12/8 Special thanks to 100pureawesomeness for proofreading!
Chapter 1
She wakes up gasping for air, wanting to never feel the water fill her lungs again. Her last memory is of being repeatedly submerged by water until she didn't have the strength to raise her head again, wishing she'd never opened the door on Tuesday night when she mistakenly thought it was the delivery guy and it was her friendly neighbor, who turned out to be a sociopath and a serial killer.
Now, all she feels is the desire to flee. She grasps whatever object she's currently resting in with force and counts to ten. Anything to make her heart stop beating so fast or else she'll faint again, and she cannot allow that to happen.
The guy could be lurking around.
She keeps her eyes shut while part of her hands is shaking in fear because if the serial killer is in indeed there, lurking to see if she survived the torture, she won't stand a chance. She didn't stand a chance the first time fleeing and now, light-headed?
Ah! Killing her this time would be a piece of cake.
So yeah, she prefers playing dead until the killer leaves. Except that this time, there isn't silence. There is some...type of buzzing sound. No, more like a constant sound coming in some sort of...pattern? Yeah, that gets her attention.
Carefully, she takes her time, opening her eyes. To realize seconds later, that she isn't in her house anymore or in her bathroom covered in blood where the killer took his time defiling her, but a hospital with white walls and there's an IV sticking into her arm.
Safe.
She's safe.
Safe. Safe. Safe.
She sighs in relief, sagging back into the bed and faintly registering the machine beeping. She's okay. She's alive, and that's more than she could ask for. But it's only when the door opens, and a nurse comes to check on her that she notices something.
The nurse's hair is blue.
And he's speaking in Japanese.
She blinks, trying to compute all the sudden rush of information. Trying, with every single neuron she has left, to distinguish if this a product of her imagination or it's her dying and her body is making her hallucinate to cope with the death.
So, she does one thing.
She screams.
And strangely so, the screams don't match her voice.
The woman is confused, the ANBU perched on the tree concludes. Not that it should surprise him at this point considering the number of injuries the woman sustained from the attack, but it's the screaming that bothers him.
Luckily, he doesn't have to wait too much more because the nurse ends up sedating her. The target slumps in seconds and the ANBU waits until the nurse goes and fetches the doctor doing rounds. He does three distinct hang-signs and he's right next to her. He hides his chakra so he can hear the doctor and nurse talking without them noticing him.
The mission is quite simple indeed; approach the target and study whether her memory is compromised or not. If it isn't, then the woman will be quietly transferred into the Torture and Interrogation Force division by the end of the night, where Yamanaka-san can safely extract her memories again. A crucial thing, since she's the only adult that survived the attack at the orphanage a day ago.
An attack, that in less than fifteen minutes, left them with ten caretakers, forty children and twenty-five babies dead. Even the ANBU squad, who were guarding the nine-tails host, weren't enough to stop it and it took the whole ANBU department to effectively disperse them.
So, they need her memories to track the ninja that tried to kill the nine-tailed host and form a plan. But this time with more precaution, since the first time Yamanaka-San did the technique the woman ended up convulsing. Leading her straight into the Hospital.
Hopefully this time, they will manage to make it before the civilian dies. It's normal for them to die when a mind transferring technique is involved, since their dormant chakra bodies aren't accustomed to chakra altering techniques.
But does that matter to him?
No.
Anything for Konoha.
They tell her that her name is Wanatabe Kita and she immediately refuses. She tries to voice out her concerns, but the doctor keeps addressing her as Kii-chan or Kii-san or whatever the hell he thinks he's doing. They tell her that she recently turned 25 last spring and that she works for the local orphanage. Her brain doesn't agree with that, because she has memories of working in a library and checking out magazines; reading books to patrons and teaching kids how to read.
Not an orphanage.
She tries to show them they're mistaking her with someone else, but they don't listen. They tell her that it's common for victims to end up losing their memories and that her relative will come to pick her up after they wait for the results of the latest exams, so she waits in the room.
