The hospital was always busy in the summer. Aside from the odd thunderstorm, turbulent weather that inhibited missions was practically nonexistent, opening the gateway for more missions and by extension more injured shinobi, particularly when the heat made them groggy and careless. In addition, the summer holiday granted to the young academy students made them more susceptible to breaking limbs whilst attempting adventurous feats reserved for the time of year, and during heat waves, there were always a handful of people who fainted in the middle of the street and were hurried over by anxious family members.

It was a chaotic, stifling, muggy working environment, especially for medical ninja who strongly preferred order and minimal interaction with irritating patients, which was probably why Kabuto hated it so much. It didn't help that he always seemed to get stuck with the hypochondriacs.

"You have a headache," he repeated, adjusting his round frames and wanting very badly to believe that the patient he was sitting across from one afternoon was kidding, or at least leaving something out.

He wasn't in luck, because the girl only glowered at him from under dark lashes. "Yeah, for like, two whole days straight. I can't even function, it's like, pounding."

For some reason the sudden empathy he felt didn't make him any more sympathetic. "Well, it's very hot out," he said with as much patience as he could muster, though it sounded like he was talking to a three-year-old instead of to a teenager like himself. He uncrossed his legs and stood, scrawling the word headache on the form on his clipboard before crossing over to a cabinet. "You must be dehydrated. I'll get you an anticoagulant, but you need to consume plenty of water."

"What's an anticoagulant?" she snapped from behind him.

He bit his tongue to keep from uttering anything hinting at poison. "It will subdue the pain," he said, glancing at the label on the bottle he'd withdrawn and emptying out two capsules into his palm. A curt answer, but he didn't feel like explaining the function of blood thinners to her at the moment.

Kabuto handed them to her, along with a small paper cup filled with water, and after eyeing them suspiciously, she took them. "How long will these take to work?" was her immediate, expectant inquiry.

"An hour at the most, Ito-san," he said politely, wanting nothing more than for her to take her headache back home where it couldn't be given to him. "With relaxation and plenty of fluids you should be just fine in no time."

She had almost started to look some semblance of satisfied when a sudden knocking on the half-open door caught the attention of the both of them.

Perplexed, Kabuto began to ask who was there, but the question was answered when an older, goateed teenager in a green flak jacket stepped inside without further invitation, grinning. "Hey, Kabuto! It's almost dinnertime, what are you still doing here?"

Urushi. Of course.

For a shinobi, he could be pretty dense when it came to realizing that someone was looking at him with murderous intent. "I'm working, Urushi," Kabuto answered, urging him in look and in tone to excuse himself. "I see you're back early from your mission."

"B-rank, little bro, nothing to it," Urushi replied cheerfully, glancing over in the same manner at Kabuto's patient, who to his concealed horror was smiling in a very enamored fashion at this new, more handsome and charismatic arrival, who nodded in greeting. "Hey."

"Ito-san," Kabuto said hurriedly to his patient, who looked up as if she'd forgotten he was there. "That will be all for your visit. Please pardon my brother."

She didn't acknowledge him beyond a short, apathetic word of thanks before making eyes at a clearly pleased Urushi some more and then, finally, taking her leave. Once she was gone, Kabuto slapped down his clipboard and took a pill for himself without a moment's hesitation.

"You're a real charmer, aren't you?" The teasing words, though affectionate, were the last that Kabuto needed or wanted to hear at the moment, and he glowered at his brother.

"That was humiliating," he said. "How many times have I told you not to come visit me when I'm working?"

"Dozens." He didn't sound like he cared. "But you have to admit, you don't have the best bedside manner. That girl practically ran out of here."

"She was dehydrated, not dying" was his impatient reply as he returned the bottle to its place in the cabinet and pulled the report of the girl's visit from his clipboard, still not particularly keen on looking at Urushi and whatever it was about his face that made the opposite sex swoon so much. "And she was positively sour. I was as pleasant as I could manage."

