Shelf number three was plastic boxes with papers in them, clumps of them held together with clips. Just like Orochimaru-sensei's.
"That's drafts of my oba's novel. She thinks she can write. She really can't."
"Oh," said Anko, weakly. "You know, there's probably not going to be anything worth looking at over here, maybe we should go further back?" She really didn't want to see the possessions of anyone that Sasuke was going to refer to in the present tense.
He nodded and started walking off toward the older looking shelves. She followed. The more she looked at it, the creepier the room became. She could see a stuffed bear propped against the wall, one eye missing, its fabric worn with love. A rack with hangers, the kind you'd see in a department store, held women's dresses of the kind that was fashionable forty years ago. Was that...parts of a railing? It had pieces of wood joined at the top with space in between each piece, so what else could it be? But why would you keep that? And then she realized that no, that wasn't pieces of a railing, that was pieces of a crib.
And then she tripped.
"Wha..what was that?" she said. Thankfully she hadn't actually fallen or anything, that would've been, like, mega-embarrassing.
"The concrete ended," said Sasuke. And she looked down, and indeed it had. They were now walking on wooden floorboards that looked far more rough-hewn than that shelf ever could. Why did Sasuke have to take "go further back" to mean "go all the way back"? Actually, how big was this thing? She looked around and realized that the walls had changed, too. They looked...older? Why would you only redo half your basement?
He turned a corner. In front of them was darkness. Lamp/alarm clock/toasters can only do so much.
"Well, uh, good thing we have flashlights, yeah?" he said, sounding a little nervous. Maybe he was just as scared as she was.
"Mm," she replied, turning hers on as he did the same. And...whoa. If Itachi had found a summoning scroll in this basement, it definitely would've been over here. There were glass bottles on the shelves in fantastic, twisting shapes. A painting hung on the wall, a glorious scene of towering trees and bright sunlight: Fire Country before there were countries. Next to it was faded and dirty...parchment, maybe with hentaigana writing done tategaki style, which was too long for the wall and pooled onto the floor. Old swords, rusty with age, lay next to each other on an intricately carved bamboo table, the kind only a very rich family could have had a hundred years ago. One side of it was held up with bricks, which explained why it was down here and not up above. And ooh, in the corner, an actual suit of armor, the kind she'd only ever seen in drawings of the Shodai in textbooks! This was kind of cool, actually.
"Look at that," said Sasuke, pointing at the bottles. "That's what passed for medicine back in the day. My dad says...said it's just opium and lies." Anko realized that that odd smell in the air was chemicals, chemicals that had sat in this dampened basement for far too long. "I guess if you're looking for potions this is the closest you're gonna get." He went over to pick one up, dusty blue glass and ancient label. Oh shh-, what if they actually were potions and they did something to him and then what would she do how would she explain that?
"Don't touch that!" she said, her voice a bit sharper than she had intended.
He turned and stared at her, his flashlight beam pointed right at her owww. "Why not? I'm not gonna drink it or anything, I'm not that dumb, you know. I just wanted to see what the label said."
"I don't want you breathing in, um, fumes, you know, that old stuff can be dangerous if you leave it alone for a while, 'cause, um, chemicals, they're, um, bad for you. Why do you even have this if it's useless?"
"Old people thought they were still good and that after we, I don't know, started a civil war against the government or some other dumb thing, we'd need them or something," he said, rolling his eyes. What? What was wrong with these people? She shouldn't think that. Shouldn't think ill of the dead. (Except these vials hadn't been very useful to them when they got stabbed, so maybe Uchiha Fugaku was right. Except surely the opium would have dulled the pain.)
"Well, um, that's a nice painting," she said, trying to diffuse some of the creepy. Except probably that had some disturbing back story too.
"Take it," Sasuke said with that same awful, flat tone that Itachi spoke solely in.
"What?" she replied, startled. Why would he offer it?...Was it cursed or something? (We're not wizards we're not wizards we're not wizards)
"My mom hates...hated it. It used to be upstairs, but she made my dad put it down here. She said she would give it away if she didn't feel bad about the idea of making someone else have its ugly. So take it." Oh, so he'd been down here before! That was good. Unless he hadn't, and haha had just told him about the ugly painting by her horrid grandmother-in-law, venting her disgust at the family she'd been forced to marry into. 'Don't believe any of the rumors,' she told herself, firmly.
"Well...er...okay." Anko felt a little weird about it. But it's what Uchiha Mikoto would have wanted, probably, maybe, and anyway, her apartment needed some better decorations. Unless...no, no, no, put the rumors away. She walked over to it to lift it off of the nail she assumed it was hanging on. It was heavy; she would need two hands to carry it.
"Hey, Sasuke, can you hold my flashlight?" She held it out to him.
And then, it went out.
She screamed.