Is this a nightmare? Or a dream? She hopes it's the last one. That maybe this is a product of her imagination and David will come to pick her up. While it's been five years since she divorced David, they had ended up on good terms. So much that he was still his emergency contact, ever since her extreme conservative family broke contact with her after she got out of the closet and finished her divorce.
The moment she sees who's on the other side of the room she starts crying. Because her friend is not there, but a granny in her seventies, who greets with a kiss on the cheek and takes her "home".
Something is wrong here.
It takes five minutes for her to immediately hate her "house" even if it's a two-floor house, with two bathrooms and a big backyard. Because well...she doesn't know where to even start since the house...has seen better days.
The walls have massive cracks, the roof has a giant hole, there's an ant infestation somewhere in the kitchen, there is a room where she can't enter due to the number of things in there and don't even let her get started on the second floor. There's so much clutter everywhere.
Like everywhere.
So much clutter, making her OCD start shrieking with horror. It takes a lot of her to close the door after seeing the new ecosystem developing in the fridge, and the bathroom is in such a bad state that she almost barfs after finishing to clean her hands.
This is not her house; her mind screams after inspecting all the backyard full of more garbage. Because while she did have a busy life, she always had the time to clean her house, so this? This isn't her. She's not Wanatabe Kita.
She wants to run and never see this house again. Preferably set it on fire and clean it with bleach until no germ or garbage can trigger her OCD and run far away. But it's the way the grandma is looking at her makes her eventually not flee or burn the house altogether.
She's being always weak for human interaction.
The grandma, well she doesn't know what to think of her exactly. She's patient, that's for sure. The grandma doesn't raise her voice when she asks questions twice or even looks annoyed or worried when she admits she isn't her Kita.
She makes her tea instead. Green tea to be precise, and for being an elderly woman she makes some great bomb-ass tea. It doesn't even taste bitter. They use one of the many cardboard boxes laying around as a dining table and they drink in silence.
She appreciates it.
The grandma introduces herself as Wanatabe Tamiko, the leader of the family. How they're the last two Wanatabe members since an accident a month ago killed most of their members and how the house, they currently live is a new one after their traditional family house got destroyed. And Tamiko keeps talking to her in that sweet grandmother's way that she hasn't heard ever since her family kicked her out. How long... five...four years?
She doesn't remember it that well.
So, she sits and makes the granny company. She learns that while the Wanatabe's family used to be relatively wealthy, they are now struggling to make money after burying fifty members. How Tamiko used the last part of her savings and her retirement pension to buy this house. That Tamiko's medication is expensive and her advance arthritis has forced her to stay at home.
How Kita (not her, never her because she's not Kita) is the only one that works, effectively shattering her hopes that the doctor was wrong. Kita does works at an orphanage. The only orphanage in whatever place she's in.
"You love kids Kita-chan," Tamiko croaks after refilling their cups with more tea and giving her another smile. She drinks it in one whole gulp. Then Tamiko's face hardens with something like grief, "You have always wanted to have kids."
She wants to ask her more about that, but Tamiko places her wrinkly hands over hers and says.
"Kita," She starts, with another smile that for some reason makes her feel a sudden lump in the back of her throat. "I know these past months have been hard for you, that I won't lie. I know I haven't been much help to you since."
Tamiko opens her mouth to finish the sentence, her tongue moves aimlessly, as she struggles to form words. but in the end, she changes routes.
"Since that, but no matter how many difficulties come along the way, family sticks together. I'll always be there for you," Tamiko finishes and she feels something sliding from her face. Tears, her mind supplies when she raises her hands to wipe them away.
"Okay grandma," She whispers. Later that night, she starts forming a plan while trying not to vomit in the yellowish-pillow her head is resting. She's not Wanatabe Kita and this is not her house, and that is something she needs to figure out.
But Tamiko is Kita's grandmother.
And for some strange reason, she feels guilty at the thought of leaving her behind.
All that gets out the window, the moment she opens the fridge again and finds something green moving.
Fuck the grandma, she needs to get out of here and fast.
"The doctor told me you shouldn't do strenuous activity Kii-chan," The grandma says to her the next day while she stretches her back and crouches again, not before dumping the sponge in the bucket, and eyes the toilet.
