[[A/N: Hello, thank you for continuing to read! If any of you are wondering about the update schedule, frankly put I just don't have one! I write whenever I feel like writing, and I update whenever I have the chapter after this one finished. So that way if I don't feel like writing for a while, I'll still have one more chapter available to post so you guys won't have to wait too long for the next read.
Enjoy the chapter! Leave a review if you have anything to say!]]
She thinks about those two boys a lot. A lot more than she should, honestly, considering it's been only four days since she met them. When she's pulling out the weeds in the garden, she wonders why they were fighting each other out in the middle of nowhere. When she's sweeping up the stray leaves on the ground just outside the compound, she wonders what their names are. When she's waking up the younger children for breakfast, she wonders why they were so friendly to her - to a stranger. Weren't they afraid of strangers? Weren't they taught to be wary of outsiders? Her brother was a Shinobi, and even he got cautious when foreigners came around.
As she eats breakfast, her mind wanders. Shinobi… could they have been? They looked so young, but Kouji was only a little bit bigger than them, and he'd started training as a Shinobi at an even younger age. But they hadn't been dressed like Shinobi, so surely they weren't… right? She shakes her head, reminding herself that her brother was only dressed as a Shinobi when he had to leave for a mission.
As she puts her breakfast dishes next to the small stack of things some other girls would wash, she wonders why it even mattered if they were Shinobi.
Because Shinobi are killers, she immediately thinks. Then she remembers Kouji, and she almost wants to hit herself for thinking that about him at all. Kouji was nothing but kind and gentle and patient with her, carrying her on his back out of the flames of their old home only to jump right back into it to save others. Kouji was… he wasn't like other Shinobi.
Maybe those boys weren't like other Shinobi either?
She stands outside with some younger children, watching them play. Sachiko sat next to her, humming a little off-tune melody under her breath as she looked through the different little rocks that the kids brought her. She was nit-picky, only keeping the ones she thought were prettiest. Hanako wanted to go play with the others, to play tag or play house, but when she thought about leaving Sachiko to sit alone on the porch, she felt guilty. She knows her little sister wouldn't mind, would tell her to go play and bring her back something nice for her collection, but still…
Hanako glances at the water reserves nearby. It was just off to the side of the backyard area where the children chased each other with stick-swords. It wasn't guarded at all - the adults taught the children to play responsibly, to never go near it unless they needed a drink after playing in the sun.
But… some kids were forgetful of instructions, sometimes. Briefly, just briefly, she thinks about enticing the children to play closer to the buckets - egg them on to wrestle until someone knocks one over and the water spilled.
If the water spilled, we'd be low on reserves… Somebody would have to get more… Go back down to the river…
She felt scandalous for thinking like that at all, and she angrily shakes her head to dispel the thoughts. How could she think like that? Ruin the Clan's supplies just so she could go try to meet some children she didn't even know again? Maybe they wouldn't even be there, and then what? She would have just given herself an extra work load for no reason at all.
"Hana-nee," Sachiko's quiet voice spoke up from beside Hanako. She looked down at her little sister, forcing a small smile to her lips. She almost felt guilty, like her sister had to have known what she was thinking about and would scold her for it.
"Yes, Sachiko?" Hanako sat down, putting a hand up to smooth down the loose strands of light brown hair on her sister's head. Sachiko was the only one who inherited Father's brunette hair, while both Kouji and Hanako had their mother's silver locks. However, Hanako herself was the only one of them all to also inherit their mother's purple eyes - both her brother and sister had brown eyes just like their father did.
"Can you find me a blue stone?" She held up her hands, cupped together with a handful of little rocks inside. "I have four greens, and four greys, but only three blues. Can you find a blue one?"
She spoke quietly, and her eyes were half-lidded like she was just a hair away from passing out. She was often like this, though - like everything in the world exhausted her. Everything in the world was just a little bit too much for her to handle. It made Hanako's heart ache.
"Of course," she nods with a more genuine smile. There weren't many blue rocks around the area of the compound, she knew. This wasn't the first time Sachiko asked others to find her rocks with specific colors or designs on them, she liked to keep her collection even and when one kind - color, size, shape - had less than the others, she wanted immediately for that to be remedied.
There were bound to be colorful stones in the river, though, where the water currents eroded the stones' outer layers so they were shiny and beautiful...
