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

9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Have faith in me, 'cause there are things that I've seen I don't believe - part 2

A Day To Remember - Have faith in me

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The candles of the huge chandelier brightly lit the hall of Tenninson Mansion.

Levi sensed the brat's gaze on him even without looking. He did not need to.

The weight of those eyes placidly caressing him evoked in him a sensation so intense, intrusive, and disturbing that it obliterated almost any other.

Almost.

The irritation, that one stayed.

Everything in that place was unbearable to him.

The light hurt his irritated eyes, the intense scents of the ladies and the food made his stomach turn, the confusing chatter dense with useless remarks contributed to the headache triggered by the morning's meeting with the upper echelons of the army.

He hated being in that place, in the company of those people, with every fiber of his body. Revulsion and hatred flooded his chest like unquenchable flames.

Yet, the gaze of the brat that - at times - settled on him, wherever she and he were in the hall, overwhelmed him to the point of obliterating everything else.

In that golden sea that haunted him, one thousand questions were contained.

She had been questioning him that way for a while now. Since returning from the November scouting, to be precise. He had noticed it, but had preferred to play it off in the hope that sooner or later she would drop it.

At first, it was nothing more than stolen moments: in the canteen, in the corridors, she would give him brief glances that enveloped him from head to toe like an abrupt embrace and then released him, gliding to the next object of her curiosity.

Then those moments had begun to occur more frequently, and to last longer.

A thousand questions, which he shunned, and she had never verbally addressed to him.

She wanted to get inside, that brat. To get inside him, and find out. And he wanted to keep her out, no matter what, and hold on to his secrets.

Give me a break, damn it.

She released him, as if she had heard his cursing, looking away.

Feeling light now that that burden had left him, he absentmindedly searched the room for her.

By the fireplace, leaning against the wall, stiff and impaled like a broom, with Pixis and two dogs, friends of Tennison's son, a forced, nervous smile plastered on her lips and a glass of red wine in her hand - the second, since the beginning of the meeting. She looked uncomfortable in that context; like a bird locked in a cage. Formality, quietness and composure did not suit her at all. Mizuki was life, energy, movement. She was an unstoppable laughter that crossed the space, and echoed irritatingly in his head even when she was not present.

Perhaps they had asked her a question, and that was why she had stopped staring at him. He saw her arrange a lock of hair behind her ear, and mumble a few words. He found himself trying to imagine what the topic of the ongoing conversation between these four people who had nothing in common with each other could be.

The old drunkard burst out laughing and passed a hand over her shoulders in encouragement; since their arrival at the estate some forty minutes earlier, he had clung to her ass and never let go, evidently in search of the motivation that had induced Erwin to enlist her by shelling out a mind-boggling amount of money.

Pixis had a good nose, in noticing anomalies, and Mizuk was anomalous in a lot of ways. But even a man as cunning and shrewd as he was could never manage to guess the truth.

One of the two dogs held out a napkin to her, but in the gesture, it fell - or rather, was dropped - to the ground. Mizuki promptly placed the wine glass on the mantel behind her, stepped forward and bent down to retrieve it. Immediately, the young man's eyes slid with a dart to her butt.

One of the main virtues of the uniforms worn by soldiers lay in their perfect fit to the body, a fit so perfect that it superbly highlighted what needed to be highlighted. The trousers of the women's uniform, in particular, could be described without hesitation as a tantalizing glimpse of paradise.

So, at least, had sentenced a gendarme, seated next to Levi during the last official parade in the capital, with an air of connoisseurship at the passing of a particularly well-built recruit, and completely unaware of the identity of his interlocutor, who had glowered at him before changing seats.

Not that he had revealed to Levi who knows what recondite truth, anyway. He, too, had eyes to see, and although he normally did not like to indulge in attentions that he deemed disrespectful to his female colleagues and worthy of a desperate man on the verge of abstinence, it was an indisputable and objective fact that the pants of the female uniform adhered perfectly to the wearer's body, and that under certain circumstances it was impossible not to notice.

As, for example, if one landed a troublesome brat during a hand-to-hand combat, and found himself admiring her bottom from above, in a privileged position and at close range.

And from that point of view, the brat was in pretty good shape. Her upper body was dry, angular, and ribbed by her bones - shoulder blades and ribs - which stood out against her tense skin; her legs, on the other hand, though skinny, were toned and muscular, and she had a nice butt, high and tight, wonderfully set off by the uniform .

On the face of the dog who had pulled off the napkin trick appeared a smug expression at the success of his scheme, simple but sufficient to mislead a clueless girl like her, and he exchanged a look of understanding with the friend at his side. The triumph, however, lasted only a moment, before Pixis came between him and Mizuki on the pretext of addressing some remark to him.

"Captain, so it's true?"

Levi winced.

Miss Jacqueline Tenninson smiled appealingly at him, bending her bust slightly in his direction, thus highlighting the deep, plunging neckline of the midnight blue velvet dress that swathed her body and, by contrast, illuminated her plump, tumescent lips and pale complexion.

She was good at it, nothing to say about that.

Too bad only for one small, insignificant detail: her damned noble birth.

"You asked him an absurd question, Jackie. It's obvious he doesn't want to answer you." Clyaton Tennison ran a hand through his thick, long hair of the same platinum blond color as his sister.

"But I want to know!" Jacqueline pouted, furrowing her thick, perfect eyebrows and contracting her mouth into a grimace.

Know what, dammit?

"What do you think the strongest soldier of humanity knows about who is housekeeping in the army barracks?!"

"But I don't believe they don't have servants!" The young woman crossed arms under her breasts, and walked half a step closer to him. "Captain Levi, please. Solve this doubt for me! In return, I promise you a song on the piano."

"..."

Stupid woman.

He hated that his personal space was invaded, and even more so if it was a female wearing a nauseating flower scent doing so.

Levi shot a glance in Erwin's direction. He was already peering at him, a silent warning in his eyes.

"Housekeeping is taken care of by the soldiers, in rotation."

Jacqueline brought a hand to her mouth, shocked. Even Clayton Tennison - who had immediately given himself airs as a great connoisseur of military life - could not hold back an astonished expression. "This is absurd! You too?!"

"Me too". Especially me, because if it were for most of my colleagues, we would all be living in a pigsty.

"What an outrage!" Clyaton sounded genuinely offended by such a possibility.

"It's part of military life, and it builds character."

"How stoic, captain!" Jacqueline approached further, an invitation unexpressed in her big brown eyes. "Someday I would like to visit your headquarters. Do you think that would be possible?"

This time the look he felt on his face was Erwin's, and the question being asked was far more irritating than any bullshit the brat could ever come up with.

Being polite.

Levi held back a sigh, summoning all his willpower.

Damn you, Erwin.

"If you wish."

At that moment, unexpected help came from the host, David Tennison, engaged in conversation with the commander in the center of the room. "Captain Levi!" he called out.

The Tennison family was one of the few noble houses, as well as the most prestigious, that supported - both ideologically and materially - the existence of the Survey Corps. Every year a considerable sum of money flowed out of David Tennison's coffers to finance scoutings, with which the commander managed, albeit with several persistent difficulties, to cover extraordinary expenses and balance the books. His support was essential for their survival, and so that courtesy visit had to go smoothly. This was Erwin explained to Mizuki as they drove by carriage to the estate, located just outside the city gates in the direction of the innermost territories of Wall Sina.

She nodded, already tense at the mere thought of having to participate in such a crucial evening.

"Commander, are you sure about this? I mean, I don't know if I'm the right person. I can be ... quite inappropriate."

"So much awareness on your part. It's almost touching," commented wryly Levi, sitting across from her.

"It will be all right," Erwin reassured her. "The Tennisons are a fairly enlightened family around here. They don't exploit people as is the custom of the nobles, and they're even quite cultured."

"But filthy pigs they are and remain."

Erwin sighed, and it was clear from his look that he was far more concerned about the captain's conduct than hers. "There is only one matter you need to watch out for. David Tennison has one passion that he does not compromise on: wine. His estate - you will see it - is surrounded by acres of vineyards from which he makes a fine wine of that he is very proud. He will certainly offer it to us, and he may be upset if you refuse it. Just pay attention to this, and everything will go smoothly. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir!" Mizuki brought a hand to her heart with conviction.

Always her usual exaggerated self.

"Besides, watch out for Dot Pixis. He'll be there too, and he's already announced that he wants to get to know you better. Levi and I will take care of the rest. Well, especially him." At these words, the commander gave him a mischievous smile.

"Fuck you, Erwin," he said.

"Miss Tennison, a couple of years ago, was helped by our Levi at a bad juncture, a sort of robbery in broad daylight."

"Tsk, if I had known who she was I would have let them slit her throat."

Both Erwin and Mizuki rolled their eyes, both certain that a man like the captain would never have done that; then the commander continued. "Since then, she has offered him all her esteem and... well, apparently, her heart."

Her heart, and her whole self, thought Levi stingily, mindful of the previous year's visit and how hard he had struggled to escape Miss Tennison's pressing advances.

Mizuki widened her eyes. "So..."

Erwin smiled. "Yes. Tonight we are going to witness a rather unusual sight."

"The captain flirting with a lady!" She threw her head back and burst into thunderous laughter. Yes, that very thunderous laughter that so tormented him and strained his nerves. "Oh, what a scene! When I tell the others about it, they will be rolling with laughter!"

"I'm not going to fucking flirting with anyone at all. And you won't tell a thing, or I'll cut your tongue out."

"That's encouraging to me, though. It's easy that I won't be the one screwing things up tonight!"

