Chapter Text
As a species we have this idea that everyone has something special about them, that we’re an unruly mass of uniqueness. Some people find out what makes them special early on in their lives, while others have hidden talents that remain buried for years, sometimes even centuries.
As a child and long into my teen years I didn’t share this vision. I carried on with my life, never achieving anything worth mentioning yet not really failing dramatically either. It wasn’t because I didn’t try, but more because being just short of the top doesn’t get you noticed. I ended up feeling that life was just a thing that happened and I wasn’t fated with any unique talents or skills that would set me apart from every other human that had the pleasure, or misfortune, of existing.
Somewhere along the lines though, my take on life changed, shifted slightly. It would be foolish and just plain wrong of me to claim this shift happened all at once, but there were certain events and a select group of people that made it happen. I still struggle to believe there’s anything special about me personally, but I’ve been able to appreciate the things about other people that make them special and, little by little, they’ve helped me appreciate things about myself too.
The first real ‘life shifting’ event started with a choice at the start of my second year of sixth form, the last year of mandatory school. Now, the thing with choices is that they are sneaky things. They can seem harmless, meaningless even, but really they have a far more significant impact than we can ever truly know.
It was only the second week of the first term and I’d already got into the habit of arriving late to school. I almost enjoyed arriving without the normal hustle and bustle. The only times I didn’t want to punch everyone in sight was when I walked around during lesson time when nobody was about, when it was like a ghost town. I guess that was the real problem with school, it was just so noisy.
I had to steel myself to enter my tutor room as the chatter from the group was loud from outside. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t a morning person that I struggled with the noise. Maybe I wasn’t a day person at all and should just become a vampire, except, preferably without the blood sucking and stupid capes.
“Good morning Jean!” Sasha greeted ever so brightly. I mumbled back a reply and sat down, leaning my chair back against the wall.
“Kirschtein, sit down properly,” Mr Smith thundered from the other side of the room. I almost fell off my seat trying to set the chair on the floor. Sasha giggled and I glared at her. This, of course, didn’t help in the slightest.
“Goodness Jean, didn’t your mother ever tell you not to swing back on your chair?” Connie asked with a snigger.
“Don’t bring my mother into this.” I snapped back. Connie looked like he was going to make some sort of ‘momma’s boy’ joke but Sasha cut in.
“So Jean, we have to choose our elective by the end of today, maybe you should think about trying meditation.” A stupid grin was plastered over her face as she pointed to the description in the booklet. For those of you not in the loop: ‘electives’ are non-academic activities we are obliged to do, normally on a Wednesday afternoon, as part of being in the school sixth form. At the beginning of each term we get given a booklet to fill in with our top three choices and you cross your fingers there are enough spaces so you don’t end up in subject support helping out with the loud mouthed, year nine, bottom set maths class. Last year I ended up volunteering at the local nature reserve and it was actually pretty cool. However the idea of sitting in a room being told when to breathe in and out while people around me fell asleep didn’t sound as much fun.
“Hey Sasha, did you see this on the last page?” Connie asked as he showed her the page in his booklet. “We should totally do this.”
“Yeah, that sounds awesome!” They high fived to emphasise how truly ‘awesome’ whatever it was, was. Maybe there was some elective where you went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant and stuffed your face. I turned to the last page to see what they were so hyped about and my eyes immediately fell on the words ‘Ukulele Club’. I looked up with an obvious look of disdain on my face to see Connie and Sasha grinning at me like they’d just agreed on the perfect way to cook me. I glanced back down at the page and when I looked back up they were both nodding their heads.
“Oh no,” I said backing my chair up against the wall clutching the booklet to my chest.
“Oh yes, Jean.” Connie said getting out of his seat. I knew what they were planning to do.
“You know you want to,” Sasha agreed, inching towards me menacingly. I checked the clock on the wall and thanked some unknown deity above that it had just gone nine o’clock.
“Yeah-maybe-sorry-gotta-go-to-my-lesson,” I said as I practically ran out of the room, booklet still clenched in my hand. Jesus Christ, those two could be real scary when they wanted to be. I cursed as I heard their laughter ringing out behind me like a pack of cackling hyenas.
I let out a deep sigh and forced myself to slow my breathing down. My heart was slamming against my ribcage in a way that made my chest ache.
Now you might be wondering what was so wrong with joining the ukulele club. What could have possibly instigated such a severe reaction? Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it wasn’t because I was awful at music. In fact, I used to have guitar lessons- and hell, I even studied Music at AS level. I was in no way bad at music.
