Breaking the ice.
The winter of Oki Tachibana's ninth year on this earth was bitter.
Great, grasping hands of gale-force winds tore tin roofs from some of the houses of Nishihama and tossed them listlessly aside. The cold was inescapable, water freezing in the pipes and the children of Kenji Tachibana huddled up at night under mounds of their own clothing on top of blankets. Each breath materialised, any sweat produced by work curled cold against their skin but worst of all the sea at their coast froze in for two miles. There was no snow. Only iron grey skies and winds that cut like blades.
Nishihama relied on their trade. Their trade relied on the sea. Therefore there was no trade. There was no money.
No food.
Oki had become accustomed to being hungry, but never before had she been forced to grow accustomed to starving. It was difficult to concentrate on anything, the emptiness in her stomach seeming to sap at every other parcel of energy in her body. Teacher's rations had nearly stopped altogether, and that combined with the unshielded barrage of elements in the cave made Oki wonder if her lifeline would even survive the winter.
She woke each morning to anxious dreams of finding Teacher frozen over; a ruddy mess of red, burned skin and the black of his uniform under a lens of thick ice, the winter winds shrieking and careening through the holes in the rock.
A child died from starvation when they passed into the third week point, family pets were being eyed with unnerving looks and generation-old heirlooms had been snapped across knees to build fires. Two of the village men had died trying to break the ice enough for their boats to venture out, but it was thick at the shoreline and too thin to stand on further out. Still the sharp winds blew and still the ice would not melt.
There was no particular breaking point. No snap or final 'enough' in Oki's psyche. It was purely a dim realisation eking and ambling into existence in her hunger-dulled mind. That afternoon when she helped her father break the ice away from their little boat, she looked up and finally squeezed into a solution.
This was another point in Oki Tachibana's life where she would look back, and wonder if she had bypassed that thought process altogether how different would her life be? Maybe she would be the next person to starve? Maybe she would have survived that winter? Maybethey would have found Nishihama regardless, and Oki's future was set that morning Kenki Tachibana forgot to tie weights to the end of his net?
In the end (and even that statement was a finality that people have forever been discomfited by) it did not matter.
Oki Tachibana had looked up and Oki Tachibana had understood that she had the power to break the ice. Her breath plumed-there and gone-while Oki's drained mind tried to connect thought to action. One leg stepped forward with wooden movements, feet disturbing the pebbles and sending them scattering onto the cold sand below. Then another. The wind snatched her back, her bones so cold it felt as if the air were blowing through holes in lead. But heedlessly, another step came.
She licked her lips; her spit only making the chapped and blistered skin sorer. Then she was running. The sand was hard-packed and unsympathetic, and Oki felt as if each footfall was peeling at her body like a strip of wax being lifted. But the buzz of panting breath and purpose kept her moving.
"Oki!" It was her father, still up on the beach, "Oki! What are ya doing?"
Oki hit the ice and skidded. There was a moment of bright, white panic before she carefully flooded chakra into her feet. Where it touched so did warmth but it was almost painful in the numb extremities of her toes. She slid again; the burst of chakra throwing her off balance as the supply to one foot greatly outweighed the other.
"Breathe," Oki whispered to herself, teeth chattering in her skull, "Focus."
She glared out at her surroundings at that last word. The world about her was a collage of whites and indigos, ice beneath her feet and storm clouds rolling in over it like swathes of tumbling silk. The wind was howling about her, cutting across the ice to blast at her face and the wintery beach behind. The uneven flow of chakra settled. It was dangerous out there but Oki didn't think of the danger, only what needed to be done.
She started running.
"Wait! Come back, it's too thin!" Her father was screaming under the layers of wind, sounding far more panicked than she had ever heard.
Other villagers at begun to congregate on the beach, drawn by the noise he was generating. They shuffled closer, eyes flashing from him to the blurry shape of his daughter out on the frozen sea. When Oki's eyes met her fathers from over her shoulder, she almost stumbled at the absolute amount of sheer terror flooding through them.
"Oki!" he lunged forward prepared to follow his child out onto the precarious footing.
"Stop!" two of the village men hauled him back, "Are you insane? You'll die out there!"
