The Girl From Whirlpool
Chapter Ten: Hometown Glory
The same blue sky was hanging over Konoha as when he'd left. It seemed unusually bright, but that was most likely because he'd spent the last three years living on the mist covered shores of the continent where the sun only broke through the clouds a couple of hours for a few days at the height of summer. Minato had never realised how dry and warm the climate was in his native village. He felt like woodlouse who'd crawled out from beneath a rock.
"Sign in, please," said the bored looking guard at the gate.
Minato didn't remember this procedure, but he hefted his backpack onto one shoulder and accepted the clipboard he was handed. There were at least thirty other names signed under today's date, and he scanned them briefly, recognising a few and making a mental note to check up on them. As he signed his own name at the bottom, the gatekeeper's attitude suddenly changed.
"Namikaze Minato?" he read out, evidently very good at reading upside down. "We just got the news the other day – everyone'll be so excited to see you back. It's an honour!"
Minato looked at him stolidly. "What is?"
"Uh... to... meet the one who took down General Akuze. They say you won the war pretty much single-handedly."
"Not really," Minato said, because that was a horrible exaggeration. If he'd fought this war alone he would have died three years ago and Konoha would have been overrun by now. Akuze's death may have been a monumental victory, but the fighting in the following weeks had been more vicious and frantic than ever before, and it was only through daily waves of endless assaults that Kiri had been driven back into the water country. By no means did Minato want to take credit for something dozens of his friends had died fighting for.
It had been fun when he'd returned with Akuze's sword, to be toasted and cheered, but he hadn't really thought the hero worship would last. He hadn't thought he would have to endure it on the other side of the country.
"I heard you're being promoted – is that why you're back?"
"No," Minato said simply. "My father died."
"Oh... I'm sorry."
Minato smiled vaguely, always left bemused by people's immediate reaction to apologise to him as if his loss was their fault. He handed back the clipboard and went on his way, deciding to head home and drop off his supplies and equipment before even beginning to think about what to do next.
The first person he bumped into along the way was Ai's mother. She gave a cry of delight and hurried over to pinch his cheeks and remark about how tall and handsome he'd grown. She asked why her favourite customer hadn't stopped by the ice-cream parlour since his return, and he informed her that he hadn't even unpacked yet, to which she asked him how long he planned to stay. Minato told her he supposed it would be until after the funeral.
"Funeral?" she echoed, dismayed.
"My father," he said.
"Oh, Minato, I didn't know," she said, looking pitying. "I'm so sorry."
There it was again.
After promising he would stop by her parlour as soon as possible, he continued on his way home. On his street, his neighbours recognised him. Like Ai's mother they made exclamations about his height and then gave him sad smiles as they apologised about his father. They had all heard about it, perhaps well before he had, and they were past the stage of surprise and onto the stage of morbid curiosity. They asked him how it had happened. Minato didn't know.
He shook them off eventually and made it to his front door. It seemed smaller than he remembered. In fact everything looked smaller, except for the plants and the trees which had grown about as much as he had.
When Minato let himself into his own home, he wondered if he'd made a mistake, for he knew at once that this was where his father had died. He could smell it.
After killing more people than he could count and witnessing more bloated water-logged corpses than he'd ever needed to see, he knew what death smelled like. It was a stench that had lodged in the back of his throat a long time ago that would never truly leave him. It was there for good and that was the price you paid for a job like this. But stepping into this house... Minato was reminded immediately of the human abattoir in the Kiri outpost. The smell, the decay, the flies...
His shoulder hit the doorframe. Only then did he realise he was stumbling backwards, out of the house and down the steps.
It had been a mistake. He shouldn't have come here. Shouldn't have naively assumed walking in the door would be as easy as he remembered. He took his bags and he kept walking, away from his house and towards the heart of the village. He had no idea where he was going other than some pale realisation that he was retreading a beaten path he'd often taken when he was younger. It took him as far as the bridge where he'd so many afternoons throwing stones in the river with his friends.
He stopped and sat down on his backpack to watch the ripples of the water current, trying to think organise himself. He had to find accommodation; something cheap that wouldn't overtax his rather limited budget. Then he'd have to go down to the morgue... or visit the village undertaker, whichever dealt with whatever came next. Minato pressed his fingers into his eyes and rubbed. Then what did he do after that?
