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

12. Chapter 11

Chapter 11: I see signs now all the time that you're not dead, you're sleeping. I believe in anything that brings you back home to me - part 1

Bloc Party - Signs

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July 849

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A warm, pleasant breeze came in through the open window of Commander Erwin Smith's study, lifting with a gentle, sinuous motion the curtains that framed it, and languidly lapped at the figures of the two men, each seated at one end of the desk, and the slender one of the girl standing by.

"Another glass, Dot?"

"You're a demon, Erwin. You know I can't say no to a glass of fine wine."

Smiling, the Survwy Corps commander held out a glass goblet to his correspondent in rank in the Garrison Corps, filled up before the other had even finished answering.

"Are you by any chance trying to get something out of me, Erwin? Ah!" Pixis accepted the glass without losing his characteristic good-natured expression, and squared from head to toe Lavinia, who was staring at an unspecified spot on the wall behind Dot Pixis.

"You can speak freely. Lavinia already knows everything," Erwin reassured him, with his bust abandoned against the back of the chair. "I share with her and her brilliant mind all the information and news coming in my possession."

Pixis brought a hand to his mouth and took to pinching one of his long mustaches. "An inspiring statement. An intelligent woman can prove a precious resource for stuffy, stiff-necked old men like us; and if she's even as lovely as Miss Lavinia Williams, you can't deny that you've got your hands on a beautiful treasure, Erwin. I must admit I am quite envious."

"You are kindly requested to not harass my subordinates, Dot," Erwin reprimanded him, only half amused. Especially, he thought, if you don't want to end up vomiting your soul, in the unfortunate event that Mizuki ever learns of these "compliments".

"It wasn't harassment, I just paid her a compliment! I hope I didn't offend you, Miss..."

Lavinia, who until then had worn a mask of indifference, gave him an icy look and laconically replied, "No."

"There, you see? Beautiful, intelligent and even able to discern a harassment from a compliment. A treasure, Erwin, a treasure indeed. If you ever get fed up with this young man's machiavellian ways, Miss Lavinia, remember that the Garrison Corps is ready to receive you at any time." Dot Pixis bowed his head in further homage to the qualities of the girl, who had meanwhile resumed ignoring him by staring at an unspecified spot on the wall behind him, and opened his arms at Erwin's side to emphasize his own victory. "Anyway, and back to much less interesting topics. If we're going to talk about real harassers, I imagine you and Miss Lavinia would be interested to hear about the latest developments in the trial against Liam Heatehr and his worthless accomplice."

"We might be interested, yes."

"The answer is simple: it's progressing slowly, unfortunately, and there are an endless number of obstacles on the horizon. Those two are still being held in jail for now, but I don't know how long they will stay there. For a start, Nile Dok is sure that you guys of the Survey Corps did something to Liam Heather while he was in your custody, even though he didn't report any abuse; so it's not as if the prosecution is killing itself to get a conviction."

Erwin nodded, thoughtful. As expected, Liam Heather had not breathed a word about the unorthodox method used to get him to talk, because that would mean explaining what information had been leaked from him, and certainly the least of his wishes was for it to come out - and consequently reach the wrong ears - that he was the one who had spilled certain details.

"Of course the Heather family got involved, and so did several other nobles, not so much out of any real interest in that certified jerk Liam, but because they didn't like the involvement of you of the Survey Corps in making the allegations."

"I thought so."

"Also, there's that thorny issue about the key witness, Jacqueline Tennison... are you aware of that?"

"Yes, Mizuki is in contact with her, and she reported to me that Miss Tennison, about a couple of months ago, left her father's roof." As soon as he had uttered Jacqueline Tennison's name, Erwin's gaze darted to the metal nameplate resting on his desk, which returned the reflection of Lavinia's delicately-featured face deformed, for an instant, by a grimace of annoyance and disapproval, without, however, losing an iota of its beauty.

She had not appreciated being reminded of the unexpected bond of friendship that had blossomed in Stohess between Mizuki and the first one passing on the street.

"Yeah, Ms. Tennison showed a tough character to make such a decision. Of course, however, Heather's defense clung to it with all its might to argue her unreliability as a witness. I'll be honest, Erwin: I don't know how this is going to turn out," Dot Pixis said, contemplating the dance of the thick liquid in the glass cup he was lazily swaying with his hand.

"I'm afraid I do know, but we'll think about the problem if and when it arises." Erwin shrugged his shoulders, as if to emphasize the futility of getting assailed by worries ahead of time. "On Wilinski, instead, do you have any news?"

On hearing Arthur Wilinski's name, Dot Pixis' attention shifted from the glass to his interlocutor, without the old commander being able to hide the flash of interest that flickered in his eyes.

Erwin was aware that, by now, Dot Pixis suspected something. Nothing definite, of course, but he knew that Erwin was keeping some secret from him, and that was enough. If he continued to cooperate, for the time being, it was only because, as their enemies still lacked a face and a name, it was convenient for him not to turn out to be too involved in the matter, but sooner or later he would come to cash in.

Erwin, Lavinia, and Hanje had spent endless, tense hours sifting through the information they had gathered, more by accident than anything else, in Stohess. They developed alternative theories, delved into them one by one, compared them, challenged them by identifying their points of weakness and implausibility, supported them again by enhancing the clues in favor of each, and, at the end of that troubled journey, became quite convinced of a certain circumstance: namely, that the enemies they were trying to counter, in good probability, were two.

On the one hand, the mysterious "ghost organization," as they had taken to calling it, that ran the orphanage and sold its "products" to anyone who had the money to pay the sky-high price charged.

On the other, one of the organization's customers, who destined "the products" purchased for the macabre game they had witnessed in Tiburtina.

These had to be two distinct groups, they agreed at the end of their investigation. It certainly did not suit the organization to waste its "products," even if flawed by their standards, by having them devoured by giants; nor did it seem logical for its members to dabble in an activity with negative implications for its income and such as to attract unwelcome attention from the authorities. These considerations left only to infer the different identity and unrelatedness of ends and actions between those who ran the traffic and those who organized macabre theaters in Tiburtina.

As for Wilinski, instead, they had not yet reached any certainty about his role in that complex picture, and had only worked out an absurd theory, taking for good Mizuki's hunch that the man was waiting for someone, and that the story told in the infamous little book was about that very someone; someone who had decided to "kill" himself in exactly the same way they did, that is, by going outside the walls.

There, taking those premises for good, Lavinia formulated a certain theory that made Hanje's skin crawl and worried Erwin. What if Wilinski was conducting experiments? Experiments aimed at finding out whether it was possible for ordinary citizens, without any military training, to survive in the giants' territory? Experiments aimed at testing whether there was any hope that the someone he was waiting for, who had gone outside the walls, had not been eaten to death?

For the time being, the three brilliant minds of the Survey Corps decided to keep their theory to themselves, in order not to direct and narrow the investigation, in the absence of any concrete clue other than the vague feeling of a "brat out of her mind"- as Levi persisted in claiming - at the risk of ruling out other equally and perhaps more plausible leads. Thus, they maintained secrecy with the other soldiers involved in the Tiburtina adventure; as for Pixis, Erwin merely requested his help in gathering information about the organization and Wilinski, letting him guess only that they suspected the existence of an unspecified connection between the two strands of investigation.

"Wilinski, huh?" muttered Dot Pixis in fact, squinting thoughtfully. "Unfortunately, my men sail on the high seas with him. No matter how much they've dug and searched, these past five months, they haven't found a shred of a clue about him. Place of residence, how he spends his time, whether he has family, friends, a mistress... nothing at all."

The answer did not surprise Erwin at all, who, after the Lovof affair, had tried hard to track down Wilinski, getting the same result. "It is really unbelievable. How can a person undo himself like that in this narrow world, without the help of the Gendarmerie?"

"Ah, a very good question, Erwin; a very good question indeed." Dot Pixis placed the empty glass on the desk, and a sly smile popped up under his thick mustache. "Roughly the same as we might pose in relation to our ghost organization, which also - and especially its profits - escaped the gendarmes' incredibly careful attention to wealth transfers within the Walls."

"Yeah. When you came to me, almost a year ago, telling me about this group of mercenaries apparently unknown to the Gendarmerie, I must admit I had more than one puzzlement."

"That's exactly why you decided to enter the field, though, huh? And from Tiburtina you brought back a mute child." The sly smile extended from his lips to the dimpled little eyes that, no matter how much their owner was addressing the commander, studied Lavinia's face carefully, as if to remark the fact that Dot Pixis had never bought the convenient little story made up by Erwin to justify their joining the Corps.

"And that's the same reason you came to me that time, Dot."

The two commanders were silent for a moment. Yes, finding themselves fighting against an unknown enemy was far more problematic and dangerous than confronting the corruption that was rampant in the Gendarmerie, so both of them - on that distant August 848 - had seen fit to take action to shed some light on the matter, each within the limits of their own possibilities and roles: Pixis, providing the necessary information; Erwin, throwing himself into a forbidden and potentially suicidal mission.

"You and I work really well together, Erwin. Don't you also think, Miss Lavinia, that Commander Smith and I make a very well-matched pair?" asked Dot Pixis, stretching one of his thick mustaches with a finger.

"Your partnership is mind-blowing," she commented in a flat tone, not even bothering to look at him.

"Otherwise translated: stop bothering me and go to hell," Erwin stepped in with a laugh, entwining his hands and placing them on the desk shelf.

"Oh, I gladly accept that too! To be told off so elegantly by a beautiful girl like her is still an over-the-top pleasure!" retorted Dot Pixis, throwing his head back and indulging in a hearty laugh. "However, we did better with the mysterious organization than with Wilinski. Liam Heather's indications of the spatial location of the orphanage near Orvud, vague as they were, allowed my men to narrow the search, and so we were able to pick up some leads in the end."

"I am grateful for your tip of two days ago, in fact. My men are already working on it."

At those words, Dot Pixis let slip an amused chuckle. "Tell me, Erwin: are you really sure that the group sent to verify the tip will get away with it? I mean, your soldiers - unlike mine - are not used to carrying out this kind of investigation while keeping a low profile. Especially Hanje. And I'll pretend to believe, if it pleases you, that in Stohess the three of you didn't bully Liam Heather, and I'll just observe that Levi certainly doesn't seem the type to ask questions in a discreet manner."

Who knows what Pixis would have thought if he had known that it was not Levi who had "bullied" Heather, but the seemingly harmless and innocent Mizuki, who also - as it happens - had been sent on the mission to investigate the leak? As that thought worked its way through the commander's mind and Erwin cleared his throat in an attempt to stall, Lavinia bent her head slightly in the direction of the two men. "It will be all right, Commander Pixis," she said in a slight but unyielding tone of voice. "There is Loki, with them, and he's a specialist in information gathering."

"Loki Shindo, huh?" murmured Pixis, rubbing his chin. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he remembered perfectly the first and last names of the four strangers whom Erwin had picked up who knows where, and among whom was the beautiful, intelligent and icy Lavinia Williams. "You have indeed been recruiting interesting subjects lately, Erwin. I envy you, did I mention that?"

Yes, Dot Pixis, without a shadow of a doubt, suspected something; although for the time being he did not ask too many questions because it suited him so well, sooner or later he would make up his mind to cash in, and Erwin, then, would desperately need the cooperation of the brilliant and unscrupulous mind of the girl behind him to get out of that situation.

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OOO

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The street of the small mountain town of Ghent, located about half an hour's carriage ride from Orvud, snaked and swayed due to the stream of vociferous people passing through it, resembling a snake slithering through the undergrowth to return to its lair. The celebration of the harvest festival had attracted people from all the surrounding villages, who had flocked to immerse themselves in that bedlam of flesh and blood and take a stroll, wearing their best clothes, among the desks lined up on the sides of the road.

A perfect setting for soldiers engaged in a secret mission, who in case of dangerous encounters or unwelcome questions could have justified their presence under the pretext of collecting donations from the merchants of Ghent and its environs gathered for the feast.

The meeting with Loki, who had preceded them to Ghent as soon as he had received Pixis's tip to start the investigation, was set in two hours, in the town's main square, and the heroes sent on the mission - the ones on whose ability to act professionally and discreetly Dot Pixis had expressed more than one remark - had only to kill time by loitering around among the jubilant people and desks without attracting attention.

The group of plainclothes soldiers - which, in spite of Pixis's remarks, had not yet caused any diplomatic incidents for the time being, and had only attracted a few curious glances because the reputation of the veterans of the Survey Corps trapped even the inhabitants of the innermost and most remote territories of the Walls - was advancing not without some difficulty along the street packed with people, with Levi and Hanje, who was holding Theo's hand, leading the way.

"Look, look, Theo! Do you see them? They're people walking on stilts! As tall as giants but much less interesting, don't you think? What do you say, would you like to study a real giant?"

"Four Eyes, don't put any strange ideas in his head."