"She's my daughter!" he screamed back, "Oki! Oki, come back! It's dangerous! Oki!"
Murmurs were beginning to ripple through the spectators as the girl ghosted further into the harsh landscape of ice and storm clouds.
"Is that Oki Tachibana?"
"What is she doing? The ice out there is too thin to hold her!"
"Is she trying to kill herself?"
"Maybe she's finally lost it?"
These voices melded with the shrieking of cold air shooting through Oki's ears. Her blood was pumping and her chakra flowing. It was the warmest she'd been in weeks.
She hit the halfway point and skidded, storm clouds rearing up like smoking dragonheads over the expanse of white. Oki was nothing but a black mark, another passing shadow on the vastness of the landscape. It was bleak and powerful and wholly majestic with its unapologetic threat. On her knees she carefully layered the chakra along every area that kissed the ice, wary of the great, ominous grumbling of the freezing water rushing below the ice. If she went under, she was done for and Oki had no intention of dying just yet. Her fingers felt at her belt for her gutting knife but they were clumsy and brittle.
"Crap," Oki muttered, squishing her head further into the fur of her collar.
She lifted her hands to her face, pulling the gloves off with her teeth and immediately sticking her fingers in the heat of her mouth. She waited until she could feel them again, glaring down at the ice between her knees, planning out her approach. She'd have to be quick but precise, too slow and her spit would freeze her fingers but too rushed and the Exploding Seal would be too faulty to work. A large part of her relished this, the challenge, the worried faces of the crowd at the shoreline, the promise of her life dangling only by a thin thread of her own honed skills.
The cold was already seeping through the thin material of her trousers, fusing with her and Oki had the bizarre fear that she would crack and break apart should she move. She shifted, darting her fingers to her knife and immediately painting in the lines she had already drawn out in her mind.
Oki forgot. She forgot about the ice moody and bemoaning her presence. She forgot about the howl, and the drag, and the pull of the vicious winds. She forgot about the sub-zero temperatures of the sea, and the smell of fish guts fermented her knife. All Oki could remember was the frantic pump of her heart, the way her body lit up and flashed faster under the pressure and the need for perfection in each stroke she carved into her canvas. It had made Oki feel alive, made her feel as though she were being pushed and only her own talent and wits would see her through.
She lived for moments such as that.
"I did it," she grinned, leaning back and struggling to her feet with shaky movements.
Then louder, "I did it!"
There was no one out there to hear it but Oki didn't care. This triumph was her own; and whether the others witnessed it or not did not lessen its value. Flushed with victory Oki panted, her cheeks red with cold, and redirected her gaze back to the shoreline. The blobby little crowd had swelled, snatches of voices caught and carried back to her by the wind. They couldn't be too close. She wasn't exactly sure how big the explosion or the ice shrapnel would be. Oki started running, pins and needles erupting where there had only been the numbness of cold before.
"Get back!" Oki bellowed and waved her arms at them, "Get back!"
The crowd swayed and instinctively slipped back a step while murmurs of concern rippled through them like a breeze through a field of wheat.
"Back!" Oki screamed.
Slowly they started backwards, confused but jolted into action by the sheer amount of urgency in her voice. Oki had barely set a toe on the sand before her father had grabbed her, bundled her up in his coat and retreated behind the shape of their boat. He was soothing reassurances over and over again in a tear-stained voice, but she barely heard him. She wiggled her arms free, positioned her fingers into a Snake and flooded the moulded chakra into the seal out on the ice.
'Fwoom!'
The boat rocked at her back, the air suddenly a chorus of startled shrieks and yells and there was a flash of light-there and gone-left only hazy blobs of black behind in their eyes. She peered around the boat, only to receive a vengeful spray of icy sea water for her effort. Oki coughed, feeling her body slipping into sleep as the voices grew dimmer and the firefly bobbing of the explosion's afterimages settled lower into her skull. Suddenly she was so very, very tired…
…
"A bloody miracle!" Genji Mizuyama patted at the back of Kenji Tachibana with a wide smile and cup of sake. Some of the alcohol had spilt; most was still nestled in the earth ware jug.
