Chapter Text
“The sweets are really good here, huh?” A kind, bespectacled face appeared beside him, peering at the bulging of his shirt.
Levi had stolen from the pantry plenty of times. He had never gotten caught, so his gradual boldness could have been the problem. He had seen Mikasa, his younger sister, whenever she passed by the snacks section in the grocery store. Her gaping mouth at the sight of the colourful assortment of sweets was enough to let him know.
“I just like looking!” Mikasa said hastily. He hadn’t said anything either.
To be caught now, when he had overheard a staff member mentioning that most of the professors would be taking their leave during the summer break, was just his bad, bad luck. Objectively, he was risking his month-old job, but stealing from the pantry was much less risky than stealing from the grocery store. He began doing it weekly. Every Monday, right before the professors came streaming in, he would take a quick survey of his surroundings, and snatch two chocolate bars, sometimes a banana—only a handful. He would glance at the security camera hanging in the corner, willing it to catch him. Nobody would be petty enough to arrest a cleaner for swiping staff snacks in the pantry, right?
Levi stared back at the unfamiliar person. He recognised most of the staff by now. Only the English Literature professor, Erwin Smith, would greet him in the mornings.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Hange Zoë, the new creative writing professor. Nice to meet you!” They extended out a hand, which he felt obliged to shake, albeit warily. The hand was sweaty, and the handshake, vigorous.
“I was setting up my table and I wanted to meet everyone. Turns out most of them are on vacation,” Hange said absent-mindedly, scratching their head. The two buttons of their shirt had been mixed up, scrunching up the dress shirt's already lopsided collar. Levi resisted the urge to rebutton it for them. Today was not the day to scare off what seemed to be a genuinely welcoming person. Hange, on the other hand, found the firm handshake hilarious. What made this person so uptight?
Hange, realising that he wasn’t saying anything, breezily went, “what’s your name?”
“Levi,” he said, pushing his hands back into his pockets.
“You don’t prefer Dr. Levi?” Hange asked curiously.
“I’m not a professor. Just the cleaner,” Levi said shortly.
“Oh? Is that why you’re so secretive about the snacks?” Hange teased him, much to his chagrin.
“You rich profs have enough to eat,” Levi spat out.
Hange didn’t even blink, nodding calmly, “you’re right, it’s certainly good to make full use of the school’s resources.” Levi, sensitive to any hint of condescension, found none, though not regretting his overdose of sarcasm.
“Also,” Hange added, “I’m not going to tell anyone, I promise! So could you not look like you want to kill me and leave my dead body in the cleaning closet?”
Levi scoffed, relaxing the fists that had formed naturally by his side.
“Do you like bread?” Hange asked suddenly, scanning him for signs of the affirmative. He shrugged.
“I passed by a bakery this morning and it had the most delicious smell,” they sighed, “I was running late so I couldn’t get anything.”
“It seems like you’re kind of a mess.”
Hange laughed—this person could literally laugh at everything, Levi thought. They lifted their shoulders with their arms in the air, in a manner of “I was born like this, what do you want me to do?”
As the conversation subsided, Hange saw Levi’s eyes dart towards the neglected mop and bucket, finding it oddly endearing.
“Well then! I won’t disturb you any longer!” Hange announced. Levi wanted to tell them that they weren’t disturbing him at all, before stopping himself. His initial plan was to escape from useless small talk. Uttering such absurdity would be counterintuitive.
“Since you’re here,” Hange grabbed the last few packets of chips in the basket and stuffed them into his gigantic apron pockets, “you might as well take the rest!”
“Are you pitying me?”
“Those snacks aren’t for you,” Hange merely said cheerfully, before tentatively asking, “or am I wrong?”
“Don’t expect any favours,” Levi said begrudgingly.
He looked awkwardly at the distracted professor, who had chosen to open a chocolate bar themselves.
“Thanks…” he said, and Hange only grins, bits of chocolate and almond stuck to their teeth.
Routine, that’s how it all began. Levi and Hange were seeing each other every day. In each encounter, Hange would tug out a new bread or pastry from the depths of a green, bottomless leather bag that they carried around everywhere.
