Note : I've still got one more chapter to translate, after which I'll re-read and try to correct everything I've translated, then get back to writing the story. Enjoy your reading, sorry for the mistakes.
Chapter size : 21500 words.
Opal and Obsidian
part 7
Six months could pass in a flash, she had just learned that the hard way. If the last two years had been extremely slow, lonely, and she had many dull memories of them, the last one hundred and eighty days had been a mess, and she hadn't seen them pass. Her memory had mixed them up. Routine had made them look alike.
It had been six months since she had met the Daimyō, six months since she had returned to her hovel. Six months since she had married Kenshin Teitarō, the Second Crown Prince, and even after half a year had passed, she was still having trouble convincing herself of that.
She was married to a man she did not know. A samurai she still didn't know. That day, when she had proposed her compromise, the Governor of the region had looked at her for a long time, stared at her, before turning to the impassivity of his second son to ask him if he accepted.
She didn't understand it at the time, but she had removed a thorn from the side of that most complicated family. She had asked to marry the man who had never had a wife, who did not want one, and who did not want a child. Two problems solved for the price of one.
She had read in the eyes of the Daimyō that he didn't care who she married, as long as she gave birth to a Teitarō with the Byakugan, that was fine.
In complete silence, the Second Prince had simply nodded at his father's request, and the whispers of the court had immediately filled the room.
There had been no ceremony, no ring, no unnecessary gifts. In total secrecy, she had signed a piece of paper and returned to her occupations the next day, as she had asked.
Only three people had visited her in six months.
The first was Baiko, a merchant close to the royal family, who came to make sure she had everything she needed, made sure everything was in order, and sent a report to the capital within the hour. With each visit, the palace asked her new questions. What she wanted, what she had been doing for the last two years. How she had survived, where, with whom.
Questions she never answered, and the man had to be satisfied with that. The capital had to be satisfied with that. As she had said so well during her trial, they had everything to gain and she had nothing to lose.
She was playing with fire, she knew, but she also knew that as long as her legs remained closed, they would never dare to reproach her anything. She was much too precious.
The second one was Shikaku Nara, who had come to talk with her over a cup of hot tea two months ago. They hadn't talked long, an hour at the most, and mainly about how she planned her future, and then the former leader of the Jōnins had left, again without any answers from her.
Finally, to her surprise, the third was... the Third Crown Prince, Mitsunari, who visited her once a week.
She had befriended him during his first visit five months ago. Older than her by three years, she had quickly noticed that he was not very mature for his age, and that was fine with her. In fact, it was perfect. Having to talk to all these people who were way too old, way too mature, was wearing her down. She preferred the simple, uncomplicated things, discussions based on time and scenery.
She preferred to leave the complicated things to her mind.
Mitsunari brought her all that and something even more important: he made her laugh. A lot. This... man was a real entertainer, the complete opposite of his two older brothers.
The two elders never smiled, never laughed, at least she had never seen them do so, and she doubted that they could even make a joke. She had talked to Musashi for more than an hour the night she was in the palace, and it went without saying that he didn't like her, and he especially didn't like his little brother. The man she was married to.
Why? She didn't know, and to tell the truth, she didn't want to know.
Who cared, one of them was missing and it seemed like she would never have to ask again.
As strange as it might seem, the Second Crown Prince had literally disappeared. After the two days in the capital and his return to her house, she had not seen him again. He had not asked her why she had chosen him, or even why she had decided to marry him. He had signed the paper, looked at it for a few seconds, and left.
In six months, she had not seen him once.
Mitsunari told her that he passed by the palace like a ghost from time to time under his father's scolding, and that most of his visits were short. His presence was felt in the corridors, but no one ever saw him.
Where is he?! Does he have better things to do than make me a grandson?! This was the last question the Daimyō would have uttered in anger. The last question that echoed through the palace.
It had taken her a long time to realize it, because she had never had to do it before, but her ego had taken a blow. She, who had made the decision to marry out of spite, out of lack of a solution, but also, and although she would never admit it to herself, out of revenge, felt... strange.
Why was he doing this? What was the problem? Was she?
