"I still don't understand why you need so many notebooks," Gaara huffed. He wasn't the only one having a hard time there: Hitomi too crumbled under the weight of dozens and dozens of notebooks. She had bought so many. After a while, her friend had had enough and had used his sand to carry most of the stack, but still, they had their hands full. The Sunajin walking around probably thought they were hallucinating and watched, open-mouthed, as their jinchūriki and this damn foreign girl went back to the hotel.

"I'm working on that fūinjutsu project…"

"I know that! But you have enough to open your own bookstore, where you'd only sell empty notebooks. Don't you think you went a bit overboard there?"

Hitomi looked at all the notebooks, their colourful spines and white edges, then shrugged. "Nope!"

Gaara sighed, doing his best to follow her. Almost two years her junior, he couldn't help but admire her – but she walked too fast for the Desert, she really did. "Anyway, you gonna tell me about this project?"

"Sorry, Gaara, it's a secret. You won't know a thing before it's done and I can show you."

"But you told Ensui-san!"

For just a moment, Hitomi almost gave in. She shouldn't have taught the Stare to Gaara, he was too effective with those damned big turquoise eyes of his. She shook it up, freeing herself from the 'technique', and gave him her most sibylline smile. "I told him because he has at least twenty years on me when it comes to fūinjutsu, so he can help. And I want the project to be ready before I leave. I need all the help I can get."

"But why?" he whined.

This time, she burst out laughing. Seeing Gaara acting like a boy his age was pure bliss, a consecration even. She was so happy she almost wanted to drop her notebooks and hug him. She'd get a mean scratch from his sand if she ever did that, and didn't want to damage her new acquisitions, but still, the desire was there.

"You'll see!" She started running then, all her ninja agility stopping the notebooks from falling all over the road, thrilled to hear him run after her. She reached the door of the suite before him, but only because she had trained for almost a year now, at least when it came to running. Her body really started to get in a satisfying shape. With a playful laugh, she entered the living room, not giving the slightest fuck about the sand she was leaving everywhere. Anyway, Gaara would do worse than that. Far worse.

Ensui was reading, slouched on the couch like the Nara he was. He looked up from his page when he heard her turn up with such a racket, then raised both eyebrows as he saw the unholy number of notebooks she had bought. Then he saw Gaara's stack and it took all he had not to start laughing maniacally. If there was just one empty notebook left in any Sunajin bookshop, he'd eat his whole pouch of kunai. Slowly, feigning a laziness that didn't fit him but went along with the Nara brand, he got up and caught the books from the top of her pile, which were perilously sliding forward.

"If you don't have enough to get your project ready with all that, I'll be damned. What will you do if you have some left?"

"Oh, I'll think of something," she answered with a mysterious smile.

Ensui let out a resigned sigh then served them both a glass of lemonade. He let them calm down for half an hour, knowing full well how useless and mean it would be to make them work so quickly after living quite the adventure – for their age, anyway. They could have focused, but why take away the tiny joys he could offer them, and what were thirty little minutes to him? He had to admit he liked seeing his apprentice so happy, and he himself had come to like the little jinchūriki who followed her everywhere.

When they calmed down, he started that day's lesson. For some subjects, he allowed Gaara's presence. He knew the little boy didn't have any form of teacher or even authority around, except for Hitomi and now him. What harm would it do to teach him about medicine, like today? It was even a good thing that he was there: that way, Hitomi could practice on someone around her size and weight. The children trusted each other so deeply they didn't have any problem with letting the other manipulate their body.

After the lesson, Gaara went home, saying goodbye to Hitomi as he always did, with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She knew how hard she would miss him once Ensui decided it was time to go. She had come to know him, really know him, and to love life around him. He was a true friend, someone she could go to if she wanted to speak about anything, be it her day or the fears keeping her up at night. It would be hard, not seeing him every day anymore.

When he was gone, she went back to her fūinjutsu books. Some of them were very old, and she was aware Ensui hadn't gotten them the legal way. Sometimes, he went away for a few hours during the night and, when he came back in the morning, there were new books on Hitomi's desk, books that smelled like the Sunajin's shinobi library and were now missing from it. Quite frankly, Hitomi didn't give a shit about the fact that her master stole priceless books from a foreign nation. If the public had been able to read them and check them out, he wouldn't have had to do that. But no, the fūinjutsu section had to be for Sunajin Jōnin only. Ridiculous.

