As Long As My Blood Flows

Chapter 2 – Notes and Sushi

I was taken to the hospital to treat my headwound, where it was discovered that I maybe had a little bit of a concussion. Hard strikes to the back of the head against very dense rocks will do that to a feminine guy. And… whoa, did I look a like a girl. Like, seriously, I never realized just how much I looked like a girl until now. The fact that I wore unassuming white robes that did not strictly adhere to any gender norms certainly didn't help.

But… Well. I was pretty cute.

So I was… fairly okay with that.

Anyway, the medical-nin prescribed me some medicine for the headache throbbing in the back of my skull and some rest from school. That was fine for me, because I needed some time to figure out what the fuck I was going to do, as well as go over all of the information I had learned in the eight years leading up to my remembrance of my past life.

When we returned home, my very worried Mother wrapped me up in a hug and squeezed me so tight I thought I'd need to make a return trip to the hospital.

"You're okay," she whispered, cupping my cheeks and gazing into my eyes. "Don't ever worry me like that again. If we were to lose you on top of your parents…" She shuddered, painful memories fluttering through her mind. Her eyes squeezed shut and she buried me in her shoulder. "I thought I'd lost you."

I froze, unsure how to handle this. After a moment, I hugged her back. "It's okay. All I have is a concussion, Mom." …And maybe some added trauma to potentially make my aquaphobia worse.

…Concerning.

"And thank the gods for that," she whispered, squeezing me again before letting go.

We had some dinner after that, and as promised earlier, my mother made me my favorite (healthy) snack to go along with it. Our house was a two-story, not anything special because our family had yet to require a lot of wealth after the devastation of our clan. Like the other Kawase Clan houses surrounding Lake Tomoe, it was a brick house, and it was made up of one main two-story cube with an attic, as well as a rectangular pop-off with a slanting roof to the right, a chimney behind the house, and a slanting roof over my mother's farm. A clearing of trees spanned several acres around the back. The dining room was quaint, consisting of an ovular table with four chairs pulled up to it, a wine and sake rack, and a potted flower bought from the Yamanaka flower shop. It connected to the kitchen, and a wall with a doorless entryway separated it from the living room. The living room was simple, too; a coffee table sat between two couches, both dark leather, and all of these bits had a dark-blue patterned carpet beneath it. A grandfather clock had been pushed up diagonally against the corner. A closet next to this contained several high-quality senbon, swords, knives, throwing stars, spools of ninja wire, and kunai. Two bookshelves sat beside the entry way to the kitchen, and a staircase to the second floor hugged the south wall.

The coffee table had a shogi table on it, and storage baskets beneath containing various other games and utilities.

All in all, it was a pretty quaint place.

That wasn't what I was thinking about when I left the dining room and swept into the living room, plopped myself on the couch, and pulled a notebook and pencil from the storage beneath the coffee table, however.

Okay, let's see. What matches up with these memories I have and what doesn't? Is this just some weird side effect of me having a concussion or are these actually memories of an actual past life?

Dying from drowning certainly would have explained the aquaphobia I have, and why it gets worse with larger bodies of water. And if my subconscious still had all those memories floating around somewhere back there, that'd explain the nightmares, too. I tapped the pencil to my chin, a troubled frown crossing my lips. Now, if I really was in the realm of the Naruto franchise, exactly how much was canon and how much was not?

Rin and Obito are no longer here. Check. I'd seen Kakashi around Konoha, though I hadn't known who he was. He was the ONLY member of Team Minato I'd seen.

Minato and Kushina died sealing the Kyuubi inside Naruto. Check. The Kyuubi attack had occurred as depicted. Every October the village mourns the previous Hokage's death and celebrates the defeat of the Nine-Tails. I frowned, pausing as my head throbbed and something about that poked at my brain, but I shrugged and moved forward.

Major clans in Konoha are the Yamanaka, Nara, Akimichi, Uchiha, Senju, Hyuuga, Aburame, Inuzuka, and Sarutobi. All that checked out.

