Chapter Two: The Marks of Destiny
Every morning for the next week I woke with searing pain in my arms and legs, like someone had run over my skin with a hot iron while I slept. In addition, halfway through the week I started to get giant hives on the sides of my neck which grew larger every day. When I scratched them, they bled and only became itchier. I put medicinal creams on them with the delusional hope that it would have an effect and tied a scarf around my neck (despite the warm summer weather) in an attempt to deter the scratching. As the days progressed, nothing could distract me from the burning sensation on my skin. I messed up so many orders at the restaurant that my parents had to ask me to leave; I was more of a hindrance than a help. I was no more focused for my private lessons.
"No." Genma-sensei easily caught the kunai I threw at him; he didn't even have to look. "You had this months ago. Why can't you do it now?"
Genma-sensei didn't understand what an "off day" was. He graduated from the Academy when he was only ten, and he was only a year older than me when he was promoted to Chuunin. Now he was an elite Jounin—one of the Hokage's special guards. It was lucky that my parents' restaurant was his favorite in town, otherwise I never would have gotten him as my sensei.
I dropped down from the tree where I had been hiding and yanked at the scarf around my neck. Just like my face, it was soaked with sweat. The salt made my hives burn, and it took everything I had not to dig my nails into them.
"Sorry, Genma-sensei." I bowed deeply to him and didn't straighten until I sensed him looming over me. He considered me for a few minutes, saying nothing but chewing on his senbon.
"If you continue to perform like this, won't graduate from the Academy this year." He paused to move the senbon around his mouth. I felt sweat beading up on my brow. Genma-sensei never lost his calm, which made him even scarier to me. Sometimes I imagined him in combat—a complete professional, completely void of emotion and so all the more ruthless. It gave me chills. Now I could see the disappointment in his eyes, and it was even more petrifying. "A week ago, I would have said you were ready to be a Genin now."
Those words both filled me with joy and crushed me with despair. I had to get this situation resolved so I could prove to Genma-sensei that I was read to be a Genin. "I'm sorry, Sensei. I haven't been able to concentrate because—"
"A shinobi must be able to concentrate under the most strenuous conditions. It is life or death out there. Whatever is distracting you has to be able to be pushed aside, or else you compromise the mission."
"I know. It's just—" I removed the scarf. "For the past week I have had constant discomfort. Maybe you will know what I can do about it. See?" I indicated the sides of my neck, each featuring a hive about the size of a ryo coin. He glanced at the hives but his eyes caught on my arms. His hand shot out and grabbed my wrist, roughly turning my arm so the inside faced up.
"What happened?" he demanded.
At first, I didn't know what he was talking about. My arms had been burning, but I hadn't noticed any visual evidence of there being something wrong. When I looked down, I noticed my palms and forearms were bright red and delicate, as if several layers of my skin had been rubbed off. Leathery brown blisters wound around my arms; I had to choke back the urge to vomit. But I was curious: had the same thing happened to my legs. I knelt down and removed my sandals and ankle weights. Just as I feared, the tops of my feet and my ankles had gotten blisters, though they had been successfully squashed, leaving behind their unwanted remnants.
"What. Happened?" Genma-sensei repeated.
"I—I don't know! For the past week I have had all of this and…"
"Has anything strange happened recently?"
"No. Well…yes. This woman came to my house a week ago. I don't know her. I've never seen her before in my life. But she gave me some sort of prophecy." Sensei's eyes narrowed. Afraid he thought I was leaving out information, I added, "I didn't read it! I have no idea what it says, really."
He frowned. "If this has something to do with a prophecy, I don't think there is anything medicine can do. But we can give it a try. Come on, we're done for the day."
Genma-san had been my sensei for nearly three years, but I had never been to his house before, though he had been to mine. It had always seemed off limits—like a breach of our relationship. That's why I was surprised when he led me to his apartment. It was an innocuous building in downtown. His room was small, clean, and barely lived in. Blank walls, bland furniture…it could have belonged to anyone. I felt something deflate inside of me; I guess part of me had thought that his apartment would be some mystical shrine to his personal life, and if I ever saw it I would really know him.
