Chapter Text
2011 - 4th grade
You were 9 years old, moved into the area of Trost just shy of a month ago. Your parents had enrolled you into Trost primary - a good school in a good neighborhood, and ever since you moved out of Marley, you had been anxious that you wouldn’t be able to make any friends.
To your delight, making friends seemed to come very easy to you.
It felt like a fresh start. The beginning of something new.
On the second Tuesday since school had first started, you were anticipatingly sitting at your desk, bouncing your leg up and down as your math teacher, Mr. Smith walked by holding a stack of graded tests. He smiled politely at you, as he placed yours face down on your desk.
You turned the paper over, and to no surprise, you passed - with almost full points at that.
Sigh.
A shaky breath that you had been unknowingly holding escaped your lips.
Mr. Smith continued down the aisle, and stopped by the desk in front of you - Jean Kirschtein’s.
You tilted your head to the side and peered over his shoulder in order to get a good view of his paper. You weren’t nosy, just curious about how much smarter than you your “competitors” were.
B+.
Hm, not bad.
Still, it gave you a small sense of relief to see that at least one person is in a lower grade range than you.
After darting your eyes back to your own desk for a few seconds and staring at the faint scribbles from previous students, your attention shifted again - this time to the paper sitting on the desk to your left.
Your desk neighbor.
Armin Arlert
20/20.
No way he did that good.
-
Armin was a boy with bob-length light golden hair, bright blue eyes that were hard to ignore, and he stood at about four-foot-four - not much taller than you.
Over the week you'd indirectly known him, you’d noticed that he would always wear some sort of anime graphic tee or long sleeve, with a pair of the same khaki shorts almost every day.
Not that it really mattered all that much anyway. You were just observing, trying to see who you should stay away from or be friends with.
Armin had mostly just been a regular boy who sat to the left of you during math and shared the same science period as you. You paid him no more attention than you had everyone else, studying all the new names and faces while trying to make a judgement on if they’d like you or not. The truth was, you were very nervous to meet new people and put yourself out there yet again after moving for the second time within 2 years.
Still, there was something you couldn’t ignore.
Armin was an absolute prodigy when it came to anything and everything he did.
You also couldn't help but peer onto his paper sneakily, and see that he had always gotten the same scores as you, or even the smallest point or percentage higher.
That slightly ticked you off, although you didn’t really understand why. However, you had always been used to being the best, and even though it didn’t come to you easy, you were always the smartest amongst your peers.
This was nothing but a minor setback to your path of greatness.
-
You eventually pulled your gaze back to your own paper from Armin’s, and the rest of class passed in a daze.
Mr. Smith kept rambling on and on about something along the lines of fractions and mixed numbers, but you barely paid him any mind. Math was your last period of the day, and time always seemed to drag painfully slow.
The second hand on the clock ticked as if someone had purposefully slowed it down, taunting your tiredness.
You just wanted to go home.
You and Armin didn’t actually meet until the third week of fourth grade.
One of his best friends - who would later become one of yours as well - Mikasa Ackerman approached you during lunch. You were sitting at your regular seat, by yourself, when you saw her figure approaching your table.
“Hi, what's your name?” the girl quietly asked.
“Hey,” you spoke back, introducing yourself. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Mikasa,” she said. “My friends and I noticed you’re a new kid here, and we were wondering if you would like to come and sit with us. Only if you wanna.”
“Oh, uh…” You paused for a second, wondering how they had noticed you in the midst of all the first and second week chaos.
“Sure,” you said finally. “If that's okay with you all.”
You gave her a sliver of a smile so that you didn’t seem like you were being judgy by staying silent for so long.
“Alright then, follow me,” she uttered, returning the smile and turning around to guide you to her lunch table.
You hesitantly followed, wondering to yourself what her friends would be like.
-
The cafeteria was huge for an elementary school - high ceilings, very spacious, fluorescent lighting, faint smells of the school pepperoni pizza.
Every lunch table was a generous distance apart from each other, but you didn’t mind that at all - mostly because you tended not to watch where you were going. You’d had a few issues with that habit in the past. The tables were wide and always slightly sticky from the last lunch period - with benches similarly treated attached to each side of it.
You’d noticed throughout your time sitting alone that everyone had claimed their own ‘designated’ lunch tables and made it home to their own little social circles.
You tried not to stare as you followed Mikasa a step behind.
Eventually, she stopped by a table near the windows.
Both of her friends were already sitting there.
The two boys' eyes were fixed on you, as if you were from another planet, too hesitant to say anything at first.