Levi leaned in to pull her ear, but she - still giggling - huddled against the commander's arm, seeking shelter. It was irritating and problematic, that exuberance of hers; but the captain preferred her in that exalted state rather than how she had been the moments following the end of their conversation on the walls. On the elevator that was transporting them to the ground, the brat had taken on the shocked expression of someone who has just seen a giant for the first time; and, despite the deafening roar of the pulley, Levi could hear just fine the gears in that little head that gave birth to catastrophic fantasies and conjectures about the new threat that had come on the scene, Arthur Wilinski. Obviously, as was her wont, she was not worrying for herself, who had been the only one to be approached by the man, but for her teammates. He would have gambled a box of fine tea on that point.

Wilinski, Lovof... no, he did not feel like thinking about Wilinski and Lovof in that moment.

David Tennison had welcomed them enthusiastically to his "modest country estate," surrounded as Erwin had announced by an expanse of softly snow-covered vines, and a splendor that - though devoted in all likelihood to making their stay pleasant - made them uncomfortable, and irritated Levi.

For the occasion, the master of the house had decided to adopt a new formula much in vogue in the salons of Mitras, where the more avant-garde nobles preferred, to the classic five- or six-course seated banquet, a dinner "by tasting" served to guests left free to wander about the richly furnished salons. The dishes offered were more numerous, what allowed the host to better deploy his wealth; and conversations among the guests were fostered by the possibility of moving - or escaping - from one handful to another.

That evening, in addition to the four soldiers, the entire Tennison family was present, consisting of Duke David and his two children Jacqueline and Clayton, for each of whom a bevy of young escorts had been summoned, descendants of less prestigious noble lineages buzzing around the two like flies on a cake left to cool on the window sill.

Just enough to make Levi wish he was anywhere - even in the midden that was Hanje's office - except in that place the very moment he had stepped into the hall.

When Jacqueline Tennison was introduced to her, Mizuki's eyes lit up. "'So beautiful..." she murmured, and then turned to Levi to cast him a look of genuine admiration. Soon after, however, it seemed to come back to her that her loyalty and support had already been sworn to another suitor, and she lowered her head with a guilty expression. At least, that was what Levi thought in observing that quick string of emotions on her face. Every once in a while observing her could prove to be really funny; it was possible to see and read everything on her face.

As he made his way toward Erwin and Tennison, feeling almost a surge of sympathy for the nobleman who had rescued him from the clutches of his stupid children, Levi again checked the situation on the brat's side, just in time to see her reluctantly accept a third glass of wine. The captain's eyes narrowed into two slits. Now he had caught him. That was not Pixis' doing. Pushing her to drink and systematically replacing the empty glass with one full of wine was the dog who had come up with the napkin move. Liam Heather. The cousin of the two jerks he had just left behind, a guest staying with the Tennison's indefinitely because he had taken a "break from the intense studies of literature to rediscover himself."

Of course, half the blame went to that little stupid of a brat, who seemed to have taken the commander's recommendation about not refusing wine far too seriously. Since the beginning of the evening, moreover, she had hardly touched any food, exactly like he and Erwin, the difference being that she weighed half as much as they did.

Knowing her, it was not difficult to guess the reason for her behavior. As the carriage sped through the city streets on its way to the estate, as it moved away from the center and into the suburbs, the number of beggars on the street had multiplied. Emaciated children, women, and men shuffled along skimming the walls of buildings, backs hunched and dull-eyed, dressed in tattered rags despite the frost.

Mizuki had watched that distressing spectacle with her face pressed against the window, without speaking, under Levi's silent gaze.

To anyone with any sense of morality such a sight would not have awakened the appetite. After traversing the city streets haunted by those spectres, the opulence and pageantry deployed at the Tennison estate could only appear indigestible. The captain's stomach had shut down that morning in setting foot in Stohess, and he had no doubt that the same had happened to the brat in arriving at their evening destination.

Levi flanked Erwin, closely followed by Jacqueline, who seemed to resent her father's intrusion into her own torture, and she immediately began bickering with the Duke.

"Perhaps we should retrieve her, shall we?" he muttered in a low voice so that only the commander could hear him.

Erwin turned his gaze in the direction pointed by the imperceptible nod of Levi's head. "She'll be all right. There's Pixis with her."

"Exactly."

"Come on, Jackie, I'll return the captain to you as soon as I hear his opinion!" David Tennison clapped his hands as if to imply that the discussion, for him, was closed. "The commander and I were having a pleasant conversation about the plan to retake Wall Maria."

Pleasant? Only for those who had never met a giant, perhaps.

Tennison shook his head, bringing the glass filled with his prized red wine to his lips. "After that total madness sponsored by the Central Government, they finally decided to hand over the reins of the plan to someone who understands what he's doing. You remember what I'm alluding to, don't you?"

Did he remember?

Levi squinted his eyes, and felt his right hand clench into a fist. It was always like that when Erwin dragged him into those shitty situations. His head throbbed hallucinatingly, and every glow and smell that reached his senses made him feel nauseous. His taut nerves were ready to jump at the slightest provocation, and in that room, there was no shortage of pretexts to give vent to the fury burning in his guts.

"I think I remember," he forced himself to comment.

The mass slaughter ordered by the Central Government, better known as the "plan for the reconquest of the territories," had enabled the king and the nobles to achieve two important results: one planned, the death of some two hundred and fifty thousand people, most of them survivors of the Wall Maria territories, and thus the reduction of the mouths to feed that threatened to collapse the delicate ecosystem that humanity had so painstakingly managed to establish; the second, unhoped-for but nonetheless realized, the exacerbation of the population's animosity towards the Survey Corps. Coming home from that nightmare had been only those soldiers trained to survive and equipped to do so, and public opinion had soon labeled such an outcom e -the survival of those who had sworn to protect civilians at the cost of their own lives - as unacceptable, against nature, betraying the very essence of the army.

David Tennison lovingly stroked the head of his daughter, who had sulked and rolled her eyes at her father's every word. "I still shudder at the idea. I'm ashamed to know some of those who conceived this crime against humanity."

Yeah, too bad that with that crime Tennison had ensured the preservation of his peaceful life, and his vineyards, which otherwise would have been uprooted to accommodate wheat crops.

All the survivors had gained something, from that crime against humanity, whether they liked to admit it or not.

"Nothing to do with this new plan." David finished his glass of wine in one gulp, and motioned to one of the waiters hanging around the room to bring him another. "The commander mentioned four stations along the route from Trost to Shiganshina, right?"

Erwin nodded. "Yes. By the end of next year we will finish bringing the necessary necessities for the survival of soldiers engaged in the future reconstruction mission - food, medicine and clothing - and the first base will be considered active. Then we will start with the preparation of the second post, where the non-heavy raw materials needed for reconstruction will be stored."

"Have you located it yet?"

"Yes. It's the old summer residence of Grand Duke Kipling."

"Oh, right, he had an estate around there. Near a forest of giant trees, if I'm not mistaken."

"That's right."

"And how long do you expect it will take, overall?"

"At a minimum, twenty years. And then the actual closing phase of the breach will start."

It was unclear to Levi why David Tennison had summoned him to hear him rattle off all the information that he and the other captains had been repeating at every single meeting for years; at any moment he almost expected to see the four-eye crawl out from under a table with some new plan to capture a giant. All in all, however, he could hardly complain: the triviality and uselessness of the remarks saved him from having to take an active part in the conversation, and, in any case, the summons had removed him from the tantrums of the sullen female who was casting languid glances at him beside her father.

"Twenty years!" David Tenninson shook his head, shocked. At that moment, the waiter - a lanky guy sporting an impressive pair of floppy ears, dressed in a blouse that fit him too loosely - approached and handed the host a glass of wine along with a plate full of food. "Oh, thank you, Tim. You know, Tim's new here, but he's good at it. Look, he selected the samples to offer me based on the type of wine! My nephew Liam brought him. He says he's recruited him to an orphanage near Orvud, a new project funded by I don't know who anymore, which trains kids without families so that they can get decent jobs, and don't end up thugging around, " the man explained, starting to gorge himself. "I was saying, ah, yes. Twenty years is an absurdly long time! We'll never get back our lost territories like that!"

Suddenly, it became ridiculously obvious the real reason behind Tennison's lavish funding of the Survey Corps, which began, as it happens, in 845.

"'Yeah,' Erwin kindly declined Tim's invitation to refill his plate. "On the other hand, there is little to be done. It's an operation that physiologically takes some time to be implemented."

Filthy pig. I bet he can't wait until he can expand his fucking vineyard to gorge himself on even more food and wine.

"That's exactly why I wanted the captain here. I mean, I believe there is something wrong with the internal system of the army!"

Just something?

"The truth is that we should increase the number of soldiers. Three years to train recruits seems way too long to me. Anyway..." David Tennison bit his lip, restraining himself from completing the sentence.

They're going to croak anyway, aren't they?

"In any case, even at speeding up recruitment, I think the number of soldiers to join the Survey Corps will remain the same," Erwin sentenced, keeping his cool and wishing the man at his side would do the same.

"Yeah, even this whole thing about allowing recruits to choose the Corps is absurd! Let the best be allowed to choose, and let the rest be assigned to you!"

The commander avoided pointing out that, in a way, the system already worked that way. "Unfortunately, ours is not a job that can be imposed. One needs to be motivated, to get outside the walls."

The duke contracted his lips. "Captain Levi, what do you think? If I am not mistaken, you once stated that discipline is everything in a military organization. Don't you think that some sense of duty should be instilled in these young people?"