Though she was not full of herself, she knew she was pretty, she had been told enough on the road in two years to have it engraved in her mind. That was not the problem. She was a Hyūga, the heiress of the clan before she was kidnapped, the woman, supposedly dead, who was the most famous on the peninsula. So her blood was not the issue there either.
Was he offended that she had chosen him like a tomato in a market?
She had thought about it for hours, but nothing concrete had come to her mind. A mind she had begun to diagnose, trying to understand why. Why she had chosen him on a whim and not the First Prince.
This was the question the first Seishitsu, mother of the First and Fourth Crown Prince, had asked her, the woman who had tried to humiliate her in front of the palace.
"Why didn't you choose my son?"
This woman who had despised her when they first met had begun to respect her once she understood who she really was. The forty-year-old had not minced her words. She had made it clear that she did not understand why she had not chosen the First Crown Prince. Just by the stature she represented, the name, the history she carried, the Daimyō would have accepted any of her proposals.
He would have agreed to break the arranged marriage with the daughter of the Daimyō of one of the northern regions so that she could marry the First Prince, that was a certainty.
Why did she not choose the one who would become the governor of the region? Why anyone other than her son, why Kenshin? He would become nothing, would be nothing, was nothing.
She herself did not really know.
Although her deepest convictions had been shaken after what she had been through, she still believed in fate, and the mere fact that the Second Prince had bought her the clothes she had seen in her dream was more than enough for her to make her choice without having to think twice.
Besides, and she could not deny this either, although no one seemed to be able to compete with him, the Second Prince was, without her knowing why, pleasant to look at.
Sensei had once told her that a man who naturally intimidated a woman had a better chance of reaching her heart, her emotions, and... it seemed to be true. Once again, he was not wrong.
Maybe, subconsciously, she had chosen Kenshin for that reason. And maybe it was this part of her selfishness that made him not come to see her even once in the last few months.
Maybe not. She had stopped thinking about it a long time ago, it was wearing her down.
For several days, snow had covered the house, the clearing, and the forest. The flower field had never recovered from the Ban's visit, and the winter cold had not helped. A bitter cold from the North Sea that didn't stop her from training. For the past six months, she had done nothing but train, even when the warm weather had passed and the clouds had come, she had continued to train hard, making up for all the times her laziness had clung to her tea.
She would get up, eat the fruit and other grains that were brought to her from the capital, go for an hour, two hours, or even three hours' run in the surrounding area, sometimes as far as the border with the Sound, come back at the end of the morning, eat, exercise, sometimes - often - take a nap, exercise again, sometimes by the river, sometimes in the clearing, until late, go back to her hut when night fell, eat lightly, and go to bed.
Every day, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes her routine was disturbed when Mitsunari visited her, which was often, but she didn't resent him, quite the opposite. His coming and going was the only thing that made her smile, as well as the gifts he brought her each time.
One day, while his guards were patiently waiting for him at the bottom of the mountain, he had arrived as she was training, and when he saw her hitting a tree over and over again for more than an hour, he had worried about the fate of the poor oak that had lost almost all of its bark where she was hammering. Three days later, he returned with a carriage full of wooden dummies, each more resilient than the last, and it was truly the best gift anyone had given her in years.
The only one, in fact.
She didn't know if it was the smile or the thanks she had given him, but since that day, not a visit went by without him coming back with a present. And of course, her personal library had taken a huge leap forward, she didn't even know where to put her books anymore.
"Would you mind if I hired some carpenters to fix up this cabin? It's in bad shape, I wouldn't want the roof to fall on your head."
Standing in front of the kitchen counter, barefoot, hair down, dressed in white pants and a black t-shirt, a rag over her shoulder and busy chopping a tomato, she turned to the young man sitting in one of the chairs next to the wooden table.
"It's out of the question"
The kitchen knife she pointed at the jade irises did not have the desired effect. Instead of intimidating them, they crinkled into an amused smile.
"Every time I bring this up, you get angry, is it your lover who builds it? You can tell me, I won't tell big brother."
The sharp knife went from her hand to the kitchen table with a thud, and this time, it went without saying that the jade pupils were intimidated. So intimidated that their owner fell backwards on his chair with a howl of terror, and got up as fast as one could say mad.
