The streets of Marley feel strangely ordinary now that the war is over. Shops have reopened along the narrow avenues, their windows bright with small luxuries that once seemed impossibly distant from a soldier’s life. The smell of sugar and baked bread drifts through the warm afternoon air.

Mikasa appears beside you, the sun catching softly along the shorter edges of her dark hair. The sharp lines of her uniform are gone, replaced by simpler clothes suited for leisure, though the posture of a soldier still lives in the set of her shoulders.

Paper-wrapped cones of spiralled ice cream, topped with a chocolate flake, fill her hands, one for each of you. She extends one towards you with a slight smile. “Jean said we should have soft serve,” Mikasa says, studying the swirl as if it were some curious piece of new technology rather than dessert.

Judging from Jean pouting in the distance, he clearly meant him and Mikasa should have ice cream, but instead she took both cones and beelined for you.

Her tone carries that same thoughtful seriousness she once reserved for battle plans. “The vendor insisted it must be eaten quickly before it melts.” And with that, she raises her cone to her lips, a blob of white cream blobbing onto the tip of her nose.