Spring has long since come and still, Ikkyu is not well.
There have been times over the past several weeks during which, had it not been for Kokuchou's medical training, the Cat, and Yuuto, that dreaded 'if'would have become a 'when'. Sukuna-sensei has stopped by several times, but usually sends his apprentice along to check on us every other day.
Since Ikkyu pulled me from the rubble, this is the longest period of time that I have remained lucid or not immersed in Kokuchou's memories. Each day, immediately after waking, I meditate. It is how I hold on and it always looks different as the world, which has been holding its breath all winter, gasps with life.
Some mornings, I climb the basswood tree in which the birds love to perch and just observe them flit about. Others, I sink my toes into the cool soil and feel the grass pushing its way up, the worms wiggling below. My favorite way of grounding myself, though, is going to the small creek which runs through the forest. This is where the most life happens, and I watch it thrive in all its various forms –the animals who come and go, and the plants which drink along the bank.
The earth fills those spaces between Kokuchou and I; it keeps me balanced, grounded. Present.
I make a lot of memories, too. Like speaking with Ikkyu of things we have never had the chance to before, or fostering a tentative friendship with Yuuto. He is so, so funny and has the kind of laugh that pulls me along with him. The Cat and I are getting along better now that I have time to play with him and he seems to enjoy exploring the forest around the hermitage with me. I never go far, of course, so that I can hear Ikkyu call out if he needs me.
I cannot remember ever feeling so whole.
I have barely recorded Kokuchou's memories these ten, long weeks. At first, it was out of desperation to keep Ikkyu alive during such an uncertain time. Then, it was because I had grown so fond of the life I nurtured along with the spring.
But some memories come unbidden and it is like being in two places at once.
I am Hokku, laughing with Yuuto as we play with the Cat, and Ikkyu watches from the veranda.
I am Kokuchou, surrounded by friends and teammates, yet always so alone. Training so hard to avoid death that I barely take the time live.
I hate it.
Regardless, I write the memories down in my journal, or share them with Ikkyu when he asks.
"Perhaps her story wants to be told," he tells me one afternoon as I help him take a walk. Yuuto told us it was important to move around each day.
"But her soul has passed on to…"
Ikkyu nods, knowing where I am going with this. "Her soul has indeed-" he pauses every now and again to cough. "It has indeed passed on to whatever is next- but stories are strange things and have a way of growing within us. They want to be known."
I do not understand how such a thing as a story can almost take on a life as Ikkyu is claiming, but do not fight the memories as they form.
"How- are her teammates?" He asks as we meander along. Ikkyu talks about them like that, as if the memories and the people within them aren't figments of the past shaded by Kokuchou's jaded mind and heart. As if they are current. As if they are here.
In a way, I suppose they are.
As I foster my own relationships with Ikkyu, Yuuto, the Cat, and even Sukuna-sensei, I remember a lot of little moments between Kokuchou and her teammates. Moments that made her feel much as I do now.
"
Minato shook his head for the fourth time that spar. His bangs were clearly getting in the way. In fact, all of his hair was becoming rather long.
When they were finished –Minato had won, of course– Hibashi helped her up. "Dude, you need a haircut. You're looking more girly than ever. Not that being girly is a bad thing-" Hibashi corrected quickly, looking at Kokuchou. It was probably out of habit, considering Sumitori's disposition.
The blond blushed at his ears. He tugged a lock of hair. The longest pieces nearly brushed the middle of his neck. "My aunt and uncle are on a mission."
"I'll take care of it," Jiraiya-sensei popped up next to them. He presented a kunai with a huge grin.
Minato flinched away and shook his head. He covered his hair with his hands. "Not again."
The jonin pouted and sniffed. "It wasn't that bad."
Minato's look told them it had been that bad.
"I can do it." Kokuchou hadn't intended on offering, but it had just... Happened. She was unwittingly becoming so comfortable with them that she was blurting things more often.
They all looked at her, surprised. While Minato had started off as the quietest, and he remained quite reserved, the boy had opened up considerably. He was serious, but cheerful and seemed to really like them. On the other hand, Kokuchou tended to stay on the sidelines during conversations, never really sharing anything too personal.
Minato scratched his head, considering it. "Have you cut hair before?"
"I cut Shou-nii's-"
"That guy with the curls?!" Hibashi mimed Shou's bushy hair with his hands. Kokuchou nodded. She'd been afraid to ruin the shape of his hair or make it lopsided, so she'd cut it curl by curl. Neither of them had minded at the time though. It had been an excuse to spend a brief two hours together.
