7. Lost And Found

After the talk you had had with Jean, things became a little different.

It had been just a few days, yet everyone in your friend group was somehow aware of what had happened and most of them behaved awkwardly in your presence. One example was Connie and Sasha, but you didn't mind since they were Jean's best friends, although it hurt when they didn't invite you to hang out as they usually would.

Even Mikasa was behaving weirdly, something had definitely changed and you could see that she made little to no effort to spend time with you in any way. It was as if she was trying to keep a secret from you and decided to avoid you because of that, but you couldn't blame her since you had a few secrets as well.

Being distant from your friends was definitely a big change, but, to your surprise, you didn't mind that as much as you thought you would. It meant that you could spend more time with your boyfriend and that alone made you feel 10 times happier.

But everything vanished once you were in school where you had to pretend to be distant from him. Thankfully you didn't have to see Eren that day since you didn't have his class, but the downside of the day was that you had class with his brother.

Professor Jeager, well, Zeke Jeager, to differentiate the two. That man was very good at explaining, that was for sure, but he didn't know how to keep his class focused so every student either fell asleep or started to do something else during his hours.

Professor Zoë had many flaws, like her weird obsession with experiments that almost cost her life, but she knew how to keep people entertained. You kind of missed her.

Once the ball signaled the end of the class, you grabbed your stuff ready to move to your next one, which did not excite you at all. You really hated economics and mathematics, those were probably the worst subjects ever, and yet they were your main subjects.

As you were walking down the hallway, you heard your name being called out and, when you turned to check, you noticed Professor Zeke Jeager walking towards you. "Y/n, a moment, please?"

Oh shit, had you forgotten to send any assignments? That had to be it, after all, old habits were hard to break. "I'm so sorry." You immediately started your usual rant that way too many teachers had assisted to. "I didn't mean to forget about the assignments that Professor Zoë left us before her injury, if you could please give me some time I'll make sure to hand in every single one of them." You weren't even sure how many of them you hadn't done.

It was so embarrassing, mostly because he was just a substitute teacher, yet you had to make it awkward for him too. "Oh." He stopped and frowned.

You looked up and met his eyes confused. "Oh?" You repeated not understanding the situation.

"I wasn't even aware there were assignments, your professor hasn't told me anything about it so I'm not checking or anything. I guess you have time to send them? Maybe make sure to contact your teacher and explain her the situation." He chuckled embarrassed, which made you frown in confusion once again, what did he want then? You had just lost dignity for nothing. "I wanted to talk to you about something else."

"Mhm, sure." You waited for him to talk, instead, he kept looking around which kind of irritated you. "How can I be of help, Professor?" You tried to get him to talk before your next class started.

He scratched the back of his neck and smiled a bit. "It's kind of... a private matter."

You tilted your head. "I'm sorry?"

"Can we talk about it in the classroom? Or in my temporary office?" He offered and your smile faded immediately. What was that about? You weren't about to follow him in a closed space for a private conversation you didn't even want to have.

Eren had been very wary of Zeke for some reason, and now you were starting to get it. He really did look a bit off. "I'd rather not, besides, I'm getting late for economics, and Mrs. Finger is not as sweet as she may look like, don't let her size fool you." You tried to joke and slowly made your way towards the classroom.

Nothing personal, you had already gotten way too close to a professor, there was no reason for you to do it again with another one, let alone his half-brother. You could just ignore him until it was time for Mrs. Zoe to come back. "It's about Eren." He suddenly blurted out which made you freeze on the spot.

Why was he mentioning him? Why to you? Your knees were shaking a bit, you were so nervous about the whole situation, you really couldn't understand what was going on with him. "Professor Jeager?" You turned to face him.

The man smirked a little, you had probably given the reaction that he wanted. "My brother, yeah." He stepped closer and you clenched your jaw to keep yourself from correcting him since they were, in fact, half brothers. "You see, I really want to build a friendship with him but I can't seem to get any closer to him. I wondered if I could ask you for help."

You sighed annoyed, you really didn't want to get in between the two of them. Frankly speaking, Zeke was the last thing you needed to bother you. "And how could I do that? I'm nothing more than a student." That was it, he had crossed the line, you just wanted to escape the situation and move on. "I don't think you should be talking about this with me, it's not professional."

But as you were about to walk away once again, you felt his hand grabbing your wrist, you widened your eyes and looked at the blonde man in shock. "Please, I know you're much closer than that." He murmured, his voice was lower than before and it felt menacing somehow. When he noticed your confused look, he snorted. "I saw you in the parking lot the other day but I already had a hunch from seeing you interact in the hallway a few times."

"Let go of me." You basically hissed angrily, not only he had found out about your secret but he was also trying to use you. If Eren didn't want to get to know Zeke, it wasn't your place to tell him differently even though you had already suggested him to give his brother a chance, but that was it.

It was a scary situation, he could use the info as blackmail if he wanted to, let alone ruin Eren's career if not worse. "I'm asking this because I want what's best for him. Please, at least consider it."

You thanked god that no one was around, probably because most classes had already started, which was also a downside since no one could get you out of that situation. "It's not something that involves me personally and you're wrong."

"Hey." You turned towards the new voice and saw Professor Arlert approaching you. "What is going on here?" He frowned and looked at Zeke's hand still gripping at your arm. "Please release the girl, we don't touch students." He stopped next to you and glared at the substitute teacher until he let you go. "You should get back to work and I'll forget what I saw. C'mon Y/n, I'll walk you to your classroom." He smiled kindly towards you which made you relax a bit.