Initially, Levi felt offended. “You think I can’t afford bread?” He asked, narrowing his eyes.
Hange’s eyes widened, “of course not! I want to share the joy of this bread, if you remember that bakery I was craving for,” they poked at the loaf, leaving a small dent in the middle.
With their hand still extended out, Hange scoured for words, “and you look like someone who doesn’t often indulge in little joys.”
“I didn’t ask you to psychoanalyze me.” Levi grabbed the bread, tore it into two, and pushed one entire piece into his mouth. A muffled word of thanks came out. The other half was planted back onto Hange’s palm.
“You said you wanted to share, didn’t you?”
Hange glowed in acknowledgement. They stuffed the warm bread into their mouth, cheeks full, incoherently raving about its texture. The sight of Levi chewing the bread contentedly after unexpectedly cramming it into his mouth; Hange wanted to preserve it, to immortalise this tentative pleasure. If fresh bread was what it took to achieve that, it was perfectly doable.
Levi saw it as what it was. An offering. There was really no reason to reject free bread, and if this were Hange’s version of bribery, it was innocent enough.
“Why don’t I get bread?” Erwin asked Hange, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Levi’s nose wrinkled at the overly strong aroma.
“Sorry Erwin!” Hange patted him on the back, not sounding apologetic at all, “I only have money for one friend and since Levi is my first friend here, it’s only fair, don’t you think?”
“Certainly,” Erwin said, sipping on his black coffee, eyeing a certain stony-faced individual’s violent coughing at Hange’s mention of “friend.”
“What?” Levi asked, clearing his throat one more time.
“Good day to you both,” Erwin said, sweeping past Levi to return to his desk.
Following the end of summer break, Hange became relatively friendly with their colleagues in the staffroom, who had never greeted Levi. Unbothered by the lack of formalities, Levi found himself getting along best with living things that discarded general rules of propriety. Like children, animals… and Hange. Still, when Levi trailed back to the staffroom, wet mop in hand, he found himself at a hearing distance behind Hange’s conversation with a group of colleagues.
Hange got to the point, smiling sweetly. “Why do you all pretend Levi doesn’t exist?”
There were awkward, feeble words of justification. Something about Levi being too scary. Something about Levi not greeting them first. Hange listened, eyebrows furrowing.
“You could at least say hi, right? He doesn’t bite,” Hange said coolly. Their colleagues felt the faintest chill up their spine. Levi sloshed the mop onto the floor, making his presence known. Hange barely flinched, as though expectant of his company.
“Are you talking about me behind my back?”
Hange slung an arm around Levi’s shoulders and whispered, “no, I’m telling everyone right now that you don’t get enough sleep and that’s why you’re glaring at everyone.”
Levi elbowed them away. “Who cares what people think?”
Unwrapping the bread Hange gave him, he took one significant, large bite while everyone squirmed in silence. Hange, strangely amused by the scene playing out before them, ushered Levi towards Erwin’s cubicle.
“Levi! What are your plans for today?”
“Cleaning.”
Hange clapped their hands together, “I invite you to have lunch with me and Erwin!”
“Why should I go?” Levi said, not unkindly.
“Why not?” Levi couldn’t give a good reason. Hange, latching on to Levi’s lack of refusal, took the mop away from his hands.
“You can finish cleaning later. Everyone has to eat, right?”
“Not you, apparently,” Levi muttered, remembering how Hange had straight-up not left their desk for a whole ten hours—the sun shining on their sleep deprivation at dawn until the desktop screen illuminated their exhaustion at dusk.
“That was one deadline, Levi.”
“Sure.” Regardless, he wasn’t about to decline Hange. Somehow, Hange had grown attached to Erwin, and had endless discussions with him. Conversations about writing, mostly. He didn’t participate much outside of jabbing at Hange’s ribs when the volume of their voice went over the publicly acceptable range. Otherwise, he would be shooting glares at Erwin whenever he tried to probe into Levi’s personal life. Erwin had an intensity that was difficult, near impossible to ignore.
Incidentally, the topic of comics cropped up.
“Comics?”
