Honōka leaves the hospital in borrowed clothes, hauling her octopus plushie and a paper bag full of cards and treats in one arm. Her sensei tells her the address to the genin apartments and heads in the opposite direction to deal with something important feeling.
She gets to the apartments on her own time. Sensei gave her his checkbook so she may have stopped to buy manjū… and then takoyaki. But she gets there, eventually.
There are three identical apartment buildings, three floors each with flat roofs. She's looking for building number two, which is not the building in the center. After a moment of squinting, she determines it's the building on her right.
She's not (that) concerned. About her vision.
Rin's father had an appointment the day before and after he finished, he came by to visit her. Sōji knows a few shinobi with missing eyes and other visual impairments and he said it gets easier to focus and judge distance after a couple of months. The brain just needs time to learn new strategies for judging those things.
Hopefully, her brain gets the memo soon.
She enters her new apartment building and checks for a map. No-go, so she walks the length of the first floor. Eight rooms. Her room is on the third floor then, room number eighteen. Sensei teased that she couldn't possibly forget. Her birthday is on the eighteenth of June, after all. Tsunade didn't find it quite so funny.
The stairs are tricky. She trips a couple times before determining that not looking will save her shins. If her hands weren't otherwise engaged, the rail would really help too.
She reaches her floor and then her apartment. She puts down her stuff and takes out her new key. Getting it to fit in the lock is her next task. It won't an easy one. She makes a fair amount of noise, which has her neighbor in sixteen opening his door to complain at her.
"Come on; it's Sunday! Some of us are trying to sleep in…" a young, grumpy, voice.
He's on her left, so she can't see him at all without turning her head or facing him. She looks over and her knuckles smack the doorknob. She drops her key as tingling pain shoots through her right hand and holds back a sad sigh.
It's a boy, maybe a little older than her. Chin length hair that might be unwashed or just lank, wearing a housecoat or hoody, and chewing on a long toothpick… or a senbon. Senbon. It's shiny.
She's about to apologize, but Sensei keeps reminding her to not apologize when she doesn't mean it.
"…"
Honōka bends down to pick up her key and smacks her forehead right on the doorknob. She hits the ground like a sack of potatoes, pops of color radiating outward in her stupid lopsided vision.
Concern trumps grump, and he closes the distance to offer her a hand up as the spinning stops.
"That's definitely going to bruise," he tells her—like she can't already feel it bruising. "You're new, yeah? I'll get you some ice from my freezer."
She holds her forehead, feeling faintly nauseous from the newest smack to her dented noggin. Sensei is going to chew her out when he sees the mark. If he sees the mark. She'll put her hitai-ate on when she gets into her apartment.
Honōka leans down again, placing one hand on the doorknob to avoid a repeat performance. She misses her key on the first reach and has to swallow back angry tears.
The boy leaves for the promised ice while she tries unlocking her door again. She hopes she has the right building and right apartment. It would be really embarrassing if she weren't even in the right place.
There's a buzzy rash of irritation from her other neighbor in number twenty. The door opens and she could cry in relief.
"Honōka?"
"Morning, Kakashi." She says, smiling at him. "Can you open my door for me?"
Confusion turns into concern as he takes in the swelling red bump in the middle of her forehead.
The boy from number sixteen reappears with the ice he promised and Kakashi glares.
"What did you do, Genma?"
"Me? I didn't do anything this time, I swear!"
Kakashi doesn't look convinced. The boy panics a little.
"Look!" he says. "She smacked her own dumb head on the doorknob. Back me up, kid!"
She doesn't get where this boy, Genma, gets off calling her a kid when there's probably only a year or two between them. But, she supposes, she is much shorter than both boys. She holds her hand out for the ice.
Genma gives her the ice, wrapped in a threadbare dish towel, and Kakashi takes her key. The door opens on the first try.
"You okay, Honōka?" he asks.
She sniffs. Not really.
"Depth perception is hard," she says.
Surprised recognition from her other neighbor. With all the cards she received from her former Academy classmates, it's not surprising that her injury is becoming well known.
"You're that other genius from last year's first years, Tsunemori Honōka, yeah? You're the kid who can make a henge smell like the target!"
She bobs her head once. That's… not really what she expected to be semi-famous for, but she'll take it.
She attempts to grab her stuff and doesn't miss for once, but her right hand is still sensitive from surgery and noodly from accelerated healing. Even her stuffed octopus is too heavy for her to pick up.
Kakashi wordlessly picks up her stuff, carrying it into her bare apartment.
Genma stands awkwardly in the doorway, feeling like he's somehow intruding.
"You can come in." She tells him. "What's your name?"
His reservations are still there, but he feels less unwelcome.
"I'm Shiranui Genma," he says. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise."
There's a table with proper chairs and she sits in one after making sure she isn't going to miss it. She sighs aloud this time.
Kakashi raises an eyebrow at her.
"Rough morning?"
"Depth perception is hard." She repeats, with feeling.
He says nothing more for a moment, just plops her plushie on the table in front of her.
"Is this everything you have?"
"The rest is still at home—at my parents' house. I have to go get my armor and stuff, but Sensei said I'm not to go there alone under any circumstance."
