CHAPTER FOUR

A/N: Suggestion; Open Youtube and search for Spirited Away Itsumo Nando Demo (or always yours). It'll help to understand what song Ren is playing.

Harutori Rengyou was anything but a quitter. I had out drunken a whole yakuza squad to win a baby monkey, I'd rowed across the sea to visit temples, I had plucked 15 acres of strawberries on one night, and I had taught Kimimaro about Birds and Bees even after he ran away covering his ears. I was not a quitter. I wasn't.

Oh, but I wanted to.

"Shijimi-sama, you need to use your wrist and not scrape the strings with the bachi," I said correcting the woman's hand once more. Madame Shijimi, my current employee and student, had the rare gift of being not only tone-deaf but having two left hands as well. It didn't help she actually had wanted to learn to play the koto, but thought she should start with the shamisen as it had only three strings compared to koto's thirteen. I was so exasperated I didn't even feel insulted.

Another careless bachi-flick and my ears bled from another plumbing sound.

One look at her pouting lips, though, I knew she was short of throwing a temper tantrum so I quickly moved to lead her.

With my hand practically doing everything, she finally managed to play the first part of Sakura Sakura. I even sang to it to cover the mind breaking screech I never knew shamisen was capable of making.

"Sakura Sakura,

the fields, mountains and villages,

as far as can be seen,

are covered in a pink haze or clouds,

shining beautifully under morning light-"

"Stop," the Madame said as we proceeded to make it to the next page and I halted looking up in question. Sweat drop formed behind my neck, a day had been enough to realize the woman was one of the most capricious people I'd ever seen. She sniffed and shook her hand in irritation.

"Bring me some water, Satsuki."

The nyobo, a maid the Madame seemed to have brought from the palace, bowed deeply before stepping back to the corridor. "Hai, Shijimi-sama."

Madame Shijimi opened her luxurious fan for a fresh breeze, while I gently placed the discarded instrument to its wooden box. Since the mistress didn't object, I guessed this was the end of our lesson for today.

Maybe she wanted to go pat her cat, Tora? Or have a tea with Hiruka-sama, perhaps?

I certainly didn't expect her to speak to me, with a slight whine in her voice. "This is boring. Sakura Sakura is boring. We keep doing nothing else. What other songs can you play?"

"…What kind of song do you have in mind?" I asked carefully, not wanting to offend the woman. I was lucky she didn't mind me correcting her mistakes in the first place, so I tried my best to keep an amiable, in her case tolerable, relationship. …Gods, had it really been only one month?

Serve and endure her well, Ren-san, the Hokage had said and I realized he'd meant it, every word.

Madame Shijimi seemed to ponder about what song she wanted to hear, then she hesitated for a moment glaring at my face. I hid my utterly perplexed expression and did my best to send friendly, harmless vibes.

Apparently that worked, because she didn't take long before graciously deciding, "Love songs."

…Not what I had expected. I blinked a few times.

"Love songs, Madame?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?" With the clipped tone she used I'd better not have any problems. I bowed once, and let a fake smile grace my nervous face. "Of course not, Madame. But I'm afraid even love songs have a genre. Do you have a specific song in mind?"

She gave me a frown and shook her head. It wasn't really surprising, as most love songs were considered too vulgar for the High Court. Women of high birth were usually raised like sheltered birds, only leaving their respected houses to marry their husbands. Madame Shijimi's decision to settle in Konoha must have been rather unorthodox, probably only granted because of the political machinations unfolding at the capital.

Either way, I was on my own. I tried to choose a song that'd be acceptable to her taste, only I never had bothered much to learn love songs… So I decided for a song I'd picked up in Yu no Kuni, the Land of Hot Springs.

