"Kizuna, I think you're ready to be on your own."

"What?"

It was a few weeks, maybe a month, and a much less eventful flight-for-our-lives after the one where I had physically wrecked and been emotionally wrecked. Bunshirou was now kneeling down in front of me so we were eye-to-eye and had delivered his news with something like a smile on his freshly-shaven face, like this should be exciting or something. Me being on my own? Was he nuts? No, no, of course he wasn't nuts. If my life partner slash mentor teacher father-ish figure was nuts then where did that leave me?

No, clearly he had his own reasons. And if I stopped overthinking long enough, I might get to hear them.

"You're ready to be on your own," he repeated, unhelpfully.

Or not. My right eye twitched. "Okay?"

He rubbed my shoulders encouragingly, stood back up, and began to walk away like it was over.

It wasn't over. "Tou-san, where are you going?"

"Hmm? To go cut up some potatoes."

"No, I mean. Where are you going that I have to be left alone?"

He stopped, turned around and knelt down to face me again. You'd think that after years of being small I'd be used to people kneeling so they could talk to me without me having to crane my neck to see their faces and it wouldn't bother me. You'd be wrong.

"I'm looking for a job, just something I can do regularly during the day so I don't have to leave you alone all the time. But you're six now-"

My eyebrows shot straight up. When did that happen? When did I turn six? The days of training ran together as we lived away from society, with only the brief intermissions of chaos and terror and subsequent recuperation to remind me that I wasn't living in Groundhog Day, and even then I wasn't convinced I wasn't living in some kind of Groundhog Week or Month. It wasn't like I had a wall calendar. I barely had paper and ink to practice my kanji.

Plus, since when were six-year-olds allowed to fend for themselves?

Oh. My baby boomer mother had at six years old been thrown outside to play and come back by dinner in an age where child kidnappings were more common and far less reported on the news than the age in which I had grown up. Her two-year-old sister was often forced to tag along, and one time she beat up another six-year-old for being annoying.

If a two-year-old could fend for herself, what was stopping me?

"-and I know you can defend yourself-"

I had, in retrospect, realized that the shinobi I had fought most recently were likely genin level - they hadn't actually given me too much of a fight, and the war had dragged on for so long that I was seeing fewer and fewer full-grown adult shinobi in the battles. I didn't know how else I could've beat two of them at my size and skill. Moreover I had hesitated to kill the Konoha-nin who was still trying to kill me in his dying moments when it shouldn't have been a question since letting him kill me would have been akin to suicide. I wasn't sure that I would have qualified me as Capable of Defending Myself™.

"-and I'll be back when I can to keep training you-"

Well at least there was that. I had maybe two jutsu I could use, both without requiring a handsign (one was a simple genjutsu). I knew exactly four official handsigns, all of which I had carried over from Before, but without knowing any jutsu, three of them were useless. The only one I could use was the one everyone knew that accelerated the process of building up chakra. And I knew the handsign for shadow clones but I hadn't been trained in using it so that was useless unless I wanted to risk chakra depletion. (Then again, Itachi had managed a clone at my age, so maybe I could do it too.)

"-and then maybe we can go buy some clothes that fit you-"

That would be nice, especially since all my clothes had had to be modified so now there was far too much open skin than was healthy for winter. And yet sewing equipment was still cheaper than actual clothing. What was with the markets here? Or was it just America that was like that?

"-and, if I make enough, we can start buying more food in the village instead of hunting all the time."

"Food?"

After nearly two years of food being primarily for sustenance, I had learned to be simultaneously open minded about what we ate based on availability and also scrutinous because nutrition was extremely important. With all the meat that was on the menu, I was probably going to end up with some pretty severe atherosclerosis, but on the other hand it had been a better source of fuel than whatever I was eating before in Yuki no Kuni.