Hange picked up on the rare tonal shift of Levi’s voice, studying him. Erwin’s fork elegantly pierced a French fry, the screech of the fork’s contact with the plate prompting Levi to speak over it. He was positive that Erwin was trying to get him to talk. On purpose.
“Yes, I like them,” Levi conceded, draining the tea from his cup.
“I learn something new about you every day!” Hange exclaimed, as Levi gripped the edge of the cup harder.
Seemingly catching on to Levi’s discomfort, Erwin asked Hange for recommendations, telling them how he had never read any comics.
“How predictable of a literature professor,” Hange said, sitting up straighter to mock the poise of a scholar, glasses perched at the tip of their nose for the intended effect.
“You look like a fart with a stick up their ass,” Levi commented, leaving Hange howling. Erwin, the consistent gentleman, remained at ease with these disparaging jokes.
While Hange listed out their favourite comics, Levi noted that none of their top choices was marginally close to any of his preferences: in genre, in plot, and in art style.
“I like horror.”
“I don’t,” Levi countered. Hange grinned wider.
“Well, you’re scary enough as you are,” Hange considered, taking in his aloof disposition and the way he sat stiffly on the chair. Nonchalant, and could possibly decimate you.
“Look,” Hange said, thrusting an open book into Levi’s hands. “This comic is so good. It keeps me up at night.”
Levi leafed through the pages, absorbed by the clean black and white lines. That was, until he flipped a page and winced at the image of empty eye sockets, gouged out, spurting inked blood.
“You don’t like blood,” Hange said this matter-of-factly, promptly closing the book.
“I don’t like unnecessary death.”
“How do you know those deaths were unnecessary?” Erwin asked, pushing back his blonde hair in an effortlessly charismatic manner.
Levi could picture it. Erwin, a fearless leader, bringing people to greater heights.
Hange had less noble thoughts. Erwin was definitely the protagonist in a teen movie who looked older than high school age and was starring as a blonde jock whose embarrassingly lacklustre coming-of-age arc was spurred by a shy, beautiful nerd. For good reason, Hange kept their mouth shut.
“I don’t,” Levi answered, “but is any death really necessary?”
Erwin smiled, “perhaps not.” The seed of doubt grew in Levi.
Hange leaned forward across the table towards Levi, a hand covering one side of their smirking face.
“Erwin’s a lot more calculative than you think.”
Levi swatted away Hange’s strands of hair tickling his cheek, “I know,” he said half-heartedly, not wishing to contemplate the extent of its truthfulness.
Carving the last piece of meat on his plate into two, Erwin shrugged.
“So, you would say that some deaths are necessary?” Levi asked. The question blurted out on its own, slicing through the amicable atmosphere like a stray bullet. For some reason, he wanted a proper answer. Hange was busy flipping through the same horror comic book, their eyes trained on the page.
“Do you like bugs, Levi?” Erwin asked.
Levi visibly scowled. “No.”
Erwin’s fork scraped the plate insistently. “Do you kill them?”
“Obviously.”
Erwin’s collectedness seemed impenetrable. “Would you say their deaths are necessary?”
“Necessary enough as a cleaner.”
“There, you have your answer,” Erwin said, with finality.
“I’m talking about human lives, not some insects,” Levi said, frustrated.
“Some lives matter more than others, am I right?”
“Yeah…” Levi said, struggling to grasp Erwin’s logic.
“It’s the same for us,” Erwin said cryptically.
Hange stood up, snapping the book shut. “Shit, I have to teach a class in ten!” Levi naturally stood up as well. Erwin gave a friendly wave, undeterred by the abruptness of their departure.
“See you, Erwin!” Hange called out, rushing back to the staffroom.
“Why does Erwin have to be so ambiguous?” Levi griped.
“You’re not very telling, yourself,” Hange said blithely, grabbing their laptop before marching out of the door.
Armed with constant smiles and warm words, Levi would classify Hange as someone just as enigmatic. Their discussions about writing were arguably personal, but they weren’t exactly close to the heart.
