"In whom there is no sympathy for living beings; know him as an outcast"- Sutta Nipata
The house was much the same as Yuuko remembered it being; an open floor layout that was almost eerily familiar, the staircase off to the side, the long table with high bar stools. This time however there were candles lit and an earthy smell filled the air. She felt an ache in her chest.
Jun stepped in behind her and closed the door with the softest of clicks. Nao, who was already seated at the table, turned completely to stare at the door, watching them both. The sleeves of their long jacket poised on their knees.
Out of habit born in the years of her time here, Yuuko almost removed her shoes before remembering that the Aburame did not follow that particular practice.
"If you are so eager, you should not design to ignore it." Confused Yuuko twisted her head to watch Jun pass before realizing the comment was for Nao.
Immediately Nao jumped down from the stool and headed toward the staircase.
Turning her head away, Yuuko followed Jun over to the table and climbed up on the stool she had claimed during her last visit.
She could feel the weight of Jun's gaze as she settled, feet swinging just slightly.
"Tell me, Hagoromo-chan, did you look for Bandojudo?"
Yuuko could feel her heart pound. She felt a little…bad. Jun seemed to be trying to help, although how Jun had noticed what her own family had not, she did not know.
She just…couldn't.
She wished she had tea- something to do with her hands.
Forcing her head to nod, she spoke into the quiet, "Yes. I found it, I just..." How could she explain to someone like Jun? To anyone from this place?
How could she explain that the idea of ever purposefully harming someone made her nauseous? That she could not imagine a world in which she could force herself to walk the battlefields of blood she knows are to be her future if she followed the path of a shinobi? That she feared constantly for Hayato, both his physical and spiritual state, ever time he walked out the door? That she worried for her parents? That she worried for the enemies they faced too?
Saṃsāra.
Duḥkha
In her head memories long buried sometimes echo- small and standing in a corner she watched two children fight. Anxiety built in her chest. Sometimes she imagined she could physically feel others pain. Other children watch or cheer or leave. A harsh reprimand from an adult whose face is long forgotten, "Listen to me! Hey! Are you listening to me? You do not hit people. Ever. We do not hit people, even if they hit you first. Violence is not how we solve things."
How could she express how the air had begun lately to thicken around her? Her aunt is dead. Her mother no longer braided her hair in the mornings. Hayato is wound and coiled, and he was preparing to enter a test in which people just died every so often. And the whole of the Hagoromo Clan seemed to be a maelstrom of pressure hurtling towards something she could not foresee.
A rift between her and this world flashed in her mind.
Part of her wanted so badly to belong here. She had come to love her family so much…but most of her couldn't see anything but a slowly crescendo to disaster.
She jumped a little when a hand appeared in front of her face. By some means Jun must have moved to the kitchen, retrieved the cookie that was currently in their hands, and returned around the table to Yuuko side without her noticing.
Jun did not reach out to touch her, the people of Konoha were not ones for casual touch, but the cookie offering was clearly an attempt at comfort.
A wave of gratitude ran through her- That she should have stumbled upon someone like Jun. A person who, if unable to empathize, seemed to have sympathy at least. Compassion.
Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ
With cold fingers Yuuko took the cookie. She nibbled on the corner to find it was some type of gingersnap -her stomach settled somewhat. Jun resumed their seat calmly.
Clever ninja.
The flickering of the candles reflected off the dark tint of Jun's glasses.
"I did not mean to upset you, Hagoromo-chan. Put it from your mind."
Yuuko blinked a little to get her eyes back under her control. She had never been a stranger to tears before but she has felt so raw lately that they seemed now to come faster than ever before.
The patter of soft footsteps announced Nao's return.
They stopped just short of the table, arms laden with a multitude of what appeared to be board games of some kind or another.
"We will play these now, starting with this one, and then have lunch." Nao demanded in a manner of absolute certainty, pointing to one box in the collection of games.
Yuuko thought she heard Jun sigh softly.
"Nao, you should ask your guest what they want to do."
Nao's fingers tighten but Yuuko shook her head easily. While not card games, board games were close enough to something comfortable. "No, that's fine. We can play that one, Nao. I wouldn't know what to choose anyway."
Confidence restored, Nao joined them at the table and began setting up the pieces.
Observing the multitude of complex little figures, Yuuko shook her head to clear her thoughts. Focus on the now, she told herself.
"You'll have to explain the rules. I've never played this one." Yuuko said.
Nao lifted their gaze from laying out the pieces and straightened their posture. Jun took over setting up the board as Nao launched into a rapid and complex speech about how the game was played.
