Bai Yu

A boy who looked barely into his teens and stood about a meter and a half tall lay on a rock, watching white clouds drift across the sky. His eyes were unfocused, as though he were thinking about something.

His name was Bai Yu, and he looked somewhat out of place in this world.

No, he really was different from the people of this world. He was a transmigrator-well, a rather unfortunate one. In his previous life, he had been a workhorse who worked himself to death. Watching anime after work had been one of the few pleasures in his life.

During a stretch of overtime that lasted several days, he had suddenly dropped dead. His health had already been poor. He had gone to the hospital for a whole battery of tests, then stared at the results in silence for a long time before choosing to crumple them up and toss them into the trash. Out of sight, out of mind.

Life had gone on as usual, with overtime piled on top of overtime. Then it was over.

When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived in this world, starting over as a baby. In theory, transmigration should have been a good thing. If he had ended up in some slice-of-life anime, Bai Yu would have agreed. But this world...

Bai Yu came back to himself and lowered his gaze from the sky. What met his eyes was a wall dozens of meters high. Behind him, a goddess's face adorned the distant city gate.

Yes, that was Wall Maria, and the world he was in was the world of Attack on Titan. Yes, the one where enemies waited across the sea, and man-eating Titans roamed the island beyond the walls. It was terrifying.

Of course, as a transmigrator, he had a cheat of his own: a system. A very, very proper system...

The system had told him its guiding principle the moment he arrived.

Study hard...

It was painfully rigid. It had some awareness, but not much.

Unlike the systems in those novels, it wouldn't give him a divine weapon for drinking water or send him a girl for taking a walk. No, what his system gave him was a virtual training ground.

The terrain inside could change according to his wishes, and anything the system scanned in reality could appear in the virtual training ground for him to use. Time also flowed at a ratio of two to one-for now, at least. The system said that ratio could change as his mental strength grew.

But there was a time limit. He received ten hours each day.

Still, even the physical gains he made through training in the virtual space would be evaluated by the system and transferred to his body.

It also issued daily quests, though it didn't matter whether he completed them. The rewards were more time in the training ground and some strange books. It didn't put knowledge straight into his head; it actually gave him books and made him read through them himself. Bai Yu really wanted to complain about that.

But he was fairly easygoing about it. At least he had a system, didn't he? Besides, some of the quest rewards were little gadgets that had no real practical use but that Bai Yu liked very much.

As he thought, Bai Yu sat up from the grass. A breeze blew in from afar, brushing his cheeks with a slight chill. His eyes held a hint of fatigue.

He had just come out of the training ground. Its current layout consisted of part of Wall Maria and a map of the present-day Shiganshina District, which he had scanned by running all over the place.

His training consisted of wearing this world's Omni-Directional Mobility Gear and trying to survive a Titan invasion. A Titan had just killed him.

Since he knew he was in this cruel world, he wanted to survive. Nor was he alone here.

The grandfather who had adopted and raised him had followed his grandmother to the grave last year. Even as he died, he had looked worriedly at Bai Yu and the younger sister who had been adopted just like him.

As for his grandfather's biological son, he had belonged to the Survey Corps. Bai Yu had buried his grandfather alongside their empty graves.

He had always taken life as it came, merely staying alive. He had no goal—no, perhaps he did. To protect Xiate, and to enjoy this world a little.

He knew the plot, and he knew when the wall would be breached: the year 845. Right now, it was 844.

Next year?

At that thought, Bai Yu couldn't help chuckling softly and shaking his head. He let out a relaxed breath, stretched hard, then lay back down on the grass and gazed at the sky.

"A lot of people are going to die..."

He murmured the words.

The annoying kids who always picked fights with him would die. That stingy neighbor would die. The Garrison Regiment soldiers who were always drinking, those drunks who shirked their duties, would die...

The old woman who helped him would die. The little tagalong who shamelessly followed him everywhere would die, too. The man who occasionally shared a laugh with him would die. The doctor who checked on him from time to time would die...

"Why think so much about it? It's not like I can protect them all, right?"

He wasn't some protagonist who became an invincible powerhouse after transmigrating. He didn't have the strength to crush an entire world, nor the wisdom to turn everything around. He was simply himself. Just Bai Yu.

If he wanted to live now, it was only because he wanted to live. He really did take things as they came. His previous life had left him unable to be any other way.

Bai Yu felt a little self-mocking, but his eyes gradually relaxed. That was just the kind of person he was.

He turned his head and looked into the distance, where a commotion was stirring. The gate in Shiganshina District's wall was slowly opening, too. It seemed the Survey Corps was heading out on another expedition beyond the walls.

He took a pair of earphones from his pocket, then slowly closed his eyes again.

These earphones were perhaps a little unusual. They were a reward from the system: a pair of wireless earphones that could play tracks either at random or by selection and never ran out of power. Bai Yu loved listening to music.

He had loved it in his previous life, too.

He had no idea how much time passed...

"Bai Yu!"

A voice pulled Bai Yu out of his thoughts. His eyes slowly opened, and he found a pair of calm eyes looking at him.

A hint of resignation entered Bai Yu's eyes, though deep down, his gaze softened involuntarily. He removed his earphones and put them back in his pocket.

"Hmm? What is it, Hiette?"

The girl before him, a little younger than Bai Yu, was an orphan his grandfather had adopted just like him. She was also his younger sister, Hiette Doyle.

Right, Bai Yu's full name should now have been Bai Yu Doyle as well.

"Time to go home."

Looking at her older brother, Xiate spoke flatly, seeming a little cold. Bai Yu scratched his cheek. When she was little, she had always called him her big brother, but at some point, she had started calling him by his full name instead.

Little sisters really were just as people in his previous life had said: the older they got, the less cute they became. Of course, Bai Yu meant her personality. His little sister still looked very cute.

Xiate reached out and pulled him up from the ground. Bai Yu patted her head.

"Let's go home."