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Looking back, Maka probably never noticed it because she and Soul were never far apart from each other. You don’t notice something about a person if you see them every day of your life for years.
Though it also could have been the fact that Soul slouches so much.
The day she noticed was a few weeks after Soul turned 16. They were walking through the halls to their next class when Sid yelled out to Soul to straighten up his posture.
“Honestly, you’re a Death Scythe. I was and still am the kind of man who expects some propriety out of you!”
Soul rolled his eyes at their undead professor, and with some grunts and groans of complaint, the boy complied and stretched out his spine.
Maka was ahead of him as she walked into the classroom and therefore did not see him perform the action. However, she did hear a resounding “bonk!” followed by a string of curses from her scythe.
“Motherfuck—!” he yowled, rubbing his reddening forehead.
“Are you okay?” she asked, whirling around to assess whatever damage Soul unleashed upon himself.
“Yeah,” he grumbled, glaring at the top of the doorframe. “Just forgot how low this actually was…”
Maka raised an eyebrow in surprised as she glanced up. From her vantage point she considered the frame rather high. Maka could stretch her hand up and barely brush the underside with her fingers.
But from what just happened, it was low for Soul. She watched him warily to make sure he really was okay as he walked into the classroom and straightened his posture back up. Once at his full height, Maka’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She had never realized just how tall her partner was—Maka’s head only coming up to his shoulder. She continued to gape at him. How could she not have noticed?
Soul saw that his meister was frozen where she stood in front of him, staring at him with wide green eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her. “What? That bad?” he asked in reference to the bump he probably received from previously banging his head.
Maka violently shook her head, trying to get a grip on herself. She had always known Soul to be taller than her—he gloated it about it once it became clear he was surpassing her in height—but she just didn’t realize how much he had grown until this second. She fought the urge to demand when this anomaly had happened.
Soul shrugged off her behavior and, much to Maka’s infuriation, began patting her head as if she were a child.
“Come on. Let’s sit down already.”
Maka only nodded, briskly swatting his hand away. The class shortly began once they had found their seats and despite everything, Maka still couldn’t fathom her weapon’s growth spurt.
Hours later, Maka and Soul were home at their apartment; Maka in the kitchen preparing their supper.
She had decided to cook steaks that night and needed to season them. The only problem was that for some reason (probably Soul’s doing…) the seasoning was placed on the top shelf where Maka couldn’t reach.
She huffed, muttering some curses under her breath as she moved to one of the kitchen chairs to use as a step stool. Before she could grab the seasoning though, Soul had waltzed in and easily grabbed it for her.
“Couldn’t bear to watch you struggle anymore,” he teased, a lopsided grin on his face.
Maka wanted to punch it right off.
Growling at the reminder that the demon scythe was much taller than her and she never noticed it, Maka forcefully grabbed the seasoning and slammed it on the counter as she said, “I’m going to measure you!”
Soul balked at her, one eyebrow cocking up in surprise, “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I’m going to measure you!”
“Never had someone take my measurements and make it sound like a threat,” Soul sarcastically said to her, but complied anyway. He made his way to the open space between the kitchen and the living room. He sidled up against the wall where the two kept track of their respective growth spurts.
Measuring their heights on the wall started during the early stages of their partnership, shortly after they moved in with each other. Like most things, they were arguing over something silly—some chore that neither one of them wanted to do from what Maka remembered.
Soul had claimed in that juvenile way children do that since he was a year older then he shouldn’t have to do the chore. Maka, in retaliation, said that since she was taller then that meant she didn’t have to do it. This led to Soul arguing that there was no way she was taller than him, which then led to them measuring each other in the entryway between the kitchen and living room.
At age 11, Maka was 5’1”.
Soul, age 12, was 5’0”.
And Maka never let him live it down.
Since then, they tended to measure each other every year. Soul caught up eventually and even surpassed Maka by the time he hit 14, but not by much. Looking at the documentation of their heights, Maka realized that they hadn’t checked how tall the other had gotten in nearly 2 years.
It made sense. The last time they measured each other (sometime after Maka turned 13), was preceded by all the chaos that was their failure of making Soul a Death Scythe the first time. Then came the Black Blood, Asura’s revival, Arachne, and so on and so forth. There was really no time for them to do something as mundane as see how much taller they had gotten, and eventually the pastime became forgotten completely.