"Oh, look, I've found a little Yellow Flash."
Minato lifted his head and looked up. He very nearly recoiled when he met the yellow-eyed gaze of a face even more pasty than his own. Just what he needed. Running into Orochimaru on his first day back.
"Would you quit it?" Tsunade said, walking past them without pause. "Stop tormenting him, he's just a kid."
As scary as this woman was on the best of days, she wasn't nearly half as scary as the snake-man, so Minato quickly jumped to his feet and called out to her before she strode out of earshot. "Tsunade-sama – ah – if you're here, does that mean-"
"Jiraiya's not here, kid," she said, turning to him with a hand on her hip, and she certainly could fill a uniform better than most people.
"Then, where-"
"Still in the rain country," she interrupted. "Trust Jiraiya... the war ends and everyone's finally free to come home, but he can't resist that one last project."
"What?"
"Orphans," Orochimaru said with distaste. "He uncovered a couple of urchins and decided to stay behind to rear them. I hope you don't mind, but your sensei has new students now. I guess he was bored with the old ones."
"Stop it," Tsunade sighed, annoyed.
Orphans? Students? Why had Minato not heard about this? "When is he coming home?"
"Coming home? What makes you think he is?" Orochimaru smiled nastily and drifted on his way. Tsunade shot Minato a faintly annoyed look, as if her exasperation with her teammate was his fault, before following after the slithery bastard.
Minato remained stiff in their wake, fiercely mixed feelings churning in his chest. Looking after orphans... that was pretty noble and kind-hearted and he wouldn't expect any less of Jiraiya-sensei. On the other hand, this was his sensei, and who knew how long such a detour would take him out of the village? Weeks? Months? Years?
He sagged down onto his backpack, head in his arms. If Jiraiya were here, he'd know what to do and say. He'd probably let Minato crash in his spare room for a few nights and help him sort through the pain of making funeral arrangements. But while he should have been there, he was off building an orphanage.
He shouldn't be churlish. In all likeliness, the needs of orphans were greater than his own. He would have felt a whole lot better, however, if Jiraiya had been here waiting for him.
A new shadow fell over him, one cast by an umbrella judging by its shape on the ground. Two feet in black plimsolls stepped into view beneath his arms. Someone with very neat ankles was leaning over him.
"You alright?" the girl asked.
And Minato, very used to being approached by strange girls and for whom the novelty had worn off long ago, sighed and said heavily, "I'm fine."
Really, who would put up an umbrella on such a wonderfully sunny day?
Scorched, the plimsolls took a step back, then they continued on their way. Minato lifted his chin to watch her, surprised that she'd given up so quickly. Had his tone been too harsh? Besides, she looked a little strange, all dressed in black with a black umbrella over one shoulder. As such he couldn't see her head, but he doubted he knew anyone as weird as that anyway.
"Minato! It's you, it's really you!"
Konoha's newly styled Yellow Flash turned only just in time to catch the girl that might have bulldozed anyone with slightly poorer reflexes into the wall behind him. He couldn't rule out the possibility that this was what Ai had been trying to do, but she seemed so happy to see him that he could quite easily forget all those years of passive abuse he'd suffered at her hands. He smiled back and accepted her enormous bear hug.
"Mom said you were back!" she told him, pulling away enough to let him see that she wasn't alone. The old gang was here too, giving him more restrained gestures of welcome that were no less pleased. There was Yamanaka Inoichi, looking taller and far more solid around the jaw than he remembered. Akimichi Chouza was twice as large in all directions, while Saburou had managed to grow longer and thinner but still retain his round-face that had always made him look almost as heavy as Chouza. Some others were there too – Chichi, Aburame Shibi, Inuzuka Tsume and a couple of faces he had either never seen or didn't recall.
The change in Ai struck him as most stark, however. When he had left, she'd easily been the tallest in their team (save for Jiraiya) but now she barely came up to his shoulder. Had she shrunk? Or had he really grown that much? She was still thin, though, so much so that she felt like a fragile bird in his arms.
"You've been making quite a name for yourself," she remarked.
"Did you just sneak back into town?" Inoichi asked. "I was so sure the only way you would be returning would be on the back of a bejewelled elephant, surrounded by a marching parade of glittering swans and a brass band."
