Chapter 19

The day I became a Kamuro of the Nichijou Yūkaku house was the day I realized that death was inevitable for a courtesan. It was an inescapable path, and it was my fate to die. Sakimono Haji held onto my hand and told me that I was going to be okay and that this Yūkaku house would be kind to me, unlike the other one that had no rules against underage prostitution.

What a colorful lie. I realize that now, because at the right price, any honorable law can be broken without warning or care.

The day I had gone to Nichijou, I witnessed the aftermath of jealousy and love. If a courtesan is not careful, her life is worthless to fate.

The crowd of Oiran and Kamuro had gathered around a room where a ninja had slaughtered one of our sisters because she had given her body to those other than him. Then he paid a meager amount as apology to Nichijou and left as if he weren't a murderer and instead a man who had accidentally broken a toy. The owner of the Yūkaku house held no care and counted his coins with no concern to one broken toy.

When Sakimono Haji glanced my way, to make sure I wasn't afraid, he had become surprised that a mere child was laughing instead of crying.

I don't believe I thought the death was funny, but naïve and ignorant Oiran took my laughter as such and beat me that night until Ohashi forced them to stop.

"Why did you laugh?" She asked as she used a sponge to wipe away the blood from my lips. The Oiran had mostly avoided the face during the beating and hit my sides and stomach.

I didn't really know how to answer Ohashi's question, as her smile and touch had numbed me. "I thought it was funny." I decided to say instead, my fingers clenching together into my palms. My hands were small for an experienced Oiran, but they were nimble and longer than most ten year olds. My breasts had also already outgrown kimonos fit for children.

At ten years old, I had been touched more than a newly bled Oiran.

Maybe that's why Ohashi took pity on me that night.

"You laugh at death," Ohashi asked, the ornaments woven into her hair shined in the moonlight, and her makeup was beginning to slightly smear. Her pipe rested next to her form and I glanced at it, having never taken up the act of smoking.

"Not death..." I remember whispering it so softly that it was a wonder she heard me. "I just understand the world now...that's all. High-class whores are still toys. Do you not find that funny?"

Ohashi paused, her layered garments slightly falling over her shoulders as her milky skin peaked out and her collarbones glistened with the slight moisture of a long night. The chill sweeping in from the open sliding Shōji doors had no effect on her.

"You are too young, but too beautiful to have not given your body...have you already been bled?" She asked slowly, her thick lashes sweeping open and closed as her nimble fingers untied my obi from the front and allowed my bruises to become visible on my stomach.

"Poor brothels cannot judge the pervasions of another...everybody has a price and honor only goes so far," my answer hadn't surprised her, and in fact the Tayū smiled instead.

"Do you have dreams, young Kamuro?" She asked slowly. "Small little Kyoko from Hamuro?" She asked in return, using my Hamuro brothel name.

"I want to run away from here," I remembered admitting and being so open and honest seemed foolish now. "The only thing left for an Oiran is death."

"Oiran or not, death is inevitable. The ninja who killed Chiyohana will die eventually. Citizens walking in the street will die eventually. It's really the only thing we humans have in common with each other," Ohashi leaned in close, her ears brushing against my ear. "I've paid good money for that ninja...Akiyama Takahiro...do die a painful rape and death tenfold than that of Chiyohana."

Ohashi's voice was treasonous to the kindness in her eyes. It was a voice of vengeance and it gave way to the tears in my eyes. It gave way to the first available moisture that I was able to have in years.

"Anomie...it means the lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual...that's what I will have you named." Ohashi's smile was angelic and her fingers ran through the knots in my hair. "Forget about your time as Kyoko. She doesn't matter and you will become stronger than her. We Oiran might die like toys, but we are stronger than ninja and we protect our own, even if we hate them. You laughed because the illusion of safety that a swine like Sakimono Haji created for you was broken so soon.

"That's a good thing. It doesn't matter where you go, you can die a cold death anywhere. Don't cry or mourn it. Play your part and accept it with open arms, or do what I do and get even." Ohashi's voice grew cold and like a candle, the twinkle in her eyes blew out. "Akiyama Takahiro has murdered eight Oiran around the countryside. It will end with Chiyohana."