The only thing left in the bathroom that needs to be cleansed and baptized with bleach.
"It's just cleaning grandmother," She says but for some reason, the word "Obaa-san" keeps lingering in her head. She'll need to ask later about the word when her hands are no longer stinging, and her eyes are not watering over the strong smell of bleach.
And when she can stop being preoccupied over Tamiko or her catching something due to this filth. More if this is the only bathroom that's near Tamiko's room. She won't let the poor grandmother risk getting an infection over something so stupid as the doctor's order.
Not if she can't help it.
She checks the cabinets, closets, and the wood flooring from the dining room and the kitchen, before taking all her cleaning utensils with her and thinks of where she should approach first. The kitchen, she declares, will be the focus for the day.
And if she has time, she'll get rid of the mats. Not only they're old but they smell bad, being that a big no-no for her OCD brain. So, she starts to work and wipes off the sweat from her forehead two hours later when she feels like she deserves a break.
She glances at the open sliding door that leads to the backyard, where six bags of thrash are displayed as trophies. A little farther are the bags she set aside for Tamiko to choose what type of item they want to keep, and there's another designated spot for all the things they're going to sell.
Right now, Tamiko is standing outside, deciding what type of tea set they will keep. She only hopes Tamiko is not a hoarder or else she'll be forced to take the matter into her own hands. Because there's so much clutter. So many things that she can't understand or don't find the meaning to keep, but she doesn't want to come out as insensitive and hurt Tamiko's feelings.
Like she can understand why Tamiko's family would want to collect odd things since she used to collect postcards and comic books, but having six whole stashes of swords and other pointy things? That is a little bit too much for her. Luckily Tamiko (god bless her) understands the situation and gives her permission to sell everything else only if Tamiko gets to keep a sword or two.
She immediately agrees and profusely thanks her. It's been only three days since she started cleaning and took the reins of the house, but now the house feels less like a garbage dump and more like a filthy house.
Now she and Tamiko can even sit and eat in something that's not a cardboard box, and that itself makes her feel ten times better. Hell, now they can even look at themselves in a mirror that's not covered in fungus.
The first time she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she almost dropped her sponge. She wasn't...what she used to look like. She remembers liking her curly brown hair, her slightly crooked teeth, and her small tomboyish figure.
So, seeing herself with auburn hair, freckles, and an hourglass figure is quite a shocking thing to see. Her breasts are bigger, which doesn't compare to her A-cup and all the kid sizes bra she bought at discount at Target. And her stomach, a thing that used to be flat and smooth now has a small loving bulge and is squishier and rounder than she remembered having.
There are way more stretch marks in her stomach, her breast, and her butt, but that wasn't what made her worry. It was more of seeing the angry red line all over her ribcage and the many other cuts she has on her back and her legs.
The first time she shows them to Tamiko, she gently orders her to sit down and tells her about the incident. How in a single night an antisocial decided to attack them and left more than fifty people dead. Babies and children, little human beings with so many years in front are now gone because one antisocial person thought orphans didn't deserve to live.
She cries.
She cries for days. She cries whenever she finishes a window. She cries whenever she fills another garbage bag. She cries whenever she kills flies and cleans out all the mice traps. She cries when she commits genocide to the fridge's ecosystem with bleach.
She cries and weeps day and night, for every single soul that didn't deserve to die, for all Wanatabe Kita's (because she's not Kita) colleagues and all the children Kita was taking care and for her until she can't cry anymore.
So, she turns her sadness into anger.
And there's no spot in the kitchen or the living room that doesn't suffer her unstoppable ire. She scrubs and disinfects with precision because she's so angry and hurt. Maybe this isn't a dream and maybe this is her punishment for all the times she should have cleaned out her house more.
But the realization that she's living in Wanatabe Kita's body hits her and she won't let that stop her. They're using the last part of Kita's savings to live and Tamiko's medication will end this week.
And since she's using Kita's body she can't let, in good conscience, Kita's grandmother suffers. She has two weeks before she can work again and since there are no more orphans left, she must find a new job.
