Rehabilitation

Inari stood in front of the two graves in front of him. Three years ago those graves had been newly set from wood made from his grandfather, with offerings fresh from the oven. His mother had those offerings made. Now the offerings were gone, picked up by squirrels and the like. The trees had not yet been overgrown, and the vines had not twined around the graves. Inari had been eight years old when the Land of Waves had been freed from the cruel hand of Gatō, and when the Great Naruto Bridge had been built. Haku's and Zabuza's graves had not been mistreated or unkempt. The grass was not wild. Now it was. Inari stood in front of the graves now, tall and sturdy from his two years of apprenticeship with his grandfather. A pang of guilt overwhelmed him. Naruto hadn't asked him to keep the graves in good condition, but Inari should have. After all, hadn't the heroes died from their sacrifice at the same bridge where they met their end? Inari crouched down to meet the grave's height. The two crosses were still firm, not yet decaying from the rain and snow that would come. Inari's grandfather had said that the snows would be coming soon, leaving the Land of Fire in a land of snow.

"That has never happened before in my sixty-one years." Times are changing, Inari thought while continuing to stare at the graves before him. The scarf that Haku had worn was still there, flowing in the wind. The sword that Zabuza had carried was again buried in the ground. Inari remembered finding it missing after he stopped to say goodbye to the markers after he and his grandfather heard that Konohagakure was attacked and destroyed. They were about to go there to help rebuild, and now the sword was here again. Inari wasn't certain how it ended up there; it just had. The shinobi village of Konohagakure had been rebuilt again, and Inari was sad to say goodbye to his friends Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke. A war had been going on without Inari knowing it. Many shinobi had died, Naruto had told him sadly, including the Godaime Hokage. Inari had seen her statue from afar, and had been pleased that a woman had been selected as the champion of Naruto's village. She had died healing the other Kage from their wounds, not healing her own and dying in peace. "Kanojo wa eyuu," Sakura had uttered somberly with tears silently dripping down her face. She was a hero, Sakura had said, and the other Kage had survived because of her sacrifice. Without her, the war had not been won. Although details had not been explained, Sasuke had returned to Konohagakure as a hero as well. The dark-haired shinobi had helped Naruto defeat the enemies of the war in the end. Inari had told them all that he would visit their village again one day.

Now Inari focused on the present, leaving the memories behind. Sasuke had told him that he had visited the Land of Waves briefly and explained the reason for the absence of Zabuza's sword. "A friend of mine used it," he had said. It was he who explained who the graves belonged to. I didn't hear him say it, but he was disappointed that the graves were in that condition from what he saw. Inari remembered the vow that he had told himself. He would repair the graves back to where the graves had been three years ago.

It was tough work at first. Inari pulled the vines from the graves and trimmed the grass. His arms grew strong from the hard toil. His family openly asked him what he was doing during the long days in the afternoon, but Inari had kept silent. He didn't want his mother or his grandfather to know. The graves' surroundings had begun to look neat and trim again when he saw a butterfly land on Haku's grave. Inari had smiled, thinking that the graves were now where they should be. He had trimmed the grass down till offerings could be made. The pre-teen was surprised when he found offerings, similar to those his mother made, near the two graves. Flowers too were steadily planted, daffodils and lilies that blew in the soft wind. Inari never stopped coming to the graves. The place somehow gave him solace when the humming of making wood couldn't. There had been a girl who had tried to wear Haku's scarf a year after the war, but Inari had given her a stern lecture about how sacred the gravesite and its surroundings were. By then his family knew what he had been doing that long year. A couple of his friends found it funny that a twelve year old boy spent his time tending to graves that didn't need to be attended to. But to Inari, the graves didn't just represent the bodies that were buried four years ago. It represented the fact that shinobi made sacrifices every day and that some of them died from their sacrifices, in Konohagakure and beyond, that people didn't understand in the Land of Waves. When Naruto had been selected as the Rukodaime Hokage a year later, Inari had stood in front of the graves of Haku and Zabuza before him. He knew that they would want to know that the shinobi they believed in had achieved his dream. Naruto had told him that they believed in him. I believe in you too, Naruto. Just as my grandfather did. His grandfather had unexpectedly died earlier that week, and it had been a bittersweet moment when Naruto became Hokage, something Inari's grandfather would never see. Like before, the gravesite soothed his grief and Inari knew that somewhere, in the afterlife, the Kirigakure shinobi and his grandfather were smiling. Around that time, the gravesite attained a name. It became well known beyond the Land of Waves. Its name was Shinsetsu no Inari. It became known as Inari's Kindness.