New York Soul
Chapter 1: Saturday
'I don't like Saturdays.'
That was Touma's first thought, when he woke up. He stared up at the off-white, flaking ceiling above his bed and decided that he didn't want to stare at that, so he turned over, tucked his hand under his head, and stared at his wall instead.
'Saturdays are like… Satan's testicles. Disgusting, horrifying, tiring, and always looming on the horizo—mmm, never mind, doesn't work." The sentiment stood, however. Looking back, last night was great. Few people visit the café on Fridays, so he didn't have to put in as much effort. Saturdays, though—in summertime, Saturdays usually meant a full house by noon. His boss liked it. Touma didn't, even right now in late autumn.
He glanced at his clock. Six thirty. Practically night still. Was that reason good enough to drift off again? Touma contemplated it for a few minutes, and fell asleep before he could make up his mind.
In his dream, he was in his shitty little apartment in San Francisco again, staring down at the street down below, cars passing along it like ants to a hive. A bottle of white wine and a half-empty bottle of red were sitting on his desk, abandoned form last night, with the postcard his dad sent them with, and his phone on his bedside table was blinking, telling him someone had left a voicemail. Some white powder covered his desk, and he brushed it aside as he sat down and opened his laptop. But when he did, the laptop grew teeth and clamped into his arm, and blood spilled the table like his mother's tomato soup used to. But wait, his laptop—it was going to get soaked!
He picked it up and clutched it under his good arm as his bleeding arm continued to spout blood, faster and faster. Soon, his room was filled with his arm's bloody tomato soup, and his laptop was threatening to get soaked regardless, so he waded to his window and crashed through it towards the ant-cars in the street below. The wind whipped him in the face, and he buried his head protectively in his arms as he was about to hit the street and the ants and his face would get smashed and he'd die and break his nose and he'd have to spend his entire afterlife with a broken nose—
He awoke back in Konoha sweating slightly, and kicked his blanket to the ground for some cool air. Then he turned and laid on his back, and found himself staring at his flaky ceiling again. His shirt had ridden up slightly, and he scratched his stomach with a sigh.
…What had he been dreaming about again? Something about his old laptop, and—wine, maybe? He spent a few minutes trying to remember, and only came up a vague image of his mother's tomato soup.
A bell rang in the distance. Touma counted so he wouldn't have to turn his head and look at the clock. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Hmm. The café opened at nine. Fifteen minutes to shower, five to get dressed, ten to make and eat breakfast, two or three to brush his teeth. It was going to be a half hour walk today, because it was his turn to get fresh beef from the market, never mind that Keigo (the lazy bum) passed by it on his way to the café anyway. So if he started getting ready now and hurried his pace a little, he would probably make it just in time.
But on the other hand, he could shower and brush his teeth at the same time, and if he grabbed a few apples from his fridge instead of, say, bacon and eggs, he could eat while walking. If he claimed he'd forgotten it was his turn to get the beef, that would save another fifteen minutes… plus, he would be sent to get the beef anyway, which saved him from having to work the first half hour of his shift if he slowed his pace a little. So he could just lie in bed for another—Touma glanced at the clock—twenty minutes and still make it.
Forty-five minutes later, Touma found the energy to sit up, and ten minutes later his feet finally touched the ground.
'Five past nine. Well, since I'm already late…' Touma shrugged to himself, and slowly trudged into his little bathroom, where he spent fifteen minutes enjoying the warm water before washing himself. At half past nine, he stumbled towards his stove, half-dressed, and spent seven minutes making a hard-boiled egg and two vaguely charred but still serviceable strips of bacon. While they were simmering, he pulled on his sandals and the café's uniform (a kosode with a hakama), and the mirror caught his eye as he turned back. Specifically, the café's logo stamped across the back of the kosode did—he turned and craned his head to get a better look. "Oh, woe is me," He lamented, scratching his cheek. "Branded like an aging milk-cow contemplating escape by the institute I slave my life away for. Property of those with money, that is all we are. One might say, we are but cogs in a wheel, ants in a hive—or, indeed, cattle on a ranch. They call it employment, but is it not to slavery as enlistment is to impressment?" He stared at his own face in the mirror, and sighed. "My bacon is burning, I should hurry."
