I like my rewrites way more. hope y'all do too
Orphanage — I
I was roused by the alarm clock.
At least, I thought it was the alarm clock.
I groped for it, cracking my dehydrated eyes open, trying to remember where I'd left the clock and the eye drops. How much did I drink last night? Can't be that much if my brain's not trying to claw out of my eyes.
A sharp pain shot through my arm, and I woke up all the way.
The ceiling was an expanse of white-washed cement. The window frame's white paint was flaking in the corners, showing the dark wood beneath. Through the panes, the sky was a robin's egg blue.
The smell of cleaning detergent filled my nose.
I sat up, and white hospital sheets slid off my shoulders. My bandaged shoulders.
I felt padding, and closer examination revealed only one shoulder to be wounded. There was some soreness when I rotated the joint, but no pain. An IV was stuck in the uninjured arm. The IV stand was too tall for me, and what labels were on the hanging packet, I didn't recognize.
The pain was from me waving that arm around and pulling on the needle. Had I dislodged the IV? I checked the port, then the tube. No air bubbles, no dislocation. I was fine.
No, the dull pain in my leg informed me, you aren't fine. You are the furthest from fine.
Where the fuck was I? (Hospital, yes, but also on a metaphysical level. If this was hell, I'd like to know, thanks.)
I was hooked up to some sort of machine. A heartbeat monitor? I stared at the display. It didn't show anything I recognized, but it beeped rhythmically and it was connected to my forehead and chest, so it must've been recording something.
It wasn't anything invasive, so I left it alone.
The machine was between the bed and the window. On the other side of the bed stood a small table, and on the table was a pitcher of water, a covered glass with a straw, and a clock.
It was eight in the morning.
"What the fuck," I said, out loud, then flung off the sheets. (It's amazing how swear words stay with you. I'm extremely thankful.)
I got to my knees on the bed, trying not to dislodge the connected wires. I didn't know their purpose but didn't want to disrupt them in case they were doing something important. My injured led twinged, but not much.
The beside table's edge was about eye-level, and while my eyes were no longer uncomfortably dry, I was now thirsty. There was a pitcher of … water. I sniffed it, found no suspicious smell — it was water, not medicine — and poured myself a cup, managing to not spill anything. I surveyed the room.
It wasn't big. The door wasn't that far away, a simple sliding beige thing with a vertical window and a metal handle. At the back of the room was a plastic chair, its design just a little off from the plastic chairs I remembered.
The window was too high for me to look through from where I was, but if I went to the end of the bed… I'll need to shift the IV.
I eyed the stand. It had wheels, but they were in some sort of locked state. After further eyeballing, I spotted the switch and flicked it with my feet, and then it could move.
I was shuffling across the bed when the door slid open.
The attendant and I stared at each other.
She was dressed in the strangest scrubs I've ever seen. I heard that scrubs were that shade of minty green to provide contrast against red blood and focus for the eyes, but not be too blinding as white. This attendant was wearing a rice-white, and it was a few moments before I realized what I was looking at.
I was seeing color.
In fact, the red 'doctor' symbol on the breast pocket was very eye-catching.
She recovered before I did. Stepping into the room with a smile, she said, "Good afternoon, Haiko-san. I'm your nurse. It's great to see you awake! How long have you been up?"
If she was surprised, she hid it behind a smile.
I sat down, looking her over curiously. She hadn't brought any equipment into the room with her, and there was nothing in the room besides the strange machine. Just making the rounds, then.
"Not long," I said.
She spotted the cup of water. "How are you feeling? Thirsty? Hungry?" She began to change the IV, ignoring the fact that the stand was in a different place. "Any pain?"
I shook my head. "What time is it?"
"Noon, dear."
"What's the date?"
It was her turn to eye me with curiosity, then cast a glance around the room. "I'll get a calendar for you later, okay?"
I nodded, satisfied, then yawned, surprising myself.
"I'll wake you up for lunch," said the nurse, kindly. "Go rest."
Over the next three days they put me through several tests — eyesight, depth perception, color identification, and some other route healthcare stuff. I had none of the language to ask why my vision had changed, and so stewed in dissatisfaction.
When the tests slowed down, they moved me into the children's ward. I was off IV but still tired, and followed the nurses without complaint. The children's ward had smaller beds, lower furniture, and for recreation: coloring books and very old color pencils.
A yellowing calendar was up on the wall: it was the middle of July.