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"
In a reflex, he kneaded his face, in particular his cheeks, and she addressed to him a falsely joyful smile.
"My so beautiful face, is it ok? Tell me that it does not have anything please..."
And a very calm tone.
"Your face is as beautiful as ever, Your Royal Highness... and if you want it to stay that way, please don't talk about touching that wood anymore, OK?"
In a cartoonish gesture, his arms along his body, he bent his spine in fear... several times.
"Yes, madam, at your command, madam, I will do it, madam."
She laughed and he did the same as he stood up one last time. He picked up the chair to put it back in its place and, leaning on the wooden back, finally watched her with a sigh.
"How do you go from adorable princess to bloodthirsty psychopath? Every time I blink, I'm afraid to see your evil double."
With a light, calm step, she approached the table and retrieved the knife with a sharp blow before smiling broadly.
"Could you repeat that, Your Highness?"
The eyebrows in front of her suddenly frowned, making her smile.
What kind of nonsense was he going to say this time?
"Hey, you cheeky girl, I'm your elder, I remind you, you owe me respect! I am the Third Crown Prince Mitsunari Teitarō, you should get down on your knees every time you want to talk to me, but in my extraordinary goodness and incredible kindness, I accept that you stand, so please be a little less condescending when you talk to me, OK?"
The smile on her face faded. She remained silent, and the only gesture she made was simple but effective: she lowered her forearm and turned the handle of the knife to press the blade against her wrist, ready to use it as a weapon.
It only took a second for the reaction on the other side of the table to be felt and a sorry look as well as several backward bows to appear.
"Sorry Madam, it won't happen again Madam."
She began to laugh again, and he followed her in her mirth.
She loved him. She really did. Even though there were three years between them and she didn't have them to her advantage, she really felt like she was in a big sister/little brother relationship. A relationship that was a little different than the one she would like to have.
The sun's rays flashed through the kitchen window and inevitably caught her opaline attention. In an instant, she lost her joy as well as her good mood. Her heart began to beat in a strange way and the pressure she felt was disturbing.
The wood of the porch creaked under the weight of the newcomer, and Mitsunari's smile immediately faded. They followed the footsteps to the door, and the three knocks echoed in the hovel.
Suddenly, the Third Prince frowned and went to the entrance.
"How many times have I told you not to come here, it's not complicated, you have to stay inside..."
Thinking he was facing his guards for the umpteenth time, he opened the door and the inky black gaze he met stopped him in his tracks.
Just like her.
"B-Big Brother?"
The silence was such that she could hear the flapping of wings on the other side of the clearing.
Dressed in his usual dark attire, but this time covered by a gray cloak and a straw headdress dotted with snowflakes, the Second Crown Prince shifted his attention from his younger brother to her, standing still at the kitchen table, weapon in hand.
She pulled the knife down behind her back, which from the outside could only raise more suspicion.
They both watched each other for a few seconds and Mitsunari, embarrassed and caught in the middle, immediately raised his hands.
"I forgot I had an appointment of the highest importance, I'm leaving right now."
He took a step outside, and just then she remembered something she wanted to ask him.
"Wait!"
Putting the knife down on the table, she looked away from the black irises to approach the front door, both hands clasped around her pelvis, a face as embarrassed as the Third Prince's.
"When are you coming back?"
"I... I don't know, why? Do you miss me, Hina-chan?"
She smiled at the nickname.
"Could you get me some colored markers? I need them, please."
He seemed to want to ask her why, but with a glance at the gray cloak behind his back, he simply nodded before venturing out.
"All right, I'll bring them later. See you later, Hina-chan, see you later, ghost."
Mitsunari put both hands behind her skull under the movements of her beige kimono and left without waiting for an answer from the ghost, leaving her alone with him. The sounds of footsteps now at the other end of the path, she finally decided to watch the Second Crown Prince once again at his doorstep, who for his part had not stopped watching her.
She offered him a shy smile, and her grin quickly faded in front of his impassive face. With a wave of her hand, she indicated the inside of the hut before stepping back to the counter.