Board games with Aburame ninja turn out to require not just a strong understanding of the rules but also on how to successfully cheat. While Nao was the biggest culprit, by the end of the first game Yuuko was certain Jun was cheating too.
They took a break from board games around noon time and while Jun made lunch, Nao pulled Yuuko around the Aburame compound. They visit a small green house first, which was full of strange plants Yuuko had never seen before. Nao gave scientific names for each species and informed Yuuko of their basic uses. Then Nao, hand grasping Yuuko's wrist through the fabric of their sleeve, lead her up to the roof. Determinedly avoiding getting or looking at the edges, Yuuko listened as Nao introduced her, with detailed commentary, to the bee farm.
Yuuko noted that there still were very few people around for a clan as large as the Aburame and although she was deeply curious she also knew that poking into clans too deeply could cause problems. So she didn't ask.
Lunch was a surprisingly pleasant affair. Her own family had grown used to her strange eating habits but mostly that meant that Takeko made separate dishes for Yuuko. At the Uchiha's she had been forced to pick around platters to find vegetables and ended up mostly eating rice. But lunch at the Aburame's was entirely vegetarian friendly.
Whether it was a coincident or not she didn't know but Yuuko was very pleased by the mixed green salad and the assortment of fruit and nuts.
As the day drew to a close, Nao went off to put away the games and Jun took the opportunity to speak with her again.
"Perhaps you do not know, Hagoromo-chan, but your friendliness has meant a great deal to Nao."
Yuuko scrunched her toes at Jun's bland but honest tone. She had not really made that big of an effort to really truly befriend Nao, had she?
She had fallen into almost everything lately by pure luck and letting Nao drag her around wasn't really embracing the child as a friend. As Nao dashed back, Yuuko decided to at least endeavor to try harder.
Perhaps Nao was a little strange, perhaps Yuuko had not really even been looking for a friend, and perhaps Yuuko wasn't sure she even knew how to really make friends anymore, but she would try her best to be a good to Nao regardless.
One successful 'play date' opened a flood and soon Yuuko was a regular visitor to the Aburame compound once or twice a week.
Things were never quite as formal as they had been the first time but occasionally Shizutori would still escort her. Sometimes her mother was the one to take her, but for some reason Tsubasa was never around when she set out.
Her time spent there was interesting.
Yuuko learned more than she ever thought possible about all kinds of arachnids and insects from Nao.
"The females are one third the size of the males with four blue markings along the cephalothorax. They are not native to Fire, so you can only see them here. So you will have to come back to keep looking at them. Now we will play another board game."
"This is the ZheHachi. Its sting can produce two types of venom, apitoxin and poneratoxin. To compensate, the ZheHachi has a smaller thorax and a larger abdomen. Their sting is said to be one of the most painful of all insects."
Jun would sometimes give lessons to make up for the lessons with Ayaha she missed being over at their house. Jun's lessons focused on stretching with a complex type of Yoga and, on what could only be described as, the art of cheating. This was something Yuuko struggled with- it went against the five moral precepts of Buddhism:
Refrain from harming living things, from taking what is not given, from sexual misconduct, from lying or gossip, from taking intoxicating substances.
Cheating had always been a form of lying to her.
And her refusal to cheat meant that she lost spectacularly every time.
At home, tensions continued to simmer. Hayato was rarely home, always out training for his exams, and on the occasion he was home, he was shut in his room sleeping. Her mother no longer brushed her hair in the mornings, rising later and later in the day. An odd tension was building between her parents too.
Late at night she could hear them arguing in low but intense voices. After one such argument, while she lay with her eyes shut wishing to block out the world and just fall asleep, she heard just the faintest whisper of someone opening her door. Then there was a dip in her bed and the large hands of her father ran through her hair. It was painfully quiet in the room but she couldn't even hear him breathing. And then he was gone.
Sometimes Shizutori would show up to speak with her parents; the arguments were always worse on those nights. It's one on of those occasions that she caught someone snapping, "What you want isn't possible! You know how much we need this! You cannot keep coddling her!" and Yuuko couldn't shake the deep knowledge that that had been about her.
Carefully worded comments pushing Yuuko to partake in more training exercises began. Her lessons with Ayaha speed up. She was gifted a set of bright and beautiful kunai that made her skin crawl. The arguments continued.
So Yuuko meditated.
One of the things Yuuko had struggled to grasp before was how Buddhism could intertwine itself with intention. Part of lying was about the intention to deceive, she reasoned. If she was sitting at the table and Jun and Nao were both expecting her to cheat, and were both cheating themselves, was she being deceitful by cheating? Was there intent to harm? How much did that matter?