"Not quite," Minato admitted with a wry grin.
"What are you doing back?" Inoichi scrutinised him. "I didn't think they were pulling people out yet. Is Shikaku with you?"
"Shikaku's still at the border," Minato said, looking around uneasily at all the people around him. He didn't really want to tell share the reason for his return with something that resembled and audience. "I'm... just here to take care of some stuff."
"His dad died," Ai said, who must have heard it from her mother.
Minato looked at her flatly, trying hard to keep the sudden surge of dislike for her showing on his face.
"Sorry to hear that, man," Inoichi murmured like everyone else. "Was it in the war?"
"Mm, no," Minato said awkwardly, looking for a change of subject. "How've you guys been while I was gone? Tell me what's been happening."
This was a much more pleasant topic for everyone, and as Minato made his way further into town in the general direction of the inns and travel lodges, his old friends accompanied him, exuberantly updating him on the latest of everyone relevant. Quite a lot seemed to have happened and no one was quite the same as he remembered.
Though he had to admit... he had not thought about his friends much since leaving three years ago.
"-so then we were all banned from the Izakaya, which I still maintain was an overreaction. The stains would have come out with a little lemon juice." Inoichi finished, and leaned towards Minato as they walked. "But the important question is, what's been happening to you, Minato?"
"Mm?"
"I heard you went to a brothel," said Chouza.
"Nearly got killed by a prostitute," agreed Chichi.
"I heard it was a male prostitute," Ai mused.
"And what about this General Akuze business?" Inoichi demanded.
"How the hell did you manage to kill one of the Seven Swordsmen?" Tsume spluttered.
Minato stopped and looked around at the eager faces looking back at him. A lot of questions had been fired just now, and he didn't really desire to answer any of them. Since he didn't really have a choice, he went with the safest bet. "I stabbed him."
"The prostitute or General Akuze?" Inoichi pressed.
"Uh – Akuze."
This was met with jeers of disbelief.
"No one just walks into a Kiri stronghold and stabs a Swordsman," Ai said contemptuously.
"It was a little more complicated than that," Minato told her.
"But it's true though, right? You did kill him? That's why everyone's calling you the Yellow Flash now like you're some kind of legendary nin?" Inoichi asked.
Minato just nodded.
"Bloody hell..." he whispered.
"Akuze was the strongest in his village – probably stronger than the Mizukage, even," Chichi said. "Does this mean... Minato's about on the same level as a kage?"
They all looked at each other, and then back at him with a quivering kind of awe. Minato didn't like it. The way people had looked at him ever since defeating Akuze always made him uneasy, especially when they were people he had thought considered him as just another peer even if he was especially talented.
"So, ah, since you were banned from the Izakaya, what do you guys do for fun around here?" he asked them, hoping to shake some of that creepy reverence out of their expressions.
"We mostly throw stones at little children and genin," Inoichi said.
"Right..." Minato nodded again. "Anything else to do?"
A strange leer spread over Inoichi's face. "Well, there's always Uzumaki."
"Oh, grow up," Ai snapped.
"Don't be disgusting," Chichi sneered.
"Men," intoned Tsume flatly.
Everyone else, who were men, just smirked.
Minato didn't get it. "I don't get it." Was this some kind of new teasing they'd devised? Minato had hoped that after three years people like Inoichi would eventually get bored of bullying Kushina.
"What's to get?" Inoichi shrugged.
"Just watch what you say," Chouza warned his teammate. "Sarutobi would slug you for that."
"The Hokage?" Minato's eyes widened. He found it hard to imagine the old man slugging anyone.
"No, his nephew," said Inoichi.
The Hokage's nephew? Why did that sound familiar?
"Forget Sarutobi," Chouza said. "Kushina would kill you."
"You're joking. She wouldn't hurt a fly," Inoichi scoffed. "You know she was on the Waterfall border for a year but she never once killed anyone. All this tough talk from her is completely empty."
"Was she in a supplementary unit?" Minato asked, confused.
"No, that's the thing. She was out on the battlefield, same as anyone else, but her unit claims she never killed anyone."
Ai made a derisive sound. "Weakling."
