Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Wabi-Sabi: (n.) Japanese. The discovery of beauty in imperfection; the acceptance of the cycle of life and death.
The red maple leaves skitter across the street as she steps out of the bus downtown, still clutching the strap of her school bag tightly in her right hand, a paper bag in her left.
Why am I here? She doesn't know exactly, doesn't know. She'd just heard Otsutsuki-sensei talking with another teacher about Uchiha-senpai, and now...well, now she's here, standing outside the imposing double doors of Konoha General on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of autumn.
She isn't a relative, isn't a friend, isn't even really a classmate.
She'd been Izuna-kun's classmate, and they might have swept the classroom together after class for two weeks after the incident with the lizard and the koi pond just a little ways off of the school grounds, but they hadn't been close.
She knows of Uchiha-senpai only by reputation. He is a third year student, two years above her, of an age with Neesan, but in a different class. He frequented a dojo close to the outskirts of the city and played shogi competitively. He likes inarizushi, and he had loved Izuna-kun. That is all she knows of him.
Still, regardless of what has compelled her to come here, she is here now, and that's enough for her to lift her chin and push open the door.
"Um, excuse me?" She shifts her weight to her left foot when bowing to the receptionist. "I'm looking for Uchiha Madara-senpai's room." Her heavy black shoes from last year are too tight on her feet, but she hasn't found the time to get another pair.
She was supposed to go shopping this afternoon, but she'd passed an eatery on her way to the department store, and remembered that Izuna-kun had once mentioned that his brother loves inarizushi. Store-bought is not the same as homemade sushi, but her trip had been spur of the moment.
She doubts that inarizushi would fill the hole in Uchiha-senpai's heart, but perhaps knowing that someone thinks of him would help him pull through a little more.
Ootsutsuki-sensei had said that he has gotten worse since he missed Izuna-kun's funeral. She understands that he is in no condition to sit up for a wake now, but she rather suspects that his grandfather from Kyoto could have waited a little longer for the memorial, for the cremation, for the ceremony...She tries not to think much on it. She cannot cry, not here.
The accident had totaled four cars and killed seven. They had pulled Uchiha-senpai out of the smoking trap of mangled metal alive, but Izuna-kun hadn't been so lucky.
She and Izuna-kun hadn't been close, but that doesn't mean she didn't cry when it was announced at school, sick with grief for the death of someone she'd known.
The receptionist, Honda-san, blinks at her for a long moment before opening her mouth to talk. Kanae ignores it in favor of the actual conversation.
"You're a school friend of his?" The receptionist leans forward. "Oh, he hasn't had many of those visit him." The older woman pats her on the hand, comfortingly. "Don't you worry, dear, I'll just go right up to tell him that he has a friend come to visit him. What's your name dear?"
"N-no." The word escapes her before she can help herself. "I mean…" In the face of the older woman's blank look she can only hope to correct herself a little bit. "I mean, it was supposed to be a surprise, and Uchiha-senpai might appreciate it a little more if...oh," she hides her face behind her hands. "I mean you don't have to do that for me. I'll be able to find his room by myself."
"Oh, that's alright, dear." The receptionist smiles at her kindly. "You want him to be happy. I won't ruin your surprise." She draws Kanae a little map on a sticky note. "He's up in Room 217-B, out of the intensive care unit now, and moved to long term care."
"Will he be alright?" She hadn't heard any details, only that he'd gotten worse after not being well enough to attend, but she hopes that he will recover.
"He's waiting for a donor." Honda-san daubs her eyes. "But if he holds on long enough, the chances of surviving are very high."
"Thank you." Kanae makes sure to smile. "I'll be going up to see him now."
And now that she's decided to go visit him, she makes her way toward the room quickly. 217-B.
Her hand pauses before she knocks though, and she clutches the paper bag in her left hand a little tighter. What if no one has been by to see him because he doesn't want to see anyone?
Oh, but a second later she shakes her head. She won't know until she tries. Chin up, Uzumaki Kanae. You are here to visit a classmate going through hard times. There's no need to be so nervous.
She pushes the door open. "Uchiha-senpai?"
He looks paler, inky black hair spread out over the white hospital pillows, than the last time she saw him when he met Izuna on the school steps. The morning sun from the window hits his face. There are dark bruises under his eyes, as if he has not slept in a while.
