by numerous contradictions and, for some, more like a cage than anything else. But, in fact, things for most of the inhabitants worked: for better or worse, peace reigned there. It was like ... a kind of paradise. Is something wrong?"

Mizuki realized that she had probably taken on a strange expression.

"No, nothing. It's just that I know a story very similar to this one."

"Oh! Maybe it's the same..."

"No." Perhaps she denied too vehemently, but she wanted to prevent the man from asking her for more details. "When do problems start, in the story?"

"What makes you think there are any?"

"I don't think there are any places on earth that can be called a paradise. There is always a catch, somewhere and for someone."

"I cannot deny that there is. The village could exist because it was based on a secret. It was kind of a strange secret, actually. Because all the elders of the Village knew it, but no one talked about it. Before they died, a blood pact obligated them to reveal it to their descendants so that its memory would not be lost and the young people would continue to preserve the Village's existence."

Mizuki furrowed her brow. "What kind of secret was it?"

"It is not explained in the book, nor does it matter. What matters is that one day the boy discovered the secret. He discovered it long before the due time, before he was old enough to understand."

"Understand what?"

"That that secret was inevitable, and necessary."

"It's a bit of a complicated story..."

"No, it's actually simpler than it sounds. After that incident, nothing was ever the same. Everything changed drastically. Harmony no longer reigned, in that house, and the once so intense filial bond was irretrievably broken." The man's shoulders hunched, and he, under Mizuki's eyes, seemed to shrink a few inches, folding in on himself like a fragile strand of grass under the disruptive force of the wind. For the first time since the start of the conversation, she thought the old man was finally showing his age. "In the end, the boy manages to escape."

"From the secret of the Village?"

"Yes, and from the Village itself."

"And how?"

Before continuing, Arthur moistened his lips, and joined his fingertips together. "By finding a way to kill himself. And by breaking his father's heart."

Mizuki furrowed her brow again. "Is that how it ends?"

"The first book, yes."

"And how does it continue? In the second book we find out what the secret of the Village is?"

The man straightened his back again, and suddenly the energy and strength flowed back into his figure. "Why do you think the secret plays such an important role?"

"Well, it seems to me that the main points of the book are two: on the one hand, the boy's personal growth, and on the other hand, his relationship with his father. In order to understand them, I think it is essential to know what the secret is, or at least to have a vague understanding of it, otherwise it would be impossible to comprehend the trigger for growth and the reason for the breakup, wouldn't it?"

Arthur nodded, pondering. "I guess you're right. Is that how you would keep it going?"

Mizuki, as much as she tried to keep herself humble, did not consider herself a particularly stupid person. Yet the longer that conversation went on, the less she seemed to understand where the old man was going with it and, before that, what exactly was the topic they were discussing. "I would like to know."

"I understand. I, on the other hand, don't care about the secret. What I would like to know is whether the father and son will have a chance to meet again someday. To understand and forgive each other."

"Like some kind of reincarnation in another life?"

"For example. Or the father might be able to reach his son."

"By finding a way to kill himself?" she insinuated, in an attempt to provoke a response that would allow her to orient herself in that conversation bordering on the paradoxical.

Arthur Wilinski did not answer that question. He merely stretched his lips into a mysterious smile, and bent his head slightly to the side, as if inviting her to draw from his silence the conclusions that most appealed to her.

Mizuki tightened her grip on the little book. "It would be nice, if it were possible," she admitted, commanding herself not to indulge in memories. "Very nice."

The earl nodded. "Unfortunately, the conclusion of the story remains a mystery. I have searched the library from top to bottom, but there is no trace of the second volume. That's why I say this place is missing something. Anyone who allows such a story to remain unfinished, without providing the answers to the reader so that he can set his heart at rest, without allowing him to know what the truth is, must be comeone cruel ... or lacking in imagination. I'm old now, and I have no regrets left other than ignoring the end of this story."

Mizuki thought that perhaps it was for the best; that way, each of them could build the ending most congenial to his or her needs: for the old Earl, the reunion of son and father; for her, the disclosure of the secret.