"I like it," Inoichi said, looking to the sky. "She descends like an angel of mercy – perfectly savage and able to take your life – but she chooses not to because inside she is pure goodness. No wonder Waterfall surrendered so quickly and she won the heart of her captain. Everywhere she goes, people fall to her feet, begging forgiveness and permission to bask in her beauty for just a few moments."
Minato stared at him. "What?"
"Ignore him," Chouza grunted, shaking his head. "He's an idiot."
"I'm serious!" Inoichi protested.
"Give it up, Inoichi. You're up against a jonin captain who's related to the Hokage and she doesn't even like you, so what hope do you have?" his teammate shook his head. "Give it up."
"Can we talk about something other than Kushina, for once," Ai growled. This was clearly something she was frequently frustrated by.
"You're just jealous because she actually has tits," Inoichi said cruelly.
Before Ai could explode, Minato pointed out, "You used to tease Kushina about that."
Inoichi put a hand over his heart. "Youthful idiocy, my friend. I was blind but now I see what you saw in her."
Minato was still nonplussed. All he'd seen in Kushina was her supreme awkwardness and her grubby, knobbly knees. He'd liked her all the same, but he didn't understand if it was a new form of abuse Inoichi was trying out by singing her wildly exaggerated praises or genuine adoration.
"Why don't you just ask her out?" Chichi asked.
"One does not date the angel of mercy!" Inoichi despaired. "You worship her from afar... and occasionally grope her from behind."
Minato sucked in a breath. "If you've been harassing, Kushina, I'll-" he cut himself off.
Everyone held their breath. Inoichi looked a little worried. "You'll... what?"
"I think I'll get quite angry," Minato said honestly.
"Make that a jonin captain and the Yellow Flash," Chouza muttered. "No chance, Inoichi."
Inoichi pouted. "That's not fair, Minato's totally asexual. Isn't that right, Minato? Kushina's just your beard? Right? You're not actually interested in her, are you?"
Minato smiled slightly and shook his head. "You'd have to be pretty touched in the head to be interested in Kushina," he said, enjoying Inoichi's spluttered denial.
"I dare you to say that to Sarutobi's face," he said.
"Who is Sarutobi?" Minato asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. "What is he to Kushina?"
"Why don't you ask her yourself?" Inoichi said, and suddenly began waving at something – someone – behind Minato. "Hey! Kushina! My darling, over here!"
Minato turned quickly, and wondered why his heart had decided to beat so hard at the thought he was moments away from seeing Kushina again. He searched the crowds of early afternoon shoppers, waiting to see that short, red-haired girl in the grubby culottes and over-large sweater appear. She always stood out like a sore thumb. But this time as he hunted the rows of market stalls, he saw no one familiar.
"Hey, she's ignoring me," Inoichi sighed, lowering his hand.
"Why wouldn't she?" Chichi rebuked.
Just where were they looking? They all seemed to be able to see her, but no matter how many times Minato's eyes darted between them and the crowds, trying to follow their gaze, all he saw was a mass of strangers.
"Oi, Uzumaki!" Inoichi shouted to the apparently invisible girl. "Look who finally decided to come home from the war!"
Someone turned and detached from the herd. So she'd been browsing that flower stall all along? Minato's mouth went a little dry, as it usually did when he anticipated one of Danzou's horrible protracted lectures. He didn't know why he should react that way, as if all his insides were threatening to turn to liquid. It was only Kushina; someone he knew better than most people alive, and she wasn't scary.
Except he didn't know the girl coming towards them. Not in the slightest.
Where was his grubby faced urchin? The one who was perpetually smudged with dirt and sweat and refused to make the acquaintance of a hairbrush? The one who wiped her nose on her sleeves? The one who wore the same worn clothes every day for two weeks before she might consent to washing them? The one with the frightening stare?
The girl coming toward them only resembled her in the vaguest possible sense. Her clothes were clean for a start, and sleek and black. She wore leggings and a plain black sheaf dress that left her arms bare and – surprisingly shapely, he'd never noticed that before. The hair that had last been forming a rough hewn mane somewhere around her chin now fell in poker-straight lines down past her shoulders, though most of it seemed to be heaped up in a bun behind her. Remarkably, her face was spotless. Not a speck of dirt to be seen anyway. Her complexion was about as close to perfection as some girls vied for, though this might have been because on a brilliantly hot, sunny day, she'd had the foresight to bring an umbrella to protect her fair, perfect skin.