"Okay," Minato pulled a pair of shears from his backpack.
Hibashi squinted at him. "Why do you have those?"
The blond shrugged and sat on the ground in front of Kokuchou. Sitting down like that, he was just the right height for her to cut his hair. While Kokuchou had gained some height over the past few months, nearing one hundred twenty-six centimeters, she'd given up any hope she'd once held of growing past one hundred fifty. Mokume-sensei told her she would probably reach the forty-five mark, if she got lucky.
"While you're busy with that..." Jiraiya-sensei trailed off with that weird giggle of his and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
"Where does he-" she began.
Minato shook his head. "You don't want to know."
Their third teammate had busied himself with going through Minato's bag, claiming he wanted to see what other 'treasures' the boy had.
"Why do you have a deflated balloon in here?"
"You never know," Minato shrugged but froze once more when Kokuchou ordered him to remain still.
"And this pack of toothbrushes?"
The boys spent the rest of haircut going back and forth about mission preparedness and what Hibashi had declared as Minato's pack-rat nature.
"How is this not heavier?" He experimentally lifted the bag.
As absorbed in conversation as they were, the two missed the smile which tugged at the corners of Kokuchou's mouth.
"
"Whoa, whoa! Stop!" Hibashi demanded with a wide-eyed laugh, hands held out in front of him.
Kokuchou paused putting on her boots. "What?"
"That's what I should be asking! Dude, what is up with your toes!?" He dropped on all fours to get a closer look at them.
Kokuchou flexed her digits. They looked just as they always did. "...Nothing?"
"Those things are so long!"
Minato, who'd been pulled aside at the beginning of training by their jonin sensei, glanced up. He craned his neck to try to see from across the field but the man slapped him upside the head.
"Pay attention, Minato."
The blond looked back at his work, a slight frown on his lips.
Hibashi delicately pinched one between his fingers. "Eww. They're so weird, like fingers almost."
"They're not weird."
"They're like a monkey's." Hibashi's tone was very matter-of-fact.
Kokuchou felt uncharacteristically self-conscious. No one had said anything about them before. "I'm sure yours aren't much better."
Hibashi laughed. "O-kay. Let's compare, then." He plopped onto the ground and tore off his sandal, shoving his foot next to hers. "See?"
Indeed, despite their difference in size, Kokuchou's toes looked strangely long beside her teammates. Almost disproportionate with the rest of her body.
"Hey, Minato-kun!" Hibashi called, still chortling at his victory. "You gotta come see Kokuchou-chan's monkey toes. They're gnarly."
The blond bolted over, pretending to not hear the jonin's irritated summons.
"No," she tried to put her boots back on but Hibashi grabbed them first.
"Hey," he said. "Stand up. I wanna see what kind of air you can get with those babies. Can you pick things up with them?"
"
Hibashi stopped suddenly, nearly causing her and Minato to bowl him over. He'd done that a few times, his short attention span and hyper-awareness always alerting him to something they didn't notice. Sometimes it was insignificant, like what he deemed to be a cool looking bug, but other times, his attention span showed him traps their sensei had set for them.
"What?" She looked over his shoulder.
He leaned forward, squinting his already small eyes at a spot on the branch he occupied.
"Do you see something?" Minato asked.
Hibashi's only answer was to lean in further, crouching then. She and Minato joined him.
"Do you... You two gotta get closer." He waved them down until their faces were just a few centimeters from the branch.
"There's..." he trailed off.
Kokuchou waited, eyes scanning the bark.
"I don't-" Minato started.
Then Hibashi grabbed the back of both of their heads and forced them to bang into the branch.
"There's nothing!" The boy cackled. "You morons fell for it!"
Minato was up like a flash but Hibashi had already replaced himself with a branch from the ground. The blond laughed, jumping down after him. Kokuchou threw a chakram.
Try to outrun that, she thought.
"
Kokuchou's food had grown cold as she watched her teammate eat. There were so many people walking around the park that Hibashi only just noticed her staring.
"What is it?" Hibashi stage-whispered, eyeing Minato as well.
Jiraiya-sensei looked up from his notebook. She'd never seen him eat. He always scribbled away in that notepad during mealtimes, smiling to himself.
Minato, as absorbed in his lunch as he was, didn't notice their attention. Kokuchou didn't want to draw it, so she pointed to her mouth and mimicked his chewing.
It was incredibly slow. Like, one chew each second.
Hibashi laughed at him and then Minato looked up and around, trying to find what was so funny. He knit his brow. Minato swallowed slowly, too. "What is it?"
