After the Rain

Chapter One: The colour of sorrow

The light was like a sledgehammer on my eyes. It had a dirty, stinging fluorescence to it, and it was hard for me to make out the woman's face without squinting. She, as I had guessed earlier, was from Social Services. She was wearing the tell-tale navy blue tie and blazer and had creases around her eyes and mouth, and pale, resigned eyes. Dad used to say that the only people who worked for SS were the ones who were already so broken that the cases they got couldn't hurt them anymore.

Kids who were beaten, burnt, raped, whatever. And the orphans, of course. All of them came to the brick-and-sandstone building sandwiched between Gai's Gym and a drugstore, and people like her tried to make their lives less fucked up. With varying degrees of success. While I looked at her, she pulled out some files from a shabby, masculine-looking briefcase.

"I'm Akemi Ren," she said, as she shuffled the pages of a file with my name on it—U-Z-U-M-A-K-I N-A-R-U-T-O—in ugly, wooden block letters, and didn't meet my eyes, "and I'm from Konoha Social Services. We spoke on the phone earlier."

I nodded back at her, my face tight and expressionless. The walls of her tiny, cramped cubicle might have been white once, but were now stained several colours between brown and yellow, among which were a few I recognized as citrine, fallow and jonquil, from last summer when Dad and I spent two weeks poring over colour samples for the paint was peeling off them, and the room was windowless and doing a good impression of being airless as well. I felt sorry for her, Akemi Ren, with her sad eyes and peeling-off-the-edges life.

'What, son of my blood, is your opinion on Navajo white?' Dad asked me solemnly, poking my bare stomach as we both lay sunning ourselves on the balcony adjoining my room. I poked him back half-heartedly, sipping my orange juice. I could barely hear him, because I had my headphones on, and I was listening to something loud, punk and painfully cool. It was an insanely hot day; it was the kind of day that took three years off your life if you managed to sweat through it. But we liked it, Dad and I. I liked summer days because everything was warm. Dad, though he tried to hide it, liked summer days because they reminded him of Mum.

'Weak, Naruto,' Dad smirked, 'Really, really weak." I snorted. Sweat was trickling down my shoulder blades and travelling further down. Hair was plastered to my forehead. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. With a supreme effort, I dragged the upper half of my body upright stretched my right arm to the right, and began to tickle the soles of his feet. Within seconds he had surrendered, there were tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and his face was the colour of a tomato.

'Stop-son—stop-please!' He gasped, rolling away from me, frantically patting his chest. I just smirked, letting my head fall back onto the tiles, 'Now that, Dad,' I drawled, sipping my orange juice, 'That was weak. And—can you handle the truth?—so's Navajo white.' Dad looked crestfallen. 'What, then?' he asked sadly (still maintaining a considerable distance between the both of us), 'The last time we painted the guest bedroom orange, Jiraiya made his special Perverted Teacher Hates The Orange Guestroom™ pancakes.' We both shuddered simultaneously.

'I still have nightmares about that stuff,' I admitted.

'So do I. It must have been the squid. I think its eyes were still moving,' Dad said in a hushed voice, 'So—no Navajo white. Alright…how about Mikado yellow? It's bright, but not to a pancake-worthy level.' I considered it carefully.

'You may be on to something,' I agreed. Dad made a pleased sound. Seconds later his cell phone started vibrating. And, embarrassingly it was playing some pop ballad. After a few seconds' quiet conversation, he ended the call and turned to me. 'Well,' he said with a slightly forced smile, 'Duty calls.' I waved my arm carelessly.

'Go,' I said grumpily, not looking at him, 'Fight crime, rescue babies, do whatever.'

'Okay then. I'm leaving Naruto,' he said in the soft voice he used around me whenever he thought he was letting me down somehow. It was stupid. I loved that he had such a great job, and he knew I did, but he'd still beat himself up about having to leave sometimes.

'That better not have been Celine Dion that I heard just now!' I called after him suddenly, as he was leaving. I could see him smiling, even though his face was averted because the skin of the sides of his cheeks moved up. He raised his arm in farewell, and slid the glass door of the verandah shut behind him.

"Do you know why I called you here today, Naruto?" she asked me, in a quiet, confiding tone, like I was slow or something. My eyes snapped back to her face.

"I know why I'm here. Some bastard did a one-eight-seven on my dad, so now I'm an orphan and a minor and you won't let me stay with Jiraiya, 'cause he's a perv who's been charged with sexual harassment before."

Her eyes widened a little after my answer, and she shuffled the papers from my file nervously once more. My tone wasn't intentionally rude, but I wasn't really trying to ingratiate myself either. I knew that they were going to try and lump me with some pathetically poor foster family with twelve kids and a drunkard for a dad. I'd heard too many stories about foster homes to not be wary of this woman. "Ah," she managed weakly, "well…you were mostly right. However," she added—and now her words sounded as though they had been learned by rote, "if you insisted upon it, if you obtained good character references about this Mr. Jiraiya, and if nobody else came forward to claim you, we at Konoha Social Services might have considered granting him guardianship and overlooking his past…ah…misdemeanours, considering that your father and he were...close."

The words 'your father' tumbled out of her lips carelessly, but they nearly stopped the breath in my lungs. Something opened inside me again, at that instant—the place that led to the pain in my chest, probably. The pain came and went—and it was funny how I sounded like an old man complaining about my rheumatism: sometimes it subsided to a dull, pounding ache that ate at me until my teeth hurt from clenching them together, and sometimes the spikes of pain left my knuckles bleeding from how I had to stuff them in my mouth to keep from screaming. The complete weight of my loss settled sickly in my stomach. I couldn't say anything in response, at first. A few moments later, and I was in control of myself again.