I mostly slept.
It took me a while to recover from the lethargy, and when I did, I got bored. They left me to my own devices outside of meal time, and there wasn't much to do. I was the only occupant of the children's ward. Out of boredom, I picked up the coloring books, then when I couldn't recognize the characters of the publishing house, dug up a battered old dictionary for kids.
The doctor who gave me the news of my mother's death didn't make a big thing out of it. He simply came in one slow afternoon.
I was filling in a flower (no idea what; I was never really interested in botany) when the doctor came in. He stopped at the table, calling my name kindly. I looked up, wondering what else they had to test for. They'd already drawn blood, took a urine test, and declared my vision passable. There'd been no X-ray, yet, so maybe that?
"Haiko-san, we finally know what has happened to your mother." The tone was calm, soothing, even. I instantly tensed . Of course I'd wondered what had happened to her, why she wasn't here yet. I hadn't wanted to think any further than that. It didn't matter that she wasn't my real parent, whatever 'real' even meant, but she had loved me, sheltered me, and tried to get me to safety in a dangerous situation. If I had more time with her, she'd have grown to be as real a parent as — well, I don't remember.
I put down the orange pencil I'd been using to color the stalk.
"She's died, Haiko-san. Do you know what that means?"
I frowned at him. Probably best to let him go ahead and explain it; I wasn't supposed to be able to grasp the concept yet, I think? Age and brain development, all that.
"It means she can no longer come see you."
I nodded solemnly. So that night went exactly how I remembered it. Which begged the question: who are these people, and how did they know where to pick me up?
The doctor was looking at me worriedly. "Do you have any questions?"
I wanted to know when and where they found the body, I wanted to know the details of her death, I wanted to know who was after her so badly they'd kill for it, and I wanted to know if there was a corpse (—I remembered the chunks of stone, its pitted surface; if I really focused, I could even imagine its texture).
I looked at the doctor pensively. It was doubtful he'd know any of that, and he probably wouldn't tell me if he did. It was understandable, of course, to not offer traumatizing information to a child, so anything he told me would be a sanitized version of the truth.
And it was fine, really. I'd get my answers one way or the other. While he was here, I was going to ask more pertinent questions.
I said, "When can I see her—" the doctor's eyes widened "—before she goes in the ground?"
The look in his eyes changed from worry to pity. "Don't worry about that, child. Someone will come for you."
He meant that reassuringly, but it was cryptic enough to distract me for a few moments.
Who was going to come? —The people who rescued me, presumably, or whoever officiated the rescue. I didn't know enough, and that automatically made me wary.
The doctor took my silence to be satisfaction and excused himself. Miffed, I turned to the nurses who stayed behind and asked, "Onee-san, who's coming?"
The nurses looked at each other. One finally said, "We don't know."
Oh, well.
I began shading a leaf yellow as they hesitantly returned to their job. (The publishing house was just a family surname, indicative of nothing.) "That's okay," I said, after a while, and they paused in turning out the sheets of the other beds. "But, erm, can I go out to the garden tomorrow?"
The children's ward had windows that opened to a garden. Maybe I could climb a tree and see more of where exactly I am. I had missed my window of direct questioning — questions like 'where am I?' and 'who are you people?' were rude when said people had been treating you for the past week. Oh, they'd give me a straight answer, sure, but I couldn't do much with just a name. A name doesn't tell me if this was the capital or a random city, and it sure as hell doesn't let me know if I'd be 'safe' here. For whatever measure of 'safe'.
Easier to just see for myself.
The nurses were relieved to get a question they could answer. "Sure, Haiko-chan. We'll make the arrangements, and Emi here will come pick you up."
Emi smiled, showing a dimple, and waved.
Well, the scrapes were worth what I saw, I guess. Who'd've guessed climbing trees when you're knee-high was difficult.
The hospital had a big, red, circular sign set above the main entrance; I saw it from the side. Nothing much to see in the other direction except that this place probably wasn't a capital — it didn't look big or developed enough, set in the valley as it was. There were three faces on the cliff behind the village, towering over the settlement. If that was their idea of decor, this place did not instill confidence.
We stood in the shade of the tall tree I just came down. Emi was checking me over for scrapes and scratches, tutting at me. I watched her disinfect the shallow cuts I'd gathered on the scramble down. When she finished, I ran off to the swings before whatever reprimand she was preparing left her mouth.
