Notes:

Apologies for not updating sooner. I have nothing. I just write slowly. And procrastinate. Thanks to everyone who commented months ago, really helped me update slightly faster, not that it shows.

Not particularly satisfied with this, as I had originally outlined this to include more events, but was tired of writing this and wanted to just post something already.

Konoha is already within spring's embrace when I leave. Just me, in the golden dawn light, the scent of the early blooms lingering behind.

The sway of windswept branches and rustling leaves accompanies me on my journey north. Scattered fans of green needles dominate the landscape, as the slopes become steeper, and every step is some direction upwards. I crave the softness of a bed; the rough bark, the damp press of the ground, all these unpleasant parts of nature that couldn't compare to the joys of sleeping indoors.

I don't dream; of all the hallowed mercies bestowed upon me. Sleep is a brief blink into darkness, then back into awareness, re-inserted into the cadence of my steps. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, left, right, left.

Those blue-washed mountains in the distance draw closer. Less and less blue, less and less distant. Dread grips its way around my stomach, constricting its hand up the tract of my esophagus, pressing, squeezing, up, up, down, down.

What am I afraid of?

April is the cruelest month... How did it go again? Waiting? Were there lilacs? Or was it lavenders? Does it matter, it isn't the season for either. Just the occasional clumps of hardy, flowering weeds.

Lost in thought, not paying attention to my surroundings, I'm certainly just waiting to be ambushed. The scenery is what poets will describe in words that can simply be summed up as "beautiful". It still is just scenery.

I had planned my path to avoid the main roads: faster, less people, and the canopy helped deflect some of the rain.

Running at high speeds always was discomforting with rain splashing into your eyes. The sound of the world rushing past your ears, surroundings only a blur, motion carrying you ahead. Empty of conversation, of words, of meaning. It's a constant noise that drowns out the rest of the world at times, leaving me to my thoughts; not the same, but close, on the edge of it that I can tell myself I don't miss it.

I hadn't lied when I said it was a courier run, not exactly.

Here in the northern borders of Fire, spring had not yet fully arrived, only starting to break out of its slumber beneath the earth. Small green buds dot the young branches of the trees and the peaks of grass start to peer out of the melting snow. In the distance are the flickering lights of civilization: Shimizu-cho. A sleepy tourist town nestled in the start of the mountain range that crawls further north, past Hot Springs, past Frost, into Lightning.

Even in the middle of war, the town had not been touched, according to Kaori and Kasumi. Conflict between the hidden villages was not something the nobles wanted to openly acknowledge even if it was us on their behalf, starting their fires and demolishing their roofs. I once set a noble's back courtyard on fire and he pretended everything was alright at first to save face. It was pretty fun, until the side side chick decided to show up and pick a fight with his official side chick, and then his wife got involved too, and things got too wild even for me.

Good times.

As I close in, I can see the picturesque traditional tile roofs and cozy chimney stacks they had recounted. The sun has already almost completely set beneath the horizon and I navigate mostly by the light of the cylindrical paper lanterns, merging into the crowd of tourists here for the hot springs and scenery.

Under the gaze of the red and yellow lanterns it is loud, loud enough to drown out the rustle of the forest, the howl of the mountain winds. Drunken tourists navigate themselves poorly, peering at sights, marvelling at the traditional architecture that is the other attraction here, second to the hot springs. Under the threadbare henge I hastily threw over myself, I was simply a mousy man of indeterminate means, bundled up in a navy coat. I'd already passed by eight other men wearing similar coats.

Street vendors and their carts dominate what space is left over on these winding cobblestone streets. There's plenty of the usual fare: roasted chestnuts, grilled corn, baked sweet potatoes, takoyaki, squid skewers.

I don't have a watch and there's no way to tell the time here other than the general position of the sun. I should be on schedule right now which is a good excuse to eat something that isn't a ration bar.

"One please." I tell the curry bun seller hawking her wares, placing the folded ryo into her hands. It's exact, no change needed. She looks at me with a shrewd gaze but doesn't choose to share whatever comments she may have with the class. Smart woman.

I'm a contactless man, or I was a contactless woman, but the joys of tapping and no pin pads are far, far away in the distant future as credit cards aren't even a thing yet here. The distant, change-less future.

She gives me the greasy paper bag, decorated by small translucent oil circles, with the golden, deep-fried pastry of joy. Only a cursory smile is given before we exchange the usual brief platitudes and she moves on to the next customer.

Another great thing about being a ninja they don't tell you about is how fast you get at eating food. It's a hard-earned skill only obtainable after constant interruptions to your meals such as travel, running for your life, battle, and unexpected ambushes. The heavily spiced meat filling is pleasantly warm on my tongue, weaker than what I prefer, but enough to ward off some of the cold.

