Naruto was falling when she spoke. Her voice chased down after him as he fell into a sea of darkening blues and purples and greens. Above she was reaching out to him, calling. He was only getting further away. He fell into a deep sadness, a melancholy; the hissing rush of the ocean closing in overhead. He called out to her. He tried to. Nothing but air and hoarse whispers.

"… arut.."

Her voice again. Lost in the white noise. Naruto couldn't make heads or tails of it. Above, way above so far he could barely see, a patch of blue parted and a face he distantly recognized poked through. Brown eyes, dark hair. Red triangles.

"Wake up dipshit, you're late." Kiba said. What an awful thing for someone to say, Naruto thought. Especially to someone falling an inordinately long distance to their eventual death. No class, that boy. Purple and blue swirled around his head, and coalesced into a hand. Naruto reached out his own hand to complete the high five he assumed it was going for, spirits already raising. It slapping him across the face.

"Asshole" Kiba's phantom face called down from on high, "wake up. Right now."

The floating hand smacked him good again. "Stop." Naruto said, and felt the most peculiar feeling tingle up and down his body. "Stop damn you." He moved head around from the neck up, blue and purple whirling, wind roaring in his ears, taking shot after shot to his face. Naruto groped out with a hand instinctively, his forearm stretching up and up like elastic, all the way up to Kiba's face in big twisting loops. He then grabbed hold because it made sense.

"Oh what the fuck man leggo-"

Naruto woke to himself grabbing on to Kiba's face. "Aww god" he said, flinching away from the light at the kitchen window. He was covered in sweat, face slick with oil. A steady pounding pulsed in his head, pushing out on his eyes. He moved his legs and heard plastic pill bottles click together beneath the covers.

"Ugh." Kiba made a sound that Naruto hated and straightened up, wandering over to the kitchen. "You're late man." He said while Naruto tried to get his bearings, blinking exaggeratedly, tossing his head about, stretching his jaw. What a night. Why had he-

"Really late." Kiba said. "Are you sick? If you are-"

"'M not sick." Naruto said. "Not sick." What was he trying to accomplish? Three empty ramen bowls on his nightstand, the slick plastic tops down by his feet, stuck to the covers. It smelled like must. Like mothballs. Like cottonmouth.

"You sound and look and smell sick." Kiba rifled through Naruto's cupboards for a clean glass, every clink setting Naruto cringing. "And since you so kindly decided to grab my face, I can say with some degree of confidence that you also taste sick. It always smells like shame in here, that's nothing new."

Naruto sat up with some difficulty. Reached up and felt the bags around his eyes with his fingers. A piece of paper pinned to his fridge by the bottom corner, the sheet hanging down limp, the barest bit of black seeping through. All his forks were gone. A circle drawn on his window in blue ink, marking the spot where a finch had perched on the railing outside. Naruto flexed his legs, empty plastic clacks. All of them? Why had he taken all of them. What the hell had possessed him to take all of them.

"You look like hell, man." Kiba had arrived at his bedside sometime during his introspection. Mug in hand, brown with a chipped handle. He offered and Naruto took, and it tasted like iron. Like bitter air. Naruto drank it anyways and set the mug on his nightstand. The words 'left' and 'right' on his right and left foot, respectively, in black ink. A monkey's fist knot on his shoelaces. A lock of his hair in the soil of his pet fern, dug in like a taproot.

Kiba shook his head slowly; a pinched, weary sort of expression. "Man, if you don't wanna go I'll tell him you're sick." He said. "But you gotta decide now."

Naruto said nothing, only looked down at his feet for a few moments. Then up, over at his window, the blue circle. "I uh." He blinked, rolled over a bit and got both his feet on the floor, careful not to rustle the bottles. "I'm good. Good. I'm fine, really." He said, the emphasis was all wrong like he'd never quite tried that combination of words together before. "Give me a minute to shower. Dress." His jaws of a shark nightcap was over on his lamp, eating the bulb; the pearlescent white teeth had glowed in the night. Eyes burning red. No forks, it had said. What a lovely voice it'd had. But it was quiet now.

Naruto shook his head. Kiba was looking at him. How long had he been thinking? A minute? An hour?

"Alright. If you want." Kiba said. Evidently it had been about a second. "Take your time, man. You look like hell. Late night?"

"Or something." Naruto said, and stood, head lolling. "or other." Kiba was gone, cream colored walls around him, steam pouring over his back. He was in the shower? When had that happened. In his left hand; a loofa. In his right, nothing. But he felt something there. Cool metal, jagged edges. His keys.

He was standing outside, clothed, dried. Looking down at his keys.

"Well, let's go then." Kiba said beside him.

"… Yeah." Said Naruto.

Down the stairwell, past his landlord's cracked door, into the open streets. The shops and houses were a lot taller than Naruto remembered. It was as if he stood beneath them all at once, looking up so they appeared to reach the clouds. His chest hurt. Only on deep breaths, only when he didn't use his diaphragm.