He's hooked up to tubes now, covered by hospital sheets, but still he is beautiful, the sort of senpai her classmates giggled over. His eyes snap open when she steps in. They are dark like coal, like a night with no moon. "Who are you?" He doesn't look like he wants her to go away. At least not yet, so she'll take what she can get.
She smiles, setting her school bag down by the doorway. "I'm Uzumaki Kanae from class 1-A."
His eyes fall closed. "Uzumaki-san's younger sister?"
"Mmmm." So he does know Neesan. Well, it isn't as if that is difficult, Neesan's a class representative in the student government, so other people do know her.
"Why are you here?" He seems tired, but he does turn to look at her.
She sets the paper bag on the bedside table and pulls out the plastic container. "I brought you inarizushi. It's store bought, but Izuna-kun mentioned that—"
His face changes when she mentions Izuna-kun.
"Get out." He snaps at her.
She jerks and almost drops the food. "Uchiha-senpai?"
"I don't need your pity!" His eyes are hard, angry. "Tell Uzumaki that she can stuff her pity—"
"Uchiha-san." She frowns and puts the inarizushi back into the paper bag. "I was supposed to buy new shoes today. No one told me to come here, least of all Neechan."
She squeezes her eyes shut, her hands together, her mouth shut, but still the words keep coming. "I know I don't know you at all, and the only time Izuna-kun and I ever talked was two weeks last semester while we were sweeping the classroom after school, but that doesn't mean that I'm here because I want to pity you."
She'd been trying to be nice, but she didn't know that he would read it so wrong. "I thought you'd be happy to know that someone cared."
He doesn't respond, but the air is heavy.
He doesn't want her here. Doesn't want anyone, she doesn't think. So she leaves, frustrated tears still pricking at the corners of her eyes. She didn't mean to make him angry.
She thought — oh, well she doesn't know what she thought — only that it's all wrong somehow.
No, he didn't have any business to be mean to her, but then, she didn't have any business taking the bus downtown to the hospital when she should have been buying shoes.
By the time she makes it to the bus stop, it is raining again, a light drizzle covering downtown. She takes the next bus out to the Uzu district and doesn't look back.
"Kanae-chan?" It's Neesan who stops her the next morning before they enter the school building. The Twins have gone on ahead, chattering between themselves about a snake they'd caught in the country a week ago. "Is there something wrong? You came home so late last night without new shoes. Did you want me to go shopping with you?"
"No," she shakes her head. "That's okay. I didn't go buy shoes yesterday after all."
She teeters on the brink of not telling Neesan what the matter is, but this is Neesan looking at her with concerned eyes the color of rich chocolate, and she knows Uchiha-senpai so much better than Kanae. Kanae can't not tell her.
"I went to visit Uchiha-senpai in the hospital yesterday." She confesses. "He didn't like it."
The corners of Neesan's mouth turns down. "No, I expect he wouldn't, but then, he's always been hard to read." She turns away and sighs. "We had an argument, so he doesn't like me much right now, and he's always been irritable. Don't take it to heart, Kanae-chan. You did a good thing, going to visit a classmate in the hospital. What he did in response to that isn't your business."
No, she supposes what Uchiha-senpai did or didn't do isn't really her problem.
She nods, and Neesan hugs her quickly before hurrying off towards class 3-A.
Kanae herself turns down another hallway toward the first year classrooms.
The image of Uchiha-senpai hooked up to so many tubes comes back to her mind for a brief moment before she banishes it. Today in English they are learning past participles.
She has to pay attention. English sentences have always jumbled up in her brain until she doesn't know where one begins and the other ends.
Past participles end in -ed. So do past tense verbs. What is an action and what is merely decoration?
The receptionist had said that if Uchiha-senpai managed to live long enough to find a donor that he has a high chance of surviving. He hadn't seemed like he was dying yesterday, though he did seem tired and angry.
Only after I mentioned…
Only after I mentioned the brother whose funeral he couldn't attend.
I'm an idiot. How could I be so insensitive to mention something like that to him when he hasn't come to terms with the situation?
She owes Uchiha-senpai an apology for being insensitive. No wonder he had thought she was there to pity him, she'd mentioned Izuna-kun without a second thought as thought Izuna-kun was still—
"Uzumaki-chan, what's the answer to question number 17?"
She glances down at her textbook. The price of oil has _ rapidly since January. "Falled?"
Otsutsuki-sensei sighs slightly. "Fallen, Uzumaki-chan. The past participle of fall is irregular."