Each would have been satisfied; exactly as it was in real life, just as the citizens of Stohess had convinced themselves that giants did not exist, and the men of the Survey Corps that all gendarmes were idiots, and the nobles mean and cruel. But perhaps this fundamentally contradicted the essence of a story told from the pen of a writer: its beauty, its attraction for the reader - at least, as far as she was concerned, as the avid reader devourer that she was - consisted precisely in the fact that in every narrative of that kind there was one and only one truth, and one and only one person entitled to tell it.

"What an awful situation," she was finally forced to admit.

"Yeah. In any case, I've given up on it now. I came here, today, for one last attempt at research and, in case of failure, to part with this book for good. I was going to leave it here, on this table, hoping that someone would accidentally find it and have better luck than me in searching for a worthy ending." At that point, the earl laid his incredibly smooth-skinned hand on his cane and, levering himself onto the tabletop, pulled himself to his feet. "But perhaps the situation took a much more interesting turn."

"Wait, what...?"

"I'll give it to you. Something suggests to me that a young and intelligent Survey Corps soldier like you will be able to reveal the sequel to this story."

How? By looking for it inside the guts of a giant that, according to Hanje, don't even exist? "But..."

Arthur Wilinski, with both hands resting on his cane, took a deep breath, assuming the soothing expression of a man who has just lifted a weight off his shoulders. "I wish you good luck, Mizuki Onizuka. And thank you for listening to the rambling chatter of an old man. I hope to see you again. In fact, it will definitely happen, and then you will provide an answer to all the questions I have asked you."

Once those words were uttered, the old man turned his back on her, and walked off at an amazingly brisk pace for a man of his age, gliding away from her with the fluidity of a boat after all the unnecessary ballast loaded has been thrown overboard; while Mizuki sat for a long time with the little book in her hands, racking her brain to try to understand what kind of a mess she had gotten herself into this time and, more importantly, how to explain it to Captain Levi without marking the premature death of her own ears.

.

"Not bad. In not even three hours, you engaged in a conversation involving clear subversive aspects with a filthy aristocratic pig, inside a Gendarmerie Corps building, and came out of it hiding under your coat an untitled and authorless book with more than suspicious contents." Levi uttered those words of accusation with a flat accent and without showing the slightest trace of surprise. "Not bad really. I'm impressed."

"I didn't really entertain it willingly," Mizuki hastened to point out, foreshadowing in that calm a not even too veiled threat and trying to run for cover.

"I note with pleasure that my fucking speech about trusting people less has paid off."

"No, I've been thinking a lot about what you said instead. It's just that that old man ... I didn't trust him, but he didn't seem to have bad intentions either. He just appeared ... tired. Tired of waiting for something or someone that wasn't coming."

At that moment, they were standing on the top of Wall Sina, on the side of the walls facing Trost. After Levi and Erwin - at about 2:30 in the afternoon - had retrieved her from the library and had lunch together at a tavern, Mizuki suggested to her superiors that they take a walk on the walls. She knew that this was the safest spot in the entire city, the only place where one could really be sure that compromising conversations could not be overheard by anyone other than the designated audience: fifty meters above the ground, the wind lashed the top of the walkway with such violence as to take one's breath away, seizing for eternity the words murmured by the human beings who walked along it.

Mizuki's cheeks were flushed from the cold, and her lips dry and cracked, which she moistened repeatedly to try to relieve the unpleasantness.

She stared at the back of Levi, who was walking a few steps away from her and the commander.

He appeared in a foul mood; more than usual, at least. Yet, from what she had been told over lunch, the meeting had gone off without any other stumbles.

Of course, that meant nothing. She did not know him well enough to speculate about what made him so grumpy. Maybe there wasn't even a reason for that and, as Hanje claimed, his bad mood depended only on the period.

She wished she could ask him about it. God, how she wanted to ask him!

Several times she had been on the verge of doing so - when the commander had lingered to pay the tavern bill, when she had accompanied him to a housekeeping store to serve as a carrier of the items he decided to buy, when Erwin stopped to chat with an officer he met on the street - but, at the last moment, she had been unable to repeat aloud the question already pawing at the tip of her tongue. Every word seemed inappropriate to her - too vague, too precise, too provocative, too insinuating, too confidential: she wanted to get an answer, and she knew that with a man like the captain, the wrong phrasing of the question would screw things up. In her head, she constructed hundreds of different propositions, only to discard them realizing that, on the whole, each one proved to be profoundly inadequate.