This earned him a painful pat on the head that amplified the splitting ache plaguing it. "C'mon, Kabuto, you know what Mother always says." If anything, Urushi sounded equally impatient now. "You need to let your patients know they can like and trust you, not be so clinical all the time."

Kabuto rubbed at his cranium, finally meeting his brother's gaze, having to look up a bit to do so though there couldn't have been more than a year or two between them. "I don't know how to not be clinical," he said, a little bitter. "I hardly ooze charm or amiability from every pore. I'm not like you or Mother."

"That's because you never really grew out of being so shy," Urushi said with a chuckle, straightening that ridiculous hat of his that bore his hitai-ate. "So you come off as…well, a jerk."

This irritated Kabuto. "I'm not shy, I'm just…"

"A jerk?"

"No! I… Oh, I don't know." He heaved a sigh, fixing his glasses. "Maybe I am."

This only made Urushi laugh all the more heartily, and he assaulted his little brother's head once again by ruffling his gray hair. "I'm just kidding around. Come on, your shift's up. Let's get you home before the kids eat your dinner again. You know Mother can't turn them down when they ask for seconds."

Kabuto swatted away the offending hand. "I don't worry. She always saves me something." The thought brought the faintest of smiles to his face. A decade of being in her care and the woman who'd taken him in never failed to think of him first, though she always made sure there was enough to go around.

But Urushi frowned. "Wouldn't count on it. Our budget got cut again, so we're not gonna have much of a surplus for a while."

He hadn't expected this. "Again?" Kabuto's heart sank at the thought of more homeless children being offered shelter by an orphanage run by nuns who could neither afford more wards nor leave them to die. Children who, sooner or later, would realize that they were a burden, like he had on the night of his arrival.

"What on earth could the village be spending that extra money on? Certainly not on its hospital staff," he said with a trace of resentment.

"Hey, you're pulling in plenty," Urushi comforted. "And you're making Mother proud. You do good work here."

"Yes, I sure am doing wonders to cure the cephalalgia of the world."

Urushi shrugged as the pair of them moved to the door, Kabuto locking it behind them. "If that's the way you feel about it, why don't you think about becoming a field medic? I'm sure you'd be good at it."

"Funny, that's what that Orochimaru told me when I healed him years ago on the front," Kabuto said. "Somehow I'm not altogether sure that trusting an opinion of yours shared by a deranged defector is wise."

When they arrived in the lobby of the hospital, Kabuto remembered that he needed to pick up something from the pharmacy for a patient coming in the next day and told Urushi to head on home and that he'd catch up with him.

He greeted the pharmacist tersely, glancing out the window behind the counter and seeing how dark it was already, now in a bit of a hurry to get back, with Urushi's news in mind. Kabuto had been working more and more lately and eating increasingly less, which he knew was far from healthy. "I need some…"

"Amlodipine, please?"

Blinking in surprise at the quiet voice that interrupted him, he glanced to his left for its source and found, with some mortification, that someone had already been requesting something when he had been the one to interrupt. A girl stood there, one with glasses and long black hair, and she blushed when she met his gaze. She couldn't have been much younger than Kabuto, though she was small in stature, and when he got a closer look he realized that he had seen her around the hospital before.

"You're…Yutani-san, aren't you?" he asked, recalling her name.

She gave a bit of a start, obviously not having expected him to approach her, and nodded. "Kairi Yutani."

That's right. He had passed by her in the hallways and had heard others call her by name once or twice. A volunteer, he believed. "I'm Kabuto," he returned, to be polite.

Again she nodded. "Yes, Yakushi-san. I know of you." Her voice was soft.

This surprised him. Being young and possessing no valuable connections in the village, he hardly held any position of superiority that would catch the attention of a simple volunteer, no matter how bright or talented he was. "Oh? Have I worked with you before?" It was possible. He'd assisted in (never performed) surgery quite a few times on days not nearly as slow as that one, and she may very well have been on hand.

Before she could answer, the pharmacist handed her her order in a small, labeled bag. "Thank you," she said, taking it, then turned back to him, though her blue eyes were averted. "I'm sorry, but I really have to be getting home. It was nice to meet you."