The little room was heavy with the smell of Tabaco smoke, man, and the low timbre of adult voices and raucous, gruff laughter. The men of Nishihama celebrated how they lived, sparsely with a focus on the smaller things and a grim maybe-promise of tomorrow.
"Aye," Hirota Kobiyashi chimed, "I thought we might all starve this winter."
"Er…how old she your daughter anyway, Kenji?" Mr Mizuyama inquired sheepishly.
"Old enough," Mr Kobiyahi interjected with a stern eye, "for my Hiroya."
"A girl like that's too good for yer scrawny lad!" Mr Mizuyama rebuffed, face red with anger as if it were his own daughter Mr Kobiyashi had edged for.
Kenji Tachibana watched the pair with dull eyes, sipping quietly from his cup and feeling himself sink deeper into the buzz of alcohol and noise and warm air. These were the men who had warned their children not to play with that 'Tachibana girl' because 'it would only end in tears'. And now…now they were arguing over whose son would marry the girl who'd broken the ice and therefore the harsh winter they had been enduring.
Kenji was suddenly unsure of what he should be doing with himself. He'd been disconnected from reality, cruising on auto-pilot, for so long that he wasn't sure whether or not he remembered how he used to act around the men of Nishihama. There was a time when he'd drank and laughed with the other villagers, a time when Nanako had been laughing between the lock of his arms while Hiroto Kobiyashi recounted another embarrassing tale from his youth. But Nanako was dead and the Kenji Tachibana that had laughed with her no longer resided in his body.
He should be home.
Oki had fallen asleep moments after her performance and he still had no idea what his daughter had done. He only had frantic memories of a noise like a thunderclap, of bright white flaring out from between the grey of storm clouds and of ice breaking and surging about the waves like broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Kenji realised he had only as much right to discuss his daughter as these other men did. He knew her only as well as they did. All of his children, Kenzo, Kenki and Oki, carried the same sense of vague familiarity. There was a time he knew them and it had gone, and Kenji was at a loss as to how he could reclaim that time again.
He knew what Nishihama thought of them; Kenji was a hermit, Kenzo was alright but faulty by occasion with the Tachibana name, Oki had visions beyond herself and Kenki was that sickly child that was one dry season away from an early grave. Kenji wondered when exactly he'd lost touch and watched their family's reputation slip away from them. He'd never felt so much an outcast as he did that night in a room full of people with only congratulations.
"To Oki Tachibana!" Mr Mizuyama cheered, sake sloshing over the rim of his cup.
"Oki Tachibana!" the tiny room reverberated with the re-joining cry.
When Kenji Tachibana staggered home that night, the house was empty and still. His and Nanako's children were out and he hadn't the slightest notion as to where he would have had to search first. The silence felt stuck in time, bottled and forgotten, and Kenji could not help but feel some form of kinship to it.
He lit a cigarette and settled himself into his armchair, staring out as the storm clouds passed under the indigo shades of dusk. He faded out onto memories of when he and Nanako had first brought the house. A time when she had been pregnant with Kenzo and Kenji's father had died three months before, leaving the boat to his remaining son.
"What about the rug? What colour do you think we should go for? I mean we can't afford to paint the walls, but I would like at leasta little bit of colour in the house," Nanako screwed her face up at the dingy surroundings, inspecting the black iron stove with a critical eye and nodding a pleasant salutation to the beach view from the front room window.
She fixed him with an impatient frown and Kenji belatedly realised that she was waiting on an answer.
"Whatever ya want, dear. Choose whatever colour ya want," he replied, not really understanding why the decision was so important but deciding that arguing that point was useless.
Nanako sighed and looked at him with fond exasperation, "you're bloody useless, you know that?"
"I've been told," Kenji smiled quietly.
"That your final answer, Kenji Tachibana?" she lifted a brow, hands on her hips and a smile that was smug and beautiful through the rose-tinted glasses of memory.
"Yeah," present Kenji Tachibana whispered into the cold and the quiet of the main-room, "Whatever you want, Nanako, I'll get you anything you want."
…..
