The sky rumbled ominously, as it had been doing most of the day. By now, most of her fellow high school students were ignoring the sound of the incoming storm, having heard its approach for hours; the boys quickly tired of scaring the girls at every thunderclap, and the girls quickly tired of the boys and of their own screaming. It was a stupid game all children played in school, she thought with disgust, and high-schoolers were hardly any different. Now they were instead frantically packing away their belongings to get home as soon as possible. She joined them in their rush but for entirely different reasons.

"Ymir!" a male voice called out.

She turned around and found the face of their obnoxious class representative and his lackeys staring concernedly at her. Well, two out of the three looked concerned, at least. "What?" she asked.

"Eren wanted to know if you had a ride home." The girl with black hair spoke from the side, her blank expression taking away from the intended friendly effect of the statement. Mikasa, as Ymir remembered she was called.

"I do," Ymir told them. It was a lie, of course, but they didn't need to know that. The sooner they left, the happier she would be. But they did not move. Frowning deeply, she heard a sigh.

"Guys, we shouldn't have bothered her, see?" the other lackey spoke up. Ameer, was it? No, Aaron? She knew his name, but she was currently preoccupied with other thoughts and concerns. Like how she was actually going to get home and avoid the storm simultaneously. But later, when it was sure to be a downpour.

"She's clearly lying" the leader of the lackeys stated. "Armin, you know she is."

Ah, yes, Armin was his name. The boy who had taken first in their class rankings.

"But Eren, she clearly doesn't want us here," Armin frowned. "We're actually getting in her way," he whispered into Eren's ear, although they were so close that Ymir heard him anyway.

"We are?" Eren seemed so genuinely confused that Ymir almost laughed. To his credit, his heart was in the right place, but he was as observant as a rock. If the situation between him, Mikasa and Annie were any indication- "But we're trying to help her out. How are we in the way?"

Ymir thought she could see a glimmer of annoyance in Mikasa's dark eyes and felt, for a moment, some sympathy for the girl's plight. Stretching her long arms above her head, she yawned, "Your buddy there is right. I have things to do, places to go, people to see, so if you'll excuse me."

She brushed past the group of three and stuck her hands into her pockets, ignoring Eren's indignant splutter. They were far too concerned with affairs that were not their own, but Eren had a tendency to interfere that bordered on insane, she mused. He was like one of those shounen manga heroes that Krista was so fond of.

The thought of Krista made her heart jolt. Sighing, she slung her backpack over her shoulder, the messenger bag hitting her leg as she marched purposefully out the classroom door.

"Hey, wait! What are you going to do when it starts pouring?"

She didn't even look over her shoulder as she answered, "Nothing. I have no control over the skies."

The door slid shut, and she held it closed tight, grinning to herself as Eren struggled to slide it back open. Her strength was proving to be greater, she noted with delight, but she hadn't expected any less. Jean chose that exact moment to walk past, and Ymir tapped his shoulder and got his attention, holding the door still even with one hand.

"Huh?" he grunted.

"Mikasa and Eren wanted to know if-" Before she had even finished her sentence, Jean was ripping the door open and engaging in a yelling match with a surprised Eren who quickly began shouting back. Mention Eren's and Mikasa's name in the same sentence and... The formula never failed, and victory was all too easy and sweet.

"Hey, twerp, you bothering other people?"

"Who're you calling a twerp, asshole? What's your problem?"

"Like lighting a powder keg," Ymir hummed to herself and continued on her way. The hallways were full of activity, kids calling or texting, most of them hurrying downstairs for the main entrance, but Ymir went up the staircase instead of down. Her tall stature cleared the way for herself, although she knew her reputation aided her just as much.

"Ymir-sama!" a high pitched voice chose that moment to call out, and Ymir winced. Here come the fangirls, she thought and sighed. And she only got rid of Eren a few seconds ago, too.

"Ymir-sama? Where?"

"Look!"

"Shit," she growled and pumped her legs up the remaining stairs. Ignoring the sound of incoming footsteps, she turned into the third floor hallway and ran for the end, spinning to the right and running down another hallway before ducking into what she thought was an empty classroom.

"Ymir?"

Except it wasn't.