"Oh knock it off, Levi! And look, Theo! On that stand are instruments for studying the composition of liquids! Heck, there's really everything at this country party! What do you say, shall we go check it out? Do you think this Uncle Levi bear will let us?"

"Do you think he gives a damn?"

Immediately behind the two superiors, followed Oluo and Moblit, the former launched into a dispassionate and convinced celebration of his own latest exploits outside the walls, and the latter locked in the attitude of stoic and mute forbearance that made him the only one capable of filling the role of Hanje's personal assistant.

Mizuki closed the line. Silent, she looked around absentmindedly without actually noticing any of the wonders and small, insignificant discoveries - such as the sight of acrobats slicing through the crowd on thin poles - that, under other circumstances, would have thrilled her. The days before her period, however, things went like this: her head refused to pay attention for more than a handful of seconds to the same object, and she preferred to wander in the abstract and unexplored territories of imagination.

That morning, though, the territories into which the thread of her thoughts had led her turned out to be much more concrete and decidedly less unexplored.

That day, her imagination fed her a neckline topped with thick dark hair, shiny under the glistening sun, shaved short underneath and longer at the top, thin and soft to the touch like the novice grass of a meadow at the dawn of the spring season; a well-proportioned back she knew was muscular from all the times she had grappled with it in the heat of the fight; slender, jerky legs that allowed their owner to move forward with a sinuous, elegant gait; and...

Stop it, stop it, you freaking brain. What's your problem, huh? Think of Petra.

What does it matter to you, you cheap morals? Stay out of it. It's not like we're doing anything wrong, we're just watching. Besides, Lavinia said you should give a damn, about that absurd promise...

Irritated, Mizuki forced her stupid eyes, which were in collusion with her stupid brain, to break away from the captain's figure, and explore the stalls on the side of the road.

Unexpectedly, one of the merchandise on display really caught her attention, thus diverting her from the unaware object of her fantasies, and the girl slowed her pace to observe it better.

The sight of a box full of everyday objects piled up in bulk stimulated her hormone-impaired mind, evoking in her a very sweet and melancholy memory whose existence she had hitherto ignored. A fragment of the past, a moment she had experienced and which, in fact, in itself and because of the events it encompassed could never have been defined or considered as sweet and melancholic; those connotations had taken on later - after everything had changed, after she had realized that never again would they exist and she would enjoy such moments of blissful ignorance and tranquility, that she had lost them forever - and now a bittersweet sensation stung her tongue and eyes, and invaded her chest and heart.

No, until that very moment, she had never been aware that she was storing within herself the memory of an episode devoid of any importance; as is often the case, the silvery bubble that preserved it had continued to float for years in the murky waters of her memory, buried by a myriad of more pressing yet trivial considerations, patiently waiting to be recalled. Now it had returned to the surface, and was bursting into her, most powerful and unstoppable, so precise and vivid that it cut off her breath.

"Miss! Do you like it? It's cheap, and it's full of useful tools!"

Mizuki straightened her back, awakening from the stupor that had seized her, and made to reply to the merchant who, from behind the stall, peered at her hopefully, when her fingers brushed against something warm...

... more fingers ...

... and an electric shock pierced her like a dart, paralyzing her.

An instant passed, the reality around her remained suspended in a limbo in which even the impossible - something she dared not hope for, but in fact longed for-could come true; a limbo in which she could recover what she believed was lost forever.

Mizuki turned around, and found emptiness behind her.

Emptiness: a crowd of cheerful, jubilant people; but not the one face she was expecting - begging, hoping, wishing - to glimpse.

Another long moment of stillness. Then Mizuki began to run, and the streams of the human river that animated the street of Ghent engulfed her.

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The Hidden Leaf Village stretched before Mizuki's eyes, as she sat with her legs dangling in the void on the rocky relief that was the eyebrow of one of the huge faces carved into the wall of the Hokage Mountain. The cool evening wind caressed her fourteen-year-old figure, and the sunset light purpled her sullen, bruised face.

Terence had beaten her again, and there was nothing she hated more than losing to him, especially when it happened under the dark, watchful eyes of her father.

After his wife's death, Sasuke Uchiha had stopped accepting missions that would keep him away from the Village for long months, and had devoted himself to raising his offspring to the best of his - admittedly quite lacking - parenting skills. After much insistence and tantrums on Mizuki's part, he had even agreed to coach the one stubborn one among his children who was hell-bent on following in her parents' footsteps and, while he was at it, decided to teach her two teammates, Terence and Rei, a few lessons as well, in the avowed hope of lessening the risks to which that " wild and reckless chucklehead" would be exposed on the mission.

The situation, at least in the beginning, was that; but Mizuki, in surreptitiously observing Sasuke Uchiha's face during training sessions, had soon realized that the tables had been turned,

He trained her because she was his daughter; Terence, on the other hand, because he was strong.

Mizuki tightened her lips in a grimace.

She hated losing to Terence. And she hated even more that it was happening in front of her father. She hated it with every fiber of her body.

"There you are, you little pest!" After making that exclamation, Rei Takashima landed with a leap beside the little girl, who returned the epithet with a snort. "I knew I would find you here.

When you get beaten up by Terence, you always run away up here."

"I hadn't been beaten up by Terence!" she blurted, glaring at him.

"No, of course not." With a sigh, Rei sat down next to Mizuki and said nothing more for a while, just abandoning himself to contemplating the sunset engulfing the Village.

"Sooner or later I will defeat him," Mizuki murmured through clenched teeth, drumming a finger against the rock.

Rei did not believe this could ever happen, but he was careful not to air his thoughts aloud. "You complain, but what am I supposed to say? For your father, our team consists of only two people. Next to two monsters like you and Terence, it's as if I don't exist."

Mizuki shrugged her shoulders. Her friend was right: Sasuke Uchiha would never feel any real interest in Rei and his technique, which he considered to be a kind of cheap trick; then again, for an individual with eyes like his, the boy's ability to create optical illusions that hid objects and people - only if they were strictly still - around him like a veil sounded like a joke, and not even of the funniest. The sharingan was able to rip through those stilted illusions without the slightest difficulty, like a blade slices through a sheet of paper.

Of course, it was true. Next to her and Terence, Rei and his technique became invisible. But why did he care? Sasuke Uchiha was certainly not his father!

"Anyway, I didn't show up empty-handed. I figured I'd find you with smoke coming out of your ears, so I retrieved your medicine before I came here," Rei added, and shook the box resting at his side, jingling its contents. "These are chipped cups and glasses that the institute no longer uses; Miss Rumiko doesn't throw them away just because she knows they come in handy for me somehow, although I never explained exactly how."

The news aroused the attention of Mizuki, who stretched out a hand to explore the contents of the box. Him showing up with that token represented an invitation to engage in the game invented by Rei to let her cool her anger, that is, to hurl old objects now devoid of any value against a wall, raising cackles and liberating war cries.

Their fingers brushed against each other.

It was not entirely causal, as Rei consciously extended his hand so as to reach close to hers.

The bodies of the two teens were paced by an electric shock, pleasant and unmistakable. Mizuki winced slightly, but dismissed the event with a shrug of her shoulders, too engrossed in the treasures in the box to give it any weight; Rei, on the other hand, squinted his eyes, enjoying the unique sensation he shared with her alone in all the world.

"I still haven't gotten used to this chakra affinity thing..." he ventured to confess, his heart pounding.

Mizuki's lapidary reply, however, did not take long to calm his boiling spirits. "It's no big deal."

"I mean... can you imagine that in the whole world there is only one person with whom your chakra vibrates like that? And we have met!"

"This is a false myth. That the chakra vibrates only with one person in the whole world is a theory with no scientific basis. Amado Kizuki, that geek on Lavinia and Loki's team, told me so. People try to convince themselves of this drivel just to corroborate that absurd story about destiny and love that is supposed to bind the two concerned." She did not realize, Mizuki, that she had just broken a heart with that simple and cruel sentence, interrupted by an exclamation of triumph and the pulling of a green glass from the box. "There, this inspires me! What do you say, Rei, shall we open the dance?"

The boy - who had just been confirmed of his own sad condition of invisibility by another Uchiha - exhaled a disheartened sigh, heartbroken but not enough to give up. "At your orders. We have to move, though, we're too close to the edge here, we risk hurting someone."

"Right. Let's get on the helmet of that idiot Second Hokage. I bet he'll turn in his grave when he realizes there's an Uchiha throwing things on his head!" decided Mizuki with a somewhat evil grin on her lips; then, without waiting for an answer, she let herself slip into the void, anchoring herself to the rock with chakra, and began walking toward her victim's head.

She did not turn to check that he was following her. She knew he would.

Rei sighed again. Of course he would follow her over the Second Hokage's head to do damage.

What other alternatives did he have, after all?

She did not know nor could she imagine it, but he would follow her anywhere, even to the ends of the earth.

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The one who noticed that something had just happened was Theo. As if caught by the foreboding of a looming threat, the child turned his head back, and his eyes moved without his command in search of the petite figure he adored.

He met her face, pale and distraught, more like a shadow from the past than a real entity. She stared at him, but without seeing him, as if her attention had been sucked into a whirlpool that originated from the center of her chest and soul.

Then Mizuki turned her back to him and began to run, disappearing from his sight. Theo's eyes widened and with all the strength of his small body he pulled Hanje's hand.

"Oh, what's the matter Theo? Did you see something that...? Hey! Mizuki, where are you going! Come back here!"

At those words, Levi turned his head sharply.

She was already far away, immersed in a sea composed of flesh and blood, but he spotted her anyway.

He could not have confused that untamed mass of curly hair for anything in the world.

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Although they had spent the last two hours in frantic and irritated search of her, the group found Mizuki only at the stroke of the appointed time and place for their meeting with Loki. She was, in fact, waiting for them in Ghent's central square, sitting on the steps of the town well, and as soon as they came into her field of vision she sprang to her feet. "Excuse me, really!" she exclaimed excitedly, as Theo clung to her legs, tightening her in a desperate embrace. "I really hope I didn't ruin the party..."

"You're kidding, aren't you, brat?!" blurted Oluo, approaching Mizuki menacingly. "We spent the last two hours looking for a fool and trying to comfort Theo, because as soon as he saw you running away he started crying! And you hope you didn't ruin our party? What on earth has gotten into you?!"

"Excuse me... that was not my intention..."

Hanje approached her subordinate in turn, passing an arm around her shoulders with a worried expression. "What happened, Mizuki?"

The girl raised her head toward the woman, letting an imperceptible grimace escape. She had expected the question, of course, and had a satisfactory answer ready, which was as close to the truth as it had been possible for her to come up with. "I thought I saw an acquaintance of mine, I really wanted to say hello and ... I got caught up. Excuse me."

She did not add that her blind running through the crowd had been inspired by the insane impulse to chase a memory, because it was a truth she still could not admit even to herself.

"Did you really make us run around for such crap?!" Oluo puffed out his nostrils, taking on the appearance of an old, sulking bull and deviating more and more from the subject of his admiration. "Now you will understand what it means to incur the wrath of Captain Levi!"

"I know." Mizuki could resist no longer. Until then, she had been able to force her stupid eyes to remain focused on the faces of an irritated Oluo and a worried Moblit, but slowly they slid toward the figure of the man behind them.

Levi stared at her seemingly calmly, arms crossed over his chest, and a wrinkle of expression furrowing his brow. Under that piercing gaze, and one by which at that moment she had no desire to be pierced at all, Mizuki lowered her head, in the grip of the cumbersome feeling that he had already guessed too much anyway. She would much rather have faced the stormy sea to which she was now accustomed than submit to a placid and deadly scrutiny such as that.

"So, captain! What punishment will you inflict on her?" urged Oluo, rubbing his hands together.

"None," Levi replied, after allowing a long moment of silence to pass. "There is no need."

The captain's reply aroused in the group an astonishment far greater than Mizuki's sudden escape.

"WHAT?" blurted Oluo, incredulously.

"Levi, do you have a fever by any chance?" Hanje broke away from Mizuki and moved a few steps closer to the captain, who contemplated the stirred reactions with an indifferent air. "Or maybe you hit your head? Mizuki, take a look at him, he's obviously sick!"

However, Mizuki, who under other circumstances would have laughingly asked Hanje if she was being serious or was just teasing their favorite victim, stood rigid and impaled, not understanding how she had just been spared a punishment she felt looming physically over her head, as certain and terrible as the threat of the giants beyond the walls.

The atmosphere of ill-concealed astonishment was interrupted by the arrival of Loki, who approached the group with a bold air. "Hey, everybody! There you are! But what happened? What are those shocked faces? Mizuki, you look so pale: are you okay?"

"Loki. Did you find out anything?" asked Levi, dismissing the incident that had just occurred with his usual pragmatic manner.