My inner glutton eventually won out, though, and I had to resist doing a happy dance. I was sick and tired of pot roast and spit-roast and jerky and stew with the only interesting flavorings (not that organ meat didn't have an interesting flavor) coming from whatever strange plants we added in a gamble that they wouldn't kill us, and the occasional feast of potatoes (not even gnocchi, which made me sad, but wheat flour was expensive and eggs were rare) whenever they were in season and on sale on the few days we went into the village for supplies. I was so ready for curry and ramen and sushi and mochi to reenter my life for real and not just in my crazy vivid food dreams.

"You like that, don't you?" said Bunshirou, smiling.

My face immediately fell. "Why'd you have to do that?"

Bunshirou's face also fell. "Do what?"

My face turned the color of my hair, if the heat I felt from it was any indication, and I had to look away. My adult was showing. "Nevermind."

Bunshirou stared for a few seconds, then got up and went back to whatever he was doing. Potatoes, I think. I picked at the loose threads in the lower hem of my shirt. Then another question hit me.

"What took you so long?"

"Hm?"

"More like… what made you decide now was the time to go get a job? I mean..." There were plenty of opportunities for him to go. Sensory training. Iron palm training. Tree-walking. Literally any training I did on my own and didn't require a partner. That one day he had managed to sneak away to go into town and buy me mochi for my birthday. Heck, he could've brought me into town so I could wander the streets while he worked. Didn't Yugakure have a training program for their shinobi? Why not put me there? All these things crossed my mind, but my tongue would not move to articulate them.

He regarded my question with an upward tilt of his head, his back to me as he sharpened his kunai. "It's just as I said. You've proven you can defend yourself, even if you're still reluctant to kill. If I had left you alone before, you could've been attacked and killed. Now you have a fighting chance."

"So I could be attacked and live," I finished for him.

"You're six," he repeated, raising his head again to think. "It might seem silly, but looking back, I don't think I expected you to have progressed this far in such short time. Yet here you are."

"Are you saying I'm some kind of genius?"

"No," he replied, lowering his head to focus on his weapons again. "Just that I didn't expect life to force you to advance so far in this."

"Good, because I don't think I could handle being a genius."

I sincerely believed that. The last thing I needed was for people to associate me with the level of prodigy and genius attributed to the great shinobi like Kakashi or Itachi or Minato or anyone in the Nara clan. I just needed to be good enough that nobody would challenge me, but without the fame that would have people recognizing me and sending bounty hunters after me. Then I realized the only way to remain unchallenged was to be famous enough that people would know not to challenge me as soon as they saw me; otherwise they'd mistake me for a mook, a pest to get out of the way. I'd have to reevaluate my training goals and controlling my public image. Not that I had a method of controlling my public image as it was. I should get on that.

"I don't think it'd be so bad," he mused.

"You were a genius," I pointed out. "And your clan hated you for it."

"Do you think I hate you?"

"No." I think you love me very much. And I… appreciate you. My skin tingled uncomfortably, as if my sweat glands were waking up in anticipation of being used.

"Do you want to have freedom in your life?"

"Yes…?"

"And you realize that freedom isn't free."

"Of course."

"So to work I go, and you go on being a genius of hard work, and one day we might both be free."

He turned around, the conversation over, and went back to whatever he was doing.

Genius of hard work? No. Just no. I had zero business being compared to Naruto or Rock Lee, both of them established highly effective kinesthetic achievers. I had been lazy in the before, and given the chance I'm sure I would've been in this life too. My tactical abilities were untested, untrained, and probably subpar. While most of my training was taijutsu-based at this point, I had no desire to be a taijutsu master. And I think I've shown that I did not have the sheer enthusiasm and will power of the two, nevermind the huge emotional intelligence they sported.

My only motivation to train anything at all nowadays was to mitigate the threat of imminent death that came from living within a war zone, and even then… was it worth it?

What was it even worth, anyway?

...I guess there was still food.

What? You were expecting something sentimental?


Months passed. Bunshirou left in the mornings and came back after dark, exhausted and ready for dinner and always demanding to see what I, sleepy because the sun had been down for an hour or so by then, had done that day.