She looked back to the water containers.
"Aoi-san! Aoi-san!" A squabble of children ran barefoot through the house, making quite a ruckus as they went. Many of them were covered in dirt or grass stains, and a few of them were soaked through their clothes. A handful of children at the front of the grouping - the older ones - were holding back tears. Hanako was holding Sachiko in her arms, the little girl held tight against her chest with her small arms wrapped around her elder sister's neck. Hanako walked leisurely, but her heart was beating hard.
Aoi was just a cook, really, but she did such a good job of whipping the children into shape when they did something wrong that most looked to her when the kids were involved anyway.
"What is it, Hibiki-kun?" She asked in a not-quite-gentle-but-not-quite-scolding voice to the young boy in the front of the group. Hanako would have thought something funny, like wondering if Aoi was even capable of having a gentle voice at all, if it weren't for the fact that her nerves were a wreck.
Hibiki, only seven years old, held back tears as he wiped his wet hair away from his forehead. "We… we… We were playin' rough in the back and…" He stumbled over his words, afraid to admit that they'd done something wrong. At the behest of Aoi, he tried to speak again, but instead he wailed and sobbed, finally letting the tears free.
"The water cans," Hanako spoke up near the middle of the group, her voice meek and quiet. She was the oldest out of them all, but her face flushed with shame the moment Aoi looked at her. Did she know? Could she tell immediately? Did she see it in Hanako's eyes, the shame and guilt she felt in doing something wrong on purpose?
"What about them?" Aoi asked sternly, getting more frustrated the longer this went on.
"They fell over," she added quietly. "When they- when we were wrestling."
She hadn't been wrestling with the others at all, but her internal guilt at getting the other children in trouble would not let her allow them to take the full blame. She had to be punished too, for her wrong doings.
"What? How could you let this happen, Hanako-sama! You were supposed to be watching over them! You're the eldest, you shouldn't have let them get so close to the containers!" Even as Aoi scolded her in front of the others, she flitted around the small group of children to check for any injuries or scrapes. Moments like these reminded Hanako that, though she poked fun at the older woman in her mind for how stern and demanding she was, she really did care for all of them here.
Hanako's face flushed hot under the weight of the Aoi's scolding, and a child off to the side of her grabbed her hand in a quiet attempt at comforting her. They've all been here before, being scolded by Aoi, and none of them liked it. Sachiko was the only one who'd never had to deal with Aoi's stern temperament before, and she sniffled quietly as she listened to the older woman shout.
The moment - the split second - Aoi heard the little girl sniffling, she went dead silent. She pursed her lips together, then held out her hands. Hanako agreeably handed over her little sister, and Sachiko let herself be exchanged with nothing more than a tearful look at her older sister.
"Oh, dear, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, lovely, I didn't intend to sound so mean! It's alright," Aoi tucked Sachiko's head of messy brown hair beneath her chin, rocking her back and forth. Aoi's brown eyes scanned through the crowd of sniffling, dirty children one last time before she sighed. "Hanako-sama, as you were the one in charge when this happened, it's only right you be the one to fix it. Please go collect more water from the river."
Hanako nodded quickly, then bounded off just as fast to go get the buckets. She had to leave the area as fast as she could, both to get away from the disappointed stare of Aoi, and to hide the grin that spread across her face. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and her nerves were aflame. She felt like she'd just gotten away with a crime, despite logically knowing it was just a small accident, nothing big or important.
She couldn't keep the nerves down on her way to the river, however. She wondered, suddenly, why she was so excited to see those boys again. She tried to argue with herself that she had knocked over the water so she could get a blue stone for her sister, but she knew that she had only been using Sachiko's desire as a push to do what Hanako herself had already wanted to do.
Perhaps it was the prospect of making friends? They were strangers, sure, but they didn't have to stay that way. There were plenty of children on the Clan compound, but they were all Ueno children and Hanako considered them more family than friends.
Then she wondered, did she even have any real friends? She never knew anybody outside of the Clan itself because of how often they moved from place to place.
(They had a real home, once - all those years ago. As soon as it burned to the ground, they'd never had a real home again. Father said they may never have another home to permanently live in.)
She got to the river quicker than she anticipated, but when she arrived she saw that there was nobody else there. She moved slowly to the river side to fill the buckets, looking around as she did. Were they really not here today? Maybe they would never show up again, maybe the last time they met was just that - the last time.