Ah. Now he knew why she was scowling at him in that manner that was perhaps the only familiar thing about her.
"It's the Yellow Flasher, isn't it?" she said, stopping a few metres away.
Some of those behind him actually had the nerve to giggle, though for once it was not at Kushina's expense.
It was his own.
"You must spare him your brutal wit, Uzumaki," Inoichi scolded her. "Minato can slay a man a hundred different ways, but he is a sensitive soul, easily fooled and easily injured."
Minato opened his mouth to deny that, but Kushina cut across him.
"Easily fooled and easily injured sounds quite like a lot of other people I know," she said, glaring at Inoichi, who coloured.
"I have no idea what you mean."
"She probably means that time you tried to stick certain parts of your body through her letterbox," Chouza reminded him.
"Inoichi!" Minato gasped. He was very close to making good on his threat to get angry.
"Good thing he got the wrong house," Chouza added.
Inoichi leapt for a diversion. "Uh - what lovely lupins you have there, Uzumaki!" he cried, gesturing to the bunch of cream-coloured flowers in Kushina's hand that, as far as Minato was concerned, looked like any other flower. "You should have asked me before you bought them – Hana gives me a special discount, you know."
"If Hana thought you were buying flowers for another girl, that discount would disappear pretty quick," Ai retorted.
"I can pay for my own flowers, thank you," Kushina said sharply, which in itself surprised Minato. When he'd left, she could barely afford her own food. To think she had spare money on frivolities like 'lupins'...?
"You look like you're in mourning with that get-up," Inoichi said, gesturing to her flowers and her black clothes. Minato took it as a sign that she at least didn't normally dress like this.
"I am," she answered, twirling the umbrella in a slow circle behind her. "Mikoto is getting married to Fugu-face. Despite my best efforts they plan to tie the knot and have threatened to ban me from the ceremony."
"Another one bites the dust, eh, Uzumaki?" Inoichi said, looking like he was trying hard to suppress laughter.
She glared at him. "You wouldn't understand. I've lost my best friend to a puffer fish."
"Ah! Well, then Minato is your man!" Inoichi clapped his hand on said boy's back. "He is a world renowned slayer of puffer-fish, aren't you?"
Minato opened his mouth-
"I'll be fine, thank you," she said shortly. "If that's all you wanted, I have things to get done today-"
"No, wait, Uzumaki," Inoichi called, making her pause. "I've been meaning to ask..."
She waited.
"Spit or swallow?"
As laughter exploded behind him, Minato felt the limit of his temper edging closer again. By then he thought he understood the answer to whether or not Inoichi abhorred Kushina or adored her; it was a little of both.
Kushina didn't seem surprised. "I bite," she snapped, and promptly turned – very nearly knocking everyone's eyes out with her umbrella – and stormed away.
"I'll be sure to give Sarutobi my sympathies the next time I see him!" Inoichi crowed after her, much to Ai's newfound amusement.
"That wasn't funny," Minato said, suddenly angry that he was watching his former best friend walk away, and that they had managed to meet and not say a single word to one another. His other friends were to blame for that.
"It's just a bit of fun, Minato," Inoichi said.
"For you," he pointed out. "I thought you might have matured a little in the last couple of years but you're just the same, making fun of someone because you can't handle the fact you fancy her."
"Ah – what?!" Inoichi was shocked speechless for once. "It's just a joke, man, I don't really fancy-"
"And you can stop laughing," Minato said to Ai, who immediately stopped. "You could have grown out of your petty prejudices, but you've clung to them instead for no reason I can see. You haven't changed at all."
"You have," she retorted, face white with anger. "Since when did you become an arrogant jerk who felt entitled to pass judgement on people?"
Minato ignored her, instead looking to Chouza.
Chouza noticed this and immediately threw up his hands. "Hey, I like Kushina," he said quickly. "Don't shout at me."
"I'm not shouting..." Minato frowned and shifted the shoulder strap of his bag. "I'm just saying. I didn't expect this from you guys."
"Oh, go screw yourself, you jumped up bastard," Ai said savagely, and stormed away in the opposite direction from Kushina.