One mediocre breakfast later, he trod out of his apartment building—it was five to ten in the morning. Touma stared at the sky. It was grey and overcast, and the wind was chilly. 'It's going to rain, isn't it?' He smacked his lips, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and set off towards the market.
The butcher the café bought from was a small, round man who brushed his hair across his scalp to hide his large bald spot. Nobody quite knew where his wares came from, and Touma was fairly sure he refused to tell for a reason, but the meat was relatively cheap and fresh enough and honestly Touma just didn't care enough to investigate.
"Eighteen pounds of round, please, Takahashi-san." He requested, digging into the inner pocket of his kosode for his wallet. They were supposed to fetch twenty pounds each in a rotating schedule and the price was packed into their salary due to laziness on their boss' part, but most employees—or, well, just the smart ones, so that ruled out ninety-nine percent of his esteemed co-workers—bought a few pounds less and saved some money. It wasn't like anyone but the butcher would notice the difference between eighteen and twenty pounds, anyway, and who was Takahashi-san gonna tell?
The troll in question silently smacked a few large cuts on a rusty-looking scale that probably wasn't entirely too accurate. When the dial hovered slightly under the '20' mark, the butcher shoved the lot into a flimsy-looking brown paper bag. Touma held out his hand to accept it, but Takahashi-san shot him a look and refused to hand it over. "625 ryo." The butcher grinned sharply.
Touma tried not to wince, and only failed slightly. "I see the price went up since I was last here?" He observed neutrally, peering into his wallet at the slim stack of ryo bills inside.
Takahashi-san scoffed. "Of course. Import tax went up, didn't you hear?"
"I didn't, actually." Quite possibly because he'd just made it up out of thin air. Instead of pointing that out, however, Touma sighed in resignation. "Shit, the boss really should open a tab here." He muttered, and stumbled when something suddenly smacked against the back of his head.
"Language, Touma-bō."
Touma slowly, measuredly, shut his eyes, still facing Takahashi-san, and attempted to deny the world. If you can't see it, it can't see you—or something along those lines. But ninjas were beyond such simple niceties as just leaving people in peace, so that would hardly make the problem go away. He pitied himself for a careful, measured two seconds, then opened his eyes to face the music.
"Hello, Nee-san." He muttered mildly, knowing full well the demonic creature wearing the skin of his older sister would end up pummelling him into the dirt if he didn't, and turned to face her. "I didn't expect to see you here."
Anko-nee grinned brightly at him, and slapped a stack of ryo into Takahashi-san's hand, snatching the beef out from under his hand when the fool was busy gaping at his sister's exposed flesh. Touma barely refrained from burying his head in his palms, if only because it would prevent Anko from pummelling him for being a nutter in public.
'And speaking of nutters…' Touma's sister blinked at him, stared at the bag of meat in her arms, and promptly shoved it into his instead. He fought not to stumble under the sudden weight. Anko-nee tilted her head, and glanced at the sky as if the clouds would allow her to tell the time—knowing ninjas, though, they just might. "Aren't you supposed to be at the café at this time?" She asked, brushing some dirt from her trenchcoat, and Touma noted absently that it was torn and bloodied in several places. Apparently she just came back from a mission. Did she tell him about that? He thought back, and couldn't remember.
"Yes, I was there." He said, tucking the beef under one arm. "It was my turn to get the beef, and I'd forgotten it on the way there." Anko-nee hummed noncommittally. 'She has a good poker face,' Touma observed silently, wondering if she'd caught his lie. But if she did, would she care? Probably not, he thought, unsure. Hopefully not, he amended.
"Well," Anko-nee tucked her hands into her trenchcoat. "I've gotta hurry to the Hokage Tower. The old geezers still need to give me my debriefing."
"Oh?" Touma said. "I didn't realise you were on a mission."
