Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

News, in a district the size of Shiganshina, traveled roughly as fast as Carla could walk to the well and back.

"So," she said at breakfast the next morning, setting down a plate of eggs with the barely-contained delight of a woman who had clearly been waiting all night to say something and had run out of patience. "Anything either of you would like to share?"

Eren nearly choked on his water. "Share what?"

"Oh, nothing in particular." Carla’s smile could have lit the entire kitchen on its own. "It’s just that Mrs. Hoffman mentioned seeing two children holding hands on the road near the old well yesterday afternoon, and I thought — how curious, I wonder who that could have been."

"That could’ve been anyone."

"Mm. Anyone with your exact coat, and Mikasa’s exact scarf, walking toward this exact house." Carla folded her hands under her chin, thoroughly enjoying herself. "Small district. Big mouths. You should have expected this by lunchtime, honestly, I’m impressed it took until breakfast."

Mikasa, to her credit, didn’t so much as blink, buttering her bread with total composure. "We were holding hands. That’s all Mrs. Hoffman saw."

"That’s plenty, dear."

"It’s not a scandal."

"I didn’t say it was a scandal. I said it was wonderful," Carla corrected, eyes suspiciously bright, "and I would like, at some point today, an actual conversation about it, preferably with fewer deflections than I’m currently getting."

Eren opened his mouth to deflect further, took one look at his mother’s face — hopeful, soft, the particular expression she’d worn since the day Mikasa first arrived and Eren had shared his bread without being asked — and found he didn’t actually have the heart to dodge it further.

"Fine," he said. "Yes. We’re — together, now. Officially."

Carla made a small, delighted sound and had to set down her fork entirely to properly compose herself, which told Eren everything about how successfully he’d kept this a secret in the first place.

Armin’s reaction, when it inevitably arrived an hour later, was somehow both worse and exactly as predicted.

"I knew it." He appeared at the door before Eren had even finished his morning chores, breathless, having apparently sprinted the entire way from his own house the second the news reached him. "I knew it, I told Hannes, I said give it two weeks, and it took—" he did rapid mental math, lips moving— "considerably less than two weeks, so technically I win the pool, but I also lose some dignity for having predicted my best friend’s romantic timeline with this level of accuracy—"

"You’re unwell."

"I’m vindicated." Armin clutched a hand to his chest like a man receiving a medal. "Do you understand what this means? I get to say I told you so for the rest of both our lives. I’m going to say it at your wedding. I’m going to say it at your children’s weddings—"

"Nobody’s getting married, Armin, we held hands once—"

"That’s not what Mrs. Hoffman’s account suggests—"

"Mrs. Hoffman needs a hobby that isn’t watching the road—"

"She’s seventy, Eren, the road is her hobby, let the woman have this—"

Mikasa, arriving in time to catch the tail end of the chaos, took one look at Armin’s face and sighed with the specific weariness of someone who had already resigned herself to a lifetime of this exact energy. "You told Hannes two weeks."

"I had faith in you both."

"You had a financial incentive."

"Those aren’t mutually exclusive." Armin grinned, entirely without shame. "So. When’s the wedding. Roughly. Ballpark."

"Armin."

"I’m just planning ahead! I want to make sure I have appropriate notice for the speech, it’s going to require extensive preparation given the material I have to work with—"

Eren, deciding the conversation had officially exceeded his tolerance for teasing before noon, did the only sensible thing available to him and shut the door directly in Armin’s still-talking face, which only resulted in muffled, delighted laughter continuing from the other side of it for a solid thirty seconds before finally, mercifully, fading down the road.

Hannes cornered him separately that afternoon, which Eren had been dreading more than anything Armin could throw at him, mostly because Hannes had a talent for delivering teasing with a straight face that made it twice as effective.

"Heard the news," Hannes said, entirely too casual, leaning against the warehouse wall with his arms crossed.

"I’m sure you did. Word travels fast."

"Faster than a Titan through a wall, apparently." He grinned. "Good for you, kid. Really. She’s sharp, that one. Sharper than you, probably, which honestly works out well, because you need someone around to talk sense into you occasionally."

"Thanks. I think."

"I mean it as a compliment. Mostly." Hannes’s grin softened into something more genuine. "You’ve had a hard few years, Eren, whatever’s been going on in that head of yours that you don’t talk about. I’m glad you’ve got something good holding onto you through it. Whatever’s coming — and something’s coming, I’m not blind, even if I don’t know what — it helps, having someone worth fighting to get back to."

Eren looked at him for a long moment, struck by how close that landed to something he hadn’t said out loud to anyone, not even Mikasa.

"You always say more than people expect you to," he said finally.

"I contain hidden depths." Hannes pushed off the wall, ruffling Eren’s hair with rough affection before he could dodge it. "Now go on. Go be disgustingly happy somewhere I don’t have to watch it directly. I’ve got a duck-related reputation to rebuild and no time to babysit your love life on top of it."

He found Mikasa exactly where he expected, on the roof, watching the last of the afternoon light stretch gold across Shiganshina’s rooftops.

"Survived Armin?" she asked, without turning.

"Barely. He’s already planning a wedding speech."

"He told me he’s planning three. In case the first two don’t ’capture the full arc of our journey.’" She said it entirely deadpan, though the corner of her mouth twitched.

"We should never have let him befriend us."

"Too late now." She shifted over, making room, and he sat beside her the way he had a hundred times before — except this time, without any hesitation at all, he put his arm around her, and she leaned into it like it was the easiest thing in the world, like they’d been doing exactly this for years instead of one single afternoon.

"Regrets?" he asked. "About the whole district knowing now?"

"None." She tilted her head up to look at him, steady and certain as ever. "I was never planning to hide it. I just hadn’t expected Mrs. Hoffman to do the announcing for us."

"Small district, big mouths, apparently."

"Apparently." She settled more fully against him, quiet contentment in every line of her. "Let them talk. I don’t mind, as long as it’s true."

"It’s true," he said softly, and meant it more than he’d meant almost anything.

Below them, Shiganshina settled into evening the way it always did — smoke rising from chimneys, children being called in for dinner, the ordinary rhythm of a town that had no idea how little time it had left before everything changed. For now, though, none of that mattered as much as the girl leaning against his shoulder, warm and solid and entirely, finally, unmistakably his.

One hundred and thirty-two days.

Whatever waited beyond the walls, whatever fragments the system still held back, whatever strangers still watched from the shadows — he intended to spend every one of the days remaining making sure she never had a single reason to regret choosing this direction.

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