She'd caught sight of herself in passing dirty windows, the occasional puddle and other untrustworthy reflections. Back in Earth, where Oniyuri was born, she could vaguely remember a mirror at Hanabi's place, but they had left the day after and she was still adjusting to a new body.
Oniyuri could draw conclusions by what she could see and comparing various clan members, with Hanabi being the base template. Hanabi had the clan hair; dark, straight, and lacked the glossy texture that was highly common in Japan. Her nose was wider at the base, and had a slightly thicker bottom lip, but still retained the traditional Lightning Country facial structure of narrow eyes, monolid, and round face. Her hair was in a half-upsweep, the outer layers pinned back with a hair clip at the base of her neck, leaving the rest of her hair to fall naturally. Her eyes were a dark black.
Asagao had similar features, but her lips were poutier, and her facial structure was more soft and cute than Hanabi's. She styled her hair in a pin straight, with the ends loosening to show a little curl. She wore supersized round glasses, and her eyes were a strange, piercing blue.
Ajisai's eyes were alike, a little less bright but still blue. It eliminated the chance that Asagao was wearing contacts, because their eyes were not seen inside the clan. Ajisai was too young to give definition to his facial structures, but he was a good weight for a twelve month year old, and his hair was often gathered in a hair tie at the top of his head, leaving a palm tree for hair and Oniyuri a great source for constant amusement.
Oniyuri fared no better, with her hair gathered and tied in the same way every day. Yet this was something she knew superficially, and it wasn't until the Suiei clan arrived at their hotel in Hot Water Country's Yugakure that Oniyuri got to see a proper mirror. Oniyuri's skin was far lighter than the average tone in the clan; that she knew. Other members tended towards a lightly diluted Lightning Country skin tone, while Oniyuri's was solidly in the half-Fire Country and half-Lightning Country range. Her nose was far slimmer than anyone she had seen in the clan; this was no doubt the genes from her father coming into play. Oniyuri's hair shone slightly in the light and was much thinner, yet the volume was a weak echo of Hanabi's. Overall, her face screamed Fire Country but her hair still had traits from Lightning Country.
Oniyuri stayed in front of the mirror for ten minutes, drinking in the sight of her new body. Eyes wide (dark black, an exact copy of Hanabi) she poked and prodded her face. It was strange to have a young body again, let alone a body she could not find a common feature on. Scottish with Dutch genes had no place in Oniyuri's body. She had no argument against that; Oniyuri's body was her and she had to accepted that.
"Oniyuri?" Ajisai called behind her, waddling inside the open rooms of the hotel. The place was a replica of a traditional paper screen buildings common across Japan, and with the long nails both Ajisai and Oniyuri had they could easily access any room by sliding their fingers between the gaps. Ajisai had a physical limitation of not being able to walk, but to Oniyuri the world was open again. "What are you doing?"
"Mirror." She gestured to the rectangular shape that was clearly in his view. He was already sitting at the low-lying tables, her calligraphy set open and already under attack from his grubby, clumsy hands. She could foresee ink splatters, ripped paper, ruined brushes, and quickly took the tools from his hands before Ajisai could progress any further. He gave her a pout as he watched her pour the ink into the suzuri and roll the brushes out from the protective roll. Ajisai could settle the paper and weight fine and did so as soon as Oniyuri left the tools in front of him.
"Write what you say." She instructed, and sat back to think of a question. Ajisai picked up the brush, hovering over the ink, ready. "Why so skilled at spoken? And not anything else?" He dipped the brush and brought it over the paper, patiently accepting Oniyuri's attempts to fix his arm into a better position.
"My job is maths. I deal with highly abstract mathematical concepts, so the only thing I would write would be maths. My position was obscure but in high demand so I travelled a lot, and ended up in Japan more often than not." He took a pause here, letting his writing catch up to what he was saying. "I did intend on learning how to read and write Japanese, but I died before I could do so."
