As the three of them neared home, Eren, who had been silent all this time, turned to Arthur beside him and apologized.
"Sorry, Arthur. I was too impulsive back there."
"Sigh... Eren, you should know that becoming a soldier isn't just a matter of wanting it. Being a soldier means you have to be highly disciplined. You can't get carried away in the heat of the moment and charge in like an idiot just to throw your life away."
Arthur sighed and tried to talk some sense into Eren.
"I understand. I'll change, starting today." Eren nodded, only half understanding, then promised he would improve.
"A proper scout also needs to be physically fit. Look at you-you can't even beat Mikasa, so how can you talk about joining the Survey Corps?" Arthur remembered how Eren had once made Mikasa angry and been taken down in a single move.
"I'm not weak, okay?" Eren felt embarrassed when Arthur brought up his defeat at Mikasa's hands.
"Besides, who can beat Mikasa apart from you?" Eren muttered. Honestly, he sometimes wondered whether Mikasa was a boy. She was a girl, yet she was so strong.
Even the bully boys a year or two older than him couldn't last a single move against her.
"What did you say?" Arthur hadn't caught his words.
"Nothing." Eren shook his head and kept it to himself.
"Arthur, Mikasa, I'm going to be as strong as you two. I'm definitely joining the Survey Corps!"
Eren clenched his fists and spoke to Arthur and Mikasa with firm resolve.
But Arthur's next words immediately dampened his enthusiasm.
"Heh. When I told you to train with me before, you and Armin started complaining before you'd even lasted two days."
"Th-that was just a one-time thing. I'm serious now! Starting tomorrow, I'll train with you!" Eren scratched his head awkwardly.
"You mean it?" Arthur raised an eyebrow.
"I mean it!" Eren looked completely serious, as though he had made up his mind.
"All right, then. If you complain about being tired again, I'll kick your butt." Arthur nodded in agreement.
"Yes!" Eren was delighted.
"Don't celebrate too soon. I'll still need to test you for a while."
"That won't be a problem," Eren said confidently, before changing the subject. "Arthur, since you're so strong, will you join the Survey Corps with me someday?"
"Join the Survey Corps?" Arthur paused.
"Yeah! If you joined the Survey Corps, you could definitely deal with those Titans easily. You're so strong!"
"I..." "No! Arthur absolutely cannot join the Survey Corps!" Just as Arthur was about to answer, Mikasa suddenly shouted beside him, overcome with emotion.
Mikasa hadn't expected Eren to start trying to entice Arthur into joining the Survey Corps along with him. After seeing the terrible state the scouts had returned in, she had firmly crossed the Survey Corps off her list.
There was no way she would let Arthur and Eren join something so dangerous.
They were the only family she had left now.
"Mikasa..." Arthur hadn't expected such an intense reaction from her.
"Why? Arthur's so strong, Mikasa. He could do so much for humanity." Eren couldn't understand why she was so determined to stop them from joining the Survey Corps.
"No means no. Give up on that idea!" Mikasa hugged Arthur's arm and pulled him toward home.
Arthur let Mikasa lead him away. Having lived two lives, he naturally understood why she was trying to stop Eren.
"Huh?! You're not my mother! I'm not listening to you!" Eren shouted angrily at Mikasa as she walked farther away, but he still followed them.
The three returned home.
"You're back?" Eren's mother, Carla, called from inside.
"Yeah!" all three answered.
They set down their baskets full of firewood, and the well-behaved Mikasa went over to help at the stove.
"Oh? Eren, this is unusual. How did you gather so much today?"
Carla looked at Eren's basket in surprise.
Blushing, Eren glanced at Arthur. The observant Carla noticed immediately. As Eren's mother, she guessed that Arthur must have helped him.
She promptly grabbed Eren by the ear.
"Did Arthur help you again?"
Eren blushed and said nothing.
"Honestly, you..." Carla released his ear with a helpless look and returned to her work.
"You idiot. You can't even lie. She saw right through you." Arthur patted Eren's shoulder, at a loss for words.
