4. Since children are shaped by the environment that they grow up in, a co-creation mechanism.
Yuurei wakes up "Haruno Sakura", suddenly a ward of Suzuraiden Shirai by the last will of her parents. Goes to live in Kumo, but relatively speaking, how is one village different from growing up alone in another?
Because giving her away would allow this state to take control of the family business, they summoned a six-year-old to the village chief's office to give blood and sign legally binding documents.
Yuurei has a good idea of the kind of world that they've woken up in, and they are quite certain that it isn't a good world at all. Since there's no time to ask for permission to go to the library to check for books on laws, and maybe they respect none. Who is to say even, that they would have a fair trial or even make it to a police station to report this as a crime.
Considering a man offers the child they are a sharp knife to cut themselves upon – maybe only power is the real force?
There's a bubbling emotion building up inside of her as the man displays this rolled scroll to her, an embossed pattern that she's supposed to drip her blood onto.
She reaches out and takes it from him instead. "Ah, no thank you," declaring in a child's voice, watching the blond man's blue eyes widen in surprise. And the old village chief puffs on a pipe – smoking some combination of crack and weed, which brings him onto his power high and more.
Yuurei makes a small, polite bow.
With her small snowy hands, pushing on the heavy door that was held open for her by the tall, platinum blond man called Yamanaka Inoichi.
He's calling after her, reaching out to her, only for the village head to make a small sound of amusement – "Give her time, Inoichi. I think the kunai must have scared her."
As she begins to walk down the very long flight of stairs (she had been carried up these same stairs at a speed beyond normal human capabilities), Yuurei turns over the scroll in her hands, feeling the smooth material and where it meets the woven fabric.
A child can only do so much in a world ruled by power – it doesn't help that she's instinctively afraid of pain.
Who even knew how dirty that sharp knife was, or if someone else's blood was on it. She pricks herself with a needle that she's boiled and lifted out of the pot with the thread through its eye.
Just one little bead of blood welling up, touching it to the needle before using that to smear some on the metal clasp of the scroll. Yuurei watches as the blood seeps into the carving and dries out with a hiss.
Then the scroll is unraveling at her feet, boxes with numbers, years drawn onto it. A small slim scroll pops out as the scroll unfurls entirely. Yuurei is glad no one was around to see how she had dropped the whole set of items in shock when there was smoke and hissing and new things popping out left and right in defiance of Newton.
A letter to her; to her body, which they can somehow recognise from her blood, but probably wouldn't have been able to differentiate if someone had drawn blood and poured it on like antiseptic.
She has no idea how to put all the stuff back into the scroll, but the letter is quite enough – apparently since her blood alone opened the scroll, there's some form of cascading mechanism and another letter has been triggered.
Sent to a business associate of her parents, who should come to Konoha and ask for her custody and the business, until she reaches the age of majority.
This thing about 'majority', as this body's father writes in prose simplified for a child, there's an age criterion, or simply becoming a ninja.
Mother's interjection on the very next line about how being a ninja is difficult work, and dangerous, and how she wouldn't want to see her hurt, reinforce the conception Yuurei has come to have.
She has to find food and drink to last herself at least a week before the business associate, Suzuraiden Shirai, arrives from the Land of Lightning. There are many maps in this house, no surprise for a merchant who would have to track the progress and mark down the locations of his suppliers.
The Haruno Merchants are as close to a merchant group that this level of development has. While she's in no danger of abject poverty – not as much as immediate execution, Yuurei can't imagine being a good businessperson. That's not the calling of her mind, or her body for that matter.
Small hands, uncalloused and with sticky fingers that cannot flick promissory notes or paper bills. Even the coinage, rough where they were cut off the coin trees, the style of the mould, prick harshly at her smooth skin. These are hands of a child who has not lacked in any way.
A good life, that has been provided for. What will life in anther city be like? Were these parents a good judge of character? How stable is the business in the Land of Lightning?
And why, and why, and why. Why not someone who lived in the exact same village.
The questions that her parents did not write into words – do not expect a child to ask or want to know, or was it simply too dangerous to write it? The kind of image of the village this body was born into that she's forming.
In one week, that she reorientates herself in a world that's limited to the street towards the grocery stall – clothes stores and the food stalls, the merchants who identify her by her bright pink hair.
For the one week, she says her first hellos and goodbyes, to the people who remember her with her parents and express their condolences in their gaze, and accepts their condolences and eats quietly and deliciously the food that they foist upon her because "you're so pale, Sakura-chan", "you're so thin, Sakura-chan", "take care of yourself, Sakura-chan."
