The amazing, metastasizing chapter. Enjoy?
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Tenzou
…..
I lie awake on the bare floor of the cabin, and stare at the ceiling.
There are four bunks in the cabin the ship's captain lent us for the voyage, and there are five of us, so we've been taking turns sleeping on the floor. The first night Sempai volunteered to do it. Now it's my turn.
It's not that I mind sleeping on the floor. During my years in ANBU, I learned to sleep pretty much anywhere; perched in a tree, half submerged in a swamp, hidden up in someone's rafters, or down under someone's floor… name the place, and I've probably slept there.
No. The problem tonight is Naruto. He's been sleepwalking again.
He's got one of the top bunks, and three times already he's jumped right out of it and gone stumbling around the narrow confines of the room. Last time he very nearly landed on an extremely sensitive spot. I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn't rolled over in my sleep at just the right moment. Needless to say, I can't drop my guard again in the face of such dangers, so I'm simply lying here in the dark, listening to the sleeping noises of my teammates.
Naruto, back in his bed for the moment, is thrashing around, snorting, spluttering, and muttering something in which Jiraiya and empty wallets figure prominently.
Sai, in the bunk below, is lying completely still, quiet, and pale, with his eyes slightly open. I'd be tempted to check if he's still alive, but I recognize the habits of someone trained from a young age to be absolutely silent and alert to danger even when sleeping. I've lost my touch, somewhat, but I used to be able to do that, too.
The second top bunk is occupied by Sakura. She's not as restless as Naruto, but I can hear her toss and turn now and then, and once, during a lull in Naruto's louder rustlings, I hear her say something. Her unconscious words are slurred, but I think she's saying, "Take that, Ino-pig!"
In the bunk below her, is Sempai. He's almost as still and quiet as Sai, though if I listen for it, I can hear the whisper of his breath through the fabric of his mask. It's a familiar sound, and it brings back memories of a time when I really thought, for the first time in my life, that I was happy.
…
When someone first learns about what Orochimaru did to me, they look at me with pity. Frankly, though, I don't remember any of it. I was barely more than an infant when I was found and rescued, so my first memories are of days spent studying and training with the ANBU who raised me. I had no idea how I came to be there, or that my abilities had such an unusual origin, until they sat me down and explained it all on my thirteenth birthday.
There were the dreams, of course. They faded as I grew older, but I still have them occasionally when I've got too much on my mind; nightmares of a place lit with constant, unvarying, and unnatural light, the air thick with the sickly smell of antiseptic. And the worst of it was, I couldn't move. Sometimes, there would be people—and one person who terrified me beyond all the rest—looming over me. I couldn't see these people clearly, except on the occasions when, after being particularly strict with me, my ANBU caretakers would take the places of my tormentors in the dream. Now, of course, I realize that those dreams must been the blurred memories of Orochimaru's research facility. As a child, however, I simply assumed they were products of my imagination.
With such vague recollections, I was actually surprised to find that I still recognized Orochimaru. Prior to taking an official post in ANBU, I thought it would be a good idea to familiarize myself with the Bingo Book. As I was leafing through it, I came across the picture of a pale man with a high forehead, long black hair, a wide mouth, and unsettling golden eyes framed in purple. Looking into those eyes, I felt a clawing fear rise in me. I wanted to throw the book down and run, but of course I didn't, because being afraid of a book was absurd. I forced myself to look and see who this man was, and once I identified him as Orochimaru, I actually felt much calmer. I'd been confused and disturbed over my own reaction, but as long as I understood what it was and where it came from, I thought I could control it. And I did. I've met Orochimaru in person twice, now. When I first see him and hear his voice, there's always a surge of fear, but I can push it down until it's little more than background noise. That's just part of being an ANBU. There's no place for people who let themselves be carried away by fear. No excuses. And really, I don't need an excuse, because I'm fine.
People pity me for losing my parents, too, but I remember them even less than I remember Orochimaru. In fact, I didn't really understand that there were such things as parents until relatively late in life. No one knew what kind of after effects Orochimaru's tampering might have, so I was kept separate from the rest of the villagers, raised exclusively by ANBU. Until my mid-teens, my very existence was classified. I had no experience, therefore, with other children or with the parents of children to tell me that something was odd about my situation. My world consisted entirely of myself and the six ANBU who shared the duty of caring for me.
If there was a tragedy in my life, it was being raised like that.
I don't bear any grudge, of course. I understand why the Konoha elders thought it was necessary to keep me in isolation. And as for my caretakers… they were just doing their best to complete the mission they were given. That's just it, though. They saw raising me as a mission. There were six of them who watched over me in pairs for eight hour shifts. For those eight hours a day that they were responsible, they made sure I was well fed and healthy. They attended diligently to my education. They spent tireless hours training me to make the most of my abilities. What they never did was play with me, laugh with me, or even smile at me. During my spare hours, I was left to entertain myself while my caretakers looked on with impassive masked faces. Those cold, blank stares bothered me, and I learned quickly that the only way I could catch their interest, the only way I could really feel connected to them, was to throw myself into their training. In a certain sense, I did become close with them, especially in later years when they began to bring me out on missions, but it was an odd sort of completely professional closeness. There was nothing warm or personal about it. They were always ANBU, and I was always their mission.
That was how, entering an official ANBU squad at the age of fourteen, I found myself with absolutely no idea how to talk to my comrades. I could give and receive information pertaining to the mission, of course; that much was within the realm of my experience, but apparently there was more to it than that. My companions spent a baffling amount of time talking to each other even when it wasn't necessary, and when our work was done, they would keep together and go on talking. They talked about themselves, people they knew, and things that had happened to them. They asked questions about each other's lives, and seemed interested in knowing the answers. They joked with each other, laughing over things that made no sense to me, and gave each other little shoves and punches on the arm.
At first, they tried to include me, but I was completely bewildered, and no matter how closely I observed the behavior of the others and tried to copy it, when the time came to act, my body just didn't know what to do. When someone tried to give me a friendly touch, I'd stiffen and go on the alert. After all, in my experience, there was no reason to touch someone unless you were correcting their taijutsu form. When someone tried to joke with me… All I could do was stare blankly back at them, while my panicked mind groped for a response that wasn't there. Eventually, my squad members and the other ANBU who gathered together when they weren't working stopped trying to approach me.
There was only one who was different.