The real reason was far more complicated, way sadder and has to do with a guy. To understand my disdain you need to know that in the little description box there was the name of the person running the elective... and that name was ‘Marco Bodt’.
Most people know him as a player, a real ladies man, but I know it’s all a front. He’d know I know, too, if it weren’t for the fact that he was extremely drunk when I found out. I’m probably the only person who knows, because I think that part of him is hidden so deep inside of him even he doesn’t know.
By instinct I had ended up at my locker in the small hallway under the stairs where I took one last look at the description in the booklet in the dim light before shoving it in the bottom of my bag and ungracefully dropping my maths book on top. I had a lesson to get to. I couldn’t be dwelling on it right now.
Do you know how to graph the modulus of a function? Great! Me too! In fact I’ve known how to for about a week now. The whole class already knows how to do this and yet Mr Pixis seems to think it’s necessary to go over it another time. Make that twenty more times. It was inevitable that my mind would start drifting- I was bored out of my mind, so you’ve got to cut me some slack. I was thinking about that goddamned booklet sitting in the bottom of my bag and the choice I had to make. Whether I stay away from him or not, whether I could break the promise to myself by making up excuses, and whether I could stand to lie about the reason I was going. It was going to be fun, I was going to expand my interests and I was going to get to spend more time hanging out with Connie and Sasha. There were a whole list of bullshit reasons I could tell myself- but that didn’t make the idea any less shitty.
I was knocked back to reality by Reiner hissing my name.
“Kirschtein.” I looked at him and he nodded his head at Mr Pixis who was looking impatiently at me.
“Uh,” I hadn’t caught a word he’d said for the last ten minutes and there was no way I knew what he’d just asked.
“The inequality, Mr Kirschtein, care to solve it for us?” He threw the white board pen at me and I caught it just before it whacked me in the face. I looked at the equation on the board then back to Reiner. Reiner was grinning because he knew I was about to make a fool of myself- and that’s exactly what I did.
“C’mon Jean, we’ve all been laughed at in class before.” Armin consoled me. “It was your own fault for not paying attention.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the only one!” I snapped back, crossing my arms defensively. “I just didn’t realise he’d moved on from those dumb graphs.”
“Yeah, Mr Pixis sure does love his graphs. I’m so glad he’s not my teacher anymore.” Armin said with a noticeable sigh of relief. Yeah well, it’s alright for him. He’s in the further Maths class made up of just him and Annie.
“How is further maths going anyway?” I asedk. He rubbed at his eye absentmindedly and ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair before discerning the best answer to give me.
“It’s fine.” He answered shortly before waving to Mikasa who he’d spotted on the other side of the common room. He turned back to me and hurriedly said his goodbye. “I’ve got to go, see you Jean.”
“Yeah, bye.” I mumbled to the Armin shaped space left behind. I quickly scanned the room but Connie and Sasha were nowhere to be seen. I was stuck between standing around awkwardly and sitting down alone even more awkwardly.
I was about to go over and follow where Armin had gone, even if it meant putting up with Eren for a bit, when Reiner approached me.
“Hey Jean!” He grinned as he slapped me on the back. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about my party.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, pretending his slap was but a gentle breeze as opposed to the bone crunching wallop it actually was.
“In a fortnight this Friday, my parents are going away on a holiday to Paris for the weekend so I’ve got a free house,” he explained. “Free house means I’ve got to throw a party, right?”
“Uh, yeah, sounds cool,” I said with a hesitant nod, “bit early to give notice if it’s just a house party though.”
“I know you need notice on these kinds of things. Got to give you time to work on your parents.” Reiner teased. “You barely got to come to any parties last year! I still don’t know what you’re like when you’re drunk.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. I went to one and that caused enough drama to sustain me for the rest of my school life, thank you very much.
“So you’ll come, right?”
I paused for a moment. He looked really eager for me to come which was just... weird. I wasn’t exactly close with Reiner, and I couldn’t figure out what his motives were. Reiner was a nice guy so I was fairly certain he wasn’t trying to get me to go to a party for any sort of malicious reason. There was still one problem though.
“Well, my dad’s going to be in Australia on a business trip around then, would I be able to stay over?” I asked because I knew my mum wouldn’t be keen to pick me up any later than half ten, which would make it pointless to even go in the first place.
“Sure!” Reiner slapped me on the back again. “We can have a good old sleepover.”
“Yeah,” I wheezed. Reiner chuckled and started to take his leave.