"I think..." Levi averted his gaze from the man, and let it wander down the hall. Already responding to an idiotic remark like that without hanging the swine who had made it to the chandelier was quite difficult; doing so while contemplating his sweaty face sprinkled with crumbs from the sandwich he had just stuffed in his mouth appeared to him to be an impossible challenge. It was then that his gaze froze, focusing on a point in the room, and the tightrope into which his nerves had been transmuted tore with a snap. "...stupid brat."

"Huh?" David Tennison's voice sounded genuinely concerned, and the duke took a half-step backward. What was famous was not only Levi's ideas about discipline, but also the way he put them into action when his five minutes started.

But the captain ignored him blithely, and set off at a brisk pace in the direction of the fireplace. The only one who found his charge damnably amusing was Pixis, who threw back his head and laughed; the gentlemen present, on the other hand, jerked back, unable to understand what was happening and to decide whether or not they should flee.

With a sharp gesture, Levi snatched from the brat's hands the fourth glass of wine she had just accepted. Mizuki stared at him a little piqued, her brow furrowed and her eyes glazed over.

"That's enough."

"But... the fine wine..."

"I'll drink it, you're done with wine for tonight." Levi grabbed her by the collar of her jacket with his free hand and pushed her towards the glass door that faced the garden; halfway through, however, he was forced to grab her by the arm and support her because she was staggering slightly. "Go get some air before you throw up and force me to clean up your vomit."

As he walked past Pixis, the captain gave him a cutting look - he would have bet his ass that Erwin had asked him to keep an eye on her on account of her inexperience, and that the old drunkard had beautifully washed his hands of her. The old drunkard in question, still laughing, nodded to him as if to apologize. "Come on, Levi, don't make that face! You've been keeping an eye on the young lady all night, I wanted to see when you'd rush to her aid!"

"Fuck you," murmured Levi, still self-possessed enough to let that very inconvenient remark slip out in a low voice so as not to disturb the delicate and noble ears of those present.

After letting her out onto the terrace, he helped her down the stairs that fanned out on either side of the platform, supporting her by the arm, and seated her on the last step at the bottom. Mizuki followed him like a little dog, as docile as she had ever been, seemingly too groggy to be able to find an explanation for what was happening. Levi set the wine glass on the floor and ordered her not to move a single muscle until his return, or he would make her clean the HQ from top to bottom with a toothbrush.

When he returned, Mizuki was exactly where he had left her, but she had closed her eyes and huddled against the wall, leaning the right side of her body and head against it, and hugging the legs folded against her chest with her arms. Levi passed the coat he had retrieved from the vestibule around her shoulders, and then tapped her on one arm with the rim of a glass water bottle.

She recoiled and, after gazing in amazement at the bottle, grabbed it. "What should I do with it?"

"You sure handle alcohol pretty bad." Levi took a seat on the step above the one where she sat and, retrieving the glass, began to sip its contents. "I would gladly smack it over your head, but you drink it. And if you feel like throwing up, warn me on time."

She did as sh was told, and clutched the bottle. The hangover had indeed made her more tame, an attitude of which Levi did not think she was physiologically capable, but from that much-needed circumstance he did not derive the slightest satisfaction; indeed, her state made him furious, since he did not harbor the slightest doubt that the dogs' plan was precisely to make her so vulnerable by making her guzzle one glass after another.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, intent on sipping their respective beverages and contemplating the rows of snow-buried vines that ran not far from the building, with such an extent that the ends were lost in the darkness of the night.

"How are you?"

"My head is spinning, and the wall is hard and cold," Mizuki complained with a snort, and giving him an accusing look. As if enlightened by a sudden inspiration, she slid closer to the captain and leaned her head in the crook of his shoulder, letting out a satisfied sigh. "That's much better."

Levi stiffened. He detested anyone who approached him and touched him without permission, and she knew it, as, for that matter, did all of his colleagues. He considered for a moment the possibility of flinching, and refrained from doing so only out of fear that, given her state, the brat would capsize and end up banking her head against the granite steps.

As if to confirm his fears, Mizuki slid slightly downward and snuggled better, increasing the grip of her body against Levi's.

Only the bun that barely enclosed the untamed mass of her hair was now within his view.

Although they had been around since early that morning, the brat still smelled good. A simple and unpretentious smell, fresh and pleasant.

Until then, they had never been near each other long enough for him to appreciate that detail, and certainly never had been without the reason for the approach lying in physical punishment.

Sure, they had been within close distance of each other in some circumstances; but these had been very brief, circumscribed, stolen moments that Levi had tried to forget as best as he could.

She would approach anyone at HQ and touch whomever she pleased without fail, bridging the distance that separated her from others with a gesture and a laugh. He had seen her do it over and over again, with everyone, even Erwin or Mike, who certainly did not invite confidence; with everyone but him.

He, she would merely mock him, and study him from afar with her golden eyes, but she would never come too close of her own accord, nor touch him.

It had taken three glasses of red wine on an empty stomach for this to happen.

And now that little head, topped with curls and full of the fancy bullshit with which she tormented him, pressed against his right shoulder, a light weight yet impossible to ignore; and a pleasant smell rose to his nostrils, before dissipating into the night, mingling with the little clouds of smoke that emerged from their respective mouths.

"'You smell really good, Captain. You know?"

Levi cast an inquisitive glance at her to check whether or not the brat was bullshitting him. But she continued to remain motionless, huddled against him and facing the vineyard; the only discernible movement in her figure was her finger tapping on the neck of the bottle.

She was serious, the brat.

Could it be that they had both felt the same sensation?

"'I wash myself,'" Levi finally said, more to shake off that thought than to provide a response to yet another offhand remark from her.

"Good thing, huh! It would really be too funny if it turned out that you're a slob, given how much you annoy everyone." A barely audible chuckle, and a slight tremor spread from Mizuki's petite body to Levi's.

She did not move, but that shared vibration of their bodies gave him the impression that they had grown even closer.

"You're in bad shape. You really needed to get out of there."

"So did you. You had an expression so ... so like you, while talking to the duke, that I could hardly keep myself from laughing."

Levi went back to lowering his gaze to the little head poking out at his side, wrinkling his eyebrows, and met a pair of golden eyes peering up at him from below, sparkling and mischievous. "That's right, captain, that's the murderous expression I'm talking about." She giggled again, then lifted her free hand and brushed a finger across the center of his forehead, trying unsuccessfully to smooth out the wrinkle between his eyebrows. "Relax, or in a few years you will be full of wrinkles."

As soon as he sensed the fingertip gently brushing against him, the captain's hand lifted automatically, as if to shoo away a fly; but Mizuki, probably expecting the gesture, had already retracted her own and, after barely contracting her lips, shook her head, continuing to stare at him from below. "Don't be rude, captain. I'm clean too."

Yep, clean and smelling great.

As well as completely helpless, and oblivious.

Mizuki turned back around, took a long swig from her bottle, and then squinted her eyes again.

Those damned pigs. As he got to see for himself the condition the two morons upstairs had reduced her to, his anger and disgust only grew.

He resented her a little, too. He had warned her, advised her, repeatedly told her not to trust.

Yet he also knew that trusting was an inseparable part of her character.

Of course, not when it came to making decisions and following orders, as she had revealed to him.

But in approaching others she was like that.

Perhaps it was not even a matter of trust, but of something more deep-rooted and profound. Simply, when approaching someone, Mizuki did so without prejudice. She saw the flaws and downsides of the person in front of her, but also and especially the qualities, and it was on those that she focused her attention.

He didn't think she was doing it with full knowledge - on the basis of some absurd belief that everyone, even the lowest of the low, hid a positive side, no matter how trivial or irrelevant. No, it came naturally to her to find something to appreciate in everyone, regardless of occupation, personal history and social class, in the same way that, even in the most hopeless of situations, she could always unearth something good.

She knew that everyone had their own story, and she accepted that, just as one accepts, in the morning, the fact that for that day the weather will be sunny or drizzly.

And that certainly applied to those dogs upstairs as well.

It also applied to him.

Mizuki must have changed her position slightly, because now he could feel her chest rising and falling rhythmically.

Despite the chill, his forehead was burning in the spot where she had touched him.

Could it be defined as "touching," that sudden gesture that lasted for a timeless instant?

He did not want to think about it; not at that moment, not under those particular conditions.

More than twenty minutes had passed since he had taken her outside. He wondered how soon he could shake her off without any danger of causing her significant harm.

"Thank you for bringing me here. I feel a little better now." As if she had read his mind, Mizuki lifted her head slightly. Her eyes now appeared less shiny and more present, and it seemed that the fresh air and water were doing their job.

"And thank you because I'm couching you."

"And thank you because you're couching me." She smiled imperceptibly, and took another long sip of water. "I would also add, thank you for saving me from a rather embarrassing situation."

"With those dogs, upstairs, and the old drunkard. What was it you were talking about?"

"Mmm. About life in the barracks."

"These idiots have a truly amazing interest in a place where they wouldn't survive even an hour."

"They wanted to know about affairs between soldiers. Commander Pixis told a few stories, and then they asked me what I had to say. Imagine that. Fortunately Hanje is fond of such things, so putting together the gossip she occasionally tells me and the romance novels Petra reads, I got by."

"That the four-eyed liked to mess in other people's business I knew, that Ral reads certain stuff I didn't."

"Did I say Petra? I meant Lavinia. The red wine, you know. I got away with it for a while, but towards the end, when the duke's son joined us, they wanted to know about my affairs. You really saved me, I was going to tell them about Willy Anderson."

"Those pigs." After draining his wine glass, Levi began nervously turning it over in his hands. He imagined they were investigating whether it would be easy to get her into bed.

"You really do hate them, huh?"