"Take a seat," Genma-sensei said, gesturing towards the couch. I perched on the edge of my seat while he disappeared into the bathroom, scrounging up medical supplies. I scanned the room, hoping to find something unquestionably his. No books laying about, no decorations on the wall, no photogra—
And there it was: a photograph, framed and sitting on the windowsill.
I quickly looked towards the bathroom to see if he was still gathering supplies in there. Even though he had brought me here, I still felt like I was trespassing. But he was my sensei. He had been in my life for so long, yet he was still such a mystery to me. I just wanted to know him a little better. So I picked up the picture frame.
First I noticed an unfamiliar man: tan skin, dark hair, and a chin strap beard. A lit cigarette was in his mouth, but he was half smiling. In the middle was a young woman I had never seen, either. Her auburn hair was in a bun on top of her head and her silver eyes glistened with the biggest smile as she stared directly at the camera. Her arms were thrown around the two men on either side of her as she pulled them close to her. Genma-sensei stood on the left, but I almost didn't recognize him. The senbon was missing from his mouth and he was smiling—really smiling, not smirking like I had seen him do so often before—as he looked at the woman through his peripherals. I was so entranced by the photo that I didn't notice Genma-sensei return from the bathroom. Silently, he removed the frame from my hands and placed it back on the window sill.
"Take a seat," he said. "Let's dress up these wounds."
"I didn't know you had medical training," I said as I backed up to the couch. I glanced at his face and bit my lip; was he upset with me? It was impossible to tell, his face was as passive as ever.
"Well I'm certainly no medical nin, but I think I can bandage someone." He smirked. "Every shinobi receives a certain level of medical training. I'm not one to teach it, though. You'll get that at the Academy." He opened a jar of aloe. "Arm." I thrust my arm out and he began to spread the gel on my blisters. I exhaled in relief at how cold it felt. "Speaking of the Academy, you start tomorrow."
"Yeah." I watched as he wrapped my first arm with cotton gauze. He ripped the strip from the roll with his teeth. "I'm sort of nervous," I confessed.
He cocked an eyebrow. I wasn't sure if it was from the unexpected turn of the conversation (he and I were not prone to heart-to-hearts) or from a lack of understanding where I was coming from.
"I won't know anyone. This class…they have all been together for so many years, and I'm just starting there."
"Well you can have all the private training in the world, but you can never become a Genin without graduating from the Academy. You'll just have to suck it up. Arm."
"No, I know that," I said, thrusting my second arm towards him. "I just think I should have gone sooner. Or that my parents should have let me. Not that I haven't loved having you as a sensei." I smiled down at him, but he didn't look up. "I just think that no matter what team I end up on, I am going to be the odd man out."
"It isn't about making friends. You just have to be able to work together." He ripped off the gauze and tied it up. "Take off your sandals….And the weights."
"That picture…" I began tentatively. I noticed his arms stiffen and he almost dropped the jar of aloe. I decided against completing the question, but he glanced up at me expectantly. "Was that your team?"
"My team?" He chuckled. "No. Those are just…friends….I met them at the Academy."
"Were you friends with your team?"
"Might Guy and Ebisu? No, not really. But we respected each other and we worked well together, and that was what was important. I had my friends elsewhere, and that was fine." He tied off the gauze and released my legs. "And you'll be fine, too."
"I just have to stay focused. Remember why I am there."
"That's what I've always taught you. Here, put some on your neck." Sensei handed me the aloe then walked off to the kitchen. I did as he instructed and reflected on what he said. I was going to the Academy so I could be a Genin, and then that would be my life. I looked around his empty apartment again. He didn't have time to be anything other than a shinobi. All he had was a photo of a couple friends…friends who weren't his team, but were from the Academy nonetheless. I had a few friends of my own in Konoha….well, only one really remaining. Emi. I had met her when I moved to Konohagakure years ago, and she initiated me into her group of friends. But as my training progressed, they slowly fell away. So now it was just Emi.
