Haze [AOT Female Reader Insert]

Chapter 1: Just A Child

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The following day, after Magath made his sudden appearance at the school, he disappeared. Of course, you knew he wouldn't have stayed long, but you didn't think he would have left so quickly. But he seemed to have finished his observation, so your class must not have had enough to be directly scouted.

"You think I got a bad score on that test?"

Ded looked up from scribbling down on his paper pad, looking at you forlorn up at the sky.

He shrugged, "Maybe. You have moped about it for the last few hours since we've been here."

You groaned, shoving a hand to your face. "It's embarrassing! I know I'm not the brightest, but why was I the last to turn it in!"

Ded eyed you warily as you gave a disgruntled noise and slumped over your drawn-up knees. "At this rate, I should stop coming to school and put more work into the shop."

"You've said you find it annoying to work there," he mumbled.

You threw him a tired look, "Yeah because we have lots of work now. My hands are killing me. It's just been nonstop work now. My mother's even decided to give me a fair share of the grunt work to finish them all in time. She's never let me handle so many orders in my life."

You rubbed at your raw hands, feeling them sting if you pressed a little too hard. It had been challenging to hold a pencil now, and Ded, with his saint-like heart, had seen you struggle to keep writing notes in class. He approached you when you were allowed a recess to rewrite them, seeing as you had sloppily jotted down whatever you could.

Ded's gaze went from you back to the notes he was writing for you, "It must be difficult. At least with my family's shop, we can afford extra help. So, all I've been doing is basic prep for the others."

"Lucky," you sighed.

He continued to write down on your notes, quietly mumbling, "You only have to endure a little longer. Your family will finish those orders and go back to normal."

You mulled over his words, finding it wasn't enough to soothe your worries. "So long as we don't have to fight more than one war at a time."

There was a brief silence between you, with the end of Ded's pencil and the quiet chirping of birds here at the back of the schoolhouse filling it. You shifted your attention away from the cloud-filled sky to Ded, seeing how focused he was on fixing your errors.

"Still no new pair of glasses, huh," you muttered to yourself, but the boy sitting next to you heard it enough to respond.

"Once we finish orders," he began, narrowing his eyes slightly, "I can probably ask about it. Until then, there's not much need for me to get new ones soon."

You grunted, poking the side of his head while he tried his best to ignore you, "But how are you going to get around? What if someone is following you from far away, and you won't even know it until they come up behind you and clobber you on the back of your head?"

He paused to give you a deadpan stare.

"Now you're being ridiculous."

"No, I'm not."

He sighed loudly, "Well, I can do nothing about it. I guess I just have to deal with it if it happens."

You hummed. "Sure, but I'm the one who's going to have to take care of you from now on then. You can't run away if you don't have your glasses to see. And we both know you're too much of a pacifist to fight back."