He judged it unnecessary to answer. Besides, hating did not seem to him an appropriate term to express the deep revulsion and disgust those dogs inspired in him. "You don't?"

"I can't say we'll ever be best friends..."

"But?"

"...But I don't think it's entirely their fault that they are what they are. Maybe you or I would have become like that, too, if we had been born noble. We all have our own story."

"'All we needed was for you to justify these filthy parasites.'

Although the fumes of alcohol had not yet completely dissipated, the brat seemed to sense that the conversation was heading into a minefield, and that the captain, a bundle of nerves and a pocket of irritation accumulated from a whole day, was a time bomb ready to explode at any moment. "I don't justify them; I try to understand. And to understand you have to try to be as detached as possible."

"I feel like I'm hearing the four-eyed giants' talk."

Mizuki smiled imperceptibly. "In fact, I think my boss is absolutely right, even if she sometimes gets carried away - good thing Moblit exists! That's the gist of it, though: in order to understand others, to really understand them, we have to be willing to listen to their story without prejudice, and especially without resorting to the meter of judgment based on our own experiences."

Levi snapped his tongue in annoyance, an all too eloquent way of expressing his opinion on the subject.

"Don't get me wrong, though. I too have seen the unacceptable conditions of people living on the streets. The current system is not working, and it needs to be changed, there is no doubt about that. Erwin, however..."

"Commander Erwin."

Mizuki let a condescending sigh escape. "Commander Erwin said that Tennison is enlightened, didn't he?"

"That pig is enlightened only when it suits him to do his bidding."

Hearing her defend the parasites upstairs was more than he would have been able to bear under normal conditions, so he didn't even try to swallow it after spending the whole day in Stohess and now that he was in the fucking residence of one of the aforementioned parasites. Levi felt the overwhelming urge to pull out the pocketknife he carried concealed in an inside pocket of his jacket, and fiddle with the blade, jerking it around only to re-sheath and jerk it again, a gesture that-since he had learned to hold a weapon-had always soothed him. Feeling the icy, thin steel blade cleave the air, under the caress of his fingertips, was a balm for his irritation; it reminded him that at any time, thanks to that little knife, he could defend himself and others from the abuse of those in power.

It was only with an effort that he prevented his hand from slipping under his jacket; but his unsatisfied fingers took to mimicking, with an imperceptible movement, the gesture of snapping the blade of a pocketknife.

The brat finally straightened her back and moved away from him. It seemed as if her hangover had worn off, and now she peered at him with an intrigued, wrinkled expression, over which also hovered a vague sense of guilt at the distant figure of a woman with bob hair, forgotten because of alcohol. For a moment, her eyes lingered on the captain's hand, who was not quick enough to curb the instinct that moved it, but she made no comment.

"Why do you ask me certain questions and engage in certain conversations, when you know perfectly well that you will not like my answers and opinions?"

Yeah, who knows why. Maybe to find out if she was really as naive as she seemed.

Maybe to sober her up quickly, forcing her to talk and reason.

Or maybe to make sure that she really was different from him, his opposite, a vivid fire that illuminated the surrounding space by eating away at the shadows, a being able to unearth beauty even in a rotten world like the one inside the walls.

"This way you only end up getting more irritated, and giving me the problem of managing a captain in a bad mood."

It took Levi a few moments to register the meaning of those words. "..."

"Please spare me that bewildered expression. Do you think you are the only one who has the right to lecture? You, in your own way, are as problematic as I am." With her back leaning against the wall and her legs folded against her chest, the brat now faced him directly, shaking her head as if to emphasize her displeasure. "Are you doing something with that glass?" she then asked, pointing with a nod to the suppliance that Levi was still turning over in his fingers.

"...".

"Well?"

"...no."

"Then throw it against that wall," the brat invited him, pointing with a vague hand gesture to the wall of the building.

"Have you drunk your brains out? I mean yes, you did, but..."

"Do as I say. The duke won't notice one less glass if it's empty."

Levi wrinkled his eyebrows. He weighted the object in his hand for a few moments, then the face of his subordinate staring at him with expectation and - it seemed to him - a certain amount of condescension.

But, yes. That evening - the whole day, actually - had already gone to shit anyway.

With a fluid gesture he tossed it. The glass made a perfect parabola and then impacted against the wall, shattering into a thousand shards that fell like rain on the bushes covered with snow that followed the perimeter of the building.

Mizuki burst out laughing, and recessed her face on her chest to muffle the sound.

"And now?"

"Do you feel better?"

"No."

"How? Do you not feel that you have at least partially vented your anger?"

"No." Smashing Liam Heather's balls, that's what would help him vent.

Mizuki huffed, and rolled her eyes. "What an impossible man! How do you usually relax?"

Levi shook his head. Perhaps her hangover hadn't quite worn off. "I think you have genius, in coming up with a new bullshit every day."

"It's not bullshit! And I didn't come up with it. This trick was taught to me by ... someone I once knew."

"A worthy companion of yours."

A moment's silence, then a soft chuckle, and Mizuki looked away. "We can say so. They all said there was a certain affinity, between us."

Those last words she let slip out in the reticent tone of when the conversation lapped at topics she did not like to discuss. Levi waited, studying her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her, as had already happened, to overcome her reluctance and add some details about the identity of her mysterious acquaintance.

This time, however, Mizuki remained silent. She added nothing about herself; instead, she turned her face back in his direction.

That sea of liquid gold enveloped the captain and crushed him back to the ground with the weight of the unexpressed questions floating there.

Questions whose answers he did not wish to think about. Questions that would lay him bare.

Who is Lovof? Where are you from, captain? What is your story? Why are you here? What is your goal? What do you want? What do you believe in? What scares you, and what doesn't?, those eyes asked him quietly, in an incessant swirl that mingled with the last traces of her scent on his clothes, as if the speed and assiduity of the assaults could somehow help her erode and penetrate the wall he had erected between himself and the outside world.

Who are you, Levi Ackerman?

This, she was asking him. And this he had no intention of answering.

But that sea of gold, pensive and inquisitive, did not hint at wanting to turn away from his face.

Who knows why she longed so much to dig into him, anyway.

Perhaps it was because of that compassionate soul of hers that he had already observed in action with the mute brat, the cripple and almost all the people he had seen her interact with. Kind of like a child who picks up stray puppies on the street and brings them home to care for them. She was like that.

He, however, did not want her compassion.

And he felt certain that, at the bottom of the nightmare-filled abyss into which his soul had turned, not even the brat would be able to find anything positive; in him there were only thoughts, emotions and memories that would terrify her.

A Levi who would terrify her.

It had been close, when on the walls Erwin had mentioned Lovof, that an unwelcome part of his past unleashed, in front of her, the blind fury normally held in check and repressed by years of mental discipline; and now trying to draw out the truth were those golden eyes that, unlike his own emotions, he had not yet learned to tame.

Then, just as it had begun, the silent interrogation ended.

The brat again sank her face into the arms resting on her knees, and now only the lighthearted mischief that accompanied her usual poking could be read in her eyes. "You asked about my evening, now it's my turn. How did it go with the lady?"

Decidedly and irritably far too sober. Levi squinted his eyes, and considered whether it was finally time to hit her over the head with the bottle as threatened.

"For example... is that your type? Is that the kind of woman you like?"

If she had been present at that moment, there was a good chance Hanje would have taken to rolling on the floor in excitement. If there was anything that kept her as busy as the giants, well, that was minding the business of her colleagues, and she apparently took a special interest in any sentimental matter or gossip that involved Levi.

On the brat, for example, she had already begun to elaborate as surreal a theory as those she churned out about humanity's natural enemies. "She's in love with you!" she had exclaimed barging into his office one afternoon the previous week.

"Get out of here." Levi did not even bother to look up from the document he was consulting, not least because the crunching of leaves that accompanied his comrade's coming did not bode well.

"But Mizuki is in love with you! Head over heels in love!"

At that point, he was forced to stand up, register the presence of mud and leaves on her boots, cluck his tongue, lift her by weight, and toss her out, before retrieving a bucket and rags to clean up the havoc that quick foray had caused; all while Hanje was telling him, speaking in bursts and almost breathlessly, how Mizuki in the training break had taken to asking her suspicious questions evidently aimed at investigating his taste in women.

"Isn't it unbelievable? Why aren't you even a little incredulous?"

Levi slammed the door in her face. He didn't feel incredulous, just annoyed rotten. The little bitch's intentions had long since ceased to be a mystery.

Mizuki, unaware of the dangerous association of ideas just evoked in the captain, leaned in his direction, evidently convinced she had hit the nail on the head. "There would be no harm in it, after all. She really is a gorgeous woman. Looks aren't everything though, listen to me. Loyalty and perseverance matter much more, and..."

No, he finally decided, no bottle in the head. Better to go classic, since she had even leaned forward. With a consummate gesture, Levi raised his hand and pulled hard on her ear.

"Ouch, I'll take that as a no?"

"From the fact that you've reached your usual level of bullshit again, I assume you're okay now, so let's go back inside and see if we can sort out the mess you've made." Levi pulled himself to his feet and, without waiting for an answer, started down the staircase.

"Too bad, just when the conversation was starting to get interesting!"

"Tsk."

Behind his back, the captain heard the unmistakable, enveloping trill of the brat's laughter; soon after, like notes of a delicate symphony, it was followed by the gentle, rhythmic pounding of her steps up the stairs.

.

"I am deeply sorry for the trouble I've caused you!"

Mizuki did yet another apologetic bow before Jacqueline Tennison and the two friends in her entourage who, of those present, appeared to be the ones most scandalized and annoyed by the incident.