During most of the evening, she worked on her first test of the seals. She went to fetch two empty notebooks from one of the piles in a corner of her room and, under Ensui's ever-watchful stare, she drew her seals on the inner part of the covers, one book then the other. Her calligraphy had gotten a lot better these last few months, to the insane level of precision asked from fūinjutsu apprentices. She still had a lot to work on before she could aspire to the title of Seal Mistress, but at least she was good enough for this work.

After twenty minutes, her first test was ready. She mixed chakra and infused it in a page after writing a few kanji on it, her eyes full of a voracious impatience. She only owed her safety to Ensui's prodigious reflexes: he grabbed her and propelled her away from the two notebooks just before they turned into a huge ball of fire. His hand slightly shook as he held her against his torso, his mouth spewing chakra-infused water to extinguish the flames. "That was close. What do you say, Seal Mistress?"

She swallowed the nervous laugh that wanted to escape her lips and put a few strands of hair behind her ear so they wouldn't get it the way. "The combustion wasn't planned and means that something is seriously wrong with this seal, that it lacks stability. However, the fact they both caught fire at the same time is a very good sign, right, shishou?"

Ensui couldn't help but laugh, seeing her in this state of dishevelment and yet so serious, so enthusiastic. She had failed, and yet she didn't seem affected at all, or only by an impatience to get back to work. He messed up her hair even more, his hand soft on the black curls. She had scared him. "I agree with you, kid. But seeing the strength of the reaction makes me believe it best to have you experiment only when I'm there and ready to grab you. I forbid any test without my supervision. We still have ten days left in Suna. You have enough time to finish it before we go. Alright?'

She nodded, meeting his eyes to show him she took it all seriously. His instructions made sense, after all. She certainly didn't have the power to extinguish fire with a few hand seals. She didn't have large enough chakra reserves yet for any ninjutsu training, and even less for techniques that looked around B rank like this one.

After working on it for one more hour, she was ready to try again. Another failure: this time, the two notebooks turned to dust. It was frustrating, yes, but it also gave her valuable information about what had gone wrong. With the help of her books, she could discover why her seals didn't turn out the way she wanted them to. Still, Ensui didn't seem to think the number of books she had bought was so insane anymore.

She only had ten days left and she intended on getting the most out of them. She wanted to succeed before leaving Sunagakure. Imagining Gaara's reaction when she'd give it to him was motivation enough. She wanted to see it for real. She didn't count the hours, nor the number of books she had to read through to get what she needed. She had chosen another of her notebooks to write down her ideas for improvements. She didn't really need to, but it comforted her.

The hard part was hiding her work without making it unstable. Ensui had lectured her for two hours about the secret she needed to keep in mind at all times around seals. All masters had to be careful, so their seals didn't fall into enemies' hands. She had to find ways to make her seals more complex, impossible to decipher, by using more than one layer of ink on the paper so a curious reader couldn't tell which one belonged to her seal, all without disturbing the fragile construction that her work was.

During a sparring session, Hitomi understood she had to learn how to compartmentalise her thoughts and activities. She was fighting against a shadow clone Ensui had created, her naked feet pattering against the tatamis each time she dodged, but part of her mind was focused on the last problem she had stumbled upon with her seal. She did her best to focus on her opponent, but she had to admit it: she was doing a pretty shitty job of it.

Suddenly, she was overwhelmed, the clone pressing harder and harder against the weakest points of her defence, so hard, in fact, that her feet got mixed up and she tripped. Usually, the clone backed away, allowing her to regain her balance, but not this time. On the contrary, it pushed its advantage against her and picked up the pace, the wooden blade hitting her hard on the shoulder. She yelped in pain, but that didn't stop the clone either, nor did it let her time to protect herself or back away.

And then…

Then.