With that, she turned on her heel and was gone, and Kabuto was left in a slight bewilderment when he found himself wishing he could have spoken to her longer. But the brief meeting didn't linger in his mind much longer. All he could think about on the long walk home was the looming threat of poverty on the horizon for those besides him dwelling there. Poverty he was only worsening by being another mouth to feed.

There was very little left of dinner when Kabuto arrived at the orphanage, stepping into the small makeshift dining area where the only ones older than him and Urushi were the adults who ran the place. Appearing from almost out of nowhere, Urushi thrusted a plate with a few dumplings at Kabuto before they could disappear.

"There you are," he said, raising his voice to be heard over the children talking and bickering and laughing. "You took forever, what kept you?"

"Hardly," Kabuto replied, accepting the plate distractedly as he looked around. "Where's Mother? I don't see her."

"Administering some first-aid. A kid fell down playing outside and hurt himself. She'll be back any minute." The two of them sat down together at a table. "But seriously, where were you? I thought you'd be in and out of the pharmacy in a few seconds."

Kabuto took his time eating some of a dumpling before replying; he was ravenous. "You forget that the walk is longer for me than it is for you," he pointed out. "I'm not a shinobi and I don't leap around the way you do. The pharmacy didn't take long at all." Belatedly, he remembered Kairi. "I mean, there was a girl there, but that didn't make much of a…"

"A what?"

Arching a brow, Kabuto felt a rising sense of unease as Urushi started grinning at him like he'd just announced something extraordinary. "A girl, Urushi. A member of the gender that you're so fond of," he said flatly. "And before you…"

"Did you ask her out? You did, didn't you?" Kabuto felt a dull, painful thud as Urushi gave him a punch on the arm, laughing. "Look at you, little bro! Finally interested in 'em, huh?"

"Why can't we ever have a conversation without you inflicting bodily harm on me?" was Kabuto's dry response as he tried to ignore the mild throbbing in his bicep, taking another bite of his dumpling before going on. "You're being ridiculous. I exchanged all of three sentences with her."

"That's enough!"

"I didn't make a date with her, Urushi," he said, growing impatient and eager to get off this particular topic, especially as he noticed a few kids from the next table over eavesdropping with wide eyes and much giggling. "She was in line before me and we made small talk. That's all."

"Does Kabuto-san have a girlfriend?" a small voice piped up from that table, which erupted into even more giggles at the question.

Seeing Urushi grin widely and open his mouth to respond, Kabuto glared daggers at his brother until he was forced to relent, shaking his head mournfully at the disappointed children. "Sorry, Miko-chan, no. Kabuto-san has opted to remain a perpetual bachelor."

"You're an idiot," Kabuto said as a chorus of sad awwwwww-ing sounded from the other table. Urushi just laughed, but the subject had gotten Kabuto thinking. His older brother could be obnoxious, but he was generally nice and charming and he wasn't hard to look at, with dark hair and a solid build. It was only natural that he should have more experience with dating than Kabuto, the smart and serious one who rarely spoke to people outside of the orphanage or the hospital unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't that he scorned romance. He simply never thought about it. On his list of priorities, it probably didn't even have a spot.

Still, he was seventeen years old. He supposed that, in theory, he liked girls, but was it normal that he had never looked at anyone, female or not, and experienced some form of attraction? Urushi teased good-naturedly about Kabuto's lack of interest in the matter, but what if he had a point? Should it be something he thought about, perhaps even pursued?

He was snapped out of his short reverie by Urushi's voice. "But seriously, you really should try asking someone out."

Renewed irritation cleared Kabuto's head of thoughts of agreement. "I don't see why. I'm not about to impress anyone, anyway."

"Don't give me that," Urushi said with a frown, sitting back in his chair. "You're a brilliant guy, Kabuto. Funny, too, if the other party has a thick skin for sarcasm."

"I'd corrode it in a second," he replied, though this brought a tiny smile to his lips.