With the apologies to the ladies, their whipping round, as Levi had called it, was finally coming to an end. He had accompanied her to make sure she didn't make any more trouble, and because, as much as he didn't give a damn what the pigs present might think, he himself, who had left the room by rudely interrupting a conversation with the host, was at fault, and Erwin had communicated this to him with an annoyed look as soon as they had returned. The offended, in any case, had to be satisfied with his presence beside Mizuki, for he did not utter a word, but this did not seem to affect the outcome of the mission.

Dot Pixis still laughed at Levi's intervention; David Tennison - flabbergasted that his wine had been appreciated enough to make a trained soldier, however young, lose his wits - gifted her a bottle; Erwin seemed satisfied with how the whole affair had ended, aware that he had partially contributed to the problem, and the group of boys really responsible for the incident, at the kind invitation of Levi's glacial gaze, apologized in turn for pushing her to drink too much.

Jacqueline Tennison gave a slight nod to Mizuki, inviting her to stop her agitated bowing. "No problem. The situation required for you to be removed from the room, and the captain graciously arranged it, even if it interrupted our conversation."

"Oh! Excuse me, Miss Tennison! And excuse me, captain!"

Levi forced himself to push back into his throat the unflattering remarks he would have gladly made to both brats in his presence.

"No problem, as I said. I realize it must be difficult for you if you're not used to certain environments and situations." Jacqueline Tennison's tone rang out so sweet and persuasive that it was impossible not to notice her falsehood.

But this, of course, did not apply to the brat who, in fact, did not notice the clear message in the lady's words, or at any rate took no notice of it. Her face, in fact, opened in a smile of joy and what appeared to be genuine and sincere sympathy for the haughty woman in front of her. "Thank you for your understanding!"

Always trusting, again and again, even a noblewoman. She just never learned. "If we're done with the whipping round, I'm going back to Erwin."

"Wait, captain!" Jacqueline roused herself from the state of irritated confusion into which Mizuki's reaction had - she, like many others before her - thrown her, and moved a step in his direction. "I promised you a song on the piano, remember?"

"...yes?"

"Yes, allow me to hold on to my promise." Jacqueline pointed to the imposing piano recessed in one of the four corners of the hall, with a prim nod of her head - so different from the spontaneous gesture with which Mizuki had invited him, moments earlier, to throw his glass against the wall.

The brat's eyes lit up and she clapped her hands, thrilled. "You play the piano? How wonderful! I love live music!"

Jacqueline squared her from head to toe, with a peculiar gleam in her gaze. "Why don't you play after me, then?"

But Mizuki shook her head, laughing at the proposal. "Ah, better for everyone I don't. I can't play, and I can't carry a tune. Just ask the captain! He always threatens me when I sing while I'm working."

Yep, a real bummer for the ears. Levi, however, stood silently with his arms folded to emphasize his complete disregard for the conversation, for the obvious subliminal message Tennison was trying to throw at him, and for Tennison herself.

"Oh, what a shame. It's those female qualities that men appreciate," Jacqueline commented in fact, in an even more persuasive voice.

"Really?!" Mizuki's head darted in Levi's direction so as to gauge his reaction to that statement, and then returned her focus to her interlocutor. "Interesting..."

Great; really great. No doubt that now singing through the halls of the Survey Corps - and, as it happens, right under her window or in front of his door - there would be another one joining in.

"Yeah. You female soldiers really don't have an easy life... no fancy clothes, no music..."

As if those were the main problems of their lives. Stupid, stupid woman.

Mizuki quietly shrugged her shoulders; she obviously didn't mind those fucked-up statements. "It's our job. And we find ways to have fun anyway."

This time it was Jacqueline's face that darted in the captain's direction. In all likelihood, she must have come to the conclusion that Mizuki was playing dumb, and that the way she was having fun implied the presence of the captain and a bed. Miss Tennison wrinkled her smooth forehead, and contracted her perfectly painted lips, as a flash of resolution crossed her brown eyes. Then, without ceasing to stare at a bored Levi, she silently reached the piano, sat gracefully on the leather seat and, after flexing her long, supple fingers on the keyboard, began to play.

The room was flooded with a lively melody, and Jacqueline Tennison's crystalline voice rose above the notes. Conversations stopped, heads turned. Soon, everyone present - except one who retreated to the terrace in a vain attempt to prevent his headache from worsening - assembled around the piano where that beautiful, spoiled and somewhat cruel girl was enchanting them with the power of her own passion.

Mizuki listened to her spellbound, hands intertwined in front of her stomach. "She looks like her...' she murmured in a hushed voice. "Yes, she looks just like Caroline."

When the song ended, Jacqueline Tennison stood up and, with a bow, took in the applause and shouts of appreciation that rose from the audience; the success earned her a satisfied, sly smile, but when she noticed the absence of the one person for whom she had actually played, the woman's petite face darkened. Mizuki did not miss her change in mood and, after congratulating her again, commented in a casual tone, "The captain certainly appreciated it too."

Jacqueline shot her an icy glance. "I guess not. He's gone."

" No, he's there on the terrace. He just stood a little further away to prevent the proximity to the source of the sound from making his headache worse."

Jacqueline twitched her lips slightly, tempted to believe the words of encouragement from what she thought was her rival. "And how do you know that he has a headache?"

"Because every time he does he squints his eyes in the presence of strong light. The more he squeezes them, the more the headache is killing him, and so the more irritable he becomes." Mizuki bent her head slightly to the side, giving her a meaningful look. "I had to learn that quickly, since I'm always upsetting him. He calls me a pain in the ass brat or stupid or jerk depending on the inspiration of the moment, and I kind of think he hates me. He is too kind to leave me in trouble, though. That's just the way he is, what can we do about it?"

Jacqueline Tennison did not answer her, merely turning her face in the direction of the French window, through whose panes a dark figure could be glimpsed leaning against the balustrade of the terrace, far enough away to communicate his desire not to be bothered, but close enough to observe and hear what was going on inside. The sullen expression disappeared to give way to the tremulous smirk of one who has received a welcome piece of news, although the young lady could not banish from her mind the doubt that, perhaps, the captain had not chosen that location to listen to her song, but rather to check out for the girl who had self-described herself as a pain in the ass brat.

Her performance, however, was so successful that, at David Tennison's urging, it was decided that in rotation Jacqueline and her friends would play to entertain the guests.

Mizuki threw herself into the dancing with Liam Heather, who immediately proposed himself as her date; when he began to behave inappropriately, Erwin intervened before Levi - whom the commander was sure was studying the situation from the terrace - again threw a fit. The commander tapped Liam's shoulder and asked him in a polite but unyielding tone to surrender the lady to him.

After Erwin, it was the turn of Dot Pixis, who was elected by Mizuki as the best dancer of the evening, with a clear and unquestionable triumph over his younger rivals: despite his age and the amount of wine he had swallowed, the Garrison Corps commander's movements were precise and harmonious, and he and Mizuki launched into a series of fast dances, in which the old man led her with amazing skill, spinning her around and lifting her off the ground effortlessly. She laughed the whole time, it was not clear whether because of the dance or because of the comments Pixis murmured in her ear.

The evening finally came to its conclusion, to the relief of the soldiers of the Survey Corps, and enormous satisfaction of Tennison father and daughter, both of whom were convinced that they had taken advantage of every opportunity available to properly display their strengths. At the stroke of eleven, the master of the house clapped his hands, and in a jubilant tone ordered the servants to escort the guests to their respective rooms.

Leaving the still brightly lit hall, the group set off down the grand staircase into the central atrium. Levi proceeded flanked by Miss Tennison who, dismayed, inquired about the state of his headache, a solicitude for which the captain was sure he had to thank the brat, who instead walked ahead of them chatting animatedly with Erwin. Making the most of the last scraps of his patience, he forced himself to give a civilized answer in order to take leave from her as soon as possible; his extreme sacrifice seemed to pay off, for Jacqueline smiled in satisfaction and wished him good night, stopping on the second floor, where the apartments of the family members were located.

The guests, on the other hand, continued their climb.

Before reaching the second floor, Levi saw Mizuki move one step closer to the commander, signaling him to slow down and break away from Pixis and the servant who were opening the line; then, she placed her hand on Erwin's muscular arm, to force him to lower down, and stood up in turn on her toes, so as to bring her lips close to his ear.

Hers was no more than a whisper, but Levi's trained ears distinctly picked up every word she uttered.

"Commander, don't close the window tonight, because I will come to your room."

.

With an elegant, silent leap, Levi landed on the balcony, then pulled himself to his feet and approached the unlatched French door that overlooked the darkened bedroom. Without attempting to conceal his presence, he unlatched it, opening enough of a gap to allow him to slip into the room.

Erwin turned in the direction of the intruder, in his hand a glass filled with a brown liquid, probably the whiskey he always carried a bottle of in his brief absences from HQ. He was dressed in a pair of pants and a white shirt that, contrary to his usual attire, he kept open at the top buttons.

He looked relaxed, and expectant.

The two men squared off for a moment, both with indecipherable expressions on their faces.

"Levi," murmured the commander then. "Too bad. I was hoping it would just be me and Mizuki tonight."

The captain advanced into the room until he reached Erwin and the desk, where the liquor bottle was laid. He, too, was wearing civilian clothes; black pants and jacket, a shirt and the ever-present handkerchief tucked into his collar. "Pour me a glass, and wipe that smirk off your face."

The commander laughed, although the huff that escaped his lips sounded like a tired sigh. "Come on, just kidding. She could almost be my daughter."

Levi took the glass handed to him without replying.