“Alright, see you later man.” He gave me a small wave as he walked over to join Bert and Annie. “And don’t forget to ask your parents!”
“I won’t!” I said, despite the fact that there was no way Reiner would be able to hear me over the din of the common room as he walked away. Going to a party where nothing crazy was going to happen would be good for me. I could probably do with being a bit more outgoing. At least, that’s what my mum thinks.
I scanned the common room again to find Connie and Sasha had magically materialised in our usual spot. Those two have been making a habit of sneaking past me.
“Where’ve you guys been?” I asked as I sat down with them, the overpowering smell of pizza making me salivate. They both had to swallow their current mouthfuls before being able to reply.
“Zoë kept us in late for Biology,” Connie said, before taking another handful of crisps.
“You know once they start off on one they don’t really know how to stop,” Sasha said with a shrug, “And then, when we did get here, you were busy talking to Reiner.”
“Yeah,” Connie said, “what was that about?”
I deliberated whether to tell them or not. I didn’t think I needed to give them another thing to badger me about, but if I told them about this it could stop them asking me about the stupid ukulele club.
“He’s going to have a party in a few weeks, and thought he should give me notice so I could work on my parents.” I explained. “He’ll probably tell everyone else about it next week sometime.”
“Oh cool!” Sasha exclaimed. “Reiner always throws great parties.”
Connie nodded but then the conversation lulled as I sat there waiting for them to finish their snacks. It was only break but Sasha still had several slices of pizza which she quickly demolished. She always managed to surprise me with fast she ate everything and anything.
“So, Jean,” she said, with the most innocent look possible on her face, “Have you chosen your elective yet?”
“Have you?” I quickly countered.
“We had a free first thing this morning so we’ve already handed the forms in.” Connie interjected with a smug grin.
“Let me take a wild guess, you both picked that damn ukulele thing?”
“Now, now Jean, don’t be like that.” Connie wagged his finger at me. “We all know you’re going to pick it anyway, so I don’t know why you keep on trying to deny it.”
“And besides,” Sasha said with knowing smirk, “Marco’s running it, and he’s really cute.”
I gave them a moment or two to take it back, but when the only thing they did was pass a look between them I could feel the weight of my eyebrows bearing down on my eyes as they fell into a scowl.
“All the more reason not to go!” I hissed as I stood up from my seat.
“Oh, c’mon Jean, we were only teasing,” Sasha whined with a pout.
“I’ve got some homework I need to do,” I mumbled before leaving them to their stupid jokes. I didn’t even make it to a study room before the bell went signalling the end of break. I rubbed my face with my hand, stretching my skin as it dragged down past my eye. I did a 180 degree spin to go back to my locker and get my biology text book out.
I had a free period after biology so I made a resolution to fill out this damn form to stop those friends of mine from bugging me so incessantly. I had no idea what to choose. Maybe I could find something that could give me a better outlet for this pent up... whatever it is, churning around inside of me.
I found myself a secluded part of one of the study rooms and quickly skimmed through my options, finding there was a running club which fit the bill, so that was my first choice done and dusted before I even had the chance to think about anything. I decided to use working on the nature reserve as my plan B, because it was better than meditation, but that just left the third spot empty.
I looked through the booklet again a couple more times in the vain hope that something would leap out at me but nothing took my interest. Not a single damn thing.
I found myself leaving the last page open staring at the form and trying my hardest not to let my gaze wonder to that name I knew was there, just a glance to the left.
My stomach flipped as I once again relived the memory of that night. I didn’t mean to find him alone like that. It was a mistake but before I even knew what was going on he was leaning so close to me. Our breath was mingling together and I could count every freckle on his face and-
Shit, shit, shit.
I felt like I was going to be sick. I covered my mouth with my hand and forced myself to take one deep breath after another. I looked around in hopes no one was watching me and only then, when I was sure everyone else was too caught up in their own business, did I feel safe enough to slowly uncover my mouth and take several more deep breaths.
I hadn’t felt this bad in a long time. I hadn’t thought about him so much in such a long time.
I saw him around school, of course, but I did my best to blur him in my mind. All of this crap was messing everything up.
I shook my head to try and clear my thoughts. Why was I reacting so badly? Fear? Fear of what? I’m Jean Kirschtein and I’m not fucking afraid of anything. I hesitated with my pen held aloft for a moment before hurriedly scribbling my third and final choice down. The only thing left to do was hand in the form to reception and hope that my flicker of courage would prove unnecessary after all.