"I am afraid of death," I remembered admitting this the night after Sakimono Haji had taken my body for his own, glancing up into the smiling Tayū's eyes as her nimble fingers stroked the koto in a melodic harmony. "But I fear love even more."

For the first time, her finger slipped and the melody was broken. She glanced up towards me with a look of empathy. "You've never known love. Love as an Oiran is dangerous and even love has a price."

"I thought girls were supposed to turn fifteen before their bodies are sold here..." I asked, my voice wavered in such a way that I feared I might have cried.

The music started up again, and I heard Ohashi as she stroked the strings. Only when she played the tune did her eyes lose that happy illusion.

"Everyone has a price. It's only flesh, Anomie," Ohashi answered, and I remember my surprise as my eyes snapped up towards her in surprise. "You still own your heart. He can fuck you bloody, but your heart is yours. It's only flesh."

Anbu ninja were scattered throughout the forest by the time nightfall hit. Anomie's hands were covered in blood by the time the moon was high in the sky. Her Chakra itself was becoming difficult to control, but she found that the Anbu ninja were much easier to take down when she separated them from the pack.

Corpses littered the forest ground, after having their breath quite literally stolen and Anomie felt the wind sweep her bangs from side to side. It was a momentary lapse of judgment that lead a katana to impale her shoulder in a clean cut from an Anbu ninja with the mask of a dog.

It was a momentary memory of Kakashi's face and white spikes and one visible eye that faltered her steps and made it easy for the Anbu ninja to take advantage of a weakness.

"Koneko..." The Dog said with a bitter tone that cut through her and allowed her to see that this wasn't Kakashi. "I always believed that you weren't what people whispered...I believed that you were a loyal ninja of Konoha and that all the rumors that spread against you were false." The Dog's breath was still labored from her previous attack, and his hand gripped her side, roughly squeezing into her hip so she couldn't move away from his blade.

"I can see now that I was wrong...you're nothing but a traitor." The Dog said simply, and she felt his katana dig into her shoulder before he attempted to pull out. "I will put an end to you now. I hope you have made peace with your treason, monster."

Before he could take the katana out from her shoulder, she grabbed his wrist and kept the blade in place with a grip so strong that she heard a snap. "It's easier to take a life when you know nothing about the enemy and embody them with the image of a monster. I can tell you know nothing if you allowed yourself to get so close."

He didn't expect her body to dematerialize and immediately enter his mouth. She could feel the dog try and resist, but she immobilized his arm and as smoke, the wound from her shoulder was non-existent.

"Are you afraid to die?" She asked as his body bucked in suffocation.

He couldn't answer past the pain, as his body grew light-headed in attempts to thrash around and rid himself of her presence in his body. Like a disease, she sucked out every last bit of breath and by the time he lost the ability to thrash, she left through his open mouth.

Naked in the forest did nothing to block out the chill of the night air, and she knew she was down to her last seal of clothing, so she walked over to the buddle of clothes and slipped them back on, still able to feel the blood dripping from her arm as she reached for her bandages inside her weapon's pouch on the ground. Wrapping her wound whilst feeling the color drain from her face from the lack of blood was painful, but not as painful as the split second image of Kakashi being the one behind the blade.

Kougin Anomie realized that when she saw his face, her first instinct was to freeze. She realized it was with calm certainty that she nearly lost the ability to fear her own death, but fear his death instead.

To love is to destroy.

And if there was one thing Anomie feared more than killing Kakashi, it was loving him.

So perhaps, it would be much easier to kill him and be done with it all.

»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««

Kakashi was ashamed for failing at killing Orochimaru before, and the shame crushed into him with such force that he felt controlled by the need to redeem his pride and his actions. He immediately summoned his Nin-Canines, finding Pakkun sitting amongst the bunch with simple and unblinking expression.

"Sup." Pakkun greeted, and Kakashi sighed. "What scent do you need us to follow?"

