clean || e. jäger

[ chapter six ] busy

Maybe a break would have been good. 

Probably better than to deep clean both her and Sasha's side of their shared room, with her consent of course, right after she had gotten home. None of the girls had thought anything of it, as Carrie tended to clean up after herself right away. And Sasha was the last to complain that her side was cleaned too. It became a little suspicious, however, when she moved to clean the entire dorm apartment on Sunday. Since Annie and Mikasa had spent the day at the library with Armin and then headed to the gym, they'd only noticed after the girl was already done. Sasha hadn't been in the dorm either, though she had not disclosed her whereabouts.

The following week had become even worse. Between classes, work and cleaning spaces, the other girls hadn't even known needed cleaning, she had maybe spent around five minutes per day just sitting down. When asked why she didn't take a break once in a while, the girl shrugged.

"I just like to keep buys, I guess."

The girls took her word for it, though with caution. She could very well be telling the truth, they didn't know her that well, after all. Yet, especially to Mikasa something felt off.

Another two weeks passed exactly like that. By now Carrie had not only made it her daily ritual to at least clean one room to perfection every day, regardless of her classes or work schedule, but she had also worked ahead on her essays for Professor Ackermann's class for the following four weeks. When she handed in three essays at once after class, he became suspicious. Just from skimming them he could tell however, that they had been written by her and despite the shortened time frame were well researched. He still wanted to ask, as it didn't take away from his suspicion that something was up with the girl.

His hunch would have probably appeared weird to others, as the girl didn't show any signs of being in any kind of distress. She came to class adequately dressed, while a lot of her classmates banked on sweatpants, and never really caused trouble during class. She was quiet, spoke when she knew an answer and was just generally a great student. Levi was a good judge of character, though, so he knew that in the way her hand dragged a bit, before she raised it to answer a question or in the way her eyes had sunken further into their sockets than last week, that at the very least she was not getting as much sleep as she should.

"Miss Morgan, is everything all right?" He asked after class when she came forward to hand in her assignment.

The girl just nodded absently.

"I know it's a lot." He said flipping through her essay. "If I could lessen the load of extra credit work, I would."

She shrugged.

"It's not that. The workload is fine."

The man tilted his head. His dark eyes were both inquisitive and intimidating as they bore right through her. Making every lie an effort in vain.

"Then what is it?"

There was something that had plagued her mind for the past three weeks. If the truth about the party, if it even was that, came out, it could very well cost her the scholarship. She couldn't say that, though. Not to the person she depended on to get even a chance at that scholarship. Porco just had to have been the dean's son and she just had to have been stupid enough to believe his beautiful lies, when she'd had nothing beautiful left in her life at the time.

"I guess, I'm still adjusting to the change of pace." She was referring to Trost, at least he presumed.

He sighed, knowing that it was a half-truth at best.

"You better adjust quickly, then. It won't do you any good to let something influence your shot at the scholarship."

Carrie tilted her head. Did he know something? He couldn't possibly. Professors had no way of knowing what happened at parties.