Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bloodborne

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Chapter One - Diary

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Today, a girl spoke about diaries. Later, someone, a boy, called it a journal. Sometimes, it makes my head spin. How people can have so many words for the same things and never get confused. Diaries are Journals. Pigs are Pork. Cows become beef. People are corpses.

She said that reading someone's diary without their permission is frowned upon.

It's one of those secret rules that everyone seems to know, and no one wants to talk about.

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The girl shook her head, blonde ponytails whipping at her face. Her mouth opened and closed as fast as someone could blink. The boy had his hands up. If he stood up straight, he'd have towered over the girl. But cringing? Head bowed between his sagging shoulders? Staring at his shoes with his mop of brown hair hiding his face? Blonde girl, so short she probably had to stand on a chair to reach the top shelves in her kitchen; she had to look down to see him.

In the Away place, there is no sound. So coming out of it always sounded as if you were breaking the surface of a lake after being under water for a long time.

"—can't believe you read my diary!" The girl said.

"It was laying on your bed—"

"That didn't give you the right to read it!" Blondie cried. Their feet were caked with dirt, like they'd been running through Konoha. "You're a thief! A pervert!"

The boy shot to his feet, quick as a sparrow, roses growing on his cheeks. "Don't you dare call me that! I haven't stolen anything. I'm not a—"

"Oh, you're worse than any thief!" Blondie said. Her mouth pulled into a grimace. "A thief can't steal my secrets! The world's horniest old man can't fuck my thoughts!"

"Why are you so mad anyway?" The boy said, not looking at her. "At least now I know to stop wasting my ti—"

"Because I trusted you!" she cried.

For a second, no one said anything. Then the brown-haired boy started to say:

"Mai, listen—"

"I'm done listening to you!" Something wet glistened off her cheeks and fell. Became twinkling stars in the sun. They hit the thirsty earth and disappeared. "I'm done with you!"

The boy's surged off the wall and roared:

"Well, why don't you go find your precious fricking Ryo-kun then!?"

The girl's mouth clicked open, her eyes ballooning to dinner plates.

Brown-haired boy waved his hands and said: "Yeah! I read that! I know all about him!"

The girl's lips quivered. She was suddenly very pale.

"Y-you—"

"Yes, I read your fricking journal!" The boy's face was blistering red, his mouth a razor-edged cavern. "I know all about fricking Ryo-kun! He's the guy your parents set you up with, isn't he!?

Standing very still, her eyes huge river-stones, the girl, Mai, was as paralysed as a deer that had just spotted the tiger stalking it.

"So tell me: when was I going to find out, huh? Were you planning to tell me when they packed the last box? Would I have to go to your apartment and find out that you'd just disappeared from the face of Konoha?!" His voice splintered like old wood.

Blondie's mouth, a pencil line on her face, quivered. Was erased.

When she didn't say anything, the boy sank back against the wall. His body shrank into itself. "I'm sorry for reading your diary. I just...I needed to know...I should have known better..."

"I'm sorry too." The girl shook her head. "I just didn't know how to tell you. Didn't want to lie. "

The boy just stared at his shoes.

"I'm sorry." Then she bowed. "And thank you for being my friend."

The boy watched as she walked away. Became an inkblot in the distance. Then the inkblot became a dot. And disappeared.

The boy sank until he sat in the dirt. Then he hugged his knees to his chest and buried his face in them. For a long time after, his shoulders and shook, and his chest heaved with the strain of his crying.

It would have been better. Saved me a headache. If we never talked. Should have just walked away. But I didn't. Because that isn't what people do.

"Why did you read her diary?"

The boy became a bottle-rocket, shooting 5 feet into the air from his place on the ground and shrieking. He spun around and said: "How long have you been standing there!?"

"Long enough."

With his initial panic over, brown-haired boy narrowed his eyes at me.

"You shouldn't listen to other people's conversations, kid. That's bad manners."

"Well you shouldn't read other people's diaries," I said.

The boy lurched at me. Face red. Gnashing teeth. I thought he would start screaming at me the way people do when you say something they don't like. But when he opened his mouth all the air just ran out of him. He drew back. Sighed, and said:

"You wouldn't understand."

My skull itched at those words. People always say that. You wouldn't understand. It's the same as someone saying the sky is red when you ask if it's raining.

"Why did you read her diary?" I asked, again.

The boy looked at his feet, the brown screen of his hair shifting enough for me to see his eyes. They were dirty grey as oyster shell.