"Well?" Kiba was looking at him, an odd sort of look. Naruto wasn't sure what to say. What to think. Everything was in such harsh contrast, sky too bright, road too dark, cracks like streaks of black lightning running through the dirt. It was no quieter than it ever was, but it seemed to be. It was all he could hear, how quiet everything was. "Well, man?" Kiba said again.

"Hmm?" Naruto heard himself say.

"You're fourteen, man," Kiba said, "what the hell were you up for."

Quiet again. Voices, yes, but they didn't register. Laughing, chiding, hawking wares, little shitfaced children. Just white noise, hear it long enough and it becomes nothing. "Nothing, really." He said. Mouth still dry. Felt like it would always be dry. Naruto nodded. "Yeah, just about nothing."

"Doesn't look like nothing."

"It's an expression. Hyperbole. Nothing looks like nothing. If it did then it would be nothing and you wouldn't have seen it in the first place." Words poured out of Naruto's mouth without him really understanding their significance. He was just making noises. A burst of flame jutted up from a crack further along the dirt road and Naruto thought nothing of it.

Kiba blinked. Considered. "That is accurate." He said. Walked through the flame pluming from the tear in the road, went ablaze. Naruto looked at him, an eerie sort of calm washing over him. He should be more concerned. He knew that. But he felt nothing. "Rude. Confusing. Pretty sure it's not hyperbole. But fairly accurate." Kiba said. Crackling, charring. The smell of him…

"Mm." Naruto could only watch in morbid curiosity. "You feeling alright?"

"Fine." Kiba said. "Why?"

"No reason." Naruto said to Iruka. The man was angry. Annoyed. But above that, through that, he was concerned. It showed on his face. His brow softened.

"Alright, Naruto… Just. Go sit down." Naruto heard him distantly, as if they were standing in a corridor, far apart. When had they gotten to the academy? Kiba was over in his seat, that same odd look on his face. Not burnt anymore. That was good. Good for Kiba.

"Ok." Sakura opened her mouth, then stilled, as if she were about to say something but thought better of it. Her tongue played on her bottom lip, and Naruto got caught up in the way her lip-gloss shined the light. What had she asked him? When had they spoken? Iruka was at his desk for the moment, glossing over a packet of paper. Naruto could hear him turning the pages, feel the rasping scratch on his skin. It made him shudder.

Sakura looked concerned and that sort of made him feel good, if only in a really stupid way. "Really." He said, because it felt like the right thing to say.

She nodded hesitantly and turned back to her work. A sheet of paper before her. Twirling a pencil in her fingers. A test. Naruto had one too, he noted. He couldn't read it. The words were there, he could recognize them, say them in his head, but the meaning was gone. Just sounds passing in one ear and out the other like a banner.

How long had he been sitting there, Naruto wondered. Felt like ages, seconds, heaps of seconds individually. What was he anxious for, worried about, what was he rushing home to. But still an air of tense impatience hung over him. He couldn't help it. Naruto glanced down. The pencil in his hand wiggled free, clattered down off his desk, and skittered off into the hall.

"Iruka," Naruto said, "my pencil ran away."

A few people laughed here and there. Iruka glanced up, saw Naruto clearly holding a pencil in his right hand. Iruka didn't know what to make of it. "…Get back to work, Naruto."

How on earth did Iruka think he could do his test without a pencil, Naruto wondered. Crazy gibberish that it was. He looked over, Sakura was already done. Now she was double or triple or quadruple checking, green eyes flickering back and forth, eraser tapping on her lips.

"Naruto."

Naruto turned. In that split second of motion blindness the classroom had become dark. Quiet. It was just him and Iruka, as far as he could tell, the man supporting himself with his left hand on the table, index finger and thumb tapping. Iruka's mouth moved. Sounds came out. Naruto couldn't understand, it was all muffled, garbled like he was underwater.

"Hmm?" Naruto hummed, matching tones with the whirring of his refrigerator. The sun was almost down, a faint blue circle stretching up, across his room and barely grazing the far wall. When had he gotten home, Naruto wondered. What had he said to Iruka to let him go home. There was a sadness, regret, shame, but it was distant. As if it belonged to someone else. He ignored it easily. Things would be better tomorrow, Naruto thought, as he ate, showered, squeezed into bed. Things are always better tomorrow. He reached out to turn off the light and settled down, drawing the covers over his shoulders. He shut his eyes.

"You're late again, man." Kiba said. Warm light poured in through the window, a blue circle stretched out on his floor. Naruto blinked. And blinked. And sighed.

"Just give a minute." He said. Iruka frowned, but more than that, he seemed disappointed. "I only need a minute." Sakura seemed concerned. The way she held herself; shoulders off, brow furrowed, uncertain. "I'll be better tomorrow." Naruto said. "I'll get up on time tomorrow."

"Just give me a minute."

END