"How...? Ah, yes." replied Loki, who, following the captain's example, disregarded what happened in his absence to fully enjoy his own upcoming moment of glory. "'If I have discovered anything? I have done much, much more. Tell me, rather: even though you are in civilian clothes, did you take any toys with you?"

Levi's eyes flashed as he imperceptibly touched the holster for the gun with one hand, hidden from prying eyes by the broad black jacket he wore.

"Excellent," Loki said with a grin, noting the gesture. "Then legs on our shoulders, people: we're on our way to reach the lair of the mysterious organization!"

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"The information that this Pixis gave us was rather vague, you know. Anyone else, in my place and given the premises of the case, would have given up; but fortunately for you I am a magician, in this kind of activity, and with the few fragments I had in my hands I dug around until I sniffed out a lead." Loki interrupted his explanation for a moment, expecting a denigrating intervention from Mizuki, which, however, did not come.

After leaving the bustling town of Ghent, under Loki's guidance the group had taken an impassable path that stumbled along the mountainside toward the summit, passing under the shelter of a dense larch forest that covered the eastern slope of the imposing rocky body.

"Those in the mysterious organization had really thought this out," resumed the boy, not after casting a puzzled glance in the direction of his oddly silent comrade. " No one ever ventures up here, from what I've been told, because of a legend that circulates among the locals, a story about an alleged and rather trivial curse: it seems that a vengeful spirit roams these woods, killing wayfarers who are so foolhardy as to set foot in them. The few villagers who do take heed do so primarily to go hunting, despite the ban imposed by the Royal Government, and certainly not to set out in search of the spirit or some hidden lair. These are people who mind their own business; if they are not affected in their interests, they care nothing about what goes on around them, however strange or suspicious."

As Loki explained, the group continued to trudge as briskly as they could along the rugged and uneven path. As they climbed, the forest seemed to close in on their heads like the ends of a box; the foliage of the curved trees joined together, forming an inextricable tangle and blocking the sunlight. A perfect environment for the growth of the plant from which the kidnappers were extracting the active ingredient used to synthesize the drug administered to Theo, thought Mizuki who, to make up for the problems created and her lack of participation in the ongoing conversation, walked around sharpening her eyesight in search of traces that would reveal its presence.

"They, that is, those in the organization, never went down to the village, or so I understood. Very wise of our prey, no doubt about it: people around here remember the faces of outsiders."

"And so...?" Hanje began to ask.

"I'm getting to it, let me finish!" blurted out Loki irritably, intent on not ceding to anyone the five minutes of glory won with so much effort and sweat, and eager to finally feel equal to that group composed of individuals who were anything but ordinary. "I can't be fully sure, but I think there is a good chance that, in order to retrieve food and other basic necessities, the enemies were sending the guests of the orphanage, that is, their "products." Over the past year, according to the villagers of Ghent, the city's streets, markets and taverns were lined with ever-changing outsiders, but with one common characteristic: they were all extremely polite, quiet and frighteningly passive. That's what the villagers I talked to called them."

"Just as one would expect from good quality products," commented Levi cynically, leading the line.

"A smart move," assented Moblit.

"The last guys with these characteristics were spotted in town about four days ago." Loki indicated with his head that they should leave the path and turn right, entering the dense forest. "That's why I wanted to make sure you were armed."

"Ah! We'll teach those guys a lesson! It's not wise to mess with the Survey Corps!" asserted Oluo with a triumphant expression, which turned into a grimace of pain when Hanje, who was walking in front of him, let go of the branch she had pushed to the side in advancing, and it ended with a snap on his nose.

"Who knows why, but I had a feeling you would say something like that, Oluo," Loki said, rolling his eyes.

"Loki, a question," Hanje intervened, still moving forward completely oblivious to the harm done to Oluo. "If none of the inhabitants ever venture into the mountains, how did you find out where their lair is?"

"Aaaaah, I was looking forward to that question. Well, the thing is that these evil geniuses, as much as they had thought it out just fine, overlooked a small but crucial detail. The population of Ghent and its environs is now no more because of bans imposed by the Royal Government, but it used to be made up almost entirely of hunters; that is why many residents noticed that the behavior of wildlife was changing. If the wildlife becomes more numerous on the left side of the mountain, it is because the wildlife that used to roam on the right side has shifted. And the reason can only be one..."

"Humans," completed Levi for him. "Good job, Loki."

"Thank you, captain!" Loki, without even trying to contain the surge of pride at the compliment won by humanity's strongest soldier, puffed out his chest. "Better start being careful now. We're almost there, and I haven't the faintest idea what we'll be facing."

"What an idiot, as if the captain and I weren't already keeping our guard up since we took the path into the woods," Oluo muttered, resentful of the success his rival had achieved; despite the caustic comment, however, the young man tightened his grip on the handle of the sword hidden under his cloak.

All of them, advancing toward the unknown enemy, prepared to fight.

.

But their warrior ardor, as they soon discovered, was entirely wasted.

The compact stone house built against a sheer wall of the mountain was in fact completely deserted.

Very carefully, and dividing into two groups, one on each floor, with Mizuki waiting outside along with Theo to coordinate them, they explored it from top to bottom. On the ground floor, they found the canteen - a rectangular, spacious room with two long tables - the kitchen and a room used as a classroom, occupied by strings of desks neatly lined up in front of a blackboard, and overflowing with materials for carrying out various jobs - sewing, cleaning silverware and the like - stacked in bulk in cupboards; on the second floor, on the other hand, two long, narrow rooms with beds arranged parallel to each other about three feet apart, and several locked single bedrooms. After that quick but thorough preliminary exploration, they calculated that the building could accommodate between forty and fifty people, although they found no trace of any of them.

"They haven't been gone long. Half a day at most. The ashes in the fireplace are still hot, and plates and glasses have been left in the cafeteria, with the food still intact," Moblit judged, at the end of the inspection.

"Damn it! We just missed them!" blurted out Levi, indulging in a gesture of annoyance.

Even the contribution of Theo, their only hope, turned out to be a washout. The child, in fact, did not show any sign of recognizing the place and, clinging to Mizuki's arm, which he had not left since her escape in Ghent, maintained a calm and unflappable attitude as she led him on a tour of the building, room by room; they drew the conclusion that Theo had never been there and that he came from another lair - perhaps the previous one - of the mysterious organization.

"If they really walked away in such a hurry, they may have left behind some clues that could come in handy! I doubt they burned anything before they took off, the risk of smoke revealing the location of this place was too great. Now that we've made sure the camp is clear, let's search more thoroughly," proposed Hanje, better adjusting the glasses on her nose.

Every nook and cranny was carefully searched: they extracted food and furnishings from the kitchen pantries, emptied each drawer or desk of stacks of blank papers or thick with notes on how to prepare a great roast, pulled out from the classroom cupboards useful items for performing a variety of household chores and clothes from those lined up in the two second-floor dorms used, presumably, as men's and women's dormitories, rapped with their knuckles all over the walls, looking for a hiding place, and auscultated the floor to make sure it did not conceal secret trapdoors, but to no avail.

After about two hours of that futile and exhausting search, they all gathered in the canteen to take stock of the situation. "We're screwed," summed up Levi, leaning against the wall, in a foul mood.

"Come on, Levi. It's already a lot to have made it this far..."

"Um..." murmured Oluo, carefully studying the rock wall that constituted - as they had discovered as soon as they stepped inside - one of the building's four walls.

"What is it, Oluo?" asked Mizuki, approaching him.

"Nothing. I just thought we didn't check this wall."

"It is the wall of the mountain against which the building is leaning. It would be impossible to hide anything in such a compact block."

"As a child, that would have been my nightmare..."

"Mine too..." murmured Mizuki, thinking back to her childhood. She and her sisters used to enjoy stealing each other's treasures - some out of spite, some because of the tendency so developed in children to appropriate what seems important to their loved ones - so from an early age she had had to scramble to invent hiding places worthy of the name. But Oluo, what did he know...? As she formulated that thought, however, her mind was crossed by the image of Oluo, in the main street of Trost before one of the scouting trips, surrounded by a multitude of children, all ridiculously similar to him, climbing all over him. Then she understood, smiled slightly and counted. "Yours are four, huh?"

"Four pests. Your family, if I'm not mistaken, is also quite large."

"Let's just say I know a thing or two about hiding places," she assented with a laugh, and then looked up to the ceiling to study the interlocking of the structure with the rock wall. "On reflection, actually, this wall would be really perfect for the purpose. No one ever looks in places where it seems impossible to hide anything."

"Great turn of phrase, brat, but the substance doesn't change."

"Don't call me brat."

Oluo studied the wall meticulously, scanning every inch in the desperate search for a key detail that had so far escaped their attention. "If it weren't for the fact that this wall is perfectly smooth, and stands out meters and meters toward the sky and plants itself in the ground..."

At that point of the talk, the boy paused. Oluo and Mizuki's eyes slid down to the ground, to the corner that marked the meeting of the rock wall and the floor; then they turned to each other.

"Where...?"

"In the kitchen!" replied Mizuki immediately. "The floor over there is made of wood!"

The two darted for the kitchen, leaving behind Hanje and Levi still engaged in a heated discussion about what to do next, which was interrupted only by the excited shouts of Mizuki and Oluo. "Come! Come! This is it!" Mizuki called them, rushing to the threshold of the canteen, her cheeks on fire.

The rest of the group rushed to the kitchen. Mizuki and Oluo had systematically disassembled all the wooden floorboards by the rock wall; first, mercilessly splitting them apart and removing the ends from their place, and then - when they noticed that about halfway up the wall the boards were cut slightly shorter so as to allow them to slide nimbly - lifting them up.

In the portion of the wall that had previously been hidden by the thick floorboards, a thin dark foil was glimpsed, which turned out to be the upper end of a hollow dark cavity carved inside the rock.

"OH YES! GREAT WORK GUYS!" exclaimed Hanje, externalizing her enthusiasm with a jump. "How did you...?"

"It was Oluo," Mizuki hastened to say. She had already decided to credit the feat to her companion: partly, because the initial intuition to focus on the rock wall had really been his; partly, because she knew how much the boy valued Levi's approval.

"Good job, Oluo." At those words from the captain, Oluo stretched his full height, chest out, and gave Loki a defiant look.

After lighting a fire outside, they created a rudimentary torch: the flames illuminated the inside of the rock-cut cavity, about the size of a small pantry, filled with papers stacked in bulk. Mizuki, having arms that were slimmer than those of the entire group, slipped her hand into the narrow slit and began to pull out anonymous-looking black books, files, and flying paper documents. Hanje took over the first few finds, eyes twinkling, and without waiting for instructions scampered to the work table located in the center of the room, followed by Moblit.

"Ohi, four eyes, make sure it's clean before you..."

"It's clean," replied the woman dryly, and immediately afterwards dropped the bundle on the table, raising a cloud of dust that horrified Levi.

Mizuki, Loki and Oluo, taking turns, continued to extract material for at least another hour. After she was given a break, Mizuki pulled herself to her feet and, stretching, found herself contemplating a strange but fascinating sight: Hanje and Moblit, surrounded by quintals of paper and dust, hunched over the table, immersed in studying the first extracted notebooks, whose pages she consulted and flipped through at an impressive speed, and then dictated to her faithful assistant, in a low voice, a few short, concise sentences or a word, which he jotted down in a notebook.

Levi silently stood beside her. "Perhaps working at her side you have already noticed," he said, following his subordinate's gaze. "But the real strength of the Survey Corps is certainly not Mike and me."

.

The group of the Survey Corps soldiers remained camped in the building that had been their enemies' hideout for two days.

Hanje and Moblit spent the first of them feverishly consulting the pile of documents that cluttered the kitchen table, and eventually deciphered or believed they were deciphering the meaning hidden behind the seemingly trivial and useless annotations that filled the pages of the books they found. After explaining the key to be used in the consultation, they asked at the dawn of the second day if anyone else felt able to join in the sorting.

"Understand?" explained Hanje, leaning against the kitchen sink. "These documents contain descriptions of business transactions involving vegetables, fruits, and merchandise of various kinds. Each sheet indicates the buyer and the person who made the sale, as well as the negotiations that took place, any problems that arose during the trading, and the price paid; at the end, a detailed description of the good delivered to the buyer follows. All in the norm, right? Some of these sheets certainly describe normal sales of goods, fictitious or real, and have been included here to throw us off. If you pay close attention, in fact, you will notice that some of the descriptions tack on aspects and details of the product that could stick even to a human being. Consider this card, which on paper refers to a load of peaches." And so saying, Hanje retrieved a sheet of paper from the table and, after clearing her throat, read, "Slightly golden skin covered with a blond fuzz, juicy, soft flesh with a sweet taste, weighing forty-seven pounds. Do you see what I mean?"