"Somewhere, a voice calls, in the depth of my soul

I always want to dream, the dreams that move my heart

So many tears of despair, uncountable through and through

But I know on the other side of them, I'll be sure to meet you

Every time we fall down to the ground we look up to the sky above

We wake to it's blue, as if for the first time

Though the road is long, the end far away

With these hands I can embrace the light

As I bid farewell my heart falls silent

And my empty soul begins to listen

The wonder of living, the wonder of dying

The flower, the wind, the city; all connected, the one and same…"

When I finished, I looked up to see the mistress closing her eyes. I gulped, not really knowing what to do. Didn't she like it? Was this not cheesy enough? It wasn't really a love song after all… I rubbed my bachi with my thumb and slowly opened my lips. "Shijimi-sama?"

"Did I tell you to stop playing?"

The Madame let me to sing it over and over again.

XXX

Kimimaro scowled as he closed his sister's bedroom. "She's not here." The strain in voice was rather evident, and surprised his two companions.

"How troublesome," mumbled Nara Shikao, stifling a wide yawn. Kimimaro gave the boy a death glare, which was promptly ignored. The nephew of the Jounin Commander had curly hair tied to a pony tail as it was custom for Nara men. He also wore his clan emblem on his back, and was known to have reached a whole new level of the nefarious Nara-laziness. The only reason the boy was present at all was because Inuzuka Hana had one of her dogs bite him in the ass. Repeatedly.

"Just write her a note, Hakkotsu," the first born of the Inuzuka clan head said impatiently, albeit in a gentle tone. Despite her cold attitude she'd been the one who had followed the White Bones without fuss to his home, and didn't even call him a sissy boy for his need to check on his sister. If there was anyone who understood pack-protectiveness, it was definitely an Inuzuka after all.

She'd been also the one who actually dared to tell the Hokage what really happened with Honda Shouichi and the new transfer.

Born and raised in a closely knitted pack, Hana had a fierce dislike towards those who tainted the pack structure. She hadn't really minded Honda's attempts to win authority over Kimimaro; in fact, she even encouraged it, as every new member needed to find their place to fit in. However, when Honda still tried to gain the overhand when it was obvious he'd lost, and when his actions actually bordered on the line of simple bullying, that was when Hana drew the line.

Hana stood there when Kimimaro managed to beat his challengers one by one to the ground and when Honda screamed that he would make the white haired boy pay; the Inuzuka snagged the fake-napping Shikao's collar and went straight to the Hokage. She gave him a detailed oral report about the incident and when she 'convinced' Shikao to stand on his own feet, the genius boy even managed to get a new teacher assigned to their class.

Since then, one of the weirdest near-friendships was formed between Hana, Shikao and Kimimaro. It wasn't a real friendship yet, as Kimimaro vehemently denied active participation, Hana didn't care and Shikao preferred sleeping to staying with the other two. It was close enough, though.

"Come on, the school training ground closes at ten. I'm sure she'll be back by then."

Kimimaro gave Hana a frown but then nodded as an acknowledgement of her logic. Shikao was trying to move away from Hana's biting nin-dogs, at the same time he tried to find a place on the stairs to take a nap.

He let out a loud whine as one of the Haimaru Brothers nipped his ankle. "Why do you want me there? I am a shadow-user, I'm useless at nights."

"Isn't it obvious? She wants to give your bones for her dogs to nibble, you freaking snail," hissed Kimimaro in disgust, still unable to believe how lazy the other boy could be.

Who in their right mind slept eighteen hours a day uninterrupted? Just because they could?

He'd seen it himself and he still couldn't believe Shikao had tricked him to let him sleep and count the hours and took his money from the bet they had made prior. Aneue had loved the story as he ranted in anger and forced him invite this sloth with frizzy hair and the dog girl to dinner.

The unworthy snail had the audacity to stay the night because he was too lazy to go home after the meal.

Just thinking about that day put Kimimaro in murderous mood and made him want to throttle the other boy. Noticing her new comrade's distress, Hana sighed in exasperation and kicked the now snoring boy in the liver. When Shikao yelped she grabbed his ponytail to yank, hard.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch, what is your problem, woman?!"

"Oh shut up. You can't fool me with the 'nights are the bane of my power'-bullshit. My Okaa-san already told me the basics of the Shadow Jutsu. One flicker of light and the entire darkness is at your disposal, right?"

…Now that would be interesting, thought Kimimaro flickering a glance at the boy in slumped form, is it true?