To tell the truth, I wasn't all that impressed with Sempai at first. Of course I recognized that he had incredible talent as a shinobi, but as a captain, he was… lax. He didn't seem to take anything seriously, and in return, his team didn't seem to take him seriously. Nobody bothered to address him as "Taichou," and the other members of the team talked with him and about him in exactly the same relaxed, joking manner they used with each other.
It wasn't until my third mission with my new squad that I began to revise my opinion of Sempai. The mission was a straightforward assassination of a provincial governor plotting treason against the government of the Land of Verse. There was solid evidence that he was gathering a force of rogue ninja and bandits at his estate, but by the time the King and his advisors became suspicious, this governor had ingratiated himself so thoroughly with members of the court, that passing a movement to mobilize government troupes against him had become impossible. All that was left, therefore, was for the King and his loyal advisors to have the treasonous governor quietly silenced. By us.
Another team had been sent in earlier to scout out the governor's defenses. Based on the reconnaissance they brought back to us, the mission looked fairly simple. The sheer number of the enemy was daunting, but security was loose, and as long as we could slip through undetected, what did it matter how many of them there were?
Unfortunately, things didn't go that smoothly. Among the mercenaries the governor had gathered, there was one sensory type ninja of considerable talent. The reconnaissance team had been detected, and by the time we arrived, the governor and his patchwork army were ready for us. They allowed us to work ourselves deep into their fortifications before suddenly springing into action and closing in on our members with pinpoint accuracy. Sempai, our squadmate Kannagiyama, and I all managed to evade capture, but our fourth member, Tawamu, had strayed too far ahead and was trapped. Our three remaining members regrouped deep in the surrounding forest, where Sempai judged that we would be out of range of even the best sensory ninja. I was shaken. It was my first time losing a teammate, however temporary the loss might prove to be, and I couldn't see how we could either complete our mission or retrieve Tawamu with the enemy reading our every move.
What Sempai said next didn't do much to relieve my concern. His grand plan to remedy the situation was for two more of us to get caught; specifically, himself and me. He'd studied the plans of the fortress, and there was only one place—a small room sunk into the thick stone foundation on which the fortress stood—that was secure enough to act as a jail. Furthermore, this room was directly under the governor's private quarters, so getting captured would effectively deliver us straight to the companion we were trying to save, and at the same time put us in easy striking distance of our target. I thought that, now that we knew what to expect, we might be able to fight our way through to the governor without getting captured, but when I hazarded this opinion, Sempai gently but firmly insisted that we had to tread carefully while Tawamu was still a hostage. I was a little ashamed. I hadn't really been thinking seriously about Tawamu's safety. Still, it seemed to me that, while getting caught would certainly bring us to our teammate, getting locked up with him wouldn't do anyone any good. I was reluctant to challenge Sempai's plans a second time, but it didn't seem like I had a choice. When I voiced my concern, however, Sempai simply chuckled, and said "Don't worry, Tenzou. You'll get us out in no time. " To which Kannagiyama kindly added, "And if you can't, then I'll still be free to bring reinforcements from Konoha. Eventually."
It was with grave misgivings, therefore, that I followed Sempai back to the fortress. We put on a show of trying to sneak back in and resist capture, but within half an hour we were crowded into a very small, very dark room, with our hands secured behind our backs with steel cuffs, listening to Tawamu laugh his head off.
Tawamu's mirth was seriously wearing on my nerves, but I didn't feel any tension what so ever from Sempai, whose shoulder was crammed up against mine. He just calmly waited for his subordinate to stop laughing at him before finally asking, "Tawamu. You can pick locks, can't you?"
There was a rustle and a clink from Tawamu's side of the cell as he shrugged. "Sorry. I've got my picks, but I can't reach the lock on my own cuffs."
"But you can reach the lock on mine."
"Ahh. I see. I do yours, you do mine."
"Not exactly. You do Tenzou's and mine. I'm afraid yours are going to have to wait until we meet up with Kannagiyama. Unless… Tenzou, I don't suppose you can pick locks?"
I could, actually, but it wasn't a skill I used often, so it hadn't occurred to me to offer my services. I nodded in affirmation, and then realized that my teammates couldn't see the gesture in the dark. Apparently Sempai felt it, though, and translated the nod into words for me. "You're in luck. Tenzou says he can."
There was disbelief in Tawamu's voice as he asked, "This kid? No joke?" I can understand why he was surprised. I must have looked to him like a straight-laced, elitist brat, who couldn't take a joke, and would certainly never stoop to lock picking. And maybe he wasn't entirely wrong about me, but pick locks I could, and after a bit of shuffling around and finding each-other's hands in the dark, we were all cuff-less. Now the only problem was getting out of the cell, and as I ran my now freed hands over the walls, I was beginning to form a grim picture of our chances. The little room was lined with steel, and as I explained to Sempai at the time, there was nothing that I could do with that. Earth I could move, stone I could move, metal bars I could pry apart with sturdy, grasping roots, but thick, flawlessly joined and welded plate-steel was hopeless. There was a door, of course, but it fit so tightly into its frame that not even the slenderest root tip could slip into the gap, and it seemed to be bolted from the outside rather than locked, so picking wouldn't work, either.
Sempai didn't seem bothered by the news. He just told me that if I could put a thick layer of wood between us and the metal floor, he'd take care of the rest. I couldn't imagine how that would help, but I did as I was told. As soon as I was finished, the room lit up with the dazzling light of Sempai's raikiri. He turned his face to the ceiling and studied it for a moment with catlike intensity before leaping up and putting a chakra-wrapped fist right through the plate steel. Electricity skittered down and around the walls, and a faintly charred smell rose from the wooden platform I'd built for us.
"Well, Tenzou, there's your hole. Pry away."
Wordlessly, I set to work pealing back the edges of the break in the steel, until there was a man-sized hole in the ceiling. A layer of stone still remained between us and freedom, but Sempai blasted it aside with a jutsu of his own, and pulled himself up through the resulting crevasse before I'd even finished retracting my roots. By the time Tawamu and I had clambered up after him, Sempai was waiting by the dead body of the governor, who had apparently been asleep in his quarters, just over our heads.
And just like that, the mission was accomplished.
Escape proved to be no problem, since without their employer to direct them, the cobbled-together band of mercenaries lacked cohesion. We slipped easily through the mayhem, and were back at our rendezvous point in no time.
Kannagiyama and Tawamu had just set off in the direction of Konoha, and I was ready to follow, when Sempai reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, as usual, but Sempai didn't let go. He just stood there like that until he felt my tension ease, and then gave my shoulder a final squeeze.