Oki Tachibana was on the hunt. Such a sentence would at any other time fill anyone within the vicinity with dread. A hunting Oki Tachibana was a focused Oki Tachibana, and a focused Oki Tachibana usually resulted in exasperation for the parents who'd have to listen to their child's wailing or whinging.
Except this time she was hunting her younger brother.
Oki was high on her earlier success, confident enough to make a game of tailing Kenki (almost) soundlessly over the rise of pebbles and out onto the cold sand of the beach. Great slabs of ice were still rocked up against the shoreline, and the lapping of the waves now only added to her achievement after a time of the coast being devoid of them. Oki paused, as her brother did, to survey the damage. Pride filled her at the scene, at the great jagged break between the two floors of ice still out at sea. I did that, Oki reflected with a grin, that was all me. Even if she had been exhausted enough to sleep until evening afterwards, that had to have been her most impressive Exploding Seal so far.
Another wave of drunken laughter swelled in the late evening, and Oki lingered for a moment, toying with the idea of returning home and basking in their acknowledgement. But no. What they had thought had never mattered to her before, so why should it matter now? She had little to no interest in impressing Nishihama, these accomplishments were hers to possess. Besides, the little silhouette of Kenki was slipping further into the burgeoning dark and losing to her younger brother was enough to dampen her present high.
She smiled to herself as she crept between the sand dunes and the sad shapes of their grounded boats. Already she was debating whether to grab Kenki to scare him or go for a more blasé 'and where are you off to, little brother?' Either was fine, but Oki wanted the reveal to be perfect.
The smile slipped and died when Oki began to recognise the route Kenki was taking. It was the same route she at least travelled twice a day. The yawning mouth of the cave sucked Kenki inside and blanketed him in the waiting darkness as if were a living thing, all kind smiles and suspicious eyes and lazy flickers of its tail. Oki swore and darted after her brother.
She followed. And it was this that perplexed Oki as she tracked the shape of her brother's shadow in the half-light of the cave. Surely she should have stopped him. She could have leapt out and asked, no demanded, what exactly he was doing and why?
But instead she followed. She had been struggling with her guilt over hiding this from Kenki, and here it seemed time had taken the situation out of her hands and righted it back on course. Kenki would discover the truth on his own, and Oki would have platitudes of 'it was bound to happen' and 'there was nothing I could do' to comfort her possessive tendencies. This way no one was at fault, and Oki found herself more and more invested in the notion the further Kenki struggled forward.
Five times, Kenki Tachibana turned around and almost headed back. And five times, Oki watched with a warring combination of relief and disappointment. There was no heedless courage present in the youngest Tachibana as there had been in his older siblings. He was scared of the dark pressing around him and the whistling of the wind through the holes in the rock.
Once again, Oki debated stopping except this time it was motivated strongly by her concern. Kenki was sickly, he scared easily and those two characteristics couldn't aid him much in the cave. If he fell or hurt himself, he'd likely panic and make the situation far worse. Oki had only just stepped forward, when Kenki's foot slipped into a rock pool and he squealed at the sensation of the bulbous-eyed creatures within rubbing against his shoes.
"Is someone there?"
Kenki and Oki froze.
He knew. She knew he must know that there was someone there. And he must know that they posed no threat, or he wouldn't have indicated his presence or position. With no one else in Nishihama having even the slightest inkling of the Shinobi Arts, Teacher could sense Oki's small chakra reserve with ease. Most likely he was luring in whatever she was tailing, curious as to why she hadn't scared them off yet. The asshole must have known she didn't want Kenki knowing about her following him or she would have already exposed herself by now. He must have known that she wanted, or was at least willing, to allow Kenki to discover Teacher's existence.
Teacher was only giving her what she wanted.
But Oki-unlike him- had none of the same penchant for bitter irony, and she was not amused by Teacher's games. Not when it came to Kenki.
"….H-hello?" Kenki's voice shook as he peered into the darkness.
"Who is it? Who's there?"
"Erm…this is Kenki Tachibana, sir," Kenki replied, that polite, apologetic tone overriding his fear when he asked simple everyday questions.
"I'm afraid I've never heard of you Kenki Tachibana, but it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance nonetheless," Oki could practically hear the dry smile from where she had ducked behind a cluster of rocks, imagining it uncurling like a plume of smoke in the darkness of the cave, "how may I be of assistance?"
