Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

Three days after the boar, nobody had said anything about the forest out loud.

That didn’t mean nothing had changed.

It was in small things. The way Mikasa sat a little closer than she used to, without either of them commenting on the extra inch of space she’d stopped leaving. The way Eren caught himself watching her hands instead of her face sometimes, remembering the exact moment her fingers had covered his and not quite recovering from it. The way Armin, insufferably, kept finding reasons to leave the room "to give you two a minute," despite nobody having asked for one.

"I didn’t ask for a minute," Eren said, for the third time that week, watching Armin backtrack out of the kitchen with a suspicious excuse about checking on a book he’d left outside, which made no sense, because books did not go outside on their own.

"You didn’t have to ask," Armin called back. "Some of us can just tell."

"There’s nothing to tell!"

"That’s an interesting thing to be defensive about, if there’s nothing to tell."

Mikasa, sitting at the table peeling potatoes with a focus that had lately taken on the specific quality of someone very deliberately not looking up, said nothing at all, which Eren had started to recognize as its own kind of answer.

Carla noticed too, because Carla noticed everything, and unlike Armin she had the good sense not to say it directly — she just started finding reasons for the two of them to run errands together. Fetch water together. Walk to the Ackerman — to Mikasa’s — old family friend’s shop together, an increasingly transparent pattern that Eren was fairly sure Hannes had started taking bets on.

"Your mother," Mikasa observed, on the fourth such errand in a week, "is not being subtle."

"She’s never been subtle. She once told the entire street I’d learned to walk by announcing it to three different vendors before I’d even made it home."

"That tracks."

They walked in comfortable quiet for a while, baskets swinging between them, the afternoon warm and unhurried in the way only a day with no particular schedule could be.

"Can I ask you something?" Eren said eventually.

"You always ask that before asking something anyway."

"It’s a courtesy."

"It’s a stalling tactic." But she softened it with something close to a smile. "Ask."

"In the woods." He kept his eyes forward, suddenly finding the road extremely interesting. "Before Armin interrupted. What were you going to say?"

Mikasa’s steps didn’t falter, but her grip on the basket handle tightened, just slightly, the same tell she’d had since she was small.

"I don’t remember."

"You remember everything."

"Not this."

"Mikasa."

"Eren." She matched his tone exactly, which was somehow both an answer and a refusal to give one. "Some things don’t need saying yet."

"Yet," he repeated. "So there is a yet."

"I didn’t say that."

"You implied it very clearly."

"I implied nothing. You’re inferring things that aren’t there."

"I’m an excellent inferrer."

That, finally, won him a real laugh — quick and unguarded, gone as fast as it came, the way her real laughs always were, like she still wasn’t quite sure she was allowed to spend them freely. "That’s not a word."

"It should be. I’m petitioning for it."

"Petition denied."

"You don’t have that authority."

"I’m assuming it anyway." She bumped his shoulder with hers, light and easy, and he let the subject drop — not because he wanted to, but because some things really were better left to grow at their own pace, and he suspected pushing this one would only make her retreat further behind the careful composure she wore like a second scarf.

The trouble, when it came, wasn’t a boar this time.

It was two older boys from the eastern side of the district, sons of a merchant Eren vaguely recognized, who’d apparently decided that watching Mikasa walk past — dark hair, sharp eyes, the kind of quiet competence that made people either respect her or resent her for making them feel small — was an invitation to be unpleasant about it.

"Oi. Ackerman girl." The taller one stepped half into their path, arms crossed, doing his best impression of someone who thought this made him intimidating. "Heard you beat back a whole boar with a stick. That true, or did the Yeager kid make that up to impress you?"

"It’s true," Eren said, stepping slightly in front of her without entirely meaning to. "And I didn’t make anything up."

"Wasn’t talking to you."

"You’re standing in front of both of us. That makes it my business."

The shorter one sneered, the particular kind of ugly that came easy to boys who’d never once had to be brave about anything. "Didn’t know Yeager needed a girl to fight his battles for him. Didn’t your father teach you anything, or is that what she’s for?"

Something cold and immediate went through Eren, fast enough that he barely registered moving before his hand had closed into a fist.

"Apologize."

"Or what?"

"Or I’ll—"

"Eren." Mikasa’s hand closed over his fist before it could go anywhere, firm and sure, the same steady grip she’d used on the branch in the woods. "Don’t."

"He just—"

"I heard him." Her voice was flat, unbothered in a way that made both boys visibly deflate, the specific unbothered of someone who had faced down worse than words and knew exactly how much weight to give this. "I don’t need you to fight anything for me. I can handle a comment from someone who thinks bravery means insulting a nine-year-old in the street."

The taller boy, sensing the ground shifting somewhere beneath his feet, tried to recover some footing. "We were just—"

"You were just leaving," Mikasa said, and something in her tone — quiet, absolute, entirely without threat and somehow more unsettling for it — made both boys do exactly that, muttering something unconvincing about not having time for this anyway as they retreated.

Eren watched them go, fist still clenched, heart going too fast.

"You didn’t have to stop me."

"I did, actually. You’d have swung, and then you’d have gotten in trouble, and then your mother would have found out, and then we’d all have had a significantly worse afternoon than the one we’re currently having."

"I don’t care about getting in trouble."

"I know." Her hand was still around his fist, and she uncurled his fingers gently, one at a time, until his hand had gone loose and still in hers. "That’s exactly why I stopped you."

He looked down at her hand around his, warm and certain, and felt the anger drain out of him in favor of something quieter.

"I didn’t like what he said."

"Neither did I. But you throwing a punch wouldn’t have made it less true that people are going to say things like that. It would’ve just meant you got hurt over it, and I’d rather you didn’t."

"Why does it matter so much to you? What I get hurt over?"

She was quiet a moment, considering the question with the same care she gave everything, and when she answered, her voice had dropped to something smaller, more honest than her usual flat certainty.

"Because you matter to me. More than I know what to do with, most days." She said it plainly, like a fact rather than a confession, though her ears had gone faintly pink at the edges. "I’m not going to pretend that’s nothing, even if I don’t always say it."

Eren’s chest went tight, the same warm unsteadiness he’d felt in the woods rising up all over again.

"Mikasa—"

"Don’t," she said quietly, but she didn’t let go of his hand. "Not yet. Just — not yet. But someday."

"Someday," he agreed, and let that be enough, her hand still wrapped around his the whole rest of the walk home, neither of them in any hurry to change that.

That night, alone in the warehouse, Eren sat with his hand still faintly warm from hers and let himself think, for once, about something other than walls or fragments or countdowns.

[Daily draw available.]

"Spin it," he said, half his mind still back on the road, on her hand around his fist, on the word someday sitting warm and unfinished between them.

[Result: Emotional Fortitude (Tier 1). Minor resistance to fear-based paralysis in combat scenarios.]

Useful, probably, for whatever was still coming. He logged it without much thought and let his hand drift instead to the compass in his pocket, needle steady, pointing somewhere he couldn’t yet name.

One hundred and forty-nine days.

Whatever someday turned out to mean, he thought, he intended to still be standing when it arrived.

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