Disappointed in this new discovery, Hanako pouted as she filled the buckets.
Her earlier fear had been right, then. She'd really just given herself more chores to do with no payoff. No friends to make.
Yet…
Yet, even after she filled the buckets, she stayed there. It might not have been a good idea, she was sure to be scolded for taking so long to do her chores, but she set the buckets down in the grass a few feet away from the river and just sat there. She waited, looking around. She counted blades of grass until she got to seventy, then got up and stretched. She walked back and forth between two trees, then walked over to the river again. When she walked forward enough that her feet submerged in the water all the way to her ankles, she stopped.
She didn't know how to swim, so there was no way she could get across it. As she looked around, however, she noticed a small path of sorts - large boulders in the water that she could hop across to get to the other side. She made towards it, then paused.
She had no reason to go to the other side at all. And what if she got halfway through and slipped, falling into the water? She frowned, then moved backwards. Finally, she sat down on the riverbank itself, hugging her knees to her chest and waiting.
For a moment, she did nothing. Just sat there, quietly, patiently.
Then she remembered one of the reasons she'd come out here to begin with - blue stones! She needed to find some pretty blue rocks to give to her sister. She stood up again and went as deep into the water as she dared to go, pulling up the ends of her kimono with one hand so the water that reached her knees wouldn't get her clothes wet. She rolled up her sleeves too, to reach into the water and grab anything she thought might be blue enough to satisfy Sachiko. She would pull one up, realize it was too grey or brown or just plain not pretty enough, then throw it back to the river to look for another.
It was like this, submerged in the water to her knees, with one hand full of little pebbles that she scrutinized carefully and her kimono scrunched tightly in the other hand above her knees, that the two boys found her when they arrived.
They watched quietly for a moment, both surprised to see her here again and confused at what she was doing.
"Hey!" The same boy who'd spoken to her four days ago shouted to get her attention.
Hanako dropped the stones she was looking at, shocked. The voice was familiar enough to not cause fear, but she still looked up with teary eyes. She couldn't help the fact that she tended to tear up whenever anyone yelled at her, it happened automatically and it happened often enough that she found it embarrassing. She willed her tears to not fall - despite the fact that her mother told her it was okay to cry, she didn't want to cry in front of strangers. What would they think of her, then?
Apparently the answer was that they felt immediate guilt.
"AH! I'M SO SORRY!" The bowl-cut boy from before held his head in his hands, looking like he was about to start crying as well. The boy with spiky dark hair hit his companion - friend? - on the arm harshly as punishment, enough that bowl-cut boy fell over into the dirt. It was funny enough that Hanako offered a small, placating smile. She sniffled and, with relief, felt the tears in her eyes receding.
Hanako stood up, straightening her posture like she was always taught to do in the company of others.
"Are you okay?" The boy with dark hair finally spoke. He was so much closer to her than he had been moments ago and, with a start, Hanako realized he was standing on top of the water's surface. The ebb and flow of the river, the rushing currents, didn't affect him at all and he stood stock still as she stared in wonder.
She nodded hesitantly, quiet as ever, and wiped away at her eyes to dry anything that hadn't gone away yet. She didn't want to speak, she always felt more comfortable when sitting in companionable silence, but she knew it was rude to not answer a question - even if she'd already nodded. Maybe after she knew them better she could get away with being more quiet, but for now…
"It- it's okay… He just startled me, is all," she spoke meekly. When she brought her hand down, the boy who'd shouted was standing right beside the dark haired boy as well - also on top of the water. He'd gotten closer without making any noise at all.
Shinobi. They're Shinobi.
Suddenly, her fear and apprehension returned full force. Shinobi are killers. The boy with dark hair held out his hand to help her back up onto the river bank, and though she noticed that her legs were going numb from the cold water, she didn't accept it right away. Shinobi are killers, who do magical, terrible things that normal people can't.
But Kouji…
She took his hand slowly. Kouji was different. They could be too, right…?
"Who are you?" Bowl-cut boy asked quietly, with a look of surprise still on his face. "We've been coming here to the river for a little while now and I've never seen you here before."
"Me neither," the dark haired boy spoke up.
