Many years had passed for him since he last stood at the pinnacle of the Titan world. His soul was already more than thirty years old, and now he had returned to his own world and climbed to the top once again.
Yet he felt little joy. The happiness of reuniting with his parents was real, but the life he had lived for over a decade, and all those faces that still mattered most to him, seemed to have slipped away forever.
At first, he had thought it might have been a dream, but his Ackerman strength and speed reminded him every moment that it was no dream. It was a life he had truly lived.
He remembered Order saying that entering space-time turbulence was almost certain death. Finding a world's coordinates within that endless turbulence was nothing short of a fool's dream. Although he had no idea how he had returned, he was undoubtedly the lucky one.
Looking back now, in that moment of desperate crisis, he had barely had time to think about Historia's pregnancy. He even had a child he might never meet.
He rubbed his forehead with a bitter smile. Perhaps there would never be anyone on this planet he could tell about his past life.
If only Chris were here...
He opened his phone and searched for pictures of Mikasa. Looking at her anime face, he felt an ever-deepening, boundless loneliness. That was not her face at all. Perhaps he was the only person in this world who had ever seen Mikasa's real face.
That night, he began scouring the internet for every kind of Mikasa cosplay, hoping to find someone who bore even the slightest resemblance to her, someone who could offer him a shred of false comfort.
As if heaven had taken pity