TEXT Vol. 06 Nifa’s Coaster
“Excuse me… You’re with the Survey Corps’ Fourth Squad, are you not?”
Stohess District, inside Wall Sheena.
Nifa and the others had found themselves with a short respite as top members of the Survey Corps and their aides attended a meeting, and so they’d gone to a bar.
“I’ve been asked to give you these drinks.”
The storeowner had read the soldiers’ affiliation off of their chests and now offered them an amber liquid with red fruit on the side.
“I’m unsure of that. They wore a cap low over their eyes, and I couldn’t make out their body from under their jacket…”
A paper coaster sat underneath the glass, and when one of Nifa’s fellow corpsmen noticed the words written on it, his eyes grew wide.
“Hold on, is this a roundabout advance or something?!”
“Don’t be ridiculous… There’s no way.”
[Sheena’s protection ticks on. At the feet of earth and fire, the grass-eating horses draw a triangle of two and five. Whisper to them a beautiful snow.]
Cage, another member of the Fourth, looked at the words on the coaster and scowled.
“It’s like a poem or something, but…”
The rest of the Fourth looked at it, just as confused.
When Nifa happened to notice that some words on the coaster were intentionally thin, while others were thick and powerful, she sighed.
“…Sorry, but this doesn’t seem to be what any of you think.”
Cage furrowed his brow at this.
“A message from Hange. Straight back to work after this drink.”
The group gave a resigned shrug as they put down the drinks they’d just been so lucky to receive.
“You know… I guess I should check this.”
Here and there, ink had seeped through the coaster to become visible on the other side. When Nifa connected these dots, she found a message to be deciphered.
“Hange is in that meeting with the brass right now, so they must not be able to receive this order.”
“Vice Captain Moblit must have suggested that we take a break at a bar so that he could send us on an errand…”
Nifa’s fellow squad members looked around at each other as they realized that even this precious breather was all a part of a job.
“Commander-in-Chief Zackly and royal government officials were in that meeting… these are probably materials for some new weapon.”
“And the location is hidden in this poem?”
Cage let out another sigh as he turned the coaster back over. Everyone nodded, then looked at the clock.
They had come to one of the many stables lined up underneath the brick clocktower. A man likely sent by a merchant who wore the near-exact shade of amber as their drink stood there at the specified time, eating a red fruit.
“Sheena’s protection ticking on” must have meant “a clocktower in Stohess District,” while “earth and fire” meant it would be built from bricks of baked earth. “Grass-eating horses” referred to the location, the stables found underneath. All that was left was…
The password was as the poem said, word-for-word.
The individual there showed no sign of suspicion toward Nifa and the rest of her squad who had changed out of their military uniform to disguise themselves. He only showed them to a horse cart with a cargo wagon attached.
“I bet the experiments will begin as soon as we take this back to our quarters…”
“Heh… Yeah, they do know how to work us hard.”
Even so, this was just an average day for soldiers under Hange. They joked as they quietly boarded the cart and brought it back to their quarters.
SOURCE: Attack on Titan: Short Stories 3
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