But hopefully, with all the stuff they're going to sell, they will have enough money to survive for the next future weeks. Now, if she could only find the box where all the kitchen cutlery is.
Eating with chopsticks is harder than what the movies and all the series she binge-watched showed.
She wakes up crying when the pain in her chest worsens. Could it be a side effect of the excessive use of bleach? She sincerely hopes not or else she'll finally call it quits. Tamiko comes to her aid when she starts sobbing.
There's so much pain.
(She later learned two things. One that Wanatabe Kita was pregnant and lost her baby two months ago. And two? Is that mastitis is a total bitch to take care of.)
The idea that this is not her universe gathers force the morning Tamiko leads her to the marketplace. She's in a village of sorts, that's organized into different districts and near the outskirts of the civilian district is the marketplace. A village that a month ago had an attack that left many places unlivable and many people dead. Occasionally, she can catch glimpses of people fixing the destroyed houses or taking out all the debris.
There are giant holes in the ground, trees tore down and many houses filled with warning tape. Which makes her wonders what type of attack could have made so much damage here. Was it an explosion? Did someone set up a bomb? There are so many questions she wants to ask, but the first time she asks Tamiko the elderly's face shuts down and Kita stops right there.
"This is Konoha, Kita," Tamiko tells her when Kita gets lost for the fifth time. They've been trying to reach a store where they can sell their stuff. It doesn't matter whether they sell it at less, the goal here is to get rid of the stuff ASAP and have enough so they can buy Tamiko's heart medication.
"The village you have lived for the majority of your life," She says after they finally reach the marketplace. She hurries, hoping to catch Tamiko because for some strange reason while Tamiko is old she's very fast for her age.
Faster than her.
But even with the recent attack (that Tamiko doesn't want to tell her more), it doesn't stop the marketplace from being crowded. The vendors have already settled their booths and put their products. And there are other people like Kita and Tamiko who are walking. It's there when she notices that all the fantasy purple, green and purple hair colors she tried during her late teens don't compare to the electrifying colors they have here.
And what's worse is that they look natural.
She wants to ask if it's their natural pigmentation or if they just have better hairdressers in general. Like honestly, it makes her green with envy. Of all the fantasy colors she could have gotten, reddish-brown hair is a total bummer.
In one she swears she sees someone running in the roofs, before quickly discarding the idea since the thought is quite stupid to begin with. Probably her paranoid brain, who still hasn't recovered from the night she was killed.
"Are there others?" She asks when they pass another vegetable stand and her stomach rumbles. Her mouths start salivating when she eyes the lettuce that's begging to be eaten. Food. She's been getting sick of having to eat those three-minutes instant soups they have. It's the only thing they have on the stupid house. So, today's goal is simple; sell the stuff, buy Tamiko's medication and restock their pantry.
Preferably with something that isn't miso-soup ramen.
"Or is this the only village?"
Tamiko gives her a strange look.
"Yes," She says, nodding along. "There are more but they're far away from here. Nothing that should worry you Kita-chan."
"Report Hound," The superior barks after the ANBU member got back and kneels. While the mission status has changed, the parameters are quite clear. Collect data and do not engage. Study the target and find if it's still usable for the Yamanaka technique.
"Target has no recollection of her awareness and identity," The ANBU starts with a deep monotone voice. His knees are killing him after so many hours of surveillance, but he keeps kneeling. It's an ANBU tradition, after all. "She doesn't respond to her name when called. Possibly suffering through a case of retrograde amnesia-"
"Probably due to the traumatic events," A third voice finishes, a man in his late forties who had his face uncovered and bandages over one of his eyes. He sneers, disgust showing all over his face. "Civilian. One little push of violence and they can't handle it."
"Either way if it's retrograde amnesia, then she isn't eligible for the Yamanaka's mind transferring technique," An older voice says. "We'll have to change strategy."
"We could still use her-"
"Don't be ridiculous Danzo," The only female scoffs, clearly annoyed at the other's words. In her hands is the folder of the target. "It's retrograde amnesia due to traumatic events. We could even ask Ibiki-San to open her skull and it won't give us anything. The memories are altered and there's nothing we can do."