Anko-nee snorted, and blatantly gazed at her ruined coat. "Yes. Who would possibly be able to tell." She said blandly, eyeing the left side in particular, where an entire bite had been taken out of the fabric. It was quiet for a few seconds, and Touma started wondering when she'd finally leave. "…Stay safe, Touma-bō." She said finally, sounding almost alarmingly serious for her usual taste, and took off with a great leap towards a nearby rooftop before he could answer.
Touma spared the roof where she'd disappeared a short look and a raised eyebrow, before he shrugged to himself and took off down the market street towards the café. He'd check his notebooks if something important was supposed to be happening soon when he got home after work. If not… well, not his business if she wanted to be weird.
Oo0oO
The December Serein was a small, old café on the main road from the merchant gate, built by the boss's grandfather a few years after Konoha's founding, and Touma silently praised the builders for having left a small alley directly left of the building—perfect, in this case, to hide approximately eighteen pounds of beef. After a glance around to make sure he wasn't being watched, he buried the bag of meat in one of the multitude of cardboard boxes deep in the alley and shoved it behind a trashcan, out of sight. Then he brushed his hands on his trousers to lose the stickiness, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and made for the café's front door.
The little bell above the door rang mildly through the chaos when Touma entered. "Hey, Keigo." He greeted when he approached the counter, where the man in question was busy making three cups of coffee at once.
Keigo shot him an annoyed look, and flicked his head as though to flip non-existent hair over his shoulder. "Took you goddamn long enough. It's half past ten!" He scowled and crossed his thin arms over his own kosode as the coffee machine behind him whirred loudly. "Why the fuck are you an hour and a half late?"
"…It's thirty-five past ten, actually." Touma said, glancing at the clock above the kitchen door. "So an hour and thirty-five minutes late, not an hour and a half."
"Is that supposed to make it better?" Keigo's scowl deepened. Touma was starting to get the impression that Keigo was a little mad at him. "Anyway, do you have the beef?"
Touma faked a look of surprise, and bowed his head. "I knew I was forgetting something." He said, and looked back up to see Keigo throwing his hands up in defeat.
"You know what?" Keigo looked ready to scream, and Touma wondered if he knew he had a large glob of coffee creamer decorating his twitching eyebrow like a huge, colour-confused wart that was inching ever closer to his eye. "No. No. I just don't care. Here." He opened the till, and scooped out a five hundred ryo note, which he handed over to Touma. "Just—go get it. You're late already anyways, we'll manage for another 20 minutes without you."
"It's actually more like seven hundred ryo." Touma muttered, pocketing the note.
"Touma. Really. Do I look like I give a shit?"
He didn't.
Touma glanced at the cups of coffee in the machine, which had finished getting filled some time ago. "That coffee's starting to get cold." He pointed at the cups, and when Keigo turned around with an angry growl to hand them to the customers Touma spun on his heel and made his way outside with quick steps. 'An angry Keigo is a violent Keigo,' he mused as he exited the café, 'and I'm not feeling particularly eager to get assaulted by hot coffee and shards of ceramic today, I don't think.'
Outside the café, he took a short left and trudged down the street, digging into his pockets for his packet of cigarettes. Several bits of fluff, some loose strands of tobacco, a crumpled shopping list from last week— "Ha!" Touma pulled the slightly squished packet from his arse pocket. 'Bugger, must've sat on it at some point.' He flicked the cap open with one finger, and gazed inside with a slight frown as he pulled out a cigarette and his neon-purple lighter. 'Only five—well, four left.'
Huffing, he flicked the packet shut and slid it back into his pocket. He popped the cigarette into his mouth and slowed his walk, cupping one hand over the lighter to shield the flame from wind as he held it up to the tip of his cigarette. The lighter took several tries to get started, and he clenched one eye shut as he gazed at the fuel inside, trying to get a read on how much was left. "I could swear a bought a new one just last week," He muttered to himself, sliding it into a pocket. "A glass can be half-full or half-empty, but why are my lighters always either full or empty? It's as if they leak themselves whenever I look away." Touma took a long drag from his cigarette, and blew the smoke out of his nose like an angry bull.
His walk brought him through a thin alley in between some tall buildings and out to a quieter residential district with a small park. The gravel path crunched loudly underneath his feet as a group of youngsters lounging around a nearby bench looked up to stare at him. Touma quirked an eyebrow and stared back. "Nice weather we're having, isn't it?" He said pointedly, glancing at the dark clouds gathered overhead, and a few quickly looked away.