He brought me embezzled paper from where he worked, an onsen with a name in kanji I didn't recognize and a pronunciation I didn't bother to remember. They also had pens. Like actual pens and not just calligraphy brushes. I had to laugh at the technological disparity, that a world ruled by ancient notions of feudalistic and militaristic societies where metal tools were considered one's best weapon also had the plastic and the manufacturing facilities to create a ballpoint pen. Then again, Yuki no Kuni had been fairly industrialized when I still lived there.

Giving me the paper and pen was a mistake, at least initially, because all I wanted to do with them was doodle all day. And I did a couple of times. I spent far too much time doodling.

Bunshirou commented derisively one day that my triceps were no longer rock hard, so I switched to doing what I did best: doodling and doing whatever until sundown, with the occasional break to check the traps, and then putting the meat on the fire and pouring an entire day's worth of training into an hour and regretting it the next day due to soreness from overexertion. So I improved, but I think Bunshirou was still disappointed.

Eventually I admitted to him that I was bored.

He tore me a new one. It was just like fifth grade, only physical because he was my father and not a teacher who would definitely get sued if she laid a hand on me ever. I definitely deserved it though - I knew I had things to do and I knowingly did not do them. And I tried to ignore the voice of Uchi Naru as she continually reminded me that, had I any integrity with keeping my word and bothered to practice the things, I could be learning new, more interesting things. Because I was a prodigy, remember? And even prodigies had to practice.

That was when the pen and paper were finally put to good use: writing. Specifically writing what I had done that day. I still didn't know a lot of kanji but I had finally picked up enough spoken Japanese that I could piece it together in hiragana. Because no way was I going to explain romaji and English to him. Or any other language I had half-known in the Before.

And… I guess I sort of got back on track?

I had hit a plateau in my training. It was less than gratifying to see the numbers stay more or less the same for the first week. Then Bunshirou offered me some alternative exercises and I began to see progress again.

He promised to bring me into town soon.


The forest was quiet and Disney-esque as Bunshirou and I approached the village gates. The skies were gray, composed mainly of big and tall fluffy clouds with flat bottoms, sinking and threatening to dump the first winter snow on the land. They had been threatening this for several days now, and to my relief (and probably also the tourists' relief) they had not made good on it yet. My long-accumulated immunity to cold had been slowly wearing away with the temperate weather Yu no Kuni had during the rest of the year, and I didn't have a winter haori that fit me yet.

That was one of the objectives, actually. New and oversized clothes I could grow into over the winter plus a cushy haori for the days when the wind, normally calm and light, was for a change relentless in its assault on my skin.

Tou-san had been given one day off from work, a desk job slash bouncer at one of the larger hot springs in the village, I learned. He was using it to clothe me. He was working very hard and I was grateful to him for it, even if the previous months' laziness suggested otherwise.

We stepped through the gates and the sight of people whispering in groups caught his attention. Normally they walked around doing their business and generally politely ignoring each other. Even more interesting to me was the variance in attire. Some of the groups included those who wore hitai-ate marked with three diagonal slashes - Yu-nin. A small handful of groups were clad in denim and leather, quite unlike the popular yet comfortable traditional garments the rest of the civilians wore. A few of the Yu-nin regarded us as we passed the groups, but otherwise nobody paid notable attention to us.

I tugged on Bunshirou's haori sleeve as we wove our way through people. "Tou-san, what's happening?" I whispered.

"Listen and learn," he whispered back.

Solid advice. So I did, using my candle training and a thin stream of chakra to expand my senses in hopes of picking up words and not just a sea of gibberish. Closing my eyes would've helped, but I didn't have that luxury since I was, you know, walking around a place that, while not entirely unfamiliar, I couldn't yet navigate with my eyes shut. I made a mental note to address that later.

"-could drive Kumo to agree to such terms?"