"No," Oluo and Loki answered in unison, with sincerity, and they continued not to understand what Hanje was asking them to do even after a second and third explanation; so the only one precepted to assist Moblit and Hanje ended up being Mizuki.

The task was simple: read the sheets one by one, assess whether or not they might refer to one of the human products that interested them, note down the name of the seller and the buyer, and then place it in their backpacks; otherwise - where, that is, she became convinced that the sheet she had just consulted carried one of those fictitious sales inserted conveniently to confuse them - place it on top of the pile, which, once the sorting was completed, they would place back inside its original hiding place.

In the meantime, Levi took care of the practical aspects of their stay, assigning tasks in rotation between himself, Oluo and Loki: guard shifts and those to guard Theo, meal preparation and, of course, cleaning the canteen room where they spent most of their time.

"We'll only stay here the bare minimum, sunshine, you realize that, yes?

"Shut up, brat. No one asked for your opinion."

In the late afternoon of the second day, Hanje consulted the last document, with a gesture of ill-concealed triumph slipped it inside the fourth of the backpacks they had filled with papers and jotted down two names in Moblit's notebook. "We're done!" she then announced, standing up. "How insane are my team members?!"

"You are insane, Hanje, certainly not us," replied Mizuki, stretching her arms upward.

"What kind of names are these?" asked Levi, to whom Moblit had handed his own notebook, on which stood a neatly and precisely compiled column. "Rainbow corporation? Northern District Fish Club?"

"That's the list of buyers, for which code names were clearly used in order to preserve their identities. I'll bet whatever you want that the key to it, i.e., the list where the real names of the buyers are listed next to the various nicknames, was taken away or burned, regardless of the risk. It was too valuable to end up in the wrong hands," Hanje explained, leaning in his direction to turn the notebook page and show him another column, consisting of about thirty items. "You see, though? The names of the sellers, that is, those we believe to be the members of the organization, are more normal. It is from these that we will have to start with the next research."

"One-eyed man? Longlegs? Magician? " read Levi, and wrinkled his forehead. "Jailhouse nicknames."

"Well done, that's exactly right! I think these are their real names. Or, rather, the nicknames by which they are known in the underworld. So we could..."

Mizuki did not hear the final part of Hanje's plan. Exhausted after spending hours hunched over the table, she went outside to enjoy the fresh air and, more importantly, take over for Oluo, who was rather annoyed that a soldier of his caliber had been forced yo nurse a brat. Having freed the old-time hero from his heavy burden, Mizuki leaned against the stone wall of the building, in the shade, and took a distracted look at Theo running across the lawn chasing a butterfly.

She felt her head muffled, as if someone had just beaten a hammer repeatedly, with all the force at his disposal, on a pot near her ear; a sensation, she knew, only partly caused by her period. No, it was from the episode that had taken place on the streets of Ghent that absolute confusion reigned in her head: she tried not to think about the electric shock that had run through her and what it implied and, failing miserably in the attempt, all she could do was shake her head and solve the problem with logic.

I saw a box full of junk, and it brought back that old memory about the Hokage Mount. One thing led to another, you know. That's all.

Yet, on the spot, the vibration that had run through her had been so intense, vivid and totalizing that she had had to turn around to check it out; and although she had not been confronted with what she had expected, instead of coming to the logical conclusion that it had just been a mere impression, she came to the conclusion that the person she had just touched and was swallowed up by the crowd existed, was right there in Ghent, just a few steps away from her, because her body had really felt that electricity.

And she was left with no other option but to run blindly in her desperate, frantic search for it.

She shook her head. I'm losing my mind.

Levi had been standing on the threshold for a couple of minutes now, silently studying the quick string of emotions crossing the brat's face: a botched attempt at indifference, perplexity, denial, doubt, fear, and then pain. A dull, deep pain so deeply rooted that perhaps not even the person directly affected was aware of its true extent.

"Ohi, get the brat. We're leaving in half an hour," Levi said, resolving to make his presence known to Mizuki, since she gave no hint of noticing him. "We'll be back in time for that antics for sure, so you and the four-eye will be happy," he added, for he knew that Mizuki had been looking forward for at least a month to the annual Survey Corps party, set for the last day of July.

"And won't you, captain?" replied Mizuki, taken aback by his appearance, and trying to assume her usual scatterbrained tone.

Levi peered at her for a moment, then leaned against the wall with his arms crossed beside her, and waited. "So what is it that you want to ask me?" he inquired, scrutinizing her out of the corner of his eye, as she persisted in remaining silent.

Yeah, of course he had noticed.

Mizuki hesitated, before capitulating to her proverbial curiosity. "Why didn't you punish me?"

Levi's answer, however, was not long in coming. It was so immediate that it seemed as if the captain had engaged in the conversation with the sole intent of asking her that question. "Why did you run away?"

Because I had to make sure I hadn't gone crazy, Mizuki thought.

This, however, she could never tell him, because such a statement would involve explanations that she had no intention of providing. To the man next to her she had revealed far too much about herself, but she knew she would never be able to share that secret with a living soul.

Yet, she did not want to lie either, not to him; not after Tennison mansion, not after the late-night chats on the roof, not after the hours spent in detention cleaning under the weight of those steel blades that rested on her, detaching themselves from the desk shelf the captain was working at, as soon as she offered her back to him on a pretext, because she knew he was just waiting for her to turn around so he could look at her, and she longed to feel the thrill that always seized her in those moments.

She did not want to lie to him. But she did not want to - no, she could not - reveal the truth to him either.

So, she remained silent, letting the unanswered question hover and settle between them.

The captain finally seemed to take note of the definiteness of her silent demeanor, and broke away from the wall. "In half an hour. Not a minute longer," he intimated, turning his back on her and starting toward the door.

Mizuki stood like that, motionless, assailed by the terrible feeling that she had just made a huge mistake.

And all because of a folly.

I'm going crazy, she repeated to herself, shaking her head.

A folly, a moment of desperate madness in which past and present had overlapped. That was all.

She detached herself from the wall to call Theo back and prepare him for departure but, after a few steps, she stopped and turned to study the building perched against the mountain. Imposing, truly imposing; and incredibly unsuitable to serve as a hideout for a secret and mysterious organization, given how much the white plaster covering the building's walls stood out in contrast to the dirty gray of the rock face.

It seemed impossible that any of the squatter hunters roaming around there had never noticed or even glimpsed it among the dense vegetation.

Of course, if someone with the appropriate skills had created an illusion around the construction so as to conceal it from prying eyes...

NO!

Mizuki shook her head vigorously, banishing those hallucinatory thoughts.

It was just a suggestion, she repeated to herself, and I must stop thinking about it and acting like a brat.

After giving herself those directives, Mizuki drew a deep breath, banished to a recondite nook of her mind the first hints of madness suddenly manifested in her at the venerable age of eighteen - almost nineteen - years-old, put on the most convincing smile in her repertoire, and called Theo in a cheerful, carefree tone.

.

Now that the brief illusion created by the harvest festival had dissolved, an absolute, ghostly silence reigned over the streets of the small town of Ghent.

The man - a 50-year-old man who had spent his entire existence in those mountains - was waiting with trepidation in a dark side street, next to the back door of the town's largest tavern. He was beginning to grow impatient with the delay of his contact when he suddenly realized that he was no longer alone. A man had approached him with a light step and was peering at him, silently, his face hidden from view by the hood of the heavy cloak he wore despite the season.

"I did as you asked," murmured the 50-year-old Ghent man, in awe, eyeing nervously the newcomer who continued to stare at him. "I communicated to that noisy boy all the information you wanted, according to your directions, making him believe it was a case."

"And about me..."

"Of course I told him nothing about our deal!"

"You told him absolutely everything?"

"Yes! That the wildlife had moved from one side of the mountain to the other ... and to check in particular a certain clearing on the right side, below the sheer wall ... because that place, since time immemorial, had been home to a certain species of deer that had, however, been migrating for a while ... and to be certain that something was therefore happening there ... He believed it! I'm sure of it!" snouted the 50-year-old all in one breath, shifting the weight of his body from one foot to the other.

The hooded man nodded slowly, then with a precise gesture of his arm tossed a jingling bag to his interlocutor. "The other half of the reward."

The 50-year-old man caught the bag on the fly and opened it to count the coins, his fingers trembling and his breath short, eager to get away from there as quickly as possible. When he finished, he raised his head...

And he realized that he was alone.

Just as he had appeared, the mysterious hooded man had disappeared into thin air without uttering a single sound.

.

OOO

.

The lobby of the Survey Corps Headquarters was swarming with vociferous soldiers. Mizuki, from her post near the staircase that led to the dormitories, watched the bustle of people, dressed in their finest civilian attire, cross the room in the direction of the doorway overlooking the building's back garden, the centerpiece of the party about to begin.

"Mizuki!"

The girl turned toward the stairs, from which Petra was descending with a beaming expression. "Petra, you look really good!"

""You mean it?"

"You bet!" Mizuki looked smugly at her friend, swaddled in a tight, moderately low-cut white dress, with curled hair framing her face. Dusting off old knowledge passed on to her by her older sisters, in the weeks leading up to the event Mizuki had prepared natural compounds based on Petra's complexion and colors, which she had used that evening to lightly make up her cheeks and lips, with remarkable results in terms of increasing the brightness and smoothness of her facial features, already two characteristics that connoted her au naturel. "I can feel it: tonight we will make a fundamental step forward in the conquering operation! Even he who deserts all outings cannot escape us: tonight he is bound to attend because people expect to see him here! He is obliged! I heard Commander Erwin categorically ordering him to attend!"

Petra blushed, a detail that even makeup could not hide. "Who knows," she merely commented, embarrassed. "I'm going to go find the others, will you join?"

"In a moment, as soon as Lav arrives. She was the last to leave the meeting with the commander."

Mizuki, leaning on the handrail, watched Petra's back as she plunged into the crowd and walked away at a good pace. Her friend was radiant and beautiful; that night, she thought, anyone would fall in love with her. She wished that mood and her smile would find a final confirmation, a safe harbor; that she would be happy, and that her happiness would begin there and now, in the HQ garden, at a rowdy party.

She really wanted that.

That was why she felt so guilty.

For all the stolen moments with the captain and, even more, for what she felt.

But what did she feel, exactly? More importantly, was it a real feeling?

There, immersed in confusion and still overwhelmed by Petra's smile, she convinced herself that it was not; that it could not be.

The spoken and even more so the unspoken words, the glances, the silences, the trepidatious searching for each other at the end of each scouting, the spying on each other when one believed the other was distracted. All illusions, false beliefs dictated by place, time, a day too long or too short, cold, heat, whatever suitable excuse she could come up with to justify them.

No hidden, or special, meaning behind each of those gestures.

The illusion of the days spent in Ghent had already turned into a distant memory, the result - most likely - of the dreamy state that always accompanied the days before her period and the evocative atmosphere of the silent forest that ate the mountainside.

Yes. That was how things were. They could only be that way.

She was not the type to meddle in such affairs, nor did she feel that she had the character to deal seriously with all the problems that ensued. She did not even know what "meddling in certain affairs" actually meant, nor did she feel the need to find out.

Besides, what was the point of complicating her life like that if, sooner or later, she was going to get out of there, taking herself and her friends back home to the Village? She had sworn it to her comrades, and she would keep her promise - she always kept her promises, Mizuki - assuming, that is, she didn't die trying to fulfill her commitment.

You're so good at telling lies, whispered a sneering little voice, rising from an undefined spot in her mind. So good at convincing yourself of what suits you. Pathetic, trite, ridiculous excuses, which you ended up actually believing, just think! You did get your face matted up tonight, though, didn't you? And why would you do that, if not to attract a certain kind of looks? If not to convince a certain person that you are not a brat?

Silence, Mizuki ordered, instinctively bringing a hand to her glossy lips and slightly redder-than-usual cheeks, and the little voice fell silent, not after letting a sarcastic giggle ring through the walls of her head to celebrate its triumph.

Yes, she had used some of the compounds synthesized for Petra on herself, to make her perennially chapped lips a little less dry and tint her normally pale, wispy cheeks with a slight blush; to tell the truth, she had regretted it almost immediately, but by then the time of the party had struck and, running out of time to remove the makeup without causing irreparable damage, she had no choice but to leave the room in that state. So what, she thought, raising her chin slightly, as if daring the sneering little voice to contradict her, what crime would I have committed? What do you think you will get out of my act?

Suddenly noticing a pair of eyes scrutinizing her in the midst of her lucubrations, Mizuki turned her head slightly and, indeed, discovered Lavinia staring at her from halfway up the stairs, a furious expression distorting her features.

"Lav! You look stunning!" said Mizuki, with a nod to the blue dress that swathed her friend's body, in an even too covert attempt to divert the argument that loomed on the horizon.

