Makes Me Feel Like I'm Falling Down

★Bonus Chapter★

Original Authors Note: [I think episode 21 has left everyone in pain, so I wrote this in a rush to try to make you all feel a bit better. I hope it helps a bit. I'm sorry it's not the next part of the story. I'm also sorry because the only card game I know how to play is carioca, and since I wanted to give this to you soon I didn't have time to research any other games, so I made everything pretty ambiguous.]

"Hanji, what are they doing?" Eren asked on his second night at headquarters.

Hanji raised her eyes from the book she'd been reading and looked at the spot Eren was pointing at, where a group of soldiers were gathered around a table. All of them wore serious expressions on their faces, and glared at anyone who distracted them. When Hanji looked at their hands, the reason became obvious.

"They're playing cards," she said. "You've never seen anyone play cards before?"

"I've seen the guards at home, but they never look so serious. They're always laughing, or yelling at each other. Are they going to start yelling?"

"Maybe one of them will, if they lose," Hanji said, shrugging. "But I doubt it, they're not betting anything."

"Why not?" Eren climbed to the seat in front of her and leaned forward. Hanji accepted her reading minutes were over and closed the book.

"I'm not sure. Sometimes they play without betting anything, and today seems to be one of those days."

"What do they bet?"

"Food, or useless things. If they're going on a mission the next day, they bet money."

"What kind of things?"

"Colorful pebbles, nails, anything they find in their pockets, usually."

Eren looked at the soldiers playing, then back at Hanji, and frowned, pensive. When Hanji thought he wasn't going to say anything and started opening her book, he quickly raised his head to look at her with wide eyes and an excited smile.

"Hanji, have you ever played?"

"Yes... a couple of times," Hanji said slowly, wondering what was going through his head.

"Can you teach me how to play?"

"Do you want to play against them?"

"It looks fun!"

He stared at her without blinking, and Hanji looked at the players again. Well, she guessed she could teach him the most basic rules and hope the others would go easy on him.

Eren was a terrible player. The problem with being five years old was that he could only get the hang of the most basic rules, and he had no concept of planning his plays. There was also the fact that his hand was too small to hold all the cards without problem, and they kept falling down when he tried. And the most important part was that you could practically read which cards he had on his expressions. Cards he thought were good? A huge smile. Cards he thought were bad? A frown. Cards he didn't know what to do with? Blink a couple of times before settling into either a grin or a frown, depending of what he believed the cards could mean.

He didn't listen to Hanji and, the next night, he strode to the soldiers who were playing and asked to join. Hanji gave them an apologetic look when they directed their eyes at her, silently asking for an explanation.

Eren sat down (well, he actually kneeled on the chair, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to see the table too clearly) and grinned as they gave him his cards. Then he turned them over and frowned, and the rest of the players looked at Hanji slightly exasperated. She simply gave them the apologetic look again and dragged a chair to watch the game.

It was beautifully chaotic, seeing hardened soldiers do their best to play in a way that wouldn't crush the spirit of a little boy. They avoided doing anything important and, all in all, it would have been the most boring game in history if it hadn't been for the fact that she knew how much care and planning went into each horribly bad hand that was shown at the end of each round. Hanji was sure that many of those hands were impossible to get without cheating.

And still Eren didn't win.

"What exactly are they doing?" asked a voice at Hanji's side that she immediately recognized as Levi's. No one else could sound so completely bored while at the same time sounding shocked.

"Playing cards."

"That's not a card game. That's mental torture disguised as a brat. They're practically shitting their pants out of fear of winning."

"They don't want to hurt his feelings," Hanji said, lowering her voice to a murmur.

"He won't get traumatized if he loses a card game he shouldn't be playing in the first place. How did he learn how to play?"

"I taught him."

"You're a shitty teacher. He's lost so many times you should put him out of his misery and send him to bed."

"I've tried, but he keeps playing. I think he wants to win."

"Maybe they should just beat him so he won't want to keep playing."

"Then why don't you do it?" Hanji said, matter-of-factly.

Levi seemed to consider the question, then he sat at the table and asked for cards.

At the end of the round, it was Eren against Levi. The others had retired after seeing that Levi had no intentions of playing nice, and they were getting ready to comfort Eren after he lost. One of them had gone to get a guitar.

Eren looked hopeless, and he couldn't seem to focus on one thing, his eyes going from his cards, to the deck on top of the table, to Levi's face. Eventually, he accepted that it was over for him, and got ready to show his cards.

"I thought those cards were useless together!" Eren said later, as he got into bed. "Why didn't you tell me that that was the strongest hand? I thought I was losing!"

In the lower bunk, Hanji was still laughing at Levi's shocked face when he realized that, despite him having one of the best hands possible, Eren had managed to beat him out of sheer ignorance about what he'd been doing.

The next day, a soldier gave Eren the deck of cards he'd played with last night, for good luck, and Levi spent the entire morning sulking. Hanji doubted he'd be playing cards anytime soon.