"I…erm," Kenki seemed to grow even smaller under the heavy mantle of gloom, small and pale and frightened, "I…my big s-sister she, er, no…it looks like my sister comes here a lot. And I-I was startin' to wonder if something was wrong an' she needed help…so….I, er-"
"Decided to investigate?" Teacher mercifully supplied.
It had grown darker in the cave by then, and colder still as night drew in. Oki ducked further behind her post, aware that any fogged breath could give her away. Only one eye peeked out at the world from where she had hidden. She was closer to Kenki and yet even at that sparse distance, it took concentration to detect his replying sheepish nod. Nonetheless, Teacher managed without much effort.
"That's brave and very sweet of you. You must care for her to venture here," there was something softer in Teacher's tone that Oki did not recognise.
"O-of course I do! Oki's…Oki's the best! She's a hero!" Kenki defended.
"Heh. Of course, I had no intention of doubting you. Oki did you say her name was? Hrmm, Oki Tachibana…I'm afraid I don't know anyone by that name here. Can you describe your sister to me?"
Oki mentally swore. Kenki was about to lay every piece of information she'd hoarded away from her Teacher right into his lap.
"Erm…well, she's really tall for her age but kinda skinny. She's got light blue hair like me and a little black spot by her eye like me, 'cept Oki's eyes are really, really dark and sorta thin. Oh! And she's got sharp teeth like me too," Kenki obediently began rattling off, "She's kinda…scary at first, and looks a little strict. But she's real smart and real strong and real tough, and she always wins so you gotta spot her easy."
"Oh, yes I'm quite aware of the girl you're describing," Teacher replied in his rasping tones.
"….Y-you…ya are?" Kenki murmured.
"Quite. She's a student of mine."
"….A student?" Kenki whispered, "I don't get it, a student of what?"
"You're her younger brother, yes?" Teacher asked but Oki knew that he was already aware of the answer, she tensed but didn't move.
"I am," Kenki replied, "And Kenzo's younger brother too."
"So there are three of you," Teacher sighed, "And no parents?"
"Ah! No, we've got Dad but…erm…." Kenki trailed off for long moments.
"You're mother died?" Teacher supplied in an even tone.
Kenki winced and nodded once.
Oki wanted to scream at Kenki to stop talking but she was rooted to the spot, watching it all unfold with morbid curiosity. Teacher had revealed nothing but Kenki was spilling everything out to him, and still Oki could not interpret them. Because no matter how far this went, she would not know the full potential of conversation if it was cut dead now. The concept of revealing herself had long ago fled into impossibility, she wasn't sure if it was curiosity or some unnamed fear that kept her still, but the need to watch this all unfold was overpoweringly potent.
"I see," Teacher replied blandly, "And yet you, your brother and your father haven't noticed any changes in her?"
"….N-no," Kenki whispered, "Not really. She's out all the time and kinda distracted when she's back. Oh, and she always seemed excited about doing something before but now…now she just don't look as interested, but that's it. Why?"
"It just reinforces a theory I have about your sister."
"….what theory?" Kenki asked as though he could not stand to hear the answer but found himself doing so nonetheless.
"That she's a natural born killer."
The air was heavy in the silence that followed, weighed and dragged down by the seriousness of Teacher's comment. Even the wind had seemed to cease shrieking in the quiet of the cave. Oki's heart came thumping up in her ears, every nerve wired on edge and her teeth clenched on the tremulous tension.
"What?" Kenki voiced with shock, "A killer? What? No! No, you're wrong!"
"Am I?" Teacher replied in dry tones, "Every skill she has learned under me was designed to outsmart and murder others, and yet there hasn't been a change to her demeanour noticeable enough that even her family have picked up on it. To me, that suggests a certain…natural talent for the craft."
"My sister might not always show it but she's a good person with a good heart!" Kenki demanded, "She's always protected me and looked out for me, if she were a killer why would she do that, huh! I know she don't always get on with people but she'd never just hurt 'em for fun, and she ain't ever gone out her way to be cruel or anything!"