Yuuko wrestled with herself for days.
Regardless of the pressure she could feel closing in around her; she wanted to make this decision on her own.
Sitting upright on her bedroom floor, calming her mind, blanking everything out, she tried to find what she herself thought.
The idea of hurting anyone intentionally, mentally or physically, felt wrong. To strike against someone, to lash out, felt wrong. Lying to conceal or deceive others felt wrong. She still didn't think she could ever step into a spar and intentionally cause pain- even if that was the expectation of her opponent. However, perhaps in this one setting, she would allow herself to learn from Jun and Nao. Only in that setting would she allow it, that setting when social convention meant that those around her were expecting deceit and when the deceit itself was not done with malicious intent.
The thought felt traitorous, like she was taking her first uneven steps onto the perilous edge of a slippery slope.
Yuuko was determined not to fall.
And so she began learning sleight of hand when she joined Jun and Nao for board games.
A lot of it had to do with how one directed people's attention and having skill with dexterous fingers. But the things Jun showed her went even further, because chakra could be used for even greater advantage. She learned to steal pieces, rearrange a board, how to direct someone's eyes away from her goal.
The first game she wins feels like a loss but the night her family hears of her victory there is no fight after dinner.
If she ever decided to steal something, Yuuko could probably fly under anyone but a chunin or jounin's gaze. Yuuko was reassured to find the thought of ever doing such a thing still disgusted her.
Yuuko's forth birthday inched closer, now only two months away.
On one windy day, trapped inside with Ayaha for a math lesson of all things, a knock came from the front door.
From upstairs Hayato descended to answered it and found Chouko Uchiha on the other side. Stuck in a backbend beside the moon well with Ayaha beside her and a leaf stuck to her forehead , Yuuko tried to hold her concentration. Hayato leaned against the wall and frowned.
"I thought we weren't training again until tomorrow afternoon," Yuuko heard her brother say in a tired tone.
"I am not here for you" She remarked, eyes moving from him to peer into the house, "I am here on official Uchiha business. Is either of your parents' home?"
"Chouko-chan?"
Hayato stood straight as Chouko turned to see Tsubasa striding up toward the front of the house.
The Uchiha moved to the side as the elder approached before dropping into a polite bow. Arms laiden with grocery bags, Tsubasa offered a thin smile. "You were looking for me? If you'd you like to come in, it will just take a moment to put these away."
Yuuko readjusted her hands on the stone floor. Her wrists hurt but the leaf stayed stuck to her forehead. Breathing deep she felt the natural pulse of her chakra.
Chouko shook her head, " Hagoromo-san, I wished only to inform you that the Uchiha would like to extend a formal invitation to your daughter."
Hayato's face twitched but Tsubasa blinked curiously and passed a bag to his son. Hayato accepted it with stiff arms. "An invitation?" Tsubasa asked in a curious but not displeased tone.
"Mikoto-sama was…hoping your daughter and the Uchiha heir would be able to spend tomorrow together."
Tsubasa passed his son another bag and ran a hand through his feathered brown hair. His smile was genuine but his eyes deep. "That sounds…most agreeable. Yuuko has the day off tomorrow anyway. It would be good for her to get out."
Yuuko's left hand slipped and she fell hard to the floor. The leaf blew away.
Duḥkha- (or Dukkha) is a Buddhist concept that is often translated as 'suffering' although the term is more complex than that. It's broken into three main categories and I won't get into it here but it basically includes things like the physical, mental suffering of birth, aging, illness and death as well as not being able to get the things you want in life and things not living up to expectation. Yuuko is reflecting upon the concept and the suffering those around her and those her family would consider enemies.
ZheHachi- is a type of bee I invented for this story. The name is a combination of the Chinese word 'sting' and the Japanese word 'bee'.
Alright. I'm sorry for skipping two updates. Work has been crazy and I got caught up in other fandoms after seeing Star Trek Beyond and then I started Pokemon Go and went adventuring instead of writing and I did warn that I tend to be a reader not a writer. anyway, I apologize for the delay. On the upside, things get real real next chapter.
As a side note, I might start looking for a beta...so if anyone knows anyone who might be interested, let me know!
Also ten chapters in, father then I ever thought I would get, and almost fifty reviews. So thank you all so much! I love so much hearing from all of you!
I'll leave you with some lovely subtly foreshadowing, "Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes"- Bhaddekaratta Sutta