"Orochimaru's scent," Kakashi stated in return.

"Snakes are rather difficult as they don't sweat, but leave it to me," Pakkun said simply, but immediately paused. "Strange..."

"What's strange?" Kakashi asked without hesitation.

"I smell a familiar scent," Pakkun murmured out glancing around and sniffing.

"Whose?" He asked in return, wondering why such a scent would take precedence over the Sannin.

"The smoke girl...Kougin Anomie."

»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««

It wasn't until early morning that Anomie found the great tree, taller than the rest with an opening like that of a cave, that Anomie's flesh turned corporeal once more. She ran her fingers over the entrance and found herself drawn closer until she had already stepped over the threshold before she paused, feeling an incoming Chakra coming from behind her.

She turned incorporeal once more and raised her smoke body to the top of the entrance so her form was hidden in the shadows. She saw a boy, young with wide black eyes and little lashes. A happuri style forehead protector framed his face while a black mask covered the boy's chin and neck.

She did not recognize the boy and he wore no Konoha headband, and yet his weapons were strapped on his back in such a way that screamed a ninja of the leaf.

What would a Leaf ninja be doing out here?

That much, she did not know, so she hovered over him, still blocking out the remnants of the pain in her shoulder that she knew she'd have to feel later.

He seemed none the wiser as he followed the wooden tunnel into the Iburi's tree. Its description was much like the one in the documents the Third had gifted her with, and she vaguely wondered if her mother had stepped through this place as she hovered through it now.

Before she could think more of the strange boy, he was already surrounded by smoke specters that entrapped him in a circle.

She watched as they took human shape, retaining their clothes, she noticed with slight annoyance. She analyzed their movements, noticing the instability of their Chakra. She didn't pay much attention to the words outside of mentions of Orochimaru, as the boy 'Tenzo' as the smoke child Yukimi had called him, was said to be coming here.

So this clan would die so soon after she finally found it, and even knowing that made Anomie feel something akin to pity as the child, Yukimi led the boy who denied his name to be 'Tenzo' into another part of the tunnels.

"You can come out," a man's voice echoed and Anomie's surprise was short lived when the man who had introduced before himself as Gatto turned his eyes to her form resting in the darkness.

She decided that it would be best to reveal herself, so she turned into flesh once more, naked in front of her 'kin'.

"You came from outside," Gatto questioned, taking brief notice to her naked state. "You cannot retain clothing...and you came from outside...you are different from us."

The whispering began and she glanced up through a mess of long hair that covered around her shoulders. "Orochimaru saved my life in a way he was unable to replicate with you." Her voice held an icy chill that caused many of her 'clan' to send her looks of reproach. "It appears you hide from the sun through many hallowed out trees and tunnels...how unfortunate."

She walked over to her fallen clothes, noticing many shield their eyes away from her naked state as she dressed herself quickly and without care.

"I was curious about the Iburi, and I wonder now if my curiosity was in vain as all I see is a broken 'village' hidden underground," she noticed her words caused Gatto's eyes to harden.

"Why have you come then? I do not recognize you...white hair is uncommon and unheard of, but your face does resembles a man I knew all to well," Gatto slowly took a step forward. "Could you be the daughter of Masaki?"

For the first time, Anomie heard the name of a man who could be her father and she felt something akin to curiosity and a deep sadness. Iburi Masaki. She wondered if it could be true, but blocked out the curiosity before she gave Gatto the upper hand.

"If I am, then he is dead," she said simply. Her mother may have lied to her about many things, and Orochimaru may have done the same, but she knew somewhere in a dark corner of her heart that they told her the truth about that much.

"That's quite the shame...I told him not to leave with that woman...it was a betrayal to Lord Orochimaru," Gatto said simply, and took a step closer. "The open air can kill us before we have a chance to enjoy the warmth of the sun..."

She didn't listen past the mention of her mother and she took a step closer, briefly wondering if she could win against her kin in a fight. If not, then all she had to do was escape outside and then take them out if they were foolish enough to follow.

She couldn't allow Orochimaru to gain their ability, but she grew uncertain if she could kill them all.