She put a finger to her lips and shushed the other person. Shrugging, the occupant of the room smirked knowingly at her and went back to wiping the board off. Neither of them reacted as they heard a gaggle of girls run by, a stampede for all they knew, and the other person only spoke once he was sure the girls wouldn't be back.

"I thought you said you took care of that problem," Reiner stated, eyebrow raised in amusement.

"I did," Ymir replied. "A minor setback with this particular group of girls, that's all."

"So then you're here to rejoin our grade?" Reiner smiled amicably.

"Nope," Ymir instantly responded. "I didn't go through so much trouble before just to come back later."

Reiner nodded, mouth tilting to one side in thought. "I think you're the only person I've ever met who scored the highest in their grade and wanted to be held back."

"Yeah, well, I had my reasons. It's no problem anyway, because I already talked to Tokyo University and they agreed to let me repeat a year without any complications," Ymir smirked. Her smirk widened at the shock on Reiner's face, before he shook his head.

"Had it all planned out? I didn't expect any less of you," Reiner chuckled.

"I should say the same to you. Oxford, eh?" Ymir cocked an eyebrow.

"Did word really get out that quickly?" Reiner asked. He threw the towel in his hand onto a desk, having abandoned his cleaning duties for the moment.

"I don't think so."

"...I seriously wonder how your eyes and ears are everywhere."

Smiling mysteriously, Ymir told him, "If they were, I wouldn't need to go to the student council room right now."

"Oh?" he smiled knowingly back. "Well, don't let me keep you."

"See you around." Waving lazily with one hand, she strode to the door and peeked her head out, searching for any potential threats. Seeing none, she took a step forward, shoulders sagging in relief, and was almost out the door when Reiner spoke again.

"By the way, I heard you're not the top of your class anymore."

She stopped.

"Hah, I would be if I wanted to. But who cares?"

She stepped out.

"Evidently you do. You're rather transparent if one knows that everything you do is for Krista." As he finished his sentence, however, he realized Ymir hadn't heard a word he'd said. She had already left. Ah well, he didn't mean for her to hear in the first place since the words slipped out.

"Okay, I get it. Finding Krista is more important." Believing he should see her off, Reiner stuck his head out the doorway and watched her zip off down the hallway. And blinked. She was wearing the guy's uniform this particular day. Chuckling, he muttered, "Man, her teacher must have thrown a fit."

Meanwhile, Ymir had come face to face with a peculiar problem. Her trip to the third floor of the school had been thankfully uneventful, up until the point where she had instinctively dodged a Sasha Blouse who came sprinting around the corner. That same Sasha Blouse was now being hung by the collar of her shirt in the hands of one very unhappy balding teacher.

"Running in the hallways is forbidden, Miss Blouse! You should know the rules by now!"

To help or not to help, that was the question. As it stood, the teacher's gruff shouting was an ear sore and helping Sasha would be useful to her own interests. So she grabbed the teacher's arm and pushed it down, forcing him to release his grip on the poor girl's shirt.

Turning to glare at the newest arrival, the teacher yelled, "What do you think you're-"

"Excuse me?" Ymir smiled. The motion felt unnatural and must have looked just as much so, for the teacher turned several shades paler upon seeing her face.

"You-"

"Me?"

"I... I have a meeting to attend now so I'll take my leave. But if I find Miss Blouse breaking the rules again, there will be consequences!" Voice raising several octaves, the teacher ran away, tail between his legs.

Ymir stared at his retreating back.

"Huh, that was too easy - oof!" Stumbling backward, Ymir tried to regain her balance as the teacher's almost-victim tackled her into a hug.

"Thank you so much, Ymir!"

Grunting, she pried the girl off of her torso and shoved her away. Sasha continued to beam at her despite the harsh treatment. "Get going, already," Ymir huffed. "You wanna be stuck here when the rain comes down?"

Sasha's eyes lit up in panic. "Oh yeah, that's why I was running. I have to help the shop put everything away before it floods!" She nodded once, saluted her savior and ran for the stairs, shoes squeaking with her rapid speed.

Ymir waited.

"Hey! Blouse! No running in the hallways!" That sounded like the gym teacher.

"You'd think she would have learned," Ymir chuckled, hearing the start of chaos from below. "Not my problem now though."