Oki blinked. She'd never in her life seen Kenki so furious and yet he was, at that moment, purely for her sake. Oki had always loved her little brother and she had always known that his loyalty was unbreakable, but she had never truly realised how deep Kenki's esteem for her dwelled. She was touched by his vehemence, wholly and purely touched.
"A killer doesn't necessarily have to be mean-spirited…You know anyone can be made into killers, rare few are born to it. The first moment I saw your sister, I understood that she was a natural born killer."
"No! Shut up! Just shut up!" Kenki yelled.
Oki found herself moving before she was even fully aware of it, her body instinctively responding to the upset in Kenki's voice. He almost slipped as Oki roughly pulled him behind her but a firm hand on his arm kept him upright on the slippery surface of the rocks.
"Oki?" Kenki's voice was small in the dark of the cave.
She glared out at where she undoubtedly knew her Teacher was lurking, but spoke only to her brother, "Go home, Kenki. I'll be back in a minute. Be careful on the rocks on yer way out."
"B-But-" Kenki began.
Oki cut him off with a single look, "Go home, Kenki."
He nodded and hastily scrambled off. Oki watched him go before readdressing her Teacher.
"What the hell was that about?" she voiced sharply.
"That could very much be my question to you. You allowed him to enter here, after all."
Oki grit her teeth, knowing that he was in part right. She had put her little brother in harm's way again, just to sate her own guilt and curiosity. Her protection had come too late, Kenki would be having nightmares about the rasp of Teacher's voice and the way it had caressed the word 'murder' with chapped fingers, for weeks now.
But for all her fury at herself, it was equally directed at Teacher. She may have crouched in the dark and done nothing, but he had instigated the words.
"You're still angry?" he inquired in a tone that suggested he hardly cared either way.
"…No," Oki grit out, "I'm bloody furious! You get yer jollies off telling little boys that their older sisters are murders, huh?"
"I did not enjoy telling him that. I merely answered his question, if he did not like the answer he shouldn't have asked."
"Well ya shoulda lied to him or something, instead."
"So you're now suggesting I lie to a child?" Teacher's tone was brittle and slightly reprimanding, "I have come to expect many things from you, but lying isn't one of them."
Oki ground her teeth. Her blood was up but her Teacher was apathetically shooting down every comment she fired. She was quiet as she searched for an angle, anything that would justify the verbal beating Oki felt he deserved. She hadn't expected this to anger her so much but what felt like the thinly veiled bullying of Kenki Tachibana (as the conversation had appeared to her to turn itno towards the end) had churned up a poisonous mixture of fierce protectiveness towards her brother and a sense of betrayal on her behalf.
Despite all her warnings to do otherwise, over the year she had been training under Teacher she had inevitably come to trust the burned man. All the forewarnings had been there, and yet the longer she went without feeling retaliation, the more she had been lulled into a sense of safety and familiarity with his presence. Besides that she detested anyone who even looked sourly at Kenki. He was sweet and unimpressive and sensitive, and honest about those traits. He could not defend himself as Oki could, and she was damned if she'd let anyone hurt him due to that.
"I'll admit," he voiced, breaking Oki from her furious thoughts, "I did not expect that."
"Expect what?" Oki snapped, almost spitting the words as if they were acid.
"You to protect your younger brother," he replied.
"Of course I would! He's my little brother, isn't he?" she glared resembling a feral cat with ruffled fur.
"Yes. But you haven't given any indication of closeness before. You acted on behalf of your village earlier also. Those fireworks out there were you, correct?"
"Yeah," Oki replied warily, "An' how come you didn't expect that exactly?"
"As I said you haven't indicated any concern for them before. I will admit to being...concerned on that point. Despite a notable natural talent for the Shinobi Arts, I had expected you to continue failing to meet the sense of 'unity' the practices require. Regardless of your general rule about personal information, you've been in here with me for every spare minute of every day since we met and not once have you ever mentioned little Kenki Tachibana. Besides that there is the time itself you've spent with me, doesn't that suggest a certain disregard as to the feelings of your family?"
Did it? Oki had not thought of it in such a way.