"That's because my mom's too smart," Eren argued.
Then they sat down at the table to eat. After the meal was over,
Eren's father, Dr. Grisha, began packing his things to make a house call.
Carla stood at the sink, washing the dishes in her hands.
At that moment, Mikasa spoke with her head lowered.
"Eren said he wants to join the Survey Corps."
"Mikasa, you!" Eren looked utterly shocked. He hadn't expected her to tell on him.
Arthur was surprised as well. It was the first time he had seen Mikasa tell on someone.
He hadn't expected her to use Carla to crush Eren's hopes of joining the Survey Corps.
"What?!" Hearing that Eren wanted to join the Survey Corps gave Carla a fright. Remembering the dreadful state of the scouts she had seen, she couldn't bear to imagine what might happen if her own son joined them.
Carla spun around and strode toward Eren.
Grisha, who had been reading the newspaper, abruptly stopped as well. An eerie silence fell over the room.
"Mikasa, didn't I tell you to keep it a secret?!" Eren suddenly slammed the table and shouted at her.
"Be quiet," Carla snapped beside him.
Then she began trying to reason with him.
"Eren, don't you know how many people who go outside the walls never come back?!" Carla held Eren's shoulders and stared sternly into his eyes.
"I know, but I'm still going!" Eren answered stubbornly.
"You!" Carla hadn't expected him to be so obstinate.
Grisha interrupted their argument, speaking up as the head of the family.
"Eren, why do you want to go outside the walls?" Grisha asked, his voice and gaze utterly serious.
"Because I don't want to spend my whole life living inside the walls like livestock, knowing nothing about the world outside!" Eren shouted.
"So that's why. I understand, Eren." Grisha nodded, then stood, took his hat and briefcase from the rack, and slowly walked toward the door.
"Dear, why aren't you trying to talk Eren out of it?" Carla hurried over to Grisha. As a mother, she still couldn't accept it.
"Carla, human curiosity isn't something you can suppress with words alone. And it's precisely because children have ideas like these that humanity has a future."
As he spoke, Grisha took a key from inside his coat. Arthur recognized it as the key to Dr. Grisha's basement.
"Eren, when I get back, I'll let you see that mysterious basement."
Although Grisha seemed to be speaking to Eren, the observant Arthur noticed that his gaze appeared to be directed toward the wooden frame.
What exactly was there?
"Okay, Dad!" Eren was thrilled to hear that he would finally get to see the mysterious basement he had been longing to visit once his father returned. He kept waving at Grisha's retreating back.
After Grisha left,
Carla spoke to Eren again.
"From today onward, you are never to mention that foolish idea again. I absolutely forbid it. You cannot join the Survey Corps!" Carla threw cold water on Eren's excitement.
"Foolish? I think the people content to spend their entire lives inside the walls like livestock are the foolish ones!" Eren retorted angrily, then turned, shoved the door open, and ran outside.
"Sigh..." Watching Eren refuse to listen, Carla felt utterly worn down with worry.
She turned to Arthur and Mikasa.
"Arthur, Mikasa, that child's temperament makes it far too easy for him to get into danger. If anything happens, make sure you look out for one another."
As a mother, Carla spoke to Arthur and Mikasa with deep concern.
Arthur and Mikasa nodded together.
"Don't worry, Aunt Carla. I'll take good care of Eren," the well-behaved Mikasa said.
"Good." Carla smiled and nodded.
Worried that the troublesome Eren would get himself into more mischief, Arthur and Mikasa set off in the direction he had run to look for him.
After turning through several winding alleyways, Arthur and Mikasa finally found Eren.
He was fighting three children.
A blond boy stood nearby, watching timidly as Eren took a beating. Arthur recognized him as the naturally timid Armin.
"With those pathetic skills, you think you can stand up for that heretic?" The three boys ganged up on Eren. Outnumbered, he was no match for them.
"I won't let you call him that!" Eren grabbed one of them by the ear and shouted furiously.
"Let go!"
"No!"