However, a couple bites in and I have a mouthful of ashes. The spice blend is strong and cloying, the grease cloying as it travels down my throat. I can't escape the overpowering taste of garlic. Each bite is another fly in the ointment. Soon, all I have is a mountain of dead little fly corpses, piled within an empty ointment jar.

It doesn't matter.

I eat every last bite.

I follow the cobblestone paths winding further into town, until I am once again, on the outskirts. Up, up, and up, the path goes.

The lay of the road is long and twisting, but still achieves the task of piercing through the town, spiraling uphill to the small inn with the weather-worn sign of entwined ginkyo leaves, cradled by the mountain.

A beautiful view.

A solitary one, accessible by walking or a very sure-footed donkey. The front desk is manned by a single middle aged woman who smiles at me with deep bruise-like circles underneath somewhat glazed eyes. She was a beautiful woman: long blonde hair framing a traditional oval face, straight-barely-hooked nose, almond eyes. A colouring prevalent here in the northern borders of Fire country, and would continue to reappear as you ventured further north into Hot Springs, Frost, and eventually Lightning.

"Good evening," She says.

"Good evening."

Up close, I can see the fine imprints of age, delicate lines that fan out from the edges of her eyes and mouth, lightly covered by make-up but still there if you chose to see the signs.

"A party of one? Dinner is already being served, but we can still provide food if needed, I'll just tell the kitchen to make one more meal."

Her words are slurred by Konoha measures, the beginning of the travesty of a dialect that only worsens as it goes further north, depending on who you ask. It's rather pleasant, almost reminiscent of the syrup-like drawl of the American south when there had been an America, only marred by the nasal tone to it. Every harsh sound softened by a rounding of the mouth despised by those of particular diction.

"Just a party of one please with dinner, thank you."

"For how long shall you be staying with us sir?"

"One night please."

"For one night it will be 790 ryo for a single room."

Ah, the joys of the authentic mountain tourist experience. Clean countryside air, fresh mountain winds, and all the price gouging you can meet. If the funds hadn't already been pre-arranged, I doubt I would've splurged. They certainly aren't holding back on the price here.

I fish out the bills from the wallet I use on outings like these. Nice leather, a little worn, but well-kept. Nondescript, bought in Earth, no discernible ties to class.

"If you don't mind sir, please write your name into our guestbook here." She taps a neatly manicured finger onto the space between the red vertical lines on the page, awaiting for the name I've been given.

Ryuzaki Kanjiro signs it with ease. The characters are written with that carelessness that familiarity begets, but still recognizable.

I almost ask what's for dinner, but it doesn't really matter. I'll probably eat anything. Even natto.

What can I say? I'm a growing boy. That kare-pan barely scratched the surface of the bottomless void of a still vertically expanding seventeen year old. No matter how hard it tries, my gut can't horizontally expand fast enough. The hunger still gnaws at the lining of my stomach, screaming as it burrows within the marrow of my bones, always demanding more.

"Room 208 is just up the stairs to the right. Your meal will be delivered to your room in about fifteen minutes. Thank you for coming to the Ginkyo Inn and we hope you enjoy your stay here."

Under the warm lighting, everything takes on a sepia tone: the gleaming burnished wood railing, the pine flooring, and the paper panels of the sliding doors. I have to remind myself to make my footsteps loud and cumbersome on such nice floors.

Drawing the room open with the steady slide of the divider, it reveals a small room: square, a low table, tatami mats hiding the floorboards, drawers that presumably hold a futon and sheets. Barely enough space at the back for a single futon, and a small door that likely hid the washroom.

I settle into the room the careless way tourists do, slipping off their travel shoes and tossing their belongings, settling down on the floor with exhaustion. Using the guise of a long-term thinker I groan and moan my way to setting up the futon in the corner, away from the table, even going so far to fluff up my pillow.

It may not be until morning that I will receive an acknowledgement of my presence here, so I have the evening to leisure away in civilian bliss.

A knock at my door interrupts my leisurely post-travel celebration.

In haste to answer, I almost trip over the table. The sliding screen rattles as it slides open to reveal a girl dressed in a plain, mended navy kimono. Her sleeves are a shade too purple to match the rest of the body, with clear stitching showing the wear, tear, and repair of the garment. Small splotches of sauce or oil are visible as well.

There is something familiar to her. Her face is ordinary: round with the suppleness of youth, dark eyes that shade of brown common as mud, in an almond shape, but neither wide or tapering, mouth small, dark brows faint and unshaped, with stray hairs unplucked. Heavy bangs dominate most of it and the rest is simply best described by how her clothes wear her and not the other way around.