"Haiko—" she said, warningly.
I sat on the swing and gave her the most innocent look I could manage.
She sighed, then gathered up the first-aid box. As she stood up, she focused on something behind me.
I twisted the swing around, following her gaze.
Two people were coming out of the door to the children's ward: the nurse from yesterday, and a tall man I hadn't seen before.
He was dressed in dark colors.
I realized he wasn't a doctor when the two figures drew closer and I saw something strapped to his back — a sheath, for a blade. He was talking to the nurse, smiling politely, and the handle was visible over his shoulder.
He had long, messy white hair.
I pushed off the swing and went towards them. Emi sighed with exasperation.
The stranger saw me coming first. He stopped, regarding me curiously, and a beat later the nurse stopped too. She opened her mouth to say, "Ah, Haiko-san, this is—"
"Did you bring me here?" I demanded, staring at the stranger and trying to fit my memory to him. He looked too young to have hair that pale, but white hair was rare, surely. "How did you know where I was?"
He blinked, astonished. The second nurse exchanged a startled look with Emi.
"You're not a doctor," I said to the man. "What are you doing here?"
"Haiko-san, that's very rude!" Emi exclaimed. "Hatake-sama, I'm so sorry, we had no idea she would react this way—"
I looked at her. These women hadn't heard me say more than a few words at a time, so it was only expected for them to be surprised, but their use of the polite form was interesting. Emi seemed just exasperated, though, but what did that say about this man…?
"It's okay, really," the man assured Emi, with a hint of amusement. "It's good for children to have spirit." He turned to me. "Nice to meet you, Haiko-san. My name is Sakumo. I was not the person who saved you, but I know who did. You must have remembered his hair, right?"
I nodded. So… Hatake Sakumo was his full name, and he was important enough to be addressed highly. It did not explain his business here.
"I see." Sakumo smiled, polite and kind. "He will be at the funeral, I think. I will introduce you then."
Still no explanation. "What are you doing here?" I repeated.
My question had cut off another attempt by the second nurse to interject. She glanced at Emi for help, but given that Emi had spent the past hour wringing her hands at my antics, she wasn't going to be of much assistance.
"I'll answer the question if you'll come inside with us," said Sakumo, grinning. "How about it?"
I nodded again, then held out my hand to Emi. She sighed in relief, took it, and we made our way back into the ward.
On the short table where I normally had my meals, there was tea and little round colorful things. We arranged ourselves on stools, the adults looking comically out of proportion. Emi tucked the first-aid pack under the table, then served me a kebab of the colorful stuff and a cup of tea.
I picked it up. Was it candy?
"Have you had dango before?" Sakumo asked.
No.
"We're slowly introducing sugary foods into her diet," Emi explained. "It's probably her first time."
Good to know they pay attention to minute details like diet — I ate one. It was chewy and sweet and wow, yeah, I'd be okay with being bribed by this stuff.
"I see," said Sakumo. "So, Haiko-san, what do you think?"
"Tasty," I said. Then I looked at him in silence until he laughed.
"Okay, alright. You're too bright to be distracted by food, I get it. You remind me of my son, you know?"
Son?
He rested his elbows on the table. "I came here to see you, Haiko-san. How are you feeling?"
"I'm okay," I said. "Why?"
"Why?" Sakumo echoed me, surprised.
"Why did you come here?" The nurses exchange a worried look in the corner of my vision. "Why you?"
Sakumo's gaze turned considering and his tone changed. "I knew your mother. A friend asked me to look out for you, so I came here today to see how you were doing."
"Who?"
He fell silent. The considering gaze grew sharper. "Emi-san, can you bring me her file and those papers?"
Emi nodded, stood up, and left the room.
"It must be boring here, alone with no one to talk to," Sakumo continued. "I heard from Kao-san that today was the first time you went outside. What do you do all day, Haiko-san?"
I pointed at the low bookshelf and its haphazard sprawl of books. I had rifled through it the day I recovered enough energy to get out of bed, flipped through all of them, then flung everything to the ground in search of a dictionary. When I found it, I went through the picture books again, teaching myself how to read. I used shelving to separate read books from unread books, so now all the picture books were neatly on the top shelf, and the lower half was a mess of coloring books and activity books and the battered dictionary.
Kao sighed. I shot her an apologetic look. I was getting around to tidying the lower half.