Oniyuri watched what he wrote absent-mindedly, checking that his characters were right and he utilised the correct stroke order. Just as he finishes his sentence, she speaks up.
"I grew up with anime." She waited until he began to write what she spoke. "I've always wanted to learn Japanese. In high school I was introduced to music from across Asia, so I branched out. My classes always required me to speak, listen, read and write."
"What was your job?"
"I had too many to count, honestly. Excluding high school jobs, I was a model, a translator, an accountant." Ajisai missed the extra dash at the top of one of his characters, to which she pointed out silently and he fixed without question. She scrambled for a topic. "I retired, and was living out my last days in a nursing home. I remember celebrating my 102th birthday, and a few other days, here and there. I think I passed away in my sleep."
Ajisai's brush did not falter, but Oniyuri recognised the pinched lines around his eyes. He was off-put by the topic. Oops, she thought, but he replied before Oniyuri could think of anything else.
"I remember driving… being reckless… no doubt speeding but I can't remember…" Ajisai carefully sets the brush down and his gaze vanishes into the distance, the details of the artwork opposite of him non-existent as he scavenged through his memories. "I know it was a car crash, I remember the pain before it cut off… but it doesn't make sense."
Ajisai frowned. Oniyuri leans forward, about to place her hand on his shoulders before he snatches up the brush again. Instead of writing characters, the rest of the page is filled with wonky mathematics, with numerals only occasionally appearing.
Oniyuri watched him, interested, but after he reached for the third page it was obvious that it would take him a while, so she observed the room around. Her bed, a small set up beside Hanabi's, was a tiny futon. Somehow, even in winter, it was blissfully warm.
Beside the magical quilts was a book; her ninja book, to be precise. Oniyuri cast a look at Ajisai – who was on his fifth page now – and walked over to her bed, dragging the thick novel closer. She settled in, wrapping herself up and eyeing the cover.
The characters on the front were ones she recognised but could not string together a coherent sentence from it. This was only the start of the problems with this devil of a book; after a few questions to Hanabi, it seemed like book wasn't written in a feudal Japanese, but the native Japanese. Native to the Elemental Lands. While it was still fundamentally Japanese, there was grammar, vocab, characters that developed differently from Japanese, leaving Oniyuri with the frustration of not understanding half a sentence. And while that might pass for someone at Ajisai's level, for someone who could read like a native speaker it was frustrating. More than frustrating; it called forth a wave of self-loathing from the lack of progress she was having with the book.
From what she could muddle through, this book was a gold-mine for information about ninjas. Written in the early Warring Clans Era, the novel lacked any bias towards the Hidden Villages, partly because they did not exist back then. The author desperately tried to eradicate bias towards the clans, but it was a tough job because all they had to rely on was information handed to them by the clans themselves.
Oniyuri went over the last few paragraphs she translated, and got through two more chapters. These chapters were for laying the foundation of something more, something that she could feel that would happen soon. The book almost read like a fantasy novel if it wasn't for the formal, academic tone.
The writer explained his intensions through the Author Notes, a detailed speculation of the origin of ninja and chakra. They went through what they knew of history, and put a little more effort in describing the history of the ninja clans. Senju and the Uchiha featured heavily, but Chinoike, Houki and a multitude of other clans were mentioned and their actions alongside.
Oniyuri ran her finger over the text, feeling the raised ink. The paper was leatherier than the other books she had borrowed, a testimony to its age. The pages weren't smooth; small wrinkles dancing across the page like immortalised lightning. Whenever she opened or closed the book, the spine would groan and complain. It was beautiful, but Oniyuri honestly felt like she should be wearing gloves whenever she handled it.
The sound of furious scribbling and muttering from the centre of the room had dropped off, Oniyuri realised, and she sat up, the futon falling off her shoulders. Ajisai sat staring at the paper, eyes wide and yet was a tiny exhausted dot against the vibrancy of life. For a moment, Oniyuri could see his past life crushing his shoulders, grinding him into nothing.