"-nothing's official yet, but they say-"

"-course you'd expect this sort of weakness from-"

"-fucking pansies-"

I didn't have to hear the names to figure out that this had to do with the war involving Konoha and Kumo. Agreement? Weakness? Either one side had been severely crushed recently in a battle that we had fortunately not been caught in, or-

"The daimyos will never agree to peace on these terms."

"Nor should they."

The snippets of conversation immediately cut off as Bunshirou pulled me into a small building. Probably for the best, since I was losing touch with reality in favor of eavesdropping and was amazed that I hadn't tripped over my own feet, themselves encased in too-small shinobi sandals (which were, to my relief, the only shoes I ever had that weren't the most uncomfortable things when I outgrew them).

The inside was lined with racks and stacks of clothing, both western and traditional Japanese. I immediately went for a stack of pants, a baggy, light greenish khaki stack drawing my attention, but was steered to the more generic navy blue ones. On one hand that was exciting - those were shinobi-grade pants, appropriate for someone who apparently had shinobi-level combat skills, and they wouldn't stain or tear as easily as something light like khaki. On the other hand, I really liked that khaki. It was one of the few colors that didn't make my salmon-colored hair seem overly saturated, as if I belonged on the Vegas strip.

I was ushered into a dressing room to try on the pants. The goal was to find two pairs with legs long enough to just brush the tops of my feet and baggy enough that they'd fit normally by spring. Because, let's face it, I wasn't getting new clothes again for a year or so unless this set got absolutely destroyed, and even then I was likely to just loosen the strings holding together the clothes I had already outgrown. I had had to cut the side hems off of them, sew in eyelets, and use cheap ribboning to tie the pieces together. Possibly a flattering look for a teenager or twenty-something, but definitely not for a kindergartener, much less a kindergartener future-killer.

I exited the stall, my pants chosen and the rest folded and placed for the shopkeeper to put back on the racks. Immediately my senses tingled.

They have displeased the gods.

More whispering?

We shall have to see to it that-

I shook my head to clear the noise, as well as the rising sense of dread that had inexplicably come with it. There was Bunshirou in the corner, seemingly minding his own business, but something told me he was just as on alert as I was. I silently deposited the chosen pants in his arms and we went to find corresponding tops.


The noise didn't stop even after paying and exiting the shop. It followed us into the food bazaar, whispers on the edge of hearing and the only distinguishable words relating to god and death, and I couldn't help but feel that I should recognize it.

I mean, I didn't need to know who they were to know they were probably bad news. But the question of their identity did continue to nag at me as I hauled sacks of potatoes and cans of bamboo shoots and a few bags of other vegetables and, yes, a handful of mochi balls through the marketplace.

On the other hand, the voices of other shoppers gave me more information. Though I still couldn't make out anything specific until-

"Oof! Ah, sumimasen." I bowed shallowly, simultaneously twisting out of the way of the woman I had just bumped into (and possibly also being rude because of the nuance of angle of bowing and stuff I didn't know too much about because I so rarely interacted with people).

My putting effort into hearing what people were saying was causing me to run into people. Perhaps it was also preventing me from getting what people were saying. I backed off.

Soft eyes, Dad had once told me when I was learning how to drive, were more observant than hard eyes. Almost like using the motion-sensing principles of peripheral vision to navigate the ever-changing landscape of roads and other cars and saving the detail-oriented direct vision for signs and noticing when the yellow line in the middle changed from solid to dashed and vice versa (though that too could be perceived with peripheral vision). Now I was only listening for things on the edge of perception, for that combination of sounds that would alert me to something interesting and to it draw my focused listening.

(If only Japanese weren't so topic-oriented. Even with this new way of listening, I was still likely to lose some key information because the words I was looking for were more likely to be verb phrases that came at the end of sentences, and after that so many things were implied from the established context and I wasn't a fucking telepath.)

But the words "Kumo" and "peace" did not come up again and I left the village with more questions than answers.

Oh well. Some other time maybe. Bunshirou would probably hear the news at work and maybe tell me later.