One punk with a baseball cap seemed ready to walk over and come punch him in the face, but before Touma could properly make up his epitaph an annoyed-looking woman with large breasts tugged at the punk's arm and draped herself across his side when he sat back down, quickly resuming their conversation. Despite himself, he felt a small, amused smirk curl its way around his cigarette, and he quickly looked away to hide it.
A few paces later, he sank down onto a different bench, and rested his left arm across his stomach, leaning his right elbow on his cupped hand and using it to clench his cigarette between his middle and index finger. He puffed out a cloud of smoke with a sigh, and stared idly at a group of small children running around the park's playset. 'Tag? Oh wait, they're holding small bits of cardboard. Playing ninja, then.'
Staring at them… for a moment, Touma felt as if he was looking at a set of small versions of what he could have been. Would have been, had he not been, well, him. The person who'd managed to cross dimensions through getting caught up in and choking to death on his recently-deceased grandma's faded-orange drapes while moving them to the dumpster.
Touma snorted, and brushed a few purple hairs that had fallen out of his ponytail behind his ear. He'd always envisioned his death being a little bit less… pathetic, but then he'd never been a particularly lucky person.
He took another drag of his cigarette and let the arm holding it dangle at his side, where he softly tapped it against a bench leg in the rhythm of a children's lullaby from his old life. "Humdumdeedadum." He sang, and spent the next few minutes picking at a piece of gum stuck to the top of the bench with a fingernail.
Twenty-three minutes after entering the park, Touma stood up, kicked his extinguished cigarette into the grass under the bench, and trudged back the way he came in a slouch. The punks had already moved on, as had the kids playing child soldier. Perhaps it was time he did as well.
When he made it back to the alley beside the café, he unearthed the box he'd buried the bag of beef in, took it out, brushed off enough of the filth to make it look presentable and clutched it under his arm, stalking back into the café. For once, there seemed to be a slight lull, as there were no people waiting on their drinks at the bar and the customers were all at their respective tables, conversing quietly. Keigo looked up from where he was drying some glasses with a towel when he approached, and gave him a thin smile. "Thanks." He said. It sounded forced. Touma refrained from pointing it out, and instead nodded at him, walked behind the bar, and opened the door to the kitchen with his free hand.
Akimichi-san was hands-deep in a shiny bowl when Touma entered, and raised a large, beige, sticky hand in greeting. "Yo, Touma-kun." He rumbled, as he dropped his hand back in the bowl and continued hand-mixing the dough. Touma wrinkled his nose at the thought. He didn't doubt that the chef's hands were clean, but it was the same thing as a waiter delivering someone's hamburger in twenty pieces and assembling it with his bare hands at the table—tragically distasteful.
"Brought the beef." Touma said in greeting, lifting the pack into line of sight.
Akimichi-san smiled gratefully, and motioned with his head to the cutting board a few paces away from him. "Dump it there, if you would." He said. "I'll cut it, and freeze it later."
'Just like the past eight times.' Touma groused, dropping the meat on the cutting board as instructed. 'If you're going to do the same thing every time, why mention it and waste everyone's time? Redundancy, mankind's worst enemy.'
He quickly turned around and left the kitchen, eager to get away from the strong smell of food threatening to make his stomach growl, and joined Keigo behind the bar in the main room. "You know," Keigo mused, again making a motion so as to fling hair over his shoulder, "if Akimichi-san wasn't so chill he'd have fired you ages ago. How many late arrivals does this make?"
"…Twenty-eight in the past six months, I think." Touma said, leaning on the countertop next to Keigo.
Keigo scrunched his nose, stared up at the ceiling, and calculated. "That means, what, one day a week on average?"
"Probably." Touma shrugged. 'I'll take your word for it.' "See it as a compliment on how much I trust you to take care of the café by yourself."
