"Do you have to go so late at night?" I heard my father's voice through my room door.
"There aren't any ferries going over tomorrow, and I need to get to work somehow. I'll stay the night at my sister's and see you next weekend."
The door to my room creaked open just then, and I hastily flopped back down and feigned sleep as best as I could. My eyes were clenched shut unnaturally tightly, but I did my best to keep silent as my mom's footsteps drew nearer to my bedside.
I heard an aluminum packet drop down next to my pillow, and I opened my eyes. It was a pack of mini cookies. I looked up at my mom, who smiled down at me fondly.
"D'you have to go?" I mumbled dejectedly.
"I've got to keep making money and working for you and Dad." My mom crossed her arms on the bedside and leaned her head on them, sighing. "Don't worry, I'll be back before you know it. Take care of yourself, promise?"
"Yeah," I said, nearly inaudible. My mom patted my head comfortingly before standing up again.
"Go on and get some sleep, now." She started to turn back towards the door, and I weakly reached out for her, but could only watch as my hand reached uselessly for the silhouette of her departing figure.
I cracked my eyes open slowly, taking in how well-rested I'd felt. No forced Enma meeting this time, eh? Looks like my pester tactics worked the other day after all!
"Futabaaa!" came Imiki's voice, faintly drifting in through my open window. I clambered to my feet, rubbing sleep from my eyes as I peered out the window. Imiki waved up at me, already dressed up in her jounin gear and raring to go. "Are you ready for training?"
I sighed, dragging my hand down my face slowly. The grind never stopped. "Give me a minute!"
Ever since Shuu started joining us for training, our sessions had gotten more rigourous and more chakra-focused. Imiki always made sure to pay special attention to me whenever it came down to using chakra, though, something which simultaneously irked me and confused me. Why couldn't she just tell me what the deal with my glowy chakra was?
For once, Shuu looked less awake than I was today, and I raised my hand in greeting accompanied with a bright grin as he dragged his feet into my yard. "Morning, Shuu."
"Ungh," he replied, rubbing at his eyes.
I frowned, bending down so I could peek up at his downturned face. "What's your deal?"
Shuu huffed a slow sigh, eyes forming the familiar Uchiha glare. "Last night, Sasuke saw me practicing the hand seals Imiki-sensei told us to memorize and called my form sloppy. I was so angry, I couldn't get to sleep for a while."
I blinked. "Normally, I'd be on board with this 'Sasuke is my sworn enemy' stuff, Shuu, but if your rivalry with your cousin is keeping you from sleeping at night, you may have a problem."
He turned to glare at me seethingly. "I do not!"
"He was just offering advice, Shuu; you need to loosen up and let things go sometimes," I said, an amused grin returning to my face. I didn't know why, but I was in a particularly good mood today.
"What, are you on his side now?" Shuu scowled.
"Not really, but if you keep not sleeping at night, you'll just become too easy to outdo during training," I explained, crossing my arms and throwing my head in the other direction with a haughty smirk.
Shuu laughed, crossing his own arms. Some of the playful fire had returned to his eyes. "Oh yeah? We'll see about that."
"Morning, kids! Time for morning warm ups!" Imiki declared, eliciting groans from the both of us. "What are you waiting for? Get jogging!"
We sighed and got to work.
Yesterday, we focused on learning the hand seals used in ninjutsu, which was a task of its own because there sure were a lot my chubby kid fingers would have to pull off. Today, Imiki stood before us with a square slip of paper pinched between two fingers and a peppy smile on her face.
"So, kids, today we'll be learning about chakra natures. What do you guys already know about them?" she asked.
"Fire, water, earth, wind, lightning," I listed off. That was really all I could remember from the show, so this would be a genuine lesson for me.
"Jutsu have element natures," said Shuu, scratching his head. "And there are natures that are good against other natures, like water against fire."
"A good start," Imiki said, nodding. "You see, chakra usually undergoes a couple transformations as it makes its way out of the body in the form of techniques. These two transformations are shape transformation and nature transformation. Where the element natures come in is during this second transformation, as Shuu-kun said. We aren't nearly advanced enough to actually start performing jutsu, but I see no harm in letting you kids find out what your chakra affinities are."
She placed the paper in her palm, continuing to explain. "All you need to do is channel a bit of chakra into the paper, and it'll react instantaneously." The paper in her hand suddenly split in two, the halves slipping from her hand and fluttering to the ground.
Shuu and I watched, entranced, as the paper fell, blown away by this simple act of chakra channelling. Then, our heads snapped back up in unison.
"My chakra affinity is wind," Imiki said, flexing her hand and dropping her arm by her side.
"I wanna try!" Shuu yelled, springing forward for a slip of paper. Imiki held out a square for him, but at the last second, she withdrew her hand, holding the paper above her. Shuu stumbled, crying out as he fell into the grass.