His brother just shook his head. "In all seriousness, it wouldn't be a bad idea. I mean, we can't stay here forever, you know? We should both be thinking about getting out into the world, making our own livings. Finding someone to eventually settle down with."

"My goodness, did I miss something?" A soft, faintly amused voice made them both turn their heads, and Kabuto felt a swell of relief at the sight of their mother smiling down at them, wearing her habit, light hair spilling out over her shoulders. "What are you two talking about?"

Kabuto's hasty "Nothing" was overpowered by Urushi's "Girls."

She raised a hand to her lips, probably to stifle a chuckle. She wasn't one to tease her adopted sons if she could help it, but Kabuto had the unfortunate quality of being an easy target. "I see. Well, what about— Oh, thank you, dear," she said with a smile as Kabuto stood to pull out a chair for her. "What about girls?"

"Kabuto actually spoke to one today without coercion or being paid to," Urushi answered with a grin, earning some more furtive glaring from his bespectacled brother.

"Oh?" Their mother's eyes were bright behind her own glasses as she glanced sideways at Kabuto, who, seated again, was determinedly looking at his dumplings. "Someone you like, Kabuto-kun?"

He sighed. "It was nothing like that," he said, trying not to let on his exasperation lest it come off as directed at her. "Urushi is a bit desperate."

"I just thought getting out a bit would be good for him!" Urushi said, defensive.

"Oh, Urushi-kun, you know your brother's always been a bit shy," she said, and though her tone was kind as per usual, Kabuto felt the tips of his ears turning pink. "He'll start dating when he's ready."

Kabuto wasn't entirely sure if he appreciated the backup or was hopelessly embarrassed by the prospect of some of the children hearing her, but he guessed it was a combination thereof. "It's not that I'm not ready," he said. "It just…doesn't interest me."

"Aw, come on, bro," Urushi said. "It's gonna interest you sooner or later! You just have to…"

Without being entirely sure as to why, Kabuto lost his patience entirely and snapped, slamming his fist down on the table, "Then let's make it later and be done with it, shall we? I don't know what I want to do when I leave here and I don't intend to make any plans tonight!"

A sudden silence met his outburst, and with great chagrin he realized that the entire room had gone quiet, not just his brother and mother. With just a quick glance left and right, he could see Urushi, the children, and a few other nuns looking stunned, but it was the worry in his mother's eyes that made him bow his head, mutter a quick word of apology, excuse himself, and leave the room without looking back.

At nine o'clock, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder as he sat outside, leaning against the side of the building with his arms folded over his knees. He looked up at saw his mother offering him a small smile, her features illuminated in the dark by the single lantern hanging overhead.

"Mind if I sit with you?" she asked, voice soft. "The children are all in bed. Except for you." She said it with a teasing lilt, and Kabuto knew she was trying to lighten the mood by alluding to his first night there, but a "child" was the last thing he wanted to be called at the moment. Still he nodded, glad for her company, and she sat down beside him on the grass.

There was a moment of silence, and he broke it on that same line of thought. "I'm not a child anymore. At least…I won't be one for much longer."

She took this with a nod. "You're scared. You don't know where you're going to go." It wasn't a question.

"Where can I go?" he asked, not bothering to hide his frustration. "With my meager salary, I can't possibly afford to live in Konoha depending solely on my own income. I'm hardly about to marry rich, or do so at all. And the only way I could attain a better position at the hospital would be if I received official training and become a medical ninja instead of just being some poor orphan whose aptitude will always be called into question because of my background. And I'm not cut out for field medic work. I'm too old to start now; most kids do when they're around twelve. I'd be dead in minutes."

He hadn't vocalized any of these thoughts at such length until now, but once the words had started flowing, he just couldn't stop them until he was almost out of breath, his eyes stinging with tears of pent-up aggravation and stress.

After listening attentively and giving him a minute to calm down, rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles, his mother said, "Kabu-kun, I'm not about to push you to become a shinobi…" She lapsed into momentary silence before going on. "But if you don't find the path you're taking fulfilling, maybe you should at least consider something else, like field medic work. You never know what you'll be good at."

