Chapter 6
That night I had a strange dream. I dreamt that I was running. Running behind Kakashi. He was walking only a few meters in front of me, but no matter how fast I ran, I could not reach him, not even when stretching out my hand to touch him. I called his name more than once, but he never noticed, just kept on walking. Running on the spot - that was all I could do.
Suddenly, I was in a whole other place. I stood in front of a naked tree – a naked apple tree, to be exact. It was flourishing right before my eyes and both green and red apples came to light. A man then appeared from behind the tree, but it was not just any man. It was me.
He then stepped closer to me and asked if I was hungry. My stomach rumbled. Yes, I was starving, but the hunger came so sudden. I was not hungry just a few seconds ago.
Without putting any further thoughts into it, I nodded to the familiar looking man. He put on a grin, which made me rather uncomfortable, and said that I could have one of his apples if I wanted to, the only price being that he had to watch me while I was eating it.
My stomach called for attention again and I accepted his offer.
"There's a catch, though," he leered and plucked one red and one green apple from the tree before continuing, "One of these apples will make you able to never have to eat again while the other one will kill you, slowly," the apples were lying in his palms that were held flat. I studied both apples and thought that maybe I would be able to figure out which one was the bad apple, but they were completely identical. Only the color of them were different.
"I'll take the red one," I said and took the red apple from his hand. The hunger was making me crazy and the apple looked so good that I took a bite without hesitating. It tasted delicious, much better than I had expected. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tasty substance that rubbed against my taste buds.
"You can't always be lucky," the man who looked like me snickered and watched me eat.
What he said made no sense to me and I just sat down under the beautiful apple tree, happily wolfing down the juicy apple. When I was done with it, I threw the core over my shoulder. Then I heard a weird sound. I looked up and saw that the tree began to shake the leafs and apples off of its branches. I closed my eyes and covered my head with my arms so I would not get hit by one of the apples.
Everything went silent.
I looked up from my protective position. There were apples everywhere, but something was different now. All the green apples were still green, but the red apples were now red with black and yellow spots on it. The man in front of me laughed.
Then my stomach began to hurt.
I did not know what that dream was all about, but I remembered feeling frustrated when I woke up from it in the morning. While helping Kakashi out on his second day at work, I imagined the dream in my head over and over again, trying to figure out what my mind was trying to tell me, but I never found an answer.
"You want one?" My attention turned to Kakashi, who was holding out a cigarette in front of me.
"What?" I asked, not sure what had happened while I had been rummaging through my own head.
"I'm going on a smoking break and I was just asking you if you wanted to join me?" it looked like he did not mind repeating himself.
"Ohm," I looked around in confusion. Was he really asking me if I wanted to go and smoke with him? Was it not only friends that did that? I had a weird feeling in my gut, should I go or should I not? I mean, I had never had a smoke in my entire life and I hated the smell of the poisonous fumes. But how could I possibly pass up an opportunity like this? "Sure, I was on my way out anyway," I lied and walked outside with him.
He gave me a cigarette and handed me the lighter. I almost did not know what to do with it, but I was not a complete idiot and managed to stick the unhealthy, tobacco filled smoke into my mouth and light it up. When I took the first drag of it, I only kept the smoke in my mouth, not daring to inhale it. If I held it back long enough, then maybe he would not notice? I was wrong because when I was out of breath, he gave me a funny look when the smoke came out again. Okay, so he was able to see that I had not inhaled it, which meant I had to do it.
As Kakashi searched the pack for a cigarette for himself, I took a long drag and tried to inhale it. Already from the first second the smoke rolled over my tongue and down my throat, I felt it; the scratchy feeling in my throat was unbearable. I had never tried anything as uncomfortable as this.
I did my best to keep inhaling, but failed and had to cough it all up. If Kakashi could not see now that I was not used to smoking, then he had to be blind. It was so obvious that I had no clue of what I was doing and that my throat was a virgin when it came to this.
I felt like scratching my throat, but that was not going to be possible, of course. The only thing I could do was keep coughing, even though I did not do it purposely. My eyes began to fill with water and I had to bend forward and place my palms on my thighs, the cigarette pointing away from my body, because of the pain in my throat and now my stomach too.
"Ohm, are you okay?" Kakashi asked. Luckily, I did not have to see which kind of face he was making because the only thing I was able to see through my glossy eyes were his feet.
"Yes," I managed to say, but had to cough a few times more before I could continue, "I'm fine," my throat felt soar and my voice sounded hoarse. This had been a bad idea from the very beginning.
