Mask-An Attack on Titan Fan Fiction

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I slid the letter out of my pocket as I descended, and as I was preoccupied, my shoulder slammed into another person on the staircase.

"Oh, hello, Ilsa," a cheerful voice said, "We have got to stop meeting in stairways like this!"

"Hello, Hanji," I said, rubbing my shoulder, "Sorry. Are you okay?"

The scientist laughed, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "I'm fine. Where are you off to?"

"Breakfast," I replied, my stomach rumbling. My cramps were returning, grating at my stomach in order to monopolize my attention.

"Good, good," Hanji said, her face buried inside of a book she'd been reading.

She headed to the upper floors, and I moved to the lower ones.

As I stood in line for my food, I scanned the dining hall. There weren't very many people up yet, just a few bleary-eyed soldiers sitting at tables. The only person who seemed to be truly awake was Armin, who sat at a table near the back of the room, engrossed in a book.

I joined him as usual and grimaced as I jiggled the gooey oatmeal on my spoon. Armin looked up.

"Good morning," he said, setting down his book.

"'Morning," I gagged through a mouthful of oatmeal, "I can never get used to how gross this stuff is." I gestured at the bowl of food.

Armin smiled. "It's not that bad, in my opinion. I've had worse."

I couldn't imagine eating something worse than the slop in front of me. "Really?"

"Yeah," he said, "I lived in Shiganshina for most of my life, and later I lived off of the rations for refugees after the Fall of Maria. The military has pretty good food compared to what I've lived off of for a majority of my life."

"I forgot that you were from Shiganshina," I said, "That was, what, six years ago?"

"Five," Armin corrected. I could see his fingers inching closer to the book.

"Sorry," I said, "You probably don't want to talk about it."

"No," he answered, "It's not easy to talk about what happened that day. It still feels like yesterday."

"Understandably."

Armin smiled softly. The tips of his fingers were brushing the cover of the book now.

"Am I disturbing you?" I asked, "I can go sit somewhere else if you-"

His hands shot away from the book. "No, no!" he assured me, "Not at all. Mikasa says I should talk to people more anyway."

"Mikasa isn't your mom," I told him, "You don't have to do everything-"

"But I feel like I do," he cut in, "Eren never listens to her, so I feel like I should sometimes."

"Alright," I relented, "But you don't have to always listen to her, okay?". I took another bite of the oatmeal, telling myself that it wasn't as bad as I had thought.

"Fine," Armin agreed.

We sat in amiable silence for a while, with Armin skimming the pages in his book and me polishing off the oatmeal as quickly as I could.

Jean joined us at the table.

"Morning," he said, grimacing at the oatmeal in his bowl.

"Hey," I said.

Armin looked up, saw that Jean was there, and put down his book eagerly.

"This is perfect," he said, "I don't have to talk to either of you separately. We can all just talk here."