She was astonished and, at the same time, didn't know which way to turn. She had never had a problem communicating with people until then. But, then again, the captain could hardly be classified as an ordinary person.

And she desperately wanted an answer.

An answer to why he was so irritable, recently; and weird since they had set foot in Stohess.

No, she had to be honest with herself!

Those were just two of the countless myriad questions she wanted to ask him.

Many, so many that she did not even know where to begin listing them.

Beginning that night in the dungeon, her already insatiable curiosity had taken over: often, she would lose herself in reflecting, at the most unexpected moments, on the circumstances of that enigmatic man's life, only to find that her gaze, as if attracted by a magnet, had spotted him among the multitude of people always on the move around HQ, and had lingered on his petite figure for quiet an inappropriate amount of time.

Mizuki shook her head, hugging her shoulders to better protect her face from the relentless wind. "Well, in any case, you're right, captain: the conversation has been very strange. And from what little I understood of it, it abounded with subversive topics."

Immediately after telling her superiors about the surprising encounter that took place in the library, Mizuki had expressed her personal opinion of what Arthur Wilinski had tried to tell her. First, the man's opinion expressed on the library coincided exactly with her own opinion on the city and, therefore, she believed that indirectly he was talking about Stohess or, even, their world.

As for the story, the parallel according to her was even more obvious.

"A village-cage where everyone is happy, founded on an unmentionable secret. Come on, it is all too obvious that this is just another way to refer to the world within the walls. So, the story is about the inhabitants of the walls; and something suggests to me that it is based on real events."

She read the book as she waited for the meeting to end. The narrative, more or less, unfolded in the terms described by the Earl. The protagonist, after the discovery of the terrible secret, entered a state of deep crisis and finally threw himself off a cliff because he was unable to come to terms with the reality-lie in which he lived.

"And there is more: I am convinced that the person mentioned in the story stepped outside the walls, and was someone dear to Arthur Wilinski."

"Tsk. You fantasize too much, brat." Levi, who until then had been listening to her in silence, finally stopped, finally deigning to pay attention to her; Mizuki and the commander did likewise, as a few feet away sat, cards in hand and surrounded by empty wine bottles, the Garrison Corps soldiers assigned to guard the pulleys.

"No, listen to me, and actually do it. Arthur Wilinski used a strange expression to describe the boy's death: he said he had found a way to die. And at the same time, that way had allowed him to escape from the village-prison. That's strange, isn't it? The protagonist dies by throwing himself off a cliff, which is a fairly common way of taking his own life. So why did he have to find it? Why did he have to think about it? What if his goal was something else, in fact? What if he was trying to escape the village, that is, the walls, and died while trying to do so?"

The captain rolled his eyes, but before he could utter one of his usual caustic comments, she continued.

"And that would also explain the Earl's attitude. The boy dies, breaking his father's heart. I told you, it is as if he is waiting for something or someone. The ideal sequel to the story, for him, would be to find out if the father and the son ever meet again someday. What if... what if he harbors some hope about him coming out of the walls and surviving, and being able to meet him again?"

"Do you realize the nonsense you are talking?"

"Excuse me, it may be nonsense, but I made it to the walls alive! Why couldn't someone have escaped from them?"

Levi narrowed his eyes to two slits. "Because you spit fire out of your fucking mouth."

"Exactly! Exactly, captain, you hit the nail on the head!" exclaimed Mizuki, snapping her fingers with both hands, and then pointing her index fingers at the captain's chest, whose expression made it clear how he was on the verge of finding a very unkind way to shut her up. "There is also another key fact central to the story, which Wilinski omitted in his tale: the boy's family holds a prestigious position in the Village because one of its members carries an unspecified power. What if it was an ability that, if possessed, could enable him to survive outside the walls?"

"What if, what if, what if." Levi retraced his steps to approach Mizuki and the commander. "I hear nothing but wild conjecture here. Erwin, talk some sense into her, since she won't listen to me."