She nods, "Hai, Sensei." but her face burns all the same. They had studied irregular words yesterday, but she hadn't studied yesterday. She'd gone downtown to prod at someone else's still bleeding wounds with a stick of salt. That shames her more than any wrong answer in class could.
But it is different now. She's hurt him already. She can't just go waltzing back. An apology that is not sincere is worse no apology at all.
She winds up back in front of his hospital room door a week later with new shoes, still clutching a bag. It's Sunday now. And she's not sure what sorts of music he liked to listen to, much less whether or not he listened to any music at all, but she brought her koto with her this time. She can play most songs that she's heard, and she is fond of all sorts of music, so it shouldn't be hard to find a song that he likes, and she knows.
Unless he says he doesn't like any sort of music at all, but at that point, she might just flee the room altogether.
She takes a deep breath. "Uchiha-senpai?" She'd called him Uchiha-san like a stranger the last time, when she'd left, unreasonably hurt, but she still thinks of him as Uchiha-senpai. She hopes he doesn't mind.
His eyes are closed again, and he doesn't open them when he gestures to his bedside table. There's a box there. "It's for you."
"Ha?" She picks up the box.
"You said you needed new shoes. I assumed they were school shoes, but these are multipurpose." He still hasn't opened his eyes.
She opens it and pulls out a pair of black suede ankle boots. Is he no longer upset with me? Is this his version of an apology? "These are too expensive to be an appropriate return present for the inarizushi, Uchiha-senpai." She knows he has money, that his family is by no means badly off, but he still has his own hospital bills to consider especially if he has to wait for a donor.
A pair like this costs at least ten thousand yen.
She'd bought him inarizushi for something like a hundred and fifty yen. It is hardly appropriate to accept his far too generous present.
"I had to guess at the size of your feet." He doesn't seem to have registered her protest at all. "But I do believe those shoes will fit correctly. If not, they can always be corrected."
"Thank you, but—"
His eyes snap open. "You will take them." His words might be demanding, but there is something like a plea in his eyes.
Now that she has spoken to him more than once, he is no longer so hard to read. He is prickly, but he is not unkind, not casually cruel.
"You're not the one who has to apologize, Uchiha-senpai." She sets the shoes back in their box, wraps the tissue paper around them, and puts them aside so that she can unclip her koto from her back. "I was insensitive last time."
"I have a black temper." It is a fault of mine. He says. "I didn't mean to make you cry."
It's like they are having two different conversations at once. "I didn't cry, Senpai." I know. I don't mind.
"Take the shoes." He looks away. "It would be a bother to return them, Uzumaki-chan."
She decides not to argue. It would be easy to forget to take them when it came time for her to leave. And if she leaves them here, surely he will return them. "Was the inarizushi alright?" She asks as she sets the koto on the floor while bandaging her fingers. "I know they were store-bought but I didn't think ahead about visiting last time so I didn't have time to make any myself, but I can bring you better ones next time…"
"You'll have to ask the night nurse." His eyes are deceptively mild. "I can't eat things that are high in sodium, and my diet is strictly regulated." He raises a weak hand to gesture at the tubes protruding from his stomach. "Dialysis works better without sodium."
"Oh." So she'd brought him a useless present that reminded him too much of what he'd lost last time. No wonder he'd been upset. "I'm—" Sorry. She wants to say sorry, but he cuts her off. Maybe he's too tired of hearing the word. Too many sorries does make them all blur together and sound useless.
She's used to hearing sorry. Ever since Niisama had brought his foreign boyfriend home on a visit from where they live in Kyoto, this town has been full of sorries spoken neither sincerely nor with much kindness.
"Why did you bring a koto?"
"I thought I might be able to provide some form of entertainment at least." She says and hopes that it's enough. "Since I made such a botch of visiting you last time."
"You play?" He asks with mild surprise.
She smiles. This visit is going better than the first at least. "I've always wanted to." And Tousan for all his faults sometimes always provides the best he can for his children, all seven of them, even if only the youngest four of them still live at home.
"And what did you decide to play for me today?" He asks.
It's the way he says that — What did you decide to play for me today? — that has her choose her favorite song.
Though, she supposes, a rendition of Soran Bushi is not what he had in mind when he asked for a song. She can't help it though, it was the very first song she'd learned to play on a koto and a much loved favorite for a family that has always missed being away from the sea.