His colleague laughed shortly, once again tried to fling hair over his shoulder that wasn't there, and Touma fought not to punch him. The tick was leftover from when Keigo went through his emo faze and had long hair. But that had ended ages ago—'ages' being a whole two weeks, in fact—precisely because Touma himself had had enough of the endless hair-flicking and ended the issue with fervour, good timing, and a pair of scissors. Apparently though, it had fixed exactly nothing.
The clanging of a cup and saucer at a nearby table startled Touma out of his thoughts, and he stared around awkwardly, suddenly very aware of the silence that had fallen over them. 'Please, not an awkward silence. Anything but that.' He despaired, staring at the cobblestone street outside for wont of a better thing to stare at. 'We need conversation. Please, lord in the sky who may or may not exist, give me something to work with—ah, thank you. Never fail to deliver, do you? I bet you make Mrs. God happy in bed.' "You know," He began suddenly, "don't cobblestones look like little children's skulls?"
Touma could hear Keigo's washing grind to a slow halt, and he almost physically felt his eyes burning into his side through the loud rushing of tap water. "…What."
"Yes, don't you see it?" He ploughed on, standing up fully. "You know, small, slightly round, significantly malformed." He cupped his hands into the appropriate shapes to demonstrate. Slightly triangular, one with large humps, a tiny one, a large one. "Like whenever someone's kid dies they bring the head over to the Hokage's tower, or some other ninja administration building, and the ninjas take it and get rid of the blood and flesh and paint the head an artistic colour—greys and browns seem to be popular—and then use the skulls to pave new roads. Use 'em for something more useful than, you know, rotting away underground."
"You know something, Touma," Keigo's voice came out muffled, and when Touma turned his head to look his colleague was just removing his hands from where his face had been buried in them. "Most of the time, like ninety-nine percent of it, I struggle to find a shred of Mitarashi in you. You're not a psychotic ninja and you're not a housewife, and historically, that's really all you've ever been. But sometimes it's like the dam that holds back the twisted, murderous parts within you shatters into a million pieces, and you come up with shit that I doubt even the head of the torture department could."
"Well," Touma considered it for a second, "considering that my sister's the one that gives the head of the torture department most of his ideas, I think I'll take that as a compliment." He smiled, and patted Keigo on the back. "Thanks."
"It wasn't meant to be—oh, forget it." Keigo heaved a big, lamenting sigh, picked up his towel, and resumed his task.
Touma suddenly realised he had a choice to make, here. An important one. Either to let the conversation end—unacceptable—or he could seem ignorant and oblivious as the wooden sandals they stood on, act as though he honestly thought it had been a compliment, and possibly damage his reputation irreparably. 'Uncomfortable silence forcing me to spend a few hours focusing on not doing or staring at anything weird or a few friends less?' The answer was obvious. But as Touma opened his mouth to inquire why on earth it wouldn't be a compliment—
"Hey, bartender." He turned around to face the voice and blinked at a familiar face he'd never seen before. Temari stared back, Suna hitai-ate displayed prominently around her neck, and pointed at the coffee machine behind him, but Touma suddenly wasn't paying much attention, because—oh. That was what Anko-nee had been referring to. 'Hello, chūnin exams. Wasn't expecting to see you here today. I don't suppose you'd like some coffee to go with your death and destruction?'
When his eyes focused back on the present, he found Temari staring at him expectantly, and realised she'd said something. "Sorry, what was that?" Touma asked pleasantly.
Temari rolled her eyes, and pulled her cloak a little closer around her. Ah. Apparently she thought him a paedophile too distracted by her (rather unimpressive) breasts to listen. Please. He was pathetic, but not that pathetic. "Does that make dark roast espresso?" She repeated, gesturing again to the coffee machine.
"Ah. It has the option, yes." Touma nodded. The Baby was the boss's, well, baby: a super-deluxe extra-large coffee machine that was probably worth more than Touma's apartment.
"Good," Temari pulled out a barstool and hoisted herself into it. Touma absently noted she was rather small, though perhaps that was because of her age—what was she again, fifteen or something? "One dead eye, one cappuccino, and one apple juice."