"Ajisai?" she called, wary.
"Oniyuri," he sighs, and very slowly closes his eyes, face screwing up like he had a colossal headache. "It wasn't a car… accident."
Oniyuri padded over where he was, picking up the pages of abstract maths with her tiny hands. That was a probability equation; she could see something in the messy calligraphy that could mean physics, but for the most part she failed to comprehend. Not only was a baby trying to write with a paint brush, but the maths was absurdly complex.
Oniyuri's kimono shifted, and she realised that Ajisai had reached out and grabbed a fistful of her clothes. His eyes now held a touch of terror, something that had unsettled Ajisai so deeply that it shook him to the core.
"I was murdered." Ajisai gasped. Oniyuri could feel the fabric across her chest tighten and tighten until Ajisai dragged her closer. Hesitantly, she dropped her arms around his shoulders. He was highly sensitive to touch, with hugs being his worst enemy. Yet when Oniyuri kneeled to be on his level he dropped his head onto her shoulder.
Ajisai was trembling, very slightly, and for the first time since she had arrived to this world, Oniyuri was shaken.
Oniyuri never had kids in her past life, and despite being a hit at children birthday parties and being a wonderful Aunt, she never really needed to comfort anybody, even if they weren't young themselves. She had offered advice for friends, but that was more for relationship problems (even though she had never married anyone).
Comforting Ajisai on his death? Well, that was just a little outside of her experience.
She led him over to her futon, throwing the blanket around his shoulders. He wasn't crying, and didn't look close to it, but he was deathly still. Oniyuri dragged over the koto in the corner, sliding on the plectra on her thumb, index and middle finger.
The koto was the only instrument Oniyuri could successfully play. The shamisen required her arms to be longer and she found the shakuhachi uncomfortable to blow. However, the koto had its own challenges; half of the skills required was the over-dramatic performance and not to mention Oniyuri occasionally lost her balance over the instrument. Kigiku had given her a worn and used koto, just so Oniyuri wouldn't feel so bad at falling on top of it.
She looked at Ajisai, curled up in her blanket. A distraction would work, right?
"I'm going to play a very famous song from my youth. Perhaps you'd know it." She told him, and he barely moved. Ok, hard audience, she took a breath and ran over the first few bars of the song, ensuring that she knew the first leg prior.
The song was Seven Nation Army, of course, as the guitar riff was simplistic but memorable for first-time players. It was one of the few English sons that Kigiku had taught her, with other famous songs in her repertoire.
They had discovered, a few koto lessons in, that Oniyuri had experience in choir and her new voice was not that bad. Choral pieces were hard to come by in the Elemental Nations, but they were always a hit with the audience when sung properly. And thus Oniyuri was enlisted in another set of classes, although this class she was not averse to participating. She had been in a choir all the way up to her death, after all.
Seven Nation Army was probably appropriate for this situation, Oniyuri justified. It was about not letting anyone get in your way, and, well, Ajisai could use that. When she finished the song, she looked up and saw that he was now paying her active attention. An improvement.
"I'm not really into pop songs," he admitted. "My taste is classical." She adjusted her playlist, and continued on. These, at least, did not have lyrics.
Hanabi and Asagao found them like that: Ajisai sitting opposite Oniyuri as she played, her quilt around his shoulders like a cloak. They joined in for a few songs, to which Asagao requested several pop songs from the early 2000s, and Hanabi preferred classic 80s, all of which Ajisai did not know.
"We should go to bed now." Hanabi stretched, shifting from one leg to the other in an attempt to wake them up. "We're leaving for Lightning Country tomorrow." Ajisai yawned at her words, holding up his arms so Asagao could scoop him up. When Oniyuri turned away from putting the koto back she caught his disgruntled face. Either it was towards the tight hug Asagao had on him, or how exhausted his tiny body was. Oniyuri could relate on the latter reason.