"Good job today, Tenzou. Glad to have you on the team."
Maybe those words were nothing special, the sort of thing that most people would barely even register, but for me… that was the first time in my life anyone had ever said they were glad I was there. And the way he waited for me to get used to his touch instead of recoiling like all the rest… After that, there was no way I could have gone on despising Sempai.
Besides. During that mission, I'd begun to see that, while Sempai's instructions might seem haphazard or just downright insane, he did usually have a plan, and he did really have the welfare of his subordinates in mind. All of his subordinates, not just the ones that could be seen as valuable assets to Konoha. My ANBU caretakers had always protected me religiously, but that was because I carried the Shodaime's DNA. Tawamu, while certainly a competent ANBU, was hardly irreplaceable, and I realized that Sempai must have prioritized getting him back safely out of concern for him as an individual, not as a tool. This was a novel idea to me, and logically it didn't really seem to fit into the ANBU codes that had been drilled into me as a kid. ANBU were tools, and I wasn't sure it was acceptable for a squad captain to lose sight of that. But… somehow there was something very appealing about Sempai's way of thinking. I thought I'd felt secure in the flawlessly professional hands of my caretakers, but when Sempai touched my shoulder and told me he was glad to have me, I felt like he was supporting me in ways I hadn't even known I needed support.
I started to watch how the rest of the team interacted with him with greater attention, and came to understand that, beneath their joking manner, they really trusted and respected Sempai. They put up with his counterintuitive orders because they had faith that he'd make everything turn out right in the end, and that his idea of "right" had bringing us all home alive and well at the very top of the list.
I also, however, noticed that Sempai rarely bothered to engage in their joking and talking. In some respects, he was much more like me, spending most of his spare time alone, rarely asking after the friends and family of his subordinates, or even seeming to listen when Kannagiyama and Tawamu brought up the subject themselves. He was generally just as unresponsive as I was to jokes or personal questions, and he didn't even have the excuse of being rendered speechless. He actually seemed to be outright ignoring the speaker, which made him much the ruder of the two of us, in my opinion. And yet no one shunned Sempai the way they did me. I was confused, a little envious, a little impressed, and determined to find out how he managed to pull it off, so I began to spend more and more time with Sempai, observing him.
At least, that was my initial goal. I soon forgot all about it.
My attempts to study Sempai led me to find excuses to stay close to him even outside of missions. At first it was just helping him with administrative paperwork in the ANBU lounge. The only thing I learned about Sempai from that exercise, however, was that he would have made an abysmal clerk. Sempai's version of a "completed" form was generally missing at least half of the necessary information. I couldn't stand the idea of those forms being filed in that woefully inadequate state, so I surreptitiously began fixing Sempai's share of the paperwork in addition to completing my own. After I started doing this, the quality of Sempai's work fell drastically, and I realized that Sempai not only had noticed what I was doing, but had no qualms about leaving everything to me. I stopped trying to be subtle, therefore, and simply took on the lion's share of the work. I didn't really mind. It gave me just the excuse I was looking for to stay with Sempai longer, and it wasn't as if I had anything else to do. When I'd first been released from my quarantine in ANBU, I took pleasure in just walking around town, wandering wherever my fancy took me or drifting along with the crowds of ordinary townsfolk. That form of entertainment palled rapidly, however, and then I had nothing to do outside work but return to the tiny, single-room apartment I'd been given, and sit by myself.
One night, when I had been "helping" Sempai until particularly late in the evening, I found that instead of turning aside to go to my own apartment, I'd actually followed Sempai to his. The two of us realized my mistake at approximately the same time, and for one awkward moment we just stood there and stared at each other outside Sempai's room. Then he shrugged and opened his door.
"Why not. Come on in, Tenzou." Not knowing what else to do, I followed him inside.
That first visit didn't last long. Somehow, being alone with Sempai, having his attention completely fixed on me instead of being constantly drawn away by the stream of people who came to talk to him (or at least at him) in the ANBU lounge, was completely different. I was too filled with nervous excitement to be able to talk, so I escaped after only a few minutes.
It was a beginning, though. The next time Sempai found himself bogged down in paperwork, he paused before sitting down at our usual spot in the lounge, and looked from the table, to the papers in his hand, to the loitering ANBU already beginning to take note of his presence, and finally to me.
"Mind if we work at my place? It'll be quieter."
I didn't mind. I was more than willing, actually. The memory of the strange sensations I'd felt the last time I was alone with Sempai had faded enough to leave me ashamed of having gotten worked up for what I concluded must have been no reason. I was determined to try it again and redeem myself. So, I followed him home, and was, in fact, quite fine. That was probably due in large part to the presence of the mountain of paperwork, since it absorbed most of my attention, but the fact that we arrived at his apartment in broad daylight also helped. I've since come to realize that Sempai and night time are a dangerous combination for me.
Several more afternoons at Sempai's ensued, and I began to relax around Sempai to a degree I hadn't imagined possible. Until the age of fourteen I had been under nearly constant surveillance. Even while I slept, the two ANBU who had the night shift would be in the room with their eyes trained on me. No one literally watched me on the toilet, at least, but there was always someone just outside the door. Under those conditions, I was never able to completely let my guard down. Never. I was always watching my caretakers, looking for a sign that I was doing something wrong, and watching myself to make sure I was fulfilling all their expectations perfectly. When I was finally given my own apartment and could be really alone for the first time… Well, for the first few days the experience was too novel to be enjoyed, but as I got used to it, I felt delicious freedom opening out all around me. Being with Sempai was kind of like being alone, in that respect. He never seemed particularly concerned about the flaws of other people… or his own. Imperfection was accepted, even expected.
But being with Sempai was hands-down better than being alone. After the novelty of freedom had worn off, I began to find being alone so much… lonely, and while I never really knew what to say to people, I found myself yearning to talk to someone. In the course of my visits to his apartment, Sempai became that someone.
When I first met Sempai, I found talking to him just as awkward as talking to anyone else. He, however, never seemed disturbed by my blank stares and unresponsiveness. If he needed an answer, he was unfailingly patient with me while I collected my wits enough to give one. If he didn't, he would simply shrug and sink into an amicable silence. Most of our time together in his apartment was a continuation of that pattern, but occasionally if I didn't answer, he would just quietly go on talking… not to himself; I always had the sense that he was talking very specifically to me, but in such a way that I wouldn't have to say anything if I didn't want to.
