First of all I'm BACK :) and I'm sorry, Më fal!, 对不起, Undskyld!, Het spijt me!, Anteeksi, Entschuldigung!, Maaf!, ごめんなさい! (gomen nasai), Piedod!, Beklager, ਖਿਮਾ/ਮਾਫ਼ ਕਰੋ ਜੀ।, Perdone, Özür dilerim, Ndicela uxolo, Sorry and few more.
Please enjoy!
The main income of the Shitamura village came from the travelers that passed through the village on their way to and from a bigger town that lay half a days walk from here. Most travelers stayed the night and continued on their journey the following day. The main street was buzzing with people and the shop owners were fighting between each other to attract the most customers into their respective establishment.
Just behind the city, right by the main road was the small Bed and Breakfast that used to be the home of the old lady, Kashikoi Ryoori and her husband. What was left of it anyways. All that was left of the main building was the stone base and the few blackened pillars that the fire didn't fully eat-up. Right next to it was a small garden that seemed to be taken care of by someone. There under an old willow tree was the final resting place of Ayako's grandfather. They were told by the villagers that is where he wanted to be buried. As for the guest that died in the fire too, they didn't know where he was from or if he had a family so they buried him next her husband.
The sounds of the wind blowing through the leaves and the chatter of travelers was only disturbed by a sound of a shovel hitting the ground repeatedly, although the passerby's seemed to be oblivious to this little disturbance.
Sakura stopped scribbling into her notebook and once again shivered at the thought of examining the dug up bodies.
"Sakura, concentrate." Kakashi warned Sakura when he noticed one little girl looking their way.
"Right, sorry." She replied and once again went back to concentrating on her current task; keeping up a genjutsu to ward off the curious looks of townsfolk and passerby's while Kakashi dug up the bodies.
He was halfway done when Sakura's concentration wavered again while she was scribbling in her notebook.
"If you can't concentrate we can switch, Sakura. Or maybe it would be easier for you if you would stop scribbling in that book of yours."
Sakura's back straightened in that instant and she closed the notebook with a snap without looking back at Kakashi.
"I'm not going near those… bodies." A slight shiver went up her spine when a memory of a particularly rotten cadaver she had on the table flashed before her eyes.
"We might need your medic's insight to be certain of the cause of death. And don't worry these bodies will be nice and crispy from the fire." The smile was hard to miss in his voice.
She knew he had that stupid smirk on his face with his eyes crinkled when he said that, but once she imagined those bodies with no rotting flesh, she actually felt better and even contemplated for a second she would really look at them.
"Tell me again why one of our best medics isn't able to look at dead bodies?" Kakashi tried to get more information out of her.
"It's not the recently dead bodies. It's the rotting ones that freak me out. Have you ever seen half decomposed body that had to be identified? Or searched for injuries so one could determine the cause of death?"
"Sure, happened few times that I had to identify a long lost and dead team mate. That is still nothing compared to what I once found in my fridge after a particularly long mission." This time it was Kakashi's skin that sprouted goose bumps. "I swear it said hello."
He quickly resumed the digging so he could push back the memory of that thing although he had to smile as he remembered as he gave it as a mission to Tenzo to 'tame' the fridge THING. That is when he started to have that scary face. Since then he refused to go near Kakashi's house.
Meanwhile Sakura once again let her mind traveled and she opened her notebook quickly to scribble few thoughts in it when she realized that there were no more sounds of shoveling and a certain man was looming behind her and looking over her shoulder.
She turned around with a frown on her face as she pulled her notebook to her breast as a mother would do with a child.
"What is it with you and that notebook?" Kakashi asked while getting the dirt off his clothes as best as he could. If he looked a bit sooner away he might have missed the flash of emotions on Sakura's face. It was just an instant, a millisecond when she dropped her façade that he didn't even know she was carrying. The hurt and sadness in her eyes startled Kakashi. Through all the years he has known her she was like an open book, keeping her feelings out in the open. That just wasn't Sakura, to keep emotions bottled up behind a mask of 'normal'.