“And who’s that?” the dark-haired boy broke the silence.
“She’s new here,” Mikasa responded while gesturing towards you.
Amidst the conversation, you became very aware of the chunky lunchbox you were holding - the one that your mom packed for you every day before school.
You had spaced out for enough time that you saw a hand waving in your face - Mikasa’s.
“Helloooooo,” the boy spoke again.
“Oh, uh, hi,” you stood awkwardly.
You recognized the other boy sitting at the table - Armin. He blinked once, clearly caught off guard, while the dark-haired boy studied you like you’d just interrupted something important.
“You’ve been sitting alone, right?’
You nodded slowly. “Yeah…” There was a short pause.
Armin quickly closed the book he was reading, and scooted over on the bench.
“You can sit here,” he said politely.
“Oh, thanks.”
You sat yourself next to him, carefully placing your lunchbox in front of you. For a moment, no one said a word. The cafeteria noise filled the silence at the table.
Then, Mikasa gestured to each boy. “This is Eren,” she spoke.
The dark-haired boy gave you a quick nod.
“And Armin.” He offered a small, shy smile.
“And I told you already, but again, I’m Mikasa,” she added.
You introduced yourself in return.
Eren rested his chin on his hand, still looking at you. “So, where’d you move from?”
“Marley,” you responded.
“That far?”
“It's not that far, c'mon," you said defensively.
Armin tilted his head slightly, looking lost in thought. “Did you like your old school?”
You thought about it for a second, and then said “It was okay, but I’ve had to move twice these past two years.”
“Oh,” Armin said softly.
“That sounds super annoying,” Eren frowned.
“Yeah, it was.”
Mikasa quietly pushed her chocolate chip cookie across the table over to you, seemingly a small gesture of kindness. “You’ll probably get used to things here pretty quick, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I really hope so,” you nodded in agreement.
Eren suddenly pointed his fork towards you.
“Wait,” he spoke.
You froze, wondering what he was about to ask you. “What’s up..?”
“You’re in our math class, right?”
Your eyebrows shot up.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve seen you,” Eren said.
You weren't really sure if that was a good thing, neither were you sure of what he intended with this comment.
Armin looked up as well. “Oh–yeah,” he said. “You sit right next to me.”
You blinked, wondering if you should entertain the situation. “I do?” you decided to ask.
“Yeah,” he said.
You tried to seem lost in thought for a second, and then continued. “Oh, right, how could I forget? You’re the kid who always gets perfect scores,” you teased while waiting for his reaction.
Armin looked confused. “...What do you mean?”
“Your math test,” you added quickly. “You got a 20 out of 20 last week, no?”
Eren leaned over the table. “Of course he did, Armin’s a genius!”
Armin flushed slightly, not being able to accept the compliment, by the looks of it.
“It wasn’t that hard.”
You narrowed your eyes a bit. “It kind-of was.”
Eren snorted, “No it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was!” you argued.
“No it wasn’t.”
Mikasa calmly took a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “What’d you get on it, Eren?” she asked through a full mouth.
“Uhh–I got an 18 out of 20,” he said, getting flustered by the sudden question.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said while she finished chewing her bite.
“Hey, no fair! Just because I got 2 points lower than you doesn’t mean that I’m totally stupid,” he groaned.
Eren turned to you and asked, “what’d you get?”
“Oh, I didn’t do too bad on it myself, I got a 19 out of 20,” you smiled while looking down at your cut-up apples.
“...Oh,” he said.
Armin looked between the two of you, amused. “Maybe Mr. Smith just explains things in a comprehensible way.”
You furrowed your brows, not knowing what ‘comprehensible’ meant. Now that you look back on it, his language was far too sophisticated for a 9 year old.
Mikasa crossed your arms slightly and intervened, “or maybe some people are just that good at math.”
Armin laughed quietly. “Maybe,” he finished.
Your conversation slowly shifted after that. Eren started talking about something that had happened at recess earlier that day. Mikasa occasionally corrected parts of the story while Armin added his two cents here and there.
At some point, you realized something. Nobody had questioned why Mikasa brought you to the table, and no one had asked if you were staying. They just defaulted to including you, as if it had already been decided. That's just the way things went, and you realized that you now had a newfound sense of stability.
For the first time since you moved to Trost, you didn’t feel like the new kid sitting on the outskirts of everything. You felt like you were part of something, and you hoped it wouldn't change any time soon.
You’d already had had to get used to enough change in the past.