She shuffled over to her futon, gloriously warm from Ajisai's body heat, waving him goodbye. The ninja book was still beside her; open on the page she had abandoned. She closed it and ran her hands over the imprinted kanji on the cover, a small goodnight to an inanimate object.
Hanabi woke her the next day, the last wisps of a dream vanishing as Oniyuri took in the bright sunlight shining through the door. The hotel's courtyard was trifle with Suiei members, rolls and carriages and people. Oniyuri pulled herself out of the futon, hurrying over to get the winter cloak from where Hanabi had prepared it. It did not have any residue heat from yesterday, so for a few minutes Oniyuri could still feel the cold bite of the air as she rolled up her futon and sweeped the room for odds and ends.
Once everything was sealed into Hanabi's scroll, they visited Asagao's room so they could strap Ajisai onto her back and Oniyuri onto Hanabi's. They joined the congestion in the courtyard, chatting with other members as Oniyuri took the chance for a small nap. It was difficult to sleep when travelling, and with her tiny body it demanded constant rest.
They began to move, trickling out of Yugakura until they hit the outskirts. There they picked up speed and Oniyuri was shaken from her doze. She watched the scenery go by, already used to the long hours of travelling.
She wondered what they'd do in Lightning Country. With it being such a large country it would take two months to travel the land. Afterwards they'd hop on a boat, visit the few small towns in Whirlpool Country, and then travel across Water, hoping from island to island.
Oniyuri wanted to pick up dancing next; she had already begun a few basic dances to get used to her new body. She had a long time before she got to the practised fluidic style she honed in her previous life, but she probably wouldn't achieve that until after puberty.
Thinking about dancing triggered the memory of watching Kiku dance for the first time. Iron would always remain a mystical place simply because watching the show was spectacular. The next goal, a life achievement, a skill that Oniyuri would hone for the rest of her life, was to learn the clan's technique. It wasn't every day you became a water bender, and she wanted to do it gracefully.
If that meant months of straight practice, then so be it.
They passed through to Lightning Country with little fanfare; the destination they would be resting overnight was one hour from the border. A town on the smaller side, the Clan wouldn't be holding any official performances. The down side of such a small location was the lack of a hotel capacity to welcome all of the clan. The clan couldn't even split into two groups, Hanabi explained, instead, we'd be peppered around the town.
"Kiku's requested for Asagao and I to join her." She turned her head slightly, a smile curling at the edges of her mouth. "I think you'll be shown how to access your chakra." It seems like today and yesterday was full of surprises, both unpleasant and welcome. She could feel herself copying Hanabi's smile, her mind soaring with imagination. They'd only be staying her overnight, and there were enough hours left in the day for it all to go down tonight.
Hanabi only stopped at their room briefly to let Oniyuri down and settle their belongings. Together they pulled out the futons to allow them to breathe before they returned, and Oniyuri, almost vibrating from excitement and anticipation, tore out of the hotel without a second thought.
Hanabi found her a second later, just outside their door, waiting for directions to Kiku's room. Kiku's room was between Hanabi's and Asagao's, with a guard in the bracketing rooms. Oniyuri knocked politely, and Hanabi opened the door when Kiku's voice could be faintly heard through the door.
There was already steaming cups sitting on the table, five in total. From the smell it was green tea, a taste Oniyuri still loathed in this life. Nevertheless, she settled on one of the pillows, hands naturally settling around the ceramic cup. She looked at Kiku with admiration.
"I know you hear this a lot," she begins, probably too softly, loudly or quickly. She couldn't tell herself; her voice sounded stupidly squeaky. "But I am in awe of your dancing."
"It sounds like you have a background in dancing?" She answered, taking the compliment with a (small, graceful, pretty) smile.
"Self-taught." Oniyuri hastily answered. Kiku waited. Shyly, she ducked her head as she tacked on "…It's entirely K-pop. With the occasional J-pop and traditional Japanese dance."