She briefly wondered if maybe it was the stress of the experiments she underwent as a child had turned the follicles in her hair a crisp white. Perhaps Orochimaru left out details of the experiments along with everything else he failed to inform her.

"What is that?" Gatto stopped speaking for a moment. "Someone has entered our village."

"Is it Lord Orochimaru?"

"We haven't been able to confirm that yet."

"Did you lead enemies here, girl?"

Anomie blocked out their whispers as she turned into smoke, trying to imitate the Chakra she witness the Iburi clan form as she noticed they erupted their Chakra around their center and incased their body.

As such, she noticed that only her vest was left behind on the ground instead of her entire outfit. She decided that it was good enough.

"Should we go after the girl?" One of the Iburi asked, and Gatto shook his head.

"Let her go," the man replied. "She's not one of us. Lord Orochimaru is the only one we need to concern ourselves with and if it is so then we will welcome him. However, if it is someone from the Leaf in pursuit, we will get rid of him."

Anomie had no care or love for the situation, but it wasn't Orochimaru whose presence she felt, but rather, Kakashi.

So she did what she did best and fled through the small tunnels, made for her kind to easily squeeze through until she was corporeal again and on top of the branches above.

Kakashi wasn't her concern anymore.

She only wanted to see her clan before the end, just once, to see if she could really betray Orochimaru.

She found that she couldn't. She couldn't kill them and she physically couldn't betray Orochimaru's trust.

Not yet anyway.

She only needed more time.

"Give me time..." she whispered to herself, thinking back to the third Hokage's proposition that felt like a lifetime ago rather than two nights.

Just a little longer.

»»⎯⎯⎯¤⎯⎯⎯««

Kakashi regretted following Anomie's scent to the tree the moment he was ambushed by Iburi ninja whose abilities mirrored that of Anomie. He immediately wished that he had thought more about methods to fight against Anomie's Jutsu now that it was necessary and he became immobilized by the very ability that the white haired girl would use to kill her enemies by oxidizing their body.

Oxidizing the body was a painful process and it created rippling waves of pain to spread throughout his form with such force that he bucked and withered on the ground.

For the second time in a matter of hours, he wondered if this was going to be how he died.

That was until Kinoe saved his life, the boy with the wood style Jutsu whose life he too had spared before.

It was then that he learned that Orochimaru was responsible to for saving a dying clan such as the Iburi. It was only then that it was confirmed that this smoke clan had been experimented on, and it was only then that it was confirmed that Anomie was experimented on as well.

It was a split moment's worth of doubt that led him to believe that her scent in this place was no coincidence and that perhaps she really has been working with Orochimaru the entire time.

Perhaps he never really knew the girl at all.

So that was the moments that led him to witness the deaths of all the Iburi clan except Yukimi who he felt compelled to save because Kinoe thought of her as he had once thought of Rin. Perhaps it was also because the girl reminded him of Anomie, not by personality but rather by her abilities and the look in her eyes when she thought she was about to die.

All the events that led to Orochimaru escaping to him finding the bodies of his Anbu teammates, surrounding a girl with pale hair and golden eyes. Those irises were pink the last time he saw them, and for a moment he thought the scene was playing tricks on him, but he knew that it wasn't so.

Anomie's blank expression matched the look Orochimaru had given him when he was certain he was to die by the Sannin's hand.

In Anomie's arms was one of the Anbu ninja, held down by her strength and weakened by the gash in his side with a kunai hovering over the man's neck.

"I will kill him for this village," I had promised the Third Hokage as much, my bottom lip bleeding with the force of my teeth breaking the skin. The Third had seemed so sullen that night as he brought me the information on my clan. I had asked him for his price, and he had told me without hesitation. "If I can't then I will make sure he doesn't get the chance to surprise this village with an attack. I will do as you ask. I just need one thing...When it's all over...just let my name be tarnished. These papers...don't let him see them."

"You're talking about Kakashi? You don't want him to know?" The Third Hokage had asked in return, and I remember his eyes watching carefully as I gripped the papers roughly in my hands.

