THIRTEEN • Eren Jaeger

CHAPTER 22: Loop Twelve, II

His cheeks turned crimson. "The usual."

"That doesn't sound bad," said Moblit, not wanting to press on.

However, Hange was not as formal. They grinned at Eren. "A girl?"

Eren flinched. You heard him say under his breath, "I've got a girl."

It stung, but you pretended that it didn't. You quietly packed your things, zipping the bag with all your materials.

"Grisell, I presume," said Hange. "You're her 'Ren."

It was weird. Eren got the feeling that Hange had said those exact words before, but not about Grisell. They had been teasing him about a different girl, who also happened to call him by the same name. And in her mouth, it sounded right.

Eren's mouth moved faster than his brain.

"No—that's not true," he said. "She doesn't get to call me that. Only my girl does that."

For a heart-dropping moment, you wondered if Eren had met some other girl. Maybe it was Mikasa or Historia.

Hange raised their eyebrows, startled by his boldness. "Who?"

"I just—I don't know who she is. She's—a distant memory."

"It's the aftereffect of Titan shifting," they guessed. "It's making you incoherent and causes your mind to come up with your ideal partner. Maybe your Titan wants to mate or something?"

"No, it's—" he trailed off, gaze landing on you as you looked away. He didn't want you to think there was something abnormal about him. "Look, it's not a weird Titan mating thing!"

"Right," Hange said, unconvinced. "Assistant, what do you think?"

"It's definitely a Titan mating instinct," you answered.

It was a half-lie. Being a Titan and unconsciously connecting himself to the Paths made Eren's mind transcend onto some new plane of reality. A reality where you existed in his life. Of course, while he saw it in his head, he wasn't aware of its existence.

"S-sorry," Eren stammered, truly embarrassed now. "I don't know why—I don't even know what's happening."

You watched his eyes slowly wash over with the sleep syrup. Oddly, when he finally looked at you properly, his pupils seemed to have become bigger, like shiny green pennies.

You couldn't stand it. He had to be acquitted to slumber before he connected the dots in his head. But the more he became self-aware, the harder it was for you to pretend otherwise, like the two of you were directly proportional in the formula that was your lives. You were intertwined, whether you liked it or not. The more Eren knew of you, the more you responded against your own will.

"Sleep, 'Ren," you said, and he began to blink rapidly upon hearing your nickname for him leave your lips. His chest lifted, his stomach turned with a million butterflies, his heart skipped a beat and just about killed him.

"Wait—!"

"Save your strength for Shiganshina," you said firmly. "You need it when you take on the Armored Titan and the Colossal Titan."

The sleep syrup finally tipped his consciousness. You gently placed your fingers over his eyelids, and closed them, sentencing him to dream of a lovely girl he never knew in this universe—the one who was in front of him.

-

Moblit was dead.

Kind Moblit, who always checked up on you and made sure you were eating right, was killed in an explosion in Shiganshina. You never saved him. You could have, somehow. It had been twelve lives, and only now did you even ever think about him and all the good ways he impacted the Survey Corps.