Introduction

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"Hey, (Y/n)!" A familiar voice called to me. I turn my head and smile slightly at Armin.
"Hey, Armin. How are you?" I ask him, pausing to let him catch up to me.
He smiles at me, and grips his book bag in his small hands.
"I'm fine, thanks for asking. How are you?" My best friend grins at me, looking like a tiny ray of sunshine, and I can't help but smile back at him, his sunniness was contagious.

"I'm good, thanks." I lie easily, feeling the gaping maw of shame and frustration ease open inside me, and I struggle to pretend it isn't there.
"Eren's sick today and Mikasa stayed back to help him out," he says conspiratorially, stage whispering it to me, "Classic Mikasa. She got mad at him because she's sure he got sick when he went out for a jog in the rain." He laughs openly now, and readjusts his backpack.
I shake my head, snorting with him, just figures that idiot would do that.

"You did the homework too, right? What did you get for question three?" I change the subject, and he's about to answer when the bell rings, and I groan.
"Never mind. See you later, Armin." I wave and turn reluctantly, heading to English class.
The first thing I notice when I'm inside is that the windows are displaying the utterly miserable day it is outside, and I can feel my emotions calm a bit, like the depressing rain was a soothing balm to my depressing self.
The second thing I notice is enough to make me wonder if maybe we had a new student who looked exactly like someone else. Someone who never really came to classes from what I'd heard and had certainly never been to this one before.
Levi Ackerman.
He's the only kid here who doesn't really talk to anyone. Well, not only, but certainly one of them.

His eyes unnerve me, but nothing else about him does. His eyes are grey, metallic and sharp, things I know I've stared at far too often whether he noticed or not.
Every time our eyes meet, I feel like he sees right through my sleeves and bandages, to the cuts underneath.
His eyes lock onto mine like he knew I was staring, and when I slowly tread to my seat, I look away, and stare at my desk like the doodled on and scrubbed desk is at all interesting. Even though I'm trying not to I still pay too much attention to him as I sit, facing away from him. He's in the back of the class, where it becomes much more obvious this is twelfth grade English since there's only about 11 students. He's wearing mostly black and grey, his hood up, and his fingers were restless and spinning a pen between them with such ease it almost looks like he wasn't aware of it.
I'm only one row away from him, his seat diagonally back from mine, and I feel tense, like the air is thick and choking me, and I don't say anything.

And neither does he.

He keeps his distance, yet he's always there. I see him around, yet we've never spoken.
Levi Ackerman.
His eyes are sharp, they see everything, even the secrets I would kill to hide.
But he sees them so easily, when no one else does. Or maybe he doesn't since he doesn't have X-ray vision and I'm just too poetic for my own good. But I have a feeling I already know which of those two options is more correct, and it unsettled me deeply.
I want to talk to him, but I don't know how, I feel like we could be good friends, but there's something about him-a wall of emotion-that keeps everyone away, like his blasé pretense is something he uses to keep people away, at arms length.

It doesn't take long for the class to fill and conversations to strike up.
But I can feel his eyes stay attached to my back through it all. My heart is racing but I'm sure he already knows that, and a handful of minutes enter the class before our teacher does.
Yet his eyes don't move from me.

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