And since there was no pressure on me to supply the right reply at the right time, I found that I could really enjoy listening to Sempai. His voice soothed me, and when he mentioned people he knew, I found myself genuinely interested in them. I even found myself wanting to know more than Sempai's oblique references to the people and events in his life revealed. That was a great relief to me. I had been beginning to wonder, if there was something wrong with me for not being interested in hearing about the lives and well being of Tawamu and Kannagiyama. In my upbringing, inquiring after people had been pointless. Every moment of my life was observed, so my ANBU caretakers already knew exactly how I was, and never bothered with the empty courtesy of asking. Their lives, on the other hand, were complete black-boxes to me, but whenever it occurred to me to ask about them, my questions were ignored. On the whole, I came away with the impression that if you didn't already know everything about someone, you weren't supposed to, and I stopped thinking about it. I'd begun to realize, however, that out here in the world, lack of interest in other people's lives was considered not merely rude, but pathological. I'd tried to be interested, therefore, in what Tawamu and Kannagiyama said of themselves and the people they knew, but I just couldn't seem to manage it. Listening to Sempai, however, I realized that I wasn't some sort of sociopath. It was just that the anxiety that usually pervaded all my social interactions drove away every other thought and feeling.
Now that I wasn't so nervous, I could listen with clear attention, and one evening I got so caught up in the moment that I forgot to be tongue-tied. The "conversation" that night was about our next mission, which was supposed to be a three team operation. Two ANBU squads were backing up a squad of regular jounin. Kakashi apparently knew the leader of the regular squad, a shinobi by the name of Maito Gai, and had been tasked with picking out a second ANBU squad that would be capable of working with him. As I worked through the reports for the last mission, therefore, he looked through the available squads for the next one.
Sempai had mentioned Maito Gai on several other occasions, and though he never said much, I was beginning to get the impression that they were fairly close. He always spoke about Gai with such a peculiar mix of respect and derision that I couldn't help but be intrigued… and at the same time irritated. I liked that Sempai wasn't critical of me, but at the same time I was jealous of this Maito Gai for being able to goad Sempai out of his benevolent apathy. I couldn't help thinking that he was only so open-minded with the rest of us because we didn't really matter to him. Every time Sempai mentioned Gai's name, therefore, I got a little more annoyed. Around the fifth time Sempai muttered something to the effect of "I can't use this team. The captain won't be able to deal with Gai's insanity," or "Hmm. I don't think they'll be able to keep up with Gai's ridiculous pace…," I couldn't help but blurt out petulantly, "You keep complaining about Gai-san, Sempai, but you really like him, don't you."
Sempai stopped in the middle of what he was doing and stared at me. He looked about as surprised as if his armchair had just accused him of preferring the sofa. I blushed and buried myself in paperwork again, cursing the impulse that had made me open my mouth and vowing never to do so again. Sempai had other ideas, though.
"Like Gai, huh," he mused, "That's not quite how I would have put it, Tenzou, but I'll admit he has some admirable qualities." He then calmly proceeded to give me a short lecture on Gai's flaws and virtues. I couldn't imagine what he was trying to accomplish until he closed his description with, "So. Now that you have a better idea of who we're dealing with, what do you think of Takahane and his team as the second squad?"
Still embarrassed and wishing to be left alone with my paperwork, I made no answer.
Sempai waited for about a minute before saying, "Too late, Tenzou, you've tipped your hand. I know you've got an opinion, so out with it, please."
I was somewhat alarmed by that, but remained silent in the hopes that he would give up, after all. He didn't. He kept badgering me, quietly but persistently, until I finally caved. I was feeling rather harassed by then, however, and snapped out my opinion of Takahane and his squad with more pique, and much more honesty than I had intended. Sempai was surprised again, but recovered quickly. He chuckled and told me he agreed completely before reading off the next squad on his list and looking at me expectantly. I was still a little annoyed with him for pressing me, but making Sempai laugh had felt surprisingly… good, and the temptation to do it again was too great. By the end of the evening, he'd managed to extort my opinion of every squad on the list, and finally chosen from one of the two I'd approved of.
"Thanks, Tenzou. That was a great help." He smiled. "Now just one more question. What do you think of Tawamu and Kannagiyama?"
I'd actually been enjoying myself quite a bit, but when he asked that question I sobered instantly. I had always thought that Sempai got along well with the other members of our team, and I suddenly felt like I was in a dangerous situation. I was afraid to answer truthfully, but I didn't want him to catch me in a lie, either. When he prompted me to answer again, and I said stiffly, "I don't think they're bad people."
He regarded me with the same bland smile for a few moments before saying, "But you don't like them."
I frowned, and looked away. "I didn't say that."
Sempai leaned down to where I was sitting on the floor and rested a hand on my shoulder. Again, he waited out my conditioned response. "They're not bad people, Tenzou, just people. So don't be too hard on them, OK? Try talking to them the way you talked to me tonight, and I'm willing to bet things will start going a lot more smoothly."
All I could do was sit there, staring at the floor. He'd never given the slightest hint, before, that he'd noticed I wasn't fitting in the rest of the team, and now that I knew he'd been watching, I was torn between embarrassment that he'd seen me so weak, and gratitude for his kindness.
Finally, I took refuge in the stack of paperwork, which had fallen by the wayside while I'd been talking to Sempai. "It'll take half the night to finish all this," I grumbled, not really minding, but finding it easier to be gruff in that situation. I heard a soft chuckle from Sempai, and when I snuck a glance at him out of the corner of my eye, found him watching me work with a smile.
I didn't look up again until I'd put the finishing touches on the mission report. By then it was long past midnight, and Sempai had fallen asleep on the couch. I leaned closer to him, but before I could make up my mind whether to wake him up or just let myself out of his apartment, I was distracted. I'd never had a chance to really, really look at Sempai before. Now that he was lying half curled on the couch before me, bathed in the soft, warm light of the lamp, I couldn't stop looking. To call him beautiful would have been to merely scratch the surface. Of course he was physically beautiful; somewhere in my head I'd already known that Sempai was good looking. But there was more to it than that. Even asleep, every line of his face and body seemed to exude rich, whimsical personality. When he was awake, though, there was something about him that made him seem very… distant; untouchable, despite all the casual touches he bestowed. You didn't dare go to him, you just had to hope he'd come to you in whatever small way he was willing to. Now that he was asleep, however, there was nothing to stop me from getting as close as I wanted. And I suddenly wanted to get very close. I wanted to climb up onto the couch with Sempai and fit myself so tightly together with him that there was no space left between us.
