a/n: a short update, since narratively it makes sense to break things up here. thank you to all who are following and leaving reviews!
The rain in Amegakure stops four weeks after Itachi leaves on his mission. For several hours, the light shines everywhere—in the sunshine, Ame feels like a different city.
Tsubaki tentatively opens the windows to her apartment and lets the humid air flow through it. She eventually moves to her balcony, where the concrete is warm and dry under her bare feet for the first time in her memory.
She spends the rest of the day going over her accounting books out on her apartment balcony, though outwardly she tries not to enjoy it too much. The streets below her slowly crowd with pedestrians and gangs of children who stand in the middle of the street with their hands out, looking up at the sky with uneasy looks on their faces.
Around lunch time, there's a commotion out on the edge of town, near where several of the drainage facilities have formed reservoirs of excess rainwater. Muffled explosions echo off of surrounding buildings, though the exact source is hard to pinpoint.
Tsubaki's entire apartment building shakes, and dust and gravel rain down from the rooftops.
Then silence.
Shortly after, Tenshi-sama flies over the skyline, sunlight filtering in through her paper-thin wings. Out in the street, startled civilians cry out to her and wave their arms ecstatically.
Tenshi-sama hurries on without glancing down at them, and the city grows silent again.
The rain begins anew the next day.
.
.
.
There are no sightings of Kami-sama or his angel after the strange commotion on the outskirts of town. It is not always evident when they leave the city - if they ever do - but when more than a week passes without a sighting of either, Tsubaki assumes this to be the case.
There are no Akatsuki left for Tsubaki to contact to ask about Itachi's mission, though she is beginning to wonder how much longer his mission will last. She's used to him spending so much time away, but Amegakure is a lonely city, and the clerks and customers at her store are no real substitute for his company.
In a fit of boredom, she finds herself looking for Itachi's little brazier, if only because it's one of the few possessions he seems to actually care for. She's never actually seen him use it, but she assumes he must be doing so in private - she recalls the edges of it being marked with dark ash and grease from whatever he burns inside of it.
For as many times as she's seen it, she doesn't expect finding it to be a difficult task. After crawling around on her hands and knees for nearly an hour to no avail, though, Tsubaki concludes that he must have taken it with him when he left.
He's never done so before, at least that she's aware of. But - perhaps anticipating that he would be gone for longer - he must have decided he would rather have it with him this time.