Sakumo hummed, watching me. "Do you mean to say you've read all those books, or you've been using the coloring books on the lower shelf?"
I held back from sighing, then decided to give him a proper answer to see how he'd react. "I've read all there is to read." Yep, even the dictionary. It was a lite version, kid-friendly, finishable.
Kao gasped. Sakumo's eyes widened. "Really?"
I nodded, then ate another dango. This was getting boring. I regretted being so forthcoming with Sakumo in the garden. It obviously only peaked his interest, explaining the increasingly complicated questions. I had thought he was one of the people who knew stuff, (he still might be), but he was probably just here to see what I've been up to, with no intention to tell me anything. I wasn't dumb enough to try and trick him — his occupation had him using a sword and he'd survived long enough to have a son, who's probably in their teens.
The green tea really went great with dango.
The door opened with a soft click and Emi entered the room, a file in her hands. She placed it in front of Sakumo, then took her seat beside me again. Sakumo thanked her, then opened the file.
The table was small enough that I could clearly see my name, printed across the top, but that was all I could read.
(I had no last name — that was interesting.)
Sakumo flipped to another page, scanned it, then said, "Emi-san, Kao-san, give Mikage my regards. He really outdid himself." He glanced at me. "How long can she stay here?"
"You've decided, Hatake-sama?" Kao said in surprise.
I set down the tea cup. Decided what?
"Yes. I'll take her in, but I have to leave for a mission tomorrow. Can the hospital host her, or should I contact an orphanage?"
"I can ask Mikage-sama about extending her stay, but …" Kao trailed off. She looked at me worriedly. "Maybe we should have this conversation outside, Hatake-sama."
"No, it's okay. It's her life, she should have a say, and she clearly understands us. Right, Haiko-san?" Sakumo smiled at me. I stared. "What do you feel about a sibling?"
"How old is your son?" I said, then winced at the suspicious, demanding tone in my voice. "Sorry." It sounded like this man was going to adopt me and all I've been to him is rude.
"He's your age!" Sakumo beamed. "Just as bright, to boot. You're a good match."
I was thrown. What the heck did a normal kid my age 'like me' mean? Rude? Disrespectful? Paranoid to hell and back?
—wait. Mission? Extending my stay?
"It's my professional advice that a child her age have proper socialization. She has already been kept solitary for too long." Kao frowned. "As you can see, there are no children in this ward right now. I suggest you enter her into an orphanage for the duration of your absence, then introduce her to Kakashi-kun when you have returned. Her environment has already changed too drastically too fast."
"I was thinking the same—"
Green tea spilled across the table as the cup slipped through my limp fingers.
Emi tutted, snatching up the tea towel and starting to clean up the mess. Sakumo gathered the papers and lifted the bundle out of the way. Kao picked up the tea pot and remaining cups and transferred them to a bedside table, to avoid any more spillage.
I took note of all this vaguely.
"It won't be for long," Sakumo was assuring me. "I'll be gone for at most a week, and then I'll pick you up from the orphanage and we can go home. Be a good girl?"
What? Oh, right, the orphanage thing. "Yeah, okay," I said, faintly.
The mountain-face with its three carvings. I hadn't recognized it, because I'd been reminded of that American presidential memorial and because I'd never expected to actually see it, in real life — and also because I remembered the mountain face to have four carvings.
I hadn't bothered with memories of my old life. It might as well have been an especially vivid dream if not for the cognitive ability it gave me, and anyway, nothing in it applied to my current situation, so why bother, right? But I'd been a small time weeb, and—
Well, there'd been a time in that community where you couldn't turn around without stumbling into the juggernaut series Naruto. Nobody who was into anime hadn't heard about that series. (Along with others, so I guess I could've had worse luck and been in … I don't know, Bleach, or something. Didn't that one have an explicit afterlife?)
Sakumo thought my reaction was because of the mention of an orphanage. I didn't mind social services; they were there for a reason, and I vaguely hoped this world had better childcare, but that wasn't it. I had finally put a face to the name, though he'd be literally sitting across the table from me — Hatake Sakumo, White Fang, committed suicide to restore honor to his clan name, part one of Kakashi's tragic backstory.
White Fang of the Leaf. Hidden Leaf, one of the ninja villages of the Great Five Shinobi Nations, military installation and human settlement and, and— I blinked. That was it, right? The more I focused on it, the more I could remember, but when I traced the thought as far as it would go, it didn't yield much. Leaf was a military installation, a civilian settlement, and … an autonomous political body camp?