But even I, sheltered though I was, knew that couldn't go well. Inviting as he might look, the moment I touched him, he'd wake, and the spell would be broken. So I peeled my eyes away, and contented myself with curling up on the floor beside his sofa and listening to the soft, slightly muffled sounds of his breathing.
From that day on, I spent every moment I could with Sempai. Through my time with him, I gradually learned how to get along with my other squad mates, too, but I didn't care about that anymore. As long as I could be with Sempai, I was happy, because without the slightest Idea what love was, I'd fallen for Sempai completely.
Looking back, I'm ashamed of how I openly I clung to Sempai over the following few months, but at the time I was deliriously and obliviously happy. I was even satisfied with Sempai's passive acceptance of my adoration. I was thinking only about how I felt, and it never occurred to me to worry about what other people thought of me, or even really what Sempai thought of me.
And then my Eden was stolen away by Tawamu, Kannagiyama, and their damned dog-collar gag.
Our usual gathering place for away-missions was a little clearing about a mile outside Konoha. That particular morning, I'd been running an errand for Sempai and arrived a little behind the others. I was just about to step out of the shadows of the trees when I heard Tawamu call out to Sempai, saying he'd gotten a gift for his new ninken. I'd paused just within the shadows of the trees to wonder when Sempai had gotten a new dog, and therefore remained unobserved while the scene unfolded before me.
At first, Sempai merely made a non-committal noise and went on reading his book, but when Tawamu held something out to him, he had to take it. Absently, he glanced over the object in his hand. Then he froze, his eye opening wide with surprise. Several seconds ticked by before he recovered himself. He passed the object back to Tawamu, frowning slightly.
Tawamu grinned. "What, you don't want it? You sure?"
"Thanks, I'm sure," Sempai answered with a gravity that was completely at odds with the jovial mood of his companion.
"Aw, that's a shame," Tawamu laughed as he walked away. "I think it'd look very fetching on him."
Kannagiyama had been watching from the other side of the clearing, trying to stifle her laughter. As Tawamu sauntered back to her, she took her hand away from her mouth. "I don't think he liked your gift much."
Tawamu shrugged, still grinning. "Can't think why. But… maybe he'd accept it if it came straight from the person in question? Whadya think, should we test it out when he gets here?"
Kannagiyama choked on her laughter, and stared at him with an expression verging on horror. "Stop it." She said, finally, "That's going too far, Tawamu. The kid won't think it's funny."
Tawamu cocked his head. "I dunno, I think his sense of humor has gotten worlds better, lately. Haven't you heard him? Never would have thought it to begin with, but the kid's a regular comedian. Besides. Kakashi didn't think it was funny, either. Did you see his face?"
Kannagiyama shook her head. "Whether or not he's got a sense of humor is beside the point. The kid's really in love, Tawamu. You'll hurt him. Kakashi's a completely different story. You couldn't touch that boy's heart with a ten foot pole."
Tawamu looked at the object in his hand. "So no, huh? And after I went to the trouble of getting it engraved…"
"No," Kannagiyama insisted. "Here. I'm taking that away from you so you can't get into any more mischief." She snatched the object from his palm and tossed it into the underbrush. Then, as if to reinforce the idea that the joking was at an end, she pulled her ANBU mask down over her face, and turned away.
I had, by this point, the uncomfortable feeling that all this had something to do with me. I was the last person expected to arrive before we set off, and therefore the only person Tawamu could have been referring to when he asked if they should "test it out when he gets here." But if that was the case, what had they meant by saying I was in love? I didn't understand, at first. I'd never put a name to my feelings for Sempai before. Did Kannagiyama think I was in love with Sempai? Was I in love with Sempai? The way my heart tried to take off from inside my chest and soar into the sky at the idea gave me a fairly clear answer to the last question. For a few moments, I reveled in the knowledge. But then… what had Kannagiyama meant when she said that you couldn't touch Sempai's heart with a ten foot pole? That didn't sound encouraging, and neither was Sempai's grave look in response to whatever joke Tawamu had pulled.
The first thing was to find out exactly what the joke had been. I'd seen where the object had landed, so I quietly sent out a root to retrieve it. A collar—a dog collar, from the tacky bone-shaped tag—with my name carved on it. So I was Sempai's new dog. Kannagiyama had been right. It did hurt. But not that much. It was embarrassing to see how my behavior had looked through my teammates' eyes, and I was angry that instead of warning me that I was acting foolish, they chose to play this stupid prank, and on Sempai. But Kannagiyama was wrong about that part of it. I wouldn't have minded nearly as much if they'd just played their trick on me, and kept Sempai in the dark, because ultimately the only thing I really cared about was how Sempai would react. Maybe Sempai had known all along that I was in love with him, and had let me stay by him anyway. With that possibility there was hope, at the very least that Sempai didn't mind me being in love with him, and maybe even that he might feel something like that for me, too. If he hadn't known, though, and if he did mind…
For the rest of the mission, I watched Sempai closely. The casual observer probably wouldn't have noticed anything different about him, but I'd gotten to know him pretty well by then. I could tell something was bothering him just from the way he moved, and since the mission was a walk in the park, I was fairly certain it was Tawamu's joke. By the time we reached home again, there was no doubt in my mind that he hadn't realized, until Tawamu pointed it out, that my behavior was abnormal. I still couldn't really tell, however, what he thought of it. We picked up the paperwork for the mission report as usual, and he made no move to stop me from following him back to his apartment. That gave me a little hope, but it soon faded. He barely looked at me or spoke to me all evening. It didn't seem as if he was deliberately avoiding me; there was nothing like shyness, embarrassment, or even repulsion in the way he was acting. It was more like he had some difficult and unpleasant problem occupying his mind, and couldn't be bothered to notice that I was there.
I was crushed.
I was also furious. I couldn't really pick out anything concrete that Sempai had done wrong, but his reaction felt like a betrayal. He'd been the first person to take the time to get to know me, the first person to take an interest in what I was thinking or feeling, the first person who actually seemed to appreciate having me around. He'd given me a safe place to learn how to be a proper human being. And the moment he realized I loved him for it, he backed out. I still think Sempai wasn't entirely free of blame. I don't mean to say he should have loved me. Even in my pain and anger, I had known that was unfair. Allowing me to get as close to him as I did, though: that was a mistake on his part. I was just a fourteen year old kid who had been raised in a bubble. There was no way I could have known better, but Sempai was four years older, and in no way naïve. He could have, and should have, paid more attention to what he was doing and the effect it was having on me. It wasn't as though I was being subtle. As I found out later, everyone in ANBU knew that I was head over heels in love with Sempai. The only two who failed to notice, were Sempai and me.
