DISCLAIMER: Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama.

~ Strings ~

"Eren, there's something I've been meaning to ask you," the commander said solemnly, his crystal-blue gaze boring into the young man before him.

"What is it, sir?" Eren asked nervously.

What question could the commander possibly have for him that Eren hadn't answered already? He'd told him everything he knew about his titan-shifting abilities and what his father had done to him...

"What are those strings for?" Erwin asked.

The commander was still staring at him intently. Eren stared back, slack-jawed. What the hell was Erwin even talking about?

"The strings on your shirt," Erwin elaborated upon seeing the teenager's confusion. "It's really been bothering me. The neckline is too wide for those strings to be used for cinching it closed. They don't seem to have any practical function. So what are they for?"

Eren was surprised by the commander's impassioned speech about his shirt-strings.

"Fashion, sir," he answered.

Erwin reached out as if to touch them, but then - seeming to think better of it - pulled his hand back without making contact.

"Fashion. I see," the commander replied speculatively, his fingers idly playing with the dangling ends of his own bolo tie. Belatedly he added, "That's all. You're dismissed."

And if the commander noticed the way the young man's bright emerald gaze lingered on the thin strips of leather that dangled from his throat or the strong fingers that twiddled those strings between them, he gave no sign of it.

Little did each of them realize that the other would also be walking away from this meeting with a strong mental fixation on strings.

~end~