Chapter 38

As ordered I reported at the place on the scroll right on time. When I'd told my team about it, there was varying reactions. Kiriko was mad, Hiroshi was relieved it wasn't something worse, Kansen however was rather quiet about it all.

I waited at a small building that was linked to several other offices. The front door was locked when I got there, and five minutes after nine an elderly old man walked up to the building. I couldn't guess his age, but it seemed to be somewhere between old, to really old.. It was hard to tell in this world because chakra and genetics were really screwy but he had puffy white hair, wrinkles, and all of his teeth, which may or may have not been false. He wasn't hunched over with a cane but his posture was still somewhat poor, and he very slowly and carefully. Still the fact that he was visibly old meant that he was either a really old shinobi who wasn't vain enough to go with a genjutsu, or he wasn't a shinobi at all. Which was possible since a lot of jobs in the village didn't require you to be one.

"Good morning ojou-san, what is your name?"
He said it in a soft kind voice.

"Ume, I was told to report here for sanitation duty."

I said it as I handed him the scroll.

He uncoiled it and read through it slowly before rolling it up again.

"Ah, it has been some time since they have sent someone for this type of punishment. Tell me ojou-san, what did you do?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I got on the bad side of a Mizushima."

The man looked at me for a few moments and then nodded his head.
"Yes, I could see that. You have the bearings of someone who might do something so foolish."

I didn't reply to that, there was no point arguing about it. The situation wasn't the best, nor had my reaction to it had been. I made mistakes, but hindsight is twenty twenty.
"That doesn't matter terribly now. What should I call you oji-sama?"

He looked puzzled over me for a few moments before saying.
"My name is Jun."

I looked at him and did a bow.
"I am in your care Jun-sama."

He puzzled again before looking at the scroll.
"It says here that you show blatant disrespect to those in authority."

"I don't have problems with authority, I just have problems with key people in authority. My dislike has no actual link to authority in general."

"Ah, well that may be a problem for you in the future."

He rubbed his chin when he said that.

"Well considering my situation it's probably a problem now."

Jun actually chuckled at that.

I have no problem with actual sanitation work. A lot of people think it beneath them, but I have had several jobs that involved just cleaning things. From bathrooms, to frying oil filters, to dishes, to windows and ovens, it wasn't like the idea actually repelled me. But then again this job was designed to demean and punish me so it was clearly more than that. The first assignment I was given was cleaning cells, normally this would be fine but Jun didn't actually tell me what the cells were for. He did however have a bucket for when I ran out of the cell and started to vomit into.

The cell I was asked to clean had been a torture cell, not one of the psychological torture cells, but a physical one. At first glance it didn't look like much, a dark room with a wooden chair sat in the center of it, but look wasn't what hit your first, the smell did. Sharp and coppery, blood was unmistakable especially to a shinobi and when I turned on the light I saw the stains, old and new on the walls and the chair. A lot of it had clumped and congealed. It was a dark horror that hit me so fast that when I was sent running out I nearly hit the wall.

Jun said soothing words as I emptied my breakfast into the bucket and provided me with some water afterwards but it didn't change the fact that I was expected to clean that room, top to bottom. So after collecting a bucket, I did it, and tried not to think about what had happened in here while I did.

My first day was five of these rooms, all of which I had to hand scrub, and scrub hard to get the blood out. By the time I was done I got home exhausted but didn't dare sleep without making sure it would be dreamless.

The next day I went to my next assignment, though instead of normal food I ate a breakfast of rice and ration bars, just like at the academy. I knew why the academy fed that to us now, and not just because it was a cheap way to feed hundreds of kids. Rice was sticky, so if you exerted yourself or started to vomit it wouldn't leave your stomach easily and rations mixed well enough to stay down with it.

The next day I was cleaning out holding cells. There was blood and dust and fecal matter in most of them. Though they each had a toilet, I could probably guess that anybody who'd been interrogated wouldn't have the strength to move to relieve themselves, if they were conscious enough to make the move. I knew this was true when one of them still had an inhabitant. It was a boy, who wasn't much older than seventeen. He was just laying on his bed, so still I wasn't sure he was even alive at first. When I approached him slowly enough though I could see his chest moving, though I didn't think he wanted it too. He was covered in deliberate cuts, they were clotting and scabbed but those areas had blood like he'd been recently bleeding. He was knocked out, either by pain or drugs because he didn't stir even when I had to move him to change the blood covered blanket from the small bench that was used as a cot.

What had he done to get here? I couldn't have known, I might have tried to help but truthfully where could he have been taken at this point? It's not exactly like I could whisk him away from the middle of a ninja village. It was a painful thing to see, but I did my job as assigned, since doing anything else would be suspicious and cause for suspect and moved to the other cells.

The assignment went on like that. I could clean cells, see blood, and horrors and prisoners, whom I could reasonably do nothing about. Scattered about that were more mundane jobs, cleaning windows, or clearing out offices, or taking out trash but I doubted that was the purpose of this punishment.

Were they trying to warn me about what my behavior would lead too? Maybe. Maybe this was a hazing process, a way to try and break me, to scare me. If it had only been a week, maybe one day, it might have worked. But the repeated instance of it, only hardened me to the sight.

Humans are adaptive creatures, we can in fact get used to anything if given enough repeated exposure, but I got used to it. I think that might have been intentional too. I didn't get used to the idea, I didn't accept it, but the sight of the blood and the cells, and the implied torture didn't immediately make me sick to my stomach. It gave me nightmares, but only for the first few weeks, it wasn't as damning or bad as the nightmares about the deaths given by my own hand, or of my own death honestly. It felt strange to become used to this, I didn't like what it said that it didn't happen all too unnaturally. But I did, so much so that the jobs I did I only did with a silent resignation instead of the vomiting.

Jun watched me go through this, he didn't comment or judge. I wonder how long he'd done stuff like this was well. He was the head, probably a long time. It didn't break him, I don't know what it was suppose to break, but it made me feel bad for him. After a month I knew I could do this job, I didn't want too, but like a lot of retail jobs because I had been assigned to do it, I could do it. But having to do this all the time, to take care of this sort of thing. I couldn't imagine a life like that.

As such I was relieved when my assignment ended and I was given a scroll from Jun to give to the EO office. I was sent to see Kishi Sato again who looked at me, and I guess the look on my face and greeted me as normal.

"Good morning Ume-san, I was told you finished your assignment."
He looked at me as I thought what to say. I settled on the normal.
"Yeah."

Before I set the scroll from Jun on the desk. He picked it up but didn't read it here. I just stood there in his office for a few moments so he broke the silence before I did.

"Did you learn anything from your assignment Ume-san?"

"That Kirigakure has a sick sense of humor, or that it has an even sicker sense of punishment."
I said it in as low and flat a voice I could manage.

Kishi Sato considered this reply for a moment.

"Are you referring to your punishment?"

"My punishment was probably quite humorous considering the circumstances. No, I meant the punishment and the interrogation of those who I saw in the cells while I was cleaning."

My voice raised more near the end. He looked at me for a few moments.

"I see."

He didn't actually say any more about that statement. Not about the cells, about the torture, or the inhabitants. He had assigned me this punishment, but he didn't actually seem to want to answer anything about the why or the how. It was only then that he opened the from Jun. He read it for a few moments before looking up at me.
"Well it seems you did well on your assignment Ume-san, so as such you have been cleared to return to active duty."

He put the scroll down and began working on his own paperwork again. He worked for a few minutes before he noticed I was still standing there, glaring at him. If he noticed it, then he didn't acknowledge that.
"You are dismissed."