Whether or not Sempai did anything wrong, it took me quite some time to forgive him for it. Naturally, as soon as I realized my affection was unwanted, I stopped sticking to Sempai like a limpet. That could have been as much for his benefit as mine, but I didn't stop there. I wanted to punish him. He'd get no more favors from me. The bastard could do his own damn paper work, and while I would continue to obey orders as his subordinate, there was no reason I had to be particularly pleasant about it. I made my manner to him as cold and distant as I possibly could without actually sabotaging our group so thoroughly that we couldn't perform our duty (even in extremity, I was a good little ANBU). That state of affairs lasted for months. I began to waver almost immediately, really, but as soon as I began to look for signs that I could creep back into at least some semblance of closeness with him, I noticed that he didn't seem to be missing me in the least. That poured quite a bit of fuel on the fire of my resentment, because I most definitely missed him.
But my anger and resentment did eventually fade. Sempai's indifference never changed, his indifference never stopped hurting, and perhaps it's not even accurate to say that I ever really forgave him for any of that. I simply came to realize that Sempai had taken root at the center of my life, and I couldn't weed him out. Although… he was, at least, no longer the only thing in my life. I had been prepared to fall back into total isolation, but that never happened. While I wasn't looking, I'd become properly socialized. I'd even become rather adept, ironically, at entertaining my peers with jokes. To their credit, they seemed perfectly willing to forget how much they'd disliked me at first, and it was surprisingly easy to carve out a niche for myself. I could preserve myself, at least, from the comprehensive loneliness I'd felt on first joining my squad. But I never got close. I could go through the motions of being part of the group, and I could even enjoy it, but I couldn't feel the same connection to them that I had to Sempai. Flawed as he was, no one could compare to him. No one could interest me the way he could. I'd been happy with him, after all, and what could ever top that? I couldn't stay angry with him, and after a year of getting to know my world a little bit better, I began to realize that he was irrevocably the most important person to me in it.
I was cautious about showing it, this time. That much I'd learned. It had been a long time since I'd been able to muster coldness towards Sempai, but now I gradually began to talk to him the same way I talked to everyone else. I hoped that it would put him at ease; disguise the fact that he was still special to me. It worked, but there were glimmers of wariness at first, so I was careful to keep my distance and move slowly.
I never did manage to win back the same kind of closeness, but I came to know Sempai better than I ever had while I was still glued to his side. It started with a comment from the person I've come to think of as my second real friend, though we only spoke once. One day, while I was sitting in the lounge with a group of off duty ANBU, I caught sight of Sempai passing through with a stack of papers under his arm. I could see him, instantly, sitting on the couch in his apartment, elbows propped on his knees as he leaned over to scan the papers strewn over the coffee table. I ached to see it for real. And why not? Couldn't a kouhai help his sempai do some paperwork without it being a declaration of love? I'd half risen from my seat, but Sempai didn't so much as glance in my direction. I sank back down.
"So, you still haven't given up," someone commented from behind me. Startled, I twisted around. There was a purple-haired ANBU leaning on the back of the couch. I recognized the hair, but I didn't know her either by name or code-name. That was the first time we'd ever spoken, and I was annoyed that, not only did she seem to know the old story of my infatuation with Sempai, she also seemed to have seen through my feelings now.
"I don't know what you're talking about." A silly thing to have said, since we both knew I did.
"I should warn you, you're probably wasting your time. It's nothing personal, if that makes you feel any better. Kakashi doesn't let anyone get close, and believe me, there're plenty of failed attempts as evidence. We were all surprised you got as far as you did. But… I don't think he'll change his mind, even for you." She turned her head in the direction of the door Sempai had just gone out of. "And who knows? Maybe he's right, and I'll wish I'd done things his way, someday."
I hesitated for a moment, resenting the intrusion of a stranger into what was clearly not her business, but wanting to know more. Her words dredged up the memory of Kannagiyama saying something similar. "I don't understand. What's he right about? What's his 'way?'"
It was her turn to hesitate. "Tenzou… I knew one of the ANBU who used to take care of you, so I know a little bit about you. You've never lost someone you really cared about, have you." True, of course, since before Sempai, I hadn't had such a person to lose. "That's pretty rare, in ANBU. We've all lost people we love. That includes Kakashi. You know that he visits the KIA stone almost every day?"
I did. I'd tagged along on his visits more than once.
"So you know how much what happened to Obito affected him."
It had never occurred to me to ask Sempai why he visited the stone. He always seemed to be just as cheerful after his few moments alone with the rock as he was before, but… could I have completely misunderstood him all that time? And I didn't like the sound of this Obito person at all.
The purple haired ANBU was surprised when I asked her to explain.
"Then do you know how his father died?"
I could only shake my head, feeling foolish. It had begun to dawn on me that I didn't actually know much of anything about Sempai.
The ANBU sighed. "Well if you don't plan on giving up, then you should know at least that much about the man you're supposed to be in love with."
Then a suspicion darted through my mind. "Were you one of the people that tried to get close to him?" As soon as I said it, I realized that I shouldn't have, but my own interest in this strange person had taken me by surprise.
There was a soft coughing sound from behind both of us, and we turned to look. There was a young male ANBU standing there, apparently waiting. At first I thought the cough had been to alert us to his presence, but then he just kept on coughing. It wasn't violent, but it sounded moist and sickly.
The purple haired ANBU straightened up from where she was leaning on the back of the couch, and turned her body so that she was including the new-comer in the conversation, too. Her face was turned towards him as she answered, "Not the way you're thinking, Tenzou. I would have been Kakashi's friend, if he'd wanted one, but my love is already spoken for. "
The other ANBU, who had finally finished coughing, took a step toward her. "We've been given a mission. Are you ready to go?"
"Just one more thing," she told him with a smile in her voice. She turned back to me. "I'm afraid I can't stay to tell you the story myself, but ask around. I doubt it will get you anywhere, but you should know, anyway. Good luck." Then she was walking away, side by side with the young ANBU who'd come to get her.