After murmuring to Erwin that she would go to his room, Mizuki had turned around and extended the invitation to the captain as well. Noting the commander's confusion and Levi's irritation, both of which were unexpected and seemingly illogical reactions for her, the brat added by way of explanation that she had discovered something important, and that they should discuss it as soon as possible. Thus, the meeting was set for two o'clock in Erwin's room, and in order to get around without being discovered by the servants roaming the corridors, they agreed that Mizuki and Levi would reach the room from outside.

Levi moved with some anticipation because the room assigned to him was on the opposite side of the mansion from the adjacent rooms of Mizuki and the commander. The reason for such a location was soon clear to him: when he opened the window to let in some air and let out the stench of annoying perfume that permeated the room, a gentle song reached him from downstairs. He did not need to look out to guess the identity of the mysterious singer and her intentions. And with that, he also explained Miss Tennison's recommendation to keep the windows open because, according to her, the cool night breeze was a real panacea for those afflicted with headaches.

"Has the brat not gotten here yet?"

"No, but she'll be here any minute."

"I hope for her sake it's something really relevant. I'm not in the mood for bullshit." Levi guzzled the whiskey in one gulp. His incredible ability to handle alcohol was also a consequence - at once a gift and a curse, considering how useful knocking himself out might be to give himself a few extra hours of sleep - of his off-the-charts physical constitution. Immediately, he held out the glass so that Erwin could refill it.

The commander poured the liquor into Levi's empty glass, and tucked his own. "I don't know, but she looked quite serious on the stairs."

At that moment, a muffled imprecation rose from the balcony behind them.

When Mizuki opened the window to sneak into the room, the snow-white flaps of the dress she wore and her long loose curly hair fluttered around her, buffeted by a gust of icy wind, cloaking her in a surreal aura and giving her the look of a ghostly apparition. She wore a long, milk-white, long-sleeved nightgown with a boat neckline, composed of a fabric so light and thin that it left very little to the imagination, and on her feet a pair of slippers of the same color.

That attire was way more problematic than the elastic pants of the uniform.

"Damn this skirt, I almost killed myself!"

As if the problem with the outfit was simply the skirt.

Erwin looked for a spot where he could fix his gaze on her without appearing inappropriate, and focused on the neckline that left her upper shoulders exposed.

Levi, on the other hand, gave her an accusing look, staring straight into her face. "Why on earth did you come dressed like that?"

"It's that old hag's fault!"

"Whose?"

"I think she's Miss Tennison's housekeeper or personal maid, or whatever the heck they call it. As I was reading to pass time sitting at my desk, she suddenly showed up in my room without knocking. When she found me in my uniform, she started asking questions, it was written all over her face that she suspected I had the intention of wandering around the house. So I had to make up the excuse that I had left my pajamas at home, and she graciously offered to ask her mistress to let me borrow one of her nightgowns. When she brought it to me, she insisted that I change, and she took over my uniform, including my coat, promising me that she would wash it and have it ready by morning." As she rattled off her misadventure in a somewhat annoyed voice, Mizuki approached the two men, which made it all the more difficult not to pay attention to what was visible beneath the flimsy fabric. "I don't know, it seemed like she wanted to make sure I would stay in the room. I certainly wouldn't have walked around looking like this if I had to use the hallway. Do you think they suspect anything?"

Levi ran two fingers over his eyes. He feared to know why the hag had chosen Mizuki, of all people, for that little late-night visit, and it probably had something to do with the circumstance that someone else - the much-vaunted and generous mistress - on the contrary, had not been cheered by the coming of a guest. He sought confirmation of his suspicions from the commander, but found him completely disinterested in the matter. Erwin now stared at Mizuki's shoulders with an intensity that seemed ridiculous, as if the smooth, blemish-free skin on which her collarbones drew discreet shadows was etched with a complicated and highly absorbing problem to be solved.

Damn him, how long has it been since he got laid, to get horny with a brat? Yet he was the first to insist that his soldiers - within the bounds of military regulations and strictly outside of fellow soldiers - treat themselves to a little indulgence now and then. He believed it lifted the spirits, and reduced incidents under his jurisdiction.

"Forget about it. It's nothing important," Levi then said to Mizuki, who peered at him apprehensively in anticipation of some remark.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, but what if she comes back now?"

"I put the sofa pillows under the covers. I hope that will be enough. Let's hurry, anyway." Mizuki sneezed, shivered, and clasped her arms to her chest. "It's damn cold. Do you think it's normal that they brought me such a light pyjama in the middle of winter?"

This time the captain was forced to look away, because the thin fabric could not hide, and indeed highlighted, the small nipples hardened by the cold.

The fact that there were three of them in that room probably saved the situation in many ways.

After a moment of silence, however, Levi recoiled. With a dry gesture, he took off his jacket and laid it on the brat's shoulders, just as he had done with his coat just a few hours earlier. "Cover yourself, everything is showing. You're really indecent."

"What are you talking about? I have practically no breasts." Puffing, Mizuki grabbed the top flap of the dress shirt and lifted it slightly, as if to provide them with irrefutable proof of her words.

Levi grabbed the two flaps of the jacket and, with a sharp tug, joined them together. "That wasn't a question, brat. Obey."

Although she did not fail to emphasize her disbelief with a second snort, the brat clutched the jacket against her body. Because of the difference in build between the two of them, the garment fell softly on her, wrapping her up to mid-thigh so that it covered the most critical points that could be glimpsed through the fabric of the nightgown.

His captain's stance and the shielding of the main distraction seemed to reawaken the commander as well. "So, why did you summon us?"

Mizuki nodded, keeping her arms crossed over her chest partly to warm up and partly to keep the jacket closed. "An incredible thing happened. I saw the mark."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"The one that Theo draws sometimes."

"Where?" Erwin placed the empty glass on the desk, suddenly alert.

"That was when the captain and I went back inside. Before we started the whipping round, I went to the bathroom. Or at least, to what I thought was the bathroom. In reality, I found myself in an empty living room. As soon as I entered, I ran into one of the waiters in his underwear getting dressed, and..."

"Only you happen to find yourself in these situations. There must be a reason." Levi leaned against the desk, arms crossed.

"Believe me, I too would love to know why I always find myself in these crazy situations. Well, in this case, anyway, it was good. Because the mark... the mark was carved on his back, at the top."

Erwin frowned. "Carved? Meaning ... drawn? I know that for members of the Oriental race to adorn their bodies with indelible ink drawings is a kind of tradition."

"No." Mizuki was struck by a chill, it was unclear whether from the low temperature in the room or from what she was reporting. "It was... it was like an imprinted mark. You know the ones that certain breeders impress on animals to certify that they belong to their herd?"

Erwin and Levi exchanged a long look.

"Why didn't you say that right away, brat?"

"Because I didn't realize it right away. I was still a little tipsy; plus, I only saw it for an instant, it all happened so fast! As soon as I opened the door to the room, I found myself staring at the back of a naked, and marked man, and I was so astonished that I couldn't say anything. When he realized that someone had entered the room, the guy had a weird reaction. I was about to apologize, when he turned away as if to hide his back from me, and immediately motioned for me to remain silent."

"And you, who never shut up, kept quiet?"

Mizuki began fiddling with a strand of hair, nervously winding it along her finger. "The point is, I didn't have much choice. He looked so... terrified. Really, like his life depended on that situation. That's when I realized that there was someone else in the room, and that the waiter in all likelihood wanted to keep my entrance absolutely secret from that person. He was lying on a couch at the end of the room, a little way from the door, and seemed not to have noticed my presence; he must have been naked himself, since there were clothes strewn everywhere on the floor. Then the waiter pushed me out the door, still intimating me to remain silent, and turning worried glances towards the couch."

Levi gobbled up the remaining liquor in the glass, and slammed it down on the desk top. What the heck had she gotten herself into this time?

"At the time I didn't give it much thought... I mean, the situation was strange: I felt like I had seen that mark somewhere before, but I couldn't really remember where, and besides, nothing serious had happened, right? It was only when I recognized the mark that I knew I had to talk to you about it."

Erwin, who had listened in silence to Mizuki's account, ran two fingers over his eyes, and then cleared his throat. "I have three questions for you. First, do you have any idea who the woman lying on the couch might have been?"

"Woman? No, that was a man."

Levi let out an indefinite sound that was probably meant to be a mocking laugh. "Do you have any idea what was going on in that room when you came in?"

"Yes, captain, I do. I'm a brat, but I do have an idea. Even between two men, though, it can happen, and I assure you those were not a woman's legs," Mizuki said, contracting her face into a grimace. "I'll tell you more. I suspect that guy was Liam Heather. Do you remember, captain, that as soon as I came out of the bathroom we couldn't find him, and that he didn't reach the salon until a few minutes later?"

Levi raised a grunt of assent.

"Second question: do we have any way of tracing the identity of the waiter?"

"I don't know what his name is, but he was tall, very thin, and floppy-eared..."

"Tim," said the commander immediately. "The waiter following Liam Heather. Third question, the most important one: Mizuki, are you sure about what you saw?"

The girl took a deep breath, and again clasped her arms to her chest, as if seeking support to help her bear the weight of the words she was about to utter. "Yes, I am. My eyes..."

"...are never wrong. Right." That answer without any trace of hesitation was enough for Erwin. After returning from the first scouting and his interview with Lavinia, the commander had never again questioned the truthfulness of Mizuki's statements when they concerned events and occurrences she claimed to have witnessed. "Very well. Then we must come up with a plan to get in touch with him before morning, and find out all we can about the mark. Mizuki, you are in charge of going to talk to him; you have already had contact, and he may prove more ready to open up to you than to a stranger. Levi will accompany you just in case." In delivering that directive, Erwin cast a quick, almost guilty glance at the snow-white robe peeking out from under the captain's jacket. "Well, let's reason out where his room might be located. In my opinion..."