Shikao gave his two friends a crinkled nose like someone had forced him to smell rotten eggs. "That would take enormous amount of power and I'm just a meagre branch member. And I'm aiming for R&D. And I'm a diehard pacifist."

"…A pacifist? Are you kidding me? Why are you in the Ninja Academy then? Isn't that rather paradoxical?" asked Kimimaro half interested, half annoyed to hell.

Shikao gave an infuriating, curt shrug. "It's a Catch-22. You know, the rule that says once you become a nuke-nin, you are required to be medically insane to be erased off the Bingo-book, but when you ask to have the evaluation done you are sentient enough to make your own decisions and therefore not crazy? The same situation happening here. I wanna be a researcher and have a consistent hour to get off work, but to be a researcher in a military village you need to become a shinobi first and complete missions, which are as volatile with the working hours as they get. It's blatant abuse, really, a heart-breaking tragedy," he finished with a morose sigh, not noticing the twitch that was building on Kimimaro's forehead.

Hana decided they had to leave before Bones decided to smear his house walls with the Nara's intestines.

In the hectic of trying not to kill each other, or in Shikao's case die by the other's hands, Kimimaro forgot to leave a note to his sister.

A bad idea, but one the newly assembled trio hadn't noticed yet.

XXX

It was nearly midnight when I finally made it back home. Madame Shijimi had enjoyed my playing it seemed, as she abruptly decided that I had to play for one of her tea parties. It was a great honor really, had I been of noble blood it could have even counted as my social debut to higher circles, the Madame as my patron. Of course, with my status as commoner it meant nothing more but pure entertainment…and a lot of extra work on my part. Shijimi-sama's nyobo, Satsuki-san made it clear she expected me to have at least acceptable social etiquette. She made it sound like I needed to be potty-trained. Well, bugger.

At this rate I would never find time to sit in my humble shop just watching the dust sparkle like small grains of golden sand under sunlight. Since I was rather paid well by the daimyo's wife, I could afford a part timer to watch over my shop. But still, it wasn't the same and I missed the calming silence. And the time I could spend with my brother.

"Kimimaro, are you sleeping?" I asked in a whisper, not wanting to wake him up. I opened the door to his room, but he wasn't there. In fact, I couldn't feel his presence at the whole house.

Where was he? It wasn't like him to stay outside for so long. Kimimaro had always been a morning person and liked to sleep early and wake up before the sun began to rise. At the rare times he didn't come home because he was working on a new technique, he always left a note. But after checking the fridge I'd noticed he didn't even have dinner. So he didn't come home right after school…and hadn't been here for hours.

Surely, nothing could have happened to him, right?

I immediately grabbed my haori and strapped on my shoes. I remembered my shishou kissing the crown of my head at that night, telling me he loved me, that he was sorry before he…no, no, NO. Kimimaro wouldn't just disappear like that. My brother wouldn't. That wasn't his style.

I knew I was overreacting and tried to calm myself, but I had spent five hours singing songs and trying not to grate the daimyo's wife's nerves, and Gods, how many times had I seen small children disappear to never come back at the streets?

"Ren you are being silly, Kimimaro's really strong, remember?" I told myself as I kept consciously stopping my legs from running. Kimimaro would surely laugh at me, calling me his mother-hen of a sister and let me hug him even though he would roll his eyes to save his dignity. But another part in my brain whispered that the academy was long over and he hadn't come to pick me up when I was getting late. And the school training grounds closed at nine, didn't they? Other training grounds were for ranked shinobi only, so I knew Kimimaro wouldn't go there.

Konoha was supposed to be safe. Safer to any other towns we'd ever been. I knew that, I truly did, but did its safety extend even to foreigners like us?

Don't be stupid, Kimimaro can take care of himself, said one voice.

Kimaro is twelve, hissed another.

He is a strong Kekkai Genkai user.

With no clan to protect or revenge him.

The perfect target for Bloodline theft.

…I didn't care if I was overreacting I was going to scold the boy for making me worry.