She's only been to the beach a few times in her life that she can remember, but her family history means that she can't help but miss it all the same. She had been born in a coastal town, but they had moved before she was old enough to remember such a thing.
She stops about halfway through. "Should I switch?" Normally at home, everyone would pitch in and sing along, but she hadn't quite the courage to sing in front of a near stranger so at least that hadn't happened.
"No." He closes his eyes. "Soran Bushi…" He sighs, though it's not exasperated which is good enough for her really. "Go on."
So she does. It's more cheerful than most other things than other people would have said to him, which is probably why he asks for it to continue.
He's half asleep by the time she finishes and starts packing up to go.
"Uzumaki-chan." He says before she has the chance to make her way out the door.
I thought you were asleep, Uchiha-senpai. She winces. I guess it was too much to hope for.
"Take the shoes with you when you go." She'd left the shoes he wanted to gift her in their box on his bedside table.
Given that this is the third time he's asked her to just take the shoes, she can only give him face and take them.
"Thank you, Uchiha-senpai." She whispers on her way out, the shoes carefully tucked away in her bag.
He doesn't respond. When she turns back to look at him, his breathing is deep and even. For a moment, she can forget the tubes he's hooked up to. He looks, strangely peaceful.
It is a good thing, she decides.
She leaves him to his rest.
Okaasan's waiting for her when she returns. "I was worried about you, Kanae-chan." She's in the kitchen, stir frying mushrooms in a small pan, her hair pulled back into a thick braid. "You don't normally come back so late."
Okaa-san doesn't dye her hair even out of vanity like other women in their neighborhood do, so the heavy strands of gray in the red is easily noticeable.
"I was visiting Uchiha-senpai in the hospital." She says. She sits down at the kitchen table and swings her legs back and forth. "He seems lonely.
"Oh, that poor boy." Okaasan sighs. "He was orphaned so young too."
Her mother's heard is kind, even though people have not been kind to them here. They've lived here for the past thirteen years, but they are still outsiders here in this neighborhood.
"He gave me a pair of boots." She feels compelled to mention it, compelled to tell Okaasan about the gift she's received. It wouldn't be fair otherwise. How could she just receive a present and not tell anyone about it?
She still feels a little bit uncomfortable mentioning it, but oh, it wouldn't be right not to, so she does.
"He gave you a pair of shoes?" Okaasan turns to her, hazel eyes wide with surprise, a hand on her waist. "Kanae-chan, you didn't accept did you?"
She scuffs the tip of her shoe against a corner of the floor tiles. "Okaasan, he asked me three times. I had to give him at least a little face." Bit by bit, the story comes out, and she tells her mother about how she'd brought him inarizushi, and the argument they had the first time she visited. "He wanted to apologize. I couldn't keep rejecting his present."
Okaasan listens to her in between scraping the mushrooms into a bowl, and pulling out the cutting board to chop tofu. "That poor boy." She says again. "I'm happy that you went back to apologize. He must feel so alone right now." Okaasan wipes her hands on a towel. "Come now, let's look at this pair of shoes he got you, shall we?"
And that is how she knows she did the right thing. Okaasan doesn't think that her acceptance of this present was too much for a second meeting.
"They're really pretty." She pulls the box from the bag. She wouldn't be able to buy a pair like this without saving for months. "See?"
"Oh, those are pretty." Okaasan presses her lips together. "I never expected a teenage boy to know so much about women's fashion." There's something sad in her eyes that Kanae feels guilty about though.
She shouldn't have said they were so pretty. Okaasan knows that this is above their means.
"Okaasan?" She squeezes her mother's hand. "Is there anything I can help with, with dinner?"
And that brings the smile back. "Oh, of course. I was thinking that your Otousan will be so surprised if we made him eel soup." Okaasan gestures conspiringly towards the sink. "I bought eels from the fresh market today, but we can't let your brothers know, or they'll tell immediately."
"Of course." She agrees. "Ruta-nii and Shiro-nii are great tattletales."
And perhaps she could have left it at that. She'd visited Uchiha Madara-senpai once in good faith, and once in apology, and maybe that ought to be enough, but she passes the Yamanaka Flower Shop on her way home from Go practice, and she can't help herself.
His white room is still in the back of her mind. He doesn't deserve to be so lonely.
So when she passes the display of sunflowers, she comes back to it four steps down the road.
She buys the sunflowers and some pretty orange lilies and continues on her way back to Konoha Regional and room 217-B.
With a vase of course, because there'd been no vases in his bare room.