But Erwin was never able to express his opinion on the subject. At that moment a scream from some unspecified part of the building ripped through the silence of the night. After that sudden burst, an absolute stillness descended again on the house; so absolute that all three soldiers began to convince themselves that the sudden shadow that had obscured, for a moment, their conversation was a hallucination born from their nerves ruined by scoutings.

One, two, three seconds of silence passed...

Then a dry, metallic sound, almost inaudible, echoed outside the window. The three soldiers barely had time to turn their heads sharply to the balcony, when a dark figure thundered before their eyes, plummeting towards the ground.

The snow, which had been falling thickly since midnight, rested gracefully and frostily on the shoulders and heads of Erwin, Mizuki, and Levi as they looked out from the balustrade to see what the heck had just happened.

"Tsk. Damn it."

"No way..." Mizuki brought a hand to her mouth to suppress a groan.

The only one who remained silent was Erwin. His clear gaze studied the human figure sprawled on the ground in a disheveled pose, while a dark pool spread around it, devouring and staining the whiteness of the surrounding snow.

Then Erwin turned his head slightly to Mizuki, and met her red eyes, asking her for tacit confirmation of what he, with his own foresight and analytical skills, had already guessed.

She nodded her head, unable to speak.

"It's Tim," the commander then decreed.

.

Mizuki felt herself being grabbed by the lapels of the jacket, and was pulled abruptly inside the room.

A manner she knew all too well by now.

"Come here. It's going to get crowded out there soon."

She sensed the captain's breath tickling her bare neck; they were so close that Levi, in pulling her away from prying eyes, drew her close to him, snatching a shiver from her.

She called herself a fool. This was hardly the time to act like a brat.

Yet, she could not even blame herself for what she did not understand and did not know how to control: since returning from the expedition - to be more precise, from the conversation in the dungeon, that damned conversation that had drastically altered the delicate balance of their relationship, and at the end of which the captain's fingers had grazed the back of her head - she occasionally experienced moments of that sort; moments when her brain seemed to notice, or remember, the fact that, beyond the various brats, sunshines and assorted nicknames, he and she were a man and a woman, and - although such matters still did not arouse her interest, and certainly not in relation to the captain - brushing against each other in certain contexts could awaken sleeping instincts.

"Erwin, what now?"

Those words, uttered in the captain's usual dry, pragmatic, indifferent tone - obviously that imperceptible touching hadn't fazed him, and perhaps he hadn't even noticed; he was an adult, after all - brought Mizuki back to reality.

"You two wait here, right now it's out of the question for you to move. The hallway will soon fill up with people, and it might look suspicious for you to come out of my room at past two in the morning. For the time being I will go. When the coast is clear, join me." As he spoke, Erwin hurriedly retrieved the copper-colored jacket abandoned on the bed, and headed in the direction of the door. Before leaving, he cast a meaningful glance at both of them. "I don't like this at all. Keep your eyes open."

They remained alone. Mizuki leaned against the desk, her mind in turmoil and her fingers tapping nervously on the shelf. Levi, on the other hand, positioned himself at the window so as to keep an eye on the situation in the garden.

"I know what you're thinking, and it's not like that."

Mizuki raised her head in surprise. It was not often that the captain willingly started a conversation. "What?"

"It's not your fault this guy is dead."

"I... I wasn't thinking that."

"Please, your shitty face says otherwise."

She prepared to deny again, when sudden knocks on the door interrupted her.

"Erwin! Are you there?!"

"Shit, it's Pixis," murmured Levi, motioning her to join him at the window. "Do you remember if Erwin locked the door when he went out?" At Mizuki's nod of denial, Levi clicked his tongue and checked again that there was no one in sight on the nearby balconies and windows. "Let's go to your room, just in case the old drunkard decides to come in."

Attempting to be as quick and as quiet as possible they stepped onto Mizuki's balcony and slipped into the room. Everything looked exactly as she had left it, especially the bed, Mizuki noted with a sigh of relief; a sign that no one had snuck in to check on her.

That feeling of lightness, however, was short-lived.

"He saw me," she murmured in fact, resuming the conversation interrupted by Pixis' arrival; as if in a trance, she reached the bed and sat on the edge. "He killed him so that he would not speak. But how is that possible? I'm sure Heather hadn't noticed my presence..."

"Take a break, you little brat. We have no idea of what happened, and it's useless to speculate now. For all we know, he may have thrown himself down because he couldn't take any more of his fucking boss." Levi rested his ear on the door of the room to check the situation in the hallway. The house seemed to be plunged into total chaos: outside, there were still too many voices and footsteps rising to be able to leave safely, and Pixis kept knocking insistently in the adjacent room.

"Or maybe it was because I had seen his back, and he thought we were going to question him..."

"Look..." Levi left his station by the door to approach her. He had just begun to speak when her gaze fell on a forgotten object on the bed, and he froze, in gesture and speech.

The captain's sudden silence caused Mizuki to turn her attention away from the floor, and from her own thoughts. "Ah...," she blurted out.

Levi said nothing. He simply lifted the incriminated object as if it were a dirty rag, waved it with an outstretched arm at the level of her face, and then dropped it on the bed.

The book, after bouncing on the mattress, opened discomposedly on a random page.

Levi marched to the desk, against the edge of which he sat with his arms crossed.

Mizuki again felt that furious, icy stare upon her, the same that, on her way back to the walls and into the dungeons of Headquarters, she had hoped never to evoke again; with the difference and aggravation that this time she knew perfectly well the trigger, and knew she had screwed herself over with her own hand.

They peered at each other in silence for a few moments, he leaning against the desk, and she sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Well? You don't have shit to say, you who never shut up?"

Although the compassionate tone of voice was not much different than usual, and the words were in line with those he spoke to her daily, in them Mizuki sensed something different.

Something that made blood run cold in her veins.

"No. I don't have to give explanations about what I do in my room during my free time. If you have a specific question, though, you can ask it."

A squeak as the only answer. The captain had gripped the edge of the desk so tightly that he had warped the wood.

She began to be afraid.

Not that he would hurt her. Such an eventuality did not even cross her mind; she knew it could never happen.

No, what she feared was something else entirely.

Suddenly, Tim's dead body and the chaos raging on the estate became blurred elements in her mind, unremarkable, side issues that no one really cared about; she, certainly not, at least.

No, only the world enclosed within the four walls of that room mattered.

Only she and the captain existed there, and the distance he was struggling to maintain or create between them.

"Stay out of it." Levi had no questions, just but one merciless order for her.

Again that feeling of a blade going through her chest.

She forced herself not to lower her gaze. She felt that if she did, she would definitely lose any chance of getting the answers she was seeking.

She was afraid, afraid that she had gambled her chance and that the man in front of her would forever remain an unsolved and unsolvable mystery, but, after being caught in the act, she could not back down either; not anymore.

"No."

"Mine was not a question."

"And mine was not a negotiable answer."

Flashes of steel crashed down on her, with one obvious purpose: to push her away from him, as a wounded lover rejects the cheater's embraces.

But Mizuki did not desist. Slowly, she got up from the bed and walked until she was only one step away from him.

She would not let him throw her out; given the now compromised situation, she had resolved to play it all the way.

With one hand she rummaged in the inside pocket of the captain's jacket and pulled out a small, long-shaped object, the presence of which she had noticed as soon as she had clutched the garment to herself, in the commander's room. Without taking her eyes off Levi's furious ones, she lowered the object so as to keep it pointed at him, and triggered the mechanism: with a sharp sound, the blade thundered toward the captain's belly.

They were close, again; so close that the tip of the knife lapped at the folds of his shirt.

Levi, however, did not move a muscle. He seemed almost oblivious to the weapon Mizuki was pointing at him, as if his entire attention was absorbed by her, by something propagating from within her, through her eyes.

"Carrying non-regulatory weapons, moreover hidden, is against military rules." Mizuki spelled out every single word that came from her lips. A silent accusation, an unexpressed question, a prayer. "You who hail discipline must really have a valid reason for having a pocket knife with you at all times, even when you are in HQ among your... no, our comrades."

She was not at all sure he would let her get away with it, and she knew she was taking a big risk. After all, she was pointing a weapon at a superior, and that particular superior was Captain Levi. She had several well-founded reasons to believe that few people had ever successfully threatened him in that way, and none had ever escaped unscathed.

Still, he continued to stand motionless, and his expression did not change. He kept peering at her, furious, and with such intensity that she shuddered.

"Notes from Underground," he finally resolved to say. Levi pronounced the title of the book contemptuously abandoned on the bed, hurling it at his interlocutor as if he wanted to spit grape seeds at her.

Those three words could be interpreted in many ways: a resigned response, an accusation filled with indignation, a plea for desistance.

"Yeah." Mizuki brought the tip of the knife closer until it grazed his abdomen. "Reading it, I think I can guess why you carry this around with you."

Yes, when in sifting through the library shelves, still upset by her meeting with Wilinski and the reading of the untitled little book, she had happened upon that text telling of life in the Underground City a small part of her - the wiser part, the part most respectful of the captain's evident desire to keep his past to himself - had suggested that she should put the book back and forget about it.

She had done so, and had turned away from that dangerous and tempting source that promised to quench her thirst for knowledge.