When Hanako was out of the water, she dropped her kimono to finally cover her legs again. "Hanako…" She briefly wondered if she should tell them her last name. Kouji talked about 'Shinobi rules' every once in a while, and he'd once mentioned that telling someone your family name was some kind of rule - was it that you're not supposed to tell them, or that you are supposed to tell them?
...Well, it didn't really matter, did it? Hanako wasn't a Shinobi. She had no reason to try living by Shinobi rule.
"Hanako Ueno," she said with a small smile. She gave a shallow bow to the both of them, and they did the same in turn.
"Ueno? It sounds familiar…" The bowl-cut boy said quietly for a moment. He shook his head, his dark brown hair flying out to fan his face for a moment, then smiled brightly. "I'm Hashirama! It's nice to meet you, Hanako-san! I'm sorry for making you cry!"
"It's fine," she repeated her earlier words, fighting the urge to look down at her sandals. She had no experience talking to strangers at all, and now that she found herself face to face with people she wasn't familiar with, she couldn't help the embarrassed blush that crossed her face and made her feel too warm.
"I'm Madara," the boy with dark hair smiled at her. He pointed to his companion without turning to look at him. "I'm also sorry he made you cry."
"Hey!" Hashirama started indignantly.
Hanako let out a shaky laugh. Though her nerves were a wreck from both the earlier tears and the strangers around her, she felt better bit by bit as they spoke and showed her that they were truly just… Children. Not dangerous enemies that she should run from, not killers that she should hate. Just a couple of boys playing by the river.
"What were you doing in the water, Hanako-san?" Hashirama asked after collecting himself from Madara's words. Madara looked at her with curiosity, apparently also interested in the answer.
"Ah, my sister, well… I-I'm looking for pretty stones. To collect."
"Ah!" Hashirama grinned brightly, and Hanako was starting to think that was his default expression. She didn't mind it at all though - in fact, she rather enjoyed it. She smiled with him, easily. "I'll help you! I'll find a pretty stone for you, Hanako-san!"
As soon as he made the promise, he dove straight into the river to reach the bottom and look for something. Madara frowned, then immediately followed after him, shouting over his shoulder to Hanako,
"I'll find one, too! I'll find a better one!"
Hanako watched with wide, shocked eyes. Of course just because she couldn't swim didn't mean others couldn't. She knew that. But the way they dove down to the bottom of the river with no fear had her pausing. Even if she could swim, she'd have reservations about going into that water where the currents were strong.
With a belated realization that she didn't tell them she was looking specifically for a blue stone, she walked a few steps into the river again to start looking on her own. She found one easily enough this time, a turquoise color with some scratches on it but otherwise had a rather nice looking design of spots, and stuffed it into the sleeve of her kimono where it wouldn't easily fall out. Both hands would be taken up by carrying the buckets, after all.
After she found the stone for Sachiko, she sat on the riverbank and waited. Both boys occasionally came up for air, arguing about something they saw or found underneath the water, before diving back down. Hanako watched with a smile.
Finally, after another few minutes of watching them dive down and up again, Madara came up first with a grin. He pushed his dark hair out of his face, and Hanako thought he looked a little silly when his hair was limp from the water dragging it down. Then he put his hands on the surface of the water and, with a strong push, used it as a solid surface to stand on the water. Hanako knew it was another thing that Shinobi did, of course, but she still found it incredible. Hashirama came up from the water soon after, but Madara was already in front of her with a bright grin on his face - his was different from Hashirama's though.
Whereas Hashirama smiled with joy in his eyes, it seemed more like Madara grinned because he was proud he won some kind of competition.
Hanako stood up from her resting spot as he approached, and Madara grabbed her hand gently to place a little round stone in it.
"There, like I promised! Mine is better!"
"No, mine is better! Mine's got the better design on it! Look, Hanako-san, it has swirls on it!"
Hashirama rushed up beside Madara, putting his rock in her other hand. As soon as the brunette boy came up beside them both, Madara retracted his hand from where he'd been gripping hers, with a blush on his face. She wondered what he was embarrassed about.
"She'll be the judge, idiot, let her look at them!" Madara harshly reprimanded him, but Hashirama only smiled and laughed. Hanako understood, then, that they must have been friends for a while, if they could insult each other without being upset by the words. She looked down at the two stones in her hands, and smiled. They were both lovely, actually, and she had a hard time picking between the two.