She put the notebook in her hip pouch and tried her best not to look near the site where the bodies were.
"So, what did you find?" She asked when Kakashi kept silent.
"Two bodies." He replied.
Sakura looked nervously around and when he didn't reply she looked him in the eye with a raised brow that indicated he should continue.
"That's all I can tell. Two sets of bones. It's hard to tell anything else."
Sakura was in the middle of the motion of shaking her head when she realized what he said. Bones. That means no flesh.
Sakura worked up her courage, and calmed down her stomach and looked the way where the bodies lay in the ground.
"Bones." She said reassuringly to herself and moved closer to examine them.
She jumped into the grave and looked at them more closely, taking one of the skulls in hand and examining it closer. After about twenty minutes of inspecting different parts of the bodies she crawled up from the graves.
"So what it is you were looking for? As far as I can tell they are both males and both died in the fire. Or better said they didn't suffer any external damage that would lead to their death. At least nothing is visible on the bones other than fire. "
"Are you sure they are both male?" Kakashi asked, he had to be certain.
"Yes, I am sure. The bones don't lie. You are suspecting the old lady has something to do with this?"
"Hm. Probably not. I just wanted to make sure." Kakashi still had his thinking face. You could almost see the wheels turning in his head. Even though his suspicions were not confirmed he is already trying to put the pieces together, but they just don't fit. Something is still missing in this puzzle.
The copy-nin sat down where Sakura was sitting before and leisurely stretched his arms, very much like a cat would do before doing little circles around the place where it wants to nap. Lying down on the ground and closing his eyes he yawned.
"What are you doing?" Sakura looked at him with a suspicion of what would be his answer.
"Why, I am keeping up a genjutsu so you are not seen burying back the bodies. So don't disturb me as I need to concentrate. "
Clenching her fists she had to remind herself not to kill her ex-sensei. Sakura kept repeating her little mantra 'Don't kill Kakashi, you are too young and too pretty to be in jail' as she moved the dug up earth to cover up the bodies.
Running around woods was always a good way to burn some calories and she had a lot of them from all the food she was eating these past few days. It was starting to show on her belly so couple hundred sit ups to finish her little work out had made her all sweaty. She was stretching by a fallen down tree just outside the ryokan to relieve her hardening muscles. The day wasn't the warmest and a cold wind flew past the blond kunoichi that made her shiver.
Making her way back to her room an idea sparked in her blond head. She would go to the hotels hot springs to soak in the hot water and relax her tired muscles and just maybe, of course by mistake, walk in by accident on the innocently bathing Sabaku. As her devilish grin spread on her face and resolution shined in her eyes she went to her room to change into a loose yukata and nothing else and went on to stalk her unsuspecting victim.
Looking in the common places where Sabaku is usually seen she had to resolve to her ninja skills to track him down as he was nowhere to be seen. As if he was hiding. Walking around the ryokan for an hour still not finding him she ventured in the private parts of the ryokan and as she passed by a not fully closed screen she glimpsed something that made her take few steps back to see in the room again. She thought she saw a needle in the old lady's hand sewing something on her face near the hairline on her forehead.
Once she took few steps back and had a better look she saw the old lady, Kashikoi fiddling with her hair. Better said her fake hair as she seemed to have a wig. Ino just shook her head at the image she thought she saw. Who in their right mind would sew their own forehead, especially an old lady? She was just sewing her wig, right? She wasn't sewing it to her forehead, right?
Not really daring to see more she went back to her search for some piece of her evading cook. That made her think of the delicious food and that made her think of the diner tonight and if Kakashi and Sakura will show up, because if not there will be more left for her and that would mean more running to burn out the calories. So in the end instead of a nice hot bath she went for another run that day.
I know and as I said up there I'M SORRY for not posting sooner. With the new job and new life I didn't have as much free time as I wanted :( and especially to find some quiet time to think or write. But don't worry, the updates should be coming more often now and I will finish this! You can count on that!
Anyways, thank you for staying with the story so far and thank you for reading and I would love it if you left some thoughts behind in a review :)