The afterwork wind of a low sun and an orange sky blows, chilling the undripped sweat stuck to my face. I'm looking down at a palm-sized balloon filled with air in my hands, trying to get my chakra to swirl around the right way.
In a day and age where most villagers both young and old default to Yobisute when addressing each other, there's usually a specific reason when a girl adds '-kun' at the end of your name.
The most cliché one is because she likes you. I'm not experienced in that sort of thing, but I can guarantee with 100% certainty that that's not the case here. The girl I'm walking with is in love with some idiot who doesn't recognize it. And I'm not really into her, either. I just happen to be a familiar third wheel in this whole process.
It's just us on the dirt road to the secret base today, passing by the sleepy scenery of an old residential district, rebuilt to look like it did before the War. If it were up to me, I'd be walking there by myself, but I don't get a choice in the matter. And on the flipside, I know she'd rather be spending time with my older brother like she usually does, but she's still pretty nice about being assigned to guard me.
It's probably best that I try to be considerate to her in turn.
"Hey, Tsunako-san? Sorry for dragging you out here like this." I talk to the silent Anbu that sat behind me today, during my short-term stint as a gate guard. Her name is spelled with the characters for 'moon', 'facing', and 'child'.
It's not standard for me to know the name of the Anbu guarding me for the day, but she's part of Nii-san's personal squad and a lifelong friend of his, so naturally we know each other outside of this forced situation we're 's probably also a little overly-cautious for me to add '-san' at the end of her first name, considering how close she is to our family, but I might as well err on the side of politeness.
"It is no trouble, Minato-kun. Please do not worry yourself about it."
She looked at me through that creepy, featureless, porcelain mask of hers. She looks a bit like a horror movie villain when combined with her unusual dress, but I'm used to it.
One of her palms rested on top of the hilt of the sword attached to her hip—an Oowakizashi, a curved blade slightly shorter in length than the more common katana—with the kanji for 'Moon' carved into its wooden sheath.
Technically, how we address each other should be the other way around, seeing as how she's the bodyguard and I'm the guy she's supposed to protect for the day. But outside of her duties to protect and serve members of the Hokage's family, she's my superior in rank and as a ninja, so it can go either way. Not that I'm really interested about who's in charge of who. Theoretically, I could try to order her to attack someone unprovoked or do menial tasks like fetching me food and cleaning my room. But most people tend to resent spoiled rich kids who throw around their parents' names, so I'll pass.
Be humble, be observant, praise others and do what you can to empower them. You can get by pretty easy in life just by following those rules, even without a special technique or a drive to be the best.
—We come up to a split in the road, taking the path leading in to one of the many forests that regrew following Pain's Assault. My friends' secret base is further on ahead.
The wind picks up again, playing the woodwind instrument of springtime trees in the breeze.
I look over to my side. I catch something more than just the green of the leaves dancing in my sight.
Her hair dark, somewhere within that blurred border between dark brown and black, fluttered in the wind. That hakama and kosode combo of purple-and-black flew along with it, that ever-waving hem justifying itself against the backdrop of a world dyed in orange.
Those miko-like clothes of hers look so out of place in modern society, but I think that's part of her charm. In an age where most kunoichi wear the standard blue-and-green flak jacket getup or something that's generally easy to get around in, I don't think too many of them would be brave enough to try to pull off the traditional clothes thing in broad daylight.
It's a shame she wears her Anbu mask all the time. She has a really pretty face underneath it.
"Nice day, huh…?" I say, breaching the comfortable silence.
"Yes," Tsunako put her hands in front of her waist and laced together her fingers as naturally as a shrine maiden. "A beautiful day."
Her manners feel so natural and effortless. If she were on a mission that required her to take the fake identity of a traditional daughter working at a sleepy ryokan along a beaten road, she probably wouldn't need any practice at all in order to blend in. Guess that's useful for an assassin.
Man…I'm a little envious. She's spoken for and I'm three years younger than her, but I wish there were normal girls like her that were my age. All of the ones I hang out with are a bunch of weirdos.
"Minato-kun."
I nooked my neck over my shoulder and looked back at Tsunako when she called my name.
Her eyes, or at least what I could guess of them beyond that mask anyway, held a serious demeanor. "There is no issue with you spacing out or elsewise getting lost in the day, but please walk either beside me or behind me. I need to be able to protect you if the need arises."
"Ah, fine, fine." I slow down a bit, matching her pace. I must've wandered off a little while I was daydreaming.
Not that it really matters. I've never been attacked or subjected to a kidnapping attempt my entire life.
In fact, why's she even bothering to tell me this? I've had bodyguards follow me around for as long as I can remember. It's like she thinks I don't know the emergency protocols inside and out at this point, what with all the drills I had to do as a kid and everything.
I'm thinking this, and then suddenly—with a sharp rustling of a bush at Four O' Clock—hear the sound of glass breaking nearby—
"Ah!" Tsunako-san gasped and her eyes went wide, her body above the waist recoiling away from the direction of sound. "Over there!"
My body snapped into action and I instinctively jumped in front of her, spreading one of my arms back and around her, one of my unused kunai drawn in my hand.