'Apple juice?' Touma blinked at the non sequitur. Keigo flicked his hair again, and Touma, against all odds, succeeded in not strangling him. "Dead eye, huh?" He said instead, reaching for the appropriate mugs from the cabinet under the counter. "Are you a ninja or something?"
"Yes." Temari said. Touma put the cups under the Baby and pressed a few buttons, suddenly reminded of why he didn't like teenagers. He turned around and leaned on the counter again, staring beside Temari into the street.
"So?" Touma pressed for lack of better conversation material. "You enjoying it?" The Baby rumbled and whirred and whooshed loudly behind Touma.
"Enjoying what?"
"The ninja life."
"Oh. No." And the monosyllabic miracle struck again. Touma hummed to hide his irritation.
"Why not?"
Temari scowled, and stared past him, toward the Baby but not at it. "None of your business."
"It isn't." Touma agreed, because touché, and Temari stared at him. The Baby's noise died down, and he cleared his throat awkwardly in the sudden silence. "There you go, a cappuccino and one part of your dead eye." He muttered, depositing the cups in front of Temari. "A dead eye is what, one part normal coffee and two parts espresso?"
"Three."
"Three what?"
Temari glared at him. "Three parts espresso. Two is called a black eye."
"Ah." Touma coughed. "Apologies." He put the three cups on at once to hurry the awkwardness away. The Baby gave another loud whir, and he ducked down to grab a bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator. "You want a glass with that apple juice?"
"Yes."
The apple juice joined the cappuccino on the bar. Touma opened the pot of complementary cookies and quickly peeked inside. 'Hmm, the rectangular ones are bland. Two of those, I think.' He grabbed two and put them on the saucers. Then, he grabbed the espressos from the Baby's maw and dumped them unceremoniously in the dead eye's cup. "One dead eye, one cappuccino, and one apple juice, there you are. Trays, straws, sugar, milk, and spoons are, of course, available in the stand over there."
"A glass." Temari said, and Touma blinked, appearing uncomprehending.
"What?"
"A glass. For the apple juice." Temari started glaring at him again.
"Oh, did you want one?" He said innocently.
Her glare intensified. "Yes." And were those gritting teeth that he was hearing? He suppressed a smirk, and ducked down under the bar to locate the appropriate glass.
"There you are, one dead eye, one cappuccino, one apple juice, and one juice glass. Trays, straws, sugar, mi—"
"Goodbye." Touma pouted as she turned away with the drinks gathered in her arms, vaguely surprised the coffee mugs didn't crack under her grip.
"Mou, Keigo, why don't girls ever like me?" He whined, and Keigo flipped his non-existent hair again.
"Because you're an asshole."
"Point."
Oo0oO
"Thanks. Have a nice weekend, or something." Touma called half-heartedly as the last patron left the café without a backwards glance. The door swung shut behind her with a faint rattle. "God, I hate Saturdays." Touma groaned, burying his face in his palms on the countertop.
He stood there for a few seconds, awkwardly sprawled across the dirty and smudged wood, and sniffed once. "Hey, Keigo," He yelled, unsure of where his colleague was. "Can you close up?" It was silent. Perhaps he was somewhere in the back. Touma stood up, looked around, and sighed. "Hey! Keigo!"
There was some loud clanging from the kitchen. "What!" Keigo's voice came muffled and annoyed.
"I asked if you can you close up!" Touma hollered back.
"I can't hear you!"
'Oh, for—' Touma rolled his eyes. "Okay, I'll see you tomorrow!" He wiped his hands once on a nearby towel and again on his kosode for good measure, and exited the café. The glass in the door rattled behind him as the door swung shut, and he stuffed his hands in his pockets as he set down the road, no clear destination in mind. After a few paces, he reached for his packet of cigarettes, but found no trace of his lighter when he flicked it open. "Oh Jesus Christ." He groaned, and took out a cigarette, letting the packet slide back into his pocket. "These things should have fucking tracking beacons, I swear."
'Well, it was nearly empty already anyways.' In lieu of turning over all his pockets in the middle of the street, he let the cigarette dangle from his lips and adjusted his course to Sakama-san's tobacco shop. It was halfway across the village, but then he didn't have anything better to do with his time.
