"Armin, you are too thin. Even the smallest size clothes look so big on you."
"There is nothing I can do about it..."
"Eren, yours fits perfectly."
"Yours too, Mikasa."
Eren, Armin, and Mikasa were standing in the hall of the Trainee Squad headquarters. All around them, the place buzzed with new recruits. Those who knew each other clustered together, while strangers quickly struck up conversations to get acquainted. A few individuals remained alone in the corners, silently organizing their uniforms.
The uniforms of the Trainee Squad.
"Mikasa."
At that moment, Armin noticed something and subtly pointed toward someone in the corner, whispering, "Mikasa, look, that person looks like you."
"Hmm?"
Mikasa and Eren turned to look at the same time, and both froze slightly when they saw who Armin was referring to.
It was a young boy with a pale face and delicate features. He had a serene, almost gentle aura about him. At first glance, he did not resemble Mikasa at all , but Armin had not been referring to his face. Rather, it was the boy's black hair and black eyes that caught his attention. His bone structure was also similar to Mikasa's, softer and more refined compared to the more angular features of most others.
"Really," Eren said in surprise. "He has black hair and black eyes too."
"Hmm..." Mikasa watched the boy.
Sensing their gaze, the boy lifted his eyes and glanced at them. His brows and eyes shone like stars, yet there was no emotion in his gaze. After a brief look, he calmly looked away.
It was no wonder that Armin and Eren were surprised. Black hair and black eyes were extremely rare. Most people had green eyes like Armin, or golden eyes like Eren, golden in the manga, dark green in the anime, or shades of deep blue, brown, and even purple. But pure black was almost unheard of.
In fact, in the story, Mikasa's parents had been murdered by bandits who intended to sell her as a rare Eastern beauty with black hair and eyes, highlighting just how rare her features were on the island.
"Does that guy not have any friends?" Eren said. Just as he was about to go over and say hello, a sharp whistle pierced the air.
"Fweeee!"
Immediately after, a loud roar came from outside.
"Fall in!"
"Fall in, fall in!"
The people in the hall scrambled to get outside. Eren and his friends hurried along with them. Soon, everyone stood in neat rows on the open ground outside.
In front of them, a bald-headed, fierce-looking instructor glared at them menacingly.
"Now, we will begin the entrance ceremony for the 104th Trainee Squad."
"I am Keith Shadis, assigned to supervise you lot. Do not even think I am here to welcome you. As you are now, you are nothing more than titan fodder. You are..."
Fodder, huh.
Standing at the very end of the third row, Rayan listened, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.
He had already been that.
Keith's words stirred up painful memories, the splattered blood, the severed limbs, the suffocating fear of death, the betrayals born of desperation... and the horror of being devoured by titans.
All of it, engraved deep in his mind.
"...worse than livestock," Keith continued. "We will spend three years training you useless sacks of rice. I will cram the techniques needed to fight titans into your heads. Three years from now, when you stand before titans, will you still be useless fodder? Or will you become a glorious bulwark guarding humanity, a soldier who drives away the titans? That choice is yours."
The speech, full of shouting and verbal abuse, went on. As he listened, Rayan's gaze shifted, searching for the key figures among the crowd.
The Eren trio, Sasha Blouse, Connie Springer, Marco Bott... and Annie Leonhart, Bertholdt Hoover, Reiner Braun, the three "warriors", and Ymir, the "aberrant" who had stolen the power of a warrior.
Among them, Annie seemed to sense his gaze. Her cold blue eyes glanced his way. For a moment, their eyes met before both looked away without a word.
"You, brat!"
Instructor Keith marched up to Armin, towering over him with a glare. Armin instantly clenched his right fist and thumped it against his chest.
"Sir!"
"Who are you, brat?"
"Armin Arlert, from Shiganshina District!"
"Is that so? What a stupid-sounding name. Did your parents give it to you?"
"My grandfather did!"
"Arlert, what did you come here for?"
"To contribute to humanity's victory!"
"That sounds wonderful. Then you can be bait and become titan fodder."
Keith's method was a kind of baptism. He sought to make these recruits shed their old selves, stripping away any pride or illusions, forcing them to start over, to be reforged into true soldiers.
However, some people were deliberately excluded from his scolding.
"Some kids are not being yelled at," one soldier said to another.
"They do not need it. They have already seen the hell of two years ago with their own eyes."
As the middle-aged soldier spoke, his gaze fell briefly on Rayan.
"And him?" the younger soldier asked, glancing at the small figure.
Compared to the other recruits, Rayan was noticeably shorter, even shorter than most of the girls. His black hair and black eyes, combined with his slight frame, made him seem fragile and delicate.
"Yeah," the older soldier nodded.
"What about him? He looks like a very weak child."
The older soldier looked at him in surprise for a moment, then chuckled. "Oh, right. You would not know."
"Huh?"
"You have heard of the Wall Maria Reclamation Operation, right?"
"Ah... that," the young man said, his expression stiffening and a flicker of anger flashing in his eyes. "I know... two hundred fifty thousand people sent beyond the walls, and only seventy or so returned. That absurd operation... but what does that have to do with this kid?"
"He was one of those seventy survivors."
"What?!"
The older soldier stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I do not know how he managed to go along. Technically, children were not supposed to participate in that operation. But he went... and he came back alive."
"How is that possible..." the young soldier said, staring at Rayan in disbelief. "So many adults died. How did a child survive?"
"No one knows. But after witnessing that kind of hell outside the walls, do you really think a little intimidation from Keith Shadis means anything to him?"
"...Yeah," the younger soldier muttered. "It would not."
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Try Other Fics I Have
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