Her plan, however, did not bear the hoped-for fruit and, in fact, had the diametrically opposite effect, contributing to Lavinia's discontent. "What would that be?" she asked in fact irritated, descending the last few steps and pointing to Mizuki's attire, which did not differ much from her everyday style: a pair of dark pants and a dark green plaid shirt of which she kept the lower flaps knotted just below the sternum, thus allowing a glimpse of her firm abdomen; this was the only distinguishing note from the way she usually dressed and inspired, rather than by a whim, by an attempt to counteract the heat.

"Um, a shirt?"

"That's not what we agreed on."

Mizuki decided to play her second trump card: acting dumb. "But Lav, I've never worn dresses to go out..." she said matter-of-factly, uttering the word as if it were an unforgivable insult. "I don't even own any!"

"That's why I had prepared one of mine for you."

"But that would have been strange anyway, wouldn't it? Besides, they're so uncomfortable! What would happen if someone attacked us and I found myself forced to fight to protect you?"

"Stop being such a jerk! Tonight you should have worn it because it's different from all the others!"

"And for what reason?"

"Don't try it, Mizuki. We've already talked about it, and I have no intention of repeating myself." With a gesture of anger, Lavinia turned to join the stream of soldiers heading toward the garden.

Mizuki followed her, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Come on, don't be like that..."

"And don't touch me!" Lavinia released from her grip with a shake of her head. "Stay away from me! I can't stand you when you act like that!" she exclaimed, backing away furiously and leaving Mizuki petrified staring at her, her mouth open in surprise and dismay.

"Oy oy, trouble in paradise?"

"Damn, I heard my little tiger's heart crack!"

The full group of veterans, returning from the meeting in the commander's office, was descending the last steps of the staircase, with Hanje and Gelgar in the front row peering amused at the expression of pain and panic painted on the girl's face.

"Hanje... she said she can't stand me... What do I do?"

"Ahhh, Mizuki. There is only one solution for love pains!" replied Hanje, passing an arm around her shoulders.

"And what is that?"

"Of course, drinking," Gelger joined in, giving her an encouraging pat on the back.

"Mizuki, don't be misled by these adults rotten to the core," recommended Nanaba, dressed in a lovely apple-green dress, and in passing the trio she sighed, shaking her head.

"But can you tell what happened? I'm curious."

"I don't know either, Hanje..." lied Mizuki, who actually knew the answer very well.

"Did you manage to exasperate her, too?"

Raising her antennae at hearing the voice of the prey she and Petra had been so eagerly awaiting, Mizuki thrust her head toward the source of the sound, which until then had remained hidden behind the imposing figure of Mike. "Captain! You came!" she trilled then, crossing the trajectory of a pair of steel blades.

"Did you see that, Mizuki? Miracles sometimes happen!" Without releasing her grip on her subordinate's shoulders, Hanje began to drag her toward the gateway that overlooked the garden. "And to celebrate this event, one must go all out!"

As she was being carried almost by weight toward the exit, Mizuki turned to shoot another glance at Levi. "Captain! Go see... get your team to see you! Make sure you do!"

"Am I wrong, or is she trying to pair you up with Oluo?" asked Erwin, in an amused and vaguely defiant tone, appearing at Levi's side.

"Fuck it, Erwin. You better do something about it, she's out of control now, and it's your responsibility to handle her."

The commander, however, was already paying no more attention to the complaints of the most valiant and gifted of his officers, intent as he was on scanning the crowd for raven hair.

The brightly lit headquarters garden welcomed the human torrent that the building regurgitated like a volcano erupts streams of incandescent lava; the soldiers, as soon as they set a foot outside, looked around in amazement for a few moments, almost struggling to recognize the place that, hosting daily training and assembly on the occasion of official announcements, should have been familiar to them, and instead appeared transfigured and foreign in the same way as the sights and landscapes they encountered outside the walls.

All around its perimeter and in various strategic positions on the lawn, the soldiers in charge of setting up the equipment had planted steel poles roughly two meters high, at the ends of which were attached lighted torches that illuminated the entire park by day. All the available chairs and shelves - the long tables in the canteen, the desks placed in the private office rooms, the removable desks in the classrooms - had been transported outside, and arranged in a pattern that was meant to be orderly and logical, but actually appeared quite confusing; at the back, on the right, stood a rudimentary stage on which the town band was tuning instruments, while on the opposite side were the stalls of merchants authorized by Commander Smith to sell beer and spirits, already besieged by a swarm of thirsty patrons.

Just about everywhere, vociferous people, plainclothes soldiers and civilians, women, men and children, mingled without distinction.

The rules of the annual event convened to celebrate the founding - and successes, at least as far as its members were concerned - of the Survey Corps were quite simple. Soldiers would allocate a portion of the current month's salary to the purchase of provisions that would be turned into the dishes offered to the guests, while civilians intending to participate were required to bring a complimentary pot containing a food of their own preparation; although no one at the entrance controlled the payment of that toll by the thrilled Trost residents who crossed the threshold of the garden, so that even the less affluent would be guaranteed the opportunity to take part in the festivities.

Erwin and Levi reached the table occupied by the veterans and their teams, as well as a pawing Theo. Mizuki, overexcited by the festive atmosphere, jumped impatiently. "There you are!" she exclaimed aloud, elbowing Petra.

"Good evening, captain," murmured the girl, lowering her head slightly.

As soon as she noticed that Erwin Smith was slowly but surely making his way toward the only seat left vacant, Mizuki hurried to take him under her arm, preventing him from sitting down "Commander! Go with Hanje to get a drink. Gelgar's treat!"

"Well, if Gelgar's treat..."

"Hey, kitten, I really don't know about that."

With an annoyed sigh, Levi let himself slide into Erwin's seat, right in front of Petra, under the watchful and circumspect gaze of Mizuki, who was studying the success of her plan, and the amused gaze of the veterans, who had witnessed the maneuvers - a threat aimed at Gelgar to reveal an unspecified secret and various trade agreements with the others - aimed at creating the right seating arrangement.

"Hey," Lynne said at one point, raising her head from the mug of beer and hinting at an unspecified spot behind Petra's back. "But aren't those gendarmes at the entrance?"

"I think so, I can see from here on their uniforms that stupid horn that keeps place of the nonexistent brain. They are very young, probably they are the new recruits posted to Trost earlier this month," Nanaba replied, furrowing her brow. "Why the heck are they here?"

"Because I invited them!" trilled Mizuki, and she stood up to go and greet them.

"You invited them? Why?" asked Oluo, with an outraged expression.

"What a question! Because they're my friends, of course!"

"Your friends?" repeated Gunther voicing general bewilderment as she hurried away followed by Theo. "But they are gendarmes!"

"There is nothing to be surprised about. Pigs or normal people, it makes no difference to her. That's the way she is." All heads, at that mocking and unexpected comment, turned in the direction of Levi, who was studying the bustle of people with his usual indifferent expression, one arm abandoned behind the back of his chair and the mug of beer brought to him by Eld in his other hand.

"Well, she's got a few screws loose for me," muttered Gunther, shaking his head and earning a dirty look from Lavinia.

The party seemed to be waiting only for the arrival of the commander and his loyal captains to explode.

At the sight of Erwin Smith heading in Gelgar's company in the direction of the liquor stalls, mugs were raised to the sky in toast.

Music flooded the atmosphere overheated by alcohol and excitement.

The first couples invaded the clearing vacated as a dance floor and began to twirl, clutching each other as if the salvation of the humanity barricaded behind the walls depended on the closeness between their own bodies and those of their partners. They were soon joined by children and eternal loners, who launched into wild and senseless dances for the simple sake of moving to the rhythm of the upbeat music that warmed the atmosphere.

As time passed, the veterans' table, previously full, began to empty. Some drifted off to greet friends and relatives, to flirt, to go to the bathroom, or to get drinks; others, instead, were dragged away by Mizuki, who continued to carry out her plan undaunted, under the guise of an invitation to dance, a hypothetical as well as imaginary girl interested in Oluo, a game with Theo, a certain gentleman who played the guitar divinely and longed for Gelgar's singing accompaniment.

They all stood up, until only two occupants remained: Petra and Levi. She, aware of the mammoth effort put up by her friend to create that optimal situation - without suspecting that, in large part, the condescending attitude of her older colleagues had contributed to the final outcome - attempted to make the most of it. Along with Mizuki, she had prepared in advance a list of possible topics to broach with the captain, and there she poured out one after the other, with the same precision with which she carried out giant-slaying techniques. He, to her enormous surprise, proved to be particularly talkative that evening, to the point that he responded to almost every remark and question with sentences more substantial than mere assent or denial.

Petra tried to convince herself that this was a positive sign. Perhaps the dress, perhaps the makeup, perhaps the intoxicating atmosphere of the party were having an effect.

She tried to convince herself, but a part of her knew perfectly well that this was an unfounded hope.

The captain was talking to her, answering her, looking at her and sometimes even seemed to smile at her, but it was not her he was paying attention to.

His eyes the same color as dirty ice were studying the garden behind Petra, moving seamlessly from side to side, as if they were chasing a maddened swallow in a chaotic search for a shelter that would protect it from the impending storm: and she did not need to turn around to know who he was keeping such a watchful eye on.

In the Survey Corps, only one person possessed the energy to move in that rambling manner.

Little hints, an imperceptible nod, a warmer flash in those otherwise immovable, dull blocks of ice.

No one but her could have noticed because, on the surface, nothing in the captain's attitude suggested that beneath the veneer of indifference and rigidity stirred an ocean of lava about to erupt and explode.

But a heart in love sees everything.

Petra's heart contracted in a grip, shattered into a myriad of fragments, and her breath caught in her throat.

She knew.

And she had known for a long time.

Again those gray eyes slid following in the footsteps of an unstoppable hurricane, and again a fiery, elusive spark ignited them.

Still in pieces, Petra's heart hardened.

"Captain," she called back to him softly. "What do you think, then?"

He brought his attention back to the girl, and cleared his throat. Even though he was lost in thoughts whose content she was trying to ignore, Levi was still paying attention to her, and Petra nodded and smiled at receiving his answer.

In the end, it did not matter what she knew or did not know. It did not matter what feelings were lurking inside the captain, or the source of such agitation.

Chatting in the man's company, wearing makeup, a gorgeous dress and styled hair, was she.

Not Mizuki. Mizuki could never have been in her place, and flirted with the captain, because she had promised her unconditional help in making her feelings come true. And Mizuki always kept her promises.

No matter how petty, no matter how cruel and ungrateful such reflection seemed to her, Petra realized that she did not feel guilty, and she clung with all her might to the advantage she set out to exploit to the fullest, no holds barred.

.

Mizuki proceeded down the back staircase plunged into darkness. At the stroke of one o'clock Theo, however overexcited by the music and confusion reigning in the barracks, had finally succumbed to the lure of sleep; Mizuki had carried him to bed, and was now making her way back to the garden, where the party had reached its climax.

After closing the bedroom door behind her, she had first attempted to take the shortest route, but a dreadful discovery had soon forced her to desist from going any further: the main hallway and staircase, in fact, were littered with couples making love in every secluded or more obscure nook and cranny than the others. A circumstance that, in normal times, would not have intimidated her at all and, on the contrary, would have incentivized her to cross into enemy territory, deliberately provoking inappropriate and embarrassing noises, just for the sake of disturbing the lovers; but that evening she intended to avoid in any way coming into contact with any elements associated with the "certain affairs" in which she did not want to meddle. So to return to the party she took the back stairs; a longer and more impervious route, but one that was less exposed to the lovers' fawning because it was too far from the heart of the fun.

Mizuki descended the steps with a light head and a vague hint of dizziness due to alcohol and exhaustion. A state of alteration so mild and devoid of excess that it was pleasant and made her wish that the festivities would go on uninterruptedly for days.

Why spoil the atmosphere with unnecessary thoughts?

With a leap, Mizuki overcame the last few steps and gained the ground floor. The back staircase ended in a narrow corridor, plunged in darkness and forgotten by the entire Corps.

Yes, it made no sense.

But as she made her way to the passageway that would allow her to reach the atrium, Mizuki noticed that the door to the cupboard under the stairs, used to store a very special kind of supplies, was ajar; the discovery forced her to stop and stagger for a few seconds in the middle of the deserted hallway.

You want it. You know perfectly well that you want it.

You're wrong, you freaking little voice, and I'm going to prove it to you, retorted Mizuki, annoyed at the reappearance of her invisible antagonist, and resumed walking toward her destination, stubbornly keeping her nose pointed upward.

And then, without understanding how, when and why she had turned around, she retraced her steps and found herself in front of the ajar door.

Oh, I see. Quite a demonstration.

Mizuki, however, was no longer paying attention to the little voice, nor did she need any further incentive to proceed at a safe pace toward the slope that spread out beneath her feet.

