Hello and welcome to the (first) spin-off of my fic Joyous Children! If this title doesn't ring any bells for you, I suggest you go read that one first since this story will be based on characters that I created there.

For all of my Joyous-Children-readers: this was one of the suggestions for the special that I promised you for reaching the 200-reviews milestone. Since so many of you liked Etsuko's parents and were upset with the death of them and since I kind of miss them, too, I decided to write this. It's going to be a romance that's not solely focused on romance and will be something around five-ish chapters. The endgame is clear, of course.

So, enjoy your reward and tell me if you liked it!

Chapter 1: Kiyomi

"Eiji-san? I'm sorry for the disturbance … I – it's about Michio."

Michio had been there since day one.

In her mind, he was even more present than her mother, which was saying a lot since Uchiha Sayaka took dedication to her job as mother and wife to a whole new level of serious. Where she showered her family with food, care that bordered on being fussy and anything else that was related to domestic life to show her love, though, Michio was her bastion of calm.

His was the bed she crawled into when she had nightmares about faceless monsters. He was the one to tell her that she shouldn't feel bad about not being able to do something that her father wanted her to. When she told him that she had dreams beyond becoming the housewife everybody expected her to become, he didn't ridicule but instead encouraged her to follow them.

"Do you have one, too?" she had promptly asked him.

"Of course I have" he had said with a smile. "I have a lot of them. One of them is to become a shinobi so that I can fight for the clan and the village. Another one, and the most important one by far, is to become a shinobi so I can protect you."

What the Nidaime was to the village, Michio was to her – and more. To Kiyomi, her big brother meant the world.

"The mission went off without a hitch. It was on our way back when our team got into an ambush."

She went to the academy with one of her cousins every morning. It wasn't something arranged. It just happened one day – and since she didn't complain, he continued to join her on her way.

She was the only one who didn't bully him for his strange and utterly non-Uchiha coloring, after all.

She didn't even mention it and at first he believed that she was laughing at him behind his back just like everybody else. So, when he blurted out "Don't you think my grey hair is disgusting?" one week after meeting her, he was so afraid of her answer being "Yes" that he couldn't look her in the eye.

That was why he didn't see her frown in genuine confusion, though he heard her well enough.

"It's not disgusting. It's special."

That day, Yashiro made his first real friend.

"At first, we were doing well enough. Unbeknownst to us, though, the enemy team managed to successfully call for help."

Michio, of course, had a best friend.

The first time Kiyomi met Uchiha Nobuo, he didn't particularly stand out from the mass of cousins the clan provided her with. Short black hair, pale skin, eyes the color of midnight – she probably would have looked like that herself if she had been born a boy. His quiet and composed nature didn't really help with that impression either and at first, she couldn't understand why Michio would choose someone as boring as him as best friend. Ultimately, she figured that he had to be pretty decent somewhere.

She didn't spend too many thoughts on him and the only times she ever met him were when she followed Michio to his training – which he'd encouraged her to do, after all – where he'd be waiting with unfailing reliability. He always greeted her politely and never told her to stop coming, so she grew to think of him as something that belonged to Michio's training.

It was kind of reassuring.

"Michio … he decided to stay behind to enable the rest of us the successful completion of the mission. So we left."

When Michio graduated, Kiyomi was incredibly proud and sad at once.

On the one hand, he would finally live his dream of fighting for his clan and village. On the other, he wouldn't have very much time to spend with her anymore.

Kiyomi knew of course that wishing for the whole attention of her brother was selfish, but she couldn't help thinking about and missing him when her father informed her about the designated husband he found for her. There would be no shinobi career for her, no dreams of fighting to protect her precious people. There were only just enough resources in the family to sustain one budding ninja, her father said.

So she was the obedient daughter she was expected to be when he told her the name of a boy she had been walking to the academy with for two years now, laid her dreams to rest and thanked him.

Yashiro was her friend at least. Besides, she was content as long as Michio could live his dream.

"When we came back for him, he … he was already dead. I'm sorry, Eiji-san."

The rain was pouring down with a vengeance on the day of the funeral. The ceremony had been small, restricted to clan members only, and most of the attendants had fled as soon as it was over.

Kiyomi stood over the grave, with her hands tightly clenched into fists and tears mingling with the rain water. She remained, long after even her own family had left and into dusk, with skin gone cold and clammy and lips almost blue.

She didn't feel any of it, though, not even when a cloak was gently put on her shoulders. She only looked up with hollow eyes when another person came to stand next to her.

"You probably don't want to see anybody right now, least of all me" Nobuo began.

He exhaled slowly.

"It should have been me."

It was said quietly, with the air of someone saying nothing but the plain truth, and it made Kiyomi's heart ache all over again.

"Don't say that" she replied immediately. "I don't blame you."

They stood in silence for a while, creating a space that seemed to be running on a timeline of its own. It was dark by the time the rain stopped and the clouds receded to reveal the silvery shine of the moon.

"I wonder where Nii-san's dreams went" Kiyomi said. "Dreams don't live, so they can't die, can they? They were so beautiful, too."

"I think that dreams do live in the person who dreams them" Nobuo answered, slowly, his eyes fixed on the grave. "And I believe it's possible for a person to share his dream so that one day when they themselves are no more, that dream can still live on in another person."

When Kiyomi finally went home that night, she went with a lighter heart. Because Michio had shared his dreams with her.

And she was resolved to let them live to the fullest.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to tell me what you think of it! :)