Wings of Freedom - BSD x AOT

Chapter 3

“She's been running for five hours straight till now, hasn't she?” Tanizaki noted as he was leaning over the veranda with a worried expressing on his face as he gazed at the young blonde girl, who was heaving and sweating as she kept running, possibly into her death.

Kenji followed his gaze, smiling so bright it could compete with the sun. Ignoring the fact that the sun was currently setting as evening drew closer. “She looks like she's enjoying it a lot!”

Atsushi smiled awkwardly at Kenji, scratching at the back of his head. “I'm not sure if that's really accurate, Kenji-kun.”

“Besides,” Tanizaki added, “Higuchi-kun looked like she was more upset about the fact that she's not allowed to have dinner than having to run until she collapses. Weird potato girl.”

“Did the headmaster really have to punish her this bad just for eating a stolen potato, though?” Naomi then interposed, looking at her brother with doubtful eyes.

“I guess that's how they establish discipline,” the orange-haired boy replied in return, though his expression gave away that he was in fact not very fond of how they established discipline among the cadets.

Atsushi and his friends had joined the Trainee Corps just on this day after having worked on the New Fields for a year, and the hardships and difficulty of this soldier training were already prominent to see.

“Didn't she say she was from a town somewhere deep in the woods? Like those traditional hunter families? I'm sure this will be a piece of cow meat for her!” Kenji beamed, and the others suppressed the urge to tell him that the correct phrase was actually, ‘A piece of cake.’

“By the way,” Tanizaki then turned to Atsushi and Kyouka – who had been silently standing beside him the entire time – with a curious expression. “Where are you two from, actually?”

“Ahh, we're both from Shiganshina district,” Atsushi responded while glancing at his adoptive sister, squeezing her hand. “Lived there till we were eleven and had to move to the New Fields.”

“Wait a second,” Tanizaki suddenly said, his curiosity growing with each word Atsushi uttered. “So that means you've been there on ‘that day'…?”

“That's right!” Haruno joined in, “It was in Shiganshina, wasn't it?”

“Did you see him?” Kenji then asked with big eyes, almost like a little child that waited for a fairy tale. “Did you see the Colossal Titan?”

Atsushi blinked, before stating nervously, “Yes… I have.”

Only a few minutes later and they were crowded by a throng of curious cadets who had gathered around him during dinner time, everyone speaking at the same time chaotically.

“You really saw him?” One asked again.

“Yes,” Atsushi replied, sounding almost exasperated by now. Being questioned was definitely not his thing.

“Oh my God! How tall was he?!”

“Is it true that he could walk over the wall?”

“What about the Armored Titan, the one that broke through wall Maria??”

Atsushi did his best to satisfy his audience, but stayed with the truth. “I don't even know why they call him the ‘Armored Titan’. To me, he looked like a normal one, if I'm honest.”

“And how does a normal one look?”

Flashbacks of the woman he had tried to save appeared inside his mind, how the titan had simply chopped down on her like a small snack, her legs the only remnants of her body. Nausea shot through his stomach and the white-haired boy suddenly felt the urge to puke, covering his mouth with his hand, his heterochromatic eyes widened. Kyouka looked at him with worry, placing her hand on his other in a reassuring manner.