"Do you like your food?" Kokuchou asked, trying not to smile.
He nodded.
"Then why the hell are you chewing so slow?" Hibashi motioned with his chopsticks.
"It's not slow."
"Take a bite, then. Go on." The other boy encouraged.
Minato did and she could tell he was thinking too hard about the typically mindless act.
He sped up.
Then the blond groaned when he bit his tongue.
Kokuchou spit water out her nose.
Hibashi fell over and onto their lunches, laughing even harder.
Minato didn't seem to mind the teasing.
"
Except when it came to his 'treasures'.
"Hibashi-kun? Kokuchou-chan? What are you doing here?" He'd started calling them that after Hibashi had insisted. Without her consent. Kokuchou preferred the more formal 'san' but it was too late now and would have been awkward to request in the first place.
Kokuchou froze, remarkably uncomfortable. She could have said no, stayed behind. Really, she should have because she had no good excuse for why they had snuck into Minato's room. Somehow, Hibashi had known his aunt and uncle were on some mission.
"I've got a sense about these things," Hibashi had claimed as he dragged her to the apartment in a nice part of town. "I'm sure there's more to his whole bag situation."
"Hey Minato-kun," Hibashi said casually, as if it were completely normal to be in a teammate's locked apartment before they arrived home themselves. "What's up?"
"... I just went to get some more ink." He held up the bag of his purchases and moved to set it on his cluttered desk. A scroll fell to the messy floor. When Minato went to pick it up, he knocked over a pile of... junk, that was the only word she could think of to describe the chaos that was stacked around his room. "Sorry for the mess, I haven't had the chance to-"
"Get rid of your hoard?" Hibashi finished for him.
Minato's brow furrowed heavily beneath his bangs. "My hoard?"
"Yeah, you're obviously a hoarder," Hibashi said with delighted eyes. "I mean look at all this crap! You're a lot of things, Minato-kun. But I never expected this!"
Minato looked around at the piles of books, newspapers, and rocks. There were several birdhouses, a shelf of snow globes, even a stack of lampshades. Kokuchou thought she saw a box of lawn decorations, which was made weirder because he lived in an apartment.
He frowned at Hibashi. "It's not crap."
And wow. Kokuchou had never heard him sound so defensive.
"What's this?" Hibashi held up a random item from the floor.
"It's a doll from the Land of Iron. I'm studying it because it reflects the nation's cultural-"
"Okay. And this?" He presented a bag of cat food. "Do you have a cat in here somewhere?"
"It's not for anything." Minato grabbed the bag and put it on a random, or what seemed random to them, box. "It's part of my collection. I'm a collector."
"You're a collector of cat food?"
"No!"
"So you're a collector of useless junk, then?"
"It's not junk!" The blond asserted. His voice broke a little in his vehemence. Kokuchou sputtered off to the side. He rounded on her. "What do you think, Kokuchou-chan? I'm not a hoarder, right?"
He looked at her so pleadingly, blue eyes wide, that she almost wanted to lie and tell him that no, he didn't have a problem. Almost. "Well... there is a lot of stuff in here..."
"Yeah, because it's all useful! This-" the blond held up a compact mirror, "can be used for disguises in the Land of Wind. And this stone can be utilized to-"
"Yeah, yeah. We got it. But really, everything is a tool if you put your mind to it. You're just using that as an excuse."
They argued over it the rest of the afternoon.
And when no one had won by dinner, the teammates ended up having it there, debating the matter the entire time.
"
"Ahh! Demo-" Hibashi flinched backward, holding his chest. "Dammit, Kokuchou-chan! I thought you were a demon or something!"
Kokuchou raised a brow. Well, brows. One day she would be able to do just the one…
"Sorry?" She hadn't been doing anything out of the ordinary, just stretching as she waited for her teammates to arrive. When she'd heard Hibashi's approach, Kokuchou had twisted her torso around, keeping her lower body planted. Apparently, her appearance had startled the boy.
"You should be. Say, can you do the thing?" It was almost part of their routine by that point. Whenever she warmed up, Hibashi requested her to bend her body in seemingly impossible ways. Then, as usual, Minato and Jiraiya-sensei had arrived together and they proceeded to their D-rank mission.
Later, when they were cooling down from training, Hibashi called her over. Kokuchou, who had been mid-stretch, simply maintained the position and hobbled to him in her contorted position. She tapped his foot. "What is it?"
Hibashi turned and startled. "Ugh! Kokuchou-chan stop that!"
"Stop what?" Minato asked curiously.