I hesitated as I reached the main road and made up my mind to try the school grounds regardless. Maybe my brother had found out a way to sneak in or just forgot time training?

Evil things were whirling inside my mind; street life had taught me long ago tragedy could happen to everyone. Whether the rich, the poor, the old or young, evil wasn't one to discriminate.

I had just reached the Ninja Academy, then I felt it. A small flutter of chakra. Just behind the front building. Not bothering to look around I followed the chakra flare and opened the door to a classroom.

"Maro-kun!? Is that you…?"

Only it wasn't him.

"Now what do we have here?" A woman, dark long hair tied with a purple ribbon, purred.

The coquette smile on her face becoming even wider as I instinctively took a step back. Her dark eyes were glistening with malice; I could practically taste it. She wore no Konoha Hitai-ate, and her chakra was covered with seal work. Good lord, what in seven hells had I just stepped into?

I swallowed, darting eyes to the third person in the room. "Mi-mizuki-sensei," I managed to whisper. The pale haired man looked so surprised at my sudden appearance, and seemed to be in shock. My mind raced, connecting the dots. The conclusion was nothing I'd have liked.

"I-I'm sorry to interrupt," I forced out of my throat, acting as if I hadn't felt the woman pulling out a sharp tool -a senbon?- and ninja strings. I knew I had to talk fast. Thoughts were whirling inside my brain. "I won't tell anything to…to Tsubaki-san, I swear." I said and now Mizuki, who must have noticed the killer intent of the other woman and did nothing to stop her, looked puzzled at the name of his fiance.

"...Tsubaki? What of her?" He asked slowly as if assessing the situation.

"Really, Mizuki-sensei." I gave him a disapproving frown with my hands firmly on my hips, trying to stop them from trembling. "It's none of my business, and as I said, I'm not a tattle-tale, but you should cherish your wife-to-be a little more. She's such a sweet woman and deserves a good man. She even bought some protection charms for you, you know, although she knows you don't believe in them...", my voice grew steadier every moment and I didn't hesitate to look him directly in the eyes. He stared at me right back intently, trying to find something I resisted with all my will to give away.

Finally, his narrowed gaze relaxed and he let out a low chuckle. He even had the audacity to look sheepish. "Ah, I can see how this would look very suspicious to you, Ren-san. But don't worry, I'm very faithful to Tsubaki and there's no need for misunderstanding. This one," he pointed at the woman who simply raised an eyebrow, "is just a comrade. We met up to discuss ninja-business, you see."

"…Oh," I said forming my lips to a round O-shape, which I knew would make me look like an innocent, brainless civilian-girl, and succeeded to blush furiously. "Oh, oh, I'm so sorry, Mizuki-sensei, I thought, well, you probably know what I thought which I shouldn't have, of course...Oh, this is so embarrassing..."

"No harm done, Ren-san. But next time give me at least the chance of doubt, yes?" The man smiled charmingly. My chakra senses were screaming, LIES, LIES, LIES Oh Gods Mizuki is a traitor.

I gave him a shy smile back. "I have learned my lesson, sensei. By the way, have you seen my brother? He said he wanted to train more and told me he would come here with his friends..." I trailed off deliberately, and noticed the small of irritated frown on Mizuki's face. He smoothed it out soon enough though, and I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been looking. Mizuki put up his fake smile again. "I'm afraid not. And Kimimaro-kun should know better than coming to the training grounds after closing hour."

"He just loves to train, that's all," I said trying to sound defensive, reacting to his chiding tone. I wondered if I could spring out of the window but figured I had no chance to escape two fully trained shinobi.

"…Yes, everyone wants to become stronger don't they?" The pale haired man mumbled. I didn't like the darkness that overshadowed his eyes at those words. Not at all. The greed and desire that poured out of him was suffocating. I knew he wouldn't keep his façade for long. This is my chance, I thought wildly while keeping a straight face, now or never. Keep calm, deep breath…

"Well, I should go. Kimimaro must arrive anytime now, and I probably should leave you to your jobs," I said and gave the two ninja a polite bow. Something cold crawled up my spine as I felt their gaze at me. I begged to Gods above to make them believe me. Believe me, believe me and let me go…

I gave them a last smile and turned around. I was about to leave the classroom as Mizuki's voice held me back. "Ah, Ren-san?"