The world that stretches to the tall building with the kanji for 'Fire' on the top, where the village leader oversees the expanse of land, the library with a tiny open section, ninety percent is restricted for those who do not have a 'headband'.
She goes two days in a row to look over everything that is within her view and the reach of her short stature – reads about the Elemental Nations and also finds out that ninjas make doctors so superior that there is no need for a 'civilian' hospital. Konoha General Hospital, supreme leader of the medic division etcetera, formerly Senju Tsunade, currently unoccupied.
Fascinating stuff, the chakra that is genetically coded to let them breathe fire or spit water many times the volume of a human body. She wonders briefly if that water would be potable – but the book on 'The Five Elements' doesn't consider that.
Healing chakra, being none of these elements, but somehow warranting a mention, there's clearly something missing in the theoretical understanding.
The book with the method to express the healing chakra (they twist their fingers into some signs, almost like a computer code) is locked up. But the book does tell her about the different hand signs based on the zodiac, though not their meaning.
She makes the snake symbol since that's the animal she would associate with medicine, and to no one's surprise but her disappointment, nothing happens.
That's about the end of her library days – and her days in Konoha for that matter.
Her guardian, Suzuraiden Shirai, expects nothing of her because she is a child. From the day that they met and she gave him the most recent book that popped out of the blood-locked scroll, he has always looked at her with uncertain eyes.
But he has never left her wanting; not after she walked beside him politely to greet the storekeepers in Konoha, implicitly replacing her parents as the head of the Haruno Merchants. Yuurei is not a business person at all, but it doesn't hurt to learn.
Shirai leaves his office and all his papers open to her. Regardless of his opinion of how much she can actually understand (probably not too much), Yuurei supposes this is what life must be like with overly permissive parents.
She asks him for entry into the ninja section of the library, and for the first time he has a moment of hesitation. Which is really odd, considering the other things he agreed to – like letting her leave the compound freely with whatever money she wants and ordering books on plants to geography to her own room, or using the kitchen as she pleases and allowing her to look at his trade contracts and business ledgers, walk in on his meetings and more.
"Alright. Next week, Sakura." He never asks 'why', another thing that Yuurei can't wrap her head around.
The 'next week' was precise, and a pair ninja appeared at the gates of the merchant home and escorted her through the town (read: carried) to the library. A lady called Ran carried her and ran across the roofs as if it were light exercise, while the man called Toroi ran beside them, eyes darting about carefully.
There is no section open to civilians, but with a show of some scroll, the librarian on duty gives her a puzzled look and ceases his objections. "I will want to continue visiting without escorts," she says politely, "I am not in need of a chaperone," and is suddenly struck by the fact that these people all think she's absolutely bizarre.
The librarian looks between her two escorts and his ledger book before mumbling something intelligible.
"Anatomy books and medical chakra, please," Yuurei says, expecting to be set down on the floor and for one person to after one type of book each.
To her great fascination, Toroi folds his hands into some of the hand signs she saw in the book of the Konoha library, and in a bright flash that has lit up the shelves, there are a few copies of him. "And all of you can carry books?"
Oddly, some of the clones give her a half smile, while some nod and some look towards the original. She smiles to learn something new – "Then can I have medical books in general too?" and Toroi obliges her, and this time she knows to shut her eyes in time for the bright flash.
Three more clones, weaving their way through the shelves.
It's not bad – the state of medical advancement. But even here in the libraries of Kumo, the best books are penned (or brushed?) by Senju Tsunade. Ironic since it didn't seem like the two villages had the best relationship.
Ran had frowned when Toroi no. 4 had come back with it.
"Shirai-oji," she calls politely when he's there, waiting in the patio that has the best view of the gate, pretending to work – dry tipped brush giving him away. "I am back, thank you for the escorts."
Toroi and Toroi no. 1 bow as he waves them in, "You're back, Sakura. Did you enjoy yourself?" She nods as Toroi places down her books, "Very helpful ability to have, cloning yourself."
There's something unsure and hesitant in her guardian's eyes, like he's walking around her on eggshells, "Yes, ninja are quite."
She smiles, "But money is better," and he relaxes with a small chuckle. "Sometimes, Sakura, I am not sure what to make of you."
He leafs through the book at the top of the stack – "Medical books?"