Minato half wondered if she'd meant that as a general insult, or had chosen it very specifically. Either way he wasn't hurt, and he turned away. "I'll see you later, guys," he said, heading off quickly in pursuit of Kushina.
"See ya," Inoichi drawled unenthusiastically after him.
Now that he knew Kushina was the one with the umbrella, she was very easy to spot cutting through the crowds in the distance. Minato wove his way quickly up the busy street, dodging elbows and the occasional cabbage thrust at his face by overzealous sellers. He caught up with her at the crest of the hill and drew up alongside her, wary of the sharp spokes in her umbrella. She looked at him, unsurprised, but she wasn't scowling anymore at least.
"You were on the bridge this morning," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Yes, and a right rude idiot you were. I didn't think it could possibly be you." She tapped the flowers against her mouth. It was the same mouth as he remembered, but those lips seemed fuller. Prettier. She seemed to know how to purse them just right to draw his attention. She noticed him staring and frowned.
"You look... great!" he gushed helplessly.
She looked back blankly. At least her propensity to never trust a compliment was still intact. "You look... well-travelled," she responded diplomatically.
"I stink, I know," he sighed. "But you... are you wearing perfume?"
She coughed. "It's Mikoto's," she said quickly. "She squirts it on me before I can run out the door, I can't help it."
The lady protested too much, Minato thought. He didn't mind if Kushina liked to wear perfume, though it further contradicted his memory of a child who scorned any other girl who so much as looked at a bottle of deodorant. Something else about her comment caught his attention, however. "Are you living with Mikoto?"
She nodded.
"So you moved out of the centre?"
"They can't keep you forever," she told him. "Me and Mikoto shared rent on a new place because she didn't want to stay in the Uchiha compound. She'll be moving back there once she marries though..."
"You guys are getting along pretty well then?"
"She's my best friend," Kushina repeated.
They lapsed into silence as they walked. Perhaps like him she was remembering a time when they had considered each other best friends? Or perhaps she was too busy fretting about the wedding?
As they moved down a street dominated by tall buildings, shadows fell heavily across the street. Kushina closed her umbrella and tapped it against the ground beside her as she walked. Every now and then they passed a gap in the buildings and a shaft of sunlight would hit her hair. Minato was fascinated. He had never seen so many shades of red in his life.
But eventually he had to ask the pressing question. "Where are we going?"
"I'm going home to put these in water," she said pointedly. "I don't know where you're going."
She wasn't inviting him along.
"Uh... I don't know where I'm going either," he admitted.
"Have you even been home yet?" she asked.
He shook his head hesitantly, not wanting to admit he'd been and gone, too afraid by spectres to stay.
"You should go home then," she said. "Take a shower, talk to your father and stuff. He got pretty lonely while you away. He says you never wrote."
Minato stopped. Her words had chased the air out of his lungs and left him as if he was standing in the doorway of his home again. Kushina spoke so casually of his father, as if he was still alive, which couldn't have cut through him more effectively to remind Minato that he was not. He swallowed hard, wondering if there was a wall nearby he could lean against to collect himself.
Kushina looked at him curiously. "What's the matter?"
"You... you talked to my father?"
"A few times, yes," she said.
"Did he throw anything at you?"
"No," she said shaking her head. "Look, maybe I should walk you home? You don't look very well."
"I'm fine," he said quickly, in very much the same tone he'd used on the bridge earlier that had made her recoil. This time she looked at him with a faint frown.
"I'll walk you home-"
"I'm not going home," he told her. "I planned to just rent a room a couple of days. I won't be staying here long."
Her frown deepened ever so slightly. "Ok... where are you staying?"
"I don't know yet."
"What's your budget?"
He scrounged around in his pocket and produced a couple of coins. He looked at Kushina, awaiting her judgement, since he suspected she knew more about the value of money than he did after spending three years out on the border where the most highly prized commodity was fabric softener.
"This is it?" she pointed to his small change. "This won't get you very far. Where's the rest?"
He shrugged.
"I'm not lending you money," she warned.
"Wasn't going to ask," he said defensively. The last person he'd attempt to scrounge money from was Kushina. "I have more but..."
"But?"
"It's at home." And he felt cold just thinking of that house.