The shinobi life is all encompassing…how long until I lose her, too? I need to make friends there. I can't go through this life alone with no one who understands.
"Here. Have some tea," Genma-sensei said, carefully handing me a teacup. He sat down at the other end of the couch. "So earlier you said that a prophecy was brought to you?" I nodded. "And the next morning all of this started?"
"Yes, that is how it happened."
"You think they are connected, don't you?"
"I guess. I don't really know what to think. I don't know anything about prophecies…I haven't really heard of any before. And I don't know the specifics of this one. I don't want to know."
"I understand. Knowing the future could be a burden. I would probably make the same decision. But I'm afraid in this case that reading it might be the only way to make this go away. They do seem intertwined…I don't think that prophecies are usually hand delivered to their subjects. They are usually background entities that the subject lives without knowledge of. When a prophecy is given to you though…" He shook his head and took a swig of tea. "Maybe you need to know."
"I don't…"
"Maybe I'm wrong. Tell me what this woman said."
I gripped the sides of my tea cup as I recalled that night. "Not much. She said that it was my fate set in stone at my birth. They had been waiting to give it to me, and now I'm ready? She…I think she touched my forehead then and said there was no escaping."
Genma-sensei set his teacup aside and replaced the senbon in his mouth. "She touched your forehead? Sounds like she was stamping you as some sort of…confirmation of delivery. She didn't stick around to see you read it, so I think that somehow that stamp has caused this as a precaution to stir you into reading it if you didn't do it on your own." He shrugged then and shook his head. "That's what I think, anyway."
"Won't knowing change me though? Won't it get in the way?"
He shrugged again. "It could. But what is the alternative? You can't go on like this—you can barely concentrate, and it is just going to get worse. You'll never become a Genin. But it's your choice. Your future may be predestined, but you get to decide on this." He must have seen the panic set into my face, because he released a small chuckle. "It won't be the only decision you get to make. Prophecies…they have more wiggle room than you would think."
I swallowed the last of my tea and just sat there, giving myself time to process everything he had said. "How do you know so much about this?"
"It's just an area of interest. I do some reading here and there in my spare time." He looked out the window and stood. "It's getting late. You should be heading home. Let me take that." He took the tea cup from my hands. I busied myself with putting my weights and sandals back on while he took the dishes to the kitchen. I took another look at the photograph with my smiling sensei and his friends then glanced back towards the kitchen. Somehow, in this empty apartment, I found parts of my sensei I hadn't known existed before. I had always respected him and cared for him, but knowing him deepened both these feelings.
Genma-sensei met me at the door and held it open for me. "Starting tomorrow, I won't be your sensei anymore."
I hadn't thought of that before, but it made sense. I would be under someone else's tutelage, so I wouldn't need him anymore. I had grown so used to working with him, I guess I had hoped that he could somehow be my sensei forever. At that moment, when I felt so sad to let him go, I felt the seed of a new hope take root: that he would be in charge of my team when I graduated. Realistically, I knew that couldn't happen. As a Tokubetsu Jounin and an elite bodyguard for the Hokage, he was neither qualified nor available to be in charge of a team. A team instructor needed well-rounded training to pass onto his subordinates, but his was more specialized. He was only able to train me in his spare time and out of the goodness of his heart. But I still hoped. I didn't let on to any of this, though. Instead I smiled small-ly and said, "I know."
"You'll be in good hands. Iruka is a good man and a good shinobi." Genma-sensei paused, shifting the senbon around his mouth. He was notably uncomfortable, clearly unfamiliar with the situation he and I were in together. "But if you need anything….well, now you know where to find me."
"Arigato, Genma-sensei!" I beamed, bowing to him.
"Heh." He gave my shoulder a pat and then quickly withdrew. "Get home now."