"Have they found out anything? The police, I mean?" I asked quickly, trying to catch her off-guard. "Do they know who did it?" She looked at me with those eyes—they were dull and flat, like a cow's. "The Konoha Police Department," she answered at last, looking at the ugly formica-lined table, "is in no way bound to release information to the KSS. As I'm sure you know, the department's detectives are answerable only to—'

"To the Chief of Police, yeah, I know," I said, interrupting her, "But don't you think that's a bit problematic, considering the Chief of Police is d—"

"An interim Chief will be named. That is the usual procedure," she said, with an air of stubborn finality. She seemed almost angry that I had goaded her into revealing this much. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face, and she wiped it away carelessly with the back of her hand, not meeting my eyes, as an awkward silence descended upon the room.

"You said 'might have considered'," I said flatly breaking the silence single-mindedly, in a way that was both a statement and a question, "so does that mean—"

"It means," Akemi interrupted, "that someone else would like to take you in. Someone who," she added in a light, joking tone that was clearly forced, "is in a far better position to be taking care of a sixteen-year old boy than a sexagenarian writer of pornographic novels—"

"Hey!" I exploded, goaded beyond endurance. Something boiled over inside me. Dad had always said that I got my temper from Mum, and I'd always taken it as a compliment. The first time he'd said that, I had been proud, and he'd looked at me with the disappointed, wary expression on his face that always meant that there was more that he wanted to say, but couldn't bring himself to say it. Because, if there was one thing Dad hated, it was fighting with me. I hated fighting with him too, because it left me feeling cold and ach-y but it was different for him. Jiraiya once said that I was all he had left in the world, and that he was scared that I'd leave. But that was stupid. Dad must have just thought that fighting was ugly.

In the past week, I had been torn apart, stepped on, interrogated, so I had an excuse to be mad, and now, finally there was someone to take my anger out on, "Fuck you okay? What the hell's your problem? Did you catch your boyfriend jerking off to his books or something?"

Akemi's face had turned an unattractive shade of puce. She was still sputtering indignantly as I flew out of my seat and hurriedly shrugged my jacket on.

"L-Look," she said at last in a vain attempt to appear understanding, "I know you're grieving right now, but—"

"I've had enough." I snarled, "Look, maybe you're trying to help me or whatever, but I don't want it. And if Konoha Social Services has some problem with where I'm living, tell them to send someone who isn't ajudgmental bitch!" And with that I left the room, making sure to slam it extra hard as I did, ignoring the disapproving glances and murmurs that came my way.

Still fuming, I made my way to the street. I drew a breath in, and cursed quietly when I remembered that didn't have anything edible at home. Well, there was a pack of month-old radishes, but you can only do so much with them. I would have to stop by the grocery store near Jiraiya's flat. I decided to walk, as the cab money I had brought would have to go towards buying the both of us dinner. Really, I thought, the KSS had a point: most of the time, I was the one taking care of the both of us. The stupid old man I was living with only cared about one thing…porn. And sake. Okay, that made two. But I didn't even remember why I'd been so angry before…it wasn't as though Jiraiya liked having me stay with him for any reason other than that I kept the both of us alive and in moderately good health. Well, we weren't dying with any alarming immediacy, anyway.

The streets were thronged with people that day, which was unsurprising as it was Friday. Everyone was eager to go home for the weekend and spend time with their families. I just wished that they would move more quickly. At the rate I was going, the store would have closed and I would have to go to bed hungry; the pervert would have sake for dinner and wash it down with more sake. Again. I amused myself by watching people…it wasn't really a hobby, just something Dad had made me practice since I was three years old. Suddenly, the hairs on my neck rose. A chill ran down my back. There! Next to the dustbin, there was a girl with dark eyes and smudged red lips. She was smoking a cigarette, and her eyes were fixed on me. Oh. My shoulders relaxed immediately, but I was confused. For some reason, she was watching me. Pretending to look in the window display of a bridal shop, I discreetly gave her a once-over out of the corner of my eye. She was wearing a short black skirt and combat boots. Her cropped black hair reached her chin in a bob, and she was wearing a sleeveless mesh shirt. Nice. Flattered, but still confused, I started walking again. Well, there was no accounting for taste, it seemed.

It soothed me a little, to hear the clamour and noise of people going about their lives. None of these people, I told myself, have any idea who you are. And if you went up to someone—like that hairy old man picking his nose next to the watermelon stand—and introduced yourself, he'd probably spit on you. Or ask for a fiver. You mean nothing to them. The thought was inexpressibly comforting. I was just one, among a million, and yet I maintained my own identity. But, if you consider it detachedly, I thought to myself, people aren't the isolates they think they are. The truth is…we're constantly falling into each other's lives, blurring the lines between ourselves.

There was man in your life, Uzumaki Naruto. He was thirty eight years old, had the same terrible taste in clothes as you did, and he was your father. He was all you had. He's dead now, Uzumaki. But don't worry. You'll find out who killed him. And then, maybe, you'll feel alive again.

End of Chapter One

A/N:

If you made it through the first chapter, thank you so much! In the next chapter, the Uchihas and Jiraiya will probably make an appearance. Oh, and a cookie to anyone who can guess who the girl checking Naruto out on the road was!

Hope you enjoyed my story, and I'm DYING to know what you think about it, so:

Please Review! Even something like 'Nice!' is fine, and it only takes a second!