When the door to the cupboard was opened, Levi turned sharply to face the threshold, freezing in a pose that, under other circumstances, would have elicited a laugh from her and occasioned a tug on her ears: the captain, in fact, was staring at her with his arms raised above his heads and in his hands a can of tea just retrieved from one of the boxes stored on the shelves.

"Caught in the act, huh?" chuckled Mizuki, in a trembling voice, trying to convince herself that she had opened the door without harboring any expectations and at the same time keeping at bay her pounding heart exulting that she had just won the bet she paid at the cost of her own dignity.

"It's you," Levi said, and turned his attention back to the shelf; with almost excessive care, he placed the lid back from the box he had opened.

"It's me," confirmed the girl, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe. "Are you really stocking up on tea in the middle of a party?"

"I'm retiring, and I finished the tea I had in the room."

"Oh, right at the very best..."

"Are you the one who came down the stairs now?" Levi finally turned toward the door, his back to the cabinet. The small room in the understairs was a ridiculously small cubbyhole, made even more suffocating by the stacks of boxes and bags piled in bulk on the furniture shelves so that, despite the physical distance actually existing between them, it seemed to Mizuki that they were close.

Very close.

Far too close.

Dangerously close.

And a blaze of heat, similar to the one caused by swallowing a shot glass of Gelgar's mint liqueur in one gulp, ran through her from head to toe.

"I took Theo to bed."

"I see."

Mizuki broke away from the doorframe to give way to him, convinced, almost hopeful, that after that brief exchange Levi would retire.

It was with enormous surprise and concern that she watched him set the tea box down on one of the shelves and lean against the cabinet behind him, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I saw that the brat was having a good time tonight."

"Ah, yes..."

"He was laughing. He doesn't even look like the same child we picked up in Tiburtina anymore."

"Time helps…"

"No. You helped him."

Mizuki flushed as the equivalent of a second drink lit up her chest, and she lowered her gaze, losing herself in studying the grain of the wooden floor, which had never seemed so interesting. "We all helped him..."

"Maybe, but the main credit goes to you. Good job."

"What's up with you, captain? This conversation has been going on for a while and you haven't said anything unpleasant to me yet. If you're so nice, I worry," Mizuki said, starting to fiddle with a strand of hair that had escaped from the makeshift tail tacked up against the sweat and heat, and still keeping her gaze down because crossing the trajectory of a pair of steel darts at that moment did not seem like a good idea.

Before he could answer her, however, somewhere unspecified behind Mizuki's back came the muffled laughter of a woman, and the sound of approaching voices and footsteps.

"Mike! Not here!"

"No one's here, come on, let me sniff you, you smell so good..."

"I mean!"

That brief exchange baffled the girl to the point of petrifying her.

Mike's imposing figure stood out in the doorway that led to the passageway to the central atrium, and at his side appeared the body of a woman who, though tall, looked tiny compared to the man she had just clung to.

In front of her, just a few steps away, Mike and Nanaba were kissing passionately, their eyelids clenched tightly preventing them from noticing the presence, in that hallway usually abandoned by the world, of two unwanted spectators.

Embarrassed at having witnessed a spectacle clearly meant to stay private, Mizuki opened her mouth, willing to flag her presence and make the discovery less awful, for the couple...

But icy fingers rested and pressed on her mouth, with a gentle yet firm touch, and Mizuki - surrendering defeatedly to that grip that left no escape - was pulled back; the captain's free hand, in reaching forward to grasp the door handle and pull it close again, grazed her side.

The little room in the basement and Mizuki's brain plunged into darkness.

A third shot of mint liquor.

Like a silent, devious disease, he was slowly intoxicating her with himself and his presence.

"If you drool, I'll make you pay," he whispered in her ear, tickling her with a puff of warm air, but she barely heard him.

Her whole body, her whole mind, her whole self tended in a single direction, toward a single point, to the only object, in the room, still endowed with any real consistency; as if the rest of the world had dissolved, only her own ear, lapped by the captain's warm breath, and her stiff shoulders pressed against the chest of him who, pulling her back from the threshold, had imperceptibly held her close to him, continued to exist and matter to her.

Now the two annoying little voices in her head fell silent, surrendering her to the confusion and certainty represented by those fingers on her lips, by the retracting hand brushing her side again, by the chest she sensed lowering and rising lightly against her own shoulders.

She wanted to run far away, and she wanted to stay there.

She wanted to push him away, and she wanted to hold onto him.

She wanted him to let go of her, and she wanted him to hold her close.

She wanted him to move his hand away from her mouth, but only to turn her around and kiss her.

It lasted only an instant, that delicious, soul-dripping turmoil that absorbed all her energy; then the captain backed away a step and, with a movement as fluid as the one with which he had grabbed her, released her. Mizuki breathed again, as if she had just slipped out of a heavy iron armor that had crushed her to the ground and forced her into an unnerving immobility; numb and stupefied like a bird just caught in a storm, she turned her head slightly to peer at the movements of the man who, without a word, had retreated to the innermost corner away from the ajar door, and there leaned back against the furniture.

"Come here. The smell of the food should hide us from Mike, but if you stay where you are now, as soon as they break away they will notice you," Levi said, hinting at the glimmer through which the figures of Mike and Nanaba could be glimpsed, still in the doorway of the hallway, indulging in an embrace that was becoming more and more passionate.

At the same moment that her mind grasped the meaning of those words, Mizuki decided that she would never, ever comply with the man's invitation.

Getting closer was too much... too dangerous. Too tempting. Too much, in short.

Yet, at the end of those sharable and morally irreproachable considerations, she found her stupid carcass leaning against the wall in front of the captain, her chin turned upward in sign of defiance - defiance aimed at whom, it was not known. Fate? Common sense? Levi himself? - and her arms crossed over her chest, in an unmistakable yet contradictory attitude of defensiveness that revealed all her discomfort with the situation that had arisen.

Her head was whirling.

I've had too much to drink, she thought, but she lied knowing she was lying, well aware that the source of her daze was not the alcohol, but rather the still vivid sensation of a firmly touching hand pressing her lips, and the nuanced notes of a fresh perfume penetrating her nostrils.

Nanaba and Mike chose that delicate and disturbing moment to end their intercourse: after a final string of passionate and noisy kisses, they broke away, panting, and each leaned against a jamb of the lintel, elected as the theater of their lovemaking, and from which came occasional flashes of an even more intimate conversation, filled with complicity and interrupted by brief laughter.

Mike and Nanaba.

Lavinia had told her that, even in the absence of firm evidence, she suspected the existence of an affair between the two veterans.

My Lav always understands. She is really formidable, Mizuki thought with a surge of pride.

Mike and Nanaba. A captain and a subordinate...

A captain and a subordinate!

Mizuki, who kept her face pointed toward the glimmer, turned her head sharply and brought both hands to her mouth in a gesture of genuine astonishment. "The rule!" she murmured in a whisper, in an almost outraged tone, as if to make sure that Levi understood the sensational significance of the discovery and, more importantly, gave due consideration to the knowledge of the rules just deployed by the most discipline-refractory soldier in the entire Corps.

"Yeah," he replied, not at all touched by that display of profound knowledge of the basic rules of military regulation. "That's why we'll have to keep our mouths shut about what we saw."

Mizuki raised an eyebrow, surprised; and then, barely holding back a laugh that would betray them, "Now we're talking! I finally get a task that's in my wheelhouse. I'm much better at being an accomplice than a subordinate!" So she waited - staring him straight in the face, because now all the tension caused by that absurd situation seemed to have disappeared - for a sarcastic and sharp reply, along the lines of those that the captain, at such junctures, usually addressed to her.

Her expectations remained unfulfilled.

"Then we will be accomplices."

He said it slowly, Levi, in his usual flat, emotionless tone; looking at her, without detaching from her, even for an instant, his eyes flashing in the dark.

Yet another imaginary glass of alcohol - by now she had lost count of how many glasses that man had forced her, in such a narrow span of time, amounting to a handful of minutes, to guzzle - that inflamed the blood in her veins.

Even though they were of a similar height, Mizuki was overwhelmed by the impression that at that time and in that place, in a tiny, dark, cluttered room, in the course of a party from which both of them had disappeared and about which neither of them cared any longer, Levi towered over her, loomed over her like the Walls that cast a powerful and seemingly endless shadow over the cities at their feet. Crushed and cornered by the captain and his gaze, by the altered state caused by his provocative words, she became convinced that there was now only one way left for her to escape from that mess: to bridge the distance between them, for good, because the man's touch on her skin would make her feel light and free.

In the silence that descended on the closet, both of them thought that that promise of complicity referred to more than just keeping Mike and Nanaba's secret.

They had become accomplices for a while now, and for countless reasons.

And those eyes staring at her, that silence that fell heavy after the captain's comment, contained an unexpressed and dangerous question.

They were already accomplices for so many little secrets, which they consumed before the eyes of the whole Corps, day after day, night after night.

Did she wish to add one more item to the list?

It frightened her, that silence filled with disturbing possibilities.

Like covering the already scant distance that separated her from the captain, and abandoning her head on his shoulder; without fear for what would happen next, without thinking of the consequences and the ridiculous promises she had made.

Like running a hand through that dark hair, tugging, taking in all she could get from that touch, and losing herself in the stormy sea that stirred in his gray eyes.

Like waking up the unfamiliar and somewhat wild Levi with whom, dressed only in a flimsy nightgown, she had become acquainted at Tennison Mansion.

Like forcing him to forget why he had gone to the cupboard, and make him bring something other than tea to his room.

Only words could cover the noise of thoughts, the accelerated beats of her heart, and the temptation that caused an unbearable, unstoppable tingling in her fingers.

Only words made it possible to pretend and create a web of deception that, enveloping them, protected them.

That was why she was always very careful to fill the void between them with the sound of her voice and a myriad of idle chatter.

So, under that intense gaze that challenged her, and accompanied by the echo of that unexpressed question, Mizuki decided to speak. To say the first triviality that came into her mind, whether stupid or profound, misplaced or far-fetched; anything was fine as long as she could interrupt the inexorable fall into the void into which, slowly, she felt she was sliding. "Poor Gelgar, though."

"What's Gelgar got to do with it now?" For a moment, Levi appeared taken aback by that comment: he furrowed his brow, somewhat annoyed, and pulled his torso back slightly.

"Well, you know... He and Nanaba..."

The wrinkle between the captain's eyebrows relaxed imperceptibly. "Ah, your usual bullshit."

" It's no bullshit!"

"Meddling in other people's love lives sure is."

Those words caused her to wince. It was the first time the captain had broached that subject with her - feelings and, more generally, Mizuki's tendency to meddle in the love affairs of her fellow soldiers - considering, above all, how closely it affected him. "I'm not meddling. I just ... I just want everyone to be happy."

Outside, Mike and Nanaba's voices morphed into an increasingly indistinct buzz as the two soldiers turned away to return to the party.

"Yeah," Levi spelled out slowly; his hands were shot through with a spasm, and in an unusually hasty gesture, the captain crossed his arms over his chest, as if to stop himself from doing something. "This is exactly the problem."

"This what?"

"That you are a brat," he replied, and for a moment seemed to address himself more than her. Immediately, however, his eyes twinkled, seeking Mizuki's, and a flash of defiance flashed there, overbearing and allusive. "As I proved to you at the Tennisons."

It was as if an entire bottle of liquor had just been injected into her veins, and Mizuki felt the last, meager reserves of her own self-control evaporate like snow in the sun.

That, too, was a first: until then, they had never openly addressed what had happened in Mizuki's room at Tennison Mansion, the way the captain had devoured her with a glance, the promises she had read in his liquid, unrelenting eyes.

And now his warm hands, resting in the crook of the elbows of his arms crossed over his chest, and the urge to grasp them and let them grasp her.

Outside, absolute silence, thick and frightening; even Mike and Nanaba were gone. Silence outside and inside the small room, silence in her head and in her heart, silence between them. Silence, the complicity that bound them together and a thousand possibilities that throbbed as they waited to receive concrete implementation.

The captain staring at her, waiting.

The slightly more labored breath.

His still, warm hands.

The captain's tasting and smelling liquor coursing through her veins, intoxicating her.

The certainty, in that instant, of sharing the same, burning desire.

Mizuki leaned her torso forward slightly, holding her breath.

"And you remain a brat even if you smear your face."

A boulder fell on her head.

The liquor evaporated and she became perfectly sober again.

She hesitated for a single moment.

"Then why don't you teach me what it means to be a woman?"

.

"That you are a brat. As I proved to you at the Tennison's."

He saw her hold her breath and retract her torso backward, piqued and a little scandalized, as if instead of uttering two simple sentences the captain had just slapped her.

He was being a jerk and in a manner far from appropriate for a superior officer, he was perfectly aware of that. And, as if that were not enough, he was provoking her in that way with no real intention of concretizing any of the promises that the silence, the narrow confines of the small room that forced them close together, the alcohol in their bodies, and the party atmosphere were whispering in hypnotic tones to the ears of both of them.