"I realize that my time is limited. I can accept that I will fade away into nothing. It's better if he hates me."

"Better for him or better for you?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to do things that he shouldn't have to forgive. I don't want to be forgiven. I just want to do something right. After a lifetime of wrongs...I need this one right."

"All I'm asking is for something, anything, to prove that you're still that girl. That even a part of her is still there, somewhere," Kakashi had removed his Anbu mask as Anomie glanced over his eyes. The fox in her hands still shivered against the blade in her hands. The edge didn't waver or shake as she held it over his neck.

The skin was brittle in that place and it only took a slight motion to cut into the neck and she was strong enough to cut into the Anbu ninja's bone if she had to.

"There's no going back, Kakashi," Anomie whispered and he shook his head as his eyes connected with the Anbu ninja that was trapped between her blade and death.

"There is. People go back all the time. That's how walking works. You can't live just moving forward. If you do, then you eventually walk past everyone who cares about you," Kakashi took a step forward, slowly dropping his kunai to the ground. "Just put the blade down and come back with me..."

"She's not going to listen to you Kakashi," the fox stated, bitterness creeping into his voice, but Kakashi could tell the ninja was losing the battle to stay awake with his side dripping with blood. "She's killed fifteen of our brothers, maybe more. She's lost and I'm dead. Kill her and don't worry about me."

Kakashi ignored the fox's warning and continued trying to find some sort of warmth in her gaze. He searched like one would run through a desert looking for a drop of water.

"Anomie... Come back with me," he whispered and in a mere moment he found that warmth, that drop of water in the desert. It was clear as day in her eyes and he noticed for once her hand twitched for the slightest second.

"There's no going back," she whispered, and the blade slid across the fox's neck as if his skin were as thin as plastic or as breakable as bread. The blood oozed over the blade and her hand.

The last drop of warmth was gone from her eyes and he barely realized his eyes were tearing up until she had dropped the ninja's body.

The water in the desert had evaporated and he gripped his tanto from behind his back and sprung to life, but the moment he went to strike her form she disappeared into smoke.

She was gone but echoes of her words still remained to haunt him.

There's no going back.


Author's Note

This chapter is named Judas Tree. ユダの木 (Yuda no Ki). Its scientific name is Cercis Siliquastrum, but I don't actually know how to translate the last part into Japanese so I decided on the easier version. It means disbelief and betrayal.

There is a long-standing myth that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from a tree of this species. This belief is related to the common name "Judas tree", which is possibly a corrupted derivation from the French common name, Arbre de Judée, meaning tree of Judea, referring to the hilly regions of that country where the tree used to be common. Another possible source for the vernacular name is the fact that the flowers and seedpods can dangle direct from the trunk in a way reminiscent of Judas' suicide.

Ah, well, that kind of hurt to write but I've been planning this moment since day one and have rewritten the last scene over twenty times before deciding on this. I was close to a cop out and having Anomie killed in this scene, but decided that would be lazy ahaha.

Anyway, to answer some possibly vague answers of this chapter, I should probably say that yes, Anomie does plan on betraying Orochimaru for the Leaf.

I went back and forth with flashbacks throughout this chapter, so I hope they aren't confusing as I tried to separate the flashbacks with a

so as to keep it separated from my usual markers. Also, whenever I write in first person, it will usually always mean a flashback and I only reveal them to shows more depth on my OC's thought process and make the memories relevant to the issues she's fighting with currently.

I wanted to make her a human character who is indecisive and unsure. She is slowly becoming the anti-hero that I always wanted her to be and she is stuck between wanting to be good person and the choices she makes that leads her further into the darkness. Basically, she is stuck between getting her shit together and fucking things up beyond repair.

I feel more bad for Kakashi in this chapter than I do for Anomie to be honest.

Shame.

But I have more plans for this story and I hope to make my character get her shit together eventually. She's rather neurotic and unpredictable with her love interest just like my little Aquarius should be.

I hope everyone liked this chapter as I tried to make everything tie together~

Thank you for reading. ^_^