Until now.
“Stand up straight and no tiptoes!”
Soul snorted, “I don’t need to be on my tiptoes to know I’m taller than you.”
Maka scowled, but didn’t say anything. She grabbed a pencil and was about to reach up to make a mark on top of Soul’s head, only to realize that she couldn’t quite reach that far up to make the mark without raising herself up onto her tiptoes and going at an awkward angle.
Her struggle caused Soul to give her an infuriating smirk, “What’s the matter? Is the great Maka Albarn vertically challenged?”
Maka snarled, “Shut up! I got it!”
To her chagrin, Maka did have to retrieve something to stand on if she were to adequately mark Soul’s height (she used the extra inches provided by the step stool to deliver a hard chop when he had to gall to laugh at her…payback’s a bitch, Evans). While her weapon was nursing his bruised cranium, Maka took a tape measurer and figured up how many inches he was.
Maka gasped, “73 inches!? How?!”
Maka stared at the black mark that indicated Soul’s current height and then the black mark from a couple of years ago from when she last measured him.
At age 14, Soul was 5’4”. He was now 6’1”. In 2 years time, Soul Eater Evans had managed to grow 9 full inches.
Maka stared at the mark from when she was measured all that time ago. Between ages 11 and 13, Maka had only grown an inch, making her a steady 5’2”. Surely now that she was almost 15 she had grown a little more.
“Measure me next!” she commanded her weapon who was still rubbing his sore head from her earlier attack.
Soul sneered, but snatched the pencil out of her grasp, “Yes, my meister.”
She stuck out her tongue at him at his snarky tone. Standing up straight and putting her back to the wall, Maka watched as her partner leaned down to mark a line where the top of her head was. Stepping away, she grabbed the tape measurer again only to stop short when she noticed something…
The new blackened mark on the wood was just barely above the line below it—not even a centimeter.
Maka hardly grew any in the last 2 years.
She sputtered, her words running together as she tried to voice out her frustration at this newfound fact. Meanwhile, Soul—that freakishly tall bastard—continued to laugh at his meister’s pain.
“Look at it this way, Maka.” Soul said in between chuckles, “You’re not short…you’re fun-sized!”
If you asked her, he rightfully deserved that second Maka Chop.
With the discovery of her…”vertically challenged” state…it was all Maka could think about for the next couple of days. It was like she had a film over her eyes hiding the truth from her; a film that was brutally ripped off to make her face the horrifying reality that she had barely grown at all since the start of puberty.
Everything was put in perspective for her. The fact that she had to stand on the balls of her feet occasionally if she wanted a better view of her top half in the bathroom mirror. And whenever she was putting away the dishes, she tended to put them in easy-to-reach places. Then there was the utter reminder that her partner was almost a full foot taller than her during those moments when she wanted to fix up Soul’s clothes so he didn’t look like a complete slob. It always ended up with her commanding him to stoop lower so she could reach his shirt collar.
It was frustrating, even more so when she was around her other friends. Maka always knew her friends (the female ones at least) had more height on her because she was the youngest of the group. When you’re young it’s expected to be short.
But once reaching adulthood, sometimes the younger kids grew taller than the older ones.
Unfortunately, Maka was not that certain type of kid. As she looked to the giants (from her perspective) around her, she felt inadequacy bubble up in her. Remembering that she had to do an annual physical with Mira Nygus in the infirmary every year, Maka decided she should ask the medical professional her opinion on the matter.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she half asked, half demanded to the school’s nurse as they finished the physical. As always, Nygus had measured Maka, and as usual she didn’t comment on Maka’s growth, just wrote it down on a chart. Maka, fed up with her silence on the matter of her short stature, decided to take the matter into her own hands.
Nygus—caught off guard by Maka’s sudden outburst—looked up from the chart in her hands to give the girl a befuddled look, “Excuse me?”
Maka sighed, realizing she had rushed into this without preamble, and took a deep breath as she tried to explain herself, “Soul and I measured our heights the other day and I realized I’ve barely grown since I was 13. That’s why I asked if I could get my physical done earlier than usual. I need to know—is there a problem with my development?”
Nygus blinked at Maka as she processed the question before the older woman started giggling. Maka pouted. She didn’t find the situation so funny…
“Maka, no, of course there’s nothing wrong with you and your development,” Nygus finally said. “I’ve been doing your physicals since you started the DWMA, and while you were a late bloomer in some of your physical growth,” she nodded in reference to Maka’s chest, “in other areas you are completely healthy.”