"That's not true Koharu-"
"We already have more than seventy people dead," Utatane Koharu says, interjecting him. It's been days of constant arguing between the council and Koharu had already enough of it. It had been a massacre and there were only two who had survived.
The thought of killing the last adult survivor to please Danzo's request seated bad with her.
"Let's not add another one due to gluttony, shall we?"
"And there isn't a case of her faking it?" Another of his superiors asks. This was not good news for them, but it was the truth. While the target suffering through retrograde Amnesia had always been a possibility, they never thought it would happen.
He turns his head to the side and thinks for a second, before answering.
"Not likely sir," The ANBU replies.
"Let the poor girl live," Koharu sighs. It's a miracle that the young woman was even alive at this point. "She's already had enough, and we can still use her."
"How?" Danzo says crossing his arms. "She's a civilian. And useless."
Utatane Koharu simply smiles.
She finds Wanatabe Kita's baby stuff just when she was finishing decluttering the second floor. Scavenging for other things they can sell, since last time went so well. Out of all the things they sold, the stash of weapons was a massive hit.
So much that different vendors fought for having them. She chose the highest bidder, and now thanks to the money, Tamiko has a softer mattress (or futon, as Tamiko likes to call them). They even bought Tamiko's favorite tea.
Now if everything turns out well, she will soon start remodeling the house. It's not the furniture that's giving her the headache since the furniture Tamiko salvage is in a good state, but it's the house structure that is the living nightmare.
It's almost as if a giant had stepped, by accident on the house because it's simply horrible. How the hell the house is still standing is a mystery to her. While the massive hole in the roofs helps cool off the house, winter is just around the corner and if what Tamiko says is true it will rain and even snow. So yeah, she wants to keep living until she solves this mess, so excuse her for not wanting to have pneumonia, thank you very much.
Hence, more scavenger hunts.
That's how she finds out that the house isn't as small as she would have imagined. The first floor is composed of an entrance, a living room, a kitchen, and two bedrooms with bathrooms, yet the second floor is another world. It has two more bedrooms, a bathroom, and a room what Kit- she believes could be used as a storage room. It's there where when she finds all the stuff.
All the baby stuff.
Her hands gently take out all the baby clothes, all the toys, and the disarmed crib. Soon and for some strange reason, they start shaking when she fishes out a folder that reveals an ultrasound and a bunch of documentation.
There are even letters that Kita wrote for her baby.
"I'm sorry Kita," She whispers when she finishes reading it. She finds out that Wanatabe Kita had gotten pregnant by accident when she decided to go out with her friends (her colleagues -that are also dead-) for a drink and ended up in some guy's apartment. She doesn't know if it was consensual or not, she doesn't know if her family supported or not because Kita doesn't mention it.
Kita just mentioned her baby boy as her miracle, and all the things she was looking forward too. She doesn't move when she finishes reading all the fifteen letters and her pregnancy diary. She closes her eyes and counts to ten, when another wave of massive sadness hits her. Suddenly the cluttering, the house state, and their ridiculous supply of never-ending instant miso soup ramen makes so much more sense and she hates herself for not giving Kita a break.
The poor girl was going through a massive case of postpartum depression and possibly working for the orphanage (when it had been only two months since she lost the baby) hadn't helped her at all.
"I'm so sorry," She says putting everything back into the cardboard box and placing it back. In the end, she doesn't keep looking for things. And it's only when Tamiko comes to fetch her saying that lunch is ready that she finds her glued to the spot, with the blue hand-knitted socks in her trembling hands.
"You used to knit all the time Kita-chan," Tamiko tells her at dinner, hours later when the second floor is once again livable, only if you take out the fact that the big part of the roof is missing.
"I did?" She asks while another drop of soup falls off her mouth and she curses under her breath. While they did find the cutlery, for some strange reason, Tamiko keeps insisting on using chopsticks.
A thing that is now her number one enemy.
Now, eating noodles is a total nightmare.