I did ask around. Surreptitiously of course, so it took me quite a while to put together the whole story from the little scraps and pieces of information people dropped. And I didn't keep just to the things the purple-haired ANBU had mentioned. Anything anyone would tell me, I absorbed gratefully. The ANBU had shocked me with my own ignorance—or to put it more accurately, my own self absorption. I'd been too busy trying to figure out who I was, and what I needed, to think about who Sempai was outside the role he played in my life. It would have been strange if he had loved a brat like me.
So now I put myself into finding out as much as I could about him and trying to understand him. In the process I fell more deeply in love with him than ever. He'd had a father who he admired and loved, who was at the center of his world, and even though I'd never known a parent like that, I thought I could understand at least a little. Wasn't that what Sempai was to me? And when I imagined what it must have been like for that father to commit the ultimate betrayal; to abandon his responsibility to his son, to leave him alone in shame, to tell his son, when it came down to it, that he hadn't been good enough to stay alive for… Well, I couldn't really imagine it. All I knew was that compared to that, the pain of what I'd been thinking of as Sempai's "betrayal" was nothing at all.
No surprise, therefore, that Sempai didn't come through that experience unscathed. By all accounts he had been stubborn and proud before his father's death, but afterwards he took those traits to an extreme. He became absolutely inflexible, putting the shinobi code above everything else. Maybe, as he'd been heard to say, he'd come to believe that was the only right way to act because he'd seen the consequences of putting the individual above the rule, both for his father and for the people who died because of his father's failure to complete his mission. Maybe the only way he could convince himself that it was OK for his father to be gone was to discredit him and his values. Maybe he simply had to be inflexible to keep from folding under the pain of his loss. Maybe it was all of that, or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the reason, he bound himself to a code that I can't imagine ever really fit him. The Sempai I know is not someone to whom following rules comes easily, and from what I've heard, even as Sempai was insisting on following the letter of the law, his headstrong nature was constantly leading him to break the spirit of it.
He must have chafed under his self imposed doctrine of absolute adherence to the code, and that must have made Obito—who, like Sempai's father, treated rules as conditional—almost unbearable to him. As long as he held on to his burden, that is. I've never been able to reconstruct a clear picture of what happened between Obito and Sempai on their last mission together, but somehow Obito must have convinced Sempai to let go of his code and return to the values his father had taught him as a child. I've heard that Obito saved Sempai's life during that mission, but I think he probably saved Sempai from himself, as well. And I could be wrong, but I suspect that Sempai loved him for it.
Then Obito died, and this time there was nothing to make his loss seem less of an evil. Whatever had gone before, Obito died Sempai's friend. There was no betrayal. On the contrary, Obito's last act was one of unspeakable generosity. He gave up his life for Sempai, and then he completed the gift with his precious sharingan. So Sempai responded by remaking himself again, this time in the image of the one he'd lost rather than his opposite. Perhaps I'm biased because that was the Sempai that I met and fell in love with, but I think his adopted humanitarianism was a much better fit. Sempai 's certainly not the intuitive, emotional type, but I believe he genuinely cares about people. Obito may have shown him how to care effectively, but a mind capable of compassion isn't something that can be copied. I think Sempai as he became in the wake of Obito's death was probably much truer to himself than Sempai as he was after the death of his father.
That isn't to say there was no damage, though.
I couldn't see it at first. Kannagiyama had said Sempai had a heart that couldn't be touched with a ten foot pole. The purple-haired ANBU had used somewhat more sympathetic language, but the meaning had been essentially the same. Maybe Sempai could have been described that way before Obito's death, but the man I knew cared so much for the people around him that he would do anything, including die, to protect them. Where was the heartlessness in that? What did they want from him, a warm cuddly attitude?
Kannagiyama was the one who finally showed me what she'd meant. Inadvertently, by dying.
It was a surprise attack. Two countries between the borders of the Land of Fire and the Land of Earth were hovering dangerously close to the edge of war, and fearing that the conflict between these two small nations would spark a larger conflict between Earth and Fire, maybe even another shinobi world war, both Fire and Earth put pressure on the two countries to accept a negotiated peace. Terms were finally arrived at, but they weren't popular. There were factions in both countries that felt the concessions they were being forced to make were unacceptable. A messenger from the country tied more closely to Konoha had come to us requesting that we guard their diplomat on his way to the conference where he would formally enter into the treaty. Even if no one from the other country attacked, the messenger explained, his own people surely would.
We just didn't expect the attacks to come from within the messenger's own entourage, and before we even reached his country.
Tawamu, never one to be serious when the alternative was at all possible, had quickly made friends out of all the messenger's guards. He and Kannagiyama walked with them, laughing and joking as we hiked through the forest toward the Land of Fire's northern border. Tawamu was relaxed, having fun, and completely off his guard. The man closest to him said something that Tawamu must have found particularly funny. He threw back his head and laughed uproariously, and as he did, a blade appeared in the jokester's hand and flashed towards Tawamu's side.
Tawamu didn't see it, but Kannagiyama did. All she had time to do, though, was put herself between Tamamu and his attacker. The thrust punched straight through the heavy padding of her ANBU vest, and the blade slipped between her ribs and disappeared so far into her body that the hilt rammed against her chest and shoved her back into Tawamu. Startled, not understanding what was going on, he scrambled to catch her. The guard wrenched his blade free, and while Tawamu's hands were still occupied with his teammate, he made a second pass. Again, Kannagiyama stopped him, catching the blade in her bare hand, not seeming to even notice as it sliced her fingers to the bone. She caught the attacker's arm with her free hand, pushed away from Tawamu, and clinging fiercely to her opponent, dragged his arm and blade down with her as she fell. By this time Tawamu had understood the situation, and before another moment had passed, he'd slit the guard's throat. The guard hadn't been acting on his own, though. Almost immediately after the attack on Tawamu began, several of the others had their blades out and were attacking Sempai and me as well. It didn't take long to dispose of them. They weren't anywhere near a match for us, but by the time we could turn our attention to Kannagiyama, she had already reached the limits of her life. In the sudden silence after the last rebel had fallen, there was a rushing noise that settled quickly into a busy crackling as the blue fire of the self-immolation jutsu swept over Kannagiyama's body and began to consume it.