The stone that Hashirama had given her was grey like most rocks are, but it'd been weathered down by the currents of the water so that it was shiny and smooth to the touch. And, true to his word, there was some kind of swirling design on the underside of it where it was flattest. It must have rested on something in that shape for a very long time to have the design carved into it.
Madara's stone was two-toned, with green and brown together in a pattern that reminded her of snake skin. Like the other, it was smooth to the touch thanks to being weathered down.
"Hm," she hummed in short contemplation, moving her hands like she was weighing her choices. She smiled gently, then held up one hand. "Madara's stone is prettier!"
Madara broke into a wide grin, put his hands on his hips, and laughed a proud laugh. Hashirama looked utterly defeated suddenly, sitting down and hugging his knees close to his chest. He whined about how he was sure he would win only to be crushed mercilessly. Hanako giggled quietly.
"Yours is nice too, Hashirama."
He perked up instantly.
The two boys began talking to each other again, about something else, some other kind of competition they would get into to 'even the scores' from their most recent one, but Hanako stopped paying attention as she looked up at the sky. She'd spent way too long here, she realized suddenly, and if she didn't return soon, Aoi would go from being upset about her lateness to being worried she'd gotten hurt or kidnapped.
Hanako put both stones into her kimono sleeve right next to the one for her sister, then picked up the buckets of water and began a light jog back into the forest.
"Ah, wait! Where are you going, Hanako-san?" Madara called out to her.
"I have to go, I'll be- I'm going to be late!" She said quickly. She paused, and looked over her shoulder at the two boys who looked, to her surprise, genuinely sad to see her go. "I…"
She smiled at them.
"I'll come back, when I can."
She was right, Aoi had been worried sick.
"I was just a hair's width away from sending someone after you, you know! Silly girl, what could you have possibly been doing to be out there for so long?!" Aoi scolded her, bent at the waist so Hanako couldn't escape her glare. The younger girl clutched the skirt of her kimono tightly, nervous and upset to be scolded again. Twice in one day. It was the most she'd ever been reprimanded before, and she found that she hated it quite a bit.
"I…" She felt her voice wobble, and knew she was close to tears. She took in a deep breath, then slowly pulled out the blue stone in her sleeve. "...For Sachiko." She spoke quietly and held up the stone in her palm, hoping that Aoi would understand without her needing more explanation.
As expected, she did. Aoi babied Hanako's sister more than anyone else, and of course knew, and indulged when she could, about her little collection of things she found neat.
"It.. it took a while to find." Hanako hadn't quite lied, she really did only find it after she'd waited so long for the boys to return. But it still left a sour taste in her mouth like she had told a lie right to the older woman's face.
"Oh, I'm…" She took the stone from Hanako's hand. She sighed. "It's very nice of you to go out of your way for your sister like this, Hanako-sama. Still! You should be more careful and shouldn't spend too much time out there alone. It's dangerous, you know! There are Shinobi around every corner! Maybe I should start sending someone else out instead…"
"No!" Hanako said quickly, with a voice louder than she usually used. A few of the young women who were helping out in the kitchen to prepare lunch for everyone paused what they were doing to stare, surprised. Everybody knew the Clan Head's daughter rarely spoke, or spoke quietly when she had to. For the longest time, it was assumed she must have had something wrong with her throat, that maybe she spoke so little because it pained her to do so. Hanako's face burned hot at the realization of what she'd just done, shouting at someone else, and she bowed deeply at the waist in apology. "I- I like going to the river, Aoi-san! It's fun! Please let me keep going!"
Aoi stared down at her in equal shock as the other women, but as she saw Hanako's posture shake from the strain of holding the deep bow for just a little too long, she hurriedly made the girl stand up straight again.
"Whatever will I do with you, girl…" She heaved a deep sigh. "...I'll allow it. But you must swear you'll never be late again!"
Hanako nodded her head so fast she was sure she'd have a headache later.
That was that, really. Aoi let her go, Hanako gave the blue stone to Sachiko - who took it with the brightest grin she'd seen on her face in a while - and she walked out to the backyard area to help the other children do chores. It was the least she could do after getting them in trouble that morning. As she walked, though, she felt the two stones from the boys in her sleeve, and she smiled, gently, to herself.
Hopefully Sachiko wouldn't mind that she kept those two for her, and her alone.