"Not so hasty, Shuu-kun!" Imiki said. "Charging headfirst into things is never a good way to go, after all." She helped him to his feet as I mercilessly burst out laughing at his expression.
He growled and snatched the paper, grumbling to himself as he rejoined me across from my aunt. I had to hand it to Imiki, it was pretty funny to watch her be a massive troll when it wasn't at your own expense.
Once I had my own paper, I held it up to the light. "Imiki-nee, where d'you get this kind of paper, anyway?" I asked out of curiosity.
"Oh, it's fairly cheap to us jounin," she answered proudly. "But I pawned these off of my old academy teacher. He's got a soft spot for me." She laughed. I wondered briefly who her academy teacher was and whether I knew him or not.
Finally, it was time to see what our chakra affinities were. The moment of truth. Shuu had no issue channelling his chakra now, adapting quickly despite his initial slowness. For a five-year-old, Shuu was pretty skilled, and if it weren't for the fact he came from a family of geniuses, I would be tempted to say he would have been considered a prodigy in his own right. As if to prove the point I was making in my thoughts, the paper in Shuu's palm burst into flame.
"N-not so much chakra, Shuu-kun! It's only supposed to burn, not actually catch fire!"
"I have a fire affinity," Shuu said in awe, deaf to Imiki's fretting. The paper was now nothing more than ash in his palm.
I quirked an eyebrow at him, eyeing the soot pile. "You're definitely an Uchiha."
Imiki approached me then, putting a hand on my shoulder and squeezing it meaningfully. "Careful with your chakra, Futaba."
"Yeah, yeah." I frowned at the paper on my palm, focusing on channeling the warmth in my core down my arm again and into my hand. Like last time, a faint light under my skin tracked the progress of my chakra's journey, but significantly less bright this time around, probably because I wasn't using as much. As it pooled in my palm under the paper, so did something else. Water.
"Water affinity," Imiki hummed. "Just like your kaa-chan!"
Just like my kaa-chan, huh?
I hadn't seen my mom in a while. They still hadn't returned from their last mission, so it must have been a real high-paying one. Maybe we could have ribs when they got back. Every time I found myself worrying about them, I shut down those thoughts. My parents were formidable shinobi. They survived not only the Nine-Tails attack, but also the trials of raising a fussy child like me.
Still, with however far away she was at the moment, it felt kind of nice to know we had this shared chakra affinity to connect us.
"Oi, Shuu!"
All three of us turned to the source of the familiar voice, which turned out to be Kouko, standing in front of my house. Shuu and I met her at the front with Shuu leading and me lagging.
Kouko assessed us both with a couple short looks. "Been training, Shuu?"
"You bet, onee-san! I've gotta get better than our cousins!" Shuu spoke with spirit, a determined set to his features. "Today, we learned all about chakra natures!"
"How diligent of you," Kouko remarked cooly, but I could see in the fond little upturn of her lips that she was proud of him. It almost warmed my frozen little heart to see the siblings together because it was so clear that they loved each other so much. As for me, I'd never had a sibling in this life or my other one, so I couldn't imagine that kind of bond. "Ah, hello, Futaba-chan."
"Kouko-chan," I greeted with a grin. "Guess what my chakra affinity is!"
"Hm…" Kouko stared at me with a critical eye, tipping her head to the side. "Water?"
My jaw fell open in shock. Okay, but really—was Kouko a psychic? Was she using the sharingan? "How did you know?"
"Dummy, onee-san's way smart, of course she could tell," Shuu said, sticking his nose in the air. Kouko snickered and mouthed the words lucky guess to me, unbeknownst to her little brother.
Before I could do anything besides glare at my friend, Kouko interrupted us. "Shuu, Haha-ue wants us to get some groceries and head back to the compound. Sorry if I'm cutting your training short."
"No, it's fine, Kouko-chan," Imiki said, coming up from behind us. "We're pretty much done here anyway. You're free to drop by and watch or even participate too, Kouko-chan!"
Kouko smiled at my aunt. "Maybe I will."
After that day, Kouko became a regular addition to my ordinary routine. For most days out of the few weeks that followed, she had dropped by to watch and sometimes even act as Imiki's assistant during our training sessions, and one day, after a long session of training, Kouko and Shuu decided to stay with Imiki and I for a night. The four of us were under a ridiculously detailed pillow-blanket fort courtesy of Imiki, who had gone as far as to pin the blanket to the walls using senbon. She'd even set (non-lethal) traps outside the fort so that any intruders would have to evade them before getting to us.
Needless to say, my house was now a mess, but it was a happy mess.
Kouko held the bowl of popcorn to her chest, trying not to show any signs of fear as Imiki continued the story.
