Break Out
Shino's cousin had a bad breakout the other day.
Shino knows because he was there. He wouldn't have learned of it any other way. These matters are not the sort widely broadcast among the clan; it's a common courtesy and a common sympathy. There are not many born Aburame who haven't shared the experience, and none who wouldn't agree that it is a difficult stage of childhood best not aggravated further.
An Aburame observes and is quiet. Shino knows this because his father taught him, and that is why he's said nothing beyond what was necessary, and that is why he's not seen his cousin since. He misses the company a little. Even if the extent of their interaction was simply passing each other in the halls, they passed each other with the shared knowledge that comes with their age—though Shino is only five, and his cousin two years his senior.
It's a shared knowledge of pain, something Shino understands not so much from observation but equal experience, and something they both have yet to outgrow. It's the shared sensation of pressure within; tiny prickles across the wrong side of the flesh. It's the pressure that grows with excitement, with a breath taken too sharply. It ebbs with an exhalation, but surges dangerously in exaltation. It rises with unease, but with fear it's at its height—no longer pressure but a definite force: Shino has placed his fingers against the skin of his wrist and felt it, or them to be more precise, crawling beneath. Their carapaces sometimes look like living welts squirming up his arm, submerged only when his breath steadies and his pulse slows. This is how Shino learned the value of meditation, something he's told is crucial in these early stages. One day they will protect him, but right now he is vastly outnumbered. They feel and react to his every emotion, and he appreciates that, but they don't feel his pain when they decide to test the boundaries of their still flimsy residence.
His cousin spoke a little too loudly. Standing up after particularly tough training session, frustrated and arguing with an elder, his voice had barely risen to a shout before his head snapped back in one burst of red and black that scattered across the room. He was carried away quickly, but Shino saw the familiar pattern on the underside of his jaw. A dozen small tears, messily done by a dozen small panicked bodies that were still humming in the air. Shino was told to leave, he did what he was told, and not another word has been spoken to him of it, but he understands that the wounds will be a scar in a few more days. A fairly visible one, too. It's a pity, but it's not uncommon. Shino's mother bears a strip of shiny, twisted skin from her cheek to her collar bone, mostly covered up by the long scarves she wears. It is in fact the least of her old injuries. She is clan head. She was a year younger than most.
Her son is two years younger than most.
Shino is called special for this. Shino is expected to become powerful, and it's not something he needs to be told to realize. He sits by a window with his legs crossed and his eyes closed, breathing in deep and steady. He's not allowed outside, for the safety of others and himself, and so his skin is white from the endless hours within the shelter of his clan. He expects his cousin to be up in a few days, just like he expects he'll be allowed to join Academy in a few years once he's grown up a bit. He doesn't expect the tightening of his chest that comes with the thought, or that his throat would hurt in quite that way. The sun is low outside, and he imagines the air must be fresh. They will like that, he knows as they stir in his wrists and ankles and neck. They feel things with him, after all. Shino curves his fingers against the scarred skin of his shoulder and lets himself smile. Just a little.
-End-