Hyuuga Hinata, heir to the Hyuuga, gets kidnapped by Kumogakure in what comes to be known as the Hyuuga Affair. Hinata's father killed the attempted kidnapper, resulting in Hinata's uncle dying to satisfy Kumogakure. Check. What a bloody mess that was. And I do mean bloody in every sense of the word… Poor Hinata had always been shy and quiet as long as I've known her. If the Memories were correct, this was a direct result of the fallout of that mess.

In Kirigakure, the Kaguya Clan attacked and was slaughtered. This caused Water Country to greatly distrust kekkei genkai users, leading to widespread racism and discrimination, and eventually all-out genocide. Check. My own clan was proof of that. We were so small and weak now, and we even had to flee our own home for our very lives.

I swallowed and shivered at the thought, then my pencil returned to the paper.

The young prodigy Itachi and Obito caused the Uchiha Massacre after a long period of tension between the villagers and the Uchiha. Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Sasuke are the last official survivors of the Uchiha Clan, and Sasuke was tortured by the Sharingan to the point that his only thought is to kill his older brother. Massive check. I remembered THAT incident very well. It had happened this past year, and had absolutely terrified me. I'd been paranoid for months, certain that my clan was the next on the hitlist due to the sheer animosity we faced as Kirigakure refugees, and I'd only just returned to a state of normalcy.

My heart suddenly flew out to Sasuke. I'd always felt really bad for him, sympathizing with his situation since my clan had to suffer through a lot of unjustified social discrimination, too. I had been decent enough friends with him prior to the Massacre. We weren't terribly close, definitely not, but we got along, and Sasuke seemed to open up to me better than most.

Ever since the Massacre, it felt like I'd become a ghost to him, and my spite over this made me ignore him, too.

I chewed my lip, wishing that I'd been able to remember everything earlier. Surely there had to be something, ANYTHING I could have done to save the Uchiha.

Guilt settled deep within me even as I realized it was pointless feeling guilty for not being able to save them when I didn't even know at the time that they were in such danger. I took a deep breath and forced it down, shoving it away for now.

As for Naruto…

I paused and blinked. Wait. Naruto?

The blonde troublemaker I knew was not an Uzumaki Naruto, but an Uzumaki Naruko. A loudmouthed, brat of a prankster who was annoyingly cute and constantly spouting off about how SHE—not HE—was going to become Hokage. She had a pendant for wearing orange, and had twin, bushy pigtails.

…Huh. So there was at least one other change to this world other than my Clan's existence.

…I wondered what else was different than the Memories.

I wondered what I could change.

I pursed my lips and started planning.

~o~

One Uzumaki Naruko sat alone in the park during lunch, hugging her knees to her chest. For once in her life, it wasn't because she was lonely. It was because she was lost in thought. And it was a line of thought that she hadn't expected to be going down. Namely, that the kid from Mist was acting hella weird lately, ever since he came back from his medical break from school.

He was nice to her.

Like, what?

To be fair, she supposed, looking back on things, he'd never been particularly mean to her. They just hadn't really interacted much. He was a pretty quiet kid, usually either studying something in class or passed out, asleep. He was a lot Shikamaru in that aspect. They both liked taking naps. He WAS very serious about his schoolwork other than that, though, which Naruko personally found to be a weird juxtaposition (not that she'd have known that word to describe it with). He was bright and lazy, like Shikamaru, and perhaps because of their shared (and, in her opinion, boring) qualities, sometimes she saw the two playing shogi together in recess.

Shikamaru always won, though.

All that said, since coming back three days ago, Ren never slept in class, even if he looked downright exhausted by the end of the day. Instead, he kept a thermos of coffee with him that he drank from. He participated in class a lot more, and worked a LOT harder, especially in Taijutsu, and in Chakra Theory and Application.

That was Weird Trait Number One.

