The Footsteps In the Snow
Chapter: Introduction
I always watched you; watched you walk away in the snowy storm, always watching your back as you moved forward while I waited neither moving back nor taking a step towards you. You never called for me. Never waited for me to catch up, so I just never tried.
I saw how the snow always went around you, as if there was this invisible shield, sheltering you from anything and everything.
I remained where I was and sometimes you would turn around to me. I would see you for all the glory that you showed and all the brilliance you held. Your red eyes were entrancing and haunting. They were the things I wished to see every time I looked up. They were the things I saw in my dreams, non-stop. Your red eyes were the things I wished to see when I wake up from my slumber.
Do you hear me call your name? Do you hear it when the wind carries my whispers to your ears?
Or do my words, instead of being carried to you, get blown away?
I laugh.
I used to think I could never catch up to you. Never be able to walk by your side, never have my words reach you. But I realised.
I could be the one you watched. I could be the one who doesn't hear you call out to me. I could be the one you looked up to in awe. I could be the one you thought of all the time. I could be the one who left you behind.
You, the one who I thought I would never be able to measure up to, are the thing that kept me going; the one who pushed me, even though you didn't say a thing. You became the one who made my ambition grow stronger and stronger each day.
I should be thanking you. Grateful that you became my purpose to become stronger and be a better kunoichi.
Now I am at a place where my dreams became reality, where I had to prove my power to be in the group, where I had to be stronger than my peers, where I am an elite. A place I have found love with another pair of red eyes.
Where I stand equal with him, when I could not with you.
I laugh again.
Equal with you now?
No.
I am stronger than you now. There is no such thing even close to equal with you and I.
I have far more power than you crave and hunger for. Stronger than you could ever be. And a better fighter than you could ever imagine.
Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like if I continued to stay by your side. Wondered what things I could have possibly accomplished.
I concluded to this: Nothing.
If I had continued to watch your back, stay behind, unmoving, I could have done nothing for myself but feel sorry and regret what I have missed. I would have died in myself, little by little.