The two people Levi was becoming acquainted with in the past few weeks were a slate full of words in a language he understood, but couldn’t decipher. For the rest of the day, he compromised on these doubts by making sure the windows had not a speck of dust on them. Every moving insect was stamped out under his supervision. He thought about Erwin’s words, turning them over and over in his head. He thought about Hange’s nonchalance towards Erwin’s questions.
After locking up his cleaning supplies, Levi peeled the sweaty gloves off his arms, untying the bandana on his head that kept his long fringe away, and removed his apron. Hearing a friendly shout in the otherwise deserted school building, he caught Hange coming to a stop behind him.
“You’re still here,” he said, frowning.
“Had a lot of work,” they said, armed with this reasoning every day.
“Were you listening during lunch?”
“Hmm, kind of,” Hange stated obliquely, “you know how literature people are.”
Levi was bewildered, his passive expression cracking slightly. “I don’t. As you might have realised, I don’t talk to a lot of people.”
“Literature people,” Hange rubbed their chin, eyes looking upwards in deep thought, “enjoy discussing morality in a mostly abstract, hypothetical way.”
“That’s annoying.”
Hange fell in step with Levi, who was headed to the exit, “Erwin’s one of the better ones. He’s pragmatic, and he’s not just all talk.”
“Yeah, so what’s his grand plan…” Levi said, finding the right words, “for humanity?”
“He wants to create a comic.”
Levi blinked.
“Huh? What does that have to do with morality?”
Hange looked unperturbed by Levi’s confusion, as though it were commonplace for them to defend the importance of the comic genre.
“Think of texts as a philosophical question waiting to be answered. And the questions of morality being narrativized makes their conclusions more believable. More influential. Erwin has a vision for comics to be the source of truth.”
“What truth?”
Hange grinned, “if we knew, would we need to write the comic?”
“You talk like it’s more revolutionary than it actually is…” Levi said, pushing open the door to step out of the school building.
“A comic can be life-changing,” Hange mused, admiring how the sunset decorated everything in watercolour splashes of orange and pink; a distinct nostalgic hue.
Levi remembered that Hange was, after all, a creative writing professor. “Yeah, you would say that.”
“It’s not because I’m a creative writing professor!” Hange said, impassioned. He gave them a dry look.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Besides, Erwin wants to be the editor of the comic that I am writing,” Hange said proudly.
Levi felt that his head might explode. “Since when were you writing a comic?”
“Since last week!” Hange said, remarkably animated.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Isn’t that what friends are for? To share things with?” Hange asked, hopeful.
That word—Levi figured that that was what they were by now. Friends. He didn’t hate the sound of it.
“You’re not going to ask what it’s about?”
“You’ll tell me if I just waited.”
“You’re right! But you see,” Hange exhaled, shaking their head despondently, “my problem is that I don’t have someone who can draw out my writing.” Levi’s hands twitched. He interlocked them into a prayer, hoping Hange didn’t notice.
“Why not just write a novel?”
Hange was unconvinced, “I’m tired of just the written word, Levi! The versatility and multimodal form of the comic are incomparable to a novel!”
Levi had to agree. “Have you been trying to find artists?”
“Yes, but none of them seemed very keen on drawing the story,” Hange said, recalling the number of people who became increasingly disconcerted upon hearing the gist of the story.
“So, what’s the story?” Levi asked.
Hange was hesitant. Levi waited.
“It’s horror, isn’t it?”
“The premise includes giant naked human beings running around eating people,” Hange said. Levi grimaced. They expected this, but it didn’t make their disappointment at his very reasonable reaction any less jarring.
“It also has a lot of blood,” Hange said. Sensing that they were one sentence away from diving into a world-building sermon, they paused.
“Do you want to hear more?”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Levi said honestly. It had been a long day.
“Of course! I’ll see you tomorrow!” Hange said, giving him a reassuring pat on the back.
“I’ll see you,” Levi said belatedly. Hange was already brisk walking towards the crowded street.
Instinctively, he called out, “Four-eyes!”
Turning back, Hange stood where they were, surprised.
“Tell me the story tomorrow.”
A gradual look of appreciation spread across Hange’s face, as their eyes arched downwards into thin curves.
“Thank you, Levi!”
Levi sidestepped Hange’s thanks with a disgruntled “tch. Whatever.”