"You may enter."
Retrieving the knife, she turned toward the kitchen and heard him enter the house. The door closed and, a little embarrassed but not knowing why, she began to slowly cut her tomato. Very slowly.
It was as if her mind was focused on some other task.
"Are you hungry? I prepared a meal for Mitsunari and me, but since he left..."
"I already ate, thanks."
She suddenly stopped cutting and turned her head slightly toward the living room. She looked at the back of the Second Prince, headdress in hand, who was busy observing the interior decoration. The annoyance did not take long to overcome her.
Had he no courtesy? The least he could have done was to accept... or was she too complacent?
She started to slice the tomato again, and the blow she gave echoed throughout the house.
"Fine."
When she was done, she approached the sink and activated the seal that surrounded the faucet. The water flowed out and she began to clean the knife.
"Wasn't there a third person here?"
The question echoed between the four wooden walls and her obsidian eyebrows furrowed relentlessly. She set the knife on the counter and took the cloth from her shoulder to wipe her hands.
"No, it was just the two of us, why?"
When she turned around after her question, she was surprised to see him right behind the kitchen table, focused on her person.
"I sensed a third person when I got to the bottom of the mountain."
Her eyebrows naturally relaxed as she was so taken aback by what she had just heard.
"Perhaps that person was on the other side of the mountain? There is a path that many merchants use this time of year, with the snow most of the paths are blocked..."
"No, that person was here, inside."
A shiver ran down her spine.
It was... frighteningly precise.
The base of the mountain was two kilometers away... did he mean that he had sensed the exact position of someone just a few meters away from them? Someone had been here, and she had not seen him? No way.
"I assure you, there was no one there."
Despite her explanation, he didn't seem to believe her, and she could understand that. Not being a sensory, only being able to feel chakra at close range and relying on her eyes to see far away, she could only imagine that he knew what he had felt, but... there really hadn't been anyone here but her and Mitsunari.
"You seem close to my brother."
The subject literally just disappeared. Without her knowing why, he... didn't seem to care about the problem at all. But she didn't mind. Maybe he had realized that he had made a mistake and did not dare to admit it.
"Yes, he is very nice to me."
He nodded quietly and began to observe the room, which reminded her of a judgment she had made about him seconds before, making her the most hypocritical person in the room. At least of the people she knew were in the room.
"Please sit down."
He thanked her again with a nod and pulled out the chair to sit down. He placed his headgear on the table and removed his cloak to place it on the back of the chair, then began to watch her again, very... intensely? Which had no other effect than to make her uncomfortable, and not liking that feeling, she asked the first question that came to her mind.
A question that could reveal a lot about her thoughts.
"Where have you been for the past six months?
As he continued to watch her, he crossed his arms.
"I was in Taki, at the Waterfalls."
His second question was not long in coming.
"What were you doing there?"
"An important person disappeared seven months ago, I was looking for that person."
She wanted to ask him why, but a possible answer came to her mind and the question vanished as quickly as it had come.
The Waterfalls were not known to have any allies within the peninsula - maybe Earth, and that again depended on the circumstances - so if they wanted to search the neighboring lands of Fire, Grass and Iron, it was only natural to seek help from the only one of the three that Taki was not an enemy of. And as far as she knew, the man in front of her was an excellent nin... sensory samurai, perhaps the best in the nation.
This could explain it.
"Did you find her?"
"Yes, she is dead."
Suddenly, her morbid curiosity got the better of her, and the conversation interested her more than ever. She moved to the front of the table, pulled up a chair, and sat across from him. Almost immediately she asked more about the subject.
"Was this person very important? Was it an assassination?"
Every war began with the disappearance or death of a human being. Every one of them, without exception. And now that the Fourth was over, she was very afraid that a Fifth might be declared if things got out of hand.
"She was Taki's Jinchūriki, and no, she died of heart failure."
The news made her blood run cold. If there was one thing she was certain of at this moment, it was that the subject matter was necessarily confidential, yet he spoke to her freely, without the slightest embarrassment.
Did he trust her that much?
"That is impossible."
The eyelids before her crinkled inexorably.