My parents were still at the restaurant when I got home, and Seto was nowhere to be found either. I set about preparing dinner for myself, taking my time. I knew Genma-sensei was right: if I wanted the burning and the itching to stop, I was going to have to read that prophecy. There were two problems: One, my mother had hidden it, so I had no clue where it was. Two, I wasn't ready, and so I found myself hoping someone would come home and distract me from the task of finding it.
But the restaurant had late hours, and with my inconsistent schedule, my parents weren't about to send Seto home without any confirmation that I was there to take care of him. I finished making dinner, ate it, and cleaned up without any interruption from my family. All that was left to do then was find the prophecy.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," I mumbled. I had been so bound and determined not to have anything to do with it when Ria handed it to me, and now I was on a mission to find it. My resolve had barely lasted a week. "Where would she have put it….?" I had explicitly stated to hide it somewhere I would never find it. For all I knew, it wasn't even in the house anymore. And unless Mom had some hidden compartment somewhere in the house, there wasn't really any place I would never look.
Was there?
Where in the house did I never venture? I could only think of one room that almost fit that bill: my parents' bedroom. I stopped outside the door and peeked through the crack even though I knew no one would be in there. I forced myself to cross the threshold then surveyed the room, feeling my hopes deflating. Even if looking in this room had been an epiphany, it wasn't enough. I would probably have to tear the room apart. I didn't want to have to look through their dressers, but it seemed to be the most surmountable challenge. Besides the dressers, there were only the bookshelves which lined the walls. That would take forever.
I opened my mother's top drawer then paused….The books, of course! I had told my mother to hide the prophecy somewhere I would never find it. And where would I never, ever look? I slammed the drawer closed and rushed over the bookshelf closest to my parents' bed. They had organized their books first by genre. Closest to their bed were the books which Seto and I were not allowed to read: the raunchy novels. I only knew about them because Mother had left one sitting out once by accident and I picked it up.
I shuddered at the memory.
Bracing myself, I took the first novel from the shelf and flipped through it for any extra pages. While I did find some, they appeared to only be bookmarks—not the prophecy. I moved onto the next, and the next, tearing through them as quickly as possible. At last I landed on the infamous novel of my past: Icha Icha Paradise. I took a deep breath and flipped through the pages, but when I got to the end I was crestfallen to find that it was empty. Sighing, I went to put it back in its place. My eye caught on a square of white sitting in contrast to the blue book it sat against. I went to grab it but found it was too heavy.
"Gotcha," I whispered. Using both hands, I removed it from the shelf. I heard the door opening down the hall—someone was home. Quickly replacing the book on the shelf, I scrambled to my feet and sprinted down the hall to my bedroom. I closed the door and slid down against it.
"Here goes nothing." I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths to steady myself. Here it was, my future. It felt so heavy. What did that mean? Was it good? Bad? Gravely important? I didn't want to know, but I needed to. The aloe was wearing off. Soon the pain would be unbearable again, and I couldn't go on like that. It would be worse than a life without friends. Before I could talk myself out of it, I opened the parchment.
A butterfly born in coastal town
Will perish in the flame
Where the Leaf of most renown
First learned to love her name.
With brightened wings, this butterfly
Will penetrate the dark
And light and shadow in the sky
Forever leave their mark
But black lizard will find its prey
Both its foe and its friend
The decision will come upon this day:
To leave, or to defend?
a/n So if you are a returning reader, this chapter is COMPLETELY different from what it used to be. I really wanted to give Cho roots in the town. Before, I made her friends with people at the Academy, but the friendships were very shallow and didn't really serve a purpose. Or, in the case of her friendship with Naruto, sort of messed up his whole genesis story, so I am reworking her relationships with the people of Konoha. And I really love Genma, so I thought it would be neat to bring him in. Especially since I have a fanfic (which I don't recommend you reading. It needs MAJOR work. I am sort of in the process of fixing it), with him. I like to tie all my stories together.
So still no Shikamaru and no romance, but I am working on establishing the plot in addition to other relationships. Sorry if it is slow :x I'll try to pick up the pace. I would love to hear what you think though!