"Are you sure?" I was finally getting over my cough attack and stood up straight with difficulty.
"Sure," I coughed, "this happens quite often to me. I guess I smoke too much," liar, liar, liar! What kind of idiot would believe that? What was I thinking?
"Oh, well that's a pain," Kakashi chuckled and turned his back towards me so that I could not see his face. That was when I realized something. He was going to take off his mask! But with his back turned against me I would not be able to see it.
I heard the wheel of the lighter being turned and fire crackling. His mask had to be off now, but he had turned around and I could not possibly get myself to step in front of him and look, could I? No, he had turned for a reason and I had to respect his wish of not being seen. After all, there had to be some logical explanation for it. If he was embarrassed about something, I was not going to make him even more embarrassed by looking at it. Instead, I turned my back against his back and leaned one of my shoulders up against the cold brick wall of the supermarket. Looking at it from the bright side, now I did not have to try and inhale anymore.
A silent atmosphere had swapped around us. I had been so happy when he had asked me to join him that I had not even wondered how it was going to be like. Maybe he wanted his companion to be silent? Or was he in fact waiting for me to say something? I did not dare and took a drag of the cigarette and blew the smoke out immediately. That poison was not going to touch my lungs ever again.
"So," I was surprised to hear him break the silence, "For how long have you been working here?" I wanted to look over my shoulder, but forced myself not to. It was definitely going to be weird to have a conversation when standing back to back.
"Since I was 15, so that's 10 years."
"10 years?" I did not even get to think one single thought before he had burst out like that, "Wow, that's a long time. Didn't you ever consider finding something else?" I racked my brain to try and remember if I had actually had any future dreams for myself sometime in the past.
I could only come up with one thing.
"I guess, but after graduating I didn't really feel like finding something else," he was right. 10 years was a long time to work at the same place. Especially if you had been 15 when you first started. I had had a dream for myself once, but I never really felt like leaving the village.
It was a pretty small village, not the smallest, but small. I had dreamt of going to Tokyo and become an auditor or something else that had to do with numbers. I did not like to credit myself, but I was actually pretty good in school and had gotten good grades and scored high on the various tests we had taken. One of my teachers told me to apply for a scholarship so that I would be able to pay for further education, but I never did, and the only reason why was because I was afraid I could not handle the pressure. So, I had ended up staying in the village and kept my old job, since it was one of the best paid jobs in town when you did not have a real education – even though it was minimum wage.
The conversation died out and the silence fell around us once again, but now it was even more uncomfortable than before because it seemed like both of us would actually rather talk then stay silent. So I asked him something, even though I did not like being the one of us to speak first.
"Why did you choose to work here?" I heard Kakashi moving behind me and I could not stop myself from glancing over my shoulder. He had squatted down.
"I didn't have a choice, really. When I moved to this village around one and a half year ago, I actually came here because of my job. But then I was fired just recently and I needed money to pay rent, so, you know the rest," he sounded so relaxed and carefree, but if I had to take a wild guess, his lack of concern around this subject was only a façade. Was this why he had begun smoking more than he usually did?
"Oh, okay," I answered and thought that in a way it was actually nice to just stand outside and talk with him.
"Well, I'm done," he said and stood beside me with his mask back on in no time. He threw the fag end away.
"Me too," I did the same thing with my cigarette, only difference was that I had not smoked the whole thing yet.
"So, what should we do next, Iruka-san?" my sight shot right up at him and I stared for a few seconds without saying anything.
"H-how do you know my name?" I did not remember telling him.
He chuckled, probably because of my reaction, and pointed at the left side of my chest, "Name badge," Kami, did I feel stupid now?
He winked at me before beginning to walk inside the shop with me following suit, "Besides, Tenzou has used your name before, don't you remember?" Now that he mentioned it, I did actually remember the boss using my name in his presence, but I never imagined that he would notice or remember, for that matter. I guess you can not always judge the book by its cover.
"I'm going to show you how the cash register works," I said, pretending like I had never asked him that other question.
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That's all for now - hopefully that was enough to satisfy you for a while^^
A huge thanks to the people that review this story, it is your fault that I would rather write another chapter than do my homework (shame on you!)
I also wanna thank all the other people who is reading this story and putting it on alert and on their list of favorites :D!..
I'll update again asap, though I have no clue when that will be, but hopefully before the week is over.. It actually just depends on when I'm done with my two assignments :)
Until then, see ya' all and please review – a review only makes the chapters come faster since they inspire me so much and make me so overwhelmingly happy!
Bye :D!