"Man, that sucks." Genma says, feigning nonchalance with all the cunning of a three legged-goose. "Too bad there's nobody to go with you on a daring rescue mission."
"It'd be an item retrieval mission—probably only D-rank. You'd have to be a genin to participate though." Kakashi provides with an exaggerated shrug. He's smirking under the mask. Genma must still be an Academy student. Likely an orphan, if he's a student in the genin apartments.
Kakashi's sense of humor only rarely makes appearances. She shakes off her thoughts and takes out her sensei's checkbook and a pen.
"D-ranks go for five to fifty thousand ryō, right? Ten thousand ryō sound good to you?" she asks.
"Thirty thousand," Kakashi challenges.
Genma's gaze snaps between them, back and forth.
"Uh, guys… I think it's illegal to issue missions without the Hokage's permission."
She nods. Of course it is.
"You're right. Thirty thousand—twenty thousand should cover hush money and so on."
Kakashi crosses his arms.
"Fifty thousand."
"Oh, if you insist."
Genma is panicking now. She puts down the pen.
"Let's just go get my stuff back and I'll buy you both lunch."
Genma clutches his chest and lets out a wobbly breath. "I never known when you genius types are joking or not, and now there's two of you?" he shivers. "Hold on. I'll go get dressed and we can get your stuff back, Honōka."
He leaves to prepare and Honōka laughs. He was wearing his housecoat.
Kakashi's mood turns a bit pensive and it triggers a twinge of doubt in herself. Should they really be doing this? She's not going alone, so it's not like she's disobeying her sensei…
"Genma is a halfway decent shinobi," Kakashi says, as if he's the one who can sense emotions. "He'd be a genin already if he didn't slack off so much."
She traces invisible Uzumaki swirls on the tabletop. She wants to ask Kakashi if he wanted to be a kid for a bit longer, like Genma, but doesn't.
Genma reappears after a short while, wearing a bandanna over freshly washed hair and shinobi sandals, all while still rocking the hooded housecoat. She can appreciate living in comfort and style.
"Ready?" she asks them. "Mission objective is in the Steam District. Travel at ground level is required. Team member Honōka cannot see straight right now, so no parkour."
Both boys nod solemnly, even if her mock serious instructions have their mouths twitching at the corners. They head out.
She remembers the general spacing of the steps and lets the rail guide her down without looking at her feet. She only misses one step and a quick balance check from Kakashi keeps her from face planting or breaking her neck.
He stays on her left side during the run, nudging her out of the way of people, potholes, and other obstacles. They reach Tsunemori-ya and head around the back.
She thought she might freak out, but (oddly enough) she feels nothing. Maybe she has a thick skin, or maybe one more beating (severe as it was) still wasn't enough to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.
The back is filthy, as usually. A broken pipe somewhere has reduced the ground into a muddy pool of water that smells of sewage. The broken table from the kitchen sticks up in one puddle, and a broken miso jar in another. Everything else has sunk. She hopes her belongings are not among the items lost to the muck.
She signals for Kakashi to follow her across the shallow puddles, surprised and impressed when Genma joins them. He is decent.
She points out her room window and Genma scales the wall ahead of them, peeking through the glass and signing 'all clear'.
"It's locked—inside latch only. I can't pick it with anything I got on me."
She stops next to him and crouches next to the window. Chakra ranges from functionally solid to completely intangible. Tsunade told her all about how those two applications could be used in medical ninjutsu to harm or to heal.
She holds her palm open near the latch and carefully directs her chakra through the glass—very carefully—and pushes. The latch unsnaps.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Genma whisper shouts. "You have got to teach me that!"
"Shh," Kakashi scolds. "Less talking, more retrieving."
They get to it—not that there's much to retrieve. Just clothes, her armor, the weapons hidden under a floorboard, and her octopus purse.
'Mission objective retrieved,' she signs. Kakashi snorts, and Genma does a double take at their meager haul. Then they boot it out of there. Kakashi holds her hand when they jump out the window so that she doesn't splat herself on the ground or belly flop in the dirty water.
They get off the property quiet as mice. She pauses and looks back at a comfortable distance.
There are two men in standard Konoha-nin attire watching the bathhouse.
Kakashi and Genma stop on either side of her.
"What is it, Honōka?" Kakashi asks.
She points out the first man, and then the second.
Genma takes the senbon out of his mouth to whistle.
"Would you look at that—it's the KKB. You don't see them in civilian districts often." Given they're only supposed to be policing shinobi or keeping the peace when absolutely necessary in civilian disputes. "What do you think is going on? Drug trafficking? Tax evasion? Espionage, maybe—! Ow, Kakashi?!"
"Stop talking, Genma." Kakashi warns. "Where are we eating?"
She shrugs. "Sushi? I haven't had makizushi in seven years."
"Uh, Honōka… Aren't you like, six?" Genma asks, totally confused.
"Seven, actually."
"Oh, so you've never had it before and want to try it out… gotcha. Sushi's good with me. Kakashi?"
"Sure. Minato-sensei brought me to this sushi place that serves eggplant-mixed miso soup. Let's go there."