Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

One hundred and eighty days left. Half a year. For everyone else in Shiganshina, six months was nothing — a season, gone before you noticed it passing. For Eren, it felt like someone had started a countdown only he could hear.

The weather turned overnight. Dark clouds rolled in before dawn, and by mid-morning the rain hadn’t let up once. Most people stayed indoors. Even the usually busy street outside the Yeager house had gone quiet, save for the water running off the eaves in uneven little waterfalls.

"Eren." Carla set a covered basket on the table without looking up from it. "Take this to Armin. He’s caught a cold."

"In this?" He nodded at the window, where the rain was coming down almost sideways.

"That’s rather the point of the basket."

He was already reaching for his coat when a second voice came from the doorway.

"I’ll come too."

Of course she would. Carla didn’t even turn around, but Eren caught the corner of her smile before she hid it in the basket.

They shared one umbrella, which meant walking close enough that their shoulders kept bumping with every gust. The streets had gone silver-gray, puddles holding pieces of the clouded sky. For a while neither of them said anything — there was something almost nice about the quiet, the rain drumming overhead, the rest of the world shut indoors.

Then Mikasa said his name like she’d been building up to it.

"Eren."

"Hm?"

"Are you worried?"

His grip on the umbrella handle tightened, just slightly, just enough that she probably noticed. She noticed everything.

"Worried about what?"

"...Something." She kept her eyes forward, watching the rain instead of him. "You stare at the wall a lot. More than you used to."

He didn’t answer right away. He was trying to decide how much of the truth would sound like a reasonable amount of truth.

"A little," he said finally.

It wasn’t a lie. It also wasn’t close to everything, and from the way her jaw shifted, he thought she knew that too — and had decided, for now, to let it go. She stepped half an inch closer under the umbrella. Not because the rain had gotten in. She didn’t say why, and he didn’t ask.

Armin opened the door wrapped in two blankets like a poorly-assembled burrito, nose red, eyes watery.

"You look terrible," Eren said.

"Thank you. I feel wonderful." Armin’s voice came out thick and miserable, which rather undercut the sarcasm.

Mikasa pushed past him into the house before he could protest. "You should be resting."

"I am resting."

"You were reading."

"Reading is restful."

"Not the way you do it." She nodded at the tower of books stacked by his chair. "You’ve been marking pages. That’s studying with extra steps."

Armin opened his mouth, found no argument, and settled for a wounded expression instead. Eren laughed, and even Armin cracked a smile around his stuffed-up scowl.

Carla’s soup helped — or at least Armin claimed it did, though Eren suspected he’d have said the same thing about swamp water if Carla had made it. By the time they stood to leave, the rain outside had somehow gotten heavier.

"Come back tomorrow," Armin called after them, voice trailing into a cough.

"If you’re actually better."

"I will be."

"You said that yesterday."

"This time I really mean it."

"You said that too."

Armin shut the door before he had to think of a comeback, which Eren counted as a win.

The walk home was slower, fought step by step against wind that kept trying to fold the umbrella inside out. At one gust stronger than the rest, Eren felt the handle nearly wrench free of his grip — and then Mikasa’s hand was there, closed around his sleeve, before he’d even finished the thought I’m about to lose this.

"I’ve got it," he said.

She didn’t answer. When the wind dropped, her hand was still there. It took her a beat too long to notice.

"Sorry." She let go like the fabric had gone hot under her fingers.

"You don’t have to apologize every time you touch me, you know." He kept his eyes on the umbrella, mostly so he’d have somewhere to look that wasn’t her face. "At this rate I’m going to start doing it on purpose just to see what you say."

That surprised a small laugh out of her — quick, almost startled, gone as fast as it came. "Don’t."

"No promises."

Neither of them closed the gap the wind had opened between them. Neither of them widened it, either.

Halfway home the rain turned vicious enough that they gave up and ducked under a wide tree, its branches leaking fat, slow drops onto their shoulders anyway. Not much shelter, but better than none.

"We should wait it out," Eren said.

She nodded, and for a while there was nothing but the sound of water — on leaves, on stone, on the hood of her coat.

Then she reached into her pocket. "I forgot to give you this."

She held out something wrapped in cloth like it might bite her. Eren unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a small wooden bird, wings spread wide, carved with a patience that showed in every uneven line.

"You made this?"

"It isn’t very good." She was already reaching to take it back, like she regretted showing him.

He held it out of reach. "It’s amazing."

"The wings aren’t even."

"That’s what makes it look like it’s actually flying instead of just sitting there."

She studied him like she was trying to decide whether he meant that or was just being kind, and hadn’t fully settled on an answer. "You always say things like that."

"Because they’re usually true." He tucked the bird into his coat pocket, right next to the Wings of Freedom charm she’d fixed for him days ago. "I’m keeping it. Fair warning — I’m keeping everything you give me from now on. You should plan accordingly."

"...That’s a lot of pressure to put on woodworking."

"You’ll manage."

The smile she gave him then wasn’t the polite one she used on strangers. It was smaller, and it was only for him, and he pretended not to notice how long it stayed.

When the rain eased to something walkable, the sun broke weakly through the clouds, turning the wet street to gold. By the time they reached the house, Carla was already at the door — she must have been watching for them.

She didn’t say anything about the mud tracked up to their knees, or the umbrella that had clearly lost a fight with the wind. She just looked at the two of them standing there, soaked and grinning at some private joke neither explained, and something in her expression went soft in a way she didn’t try to hide.

"You’re both hopeless," she said, which meant something closer to I’m glad, and ushered them inside before either could argue.

That night, Eren sat alone in the warehouse with a lamp turned low. The stockpile had grown steadily for weeks — food that wouldn’t spoil quickly, medicine wrapped and labeled, tools, blankets, a hand-drawn map with three different escape routes marked in his own cramped handwriting. On paper, it looked like enough. It never felt like enough.

Six months.

He turned the bird carving over in his hands, tracing the uneven wing with his thumb. It should have been a small thing. It wasn’t.

Could he actually save her this time. Could he actually change anything, or was he just delaying the same ending by a few more months of pretending.

He caught the thought halfway and made himself stop.

Doubt was a luxury. He didn’t get to have it — not with Carla asleep upstairs, not with Mikasa’s carving sitting warm in his palm, not with Armin coughing through a cold he didn’t know was the least of what was coming. Too many people were standing on the other side of his failure.

He stood and looked out through the gap in the warehouse boards. Wall Maria sat where it always sat, vast and silent, giving nothing away.

"Six months," he said quietly, like saying it out loud made it more real, or less impossible. Maybe both.

This time, he told himself. This time he’d be ready — whatever it cost, whatever it took.

He just had to be right about that.

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