But then, after a few moments, another small part of herself - the more reckless and irrational part that occasionally took over - whispered softly that she, after all, was doing nothing wrong at all. It wasn't like she was going to consult Levi's personnel file: the captain's business was already a matter of public record, in the barracks, and Mizuki - a stranger there - needed only the information she needed to piece together the fragments of the story she had managed to gather. Information that a book like that could have easily provided her with, and in abundance; and that perhaps represented the only means of knowing anything more, considering that, according to her fellow soldiers, pleasure trips to the Underground City were completely out of the question.

So, she had retraced her steps, and retrieved it from the shelf.

Reading it, as she waited for the end of the meeting, she had understood why he hated so much the gendarmes - who guarded the entrances to the surface, and were in charge of keeping the situation in the slums "under control," resorting to every imaginable form of violence and abuse - and especially the nobles - guilty of taking advantage of the substantial anarchy of the underground and the desperation of its inhabitants to conduct illegal trafficking in prostitution, drugs and various filth.

Reading it, she understood why cleanliness was so fundamental to him.

Reading it, it seemed almost obvious to her why he suffered from insomnia.

Reading it, she tried to imagine what it had meant, for him, to be born in that place and spend his childhood there; what he had been forced to do to survive, and what feelings had invaded his chest when - in the company of those two lost friends - they had first risen to the surface.

Reading it, she had hoped to find out more about Lovof and Wilinski; this was the one expectation, as was to be imagined, that the book had failed to meet. She was not surprised; from the captain's reaction, on the walls, she had guessed that those two were not - or were not just - leading personalities in the Underground City, but that they must have played a much more personal, and probably disastrous, role in its history.

That knife symbolized the link with his origins, with that frightening and dark reality; a link that was never quite severed. No matter that he now held the role of Captain of the Survey Corps, feared and respected, and trusted by the comrades who fought alongside him, that was still a man born and raised in the darkness of a cave, induced from an early age to distrust anyone but himself and his knife.

That knife she was now gently pressing against his belly.

Never had she met a man so obviously brought up to love others, and at the same time more alone than him.

He was surrounded by people, comrades he trusted and loved in his own way, whose deaths he suffered and fought for, so that the decision to offer their hearts for the cause would not be in vain.

Yet, he was so lonely; lonely because he did not allow anyone to go beyond what he showed in appearance.

He offered others his superhuman strength, and fought following even the most ruthless orders as if that alone could provide him with a valid alibi, an adequate and satisfying reason to justify his existence.

To the world he offered this: humanity's strongest soldier, the last stronghold against the giants.

And in exchange, he hid behind that lofty title.

Why are you so lonely? Why don't you let another person really get close? Why don't you allow someone to really see you? Why do you think no one could appreciate what is inside you?

Even if only for a few moments, she had glimpsed it in his stormy eyes, sensed it in the fingers that gently grazed the back of her neck, the inner world that flourished inside the captain; his strength, his kindness, his generosity, his humanity, his determination, his sense of duty, and she could not understand how he had convinced himself that, fighting and military skills aside, there was nothing good in him.

Mizuki withdrew the knife and, after resheathing the blade, carefully placed it back in its place, in the inside pocket of his jacket, the flaps of which, no longer held back, slid to the side, uncovering the snow-white nightgown and, more importantly, what lay underneath, and which the thin fabric could not conceal.

Levi let a sigh escape. "Why?" he asked her only, and for a moment seemed to falter in his attitude of cold, furious composure.

He did not formulate a complete question, but she understood perfectly what he wanted to know.

At times, one is able to understand another human being even without words.

Why do you want to get inside me?

"Because..." murmured Mizuki, but she was forced to freeze, realizing that she did not know the answer either. "Why not?"

He turned his head, stripped of his fury and seemingly exhausted, and stared at an undefined spot in the room.

"Why?"

Why do you want to keep me out?

No, it actually only happened with him that she was able to communicate that way, by whispering one-word sentences, lacking the basic information to give them full meaning. But they understood each other nonetheless, of that she had no doubt, as if an underground, invisible channel flowed between them, connecting them, and over whose waters the thoughts and emotions that each wished would reach the other slid placidly.

It had never happened to her; not with her mother, not with Rei, and not even with Lavinia.

"Because I hate being pitied, and I hate people who pry into my fucking business," he said.

"I don't want to pity you, or pry into your business. I want to understand."

"There are some things it's better not to understand, brat."

Levi turned his gaze back to her. Now in it harbored a strange, somewhat wild, unfamiliar and dark light, in a way far more frightening than the previous fury.

Was this a warning? Was he urging her to stop, before circumstances or her insistence showed her something inappropriate?

Her instincts suggested that Levi was giving her that warning to make her run away.

To run away from him, and from what lurked within him.

Petra and other soldiers had told her that when fighting giants, Levi would occasionally change completely. It did not happen all the time, only when they intervened against exemplars who had penetrated the formation after slaughtering many of their comrades. He would become violent, sadistic, uncontrollable and cruel. In those moments, they had said, he no longer seemed himself; hatred for giants transforms people, they always commented a little embarrassed, as if to justify that.

But she did not believe that was the case. Some situations just bring out aspects of personality otherwise buried and inhibited by everyday life and the rules of civilized living.

Was that what he was trying to hide? Just that?

Mizuki felt indignation mounting inside her, invading every inch of her body.

If only the captain could see what she had seen, sense what she had sensed, and feel how she had felt on the rare occasions when his defenses had crumbled...

If only she could make him understand what she understood.

"But I'm not afraid."

" I have known for a while that you are reckless."

"I'm not talking about giants and expeditions. I'm scared as hell of those. But not of you. I could never be afraid of you."

She didn't know what she was saying anymore. She didn't know anything anymore, except that she wished with all her heart that he wouldn't slam the door in her face, and that she was willing to throw herself into any madness for that not to happen.

Levi let a long moment of silence pass. "You're wrong," he finally murmured.

He had not closed the door in her face, but gently and unbendingly was escorting her towards the exit, away from that glimpse inside his darkness that, consciously or unconsciously, he had allowed her to discern.

Mizuki took a half step forward, further shortening the distance between them. At that movement, it seemed to her that he held his breath. "I don't think so. I trust you, I've already told you that."

Levi parted his lips, but before he could articulate any sound, an agitated call resounded in the hallway, dangerously close to them. Mizuki turned her head sharply to the door as reality burst violently into the room, creeping into the secret dimension, outside of space and time, in which, for a few minutes, they had been floating, forgetting everything else.

When she turned her face back in Levi's direction, she noticed that he was still watching her, with the same vaguely menacing flash of a few moments earlier. He then squinted his eyelids, and rubbed them with two fingers. "What a fucked up situation."

That remark could have referred - and most likely did refer - to the drama unfolding beyond the room's door: Tim's death, the mark, the need to find out what had happened.

Still, the captain let the comment ring in the silence as he looked at her.

Was he perhaps referring to the attempted intrusion into his past ?

To the knife she had directed against him?

Or to the fact that they were standing close, far too close?

Perhaps it was time to move away; she had already tormented him enough, she assessed, considering how much the captain hated excessive and prolonged proximity.

Mizuki withdrew her hand, and was about to take a step back, but something stopped her.

Levi was staring at her with an intensity that froze her. And this time, he was not peering at what was churning in her head, but at her body, over which he had a privileged view because of the proximity, and the fact that the black jacket slung over her shoulders hung completely open.

The captain's gaze caressed her like a pair of invisible hands, not omitting a single inch of her figure, as if he were following its contour with a finger. First her face, the golden eyes that wryly reciprocated that unexpected attention, and the wavy lines of her hair that framed it; then his gaze slowly moved down, savoring every inch, lingering on every curve and every detail. The bare shoulders, the neckline, the breasts and nipples still turgid from the cold, the soft waist, the hips and legs glimpsed through the thin fabric.

As he carried out that slow exploration, the same animalistic twinkle as before flashed in his steel-colored eyes once again, the surfacing of an unfamiliar Levi, who was undressing her with his eyes, and whom she did not recognize; she felt - no, she was sure - that this Levi would not let her run away from him, and that he was getting ready to do her something that would mark her for life, that would make her his forever.

In that moment, she became painfully aware of their excessive closeness, of the lightness of the dress she was wearing, and - once again - of the fact that he was a man.

With a somewhat awkward gesture, Mizuki grabbed the flips of the jacket and closed it, lowering her gaze, cheeks on fire.

" I gladly note that your head serves you well from time to time." Now the usual captain with impassive face, sharp tongue and rough manners was back, and all traces of the wild flash with which he had stripped her had disappeared. With a dry sigh, he pulled himself to his feet. "If I tell you that you are indecent and to cover yourself, that means you are indecent and must cover yourself. If I tell you not to trust, it means you must not trust. Nobody. If you don't give a shit as you usually do, you take what comes." With that said, Levi stepped to the side and passed her, heading for the door. "Let's go. Everyone must have left by now."

Mizuki followed him in silence: she did not trust herself to speak, so she merely studded her superior's back with an accusatory look, filled with indignation. Her heart was still beating wildly, and her exasperation was actually aimed more at herself than at him. How could she have taken him seriously, and fretted that he would do something?

Obviously, he was teaching her a lesson. An adult trying to show a clueless brat what happens to let her guard down, and not listen to her superiors.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And the most irritating circumstance was that she, with her own reaction, had also proved that the captain was perfectly right: a single, expertly dosed glance had been enough to throw her into utter confusion.

Even that flash that had crossed his gaze as he undressed her with his eyes was part of the act. It could only be so, she decided. To give it more credibility, she added, nodding to herself, and finally convince her to pay heed to his advice.

She had been called a brat too many times to doubt it.

Still, her heart kept throbbing in her chest, faster than normal, for a long time to come.