The other boy gestured wildly to her. "Just look at her! She looks possessed!"
The blond tilted his head. "I don't- Oh! You mean like from one of those classic kaidan novels?"
"You read classic kaidan novels?" Kokuchou asked. She never had the stomach for it, never mind the fact that they were impossibly dry, but she always read the books her mother passed along. She considered it the woman's form of communication. Kokuchou unfolded herself and blinked away the blood rush.
Minato nodded.
Hibashi made a face. "You keep getting weirder, Minato-kun."
After that, if things got boring between missions and training, Kokuchou made a point of seeing how badly she could scare her teammate.
"
"Not everything was great, though," I tell Ikkyu.
He nods, as if he expected as much. "For example?"
I think about. "Like how Jiraiya-sensei usually pulled Minato aside during training. He would teach them all together, of course. But Minato got the most attention, as if Jiraiya believed he needed it the most."
That used to make Kokuchou so angry. She didn't understand why the jonin couldn't see that of the three of them, Minato needed the least amount of help. She had a lot of work to do on her offensive techniques and Hibashi needed help all across the board. But the man had apparently deemed their progress as less pressing.
Shou's whispered 'War' was a near constant in her mind.
"I can see how that would alienate the boy from the rest of his team. Anything else?"
I nod. "Yeah. She and Jiraiya were pretty antagonistic towards each other. She didn't respect him. I think she saw… I don't know. Kokuchou saw something in Jiraiya that made her act out… Minato was constantly avoiding responsibility within the team. Not in the sense that he wasn't there to help them during a spar or mission, but he avoided any sort of leadership role."
Kokuchou hated it because, the way she saw it, she hadn't even wanted to be a shinobi but wasn't avoiding her role the way Minato so often did.
"Then, this one time, Hibashi said something unkind about Wakuraba."
I don't think it had been on purpose, but the village had just conditioned them to react to certain things in specific ways. When Hibashi saw the Wakuraban boy being arrested for painting graffiti on a wall, he'd frowned and said to them, "It's because they're raised that way."
Kokuchou, out of habit, had maintained her straight face. Beneath her calm exterior, however, she was completely taken aback. She was raised in Wakuraba. Everyone she grew up with and nearly everyone she attended the Third School with was from Wakuraba. Perhaps it was something he'd heard his parents say or one of the many villagers who held similar sentiments,
Then Hibashi had realized to whom he was speaking. "I don't mean you, Kokuchou-chan! Or your friend, Shou-san. I just meant-"
"Forget it," she'd said to get him to drop it. She didn't want to hear his excuses. "It doesn't matter."
Hibashi looked remorseful and Minato, thoughtful. He hadn't voiced his own opinion, whatever that may have been. As usual.
Kokuchou's eyes had lingered as they passed the main cemetery with its gleaming monument, clean headstones, flowers, and kempt grounds.
"But, they made up for it, I think." I pause to let Ikkyu rest a moment. Despite the heavy topic, he appeared untroubled. At peace, almost, as the sun shone through the branches tipped with budding leaves.
"
"I miscalculated."
Kokuchou stood beside her teammates as a room full of angry public officials and administrative shinobi berated them. Well, they berated Minato and Hibashi to be specific. Kokuchou was just guilty by association. She hadn't even been there.
"And you," the leader of their platoon, the Rikugun-Chui, Fujino Hansei, whirled on Jiraiya-sensei. "What have you been teaching him all this time? Namikaze has been your student for over two years and he still doesn't understand the importance of not playing with fuinjutsu?"
"A bigger miscalculation could have blown up the entire village!" Another official ground out, his voice nearly hysterical.
A member of the Shinobi Police Force stepped forward, the Uchiha symbol emblazoned on his sleeve. "Should further action be necessary-"
Jiraiya-sensei cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Let's not get hasty. No one was hurt and no major property was damaged."
"They burned down an entire forest!"
The jonin rolled his eyes. Kokuchou worried he would make the whole thing worse with his blasé attitude. "Okay, cool it with the dramatics. It was a small grove and to repeat myself, nothing but trees were damaged."
Hibashi was uncharacteristically focused and Minato, as collected as usual. Neither appeared the least bit repentant. Something was up. Kokuchou couldn't believe that they hadn't realized they were near the unknown cemetery, not after they'd gone to find her there on the day of Wakaba's funeral.