"Good evening sir. Your dinner tonight is chawanmushi, vegetable tempura, grilled fish, vegetable soup, and grilled tofu." She enters and places the heavy tray on my table with ease that belies her skinny limbs. The food is arranged into small bowls and dishes, the soup the usual fare: hearty winter root vegetables which store well, napa cabbage, mushrooms dried then re-hydrated.

She plays the role very well. If it is a henge like what I suspect, it is well-made: pores, freckles, peach fuzz, discolourations, scars, all wonderfully done. We are just two actors in a play, in front of an invisible audience, locked into our roles so that we don't ruin the suspension of disbelief for them.

"I hope you enjoy sir." She says, "If there is anything you need, let us know. I will come back in an hour for the tray sir."

She bows and leaves.

Sometimes being too nondescript is a give-away in and of itself.

It smells great. My stomach rumbles once again, but first, I have matters to settle. I blaze through my scan of the room, checking for hiding spots and peepholes, finding none, but that may just be my shoddy searching skills.

A paper is visibly pinned under my bowl of rice. Folded in half, the dark ink of a handwritten character peeks out.

I'll leave it for later. It can wait. It probably can't.

I open it, bending it straight. Two vertical rows of characters, seven kanji each, all written with a pen, not by brush. There's a certain flair to the flicks and swishes of the tails, a trailing hand to the dots, softness where I vear sharply, loops that others may simply terminate.

It reads:

The east wind sighs, the fine rains come:

Beyond the pool of water-lilies, the noise of faint thunder.

Embedded between the two faces of the yellow paper was a simple landscape painted on thick, textured paper, almost like cardstock. In the style of sumi-e it depicts the local mountains presumably from the inn.

Contact has been made it seems.

Ah, this again. I think some Yamanaka code-geek out there in their musty little sun-deprived office is burdened with the delusion of intellectualism. Nothing else can explain the obsession with old, archaic poetry. At this point I could almost consider myself somewhat educated. Terrifying.

Now I can recite old poetry like a parrot whipped out for a party-trick. Certainly something to break the ice with, if I ever did go out, socialize, make friends.

Despite the curry bun, I eat the tray of food with ease, my stomach ever-expanding. After all, I am a teenage boy.

Scrounging in my bag I search for my pen. The pen, a shitty one, bleeds out onto my palm the bruise-blue ink that shows it is the wrong pen. I try again until my palm is blue, black, and red, until the "invisible" ink pen is in my hands. Using this dearly sought-out utensil, I scribble out the corresponding response in my worst kanji.

Separated under the weight of ten thousand miles by Mt. Bu.

Then, separated by some lines further, my own message:

The colours of the flowers

Lie shrouded in the mists

Seriously. Whoever decides on these needs to discover that time has passed on to a new millenia. The Empire of Grass has long fallen, the warlords of Fire deposed, and we are long united under one throne, one daimyo. For better or for worse.

As always, for better, or for worse, which I am allowed to say in the tinny privacy of my own little head.

And under the rice bowl it goes. Folded up without any regard to the nice handwriting of the original sender, with my slightly altered chicken scratch marring it beyond repair.


It is quiet. At night the river is a shimmering obsidian serpent reflecting the distant city lights. Cold, I-

There are dead things here where the soil washes away. Dead things in a space where the sea meets the harbour bay. The ocean roars, the cold winds screech, and in the middle, there is no peace. No trees grow, for sand is not enough. No trees, only gulls, and the occasional grass tufts.

-Four days before Christmas. I already signed the cards, wrapped the presents, mailed them off. There's no one around, not now-

Grey skies, grey-blue water, grey sand. The grey scattered feathers of the bisected seagull corpse. His eyes are grey: rusted steel, wide open, long dark lashes fanned out against milky-pale skin.

-her eyes were brown. Long-lashed, wide almond brown. Warm, warm brown. The comfort of hot coffee, the grasp of soft palm and fingers interlaced with your own, the burn of water against your eyes as you-

The gulls have already started fighting over the body.


It's better not to remember my dreams. It's better not to dream.

I leave the quiet town of Shimizu before breakfast. All for the better, to avoid running into actual tourists, after all, continuity is a bitch. It's further north that is my destination. And I am alone. Or so I think, at least, for most of it.

It's a lot of time to my thoughts. Quite hollow here. Empty.

I run. I sleep. I hide. I try not to think. Thinking is overrated. Only losers and nerds think. Don't become a desk-rider like them, go die in combat for glorious leader like the rest of us.

Tree, tree, rock, tree. The occasional wild life. Tree.

Then, I emerge from the wilds, two days later.

I am quite confident I reek. The unwashed masses however don't seem to care too much. We commonfolk walk up, goods perched on shoulder, eyes downcast, up before the rise of dawn. The guards at the gates watch us, occasionally checking papers. There's a pattern to it: you must look pathetic enough, but not too pathetic. Poor enough to come selling your cabbages with your cabbage cart, but not poor enough to come begging with an empty cap. Dirt farmers yes, panhandlers no.