"Yes, you did Kii-chan," The grandma speaks after eyeing her plate, "You were so good at it. It's our family tradition to sew, but you were always a special girl and decided to knit. Why don't you pick it up again? I'm sure you're getting bored now that the house is clean again."
"I don't know-how," She admits, feeling more self-conscious than ever. While she still tries to cope with the fact that she's living in Kita's body, there are a lot of things she's not used too and one of them is knitting. She remembers doing other things.
Gardening, writing, making soap and even cooking as her hobbies but she never took the time to knit after she left her parent's house. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she associated knit with the stigma his family carried around; how girls should knit and sew for their husband first and then study.
Tamiko hums when she doesn't add anything more and declares.
"I can teach you Kii-chan," She says with a smile, and the wrinkles around her eyes are showing. Part of her heart's aches at Tamiko's smile because she's not Kita. Tamiko's niece is dead and she's only borrowing her body.
She's a fake.
She remembers living another life in a different universe with different people and different places. She can remember her boss's face and the number of books she collected over the years. She can remember her estranged family; and her mother and father. The years she lived with the burden of being different. Or the many years in which she hid her sexuality to please her family. How she ended up marrying her best friend, only to appease her family's conservative desires.
The same one that shut the door to her face the moment she admitted she fell in love with a girl and when her divorced finished. And the way her grandmother took her by her hair and threw her out of the house, yelling at her to never see her again. Even when her grandmother was dying in her bed, she forbade her to visit, stating she didn't want to have contact with the devil.
That hurt her more than the serial killer raping her.
Tamiko is not her grandmother, but oh god what would she do to have her as such. She wants to tell her the truth, but she's terrified of being rejected again. Especially Tamiko, who supports her in every possible way.
She cries more.
Wanatabe Kita is not her, and she's not Kita. But for some strange reason, she's tired of not remembering her name and having to call herself a "she". She only hopes the real Wanatabe Kita, the one that died in the orphanage attack alongside all the seventy-five other people, forgives her for doing this.
I'm sorry.
"Obaa-san," Kita says the next morning when Tamiko makes tea and she finishes nibbling her breakfast. It's another day, Sunday to be more precise when Kita finally decides what she wants to do with the day.
"Yes, Kita-chan?"
She only hopes Tamiko will have enough patience for what she's going to ask her
"Can you teach me how to knit?" Somehow by the wide smile, Tamiko is giving her, Kita has the feeling she made the right choice.
She starts slow, like every other hobby she wants to learn. Tamiko is patient in teaching her the correct way you should knit stitch. The scarf she knits is quite ugly indeed but for a first try, it's quite an accomplishment.
She spends the rest of the week knitting socks until she masters the technique.
"Report," The ANBU commander shouts when Bear finishes doing his round. He kneels and looks at the ground, the sight of the young woman cleaning the house while singing to the plants still in his mind. He narrows his eyes when he realizes the commander is waiting for his reply.
"Target shows no signs of remembering her past, sir. She has gotten more active but apart from that, she still relies on her relative to live."
"What relative, exactly?" Danzo asks now more interested than all the other reports Bear has done in the past. "I thought she was the last one in her clan."
"Her grandmother from her mother's side, Wanatabe Tamiko, is still alive," Bear easily replies. It takes two seconds before the rest of the board suddenly groans and a bunch of angry comments come in full. Bear watches amazed the whole banter of insults.
"Hey, Danzo do you remember Tami-"
"Of course, that old viper would survive the attack-"
"I thought she had died-"
"Somehow I'm not surprised-"
"Just call Sarutobi on this one."
"I want to fix the house Obaa-san," Kita says when they finally finish eating their never-ending portions of dumplings after Kita accidentally read wrong the instructions and instead of making twenty-five dumplings it turned into more than fifty.
"But I don't know how," She says, ducking her head. She had always been a big "DIY" kind of girl, but one thing is learning how to make floating shelves and another thing is building a roof from scratch.
But it's the last thing Kita needs to finish before she can dedicate her existence to job hunting. Kita doesn't have a single clue on how the hell you're supposed to fix a house, but she dutifully follows Tamiko's advice. So, with Tamiko's guidance, she starts replacing the floor and tatami mats. She buys one tatami mat for the entrance and one for the living room.
