"It's...well, um...it's a bug."
Hotaru knew the moment she said it, she'd have more enemies than friends in the village.
But she had no choice but to talk.
Talk or risk being stuck in this honeycomb with Matchmaker Akirabachi for 3 more miserable weeks.
"A bug?" Akirabachi buzzed, her towering antennae quivering to contain her temper. "How brave you've gotten all of a sudden. Do you really think I'm an indulging, patient honey bee who will let you forget you're in her nest?"
"And whatever you do," Hotaru's father had forewarned her before her session with the matchmaker bee. "Do not, under any condition, mention the word 'bug' in Matchmaker Akirabachi's presence...She's sensitive."
"Please forgive me! I didn't mean...I was only trying to say..."
Hotaru lost her words.
It was so hard to concentrate with a giant grumpy queen bee staring her down.
"One last time," Akirabachi resumed, with strained patience. "These dreams you keep having. It is important that I know everything. When you say bug, what exactly do you mean?"
They're bugs! Creepy little demon bugs! What more does she want from me?
"I already answered that," Hotaru said, with even less patience than the matron bee. "How many times are you going to ask me the same question? Why is me dreaming about bugs so important? It has nothing to do with anything."
"Because it has everything to do with matching you with a husband," Akirabachi defended her methods.
"But that's ridiculous! How is that ever going to-"
"Ridiculous?" Akirabachi cried. "I have brought soulmates together since long before your time! How dare you insult your elder like this?"
"But how does some dream have anything to do with being close to someone, let alone, a husband?" Hotaru questioned her. "I didn't expect much out of this matchmaking thing, but shouldn't you be asking me more useful questions? Like whether I even want a husband to begin with? Or if I even see myself as a good mother? Or why I was forced to come here in the first place?"
"Oh I see," Akirabachi scorned her. "You think my decision is based on things I don't care about, like what your favorite color or tempura roll is. Stupid girl. None of that ever matters in a real marriage! Do not forget why you were sent to me. You are not here to find a lover. You are here to make an alliance. To carry on the legacy of the Kamizuru clan."
"There has to be a better way to do that than marrying a complete stranger," Hotaru argued. "This whole matchmaking ritual is a thing of the past. Why should I be forced to marry instead of being trained as a shinobi, just because I am a girl?"
"Being a girl has nothing to do with it. You're a daughter of the lead family," Akirabachi informed her. "The matchmaking ritual is tradition! It is highly useful in building our alliance with leaders of other clans. And your insolence is only prolonging my assessment! For the last time, give me the name of the bug from your dream!"
"Even if I knew it, I couldn't tell you," Hotaru answered. "You're wasting your time."
"Do you not understand how serious this is?" Akirabachi questioned her."Marriage to an outside clan leader was never ideal, but we have no choice. Our numbers are so few. An alliance by marriage can only benefit the Kamizuru clan in restoring our village to its former glory. Power and recognition of the Kamizuru name is the promise your father made to his father, and the father before him."
"But I didn't ask for this!" Hotaru objected.
"You are a Kamizuru," Akirabachi charged her. "An attack on one bee is an offense to the whole hive."
And remembering every tragedy that had led up to this point, every act of violence by enemy clans toward the Kamizuru, Hotaru shrunk away from her longstanding resistance.
"Can this really be the only way?"
"It is your will of fire," Akirabachi reminded her. "A burden passed down to us through the generations. You must help your father achieve justice. Our enemies will pay. That is your duty."
Thus, if it meant marrying a stranger, Hotaru would learn to live with it. If it meant a hundred armies fighting for the village, she would not let her father down.
She couldn't forget the tragic history and suffering of her ancestors.
Knowing she was a Kamizuru, but being forbidden to speak about it. To be the joke of every village. To live like a ghost in obscurity, where shame and self-hatred were her clan's only identity.
Forever cursed to by an enemy clan's tyrannous exertion of power.
Hotaru wanted nothing more than to prove the true strength of the Kamizuru clan.
But still, wouldn't marriage outside the clan only complicate things?
"If I tell you what I saw in my dream, promise me my father will never know about it," Hotaru said quietly. "He's got a lot to deal with in the village right now. I don't want to add to his worries."
"Go on."
"I don't know what insect it was exactly," Hotaru said, thinking back on the fuzzy details of her dream. "But it looked like...a beetle."
Akirabachi's buzzing wings slowed, her body tense.
"Are you sure?"
"There was a honey bee on a white lotus, collecting pollen for its hive," Hotaru confessed, Akirabachi hanging on her every word. "Then the beetle attacks, ripping the bee in half with its pincers. And as the bee fights for its last breath, the beetle swallows it whole, with nothing but a violent stain left on the lotus petals."
"Bees are sacred to the Kamizuru clan," Akirabachi said, in deep concern. "To take a bee's life without good reason is taboo. What you dream of is treason against the Kamizuru clan."
"Don't you think I know all that?" Hotaru answered. "I know what risk I'm taking by telling you this. But you're the clan's matron bee. If these dreams are a warning, you're the only one who can help me understand them. I know our clan is in danger, which means I can't worry about some marriage right now. I have to stop this omen, before it destroys everything my father has worked for."
"It's not that simple. What haunts your dreams is a Kikaichū beetle," Akirabachi informed her. "Where have you seen it before?"
"I don't know," Hotaru replied. "I'm sure I've never seen an insect like that before. But what's so special about it?"
"Never mind," Akirabachi replied, though her five bee eyes looked more worried than ever. "I have everything I need to know. You may go. But for your sake, I suggest you keep this dream between us for now."
"Wait, what do you mean?" the girl in Shino's arms whispered faintly. "You haven't even told me who I'm matched with yet..."
Puzzled and confused, Shino's inquisitive brow rose above his shades as he looked down on the mysterious kunoichi he'd caught in his arms.
A swarm of yellow jackets still buzzing angrily around him.
"Is she having a nightmare or something?" he wondered. "The poison from these bees should've killed her by now. Is she immune to it too?"
He scanned her over for clues, but noting that her ninja headband was missing, Shino was lost for who this girl could be and why she was sent to kill him.
"Whoever she is, she's sloppier than even Naruto," he thought. "Did she really think I wouldn't see her attack coming?"
"Wasn't that the whole point," she whispered in her sleep. "Of me being here."
"I have no match for you," Akirabachi's voice echoed in Hotaru's memory. "You will never find a husband in this village. There is nothing I can do for you."
"What?" the girl's words were so soft, Shino could barely hear them over the buzzing of yellow jacket bees around him. "You're telling me this was all for nothing..."
"She's definitely dreaming," Shino said, as the girl's head of snow white hair fell against his firm chest.
She didn't move again, and Shino made sure of that by commanding his insects to restrain her out of harm's way.
"Now I can focus on the beekeeper."