Seeing Eren losing, Arthur and Mikasa ran toward them.
"Whoa! The demon king and Mikasa are here!" The three brats reacted to Arthur and Mikasa like mice spotting a cat. Terrified, they immediately let go of Eren and fled out of sight.
"You're lucky you ran so fast!" Arthur watched the brats flee but didn't chase them.
"Eren, are you okay?" Mikasa stepped forward and carefully helped Eren up from where he had been knocked down.
"I'm fine," Eren said, holding his face and grimacing in pain. With his face bruised and swollen, his words weren't very convincing.
"Armin, why were they bullying you again?" Arthur looked helplessly at the timid Armin. He had taught him some self-defense after seeing him get bullied before, but Armin still let others pick on him.
"If I hit them, wouldn't I be just like them? They only resorted to violence because they couldn't win the argument," Armin said calmly.
"Why did they hit you?" Eren asked in confusion.
"Well..." Armin began explaining.
Essentially, Armin had told the three brats that humanity would leave the walls sooner or later. They had accused him of spreading dangerous lies and beaten him.
"Those bastards! Is wanting to go outside the walls wrong?!" Eren fumed.
"Of course not. Their thinking just limits them. You can't explain ice to a summer insect." Arthur remembered a saying from his previous life and used it here.
"Can't explain ice to a summer insect? What does that mean?" Eren repeated the phrase clumsily, then looked at Arthur curiously.
Mikasa and Armin were also curious.
"It means that an insect that's never seen winter certainly won't believe that ice exists in winter," Arthur explained roughly.
"Oh, I see." The three nodded as though they had learned something and committed the saying to memory.
"Unfortunately, trying to explain that to them would just be a waste of time. The royal government is no different from those insects. All they do is restrict us." Armin lowered his head dejectedly.
"..." The three remained silent. They knew Armin was right.
Then they began leafing through the books Armin's parents had left behind.
Looking through those books, Arthur realized for the first time just how limited humanity's knowledge was in this world.
They had never even seen the North Pole, volcanic lava, or the ocean. Nor had he expected the royal government within the walls to have expressly forbidden these things.
Arthur could tell that the royal government was desperately trying to conceal something from the people inside the walls. He knew that something earth-shattering must have happened a hundred years ago.
Just as the four were imagining whether they might someday see the ocean,
Arthur suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of danger, exactly like the one he had felt when Kane and Yumiko were killed.
Whoosh! Arthur sprang to his feet and scanned his surroundings, searching for the source of that sense of danger.
"Arthur, what's wrong?" Mikasa looked in puzzlement at his sudden movement.
But in the very next second,
A blinding bolt of golden lightning flashed across the distant sky. Immediately afterward, the ground began shaking violently, as though the mountains were collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
Flocks of startled birds flew into the air.
The four instinctively looked toward the sound.
What they saw next filled all four with horror, as though they had witnessed something utterly terrifying.
A blood-red hand, so huge it blotted out the sky and sun, suddenly grasped the top of the wall, steam pouring from it. A moment later, an enormous, skinless, blood-red head rose into view, also wreathed in steam.
Its enormous eyes stared down at the people in the city like a demon's.
"It's a Titan! A Titan fifty meters tall!"
"A Titan taller than the wall? How is that possible?!"
The residents cried out in shock as they looked at the Titan.
"That wall is fifty meters tall!" Armin said beside Arthur, his lips trembling.
"Run!" Arthur reacted first. He grabbed Mikasa's hand and took off, shouting a warning to Eren and Armin beside him.
Arthur's shout snapped Eren and Armin out of their daze, and they hurriedly started running as well.
But they had only taken a few steps when,
With a thunderous crash, the towering Titan smashed the massive city gate apart with its enormous foot.
For a moment, it was as though the world were ending. Fierce winds swept rubble through the city.
Debris flew everywhere, huge chunks of stone crashing onto streets and houses.
Some stones even smashed residents who hadn't reacted in time into bloody pulp.
At that moment, panic engulfed everyone in the city.