Chapter Four.
The first, few months are the hardest.
Tsuru can hardly keep her head from falling in her supper dishes each night, and knows without a doubt, if it does her sister will be there to take a picture.
Especially if if the rice grains stick to her face.
Their father would even send it to their uncle in the capital, with words just sort of cooing and then, use it in the morning as an excuse to pull her from the extra lessons.
Still, she cannot stop her head from bobbing. Her eyes from feeling heavy.
The dimmed lights, from being comforting.
And every time she looks up, she sees Yagura's laughing eyes.
0o0o0
The days seem to blur together, and Tsuru's body always seems to ache. Even with the extra training she's receiving, it is hard to keep up with many of the more diligent clan families.
Her eyes grow tired, during the scheduled breaks and she falls into a restless, fifteen minute sleep.
The other children usually willing to ignore her, in favour of a drearier atmosphere, and easier target.
Or so it had seemed.
Tsuru startles awake a week later, to a loud yelp and terrified looking head, slammed down beside hers.
"Apologise, to the priestess," the eldest of the Kaguya demands. Voice stern.
"I an sorry! So sorry!" the boy, Hasumi cries out. The other child's nails dogging onto his skull.
Tsuru wipes at her face, unsure of her eyes and then beams, up at the other child. Suddenly relieved.
"Ah, Subarou. Thank you," she says.
The boy nods. "And the heir? What shall I do with him?"
"Nothing, my friend. I shall."
The blonde plastered to Tsuru's desk panics, and she target drags a kunai from the pouch at her side.
Smiles, without hesitation as she draws the weapon across the hand, inches from the his face. Pressing harder, because the edge is slightly worn and she had forgotten to sharpen it. Still blood, wells up as it should below the knuckles.
"Next time, you try to touch me outside of lessons," she warns. "I will take your fingers."
0o0o0
Coloured by age, bruises have bloomed across her skin in horrid, unflattering hues.
Eito is furious.
His hands shake as he helps her from the round, wooden tub. The scent of salt, heavy in the air and the pine needles she had added clinging, stubbornly to her form.
"I should tell father! He would put an end to this farce!" her brother hisses, just above a whisper.
Eito wouldn't Tsuru knows, no matter what he says.
"You've come home with worse," she replies, fighting back the tears threatening to spill. His fingers having found a particularly tender spot.
"I'm not six!"
"The medic said I'll be fine."
"You're in pain! And that medic is an idiot!"
"And is he the one that told you to soak in this hot of water? You could of went into shock or passed out, if the heat got to be to much. The pain."
She ignores his initial question. "I didn't."
Her aunt had never, when she bathed in vanilla after a bad fight with her husband.
"I can stay home a few days, let father think I'm sick again. A few of the other kids are o-"
His forehead bumps hers. "You're going to damage your body of you keep this up. What use will it be then?"
0o0o0
Tsuru winces, as she hears another child cry out, struck by the edge of the instructers tambÅ.
One of the civilian members, by the sound of their response.
No clan kid would dare make such a sound.
She forces herself to push forward in the darkness. Toe to heel. To breath with her stomach instead of her thorax as the man had insisted, multiple times.
Tsuru's struggles.
It is an awkward feeling, to have to breath in such a way. Though quieter she admits, if properly done. Less likely to draw the teacher's ire. And Tsuru's has preferred that lately, with the attention the man has been paying her. Going far further, than she would ever consider acceptable to a child, even a Shinobi one.
And it isn't something she can change, not now.
A couple more steps, each carefully made and Tsuru stills.
Feels the familiar dandy long legs crawling in her brain. The small ripples of gently, disturbed water. Her brother calls it a slight sensitivity to chakra and tells her, it will probably increase as she ages. Heads out into the world with more stimuli, and greater dangers.
Tsuru waits, as she always seems to for the inevitable.
Two children brush pass her. The first better coached than the other, and the latter to close to the ground, with too many points of contact. A terrible idea in this kind of terrain. There is to much debris, and far to many concealed traps.
He yelps. Then screams, as wood impacts against his back. Cracks.
Another non-clan member lost, Tsuru thinks as the sound carries throughout the room. Sets them all on further edge.
"Four minutes left," a voice calls, from the darkness.
Tsuru moves to the left to avoid the prone figure, and looming teacher. Barely darker, than the world around him.
Encounters another two steps away.
A hand clamping over her mouth.
A cold stamp pressing against her cheek.
"Safe," they whisper in her ear.