Then she buys wood in bulk and slowly but surely, she starts replacing the ugly floor carpet. She takes out the padding and the tack strips around the edges of the room, along with the nails holding them in place before she starts replacing them with the wood. There's so much wood involved on the floor that by the end of the day Kita only hopes that the house never ends up catching fire or else they will die.
Then, they start fixing the walls. They replace all the other colors the previous owners painted with milky, light beige and cream tones and Kita's hair accidentally ends up covered in cream paint when she tries to show off Tamiko she can paint. They tried fixing the sliding doors but, in the end, they had to replace every single one, being that a huge blow to their savings.
But they turn the old sliding doors into a cool cabinet where Tamiko put all the Wanatabe's photos, so Kita guesses it's okay. It's only then when Kita realizes that Tamiko hadn't been lying around when she said the Wanatabe family had been large.
It's huge.
There are more than fifty members, and sometimes after Tamiko declares they are done for the day, Kita inspects the photos with great care and wonders how it would have felt to grow up in such a large family.
"We were nomads before we lived in Konoha," Tamiko comments to her one day after they finish with the first floor. "We used to live in a faraway place where the sea was our place and the whales were our friends Kita. It took us years to finally settle here."
"Why did you ended up choosing Konoha?" She forces her tongue to complete the sentence even if it sounds awkward to her ears. While Tamiko reassures her that the difficulty in pronouncing words comes as a side effect to the head injury, she knows it's got to do more with Japanese not being her native language. Hell, she never considered learning Japanese in her other life.
Tamiko doesn't respond at first, before slowly facing her.
"We didn't have a choice," And before Kita can ask her what she is referring to, Tamiko adds. "We were tired of being hunted."
She doesn't answer any more questions that night.
She remembers living a different life. A life where magic didn't happen and ninjas were just told on fairytales, TV shows and history. Life in a world where technology was much more advanced, and their leaders were chosen by the number of votes and not by the amount of power they have.
It takes a while to process that she's living in a village where ninja exists. The first time she sees someone walking in the river, she rubs her eyes thinking she is hallucinating before Tamiko gently explains to her that all ninja learns to water-walk. That magic here has a name and it's called chakra. And how Kita despite being young will never manage to wield it since her parents sent her to a normal school instead of the village's academy when she was a kid.
It's a total bummer hearing that.
Tamiko sets some rules for her to memorize before she gives her permission to wander alone. How she's not supposed to attract attention, or she'll end up in trouble. How she's not supposed to glance at all the fast shadow running on her neighbor's roof or look at all the scars people have on their faces or their bodies.
And how Kita should never watch ninja work because they can get easily spooked and react.
"Like a cat?" She asks when she's struggling to carry the rest of the grocery bags. It's a huge investment they're doing, but an electric rice maker will make their life easier. That way Tamiko can spend her morning reading those books she likes to read instead of worrying that she will burn the rice.
"Ninjas behave like cats?"
"Something like that," Tamiko chuckles. The good thing about ninja is that most of them don't present a danger to civilians, since the village has a strict policy that regulates the relationship between ninjas and civilians. There is a whole police department dedicated to that.
But while Tamiko tells her that Konoha's ninjas are far more friendly towards civilians than other ninja villages, she should never trust them. Maybe that's how Wanatabe Kita got pregnant, because Tamiko informs her that ninja here have techniques that create powerful illusions and make you see things that don't exist.
And maybe that's why Kita hyperventilates the first times a ninja offers to carry her grocery bags. Tamiko laughs at her nervous stammer and lets the young man carry them. Ninjas here have super strength and are very fast. So fast that the only reason Kita can see them in the first place is that the Hokage (the leader of this place) implemented a rule that Ninjas needs to be slower in the civilian district to stop the rise of civilian heart attacks.
Because while civilians are the weakest of them all, they're the working ants that keeping the structure stable. They are what keeps the village functioning and all the Hokage's ranks happy. Even with that in mind, Kita still hurries to come home before the sun sets.