I might as well be the king of dirt these days. Dredged from the loamy deep, with my gravel crown atop my silty clay throne, I drudge forward with the rest of the hivemind. My shoulder pole is standard bamboo and only slightly less soiled than me.

One burden less, one meet-up more: conferences are such a drag.

The guard takes one look at me, an old lady of hard to discern age, features tan and worn from an honest life of rough work and thankless toil, then decides to set his bleary gaze upon a more aesthetically pleasing member of the working poor. Bless his heart.

For a lowly provincial town like this, they don't hire ninja or samurai. Henge is a godsend.

And so I go, taking my cabbages with me. Fine cabbages, the best cabbages, sold at a reasonable price. Fresh from the farm. No fresher cabbages out there than my cabbages.

"Cabbages, cabbages! Eight ryo a kan!" Someone yells. Eight ryo a kan? What in tarnation-are they trying to put me out of business?

I'm an honest cabbage farmer trying to peddle his, er, her wares. Feed my family. Think of the children! My non-existent struggling children, grubbing around in the seediness of rural poverty!

The rough cobble road leads deeper into town, and here's my first costume change. Ducking into cover, all I have to do is re-seal the pole and my lovely, delicate cabbages, then re-apply a different henge. Easy, peezy, lemon squeezy.

I wander around, hoping to blend in. Watching the passage of the sun above, I have wasted a good portion of the day walking around this town, and I finally decide to check-in by afternoon.

This time, it's a more modern inn on the borders of the red light district. Rickety, that's the word for it, rickety. Wooden with a shabby veneer that doesn't inspire any faith for its security or cleanliness. A whole three storeys, three unsteady looking storeys. If I die in here, would this count as a workplace accident?

The proprietress gives me a lazy glance from the counter. She doesn't look impressed. I wouldn't be either. I get the feeling I'm interrupting her sudoku here. One uncomfortable check-in later and I have the key, climbing up the cramped stairway onto the third floor.

I place my fist against the grain of the door, about to knock, before stopping myself. Right, the pattern changed this February. Fucking hell, what was it supposed to be now?

Stepping away from the door for now, I walk over to the side to think. Uh, it can't be the old one, that's for sure? Did they revert back to the one before that one? With the modifier at the end? Or was it beginning, there was that modifier I'm sure. Pretty sure. Would bet 20 ryo on it.

"Are you alright?"

The woman is not particularly short or tall. Dark hair, dark eyes, slightly pale but not out of the ordinary. Features almost familiar, somehow. Dressed like a traveller in an old, patched coat; one who can't afford better accommodations and is just making do. Something about the shape of the eyes...

"Ah," I give the room another glance. "Sorry, I just realized I forgot something but can't quite recall what it was."

There was someone inside. Stretching my shitty abilities to limit, I could fail the faint hum of a human within, but it wasn't strong. Civilian at first glance. Probably them holding it in.

Feigning innocence, I use the other greeting, the one I was supposed to use later. Ah well, running out of options now.

"The roads were horrible. Muddy, so much mud. Got trapped behind someone's water buffalo too, dropped dead on the road and the owner wouldn't let us pass or move his cart. All for a cart of cabbages."

A flicker of a frown, then it smooths itself out. Her eyes dart around the empty corridor, before holding her hands out in front of her chest to sign in Konoha Standard.

Why outside now?

"Oh, how unfortunate." She says for the peanut gallery.

Sheepishly, I sign back.

Code change February. Forget code enter.

She looks uncertain.

Registration number?

I sign it back to her slowly, making sure she can see each number.

She sighs. Stepping up to the door, she knocks what likely is the correct passcode and the door shifts just the slightest fraction, to signify it is open. Giving me a look, I follow her in.

It's not a large room. There's barely any furniture, just a table. Four people could squeeze onto the floor in sleeping bags if necessary. A washroom in the corner with the paint peeling off the door.

Two people are already waiting inside. A man and a woman. Bland, forgettable, dressed in clothing that you could see on the street outside. Hands casually placed at their sides, near what is likely their weapon pouch.

They both look at me much warily compared to the woman beside me. Not unsurprising since they've probably heard the exchange outside. Ah, introductions again it seems.

Can't fuck this up again.

End notes:

"The east wind sighs, the fine rains come:

Beyond the pool of water-lilies, the noise of faint thunder." Is from Graham's translation of Li Shangyi.

"Separated under the weight of ten thousand miles by Mt. Bu." Is my translation of the last line of the poem preceding that one.

"The colours of the flowers Lie shrouded in the mists" is from www. wakapoetry . / kks-ii-91 /