"Sunshine, you're the one not listening to me. Commander Erwin, you explain it to him."

They both turned their faces toward the commander - who until then had been walking side by side with Mizuki in silence, holding in his hands the little booklet she had handed him immediately, as soon as the conversation had begun. His light-blue eyes stared at an indefinite point on the horizon, alight with the same somewhat sinister gleam that was sometimes visible when they rested on the four lads coming from the outside world. When he noticed that his subordinates were demanding an answer - and, in particular, an answer that would prove one or the other right - Erwin Smith softly shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but I can't answer that at the moment; I need to think more calmly about the matter before drawing any conclusions. But there is one detail about Earl Wilinski that you both need to know about."

The man uttered that statement in a very low voice and spelling each word carefully, without looking at Mizuki and Levi.

"Ever since I became commander - and even before that, in truth - I have always been forced to interact with the nobles, although the idea has never appealed to me. For the survival of an army division such as the Survey Corps, which sustains huge costs to procure equipment essential for scoutings, their financial support is indispensable. I have met them all, from first to last. Those who feel sympathy and support our activities, and those who try to oppose us in every way, or who more simply mock us. I have known them all, over the years, except Arthur Wilinski."

"Uh-huh! See, that there is something fishy?"

"Shut up, you brat."

"The man leads a withdrawn life, almost like that of a hermit. He does not live in the capital or in the Wall Sina cities, nor, as far as I know, does he attend parties organized by the nobles or the royal family. His residence is somewhere in the mountains within the last circle of the Wall, and he spends his time there in complete solitude." Erwin thoughtfully tapped a finger on the cover of the book, abandoned against his side. Although he was addressing Levi and Mizuki, he still had not looked away from the horizon, and, in a way, both of them had the feeling that the commander, rather than explaining his point of view to them, was trying to get his mind right.

"A bit like captain." The comment was immediately followed by a groan of pain as Levi reached out and tugged on her ear.

"A bit like Levi." agreed Erwin, and, as if suddenly reawakened from a long slumber, he finally granted his attention to his interlocutors: he turned an imperceptible smile to a Mizuki busy massaging her ear, and an amused glance to Levi, who was wiping his hand with a handkerchief as if he had just brushed against something dirty. "However, the fact that I did not meet him in person does not mean that I never had anything to do with him. He ... you know, Mizuki, the other nobles have never supported our scoutings outside the walls; it was only after the fall of Wall Maria that a few of them began to fund our activities, hoping to recover the part of their wealth that was lost. But Wilinski... four years ago, at the most critical moment in the history of the Survey Corps, when we were on the verge of dissolution, he happened to get in touch with me through one of his trusted intermediaries. He did not wish us to stop the expeditions; in fact, quite the opposite. Thus he provided me with a weapon to get the worst of our detractors out of the way, and a new hope for humankind crushed by the superhuman strength of the giants."

At that point, Erwin fell silent. Mizuki followed the direction of his gaze and nearly sent an exclamation of surprise.

Levi had contracted his fists and every nerve in his body was as taut as a rope. In his gaze was a stormy gray sea, in which hellish winds were raising waves of vivid emotions that swept over the astonished bathers.

"What the fuck are you talking about, Erwin?"

"Levi, it was Wilinski who provided me with the documents on Lovof."

"Levi, it was Wilinski who provided me with the files on Lovof."

Mizuki's eyes darted restlessly between the two men. "Lovoffo? Now, who the heck is Lovoffo?"

"Lovof." the captain dryly corrected her. "And that's none of your business."

"But how can you say it doesn't concern me?!"

"And it was always Wilinski who advised me to take a tour of the Underground City if I was interested in seeing someone truly extraordinary at work."

Erwin fell silent again, and this time Mizuki did not need to ask who the commander was talking about. Timidly, she shifted her attention back to Levi: his face, as always, as impassive as that of a marble statue; but his gaze... she knew it well because, sometimes, she had glimpsed it on her father's features.

Mizuki swallowed.

Before her flashed the eyes of a man capable of cold-blooded murder.

Then those two steel blades, for no apparent reason, moved from Erwin to her. They paused to study her for a few moments, gliding along her features, lingering on her wide-open eyes, almost devouring her.

