THE OTHER SIDE. aa

dreizhen.

     the sunlight reflecting from the stone ceiling showered armin and he reveled in it with a smile, despite his disgusted reaction to it when he fully woke up a while ago. the streets were, as always, busy and noisy, crowds of merpeople going about in their day and responsibilities. there were also soldiers from the garrison, patrolling the streets while drunk, which irked armin a lot.

     with a sigh, he started swimming to the left, the direction of his childhood friends' home. it was still early in the morning so the two might be in their home helping their mother with the house chores. he was about to turn to another street when he heard someone faintly calling his name.

     he stopped and inclined his head, squinting his eyes to look for the person amongst the crowd. he spotted a mop of copper-colored hair swimming towards the blond, and two more figures following him.

     that same copper-colored hair suddenly rushed towards him before tackling him in a hug, the action causing him to stumble back with water bubbles enveloping the two of them. armin wheezed, the wind getting knocked off of him at the sudden impact. despite not seeing the face of the person that hugged him, he wrapped his arms around him and let out a joyous laugh, for he knew who it was already.

     "armin, hello!" a brunette greeted excitedly once they caught up to the two. "we missed you a lot!" she giggled, pulling armin into a bone-crushing hug after the first person pulled her away.

     "hey, you three." armin smiled and gave a high-five to a smiling boy with a buzzcut, connie. "how are you guys?"

     jean, the first one who hugged him, shrugged, "we're fine. what about you? you were practically gone for almost a week now."

     connie sighed in slight frustration and frowned, "yeah. eren and mikasa were worried about you, they thought something horrible happened."

     the brunette, sasha, let out a low whistle before continuing, "they said if you weren't going to come out in two days, they were going to, and i quote, 'bring hell upon the cursed lands and make sure that every existence in the world, aside from us mermaids and the fishes, gets eradicated'." she recited from the depths of her memory, even looking up to recall what they truly said.

     "it's not scary if you imagine eren saying it," connie snickered as he crossed his arms, "but since mikasa was the one who said that, we got genuinely concerned."

     armin felt himself grow numb at what they had implied, the hairs on his neck standing ominously. his blue eyes stared at the three friends who were completely unaware of the frozen blond as they continued to tell whatever they had to say, their words passing through armin's ear and out to the other.

     he could feel his heart pumping quicker than ever, his thoughts racing at mikasa's carelessness with her threats. he was afraid that they found out that he was meeting up with a human, befriending them even.

     but based on their expressions, it was obvious that they didn't think much of mikasa's violent threats and laughed it off. maybe if they thought about it more, they'd caught on.

     luckily, it doesn't look like they did and that calmed armin down a bit.

     "let's visit the two," sasha suggested with a smile, "i'm sure they miss you, armin."