"I know what I won't be," he said doubtfully.

"That's absurd," she replied, but with a smile. "Remember when I first started teaching you medical ninjutsu? And how on the first day I took you with me to the front to heal shinobi, I let you out of my sight for five seconds and you got a nasty cut on your arm?"

Kabuto did remember, and the recollection made him smile in spite of himself. "That shinobi was at least five times my size and wearing the sharpest armor I'd ever seen."

"It was rather…ornate," she said, laughing. "I saw the blood and rushed over, but by the time I'd gotten there…"

"I'd healed myself," he finished, the memory fresh in his mind. His mother, standing before him with her hands already aglow with chakra, gaping in disbelief at what had used to be a deep gash, reduced only to a thin line on his arm and an ugly tear in his sleeve. Without knowing it, he'd had a fleeting moment's anticipation of the wound and had started applying chakra before the sharp metal had even made contact with his skin. In'yu Shōmetsu.

She nodded, her voice quieter now. "I'd never seen anything like it, and you had no idea how you'd done it." When he looked at her, her smile was one of pride. "I knew then that I'd found a truly talented boy. And I've seen you grow into a remarkable young man." Here she paused. "Now all you need to do is find out what you want to channel your talents into."

A sigh passed his lips. He knew she was right, but he only felt a little better. "But how do I know what that is?" he asked as he sat still, looking out through the trees at the village in the distance. "How do I know when I've found it?"

"You'll know," she promised, not saying anything more, and he was left to contemplate this vague advice in silence for a moment until she added something else. "Same as you'll know when you've found the person you want to share your life with."

This time, when he looked at her, her smile was almost as playful as Urushi's. "Mother…" he groaned. "Please, not that again."

A laugh like the tinkling of bells met his dismay, and she placed a kiss on his temple. "Whether or not you settle down, dear, I guarantee that there is someone out there for you. And there are most definitely teenagers like you who are uncertain and afraid." She stood, going over to the door. "They all manage to find their place. I know you will too."

With that, she went inside, not even reminding him of the curfew, and he was left alone to his thoughts. There was a part of him, the terrified and wounded little boy on the brink of death found after a battle he could not remember, that wished she had sent him to bed, his bed in the first and only home he had ever known. But there was also a part of him, which he knew to be the person he would someday be as opposed to whom he had always been, that was invigorated by what she had said, now too restless to sleep at all before he found out what his true purpose was in the world.

The next week, he was sitting in the Konoha public library with a stack of various tomes perched on his table in the reading room, his pupils darting back and forth as he read the small text from the one open before him. He held a pen in one hand and a page in the other, scribbling barely legible notes in shorthand as he read intently. It was mid-afternoon and no less humid than usual, and even with the windows closed and the air conditioning on, there was a certain lethargy among the library's few patrons that for some reason didn't seem to affect Kabuto as he concentrated.

Patients with multifocal atrial tachycardia frequently have significant comorbidities, especially chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and respiratory failure. Consequently, a high mortality rate (ie, up to 45%) is associated with this arrhythmia, although it is not a direct consequence of the rhythm abnormality…

"E-excuse me?"

He knew that whisper. His gaze snapped up and was met with the sight of none other than the girl he had encountered in the pharmacy the week prior, looking just as shy and timid as ever as she stood before him, tugging on a strand of long black hair. Her eyes were not on him, but on his book.

After taking a moment to wrack his brains, he remembered her name. "Yutani-san," he greeted, voice hushed. "May I help you?"

"Yes. Well, I mean…" Smiling apologetically, she pointed to the book. "I hate to bother you, but…I've kind of been waiting for that book for a while and I'd like to borrow it, that is, if you think you'll be finished soon…"

If he'd said he had suspected her to be the type to be interested in a textbook on cardiovascular diseases, he would have been lying. Kabuto wasn't so narrow-minded (or unfamiliar with the tales of the legendary Tsunade) as to believe that women couldn't be brilliant medics, but there was something about this girl's almost cherubic features that didn't quite coincide with the ideal of a person looking to study something so…well, bloody.