He just wanted to shake her a little.

To shake her, and repay her in the same coin after she had oddly kept quiet in Ghent about her motives for fleeing as if in the throes of a fit of madness, forcing him to question the identity of the mysterious acquaintance she claimed to have crossed paths with; and after that, for the entire duration of that interminable evening, she had steered clear of the table where he sat, except to drag away Oluo or Gelgar or whoever sat there, unwaveringly faithful to her idiotic mission, and all he had been left to do was to peer at her from afar as she rolled with Theo onto the grass, toasted with her gendarme "friends," exchanged a few jokes with a stranger, threw herself into wild dances with all their comrades, sang at the top of her lungs the hottest songs of the moment, ran from one end of the garden to the other to deliver messages from lovers or quarreling couples.

And then laughing, laughing, laughing.

Although he could not hear it because of distance and confusion, as he watched her lips curl, leaving her white teeth exposed, that laughter - her laughter: a little childish, uncontrollable, overwhelming, bright though it was a sound, enveloping though lacking in physical form - resonated in his head as if Mizuki had been sitting beside him, as it did during the course of the nights on the roof, as it resonated in his heart and mind during the increasingly frequent dreams in which she made her appearance.

He was being a jerk and had just put her on the spot, he knew it. But with her so close, that seemed the only possible way to drive her away from him and avoid a catastrophe: to force her to escape before he finally lost control.

Moreover, in order to try to dominate himself, he felt the pressing need to remind himself of the obstacles that stood between them; and the last comments regarding her being a hopeless brat were tending to that end.

She was free, and born with a clear predisposition to happiness. Free: one day, perhaps, she would leave that place that reeked of shit, and find someone or something with whom to share the joy of life that animated her every gesture, every smile, every look, every word.

He, on the other hand, was not free nor would he ever be, and he was fine with that. First poverty and the Underground City had subdued him, then a vow to a greater cause to which he had offered his heart, and the choice to share a dream with Erwin, Hanje and all their fallen comrades. A world without giants, without pain, without fear. A world where it would not be strange for brats like Theo to laugh carefree. A world almost boring, where everyone would be absurdly and stupidly happy. A world that the brat would surely love.

That's it; that's what the little devil was doing to him. Even when he reflected on the mission to which he had devoted his entire existence, the course of his thoughts deviated from the established path to lead him, unstoppably, to her.

But, on the other hand, with her palpitating body only a few steps away, how could he hope to concentrate without taking some detour?

With one finger, the brat was tormenting, as she always did in moments of discomfort, a curl that had escaped from the lopsided tail sticking out at the nape of her neck.

Levi's fingertips remembered the softness of that hair, and it wouldn't have hurt to sink his fingers into that untamed, proud hair again.

But he was not free; she was.

His heart, his body, his mind, the person who went by the name of Levi belonged to the army, existing only to serve the purpose he shared with his comrades.

For the soldiers of the Survey Corps, there was no tomorrow.

Thinking about the future had never seemed like a viable option because of the kind of life he led and the situation he was in. The few occasions on which his mind had ever dared to venture in that direction, into the future, had been reduced to the times when, during a scouting trip, he had paused to consider the granitic certainty that after one felled giant, another would immediately arise; and that would be until he was dead or the race of those monsters was extinct. He had never thought of tomorrow in any other terms than those.

She did not realize that. No, she was not aware of anything: neither of his gaze that never lost sight of her for an instant, nor of the distance that inexorably separated them.

For her everything represented a possibility, sweet promise of a better and concretely achievable future, and in the face of the power of her ambitions, in the face of the force of her irrepressible drive toward the future, there were no obstacles worthy of the name: not even the high walls that imprisoned the rest of humanity could ever stop her. She would discern roads where others glimpsed with dismay only human misery or wickedness, and if the path she had just taken ended in an unsurmountable wall, she would barely shrug her shoulders, as if to emphasize that another path, even if invisible and winding, would always exist and that sooner or later, along the bright path of her own life just starting out, she would come across it.

You are free. And I am not.

This condition could never change. He had known this from the first signs of that blossoming feeling, jealously kept hidden from the gaze of others. He could not... he did not want to chain her in a painful grip with no future; he would never inflict such a sentence on her. He wanted her to continue to smile as carefree as she had always done, with that warm, radiant smile that he secretly spied - she, gifted with the ability and strength to choose happiness in spite of all that had happened to her, to choose to see the good even where there was none, with that naive, sometimes irritating way of hers. He wanted her to be able to walk with someone by her side, along the path of life, and shape reality according to her own desires. He wanted her to share her days and nights with someone who, unlike Levi, could give her all of himself, offer her his free heart not enslaved by promises, bonds and oaths.

She was a brat.

"And you remain a brat even if you smear your face."

It was enough for him to see her come back alive and well from every scouting, enough to spy on her as she searched for him with her gaze among the throngs of soldiers massing on the streets of Trost, enough to catch the imperceptible smile that appeared on her lips the instant her eyes finally rested on him.

I will never be free from this hell.

Therefore, when he became aware of the vague and indefinite feeling that had just blossomed in her, unable to disguise it because of her young age, lack of experience and genuine personality, Levi felt a dense and creeping worry pervade him. He considered the possibility of pushing her away from him, devised plans to bring about a final, no-return detachment, at night, while he could not get to sleep...

He came up with strategies and speeches, plans, sharp and cruel phrases, but he never managed to implement them.

It was what he should have done, the right choice to make, but when it came time to inflict the blow that would sever the umbilical cord, he had always found an excuse, an unassailable reason that made it impossible to sever all relations with the brat - who would discipline her, if not him? Who would make sure she returned to the walls after every scouting? -, a supervening and unforeseen circumstance that prevented him from going ahead with the implementation of the plan.

And his favorite excuse was her.

When he found her in front of him, when those golden eyes met his, there existed her and nothing but her. Suddenly, world and reason fell silent: their being soldiers, the mission, the giants, the heart already devoted and offered to a suicidal cause; everything outside of her lost importance.

Brief, lucid moments of madness, to which he gave himself over with guilt and remorse, aware that he was playing with fire but also that he could not help himself.

So, in that dark, damp little room, as Nanaba and Mike's footsteps and voices faded, he teased her in the hope of forcing her to flee.

He expected that, under attack as she was, she would turn red and lower her gaze, trying to flatten herself against the wall.

Certainly not that she would raise a look at him that was a little lucid from the alcohol, but unyielding and resolute. And: "Then why don't you teach me what it means to be a woman?"

So much for escape.

The captain petrified on the spot. As always, his expression betrayed nothing; his body, however, was shot through with a rush of adrenaline in response to yet another challenge from an insolent brat who, to be fair, at that moment looked very little like a brat, and no matter how much he pressed his arms against his chest in a last desperate attempt to maintain control, he could not contain the urge to stretch them out and finally grasp that girl whom the rational part of himself commanded him to consider untouchable, and the rest of him - all of him - was burning to touch.

In his head, he did so.

He imagined reaching out in her direction, nullifying all distance.

He imagined placing his hands on her forearms, because he would not allow her to escape, pushing her against the wall and gently leaning his body against hers.

He imagined feeling the chimes of her heart beating against his chest.

He imagined loosening the tail that tied her hair and letting the curly locks, soft as he remembered them, regain their freedom and tickle his neck.

He imagined bringing his face closer, feeling her hold her breath and forgetting to breathe in turn.

He imagined pressing a chaste kiss on her mouth, lining up the contours of their lips so as not to miss anything, to fully savor her taste of beer and happiness, not daring to do anything else because he had no intention of violating her any more than that in that dusty, damp place.

He imagined pulling away and looking long into her eyes, gold and steely irises, accomplices, communicating without the need for words.

And then he imagined taking her in his arms without further ceremony, carrying her to his room and granting her what she had asked of him: he would make her a woman.

Tearing her clothes off, one by one. Kissing her, everywhere, with light, voracious caresses of his insatiable lips: on her mouth, exploring every nook and cranny of it with his tongue, engaging in an unwinnable battle with her's; on every inch of her body, on her hair, her eyes, her breasts, the nudity she would offer him, brazen and impertinent as usual. Bask in the sensation of the contact between their bodies, so minute, her's, and yet able to subdue him completely; to lose his senses to the heat radiating from her skin against his own. Listening to her moan beneath him, watching the familiar face that, stripped of any hint of malice and defiance, contorted into a grimace of pleasure cause by the touch of his hands, contemplating the surrender of her who, half-closing her eyelids, gave herself up to him, biting her on the neck and belly, leaving his mark on her, teaching her something anatomically impossible. Penetrate her slowly, methodically, to lengthen the time of that longed-for and suffered conquest, first with his fingers, then with his tongue, and finally with all of himself.

The beginning of the end.

A victory that tasted like defeat.

But before he could enact even the first of the gestures he had imagined in such detail, Mizuki threw back her head and let out a thunderous laugh, shattering the fantasies that Levi's mind kept spawning unabated. "I thought it would be funny, but your expression right now is really priceless!" she finally managed to exhale amid the uncontrollable snickers that shook that untouchable body and which in his fantasy he had just violated in the worst way. "That'll teach you to always call me a brat!" Still giggling, the brat jerked away from the wall and hastily reached the door of the tiny room, which she pushed confidently outward; before she left, she turned her head slightly to shoot him a glance over her shoulder. "I may be a brat, but you really are too easy to tease, Captain. This way there's almost no fun. Well, now that I've got that little satisfaction out of the way, I'll say good night. Ah, one last thing: don't drink too much tea before bed. Doctor's advice."

She vanished just as she had appeared, in a puff - similar to the sudden vision, offered to the wayfarer who has just stepped onto the top of a hill, of the skeleton of a house clinging to the opposite side of the valley on a misty morning - leaving behind only the hint of a scent, the weight of her absence and a state of ill-concealed and all but unwelcome excitement in Levi.

The captain stood motionless for endless instants, his eyelids closed, savoring the images conjured up in him by that last impertinence and trying to regain control over his body and, more importantly, over his own mind. "You insolent brat," he murmured, and stretched out his arms because by now there was nothing he had to keep from grasping. "You won this time, but good thing you ran away."

He allowed himself a few more minutes of abandonment, losing himself in the fantasies of what might have happened if she had not escaped in that way; then he collected himself, left the small room and took the stairs to return to his quarters.

It was only when he closed the bedroom door behind him that Levi realized he had forgotten the box of tea on the shelf under the stairs.

"Damned brat," he repeated softly, lingering with his hand on the handle as if it were the wrist of an untouchable girl.

He said so, but did not return to retrieve the tea.

He imagined that, for that evening, other thoughts would sustain him through the nightmares and long waking hours.

.

Lavinia Williams's coal-black eyes - resembling two burning embers thrown into the middle of a pile of white snow - wandered for the umpteenth time over the garden crawling with festive people, throughout its entire expanse and without omitting even the most hidden of nooks and crannies, but in vain: no sign of Mizuki, who had been missing from the roll call for at least an hour.

In all likelihood, she was in the company of who she knew, crawling into some hole - clean and neat, no doubt, but a hole nonetheless, certainly not suitable for...

Lavinia shook her head.

No, this was not the way to go.

By now she had made the painful but unavoidable decision to take note of Mizuki's feelings and, as much as it might come in her way, not to stand in the way of them. Yet every time she discovered the two of them exchanging a few silent glances or an inscrutable smile, she could not help but be assailed by irritation.

Between accepting the situation and witnessing the exchange of secret pleasantries - nay, even worse, of observing a ludicrous surrogate of the pleasantries they would have liked to exchange - without getting caught up in disgust was a long way off.

Barely restraining a motion of annoyance, Lavinia returned to the table nicknamed by Eld the "veterans' table," now deserted by all its previous occupants except Commander Erwin Smith, who sat in solitude, with a glass in his hands and a half-empty bottle of liquor resting in front of him, his gaze lost in thought.

As soon as she took a seat in front of him, however, the man's attention immediately turned to her, as if he was waiting for her. "Lavinia."

"Commander. Do you know where Mizuki is?"

"No."

"Too bad. I was hoping so."

Erwin brought the glass to his mouth, furrowing his brow. "That girl has an amount of energy supply that would make a giant envious. I haven't seen her stand still in the same place for more than two seconds tonight, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that she danced in that absurd, scrappy way of hers all the way to the top of the walls. Why should I know where she is, pray tell?"

"Because I suppose you know where Captain Levi is."

"He's back in his room." A mocking smile appeared on the man's lips. "Alone."

Lavinia contracted her face into a grimace of disappointment, shook her head again, and blinked in the direction of the bottle. "Can I have some?"

"Please," Erwin replied, pushing the bottle in her direction. "I only have this one glass available, though."

"I'm not picky."