And then, just as it had raged, the storm withdrew.

Levi snapped his tongue in annoyance, and returned to his usual self. After that, leaving Mizuki more confused than before, he turned back to Erwin. "Is it so? I see."

The commander, without commenting on the incredible carousel of emotions that had just unfolded before him and its even more unexpected and rapid outcome, allowed a few more moments of silence to pass. "That was my first contact, albeit indirect, with Wilinski, but certainly not the last. Almost six months ago, in late August, I ran into him in Trost. Perhaps I used the wrong term in expressing myself: to be more precise, I did not run into him; he found me. At that time, my energies were totally absorbed in preparing a plan to get you and the others into the Survey Corps, Mizuki. I devised several, but all of them required a considerable amount of money to silence the higher-ups. I was walking through the streets of Trost, deep in thought, when someone touched my shoulder. I didn't realize he had come so close to me until I found him beside me."

Exactly as had happened to her in the library.

"He went straight to the point, and informed me that he intended to contribute to the cause of the Survey Corps with his substances. The offer he made ... was an embarrassing amount of money. He didn't care how his money would be spent, as long as I used it for the cause. So, at least, he told me." Erwin crossed his arms over the chest, cautiously holding the little book of discord between one of his huge hands. "I accepted, of course, and with that money I bought the consent of Zackly and the others. I was convinced that it was money pulled up by some dirty business, which he had the urge to make disappear; someone like him, completely out of the noble circle, probably couldn't count on the support of the Gendarmerie, in case a scandal broke out, and he certainly must have made quite a few enemies, considering how he had acted in the Lovof affair. But now ... what happened in the library casts a whole new light on the matter."

Mizuki lowered her head, overwhelmed by the wave of connections her mind was frantically building. "He knew." she muttered finally.

"Yeah." growled Levi. "Damn!"

He knew everything.

That she was going to the library that day. He was watching her, like a predator waiting for the opportune moment to pounce on the unwitting prey.

Mizuki Onizuka. A rather unusual name.

What the money donated to the Corps would be used for. No, indeed. He wished for his donation to be destined to that purpose, and for Mizuki and her comrades to become soldiers.

The Survey Corps, huh? A challenging choice.

Who was she; perhaps even where she came from, and where she wanted to go back to.

Because I was here before you were. Long before, and I know this little universe like the back of my hand.

Her legs became soft, and she struggled to maintain an upright position.

"What if..."

"Cut it out with these what ifs. That seems to me to be one of the few full stops of the day, along with the fact that you're a naive and gullible brat, despite the fact that I warned you." Levi took a step in Mizuki's direction, daring her to contradict him. "That filthy pig was there that day. And he saw everything."

In Tiburtina. The day they had met. The day the madmen they were looking for had abandoned helpless human beings at the disposal of giants.

"Mizuki." Erwin pronounced her name in a huff, and despite the quiet tone not devoid of a hint of gentleness, that call sounded like an ominous warning to the ears of the person directly concerned. "I have yet to understand what exactly is the task that man has given you. But whether it is to write the conclusion of this story, or to find out what really happened to its protagonists, one thing is sure. He wants you to be the one to report the end. Be careful."

I hope to see you again. In fact, it will definitely happen, and then you will provide an answer to all the questions I have asked you.

"Damn." repeated the captain, a few steps away from her.

"In any case, there's not much we can do about it for now: it's done now, and as I said, I need time and peace of mind to reflect on the matter." Erwin pulled out a pocket watch. "It's almost six o'clock. We must go, our hosts are waiting for us."

Mizuki snapped her head up, vaguely outraged by the idea of the Arthur Wilinski matter being dismissed in such a way. "What hosts?"

"I told you I was coming to Stohess for various tasks, right?" Erwin started in the direction of the pulleys, stepping past her. "The meeting was only the first one. Now we are expected to have dinner at Duke Tennison's estate."

"The dinner..." Mizuki winced and then turned to face the captain, seeking support. "...at the Duke's estate?"

"You heard him. Move your ass, brat." Levi kicked her shins, as he usually did whenever Mizuki proved too slow, for his liking, to react to orders. "'Real trouble' starts now."