And just a note that I'll be away for the next couple of months, so no uploads (even though my uploads are few and far apart anyways), until my return. But I am being held to a promise to have at least two chapters to upload upon my return
disclaimer: I don't own Naruto!
I'd always known that there was something more between us than that of teacher and student. Whenever we walked as a team you were always the one closest to my side. And when I walked alone homeward after training I felt you, my silent shadow, hovering nearby.
And now that space beside me is empty and I am left numb. All I can seem to remember are the endless games of Shogi we played, the pattering of rainfall, and our stargazing that was somehow more mature than cloud watching between friends in the daytime.
The moonlight was always more beautiful with you there to bathe in the silver streaks. Now the moon doesn't seem to shine so brightly, almost as if it averts it's shimmering gaze from the ground, unwilling to truly shine and show the truth, of your no longer walking with me, with friends, with family. Why does everything seem less real to my fingers? As if my hands are still left behind in that rainstorm, perpetually cold.
Yet again I find myself walking those painfully familiar paths, our normal routes through the village, where the walk would somehow take twice as long than for other people, and we would always emerge a little more disheveled than when we entered.
Your lighter lies heavy in my pocket, and whenever I think of you, it is not as some amazing hero, nor some bloodied corpse, nor as my sensei, but as something more, as the man who taught me to whistle… amongst other things.
So I raise my glass to you, Saratobi Asuma.
A final goodbye my teacher, lover and friend.
To the man who blew smoke rings at the moon.
Aregato.
Short but sweet I hope.
Ember out,
ja ne