Then her whole world turned into a sandstorm, billions of abrasive grains of sand shifting and flying to form a protective dome around her. The clone exploded in smoke, its wooden tantō falling on the ground. A hand on her shoulder to assess the damage, Hitomi tried to get up, out of breath and her hair stuck against her skin from sweat.

She couldn't see it but, outside the sandstorm, Ensui and Gaara had gotten in a glaring match. Everything contrasted them, up to their very attitude: the Nara looked relaxed, as always, but the child was so tense his body probably protested, his two hands up in the air to command his sand to protect his precious friend.

"Call back the sand, kid. Lesson isn't over yet."

"It is, and I won't! You hurt her!"

"She didn't focus! What do you think, kid, that enemy ninjas will wait for her to give them her whole attention before doing something far worse to her? I won't watch my apprentice get killed because she didn't learn she can't be distracted during a fight, I just won't!"

A heavy silence settled on the training room. Mortified, Hitomi cowered against the sand wall, still slightly shaking. She knew Ensui was right, of course, but she had worked so hard from the very beginning so she wouldn't disappoint him; having it happening after so many months made her feel so lost she didn't know how to react. Her face burning with shame, she forbade her tears from running down her cheeks.

Gaara reluctantly obeyed Ensui's instructions. The sand crumpled then came back to pool around his feet. When he didn't use it, Gaara usually gave it the shape of an animal from any part of the Desert, since he didn't have his gourd yet to transport it. Sometimes, his creations were so vivid they seemed to be the real thing. This time, though, he was too upset to create anything.

Ensui was the first to Hitomi's side, kneeling to come eye to eye with her. His hand careful and soft, he pulled on her neckline to expose her shoulder and see the wound he had inflicted to her.

His features were frozen in an expressionless mask as his dark grey eyes took in the dark purple bruise on her pale skin. Without commenting on it, he stood up and helped her to her feet, careful to avoid her painful shoulder. "Come too, Gaara," he commanded calmly.

Without even checking if the little boy was following – he was quite obedient after all, thanks to Hitomi's influence – Ensui led his apprentice through the hotel, to their suite. In three days, they'd leave the desert and all its hidden treasures behind, as hard as it would be. Hitomi's training was far from over. He still had a lot to teach her before she was ready to go back. Before he was ready to go back.

In the living room, he made her sit on the couch and asked her to take off her shirt, giving her a towel to cover what needed to be. He knew children her age weren't really modest, but Hitomi was different. If he could avoid it, he'd rather not intrude or make her embarrassed in his presence.

His features now betraying an emotion Hitomi couldn't quite define, he brushed his fingers against the bruise then engulfed it under his large, calloused palm. In Hitomi's eyes, her master's hands were beautiful, a work of art even, the scars and calluses a testimony of his life as a shinobi. She closed her eyes and sighed with relief when he got to work, minty green chakra pouring out of his fingers to slowly erase the bruise. When he lifted his hand, her skin had turned a fading shade of yellow and it didn't hurt anymore when she moved, only when she touched it – which she did only once. Medical ninja arts were a true miracle.

"I'm really sorry, Hitomi. Gaara is right, I was too hard on you. You need to learn this lesson, but still, I was too hard. Sometimes, I forget how young you still are. I'm sorry."

Speechless, her eyes wide open in shock, Hitomi stared at her mentor. Next to her, Gaara acted the same. Neither of them were used to adults admitting when they were in the wrong in front of them or, even worse, accepting that a child had shown better discernment than they had. The girl pulled herself together first and brushed his forearm with a comforting smile. "It's okay, shishou. Look, it's almost gone! I know you won't make this mistake again, I trust you. And you're right, I have to learn."

These words didn't do much to ease Ensui's guilt. He had never thought he'd ever be that hard on his apprentice, who worked so hard to please him. Still, he was thankful for the mix of kindness and sweetness she offered him. He knew that, with a memory like hers, forgiving was not a small feat. He had lived long enough amongst his clanmates to understand.

After making sure his apprentice was alright, he allowed Gaara to take her for lunch. Later, still feeling a bit guilty, he cut the theoretical lesson short so she could have a bit more time with her secret project. The faster she was done, the faster he could fully get her back, anyway.