The World that the Girl Saw

Dr. Yeager discovers the bodies of Mikasa's parents and sends Eren downstairs while he goes for the police. Elsewhere, Mikasa lies bound on the floor of a hideout while her captors size her up for sale on the underground market, noting the premium her Asian blood would fetch. One kidnapper berates the other for cutting their profits by killing her mother, who was the last pureblooded Asian; the killer protests that her resistance forced his hand.

The chapter then fills in the missing hours. Expecting the doctor's visit, Mikasa's father answered a knock and took a blade to the stomach. Her mother snatched up a weapon, shouted for Mikasa to run, and was cut down by a hatchet while the girl stood paralyzed. The men seized Mikasa, who could only wonder where she would even have fled.

At the hideout, Eren appears at the door playing a lost child wandering the woods. When one robber crouches to reassure him, Eren opens the man's throat with a hidden knife. The second charges, only to be run through the chest by a spear Eren fashioned from a broom handle, after which Eren straddles him and stabs him repeatedly in a fury. Calming himself, he cuts Mikasa loose and introduces himself, but she warns him of a third man, who bursts in, kicks Eren across the room, and pins him to the wall by the throat. Choking, Eren screams at Mikasa to fight, that winning is the only way to live. She grips the knife yet cannot force herself to use it until the sight of Eren suffocating unlocks a cascade of memories and a cold clarity: the world is merciless, and she must fight. Her trembling stops. She drives forward with force enough to crack the floorboards and pierces the man's heart from behind.

The police marvel at what two children accomplished. Dr. Yeager embraces Eren while scolding him for gambling with his life; Eren answers that he only put down dangerous beasts wearing human faces, and that he wanted to save her as fast as he could. A dazed Mikasa asks for directions home before realizing aloud that no home remains, and that she is cold. Eren winds his scarf around her neck, and Dr. Yeager invites her to live with his family.

Back in Trost, the grown Mikasa cuts down Titans effortlessly while waiting for the withdrawal bell. When it rings and her comrades make for the Wall, she pushes toward the front instead, her thoughts fixed on Eren.

A flashback reveals that slavers murdered Mikasa's parents and abducted her, intending to sell her for her rare Asian heritage.

Nine-year-old Eren infiltrates the hideout and kills two of the three kidnappers with a concealed knife and an improvised spear.

Facing the third man, Mikasa awakens to the world's cruelty, gains total composure, and makes her first kill to save Eren's life.

Eren wraps his scarf around Mikasa, and Grisha Yeager takes the orphaned girl in.

In the present, Mikasa fights through Trost and heads toward Eren's position as the retreat is sounded.

The World that the Girl Saw is the second chapter of volume 2 and the sixth overall, drawn and scripted by Hajime Isayama within the Wall Sealing arc. It ran in Japan on February 9, 2010, with the English edition arriving September 11, 2012. The anime adapts it as The World the Girl Saw: The Struggle for Trost, Part 2. It bridges A Dull Glow in the Midst of Despair and Small Blade.

In Isayama's original conception, the core of this material was meant to open the series in its first chapter, in altered form.

The chapter's information sidebar covers wall-mounted artillery: solid shells can kill a Titan with a precise hit on its weak point, though smoothbore accuracy against moving targets makes that rare; grapeshot mainly slows Titans before close combat; and rail-secured batteries trade firing speed for stability. Mounted cannons distinguish themselves from mobile ones by firing straight down and absorbing recoil, and they were the primary anti-Titan weapon before vertical maneuvering equipment existed.