"And little Mimi-chan tried to run, but the Gashadokuro was too fast!" Imiki grabbed Shuu and pulled him into a headlock. "Mimi-chan felt herself being grabbed by a bony hand. And the rattling bones were the last thing she ever heard." There was a moment of silence, then Imiki started tickling Shuu mercilessly. This evolved into a large tickle-fest that ended when we heard a pounding on the door.
Imiki untangled herself from small children and exited the fort, evading the traps with ease.
"So, Kouko-chan," I started. "Afraid of bones?" I smirked when she turned red.
"I-it's not fitting for a kunoichi, I know," she stammered. "But they're just so...creepy."
Man, Kouko would definitely hate Kimimaro, then.
Shuu and I shared a look that meant we were definitely going to bug her about it later on. We'd found the crack in what was previously impenetrable armour.
As Shuu and I were just starting to tell a new ghost story about the shadows behind the water heater, Imiki threw open the blankets that served as an entrance to our fort.
"Futaba, come with me." The look in her eyes terrified me because she looked terrified. Gulping, I obliged, my excited grin quickly withering.
As I got to my feet in the fort, I could feel the stares of Kouko and Shuu on me. Imiki ducked behind me as I navigated around the traps.
"Kouko-chan, Shuu-kun, you should go home," she muttered in a hushed and strangely hollow tone.
I saw Kouko and Shuu walk past me to leave through the front door wordlessly, Shuu shooting me a look over his shoulder as he passed the tall, foreboding man standing in the doorway. Then, they were gone.
I made it to the door, looking up at the man fearfully. It had been a long time since I'd felt that raw fear of the unknown. Imiki joined me, a hand firmly on my shoulder.
The unfamiliar jounin was covered in scratches, grime, and dirt. "Are you Asagiri Futaba?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He seemed to be in great discomfort as he cleared his throat, looking unbearably sad. "I'm sorry to inform you that your parents, Asagiri Rurae and Asagiri Takeshi, were killed in action. I was on the same mission with them. They went down with honour, and I likely wouldn't be standing here right now if not for them."
What?
The jounin's words had faded to static at some point in his speech, his voice fuzzy and nothing more than faint noise in my ears.
"They wanted me to give something to you," he continued. He handed me a yellow folder, and inside was a mangled-looking letter and a piece of ripped paper. I stared back numbly.
Imiki exchanged an unreadable look with the jounin, and he departed after disclosing his condolences again.
My aunt started dismantling the pillow fort silently, save for some sniffling. I made my way through the mess we'd made and sat on my bed. Why wasn't I feeling anything?
Imiki's sniffling evolving into sobs was what broke the static noise for me, and suddenly the floodgates had opened. This wasn't supposed to happen. This couldn't be real—tragedies like this only happened to main characters, to people that mattered. My parents—the people who raised me in this life—would be reduced to background characters, just etchings on the memorial stone.
"F-Futaba, no," Imiki choked out through her sobs that had began to consume her. She quickly dropped the pillows and took me in her arms—her arms that faintly glowed—jolting me out of my trance and making me realize that my arms had lit up like glowsticks too, the letter clutched uselessly in my uselessly small and weak hand.
In the hollowness of my own home and amidst the muffled sobs of my aunt, I found my tears stopping, my throat cracking, and my mind wandering numbly.
Asagiri Rurae and Asagiri Takeshi were dead.
But...were they ever really alive?
The ironic reality of my situation had started to hit me like a storm wave. I was in a world I'd only ever known to be fabricated by a single man in the real world. Was I really alive, or was this some sick afterlife? Was any of this real?
Would I ever see Asagiri Rurae and Asagiri Takeshi again?
Maybe I was foolish, but I couldn't help but latch onto that foolish idea in the moment. Was there an afterlife for characters that may not have even existed? There had to be, the dead in this world couldn't just...fade to nothing, could they?
The thoughts began to crowd my mind, my hands subconsciously reaching up to clasp at the sides of my head as it throbbed. I took a series of stuttering breaths, two sides of myself fighting—Asagiri Futaba had just lost her parents. Her mother and father, who had lovingly raised her from birth despite all the mishaps along the way. But I, whoever and whatever I was at that point, had just come to terms with the fact that I knew nothing. That I didn't know what this world was, if it was real, or if I was real anymore.
That was when I started screaming, and the tingling in my glowing skin turned into burning. The burn spread until it was all over my body, and for a few seconds, that was all there was, the burn the pain stop it stop it all—
Then everything went black.
and that's all i'm uploading of the rewritten chapters tonight! i have more done but i'm really pooped right now, so i'll upload some more tomorrow.
sorry if futaba lost any of you in that existential stuff. she kind of lost me, too.
alts