A few ninja jumped overhead as he trudged down the main street. He twisted his head to look up at them absent-mindedly, his mind on the events ahead. Truthfully, he was a little nervous, deep down inside. When he was born into this world, he hadn't chosen to become a civilian because he couldn't become a ninja, or some other such depressing reason. He'd read his fair share of Naruto fanfiction in his time, and for whatever reason Self-Inserts always became ninjas, as if they'd have a better chance of survival then. Stupid plan. Ninjas died in droves even during peacetime. As a civilian in Konoha, survive the Kyūbi attack and the Konoha Crush, and hey presto, you might just live to meet your grandchildren, supposing no apocalyptic event obliterated the world into oblivion at some point past the end of canon.
But then again, having a civilian main character would make for a horribly dull fanfic, wouldn't it?
By the time he turned the corner into one of the civilian residential quarters (Sakama-san had her store only a few blocks away), the filter on his cigarette was almost soggy with saliva—saliva created by means of the mouth-watering smell of tobacco pervading his nostrils so close, yet so far away. There was a loud, rumbling horse-pulled carriage pulling up behind him. Touma craned his neck to look. A passenger vehicle, he recognised the model, driven by a red-faced man with an impressive moustache. It would have to do.
Touma took a few steps to the side out of its path and picked up his pace until the carriage was thundering past him. He quickly grabbed the handhold on the back and hopped onto the small foothold, and smiled politely at the people inside. They didn't seem terribly surprised at his chosen method of transport—it was something he'd picked up from his friends at school here. Delinquents from all over town were known for using it as their method of transport to the exclusion of all else; the public transport guild was still lobbying for a prison sentence on anyone caught hitching a ride, last thing Touma'd heard.
"Evening." He said pleasantly, though most of the people inside ignored him. "Fine weather we're having, isn't it?"
A young girl on the other side of the wagon leant out and took a look at the dark, cloudy sky. "Not really." She said, with a rather nasally voice naturally predisposed to whinging.
Touma coughed, and he was fairly sure her mother stifled a giggle behind her handkerchief. "Yes, well. At least it isn't raining."
"It was." The arrogant little snot said, and yes, the mother was definitely laughing now, as was half of the carriage.
"Why's everyone so glass half empty today?" Touma complained, glancing around to see if his stop had passed yet. It hadn't.
"Well, my glass would have been half empty," the tiny person lectured, "but then the rain filled it up and I couldn't possibly drink rainwater so I tipped it over, and now it's empty."
"God, child, do you even listen to yourself?" Touma banged his head against the side of the cart. "How depressing can a five-year-old get?"
"Six-year-old, actually."
"Okay, bye." Touma snorted, clamped his still unlit cigarette between his teeth to prevent it falling, and hopped off the cart and into the muddy road. It splashed onto his shoes and pants. "I bet someone's gonna grow up a bitter old maid."
He stuffed his hands back into his pockets and set off into the alley he'd jumped off at. The large, pink neon sign of Sakama-san's shop was already flickering in the distance. 'When did she commission that again?' Touma wondered. 'Fifteen years ago? Twenty? Before the Kyūbi Attack, at any rate.' Kurama had destroyed quite a bit of the electricity lines in his rampage, and some of them still hadn't been replaced properly. The quarter Sakama-san's shop was in, for one, still needed proper replacements. They had enough electricity for day-to-day use, which is why they were at the bottom of the to-fix list, but big, draining neon signs just couldn't get enough steady power to function properly. Still, Touma found it gave the place a strangely homely aesthetic—none of that sterile, professional stuff, and Sakama-san wasn't like that anyway. Nobody minded it in the least.
"Evening, Sakama-san." Touma greeted, stepping into the store. Sakama-san, a relic from the warring clans era with squinty eyes and grey hair pulled into a tight bun, was sitting in a rocking chair behind the counter. She didn't respond. "…Sakama-san?" He approached, curious, and the floorboards creaked under his feet. Suddenly, the old woman jolted as if suddenly roused from sleep, and stared around blearily.