Tawamu let out a strangled groan and lunged for the burning body. Who knows what was going through his head. Kannagiyama was already dead, and if he'd touched that flame he would have died too, or at least been horribly injured, but still he stretched out his arms as if to gather her body into them. It was Sempai who caught him and held him back, gently but firmly, until the flames went out and nothing but a pile of ashes and charred fragments of bone remained. All I could do was stand there and watch it all happen in a state of shocked numbness. My own feelings surprised me. It wasn't the first time I'd seen someone die. It wasn't even the first time I'd seen a fellow ANBU die, but apparently over the years of working together, Kannagiyama had become more important to me than I'd realized.
But I was even more surprised by Tawamu's grief. I never would have imagined that Tawamu, who was able to laugh at even the most dire situations, could be so devastated. When the fire had gone out and Sempai relaxed his grip, Tawamu went limp and Sempai had to hastily catch hold of him again and guide him to the ground. He crouched there next to Tawamu, supporting his shoulders as the older man sat slumped forward, staring at the grey smudges of Kannagiyama on the forest floor. It was a very strange and frightening thing to see the untamable Tawamu broken so badly that he had to be supported by someone decades less experienced in such things than himself.
The messenger and the loyal members of his guard had been hovering, uncertainly, at a distance. Now the messenger approached Sempai and spoke to him. Sempai listened, and nodded. He turned his head and murmured something in Tawamu's ear. Then he let go of him. He waited a moment, but Tawamu remained upright, and Sempai got to his feet. He came over to me, then.
"Are you alright, Tenzou?" he asked, but I couldn't answer at first. I still felt numb; adrift with no connection to my own body.
Sempai gave me time, but when I still said nothing, he shifted and reached up to scratch the back of his head. Then, after a moment's thought, he pulled his mask away from his face. That got my attention, but I was too sluggish to stop him when he reached over and pushed back my mask, too.
"Look at me, Tenzou. Are you alright?" he asked again. I looked him in the face, and realized that he, at least, was alright. He'd known Kannagiyama longer than me, had certainly seemed to care about her quite a lot more than I had, and he was much younger and more inexperienced than Tawamu, but somehow he'd taken her death completely in his stride, while the two of us were floundering. I could see the pain and regret in the tightness of the muscles of his face, but he was unmistakably OK.
I wasn't really sure what to make of that, but at least it had distracted me enough to get me back in control of myself. I nodded to him and slipped my mask back over my face.
"Good." There was some relief in Sempai's voice, some of the tension left his face, and his eye curved in a smile. He gave my shoulder a brisk pat and a squeeze before he pulled his own mask down. "I'm going to send Tawamu back to Konoha to inform them of the change in the situation and ask for reinforcements. I'd like you to go with him." Meaning Sempai wanted to get Tawamu home as quickly as possible, and was worried about letting him go alone in his current state. That was the Sempai I knew.
I started to nod, and then stopped abruptly. "Just a minute. What are you going to be doing, Sempai?"
He cocked his head as if he thought the answer should have been obvious. "Someone's got to go ahead to watch over the diplomat as soon as possible. Clearly the situation is even more dangerous than we thought. He might be attacked before he even sets out on his journey."
That was the moment that I first began to understand how terrible the fear of losing someone could be. Kannagiyama had just died, and that was bad enough, but if Sempai were to be killed… that was unthinkable. Instead of nodding, I shook my head, horrified.
Sempai, who had stiffened and reared back slightly in surprise at my refusal, settled in to wait silently for an explanation. I gathered my thoughts, and my memories of how I used to talk to him when we were at our closest. Now was not the time to mince words.
"That's an absurd plan, Sempai. Didn't you just say yourself that the situation is more dangerous than we thought? Those guards were trust-worthy men, hand-picked for this mission. If they went renegade, then there's no telling who else will. Or even worse, someone higher up might have put them there deliberately and planned the whole thing. There won't be any safe place or any safe person from start to finish on this mission. It's too dangerous for one person to handle all that alone!"
Sempai shrugged. "Can't be helped. I don't really want the blame for the Fourth Shinobi World War to fall at my feet, you know."
I knew he didn't, and I knew that his father's past gave the situation even more weight to him. "Fine. Take me with you then. It won't be nearly so dangerous if you have someone there to watch your back."
It was Sempai's turn to shake his head. "I need you to go with Ta…"
"Send Pakkun to ask for reinforcements." While we'd been talking, Tawamu had come up to us un-noticed. We both looked at him with a mixture of surprise and apprehension. His shoulders were still a little bowed, and he was no longer radiating the impish energy that always made him seem ten years, and mentally maybe closer to twenty years, younger than his actual forty-two. Still, he was standing up on his own two feet. "You're a hundred years too early to try and send me home in the middle of a mission, kid." It was an attempt at a joke, but it came out grim and bitter. "I'm ANBU, Kakashi. I'll see the mission through."
Kakashi examined Tawamu long and hard, but Tawamu didn't waver, and he finally nodded. He must have known as well as I did that he really needed as much of his team as he could get for this mission. There was a real possibility that the unrest over the treaty terms could blow up into a full out civil war, and even Sempai couldn't hold off half a country single handedly.
Tawamu did finish out the mission with us, but he was far from OK. His mind wouldn't focus on the task at hand, and he made more mistakes than usual. Sempai transferred most of Tawamu's responsibilities to himself, and took as good care of his heart-broken subordinate's feelings as was humanly possible under the circumstances. He cared for Tawamu the way he cared for everyone, including Kannagiyama, until she'd died and it was no longer necessary. He cared for people, I realized, as individuals with lives and futures that were worth protecting, but not as important pieces of his own life. He loved people, but not in the way that Tawamu had loved Kannagiyama, or the way that Kannagiyama had loved Tawamu. Or the way that I loved him. He was kind and caring, but it was just as Kannagiyama had said. None of that was allowed to compromise his core.
Maybe I'm wrong, but this is what I've come to believe: Sempai was shattered, twice, by the loss of people who were close to him. This time, he's organized his life in such a way that he can never be so thoroughly shaken again.
And maybe he's right. As shinobi, we lead incredibly dangerous lives. Maybe, when it's almost guaranteed that you and everyone around you will die an untimely, and probably unpleasant, death, the only rational course of action is to keep your distance. But at times like this, lying on the floor by Sempai's bunk, listening to the sound of his breathing, and remembering a time when we were closer, I can't quite believe that.
…..
And there was actually more I wanted to put in there, but I finally had throw up my hands and say "Enough, already!" Or actually more like "Too much, already!" Anyway, I think that's it for long reminiscences. Next chapter is back to the plot.