Then again, there were children killing at the age of ten in hidden villages. Nothing should really have surprised him.

Much to her obvious surprise, he closed the book without another word and offered it to her.

She hesitated to take it. "H-huh? You're sure? I mean, I don't want you to feel pressured…!" Her voice rose and prompted a keen librarian nearby to shush her with deadly efficiency.

He only shook his head and smiled, continuing to hold it out. "Go on, I'm only reading it for pleasure. I don't think it's going to help me much if I want to pass my graduation exam."

Still looking taken aback, she reached out a small, pale hand and took it, clutching it to her chest and giving a grateful nod. When she actually returned his smile, he noted that it was the first one he had seen on her face. "Thank you so much! And…graduation exam?" A befuddled frown. "You mean…to become a genin?"

"The very same," he said, closing his notebook as well. "I'm putting that idiom about old dogs to the test."

"I see…" She was biting her lower lip. "So…you're going to leave the hospital to become a field ninja?"

"Well, yes. For the foreseeable future, anyway." A glance out the window told him that it was getting to be early evening, when Urushi had said to meet him so Kabuto could "actually enjoy" his day off instead of spending it "holed up with books." He started to gather the other textbooks, not wanting to be late for whatever shenanigans his brother had planned. "At least until I've attained a high enough rank to get me a position that's not just a step above an internship," he added with a faint smile.

She shifted, holding the book a little closer. "Oh." Giving her glasses, thick square frames in contrast to his thin round ones, a little push up the bridge of her nose, she said, smiling, "Well, good luck. The exam shouldn't be too hard for you, don't worry."

Her shyness seemed to be dissipating. In an odd way, he found his own doing likewise. "You're a ninja then, Yutani-san?"

"Oh, you can call me by my given name. If you want." There was a pink tinge to her cheeks that he decided to attribute to the weather for now.

"Kairi-chan, then."

She nodded. "Yes, I'm a ninja. Not a very good one, but…I have a sensei and a squad and whatnot." A sheepish giggle. "My hospital volunteering is more of a hobby, I guess, but it's what I love the most. I adore science and medicine."

"I can see that," he said, gesturing to the textbook she held like a precious treasure unearthed from deep in the ground. She blushed.

"Yeah, well…" Tucking some hair behind her ear, she smiled at him. "You like it too, huh?"

"It's certainly compelling," he said in assent. "Who knows, maybe it will become my profession. Only time will tell, I suppose."

"That's the spirit," she said, smile wide. There was a pause, and after a moment's trepidation, she started, cheeks a brilliant color, "You know, I was wondering… If you ever wanted to…"

When the librarian shushed them again, more harshly this time, Kabuto gave a little jump as Kairi did, the both of them immediately averting their gazes as a tense, awkward silence followed. He had just begun to pick up his pile of books and stand when he saw her grinning at him. It was a decidedly teenage expression, guilty but careless—an "oops, we were caught" grin.

It made him feel as though he had been granted access to an exclusive club he hadn't even realized he'd sought the membership of. Like socializing with and relating to other people his age was actually something he could see himself enjoying, at least in small doses. Go figure.

"Guess I'll see you around, then?" she asked in a stage whisper that was more carrying than any of their previous conversation. Purposefully so.

The manners drilled into him over the years by strict nuns kept him from playing along, but he nodded and returned her sincere smile, hoping that would be enough. It seemed to be, because she looked infinitely more cheerful as she flitted out than she had when she'd first approached him.

He stood there for a moment after she'd left with the unusual feeling of being on a sort of precipice. His books were in his arms, waiting to be brought home for more reading that night, and he knew that, a few blocks away, Urushi was probably already waiting for him.

He also knew that in a few minutes, when she walked out the library's front doors, the chances of seeing Kairi Yutani again, or at least in the foreseeable future that he had mentioned, would become pretty slim.

Kabuto set the books down to be returned to their rightful places by the librarian who was annoyed with him anyway and made haste to the door. Urushi would understand.