The man's eyes flashed. With a dry gesture, he finished the remaining liquor in one gulp and slid also the glass in the girl's direction. For a few minutes they both remained without speaking: Lavinia absentmindedly drinking the liquor, each sip of the strong liquid drawing adorable grimaces from her, and keeping her face pointed toward the building to her right; Erwin studying the girl's perfect, elegant profile with intertwined hands.

After their unexpected collaboration to trick Mizuki in November 848, Lavinia seemed to have thrown off the mask in his presence. When they found themselves working together, in fact, she divested herself of the guise of the shy and fragile damsel who found meaning for her own existence only in Mizuki's function, and transformed herself into the silent, icy and intuitive woman who so attracted him, hinting at a certain pragmatic tendency to make the optimal, even if most ruthless, decision in every situation. She was no longer pretending, although Erwin was still unsure of the correct interpretation to attribute to that change: did it mean that she felt comfortable, with him, or simply that she didn't care a damn about his opinion?

"You took it pretty well," observed the commander, determined to test her, breaking the silence.

Lavinia drank, and her face contracted, perhaps from the comment, perhaps from the boiling liquor running down her throat. "What else should I have done, in your opinion?"

"Aren't you going to ask me what I'm talking about?" With that answer, Erwin achieved the effect he hoped for: slowly, as if the gesture was costing her every remaining energy in her body, Lavinia turned her head in his direction. "I expected that you would try to intervene in some way," the man added.

She made a little smile, devoid of any trace of mirth. "I think you know as well as I do that after Stohess it would have been useless."

"I agree with you that something happened during our mission in the inner territories, but..."

"Oh, you can call it whatever you like or pretend to ignore it, but we both know very well what it is." Lavinia leaned in his direction and, lowering her voice, went on the attack. "That's why you always place Hanje's team and the captain's team at opposite poles of the formation lately, isn't it?"

Erwin followed as if mesmerized the circular moment of the girl's tapering finger as it ran along the rim of the glass, gently grazing even the spot where, moments before, the lips of both had rested. "As a commander, unfortunately, I cannot allow my soldiers' personal feelings to take precedence over military duties. And that's what you aim for, isn't it? Now you're not just refraining from interfering in their relationship. You are trying to helping it."

Lavinia tightened her lips imperceptibly, and a flash of annoyance passed through her gaze. She did not like the fact that Erwin had been watching her so scrupulously as to notice her scheme to encourage Mizuki into giving in to how she felt and behaving accordingly - such as, for example, wearing a dress and makeup at the party the captain would be attending - and the motive underlying Lavinia's obvious change of heart - namely, that by doing so, she hoped to provide her friend, outside the walls, with life insurance.

There was another secret, which Lavinia and Erwin shared: the theory about the presence of other ninjas inside the walls. When they had discussed this - concluding that it was more appropriate to keep it confidential with the other soldiers informed about the real identity of the four mysterious recruits - the commander asked Lavinia if she was really serious about not revealing anything even to Mizuki, whose membership in the Uchiha clan - at least according to Lavinia's intuition, which Erwin took at face value since he had insufficient elements to establish why being a member of that family constituted guilt and danger - made her the likely and specific intended target of anyone who had cut down trees along the formation's path. At that question, the girl had sighed, appearing for a moment younger and more helpless than she actually was; then she replied, "If I told her, commander, do you really think it would do any good? That is, that the news would cause her to pay more attention? The answer is no. Of what I would reveal to her, all that would stick in her mind is that these phantom enemies MIGHT be trying to harm me, Amado and Loki, certainly not that the likely target of the attack was her. That would only make her more reckless during expeditions, which is the one thing I would like to avoid."

Thus, they had kept the secret.

But Lavinia was smart, shrewd, and prescient. And she was trying to obviate her friend's state of ignorance in order to keep her alive by securing the cooperation - even if unconscious - of humanity's strongest soldier.

The two studied each other, tense, from one end of the table to the other, for a few more moments.

Then Lavinia clutched her shoulders, finished her liquor, and slid the glass in the commander's direction. "Captain Levi is the humanities' strongest soldier," she merely commented in a colorless tone.

You admit it, then, the hope that if they were to enter into a relationship, he would become her shield against the giants or the likes of you who perhaps prowl the walls and want to kill her, and he would protect her even if it meant going against orders and military hierarchy. But Levi would never do that. He is a soldier to the core. You don't know him, thought Erwin, pouring himself another glass and swallowing its contents in one gulp.

Despite his unwavering faith in his captain's loyalty, however, he always prepared the formation with due consideration for the intangible forces electrifying the air between Levi and Mizuki. He was too cautious of a man to leave such a detail to chance, and a fervent believer in the motto that prevention was better than cure.

The commander let a few more moments of silence pass, then cleared his throat and the glass passed back to the other side of the table. "Does Mizuki know about this?"

She, unperturbed, refilled it again. "Of course not."

"I didn't mean about your plan, but about you."

"About me?"

"Of the real you," Erwin clarified, winking with a nod in her direction. "Of the Lavinia Williams who sits in front of me, and relates to me daily."

"Ah, that," murmured Lavinia, in an almost bored tone of voice. "There are many things she is unaware of, of course. But I think that you, commander, have run into a misunderstanding. Mizuki knows me. She knows what I'm like: selfish, unscrupulous, concerned only about the people I deem important to me, and ready to manipulate others for my own purposes. She knows it perfectly well. You don't believe it?" she asked, noticing Erwin's furrowed brow.

"No, no. It's just that knowing Mizuki..."

"She accepts me for who I am, and that's all I need. I don't hide anything, neither from her nor from myself, commander. Unlike you."

"Unlike me?"

Lavinia pushed her glass back to Erwin's side, with a teasing and vaguely cruel smile on her fleshy lips. "You lie all the time, Erwin Smith. You lie to your subordinates and friends, embodying to perfection the role of the brave commander who leads humanity toward hope through sacrifice and abnegation. But your true nature is different. You are like me. There is something you want, and you are willing to do anything to get it. Do you really think others haven't noticed? Or that they will never notice? I have, and I've known you for much less time than they have." The girl's black eyes, glossy from the ingested alcohol, kept nailed on the man's figure, and her clear, limpid, unrelenting voice assaulted him without giving him any respite. "And the worst part is that from playing the part of the spotless and fearless knight, from telling the rest of the world this nauseating lie, you sometimes end up convincing even yourself that it's the truth. I'm not wrong, am I?"

A long, instant of stillness and quiet. Then Erwin placed both hands on the table. "No," he replied slowly, without looking away. "No, you're not wrong."

Lavinia drew back her torso, satisfied with the answer. "Mizuki loves me even though I am who I am. You too should trust your friends more, commander. And if they don't understand you, know that I, at the end of the day, don't mind working with you, even if you get in my way."

"Lavinia..."

But the girl, as if caught by a sudden intuition, lifted her head abruptly, and Erwin realized in an instant that he had become, for her, nothing more than a side element, a cloud floating lazily in the sky, destined to fade in comparison to the grand and all-encompassing brightness of the sun.

"I have to go," she said hastily, rising to her feet, and without addressing him even a parting nod, she hurried away toward the building.

Erwin was left alone again, lost in the superficial observation of the vociferous crowd of people gathered to celebrate the one hundred and third year of the foundation of the Survey Corps and, deeper down, engaged in trying to reorder his own swirling, squirming thoughts. With blood boiling in his veins, he analyzed and repeated, savoring them, one by one, Lavinia's scratchy words. He wished that she had stayed, that she had listened to what he was about to reveal to her - a truth he had never shared with anyone before - and that, even after such a confession, she would repeat again that she did not dislike Erwin ... no, perhaps she had not said exactly that, but it mattered little.

She had figured him out perfectly; and she had said that they shared the same secret, the same sin, the same selfishness. Did that mean she could understand and accept him?

Perhaps; but fate had not given him the time to ascertain that.

There was something Levi often said. Timing can sometimes be a big bastard.

Erwin Smith smiled and poured himself another glass of liquor. "Timing, yes," he murmured, continuing to scan the crowd and his thoughts. "Or Mizuki."

.

Lavinia, unaware of or perhaps indifferent toward the upset she had just triggered in the commander, quickly headed for the building, and followed the figurine she had seen running like lightning out of the lobby. She found Mizuki in the back garden, shrouded in an unnatural quiet compared to the roaring disorder on the opposite side; the girl, leaning against the wall, held both hands raised to cover her face.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," Lavina reprimanded her, approaching with a plush step, too tired and irritated, as well as groggy from alcohol, to hide her disappointment. "I guess you snuck off somewhere with the captain."

"I didn't sneak off with him!"

"Then where were you?"

"..."

"Since that's the case, you could have listened to me and worn the dress I lent you instead of being so stubborn."

"..."

Faced with that silence, with the labored breathing, with the frantic running more akin to an escape, with the hands hiding her face, Lavinia grasped the truth in a flash. "Mizuki, what happened?"

"I didn't know what to do anymore... the captain kept acting strange, and we were alone... I didn't... I couldn't control myself."

"Are you drunk?"

"Yes..."

"Strange, I didn't see you drink so much..."

"I'm not drunk from alcohol..."

There was no need for Mizuki to specify the intake of what - or rather whom - had thrown her into that state of confusion. Lavinia knew all too well the effect that the proximity of certain people was capable of producing on the most rational brain, even if equipped with firm inhibitory brakes.

"I said something I shouldn't have. I mean, that's the way things went. The captain was acting weird, and I freaked out. He kept calling me a brat, and then... then he made that comment about there being no point in me smearing my face. I don't know why, but it made me angry... For a moment it was as if someone had gotten the upper hand on me, I wanted to get back at him and prove him wrong, so I said something I shouldn't have, and when I came to my senses I found myself with the captain in front of me, staring at me... staring at me so intensely. I had to run away, you know? I couldn't stay there. I laughed it off, and I ran away." Mizuki spoke in a choked tone of voice, as if she had some sharp object stuck in her throat and had to struggle to pronounce each syllable, and she slowly lowered her hands, offering Lavinia the spectacle of burning cheeks and a slightly feverish gaze, in which elated excitement and deep confusion mingled. "Lav... I can't take it anymore... what can I do?"

Seeing her in such a state, and because of someone else, caused a twinge of pain and irritation in her chest, but Lavinia merely sighed and wrapped her friend in her arms. "What should you do, besides stop acting like a child?"

"I can't, Lav!" Mizuki wriggled out of her grip and peered at her with feverish eyes. "I can't, and I won't!"

This time, the raven-haired girl made no attempt to hide her annoyance. "If you're talking about that stupid promise you've gotten caught up in, Petra will get over it. If he doesn't want her, he doesn't want her."

"Oh, yeah. There's also Petra..." murmured Mizuki, lowering her head. "Petra... Right, right."

Damn you, Captain Levi. Look what you've done to her, Lavinia thought furiously. "Yeah, but Petra is a solvable problem."

"Lav, it's not just that." Mizuki shook her head firmly. "It's not just Petra."

"What then?"

"I don't want... I don't want this," she said, pointing to her chest - the left side, where her heart was beating - with one finger, unable to give voice to what was stirring inside.

"It's not something you can decide," replied Lavinia, stroking her head. And at least you, who are fortunate enough to be requited, should take advantage of it, she added bitterly to herself.

"Yes, but Lav... one day we will leave this place," murmured Mizuki, her face sunk into her friend's welcoming embrace. "We don't belong here," and here she imperceptibly clutched the sleeve of Lavinia's dress, like a shipwrecked man clinging with all his might to a floating plank of wood. "We'll go home someday and leave this bad memory behind us. No, that's unfair." Mizuki shook her head firmly, and one of the strands of hair escaped the grip of her tail, falling back onto her forehead. "There were also good moments... funny moments, profound moments, important moments, moments..." Here she paused, restraining herself from adding a very inopportune adjective. "But we're leaving anyway, and we're never coming back. Do you understand, now, why I don't know what to do?"

First, though, you have to get home alive. The giants are quite a problem, but so are the ones who placed logs in the path of the Finnian team... No, I need Captain Levi.

Lavinia gently brushed the lock from her face, settling it behind her ear. "I don't understand, but let's call it a day for now."

Mizuki, on hearing the gentleness of the tone, raised a pair of shining eyes on her. "You don't hate me, do you?"

"What absurd questions..."

"Good thing. I don't know what I would do if you abandoned me..." The girl returned to nestle her head in the crook of Lavinia's shoulder. "Next weekend let's go out just you and me, a girls' night out like we haven't had in a while, and I'll wear the dress you lent me. I promise."

"It won't do any good for that night..." murmured Lavinia in a choked voice, but even as she uttered those words, she realized that it was a lie, and that she would look forward to the day of their date.

With an imperceptible gesture, she tightened her grip on Mizuki's shoulders; perhaps Levi would eventually have her, but as long as long as she could, she would be the one to hold her in her arms.