"Thank you." You muttered and looked at Zeke one last time before following your math teacher. "Ehm, I hope you don't take it the wrong way, Professor Jeager was only asking me about... my last assignment." You would've felt guilty if he got fired because he had been seen talking to you, even if he was in the wrong.

Armin stopped once you turned the corner and took a deep breath. "Was he trying anything?" He asked worriedly and you shook your head immediately.

"He didn't." There wasn't a good excuse that came to mind to excuse him grabbing you like that, so you could only hope that he was naive enough to let it go.

But Professor Arlert was weirdly looking at you, as if he was pitying you, but you were totally ok. "If he does, please let me know." He asked so nicely that you almost wanted to hug him and reassure him that everything was okay. "Really Y/n, don't get in any kind of trouble, you already got many assignments late." He gave you a stern look.

You faked a small smile. "I know, I'm still working on them since they're very hard." Not gonna lie, you had gotten used to his kind ways and kind of taken advantage of that so you could send your assignments late and he would just sigh tiredly. "But don't worry, everything's fine. I'll go to class now, thank you for your help." You started to walk away not wanting to keep him from his work or whatever, plus it felt so awkward.

"Y/n!" He called out to you and you turned confused. "Are you and Eren..?" He stopped and shook his head before offering a tired smile. "Be careful, ok?"

You could only nod before basically running away. Great, so now two people knew about your relationship, what were you supposed to do about that now? You couldn't even talk to Zeke and Armin about it since they were Eren's acquaintances and colleagues, you were only the student after all.

You were so focused on your thoughts that you didn't even notice the girl you bumped into, maybe you needed to pause a little and stop overthinking. "I'm so sorry, are you alright?" You immediately apologized.

"Hey stranger." She smiled, she was shorter than you and very thin, she had this beautiful blonde hair and blue eyes, you wondered where you had already seen her, she looked rather familiar. "You don't remember me? We were together at the party, well more like we helped each other get out." She chuckled and you suddenly realized.

"Oh my god, it's you! I'm sorry, I was a bit drunk that night so... you know." You giggled and she nodded amused. "But it's great to see you... ehm..."

"Historia, my name's Historia."

"Y/n." You offered a smile. "I've never seen you around here."

"I like to skip classes." She shrugged and you blinked surprised, she didn't look like the rule-breaker type. "Yeah, that's the kind of face people make." She giggled again and then looked around. "I know this sounds a bit sudden, but do you wanna go get some coffee?"

You grabbed your phone to check the hour, the lesson had already started and you weren't even sure if you wanted to participate at that point. There weren't any messages from Eren or Mikasa so you didn't really have any reason to refuse. "You know what? Sure, I need some coffee."

**

Armin was feeling anxious, why wouldn't he after what he had seen earlier? If it were any other student he would've immediately Levi and waited for him to be the judge of the situation, but he couldn't do that because it was you and he knew better than putting Eren in a difficult position.

Once he reached his office, he immediately closed the door and grabbed his phone to call his best friend who picked up on the first try. "Hey Armin, what is it?"

"I think there might be a problem." He decided to get straight to the point, he didn't have time to waste.

"Oh shit, did Levi ask me to come today and I forgot or something?" Eren asked in a panicking voice, which was totally understandable since Levi was the scariest person in that school.

"No, it's not that." The blonde man sighed as he leaned against his seat. "I saw Zeke talking to Y/n and it wasn't the typical teacher-student talk." He tried to explain the situation the best he could.

There was a long pause on the other end, Eren didn't really know what to say, he hadn't told anything about his relationship to anyone, so he was a bit surprised. "Ok..."

"It's not ok! God knows what will happen if someone..." Armin stopped and decided to take a step back, he was being overly anxious for nothing, no one had seen you with Zeke so it was fine. "Can you tell me what is happening? Last time you told me that nothing was going on and that you were just helping her out!"

At that point, there was no reason to lie anymore, besides, Armin was his closest friend and they had known each other ever since they were children, so he could trust him. "That was more than a month ago, things changed."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, let's just say that we're... in a relationship."

The blonde man took a deep breath, he had seen it coming ever since Eren had first mentioned you and the way you were getting closer to each other. "If I have to be honest, I don't really care about it. You are both consenting adults and can do whatever you want, I would have protested if she was a high schooler or something, but she's not. It's your responsibility to either come clean about it or hide it until she's done with her studies."

"You think I don't know that?" The long-haired man snorted. "But if I do tell Levi, he'll probably fire me and my reputation will be over." It was much more complicated than that but he couldn't do much about it. "But why was Zeke with her in the first place? Does he know something about us?"

"I'm not sure. I was just down the hallway when I saw them, he grabbed her arm and she had this look on her face, it was like she was both scared and angry. I intervened as soon as I could but I couldn't hear anything they were saying."

"Shit." He snorted. "Where is Y/n now? Is she okay?"

"Yes, she's in class right now but she seemed fine to me." He tried to reassure Eren before taking another deep breath. "Look, I have to go, I have a lot of work to do. Be careful." He warned, if he couldn't hide his relationship from Zeke who was a newly arrived, god knows how many people about them already. "Bye."

Armin ended the call and sighed, he just hoped everything turned out for the best. The worst thing that could happen was for them to be found out by someone who could rat them out or something even worse. He needed to keep an eye on things and pray that Levi didn't know a thing.