Weird Trait Number Two was that he began choosing to sit beside Naruko, and openly chatted with her in downtime. He even volunteered to be her partner on a group project yesterday, which literally nobody had ever done before. He'd even smuggled chips in and offered them to her! Stunned, she'd asked why, and he'd just shrugged, saying, "You looked hungry. Do you want them or not? Because I'll definitely eat them if you don't want them."

She'd quickly accepted them, stomach growling at the thought of chips.

Weird Trait Number Three was that he was friendly with Sasuke again. Or, trying to, anyway.

Sasuke just kind of… purposefully ignored him. Or maybe begrudgingly accepted his existence and the fact that it didn't seem like he was going anywhere anytime soon. It was difficult to tell with the Bastard.

She furrowed her brow, eyes closing in thought as she tried to figure out what the heckin' heck was going on. She hummed, shifting about. What had happened? What had he even gone to the hospital for? She didn't know, but damn did she want to.

(And… was he being nice to her because he wanted to be her—? She stopped that train before it arrived at its destination and gave her too much hope.)

Grass rustled beside her, and Naruko jumped, gaping up at the navy-haired boy who sat down beside her, bento in hand. His turquoise eyes shone with hunger as he removed the lid, and the mouth-watering aroma of sushi, soy sauce, and egg rolls filtered out. As he took out his chopsticks and was about to eat, he glanced at her, blinking. Then he glanced back at his bento. Now back to her. Now back to his bento.

"…Do you want some sushi?" he offered, picking up a roll with his chopsticks and moving it towards her.

Her brain stalled for a few seconds.

"…Eh?"

"Do you want some sushi?" he repeated, waving the roll for emphasis. Then his eyebrows lifted. "Oh, wait, do you not like sushi? I have an egg roll, too, if you want that instead."

Reeling, she had to blink several times to make sure she was seeing everything properly. Yep. The sushi still hung between his chopsticks, proffered to her.

"What the hell!?" Naruko barked suddenly, brain defaulting to the only thing it knew in situations she wasn't used to—being loud. The rest of the kids nearby paused and looked at them in confusion. "You're so WEIRD lately! Why are you offering me sushi!? Why are you offering me an egg roll!? I don't understand!"

Ren's mouth opened slowly, then shut. He looked absolutely flummoxed. "…Because you didn't seem to have any lunch and that's just the nice thing to do?"

Naruko blinked once. Twice.

Her stomach growled.

"…Sushi's okay," she murmured in a small voice, flushing deeply, and Ren smiled as she sat down. He placed it in her hand, and she carefully gripped it with her fingers before dipping it in some soy sauce. Sensing that a fight had not occurred, the other kids all returned their attention whatever it was they'd been doing. Then Naruto opened her mouth and brought her acquired sushi up—Fearful for a moment that he'd snatch it back when she wasn't paying attention, she snapped her mouth shut and glanced at him as he watched her. He blinked brow furrowing in confusion, and she studied him for a moment before, with exceedingly uncharacteristic shyness, slipping the sushi roll between her lips and chewing.

She paused, silent as the flavors filled her mouth. She slowly chewed, rolling the rice across her tongue and letting the soy sauce linger.

Maybe she took too long, because Ren tensed a little. "I-Is it not good?" he offered, frowning. "I have other flavors if you—"

She shook her head, still in utter disbelief at everything happening to her. "It was good," she murmured quietly.

Relief flooded the Kawase Clan heir's face, and he smiled widely. "That was my mother's cooking," he explained, nodding. "It is really good, isn't it?"

Savoring the taste of sushi that still remained, she nodded, suddenly realizing a tear had rolled down her cheek. Why? Was she crying over a single piece of sushi? It didn't make sense. None of this made sense.

(Later, Naruko, staring at the ceiling of her lonesome apartment and thinking back on the day's events, would realize it was because she'd never known what it was like to enjoy a mother's cooking before.)

"It was," she murmured, wiping the tear. "It was really good. It… It was the best sushi I've ever had."

He smiled widely. "That's sweet of you. You're a good friend, Naruko."

From that day on, Naruko never went without lunch again, because Ren, her first friend, always made sure she had some.