Teacher's laugh was bitter, "you have no idea what you have, do you? Out there, you have a home, a family, a village that promises a safe, normal life. And yet you've squandered every gift you've been given, taken for granted those precious things I have spent a lifetimeyearning for."
Oki was dumbstruck. Something in Teacher's voice had changed and that sudden vulnerability filled her with a dread that seemed as those something awful would befall should she break it.
"I suppose it's too late now. After your demonstration this morning they will be on their way, find me before the day is done and slit my throat before I even know it," another dry laugh, "then again, it's been too late for me for a good while now. I'm not entirely sure what I was holding on for."
Oki blinked dumbly.
"Would you like to listen to something tragic, Oki Tachibana? Yours is likely the last face I'll ever see, and until a few minutes ago I didn't even know your name."
….
They did arrive that night.
Like the entrance of her Teacher, the appearance of the ANBU squad was markedly devoid of exceptional weather.
She had slept the night through frost, worrying about what Kenki would do, what Kenki would think, what would happen now, what had her Teacher meant. She had returned home and was instantaneously filled with a bitter-sweet sense of Deja-vu, as if she had only just returned from an age-long journey. The old, pockmarked stove and frayed, colourless rug were suddenly childhood friends that she had been reacquainted with. The smell of salt, dirty clothes and her father's cigarettes had become past-romances glimpsed across a busy street. She traced her eyes across each memory associated with each nook or cranny as she struggled to grasp why exactly she was feeling so reminiscent.
And, yet she remained unsatisfied by it all.
It was warm and homey and familiar, and she was frustrated as to why she couldn't just be content with that, especially after Teacher's words. Was there something fundamentally wrong with her? The gifts she had been given couldn't be appreciated, instead she had cruised over them towards bigger heights that she would have to bleed for herself.
Waking that morning that they came to crisp but polite knocking at the door, Oki's eyes had lingered on the still sleeping shape of her brother and felt the same thoughts flooded her. Should she try to be happy with this life or would she inevitably return to the cave again, even after everything that had happened the night previous?
Oki did not have time to answer, and her reply would have been unwanted anyway. Once again, time had taken the situation out of her control to the sound of three more knocks at her door, except this time in synchronisation with several other knocks at several other houses clustered by her own.
Oki hauled herself from the Tachibana's shared futon, spared a look towards the shape of her father in his armchair quietly submerging into the waking world and then struggled their warped door open.
Surprisingly, the first thing she registered was how unexceptional the weather was. Pale blue, the sky appeared untainted and cold. It was frosty as most mornings tended to be, and the strong winds from the day previous were only just beginning to work themselves from their own slumber.
The second thing she noticed was that there had been a man at every door to every house in Nishihama being gawped at by similarly bleary-eyed neighbours. Oki caught the eyes of the elderly widow next door and the unfettered panic in her rummy gaze finally stopped Oki scanning her surroundings and turning to address the man who knocked.
The third thing Oki Tachibana noticed that morning was that the three uneven swipes painted across the left side of his mask (one covering his right eye, one shorter and high up where his temple should be, the last curling just under his left eye) looked the same muddy red as dried blood when stamped across the devoid surface of his mask.
A/N:
Shorter chapter but I wanted to leave it on that note. Also I am a LIAR, I just can't keep to any update dates I set myself and can't help posting as soon as I finish. So just disregard anything I say on that subject…sorry.
Now as SadisticAvocado picked up, I intend to reply to everyone who reviews personally just to help show how genuinely grateful I am. Not to say everyone who's followed and favourited isn't just as appreciated, because they seriously are.
MissJackson: Thank you for the review! I'm glad you're already hooked especially because I don't think much has happened yet XD I hope you keep reading and enjoying this story!
Countenance: Thanks for reviewing this, and thanks for all the reviews for Three Tails too! I'm glad I've managed to keep your continued interest :]
SadisticAvocado: Yep, Oki will be gaining some more aggressive skills but at the moment she's still at only slightly above civilian chakra levels. I don't know if I'm overreaching but I think Oki's level is alright, I mean look at Sakura graduating she had like what three jutsus and she was pretty high in class rankings. A lot of the impressive Genin jutsus are Clan techniques and I think everyone else has just the bare basics, so that's where I'm plopping Oki XD