Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The trouble started with a poster.

It went up overnight, nailed to the board outside the market square, and by the time Eren and Armin walked past it the next morning, half the district had already gathered to squint at it like it was a declaration of war.

GARRISON REGIMENT — SHIGANSHINA DISTRICT

YOUTH TRAINING PREVIEW DAY

ALL CHILDREN AGES 8–12 WELCOME

"A preview day," Armin read aloud, with the tone of a boy already regretting his own curiosity. "For training. Voluntarily."

"It’s not real training," Eren said. "It’s just — obstacle courses. Rope climbing. That sort of thing. They do it every few years to drum up recruits early."

"You say that like it’s reassuring."

"It’s not supposed to be reassuring, it’s supposed to be fun."

"Nothing with the word ’Garrison’ on it has ever been fun, Eren, that is a documented fact."

Mikasa, arriving behind them with a loaf of bread balanced against her hip, read the poster once, silently, and then looked at Eren with an expression he recognized immediately and did not love.

"We’re going," she said. Not a question.

"I didn’t say I wanted to—"

"You’ve been sneaking off to practice footwork behind the warehouse for two months. I’ve seen you." She said this with the same flat, undeniable certainty she used for everything, which was somehow worse than if she’d been smug about it. "You want to go."

Eren opened his mouth to argue and discovered, with some annoyance, that he didn’t actually have a rebuttal.

"...Fine. But we’re not signing up for anything real. Preview only."

"Of course," Mikasa said, in a tone that promised absolutely nothing.

The training field on preview day looked like chaos wearing a uniform.

Dozens of kids milled around ropes, balance beams, and a horrifyingly tall climbing wall, while a handful of visibly exhausted Garrison soldiers tried to maintain some illusion of order. Hannes, to Eren’s genuine delight, had been roped into supervising — a fact he discovered only when he spotted the man standing at the base of the climbing wall looking like every decision in his life had led him to this exact, regrettable moment.

"You," Hannes said, spotting Eren, "are not allowed to cause trouble today."

"I never cause trouble."

"You caused a duck-related international incident three weeks ago."

"That was entirely your fault."

"It was apple-related, and I have chosen to move past it." Hannes rubbed his temple like this conversation was aging him in real time. "Just — climb the wall. Don’t set anything on fire. Low bar. You can clear it."

"Low bar. Got it."

Armin, examining the climbing wall from a safe distance with the expression of a man assessing his own mortality, made a small, unhappy noise. "It’s very tall."

"It’s not that tall."

"It is exactly that tall, Eren, I can see it, my eyes work."

"You’ll be fine. Just don’t look down."

"That is the single most unhelpful advice anyone has ever given a person about to climb something."

Mikasa, already three feet up the wall before either of them had finished arguing, called down without even glancing back. "Are you two coming, or debating philosophy?"

"We’re strategizing!"

"You’re stalling."

"Same thing, different name."

Armin’s climb was, charitably, a disaster.

He made it about halfway before his arms gave out with the dramatic suddenness of a man who had clearly never done a single pull-up in his life, and he ended up dangling from a handhold, legs kicking uselessly at the wall like a beetle flipped onto its back.

"Eren."

"I see you."

"Eren, I am going to die."

"You’re four feet off the ground."

"That’s still a height."

Below, Hannes had drifted over, arms crossed, watching the unfolding catastrophe with the weary patience of a man who’d clearly seen worse. "Just let go, kid. There’s a mat."

"I don’t trust the mat."

"The mat has never once failed anyone."

"It only takes once, Hannes!"

Eren, laughing too hard to be much practical help, finally climbed up beside him and physically guided Armin’s foot to the next hold, one at a time, narrating the process like a man defusing a bomb.

"Left foot. There. Now just — no, don’t look down, I said don’t—"

"I looked down."

"Why would you—"

"You told me not to, which means my brain immediately needed to know why!"

"That’s not how instructions work!"

By the time they both reached the top — Armin significantly paler, Eren significantly more amused than the situation probably warranted — Mikasa was already sitting there, entirely unbothered, watching the whole ordeal with the specific patience of someone who had finished ten minutes ago and used the extra time to enjoy the view.

"You two are the worst climbing partners I’ve ever had," she said.

"You’ve had other climbing partners?"

"No. That’s how bad you two are. You’ve set the bar and it’s underground."

"Rude," Eren said, "and also fair."

The rope course went marginally better, mostly because it required significantly less upper body strength and significantly more not-falling-over, an area where Armin’s caution actually served him well for once. Eren cleared it easily — a fact he tried very hard not to attribute to two months of reflex draws stacking quietly in the background — and found himself at the finish line before most of the other kids had made it halfway.

A Garrison instructor, clipboard in hand, watched him finish with open surprise. "That’s a good time. Really good, for your age."

"Just practice," Eren said, which was at least half true.

"You should think about signing the early interest list. We don’t see reflexes like that in kids your age very often."

Eren caught Mikasa’s eye across the field. She wasn’t looking at the instructor. She was looking at him, and there was something careful in her expression — not suspicion exactly, but the particular attentiveness of someone quietly adding one more line to a list she’d been keeping for a while.

"I’ll think about it," Eren told the instructor, which was true in the sense that he thought about very little else these days.

They walked home as the sun went low, Armin still describing the climbing wall as "a structure built with clear malicious intent" to anyone who’d listen, which by this point was only the two of them and one uninterested stray cat.

"You did well today," Mikasa said, falling into step beside Eren once Armin had peeled off toward his own house, still muttering about height-based betrayal.

"So did you. You beat everyone by half a minute."

"I had motivation."

"What motivation?"

"Making sure you didn’t do something reckless and fall off a wall trying to show off."

"I wasn’t showing off."

"You climbed the last four feet with one hand because Armin dared you to."

"...That’s different."

"It’s not."

He laughed, and she almost smiled, and for a few steps neither of them said anything else, comfortable in the kind of silence that didn’t need filling.

Then, quietly, without the teasing edge she usually kept close to hand: "The instructor was right, you know. About your reflexes."

His stomach did a small, uncomfortable drop. "It’s not that unusual."

"It is a little." She wasn’t looking at him now, eyes on the road ahead, voice carefully even. "I’ve been watching you train behind the warehouse. You’re not just fast. You’re fast in ways that look like you’ve done it before. Like your body already knows something your mouth hasn’t caught up to explaining."

He didn’t answer right away. There wasn’t a version of the truth small enough to hand her without the rest spilling out behind it.

"Someday," he said finally, "I’ll tell you. All of it. I promise."

She nodded, slow, like she was filing the promise away next to everything else on her list — not doubting it, just holding it, the way she held everything he gave her.

"I’ll be here when you do."

The wristband on his wrist caught the last gold light of the evening, worn soft now from months of use, and Eren thought, not for the first time, that he didn’t deserve how much trust she kept handing him without asking for anything back.

One hundred and sixty-five days.

The number kept shrinking. For the first time in a long while, it didn’t feel like it was shrinking alone.

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