I narrow my eyes and look forward, see a broken glass bottle next to some low-lying branch and a shuriken, and…
…No one there?
"Fufu." I hear a light, familiar laugh behind me. I turn around towards the source.
Behind me, Tsunako-san had a slipped a hand underneath her mask, covering up her mouth.
…Tch. She must've thrown the shuriken herself and acted surprised in order to gauge my reaction. Must be Shinachiku's influence at work on her.
"Yeah, yeah. I get it. I'll make sure to stay behind you if someone shows up." I get a little irritated. She had made her point.
When I take a glance back at the source of the sound, her guilty shadow clone is already cleaning up. She must've performed Kage Bunshin no Jutsu to place the bottle there and then knocked it over with a shuriken right after chastising me. That's not very advanced in itself, but she was able to predict what my reaction would be and do all of it without me noticing.
"I know. You're normally very careful, but deep down you have this really hotheaded side to you like the rest of your family does." She smiled, just a bit visibly through the gap between her face and the mask. "You're a good person, Minato-kun."
A girl's smile can mean a lot of things, depending on the context. I think I'll take it as a 'big sister-little brother' kind of thing in this case.
I suppose I should be thankful I have someone so devoted to our family watching out for us. If someone were to kidnap or kill Dad (hint: impossible), we'd just get a new Hokage and life in the village would go on more or less the same. But if they were to kidnap one of the Hokage's children and hold them hostage, well, we'd suddenly have a much worse crisis on our hands.
Besides, with my current 'defect', I wouldn't be able to do much against someone trying to attack me. It's necessary for me to be protected, much as I hate to admit it.
Not that I can remember anyone ever trying to kidnap me. Pretty much everyone in the known world loves Dad thanks to what he did during the War, but I guess the potential risk warrants having someone follow me around all the time.
As for how capable she'd be in that situation…well, we can test that right now!
"Hey, Miss Special Ops Lady." I get her attention. "If you're done teasing me, could you help with something? …Here, hold this." I hand her one of the palm-sized balloons that Dad gave me to train with.
"Hm?" She holds the balloon delicately between her fingertips. "This?"
"Yeah, but hold it out and away from your body with one hand. Try to focus your chakra and spin it into a sphere like Nii-san does."
"Like Shina-kun?" She repeats and then tries to replicate the jutsu, closing her eyes and focusing her chakra.
The balloon in her hand rips from the inside, and scatters to a thousand shreds. It's replaced—for a single second—by a spinning ball of vibrantly blue chakra that disappears as quickly as it appears. An incomplete version of the A-ranked ninjutsu.
'Normal' girls are not to be pushed around, apparently.
"That's pretty amazing. You've never trained it before, and you can skip right past steps 1&2 and move right on to the containment part at step 3. You're already better at this than I am." I remark the honest truth.
"Oh, no, no, no, no, no…" She puts both of her hands up and waves them in rejection, trying to maintain her modesty. "I can only do this much because of several years of chakra control training on my part. I would need to train for at least six months to refine the shape manipulation aspect well enough to learn the next part, let alone try to inject my chakra nature in the part after that. I'm not nearly as amazing as your family is at it."
She rambles on about how she's not that great, but it's pretty easy to see through her words.
Not that I should be surprised or anything. Prewar and War Era Anbu used to have a reputation for getting stomped on by the conga line of increasingly powerful villains that kept popping up, but Postwar Anbu is a bit different. Thanks to some backroom conspiracy with some organization named after a tree or something, Dad retired all of the old guard when he took office and hard-capped Anbu membership at an even 40 members in total. Ten squads of four, headed by nine Squad Captains and one Anbu Commander. This gave the Hokage more direct oversight, and increased the average skill of those who were able to grab one of those now highly-competitive spots. The folks wearing the animal masks today are no joke.
…If I needed to, how would I beat someone like that?
I looked down at the shredded remainder of the balloon on the ground.
This is how the technique has always been handed down. From my Dad down to me, down to my Dad from the Toad Sage, and up to him from my own namesake. If I never learn it, I'll never be able to pass it down myself.
I've been trying to master the Rasengan for eight years now. I've been stuck on the final phase for seven.
My brother mastered it after a year's worth of training when he was nine. My Dad mastered the stage I'm on in exactly one week when he was twelve. I think my little sister is getting close too.
I had turned sixteen earlier this year.
"Haaaa…"
I closed my eyes, shrugged, put up my palms up to the sky and parallel to the ground—and sighed with a little grin.
"Hm?" Tsunako looked over at me while we kept walking forward.
"Nothing." I replied as I hooked my fingers back together and rested my head back against my hands. "This high level stuff's just not my forte."
Well, no use in having an inferiority complex and getting depressed about it. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, after all.
I gaze up at that distant, sleepy sky—its warm orange watching over the world. Some kids were playing in the adjacent neighborhood, their laughter carried in a wind that was too weak to be of a storm, too strong to be lonely. This peaceful world, the one that generations of hard work had afforded, kept moving at its own pace.
…Everything felt just like it should be.