A missions dispatcher who'd been scribbling on a scroll the whole time looked up. "Whatever the case may be, your actions will be put under review and you will be notified of further action to be taken. In the meantime, Team Jiraiya will repair the lot that was destroyed. That means uprooting the trees and moving them to the designated area, ensuring that no graves were damaged, et cetera. The details are in here." He shook the scroll out to Jiraiya-sensei.
"Next time," another random bureaucrat spoke up, "keep your spars contained to a training ground. That's what they're there for."
Some chunin were whispering to themselves in the back of the room. "What neighborhood is it near anyways?"
"Just Wakuraba." Kokuchou's gaze shot to the man who spoke. "It wouldn't be a great loss, but the Aburame compound is so close to it…"
Rage.
They don't know, she forced herself to calm down. They don't know that I'm from Wakuraba. They've never met Shou. Or Okaa-san, Futaba, Kozue, Kareha, Ochiba, Hama, Wakaba, Wakaki. Her neighbors. Hundreds of people's homes, their lives, deemed as 'no great loss'.
What was the opinion of a single man?
Except it wasn't just him. How many times had she or other Wakurabans been called rot, a blight? How often were they glared at for 'loitering' in the village or watched like a hawk because shopkeepers caught just a bit of their Wakuraban accent and thought they would steal?
What thoughts did her team secretly harbor about where she came from? About who she was as a result of having been born and raised there.
It was not just this man.
The worker beside him nodded. "How much shit would they be in if that place got blown up?"
Kokuchou breathed heavily through her nose, eyes glaring holes in on the floor. It felt like they were on fire. She blinked.
Beside her, Hibashi stood a little taller and Minato shifted on his feet.
"Save your gossip for another time," the chunin dispatcher grumbled. "I swear, you two are worse than a couple of bored housewives." To them he said, "Because of the destruction caused to public property, you'll be paying for the damage out of your paychecks."
Minato's hand shot up. "Sir? Aokigahara Kokuchou was not present for the spar."
Aokigahara, someone whispered.
The chunin's eyes roved the report and he nodded. "Fine. She'll still have to help you two because this does qualify as a mission. But your record will not reflect the incident and you will be paid for the work. Team Jiraiya, dismissed."
The glares and stern looks did not leave them as they moved to exit the office. Some of them went back to discussing how to go forward with the issue.
As they were departing, Hibashi's eyes zeroed in on something on the neck of the man who'd insulted Wakuraba. Kokuchou couldn't tell what it was that he saw.
The man touched his neck self-consciously. "What?"
Hibashi strode towards him and leaned in, eyes narrowed at a spot. Then he made a face. "Huh."
The boy rejoined them without another word.
"What?" The man asked his coworker. He tilted his head back to get a better look. "Is something there?"
The door closed behind them with a click.
"What the hell was that, Goldfish?" Jiraiya-sensei asked. He jostled the boy's head.
"Nothing." Hibashi ducked away. "But that asshole will be paranoid for days."
She listened to the jonin admonish her teammates as they made their way to the plot of land that had been destroyed. "You could have tried harder to look sorry."
"You could have tried harder not to antagonize them." Hibashi shot back.
"They know me, though. You guys are just genin-"
Minato caught her eye. "It matters."
What? Kokuchou's brow knit as she followed behind them. What was he talking about?
It had taken three days to clean up the small forest. Minato and Hibashi had certainly done a number on it. A large part of the reason it had taken so long was because they had to chop the remaining trees into logs that would fit on a cart and then lug that cart across the village. It would be sold as firewood or used for training resources.
Thankfully (strangely), just the surrounding trees had been burned. The grave stones and tomb were left untouched.
When they were done, the once concealed cemetery was noticeable from the road and weeks later, Kokuchou could still overhear people talking about it.
"I didn't even know it was there," some said.
Others, "They're mostly Wakurabans."
"It's kind of sad," she'd heard someone say.
From that time onwards, more flowers were left on the graves and genin teams were assigned to maintain the cemetery. Minato and Hibashi continued to assert that it had been a mere miscalculation. An accident.
Kokuchou suspected otherwise.
"
"Do you believe it was an accident?" Ikkyu asks as I help him back onto his futon. He tries to contain a grunt when the movement jostles his cracked ribs. He'd coughed so much, so hard, that they had given way a few days ago.
I make sure to shut the door and begin humidifying the room. "No."
Minato, I have come to realize, was outstanding amongst his peers. So much so that he was basically competing against himself by the time he graduated from the Academy. For him, learning fuinjutsu –one of the most difficult shinobi arts– was like a foal learning to walk just after it was born. It was instinct, an innate ability.
"It was not a miscalculation."
Ikkyu hums and watches me go about our evening routine.