Prayer Beads
by Nezuko, Prince of Rats
This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei.
It had been a year. A whole year since Konoha had been betrayed. Since Sandaime had given his life trying to save his village from his star pupil. Since so many Konoha shinobi had died. Since Hayate had died.
Hayate's death had been the bellwether, but no-one had known then, what it presaged. He'd been found messily slain atop a temple roof, blood sticky and drying, entrails already picked at by early-rising crows in the weak dawn light.
Genma hadn't been there. He was no longer ANBU, and for that he'd thanked god. Hayate's girlfriend Yuugao had been the one to reclaim her lover's body. Her team had brought him back for the autopsy and cremation. But Genma had been on the detail trying to find the trail of the killer. It led them in circles. It cast suspicions, but it gave no definitive answers. Such was often the case in shinobi deaths. It was a horrific scene, with smashed walls and broken roof tiles. Violent jutsu had clearly been at play that night that Hayate died, unleashed by ninja that Genma could only hope had died in the battles that followed, when Sound and Sand invaded.
He never learned the identity of Hayate's killer. Completely missed the irony in his fighting the assassin to a standstill only days later, while battle raged around them. Never knew, and maybe it was for the best. If he'd had to fight Baki of Sunagakure knowing he'd been the instrument of Hayate's death, Genma would have made mistakes. Been tripped up by emotions that a ninja in a fight for his life can ill-afford. But he'd faced Baki as simply a traitorous ally. A dangerous jounin enemy. And he fought him long and hard, matching jutsu for jutsu, blade for blade, until both men were exhausted, bruised and bleeding. Until the tide began to turn for Konoha at last, and Sunagakure and their "allies" in Sound were forced to retreat.
Days before that battle, he'd sat, face placid, unflinching, and listened while Sandaime told the assembled jounin that Hayate's body had been found. By then Genma already knew. Those that hadn't heard expressed their outrage. Those who knew Genma wondered at his calm. Wasn't he, they asked each other afterwards, Hayate's friend? Hadn't they been lovers once? Weren't they still? But Genma had sat unmoving, as unreadable as polished stone. His tears, if they came, came in private.
So much had happened since then.
Genma had taken Hayate's place as proctor of the third stage of the Chuunin exams, and no one but those closest to him had an inkling of his grief. The exams had erupted into treachery. War had been averted by the slimmest of margins. Konoha had rebuilt. And even the signs of rebuilding were fading, with new wood and fresh paint weathered by the passing of a year.
Konoha had mourned the loss of her Hokage. Her many losses. And Gekkou Hayate's name became just one of many names chiseled freshly into the Hero's Stone.
And now. Now it was the end of the rainy season, and the hot clear days of summer were on them. Cicadas hummed in the trees, and the earth baked to dusty clay. Crops ripened and the markets were full of fruits and vegetables and berries. It was the berries that did Genma in. He was up early, at the market before the farmers were even finished setting out their produce, hoping to get the best pick of the day's offerings. At the second vendor's stall there was a basket of ripe black raspberries, plump and almost frosty looking.
"Are they sweet?" Genma asked, frowning at the price. Fifty ryou was a lot to ask for a single basket of berries. Even really good berries.
"Picked 'em myself this morning, youngster," the farm woman said, and she squinted up at Genma as if he were an insolent adolescent and not a thirty-year-old man. "But go on, taste one. One, mind you."
Genma used a senbon to spear a single berry from the basket and pop it in his mouth. It burst into sweet perfumy flavor so intense Genma could almost feel the thorns on the cane where the berries had grown.
"Are they sweet, he asks," the old woman said, and cackled triumphantly as she pocketed Genma's money and handed him a basket of berries in a little paper sack.
"Thanks," Genma muttered indistinctly, and slipped away with his purchase.
Hayate had been the one who really loved raspberries. They'd always just been another fruit to Genma. An expensive fruit he hadn't really seen the purpose in. Sure, they were a nice treat every now and again, but they were absurdly expensive compared to say, peaches. Or strawberries, even. Especially the black ones Hayate had loved. Ninja berries, he'd called them, and just laughed when Genma had pointed out that red berries and black ones looked identical under moonlight.
The black ones were sweeter, Hayate told him. The opposite of what you'd expect. Berries you had to look beneath the underneath to understand. Genma hadn't really understood. But he'd bought the berries for Hayate, because Hayate was young and laughing and wanted them. Wanted him. Even fifty ryou wasn't too much to pay when you were buying sweets for your lover.
Genma didn't stop at any other stalls. He slipped away from the marketplace, and up through sighing cherry trees heavy with nearly ripe fruit. He climbed through bamboo and maples in full green leaf, moving like sunlight and shadow through the temple grounds. He passed the big red tori gates. The long, low main temple, with its rows and rows of gently smiling Kanon-bosatsu statues, radiating compassion. The tall pagoda with elegant brass doors. He bypassed the sweeping acolytes and the chanting monks, and the temple bell with its guarding lion dogs, and didn't stop until he was in a grove of cherry trees so old they were more dead than alive. Black branches clawing the air, with a few clumps of green saw-toothed leaves and red dangling fruit here and there.
Under the cherries, soft with moss, nearly falling down, there stood a shrine. Its deity watched benevolently over families of field mice that nested at his feet, and spiders whose webs graced the weathered stone Buddha like raiments of silk. Genma sat in the leaf litter and dust, kneeling seiza-style. Formal, composed. He slipped a berry into his mouth. Then another, and another.
It was a prayer. Berries for prayer beads. Namu Amida Butsu over and over, one repetition for each berry. Endless repetitions for endless dead. For one dead. Give rest to Hayate's soul. Give him peace in the Pure Land.
The berries were half gone before the tears came. Genma's mouth ringed in purplish juice as if he'd drunk a blood sacrifice. The box dropped from his hands, a half-chewed fruit fell from his mouth. He curled over his knees weeping as he had never wept. Bereft. Alone. Witnessed only by an inert idol and unconcerned insects.