"Oh, my head is old, my body weak, my hair is dark and grey. Excuse this old woman for she cannot see—oh, Touma-kun, it's you." Her voice was scratchy and faint, and Touma always envisioned her vocal chords like a baker's dozen pointy rocks grinding together.
He laughed, and smiled at her. "Evening, Sakama-san."
"Yes, yes, laugh at my poor soul, why don't you." Sakama-san complained, but there was a definite positive tilt to her mouth, if only ever so slightly. "My feet are itchy, my fingers bent, my legs about to rot, and what do I get? Bullying customers and heightened taxes."
"So the import tax really did go up, huh." Touma mused, and Sakama-san glared at him.
"Of course they did. Unlike the rest of me my voice is fine boy, don't make me start repeating myself."
"Of course not, Sakama-san." Touma smiled, and made his way to the wall of cigarettes. "How's your grandson? Doing well in the academy?"
"He's not." Sakama-san grumbled. "Incredible at mathematics—or so his teachers tell us—but worthless in anything else. And what will formulas do for you when an Iwa jōnin is breathing down your neck? Nothing, I tell you."
"Ah, don't write him off yet, Sakama-san. He might still surprise you."
"And Shodai-sama will rise from the grave." Sakama-san snorted derisively, and Touma found himself curbing a knowing smile despite himself.
"These three, please." Touma said, and made to put the three large packs of Silver—Silver Grass, his cigarette brand of choice for their thin filters, but everyone just called them Silvers—on the counter, but Sakama-san waved him off.
"Yes, yes, you always buy the same thing, I really don't need to see it again." Sakama-san said, reaching blindly behind her. "And you'll be wanting a lighter as well?"
"Please."
"There." She dropped the hot pink lighter on the counter, and Touma wrinkled his nose at the garish colour, but pocketed it regardless. "Same price as always. 395 ryo for the lot."
"You're robbing me blind, Sakama-san." Touma groused, half seriously and half fondly, and forked over the cash. A significant part of him was touched, however—prices should have gone up with the import tax, but, well, same price as always. It meant more to Touma than it probably should. "Tell Udon I said hi, would you? Haven't seen the kid in ages."
"My brain is mush, my fingernails hurt, my ears splitting in half. And even still, the youth demands. Until my abused body is lowered in my grave, not an hour's rest I will get." Sakama-san raised her head, and cranked open a dull grey eye to stare at Touma. "I'll tell him when I see him next. He'll be glad for it, I think. Take care, Touma-kun."
Touma smiled, bowed respectfully, and made for the door. "Take care, Sakama-san."
"My eyes are bent, my elbows twisted, my hipbone backwards physically and socially. Excuse this poor old woman for my shins can no longer hear…" Sakama-san's muttering quickly faded into the background as Touma shut the door behind him with a soft thump.
On the doorstep, Touma finally reached up with his new (hot pink) lighter and lit the cigarette that had been dangling tantalizingly from his mouth for the past half hour. It tasted a little odd through the soaked filter, and he had to pull a little harder than usual, but as the familiar dry, acidic taste of smoke filled his lungs he imagined, just for a moment, that he knew what a child in Africa felt like, drinking their first mouthful of clean water in years.
Then, a strong gust of wind extinguished his cigarette, and he had to get out his lighter again and the moment was ruined.
But such was life amongst the civilians in Konoha. Slow, and tedious, and tiring, and about as far away from most people's view of the Naruto world as you can get without crossing an ocean. For Touma, though, the choice between living a boring life and dying to a fire, or lightning, or water, or earth, or wind, or shuriken, or kunai, or senbon, or poison, or summon, or gravity, or any of the infinite other ways to kill your enemies in that horrible world—well, it wasn't much of a choice at all.
-to (possibly) be continued.
Author's Note: Mmm, haven't published anything in a year and a half. It's good to be back in business. I stuck around for almost two years the first time, let's see how long I will this time—if I will at all, haha.
As you can probably tell, this is significantly different from other fics you've read. I was largely inspired by The Evenings by Gerard Reve—an amazing book, and 100% worth the read if you can appreciate this style of humour.
Reviews are always appreciated, even if you have nothing particularly meaningful to say, because it shows me you care, and I like people who care :3
-Murph