I think a lot of people expected me to die.

But the thing was everyone had a tendency to forget how stubbornly life liked to cling to things. Winter would wipe out even the most stubborn of plants trying to poke up through the baked dirt, snow blanketing everything beneath the sky. Spring came, though. And with a non-zero amount of spite, I got better.

It turns out all the pushing and poking I had done had blasted through my chakra points like nobody's business. A great exercise for a kid with steady meals and training, a horrible blight for a kid who had a body fat percentage hovering somewhere between malnourished and downright skeletal.

There was some modicum of success though. Tsunade had left after a handful of days and some stern warnings, but it had made a whole lot more sense when she had phrased it in a way that explained it as a muscle. You had to let it rest to develop, and I had been relentlessly abusing the limits of what I could take. In the end, I had built up so much energy, it had clogged up pathways and points, sending my body into lockdown mode.

You live and learn, I guess.

Tsubaki had taken the scroll away during the period I had been completely delirious. I think she was vaguely disturbed by the sheer enthusiasm that I had attacked it with, though I got the impression that my being bedridden had impacted her more than she had let on.

Weakness is what killed you at the end of the day. There was always someone hungry for your position, so you clung to what you could to keep it. That meant that I probably posed a problem for Tsubaki, being her blood child and all. Sometimes I got the sense that she wished I hadn't been born. I didn't really know what to think about that, so I didn't. It was a lot easier that way.

Spring hadn't just come to the red-light district, it had arrived for Sayu as well.

She had damaged her arm from an incident with flaming charcoal that had left the uppermost part of her shoulder covered with puckered scars. Sayu hadn't told me a whole lot about what she wanted for her future, but the injury had slashed out the possibility of becoming a serving girl. It had hit her a lot harder than I had thought it would. She had been despondent for weeks.

Takumi had leapt at the opportunity and proposed to her. It was bewildering. I hadn't even thought he had the capacity to think about things like romance when he was the type to shout things like "MUSCLES!" or "GIVE IT YOUR ALL!" and spend his time mooning after sharp objects. But she had accepted tearfully, so I guess it all ended up well.

(Probably. I foresaw Takumi waking up to slugs in their wedding bed.)

Maybe it had been some kind of awakening after Tsunade had visited, but I saw a lot more nin after that. I figured they would probably visit some of the more well-to-do spots on the map, maybe even splurge at one fancy houses that had a geisha, but apparently, you didn't get a huge salary murdering or spying on people.

I knew were on the fringes, but it was pretty interesting to see what kinds of headbands popped in. We got a handful of guys with those iconic leaf headbands, but a whole lot more people with a design that looked a little like an hourglass. Sometimes some squiggles.

Takumi swore up and down that we had a super buff guy with a slash through his metal plate visit at one point, though Sayu and I doubted it. Nin seemed to cherish their headbands. You'd see guys polishing them on flak jackets once in a while, so the thought of someone sporting such an obviously damaged one was outlandish.

The three of us made a game out of punching one another whenever we saw one, and I got incredibly good at dodging. Takumi didn't pull his punches, Sayu was bony, and I was brittle.

Not a good combination.

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Tsubaki was in an awful mood when I came to see her. She had hurled something through the paper screen, ripping the panel into little shreds. Items were scattered around the room, as if she had thrown them in anger, and I averted my eyes almost immediately when I spotted a hairpin lodged firmly into the wall, sharp end pointing outwards. Terrifying.

"You," she said, and I gave her a tentative smile. "Don't do that again," she said, voice hoarse. She must've been yelling before I arrived. "Don't smile like that," she said, waving her hand around her face. "Smile with your eyes, not with your cheeks. You'll get wrinkles that way."

"Yes, miss."

"I–" She started, but stopped immediately. She looked torn. Incredibly so. "My son," she said as if it pained her, and I jolted. She had never called me that before. Just "you" or "brat" or sometimes when she was really, really angry, things like "leech" or whatever. "You're my son," she said, as if reaffirming something.

"... Miss?"

"Everything I've done, I've done for myself," she said finally.

I blinked, confused. "Yes, miss."

"And then I had you. I never wanted kids, did you know that, brat? They're smelly, they're loud, and most of all, they're useless. They're a liability. They make your body weak. They make you weak." She held out a hand, and I jerked my gaze around the room, trying to look for her comb. It lay in the corner, and I scrambled over to hand it to her. One of the teeth was broken, wood splintered. Tsubaki picked the pieces away serenely and started brushing her hair.

"I never thought of myself as a mother. Not once," she said, slowly. "I still won't."

I had no idea where she was going with this, but even out of all the times I'd seen her volatile emotions explode outwards, never once had I seen her look defeated. It scared me, to be honest. I had no idea when I had started thinking of her as some kind of impenetrable monolith, but seeing her in the dim lighting, brushing out her hair, made me realize that she too was human. It made something deep inside feel odd, as if I was developing indigestion.

"You do what you have to do to survive."

"Yes, miss. You taught me that."

She eyed me. "Hm. You'd do well to remember that," she said. "It's the most important lesson you can possibly learn. The world isn't a kind place. It will never be a kind place. To survive means being able to step on others to live."

I blanched. "Miss?"

She looked at me for a long, long time. "And then I had you," she said, again. "I had you, and things changed. I thought about drowning you, did you know that?"

"I… I see?"

"Or throwing you out a from a window. It might be harsh to say, but I was in no state to be a mother. You were a weak little thing when you were born, but when I first saw you…"

I wasn't sure if her words hurt. I wasn't even sure if her words shocked me. You saw these kinds of things all the time, and sometimes I wondered if remembering my past life had been what saved me in the end. Maybe the original me had died as a baby. Maybe the me right now was the previous one. I didn't know. I was both. I was neither. I was someone else entirely.

"When I first saw you, I wanted to keep you safe. And that scared me."

I stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Brat," she said. "I'm sending you away. This will be the last time we see one another."

I stiffened. "Excuse me?"

"Mind your manners." She set her comb down and turned her head to make eye contact with me.

We didn't exactly have the same appearance, me and Tsubaki, but we shared the same ambery-yellow eye color. It was hard to tell in most lighting, but in direct sunlight it looked almost golden.

Beyond that though, she was a well-groomed, prim and proper icy flower on a hill, the kind that screamed of classical Japanese beauty. I had heard that she was supposed to be an Oiran at one point, but her attitude had driven her from the establishment. I had also heard that it had been her pregnancy. In that moment, I realized the gap between me and Tsubaki wasn't as large as I thought it had been.

"You do what you have to do to survive," I said slowly.

She smiled, all teeth. "Exactly. This is your fighting chance, brat."

I bowed as low as I could go. "Thank you," I said to the only family member that I had known in this life. "Thank you, mother."

She didn't say anything when I left.

Walking back to my sleeping quarters, I unconsciously lifted my hand up to my face. My fingers came away wet.