"Uchiha-senpai?" He'd been listening to music, earbuds tangled above a small mp3 player.
"Uzumaki-chan," he begins, but then blinks. "Are those sunflowers?"
"And orange lilies." She holds up the other assortment and carefully arranges the flowers in the vase she brought.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him blink in shock once more. "Do you know what those mean?"
Mean? "I never took hanakotoba classes, so no, not really." She finishes the flower arrangement and looks around. "I only got them because they were so bright." His white room looks better already.
"Then I suppose you don't mean you want to take revenge on me, but only respectfully."
Was that why he was so stupidefied? "No, of course not." She sits down on the only chair in his room. "I don't care for revenge in any form."
She'd never found a point in it. Back in elementary and middle school, other people had teased her mercilessly for her red hair and green eyes. Gaijin, they'd called at recess and during class breaks. Foreigner, foreigner we don't want you here.
She's no foreigner though, not really. Her family just has red hair, a quirk kept from back when they lived on the coastline. Old family legend whispered of a youkai woman who had left them her red hair.
And she has green eyes, the same as Obaasan.
It is better to live and let go, to live and move on. She's Uzumaki Kanae, as Japanese as any of the classmates who called her names. She knows that. Her family knows that. What else is needed?
"I see." Uchiha-senpai comments after a long pause. "Tell me, Uzumaki-chan, why do you keep visiting me?"
Why? "I'm not sure why." She says. "The first time was because I thought you might want to see someone. The second was because I needed to give you a proper apology for the first time."
"And this time?" He prompts.
What had made her come back to 217-B for a third time?
"I passed a sunflower display outside of Yamanaka Flowers this afternoon." She says slowly. "And thought that if I left your room all white like it was, it would be quite a sad room."
"You pitied me in my sad state." His face twists as he turns away. "How many times do I have to tell you? I don't need—"
"It wasn't pity."
"Then what is it?" He still doesn't turn around.
She doesn't pity him. That would imply she looks down on him somehow, that she can stand at her high altitude of moral superiority, judge him, and find him wanting. But how to explain?
"I thought the room would be sad." She says at last. "I already know that you're sad, you wouldn't be much of a person if you weren't."
He laughs, a bitter sound. "What do you know, really? You think I'm sad?"
"I didn't say think, Senpai." She doesn't know why she continues arguing with him. He seems determined to think that she's pitying him, and it would probably be easier to let him think it, but she doesn't want to. "I know you're sad. I might not know how, but I know you're sad."
Sad doesn't cover the sort of grief he'd feel.
She's never lost anyone before, so she wouldn't know, but she does know that Izuna had loved him, and in return he loved Izuna so brilliantly that anyone could see it.
This room is a sad one even with yellow sunflowers on the bedside table.
She doesn't flee crying this time, and he isn't even capable of getting out of bed unaided, so he has to say something to fill the space.
"You play Go?" He still hasn't turned around or acknowledged that he is, in fact, sad, but it's good enough she supposes.
"How do you know that?" She is certain she's never mentioned it to him before.
"You had a board and boxes for pieces in your bag." He turns his face so that he is staring up into the ceiling, propped up by white cushions. "I saw it when you got the vase out earlier."
"Oh." It's a rather mundane reason. She had come from Go lessons after all. "Do you play?"
"I did." He gestures at the room with one limp hand. "I haven't had anyone to play with me since I got stuck here." Got stuck here.
How boring must his life be if he keeps putting up with her visits like this? How lonely is he really?
He hadn't been insanely popular in school, not by a long shot, he'd been a little too aloof and unforgiving to be popular, but she still expects other people to have visited him.
"Would you like to play a game then?" She has a competition in Takasu on Saturday, so she will have to practice hard in the week to come. She's a club player now, having advanced to 6 kyu over the summer, but still, the uphill climb is hard.
"I wouldn't mind it." He turns back around to face her, so she sets out the board and they begin.
She leaves her book on Go strategy with him when she goes. It might help him pass the time.
A.N. Hi everyone! This is my latest project, and it comes in four parts. I have it all written, so posting updates for this should be regular (Unless I'm really busy, and I forget to update.) Probably once a week for each of the next three Saturdays, or something close to a regular update schedule, not that I'm so good at knowing what that is.
Regular updates for everything else will continue as chapters are written, but I thought it might be nice if I could update something semi-regularly.
As always, I hope you like it.
~Tavina