Wanatabe Kita is not her, and she's not Kita.
But she feels that with every day that passes, that she can live in Kita's body.
When they finish with the floors and the walls, they tackle next fixing the ceiling stains, replacing the toilet seats and unclogging clogged drains. There's nothing more satisfactory than cleaning the dishes and seeing how the water doesn't accumulate there.
After that, they fix all the cabinet knobs and all the scratchy cabinetry. That's how Kita falls in love with walnut and their property to remove all the scratches to their wooden furniture. But the main problem for her is the roof, since they don't have enough funds to cost it and winter is just days away. Tamiko had said the other day they could hire a "genin" team to get the job done, but Kita doesn't know whether they can afford it or not.
And Kita's not sure the genin team has the necessary skills to do it. She spends the rest of the day daydreaming about the type of roof she wants as she rearranges all the stuff Tamiko chose to keep (including all Kita's baby stuff) into one room before the anxiety hits her and she realizes that over the past few days the temperatures have steadily been dropping and she saw Tamiko sneezing the other night.
She panics. Tamiko tries to reassure her that winter will be delayed. That there was so much magic- chakra released on the day of the attack (October 10th) that it affected the weather and possibly the season but that doesn't stop her from worrying.
She just hopes they will have enough money to fix the roof before winter comes.
Sarutobi Hiruzen lights up his tobacco pipe, takes a brief nicotine dose before he faces the whole crowd. On his right side is the Konoha council composed by Homura Mitokado, Danzō Shimura and Koharu Utatane. On the other side is the ANBU commander.
In front of him are the three ANBU who had been reporting the mission and a representative of Konoha's most prominent clans. They are all here because it's been weeks since the orphanage attack and they need to find a solution soon. A solution that comes into convincing someone to take care of the only baby that survived the attack.
"So, you're telling me that no one wants to take care of the child?" He asks while glancing at every single member of the room. It takes a lot to not raise his voice. "No one?"
"Konoha's clans have gently denied your offer Hokage-Sama," The representative of every single clan in Konoha speaks. "While they're humbled to be included in your honest proposal, they don't have the resources to take care of a baby."
Of a demon goes unsaid and Hiruzen sighs, more tired than ever. He's been taking care of the baby so far, but there's only so much he can do while not slacking in his Hokage duties. The grief of losing her wife sometimes is too much for Hiruzen to handle, less with taking care of a month and seventeen days old baby.
"And the civilian?" He asks, rubbing his temple. Right now, his only hope is the other survivor of the orphanage's massacre. Koharu Utatane had given her the file two days ago, and by now Hiruzen's willing to do anything for someone to take care of Naruto. "The Wanatabe...something?"
"Wanatabe Kita, twenty-five years old," Hound recites her file from memory. Hiruzen listens and nods until Hound finishes the report.
"She could become Naruto's wet nurse," Hiruzen says. She's young, has no connection with any prominent clan, and has only one living relative that's in her late seventies. The fact that she recently miscarriage two months ago definitely catches his attention, since it means she's still lactating. It would be a win-win situation for them.
For everyone at this point.
"Her relative is Wanatabe Tamiko," Homura Mitokado breaks the news to him and Hiruzen groans because of course, Wanatabe Tamiko must be involved in this. Of course. But Tamiko must be nearing her late seventies now, and while the name stills make him doubt twice, she's old enough they can fool her.
Only if they play the right cards.
"I want someone to request a private meeting with Wanatabe Kita," Hiruzen orders when all had been done and said, and now there were only actions to partake. "And call our best poison specialist please."
Thank you so much for reading! I'm so sorry to all the people that read this the first time and found out I deleted it. I thought no one liked it. I was totally wrong. Special thanks for Unlatrun for being such a sweetheart and personally pm-ing me to let me know how much she/he enjoyed it, and making me change my mind. I won't delete the story again. Pinky promise.
And if you like it, please leave a review! Or whatever makes you feel comfortable tbh. I would totally love to hear your opinion.
Hope you all have a wonderful week! And thank you for reading!