On the shabby bed of the boys' quarters, Eren, who had just closed his eyes after cursing nine generations of Shadis, was just about to fall asleep. He was in a half-conscious and half-sleep state.
Thud! With a heavy sound of the door hitting the wall—
"Eren!" someone shouted his name. It was a sweet and sharp feminine voice.
Eren jolted awake, his mind stunned. Although his body had regenerated the broken muscles and tissues, his stamina was depleted, so he just wanted to sleep a bit. But at that critical point, someone disturbed him. But when he recalled the familiar voice—
Mikasa? He was double stunned. What happened? Why is she here?
But just when he sat up and was about to open his mouth to ask why she was here and why she was shouting his name so loud—with a swoosh—Mikasa, who had detected the figure of Eren on the bed, just adjusted into a sitting position. She didn't give him any chance. Like a tigress protecting her cub, she leaped toward him.
Seeing this, Eren's eyes contracted. But nothing like the heavy collision of bodies he expected happened. Just when her body came near him, it seemed like she lost all her weight. Her arms were already around his waist, and she started to check his body for any kind of injury. She was so anxious she wanted to remove his shirt to check.
But to her relief, he was fine. There wasn't any visible or invisible injury on his body; his bones and organs were fine as ever.
Eren is fine, he is fine, she thought, and tears started to come to her eyes. She wiped them with her sleeve, but then, as if remembering something, she raised her head. She saw his forehead. She wanted to check his temperature, but then she saw her hands, which were anything but clean. So, without any hesitation, her forehead touched Eren's forehead.
Her forehead touched his for one minute, two minutes... like that, after a whole five minutes, she lowered her head. The wet marks of sweat from her forehead had been left on Eren's forehead. Seeing this, she raised her sleeve to clean it, but she thought it wasn't clean enough and used the red scarf on her neck.
But then, instead of making it clean, his forehead became even more wet. She had used the side of the scarf which was touching her skin and was also wet. She hurriedly switched to the dry side, and this time his forehead seemed cleaner. She took a sigh of relief.
In the middle of this, Eren didn't say anything. In the start, he was about to say something or stop her, but for some reason, after looking at her panicked condition, he said nothing and let her do whatever she was doing. The look of panic and grief on her face was not something that could be achieved by acting; her emotions were genuine. But he couldn't grasp why suddenly, after two years, she came here like this.
"Good you are alright. Good you are alright. Good you are alright," she repeated the same phrase again and again. Her head was nestling on his chest, and her tears had gone through his shirt as he felt a cool sensation on his skin. He felt a little weird; he wanted to push her aside, but seeing her sorrow-stricken face, he wasn't able to let his heart do that.
Unlike the previous timeline, Eren in this timeline had grown visibly taller. In the previous timeline, he was shorter than Mikasa, but now he is almost the same or even taller than her. A pollution-free environment, regular exercise, healthy food without chemicals, and good sleep had shown their results.
And Mikasa, leaning on him, can now feel this change too. Before, she had just looked at him from afar, but now, looking up close, her heart started to beat faster and faster. His chest muscles were tight and strong; his abdomen core muscles felt well-defined. When she realized that her hands were just tracing them, a light blush appeared on her face. Although they are in these bodies, they both are adults, and like adults, they carry the emotions and shame of adults too.
She was hearing the strong heartbeat coming from his chest, and bit by bit, it was growing stronger and stronger. Soon the realization hit her, and her cheeks started to turn a visible red. She, like an ostrich, buried her head—or tried to bury her head—even deeper into Eren's chest, as if doing that would make Eren not see her.
"I... I am find—I mean, I am fine."
He forgot which word was which. He was also nervous. Out of nowhere, a beautiful girl comes and starts to cry on your chest; at that time, only he can understand what he is feeling.
"But you tell me first, why are you here? And what was..." He didn't say the complete sentence, but his tone told her he was asking about what that outburst was for. But what could she say now? She was never good with words from the start.
But Eren guessed more or less the reason for her coming. Even after all the harsh things he had said to her, at the first second of hearing news about him, she ran to him. He felt a little guilty, but soon he suppressed the guilt and asked, "So, how are you doing?"
It was the first time Eren had spoken to her after the regression of his own accord. Her eyes lit up instantly. She looked at Eren. A smile bloomed on her face; a wind, as if waiting for this exact moment, came through the open door and blew the bangs away from her eyes to the side.
Eren's eyes widened in amazement. It was the first time he had looked at Mikasa this closely after the regression.
"I am fine. How are you, Eren?" she said with the same smile. Her answer, with her blowing bangs and her dark obsidian eyes glistening, created a deadly atmosphere.
She is truly beautiful, worthy of the main cast. In the final arc, she looks all dull and... he can't describe what this Mikasa have that the future Mikasa didn't have. Why does she seem so beautiful?
continue—