Whistling an absent carefree tune, anticipation rising up her chest, she moved on and soon arrived at her destination, the familiar white student council room door standing strong and sturdy before her. She put her hand on the handle and swallowed, thinking herself a fool for always being a tad bit nervous every time she did this. No, not nervous. Just eager, she corrected. Quietly she edged the door open.

Only to find that the room was devoid of her target.

"Ymir?"

"God you two even sound the same when you're saying my name," Ymir muttered, disgust coloring her tone. Louder, she said, "Hey Bertolt. Do you know where Krista is?"

"Krista? She left not too long ago. I think she might have gone looking for you," Bertolt informed her. He bowed his head politely and went back to scribbling on a sheet of paper, one of many if the giant stacks around him were any indication.

Shoot. Krista had probably tried calling her phone, but her cheap device was sitting on her kitchen counter, forgotten in the morning rush along with her umbrella. Scratching her cheek, she gave a half-hearted "thanks" and left the room.

She shut the door closed behind herself and sighed, leaning her head back against it and closing her eyes. If she were Krista, where would she be looking for Ymir? Tapping her foot against the tiled white floor, something shifted in her pocket, and she reached down and patted it. Her lighter.

Her eyes lit up. The roof. But... Krista wouldn't honestly be looking for her on the roof when it was raining, right?

…

The water droplets that slipped down her scalp and onto her forehead felt like warm blood, Krista thought. It was nice. The rain was lukewarm, light, and there wasn't any lightning or thunder for the moment. She could stay out here for hours, or at least until the rain picked up or the sky turned pitch black.

Leaning against the cold metal railing, she looked out over the crowd of bobbing heads and colorful umbrellas that rushed out of the school's gates and straight for home. If she squinted hard enough, she thought she could see her individual friends amongst the chaos too. But not Ymir. Never Ymir.

She wouldn't leave until she saw Krista. Actually, she wouldn't leave unless Krista left too.

But Krista didn't want to leave.

She tried not to think about anything, only let the rain wash away her scattering thoughts and focus them into one blank mass that stared unseeingly at the people leaving the school. They walked with hurried steps, every single one of them eager to escape from the rain although it wasn't cold and there weren't any huge assignments due the next day or tests to study for. Being a member of the student council certainly provided her with interesting and sometimes useless information, she mused. Indeed, most of them were probably going to go home and slack off.

The rain continued to steadily fall.

Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip? Individual drops were falling on her head. Shouldn't it be a constant roar of splattering? No, she could hear it, but it sounded thicker, more noticeable than when the rain hit the roof or her head or the railing.

Blinking, she looked up when she realized the rain had stopped falling on her head.

"Oh," she gasped. Standing quite close to her, using her height to her advantage, Ymir covered the girl with a makeshift umbrella that consisted of her sopping school jacket and her arms for support. Ymir herself was getting soaked to the core, but she probably didn't care. In the first place, Krista was already sopping wet and a little more rain wouldn't have made a difference, but she didn't try to stop the taller girl from trying.

Ymir's eyes smoldered and burned a hole into her head enough as it was without her protesting.

She knew better than to argue, and so she said, "Thank you."

Ymir said nothing. Instead, she moved her gaze to the grey skies, seeming to ignore her gratitude, and observed mother nature's gift. Neither of them wanted to give in to the other, Krista thought, but that was fine. They had time, and that was why they stood in the downpour and listened to the rain. Water rushed down the school's gutter, while the roof continued to absorb the rapid water droplets into puddles that grew larger and larger in tiny milliliters.

The ripples in the puddles were growing more chaotic, the rain falling more heavily now, straight down without a slight wind to disturb the flow. Yet Ymir did not complain even as she took the brunt of the pelting.

She watched the taller girl's nostrils puff in defiance, her eyes lost in the distance and faking indifference, her nose twitching as rain slid down her face and tickled her senses. She watched the muscles in her jaw tense, her skin white as a sheet, her throat contracting a swallow, and noted the way her mouth parted as she breathed. She watched her chest rise and fall in tune to her body's other functions and marveled at how put together Ymir's body was. How right the pieces fit together, like a puzzle she couldn't quite figure out but was whole and beautiful if she did not tamper with it.

Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was tracing down the clench in Ymir's jaw and slid slowly down the pale skin, down to trail her fingertips along the curve of her throat, down to rest on the strong collarbone where finally she felt warmth thrum along to her own chilled bones. Then she caught herself. This was Ymir, Ymir the untouchable, Ymir the infallible, and yet she was touching her intimately and without permission. Heartbeat rushing through her ears, she raised her head to see that Ymir's eyes had jerked down to meet her own and that Ymir was sporting the slightest shade of rosy pink around her ears and nose and freckled cheeks.

Her hand did not move.

"I quit already, you know," Ymir suddenly spoke, voice humming against Krista's fingertips. Krista almost didn't hear the words through her focus on the sensation, and she swallowed. Hard.

"Quit what?" she asked, somewhat dazed. Ymir twitched. Krista's hand was cold.

"The smoking. That thing. So you don't need to look for me out here anymore."

"Oh," Krista dumbly responded and said no more.

The subject dropped rather quickly, and Ymir felt a little indignant that an "oh" was the only sort of response she received. Her sharp eyes narrowed, then softened, eyebrows scrunching up together before relaxing. Krista was intent upon her close observation of her body, it seemed. No matter. She could coerce praise another day. Indeed, another day. When Krista wasn't staring at her skin as if she had never seen it before, as if Krista's lips weren't parted in fascination and looked-

A strong desire suddenly gripped her mind, and the jacket, thoroughly soaked, slipped from her grip and landed with a slap on the puddle gathering beneath their shoes. Her arms fell around Krista's small shoulders, the uncomfortable sensation of wet fabric rubbing against wet skin piercing the haze that had settled on her mind, and one last sensible thought flew through her mind.

She'd blame this on the rain later, once she was sporting a fever of 103 and laughing at Krista's sick red face as well.

Heart threatening to leap out of her ribcage, she leaned down and froze as she saw Krista's half-lidded eyes staring, waiting, almost as if she wanted this as bad as Ymir did, but there was no way that she could have, not when Ymir had kept it in for so long, not when Mikasa was more obvious than Krista, not when Annie was more obvious than Krista, and she knew Krista better than anyone else, that how could she see Mikasa and Annie chase after the same idiotic guy and fail to notice that Krista wanted this too, that she was as thick as Eren-

The hand on her collar slid up, grasped her nape, and yanked her down into Krista's clumsy, clammy lips, and everything else was forgotten.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Her eyes were raining too.

…

"Achoo!"

"Bless you."

"Achoo!"

"Bless you."

"Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!"

"...I think we should give up on saying 'bless you' the rest of the night if this keeps- Achoo!"

"Bless you!"

"Damn it!"

Laughing, sniffling, Krista continued to dry her hair and beamed down at Ymir's shivering form. "Your turn to shower," she smiled. Her smile grew as Ymir mumbled something unintelligible and got up off the living room floor to clean off. She'd changed out of her wet clothes, at least, but had insisted that Krista had the privilege of using the shower first. "The bath water should still be warm, if you want it."

"Thanks," Ymir said and then shut the bathroom door.

Things weren't too different, Krista thought. Ymir was still curt, still chivalrous, still roughly kind in the way only Ymir could be kind. She was still shy, still confused, but... at least she wasn't alone.

Towel dropping from her head, she moved to pick up Ymir's wet clothes from where the taller girl had thrown them, shaking her head to herself at the sloppy behavior. This may have been Ymir's apartment, and the girl was semi-decent with keeping everything neat, but she was Ymir at heart and therefore subject to laziness whenever it struck her.

Something clinked in the sopping wet mess. Curious, she felt around the pockets of the various clothing items until her hand hit something hard in the pants pocket.

"Oh dear, her lighter?" Krista muttered.

Quickly, she began to wipe it off with her discarded towel and tried to prevent any further rusting on the metallic and elegant casing of the object. Any other girl would have thrown it away, she knew. They would have thought Ymir was lying. But Krista knew.

Ymir wouldn't lie to her.

The other girls didn't have any idea what the lighter meant to her, either.

Somehow, the secrecy of that knowledge made her feel just a little more secure, a little more happy, and a little more like she was indeed the right one to be there, right now, standing in Ymir's apartment, in Ymir's spare clothes, and keeping Ymir's heart safe in her hands.