"Yes, I would like to become a doctor." "Not a merchant?" he asks befuddled again, before he quickly amends that, "But I'll support you regardless, I mean. Since that's what I promised."
By the time she finishes her studies of medical chakra with the private tutors, Shirai donates a sizable sum to the hospital and has a new wing refurbished – the 'Suzuraiden' nameplate on the gold plaque twinkles merrily at her each day when she goes to work.
It is the gleam of money around her that protects her from being called a ninja. What troubles Sakura is more that she will one day become too big to be protected.
Toroi is her daily guard – or fast track taxi, so that she can wake up later each morning. And while he's undoubtedly strong, Sakura can't imagine still being ferried to work by ninja express once she's a grown lady.
There are no vehicles in this world, but there are computer monitors and probes that are hooked up to the patients that she works with. She could definitely do with a little more technology, just a motorbike would do, to make the hour-long civilian-speedwalk to the hospital less far.
Then there's Toroi, who graduates from carrying her library books to carrying her cadavers (ironic). He must earn good money, being by her side, but Uncle Shirai never stops looking at him with eyes full of caution.
"Is it boring, Toroi?" she asks while working her way down the list of notes, one room by another.
Some of the ninja under treatment react badly to her chakra – yanking out metal probes or needles to wave at or otherwise stab her.
"Routine, and fairly safe, Sakura-sama," he says, having repelled their predominantly-steel object into the metal bed frame.
She laughs, detaching the object and collecting it into her biohazard container for disinfecting. Kumo has a strict policy with ninja – once they recover enough to attack the medic, they're discharged.
Toroi excuses himself for three weeks to escort a Kumo delegation to her homeland. "Some people were keen to go and spectate the Chunin Exams being held in Konoha. I have been assigned to join them."
Sakura hums, "Have a good holiday." Toroi gives her a smile in reply, like there's a secret he isn't sharing.
She gets a bicycle. It takes twenty minutes to get to the hospital, but there are a suite of protective mechanisms like the bell being replaced by an arc of lightning that will physically throw people in her way aside.
(just kidding, that would need a lightning nature rider. Sakura has only water.) But she has Shirai's name behind her leisurely cruising bike through the early morning and late evening streets. It's definitely a comfortable life.
Living without extra fanfare, the earmarked next director of Kumo Hospital.
Toroi returns from active duty to his placement by her side, whatever that may be, other than escorting about the heiress to the Suzuraiden fortune.
He has problems controlling his chakra flow, even his prized Magnet Release, trained dutifully over the years, sputtering.
Then hospital director calls her to watch an experimental surgery, a transplant of a 'Kekkei Genkai'. Only, the donor is a girl her age, with dark blue hair and pale, pupilless eyes.
It's not because she's a faintheart. She just couldn't bear to think that the little kidnapped girl might lose both her eyes, and for naught.
"The recipient you have arranged for is a bad match, let alone the way you intend to gouge out her eyeball. Do we even understand how her body works? Is it really just her eyes?"
She's embarrassed him, her benefactor who allowed her to view this in the first place. But Shirai is his patron. The blond ninja waiting in the corner of the room, presumably the medic on standby speaks up and asks, "Finally showing your true colours, Haruno Sakura?"
Sakura cocks her head aside, "The director is free to ignore my comments if he felt they were baseless. But if this is what Toroi spent three weeks and his chakra system on, I too should get my money's worth."
The director swallows hard before agreeing with her, "Unless there is a specific reason to rush, perhaps we should study her for at least a while."
Toroi is close by, watching warily, tense until the medic excuses himself with a curt, "I will report this to Raikage-sama."
The girl is shy, hesitant with a stutter, but one thing is clear. She misses nothing of home.
Not her domineering clan head father, her prodigious little sister nor prodigious cousin who beat her pathetically during the Chunin Exams.
Sakura tells Shirai, "I will have her as my guard," and before he asks her if she knows what she's asking him to do, "Please deal with the Raikage. Surely he can wait a generation for his Kekkei Genkai users."
And for the first time, her guardian asks her, "Sakura, what do you actually want?"
Sakura only smiles, "I wonder what it is that oji-san wants."
Her name is Hinata and there is no one to teach her the martial arts of her clan.
But that's a story for another time.
(10 November 2021)
Ah, it took incredibly long to finally write this, not in the least because I had writer's block. My image of Kumo is constantly shifting, especially as I continue to write Chains. Since we have to characterise our understanding of an entire country.
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Kayo