I stopped, my heart pumping so loudly I was sure they must have heard me, and sweat prickled on my palms. My throat felt sore with the tension and I felt sick. Turn around Ren! My mind yelled at the panicking me, turn around dammit!

"Yes, sensei?"

When I turned and looked up, Mizuki was standing right behind me. I could feel his breath on my skin- "Don't tell anyone about this, please," the man whispered sending me a shiver all over my body, "it's a secret mission and I don't want anyone else to come to your unfortunate… misunderstanding."

"…Oh, I understand, Mizuki-sensei. I-I can keep secrets," My eye innocently wide, I gestured my lips closed like a zipper with my fingers, Mizuki gave me a patient grin. "Uhm, have a good night, sensei."

"You too, Ren-san." He answered and let me leave.

Gods, Gods, he let me leave, Gods…

I counted every step every breath, my spine tense but still I was breathing. I stepped over the door frame and my mind whirled with thoughts - What now? What now? What should I do?

Go to straight to the Hokage? But it was so late, was he even in the tower? And wouldn't Mizuki or the woman keep an eye on me? Good lord, where was Kimimaro – they hadn't seen him had they? Were they going to come after him, too? I needed a plan, I needed to think fast, my feet were close to running, but I wanted to get out of here, I needed to keep calm, I needed to tell–

Then, I heard it.

The sharp whistle of cutting wind.

And the crushing of flesh and bones.

"…What the- WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT, KIN?!"

I stared, not really hearing Mizuki's yelling, wide-eyed at my stomach. Senbon, I thought in panic, Senbon were sticking out of my body. A dark red stain spread over my yellow kimono. The golden bells soaking in blood…

Nausea and pain swallowed my mind. I fell, hard.

"This bitch saw us, you twat, of course I had to kill her." said the purring voice of the woman. My blurry eyes stared at her as she gave me a wide smirk. She's happy, I thought, she's happy I'm dying…I'm dying…

"She's an ignorant civilian who is a fucking fortune-teller! A foreign one at that! Nobody was going to believe her anyways! Besides, I had plans to use her for Orochimaru-sama's plans..."

"Ha, don't even try to fuck with me, you loser. I know you just wanted to get into her pants-„

"Shut up! This one's brother is a bloodline limit user one of the Kaguya clan. And you know how Orochimaru-sama loves to experiment on freaks like them..." I heard Mizuki furiously whisper. I tried to crawl away, pain surging with every move. Oh Gods, help me…

"…Che, she's a pretty little thing for such a monster." The woman was saying, and yanked my braid hard. "AH!" I screamed, feeling the warmth leaving my body in terrifying speed. She brutally kicked me on the sides, until something cricked and my lungs were collapsing. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, blood in mouth and everywhere, oh Gods I was going to die –

"Not so pretty now huh you slut?"

I must have lost consciousness in between; when I came back to myself, I heard a wet, squishing sound as a senbon was forced out of my body – and then the woman stabbed me more, repeatedly. Blood gurgled out every opening of my body and I felt my mind slipping. I couldn't even feel the assault stopping, everything was burning and aching so much and I wanted to go home…Oh…

"Maybe I should skin your face and pop those eyes out…"

"Stop it already! Shit, didn't she say her brother was coming here? We need to hide her body."

My body convulsed violently as they hauled me outside. I couldn't move, my head hurt so badly, more bones cracking as somebody dumped me to the ground. I wasn't breathing, was I? Was I already dead?

"Quick, let's bury her beneath the tree. I'll come back tomorrow with a corpse scroll. Orochimaru-sama will appreciate the gift..."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight, to make them hurt but I was losing consciousness so rapidly, and felt every dirt they piled on top of me, lying in the hole they dug for my body. The smell of sand and stone on my face, the blood, the cold pain-

Gods, this is my grave, I thought before entirely blacking out, Gods this is my grave…

Then, nothing.