Thinking about it was giving me a headache. I had my anime phase as a teenager, and how damned long ago was that? Too long.
Oh, fuck, I thought, with feeling.
"—Haiko?" Sakumo said, in the tones of someone who'd been repeating themselves.
"Yes?" I said, startled.
He looked worried. I was making people worried a lot, it seemed. That wasn't good. Worried adults meant more attention on me, and I couldn't deal with attention at the moment. What if I slipped up and said something I shouldn't know? These people had someone with freaky mind-reading powers hidden away somewhere, and I did not want to end up in the bowels of some building, having my brain picked.
"If you're this bothered with the idea, I'll talk to the hospital director and extend your stay here. As I've said before, I won't be away long." Sakumo fiddled with the papers in his hand. "Or you could head over to the house today, meet Kakashi, settle in?"
Emi and Kao instantly made noises of protest.
Never mind being in a piece of fiction, that news was two years old. Apparently I had died and I didn't even know how that happened. I needed time to think.
"It's okay, it's—" Orphanage was the good choice. I could see how the kids around here acted, what they knew, the kind of shit they talked about. Now to frame it nicely. "I'll go to the orphanage, it's fine. Just a week or so, right? Whatever is easiest for you."
The nurses agreed Emi even patted my head.
"You're sure?" asked Sakumo.
I nodded, standing up. "When do I go?"
"Not immediately, no," said Sakumo, placing the papers in his hand back on the table. "I have to settle the paperwork. Kao-san?"
"Sign here." She pulled out a pen from her pocket, then fished out a page from the pile. As Sakumo signed it, she said, "I'll arrange it through the director. Tomorrow might be pushing it, so I'll leave the paperwork at your house when it's complete."
"Thanks."
"I'll go right now. Mikage-sama should still be in his office."
In brisk, well-practiced moves, Kao slotted the papers, and then she was out of the room, the door swinging closed behind her.
Sakumo rose from the table. "I should report in. Thanks for arranging the meeting, Emi-san."
They exchanged more pleasantries, and I took the chance to fish out the coloring book I was working on. The only thought on my mind was putting up the front of an occupied child so Emi would leave me alone so I can think.
A hand came to rest on my head, ruffling my hair. I froze, not looking up. "Take care, Haiko. See you in a week," Sakumo said. The door closed a second time.
The only sounds in the room were Emi's cleaning up, and I stared at the garishly colored flower on the page.
There was a clink as Emi set down the plate of dango on the table. "I know it's been hard, but you'll have a home and a family again in no time, Haiko-chan. Hatake-sama is a good person, and Kakashi-kun is fun. I'm sure you'll be happy with them. Cheer up?"
I looked at her. I wasn't sure what she saw in my gaze, but her smile turned a little sad in the corners. She patted my cheek, then gestured at the dango. "My treat."
She left.
The second the door closed behind her, I dropped my head onto the table. It was almost impossible to sort through the jumble of emotions I was feeling— relief and suspicion and dread and anticipation and horror and…
What did I remember about the story? At this moment, not a whole damn lot.
Well… when life gives you lemons…
The hospital kicked me out two days later. Emi and Kao continued being my caretakers until the end, and they saw me off when a man came to pick me up. I waved, the nurses waved back, and that was it.
The walk through the village was short, the man was quiet except to nod and smile at me, and after five minutes of walking we turned away from the main thoroughfare. Bushes gave way to thin trees, thin trees gave way to large trees, and when the paved path beneath our feet became a dirt road, the trees opened to a house.
It was a large house, and from what I could see, it was about eighty percent windows.
A woman was standing at the main doorway, mousy-haired and bespectacled. She wore a coif-like headdress that covered her hair (was it sun-bleached, perhaps?), dark robes, and had bright eyes that sparkled behind her glasses.
I looked over the house again — no crosses, no chapel. Not a religious place, then, I hope, and she didn't wear any visible talisman or . Oh, well, I wouldn't be here long.
"Thank you, shinobi-san," the woman said to my chaperone, once she was in speaking distance. "I'll take it from here."
The man dipped his head at her, then — disappeared.
I stared at the space he'd vacated. O—kay.
She turned to me, holding out a hand. "Nice to meet you, Haiko-san. My name is Kamiji and I'm the matron of this house. You'll be staying with us for a while. Come, let's get you settled in."