"Then you better run home and get it," she said expectantly, waiting for him to do just that.
He stayed fixed in place.
Kushina tapped her umbrella against the cobbled street. "You don't want to go home, do you?"
Rather than admit it by shaking his head, he just frowned at himself and his own silly weakness.
"I can go get it for you, if you like," she said. "I'm sure you're father won't mind."
"No, no," he said quickly, wincing. "I'm a big boy, I can do it."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
He thought about it for a long moment. He didn't really want to take her to that place, but he didn't really want to say goodbye just yet either. Also, she seemed to sense that he needed the moral support. He knew it too, so he nodded his ascent and she fell into step beside him as they started on their way back towards Minato's house.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
"I'm sure you'd do the same for me," she said, a little impersonally, as if he was nothing more than a casual acquaintance to whom could be granted the occasional favour. He supposed that, these days, that's what they really were to each other. He was unfamiliar with the girl next to him. She had been to war, she had moved into a new place with a friend, and appeared to have a boyfriend he knew nothing about. What she thought about these things – what she thought of Minato – was a mystery to him.
Out in the sunlight, she drew up her umbrella again.
"I burn easily," she said to him when he stared quizzically.
"Ah," he said, turning his face to the sky. "I just go as brown as a berry."
"Are berries brown?" she asked.
"Some are, I guess."
"You don't look very brown right now," she said, peering at him. "I think you'll burn too, if you're not careful."
"Maybe I can share your umbrella?" he joked
"I don't think so." She looked away to examine the passing houses.
Her manner had always been a little cool, but he didn't remember her being this standoffish with him. "Are you mad at me?" he asked uncertainly. "Is it because of what I said on the bridge – I'm sorry if I was rude-"
"It's not that," she interrupted, sighing. "I'm just... not sure about you yet."
"What?"
"Nothing, never mind." She shook her head, shaking loose a few brilliant strands of hair from her bun. "Let's just get your money."
Minato didn't know what to make of that. She probably just needed time to get used to him again, since she had always been slow to make friends, and maybe reaffirming an old friendship would need just as much careful treading. If she was the anything like the old Kushina, one wrong move could easily chase her away for good.
"Here we are," she said, as they approached the very house Minato had fled from not so long ago. She knew where he lived then. Did this mean she had actually visited his father in the past?
"Can you... wait here while I go get it?" he asked. There was a smell in that house that he didn't want to explain... one that he didn't want her to know.
Kushina twirled her umbrella behind her and nodded. She was amenable at least.
Minato heaved a deep breath and walked down the garden path towards his own front door. He hadn't locked it on his way out, so he pushed it open once more and stepped inside.
The smell threatened to make him gag, but he forced himself to breathe and stay calm. It was far easier to keep a level head when there was someone outside to witness if he tried to disgrace himself by running away again. He just had to get the money and then get out. It would only take a few moments and he knew exactly where his father had kept his money box.
He ran upstairs and into his father's bedroom. It was exactly as he remembered, as if his father had slept it in only last night. This hurt to think about, so he quickly dropped to his knees and began hunting around under the bed for the box he knew should have been there. The existence of this box was the reason he'd been able to feed and clothe himself for most of his young life.
But it was not there.
"It's a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside!"
That sounded like Kushina, coming from within the house.
Minato raced out of the room to lean over the banister. Kushina was standing in the hall below, leaning forward to look into the kitchen. "You're supposed to be waiting outside!" he protested.
"Is there a reason why I can't come in?" she asked, and right then he knew he should have expected her to disobey. Once upon a time, she may have stood outside and argued with him until he let her inside or until he locked the door on her. Grown up Kushina apparently just nodded and smiled and then did what she wanted anyway. She'd grown a lot sneakier.
"I-I'm sorry about the smell," he said awkwardly.
"What smell?" she peered around. "Where's your father? Is he at work?"
He couldn't answer that, not honestly. He pushed away from the banister and, out of ancient habit, went to his room. Not much had changed here either except that it had acquired the musty stink of dust and disuse. Everything else was exactly as he had left it three years ago, and he was possibly the only person to have stepped into it since then.