Not much had actually changed about our financial situation since he started working a job. We were able to add more vegetables and udon to our wild meat stews, and there was that one clothes shopping trip. And Bunshirou began outfitting me with my own weapons pouches.

I patted the shuriken holster now strapped around my left thigh, kept from sliding down my new pants by the sticky bandages wrapped around it. (That was something I had wondered once, how thigh holsters could be flush against the fabric of the pantsleg no matter how loose or tight the pants themselves were.) It felt heavy and foreign. I wanted one for my other leg too, to balance things, but Bunshirou had said no. I guess that was fine. I still needed to learn how to throw shuriken anyway.

"Come here," Bunshirou said. I turned around to see him unfurling a scroll with some fancy squiggles inside and I resisted the urge to flap and squee with excitement. It was tradition, it seemed, for an OC to learn and master fuinjutsu - Shikako and Kasa had done it, after all, as had a number of other rip-off OCs. I jogged toward the display, ready for this rite of passage.

"There's a trick not many people know," he said, the corner of his lip twitching upward in amusement. He took all but one of the cans of bamboo shoots and stacked them on the blank spot in the center of the formation. Then he outright grinned as he built up chakra, accompanied by the expected low whirring, and channeled it into the paper, into which the stack of cans immediately disappeared with a "poof," the only evidence of them ever being there a kanji where the paper had once been blank and a rapidly dispersing vapor cloud.

It was a basic sealing jutsu just like the one he always used for his cooking materials and change of clothes. How could people not know about that? I stared at him, unimpressed.

It took him a moment before he realized his faux pas. "Oh right, you don't know about that. Normally one cannot seal food in a scroll, but when it's in an airtight container it's perfectly safe."

"Oh," I said. "...Are you really sure that's a little-known trick?"

"Your mother taught me that," he replied, slightly offended, like that should've answered all my questions.

It didn't. "I don't know what that means."

His face fell. "Of course not," he muttered. "Your mother was from a village famous for their fuinjutsu."

My eyes widened marginally. "...Uzushiogakure."

It was Tou-san's turn to look surprised. "Yes. How did you know?"

"Uh," I said, fishing for my usual scapegoat when I knew something about this world that I had no business knowing. Because Kaa-san sure hadn't told me and I had yet to see another person at all with red or pink hair. "Yukigakure no Academy?"

Well that was an unexpected revelation - confirmation that Kaa-san was originally from Uzushiogakure. I added that to my growing mental list of similarities between my situation and Kasa's. What was going to be next? I run into and save a dying Obito and end up preventing Madara from unleashing Kaguya on the world? (Except that was all the way in that country where Kusagakure was, not too far from Amegakure, and we were several nations away. So probably not.)

Tou-san nodded and turned away, taking out his kunai to mark up some of the tree trunks. "Sometime I'll have to take you there. When you're older."

Aside from the snarky comment about every second I'm older than I was from Uchi Naru, I nodded and took that in stride. It would certainly be interesting to see Uzushiogakure. It was also my second clue as to where I was in the timeline (the first being that Yuki no Kuni was still Yuki no Kuni and not Haru no Kuni so I wasn't in the Boruto!verse). Uzushio had existed not too long ago. Possibly still existed. Which, if indeed the case, begged the question of what had Hamauzu Naomi leave.


A|N: So this is late. Three months late, because I have terrible time management and summer classes with hours of homework every night and relatives coming to live with us and my grandfather passing and I went to edit this and it blew up and then I ignored it for a month (in favor of far-future events) mostly because of physics, and became just detached enough to conclude that it isn't complete junk and finally just uploaded it. It's been kind of hectic. Things are settling but slowly.

For April, my final word count was somewhere between 8000 and 10000 words (I wasn't very diligent about not counting all my other notes lol). That's still more than I usually write every month so… mission accomplished?

Chapter 8 is nearly finished at this point and will be up sometime in mid-August. I'm doing Flash Fiction Month, and I have a goal to put down some words in this story every day. (It's not going that well lol.) Actually you can thank FFM for this fic, since several of the elements came from their prompts.