Asuma is not a religious man. When you're far more intimately familiar with humans' internal organs than you ever wanted to be, the human race as a whole seems rather more messy than divinely inspired; and in any case he'd rather not place his immortal soul in the hands of some mysterious, invisible presence. Enough people control his life as it is.
Even so, it'd be nice to have someone to blame.
Which is what Ino seems to be doing, addressing some deity known only as "God" over and over as she bends over and retches what remains of her breakfast onto the forest floor. Chouji is holding her hair back as Shikamaru stands awkwardly off to the side, an expression on his face than anyone else would interpret as annoyance but Asuma knows is worry.
It had been, unfortunately enough, a messy kill, born only out of inexperience rather than any real malice. In her panic Ino had left her kunai behind in her enemy's stomach, Asuma quietly snapping the wounded shinobi's neck behind her as she ran. It hadn't been until she had seen Chouji and Shikamaru's worried looks that she had broken down.
She can only dry heave now, Chouji patting her back in a desperate attempt at comfort. Shikamaru looks away. His own first kill had been last week.
Her breathing is labored. "She looked like Sakura," she finally chokes out. No one can see her face.
Asuma doesn't answer, because he can't. He only lets out a puff of cigarette smoke in something close to a sigh.
"But she wasn't her," is all Chouji can manage.
She gulps and nods. Slowly she pulls herself to her feet, her face carefully blank. "We should get moving," she says, voice barely wavering.
Shikamaru and Chouji nod without saying anything and form up on either side of her, a personal bodyguard, close enough to touch, though they never do. Shikamaru looks over his shoulder at Asuma. "Sensei?"
Asuma nods as well, shifting his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. "Go ahead. I'll finish up back here," he says, and if his voice is rough it's from years of smoking, because shinobi don't show emotion.
HIs students disappear and he turns back to the fresh corpse. The girl's empty eyes are wide open, staring at the sky. Asuma looks up, wondering what she's seeing. The wisps of clouds seem painted onto the endless blue. He wishes he could believe that that's where she is now.
He reaches over the pool of rapidly cooling blood and closes her eyes with one hand. But who knows? No one has ever come back alive from being dead, so maybe it really is clouds and harps. Maybe there is some omniscient being up there, watching his every move, judging him.
Or maybe when you die you're just dead. He isn't sure which option he prefers.
He looks at the sky again, the dying fumes of his cigarette drifting up like some sort of tainted incense. "To whomever it may concern," he mutters quietly before stubbing it out.