Nygus bent down to give Maka a reassuring squeeze to her shoulder, “Height isn’t everything, Maka. Some people aren’t meant to grow very tall. It just depends on our genetic makeup. Some children have issues with their growth hormone, but I promise you, that is not your problem. So you’re petite, big deal. It’s nothing to stress about. You’re absolutely healthy.”
Maka frowned. Despite Nygus’s words, it didn’t make her feel any better about her lack of height.
Nygus sensed Maka’s displeasure and heaved a sigh, “If it does make you feel any better, you are still growing. Most girls stop at age 15, but I’ve seen some instances where their physique continues to develop until they reached adulthood. Maybe that could be you…”
Maka perked up at that. Nygus was right, she was still growing. And like she had said, Maka was a late bloomer. Maybe her height was just late to develop too.
“That does help, actually. Thank you Miss Nygus!” Maka chirped. Waving goodbye to the school’s nurse, she skipped out of the infirmary and into the hallway.
As she made it to the school’s entrance, she found Soul waiting for her.
“Talk to Nygus?” he asked with a quirk of a brow.
Maka nodded, “Yep! She said I was a late bloomer so it is possible I could still grow until I reach adulthood.”
Soul nodded, “I’m sure there was more to that conversation, but I’ll take your word for it…”
Maka rolled her eyes at his sarcastic quip, but refrained from arguing with him. Her mind was made up. She would not fret about her short stature any more. She was confident that by the time she turned 18 she’d definitely be taller…
“Are you freaking kidding me?!”
Soul rolled his eyes at his partner’s reaction as he put the tape measurer on the counter, “It’s not that bad.”
“An inch! I can’t believe I’m a freaking adult and I’ve only grown one lousy inch!”
It was the day after Maka’s 18th birthday and she was determined to see if there had been any progress on the possibility of a late growth spurt. Granted, she knew she was still smaller in comparison to her friends, but surely she’d have made it to 5’4” by now.
Looking at the results…this was not true.
“Technically you grew 2.5 cm…which is like three quarters of an inch or something like that.” Soul pointed out.
Maka glared at him, “Don’t start with me, Soul Eater Evans. In this house we round up!”
Soul scoffed, “Sure we do.”
Maka huffed before lifting her eyes to where she had marked her scythe’s height. “Well, on the bright side, it seems like you’ve stopped growing. Any more inches on you and I’d have to question whether or not you were part beanstalk.”
“Haha very funny,” Soul said, looking at the blackened mark that showed his height. Sometime after Soul turned 17, his annual physical revealed he had reached the impressive height of 6’4” and it appeared he would stop at this height. “Not my fault most of my family is on the taller side.”
Maka frowned, “Papa’s tall though. How come I didn’t get those genes?”
“Maka, I’ve met your mom and she’s as short as you. And the photos of her side of the family show they ain’t that tall either. Face it, you,” he snickered a bit, “got the short end of the stick!”
Maka gave an indignant scream as she shoved her partner, “Screw you, Evans!”
She was about to stomp off into her room when she felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her waist.
“Come on, don’t be like that,” she heard Soul’s voice say into her ear. Despite her irritable mood, Maka flushed against him, “I like that you’re tiny.”
Maka rolled her eyes, “You just like making a big deal about how much taller you are than me.”
“Well, yeah, that.” Soul chuckled, “But I also like how I can do this!”
Without warning he spun Maka around to face him and effortlessly lifted her off the ground. Maka gave a sharp yelp of surprise, reflexively wrapping her arms around Soul’s neck and her legs around his waist. Now face to face with each other, Soul leaned his face forward to give her a kiss on the lips.
When he pulled away from her, Maka—noticeably more relaxed in his arms—gave him a flat look, “Not gonna lie, that was kind of corny.”
Soul pouted at her, “Shut up, it was cool. Cool guys always know how to sweep their girl off their feet.” He then wiggled his eyebrows at her, “Figuratively and literally.”
Maka smirked, tapping his nose, “Yeah, well, no matter how short she is, this ‘cool’ guy’s girl knows how to kick his ass!”
Her partner in every way including romantic grinned at her, “Hell yeah she does!”