I just stood there, looking at him. The boy was still looking away, maybe thinking about the girl, maybe trying not to think of her. I kept looking at him. He kept his eyes fixed on an invisible point somewhere in the distance. Once in a while he'd flick his hair out of his face and glare at nothing. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, took them out again, put them back.

What I've found out is, there's no one as impatient as someone trying to ignore something. Isn't it funny? How ignorance is real but ignoring isn't? How ignoring something is impossible. If ignoring is when you try not to think of something, then the fact you're trying not to think of something means that you are, of course, thinking of it. It is in the very front of your mind. And isn't that funny? The way people try to do something and end up doing the opposite.

The brown-haired boy looked at me, sighed.

"You're not gonna leave until I tell you, huh?"

"No."

"Don't you have anything better to do?"

"I don't," I said, which was true.

"Well fine. But after you have to promise to get out of here when I'm done."

I nodded. The boy leaned down and held out a pinky.

"Promise?"

I resisted the urge to make him go away. He didn't have to make fun of me.

It must have shown on my face because the boy threw his head back and thrust his chest out; shoulders swelling and deflating, his whole body shaking, and laughed. Worms danced under the skin on my head.

When he was done, the boy wiped his eyes with his sleeve and said, smiling:

"Oh, man. Your face was priceless."

Making him go away would sooo easy...

Brown-haired boy put a hand on my head and ruffled my hair.

"Don't look so serious, kid," he said. "You'll get wrinkles and then none of the girl's will date you."

The skin on his face turned to muscle. Tightened.

"What was your question again?" His eyes were far away. "You asked why I read her diary, right?" The boy looked away again. "It's cause I liked her, I guess."

Remember what I said? About how people always seem to do the opposite of what they try to do?

His answer didn't stop the worms wriggling under my scalp. If you like someone, you should try not to hurt them. He'd read her diary and he knew it would hurt her. So why did he read it? The worms became snakes. Danced on my brain.

The next moment, the boy frowned and said:

"Hey, what's your problem? I answered your question, so scram!"

I thought about making him go away again. Maybe it would make the itching, like beetles scampering around the ceiling of my skull, stop. It would be sooo easy...

But that's not what people.

"Why did you read her—"

"I told you why!" Brown-haired boy said, throwing his hands into the air. "What else am I supposed to—"

I held up my hand and closed it. And the boy's voice went away. When the last word never left his mouth, the boy reached for his throat. His eyes grew wide as plates. His mouth unlatched. Veins popped on the sides of his neck and his temples. He strained forward. Tried to scream.

"Please don't talk while I'm talking," I said.

He clutched both hands to his throat, opened his mouth, the veins in his neck bulging and writhing beneath the skin, and...nothing. I don't know why he was panicking. He could still breathe.

After a while he calmed down. Or got tired. Or both.

I crossed my arms. "Are you going to listen to my question now?"

The boy glared at me.

"Why did you read her diary if you knew it would hurt her?"

I let his voice come back.

The boy swallowed, ran his fingers up to his chin and back down to his Adam's apple, his eyes. Then he cleared his throat. When the boy heard the phlegm collect in his throat, he almost collapsed. He narrowed his eyes at me.

"You a ninja, kid?"

I raised my hand again and curled the fingers slightly. The boy's eyes darted to my hand. He raised his hands, palms out.

"Whoa! Whoa! Okay! Okay! Okay! I tell you!"

My fingers stayed curled.

When he saw that, brown-haired boy slumped and said:

"Because I wanted to know if she liked me back."

Anchors hooked into my stomach, pulled at my guts. Of course. That's just how people are.

I turned and tried to not be disappointed. Walking away, about to disappear around the corner when he called back:

"Hey! Wait a second!"

Serpents danced in my head. First he says, 'Go away,' now he says 'Wait a second.' Why can't people ever make up their minds? I turned.

"What?"

He was looking at his shoes again.

"What—what do you think I should do now?"

"Do about what?"

The boy kicked up a cloud of dust. "...About her."

Making him go away would have been easier. But people don't do that.

"Tell her the truth."

The boy's mouth clicked open and a bead of sweat ran down the side of his face.

"I—I can't do that!" he said. "You heard! She's leaving soon! What would I look like, telling her now?!"

I was tired of him, so I said:

"Everything ends."

Then I went away.

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As for what happened after—between the girl and the boy—I won't say. That's private.

Author's Note: I've decided to switch to a first person perspective. Please let me know if anything's confusing and if you have any constructive criticism, I'd be glad to hear it.

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