"I am sure you could use those." Oniyuri could, and will, strongly disagree. The dances the clan used were more abstract, more traditional. Something you'd see on a private stage paid by millionaires, not on stages surrounded by screaming fans. Her opinion must've shown on her face because Kiku calmly continued. "The dance I performed for the opening act in Iron isn't done every night. Iron Country is heavily traditional, so the acts run were changed to suit their preferences. Lightning Country, on the other hand, loves hip-hop. I know K-pop finds heavily influence from hip-hop, and those dances are always well-received."
Kiku smiles down at Oniyuri, placing a hand on her wrist. "Don't worry; all styles are welcome." At that smile, Oniyuri felt her respect and love for Kiku shoot through the roof. At her words, Oniyuri felt relieved. Apparently she had been much more worried about her dancing experience than she thought.
"I hear you also sing?" Oniyuri brightens at the mention of choirs. There weren't many vocalists in the Suiei Clan, a shocking lack that needed, in her opinion, to be changed. She always loved to sing, and this new body had an angelic voice.
Asagao and Ajisai joined them soon enough and the five of them had a riveting conversation about the skills Oniyuri and Ajisai had. Ajisai had little to no talent in anything Art, from singing to dancing. His mathematical genius was something that Kiku was interested in, she admitted; typically, the books of the Clan were managed by a small army of people but having Ajisai at the head could lead into new things. In her previous life, singing and dancing was nothing more than a hobby; something she devoted an indefinite time and attention to, but never evolved into something that paid the bills. She was elastic at the chance to change that.
Eventually, the conversation wound down. Kiku excused Hanabi and Asagao, the two of them leaving with a bow. Oniyuri's hands clenched around the cup, feeling every fibre as she was finally awarded for her patience. A quick glance to the side showed that Ajisai's face looked blank; focused and concentrated. He was ready too.
"Now," Kiku begins, gathering the cups to set them aside. She settled down and held out her hands. "I hope that Hanabi and Asagao have told you why you are here." Both Oniyuri and Ajisai nod dutifully.
"Opening your chakra is something that is importance for this clan. Not only will you need to use it when travelling, but when performing our clan technique, it is vital. Please, link hands." Kiku's hand was much larger than Oniyuri's; she could wrap her entire fist around her pinky. She reached out to Ajisai, his grip much tighter than she was used to. "I know that some of us here might not believe in meditation, but to unlock your chakra you need to be prepared."
She closed her eyes to the darkness, her eyes imagining streaks of black and white. She could still feel everything around her: from the pedestrian traffic outside the window to the smell of Oniyuri's untouched green tea, her mind was still open to the world. Kiku continued to talk.
"I will use my own chakra to awaken your coils. You will feel something travelling down your arm and reach for your gut. Chakra is comprised of physical and mental energies; the common technique used by ninjas is to combine these to create ninjutsu. They use the physical energy to booster their taijutsu and use the mental energy to create genjutsu. Our ancestors discovered that through our excessive mental energy we could create another use: to control water. Earth is too solid to effect, air, fire and lightning are too fleeting to contain; water is perfect for us."
It crept up on Oniyuri – the feeling of something tiny, something tinner than ants, slithering, gliding and crawling all at once up her arm. It had a pace and it stuck to it; at the shoulder it moved south, down, down, down. It circled around somewhere in her gut, and something began to itch.
Her body felt like her nails when she struck them in a peculiar angle; it felt like TV static; it felt like when she bit down on something that made her teeth scream from sensitivity. Then, it vanished, and in its place unfurled a warmth that washed away everything. The green tea smell slapped her awake, a loud saleswomen taking the moment to join. When she opened her eyes, the room was over-saturated with vivid colours.
Kiku was done but she continued to hold their hands. Oniyuri watched as Ajisai rediscovered the world with chakra, taking joy in his euphoria. Her chakra ebbed and flowed, growing like an unleashed tsunami. She looked over to Kiku, giving her the silliest grin.
"Thank you,"
Kiku simply smiled.