The bed creaked stiffly as he sat down on it, reminding him that this was the comfort he'd sort when he'd spent one too many nights sleeping on a hard, lumpy bedroll in the middle of a marsh. This room was, in a way, like Danzou's tent; full of indulgence and opulence that had been taken for granted by its owner.
The squeaking floorboards on the stairs gave away Kushina as she climbed them. He heard her outside his door.
"Don't come in," he said, though he might as well have not bothered. She appeared in the doorway and looked around.
"This is your room?" she asked, staring with bold interest at his belongings. Despite asking her not to enter, she did just that. "There's a lot of pink."
It had come with the house. His parents had never redecorated it when they'd moved in, but it felt so tiresome to explain why the walls were adorned with murals of pastel coloured fairies. "I like pink," he said indifferently.
"Oh."
She came into the room, an interminable snoop. She looked around at his shelves and his chest of drawers, then spotted something familiar resting next to his pillow. "I'm met him before," she said, bending down to pick it up. "Mr Nose. Your anteater, isn't it?"
"Elephant," he corrected half-heartedly.
Kushina sat down on the bed beside him, making it bounce, and placed Mr Nose on his shoulder to tickle his cheek with the fuzzy trunk. "What's wrong?" she asked, for she evidently was not blind, and Minato was staring into space as if he'd just realised he'd been in a god-awful war.
He took Mr Nose off his shoulder and held him, between his knees, examining the toy that seemed so much smaller in his hands than before. He'd once doted on this bean-filled scrap of cloth. But, like many things in this village, he'd simply not thought about him for years.
He had thought about his father even less.
"Why should I have written to him?" he asked aloud.
Kushina tilted her head quizzically. That was new. Normally she just grunted 'what?' when she was confused. When and where had she picked up this mannerism?
"My father," Minato said. "He never wrote to me, why should I have written to him?"
She shrugged, not knowing the answer.
"And what would we talk about? 'Hey, remember that time you got drunk and locked me out of the house for two days?' Did he tell you about that? All my father ever did was throw things and mope over a stupid old picture of my mother. How could he ever expect me to bother about him?"
Kushina considered this quietly.
"He wasn't even my father," Minato said, and he felt physically sick for giving voice to a truth he'd never openly acknowledged before, even though it was a secret known to anyone who was at all moderately informed. "My father could be one of any number of men in or out of this village, but the man I lived with was not him."
Something about his choice of the past-tense made Kushina narrow her eyes in confusion. "Minato," she said softly. "Where is your dad?"
"He's gone," he said evenly. "He died."
Kushina looked at him sharply, and he knew what was coming: the soothing, soft platitudes of meaningless apology. He'd heard them all, and he'd said a few in his time. He remembered years ago when Kushina had written to tell him about the death of her sensei's wife and the breakdown of said sensei, and all he could think of to say were the same things everyone said. He wouldn't begrudge her now for parroting the usual lines.
"Do you want to cry?" she asked.
"No," said Minato quickly, suddenly worried he was about to.
"Do you want me to go?"
He swallowed. "No. It's ok."
He carried on staring morosely at the spots where Mr Nose's eyes used to be, until he felt the soft cool touch of Kushina's fingers cautiously touching the back of his hand. She was awkward, like she wasn't sure if she was allowed to touch him, and she settled for curling her finger lightly around three of his. Remarkably, all he could think of was her nails. He remembered them once being blunt and short and always caked in dirt; these days they were carefully filed to practical tips that were white and pink and as clean as the rest of her.
Hesitantly, he curled his fingers round hers. Her hand felt much smaller than he remembered too.
"You've changed," he said quietly.
She was also looking at their joined hands. "Not as much as you."
"Is that bad?" he wondered, because she didn't sound as happy as he felt when he realised how much she'd grown up.
"I'm not sure yet," she answered with a serious frown, "Even when you're not here, people talked a lot about you, and I heard some things... but I'm glad you're here now. I'm just sorry that the only thing that could drag you back to us was something like this."
"I'm glad you're here too," he said slowly. "I don't really want to be alone right now."
Her fingers shyly squeezed his a little harder, and when he glanced up at her he saw she'd turned a fetching red and her eyes were glazed with the threat of tears. "I'm sorry about your dad," she whispered.
And there it was.
This time, however, Minato smiled gratefully, because he knew that Kushina was the one person who truly meant it.
TBC