crush culture | jean kirstein

chapter fourteen

Your house is located beside a railroad. Looking after it as the station master and signalman has been your father's job ever since the both of you moved to Trost, so when he isn't watching mid-20th century TV shows in the living room, he's out and about doing his own thing at the station.

On some days, you get to help him out as the signalman. It's a pretty fun job, just sitting inside the signal box to control the movements of passing trains while you do your homework on the weekends, but on most days, you get to do much more enjoyable things, like playing a game of table tennis with Jean in your awfully old and unused basement.

It's a miracle that he manages to fit a ping-pong table in the back of his truck and through the front door of your house. You dumbly stare at him as he struggles to push the table in the direction of your basement, his hissing and groaning completely going over your head, before he finally snaps and commands you to help him.

He also glares at you, which is enough to get you up and moving to lend him a hand. With gritted teeth, you hold the underside of the table and slowly descend the stairs to your basement. You guide him to the center of the room and cautiously lay the table on the floor.

You spend the next ten minutes setting things up. Jean tosses you a netted bag of ping-pong balls and slides two rackets on the table. You catch the bag before it falls to the ground.

"This is giving me party flashbacks," you say with contempt as you hold the bag to your chest. The smell of beer fills your nose for a hot second, and you actually have to pinch it to forget the smell as you cringe.

Jean chuckles. "You said you wanted to play table tennis, so here we are. Cool basement by the way."

"Thanks. I decorated it myself," you reply with the same amount of sarcasm as you hide a small grin. He starts to roam around like he's in the Louvre Museum and seeing the Mona Lisa though, so maybe the sarcasm isn't mutual at all. "You're touching the walls like they're treasure. Are you okay?"

"I'm just wondering what your life is like here in Trost," he says. He keeps his eyes on his fingers that are running through a crack on the wall. "You said you moved here when you were young. Why?"

"It's a long story."

"How long?"

"Let's just start the game and maybe I'll tell you some of it."

He nods. He takes his fingers off the wall and walks over to his side of the table. Then, he grabs a racket as you pick up a ping-pong ball from the netted bag that you drop on the ground.

Conversation is like ping-pong. Not the competitive table tennis sport that professional athletes play, but the old classic ping-pong that people bond over as a hobby. You grab a ball and hit it, and whoever is at the other end of the table hits it back with the same energy.

Same energy and same strokes. All to keep the ball to travel back and forth and all to continue the conversation.

It's the perfect talking practice for a clueless boy like Jean. After meeting Mikasa at the library more than a week ago, determination drives the both of you to start planning for a potential date. He hasn't asked her out yet, but your friend is an impatient man baby who won't stop whining, so you eventually start prepping him.

Your preparations become twice as extreme because of this one conversation.

Mikasa🧣

I'm working on a pair project
due in a few weeks. Sorry for
replying late.

Totally okay with me. All the
homework just keep coming