"Why?"
Though she couldn't venture into certain points, she answered anyway.
"The chances of a host dying of cardiac arrest are... so small that it's impossible."
He raised an eyebrow and she continued.
"The demon's chakra mixes with its host's chakra and holds it in a kind of stasis. In theory, a Jinchūriki cannot have a heart condition; the only way it can have one is if it causes it itself. This is a paradox, because those who are chosen to become hosts undergo psychological training from their earliest childhood. Suicide is not something that can cross their minds. Are you sure this is not a murder?"
He stared at her, for a long time, and she felt obliged to give an explanation. With a simple movement of her head toward the living room, she did so.
"I read a lot."
A shaky explanation, but one that seemed to suffice for the moment.
He turned his attention to the piles of books on the floor, on the shelves, and on the small chest of drawers in the middle of the living room next to the armchair before returning his gaze to her.
"A month ago, Suna reported that an attempt was made to kidnap her Jinchūriki after the war ended, in the middle of the day, in the village itself. Which is quite a coincidence, considering that no major village knows that Taki has lost its demon. If this is true, and not just a lie to cover up the disappearance of the seven-tailed demon that belonged to them before the Second Great War, then this is very bad news.
With her lips half open, she stood in awe. This was very bad news indeed. It seemed that she would not be the cause of the Fifth Great War. The peninsula seemed to be able to start it on its own without her help.
"It seems that a person, an organization, is trying to take over the Tailed Beasts. Tsuchi and Kumo have remained silent on the subject, while Kiri claims to have suffered no attacks. Since the Yondaime Mizukage is the Jinchūriki of the Three Tails, we can already confirm that this is the case. Konoha officially has no demons, so the question was not put to them, but everyone knows that Fire has Kyūbi. The Fox Demon has not resurfaced in almost seventeen years, so it must be sealed somewhere."
She felt so many emotions at that moment that she had to juggle them so as not to fake a smile, cry, or even scream.
An organization was looking for the Tailed Beasts. An organization was tracking the Tailed Beasts. An organization had a Tailed Beast... did they have two?
He had disappeared suddenly, overnight, and she had not heard from him in over two years. She knew something had happened to him, and now she was hearing about it. This was no coincidence.
"Is everything OK? You look pale."
A terrible feeling came over her stomach, and she actually thought she was going to throw up on the table, right there, right now. So she got up quickly and went to the sink and, pulling her obsidian hair back, leaned over it and waited, but nothing came out. Even though she let herself go, ready to vomit, nothing came out.
He was dead. He... was dead. They... were... dead.
She shook her face violently.
No, it wasn't possible, they were alive. They were the strongest people she had ever kno... she knew. Sensei was one of the greatest ninjas of his generation. Never could they have been fooled so easily. Never.
Opening the seal with a pulse of chakra, she moved her hands under the stream of water and soaked her face with it. Once, twice, then three times, before the voice right behind her called out to her once more.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have told you about that."
Sorry?
Why did he apologize? He had no idea wh... oh.
He didn't talk about that. Surely he must have thought that after what she had been through, the idea that another war might be declared made her so emotional.
Good for her. Having to explain herself was the last thing she needed.
"It's... ok."
She turned and... came face to face with him. Standing less than thirty centimeters from her, he towered over her.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded and the drops of water beaded on the stop of her nose and the curves of her smile.
"Yes don't... don't worry."
She escaped their proximity with a quick gesture toward the dinner she had not finished preparing. When she found herself in front of the counter between the wall and the sink, she started to tear off some lettuce leaves and got lost in her thoughts again.
The seconds ticked by, and after perhaps a full minute, she decided to look to her left to see that he had not moved. Standing at the sink, he continued to watch her. She turned her attention slightly to the twilight rays through the kitchen window before bringing it back to the inky black pupils.
"It'll be dark soon, are you sure you're not hungry, where are you going to sleep?"
He looked impassive, watching her with that phlegm that characterized him so much.
She'd just been worried about him, and yet it didn't make him hot or cold. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if this whole story, the fact that he had never come to see her until now, had something to do with the fact that, in the end, she had forced him to marry her.
He had asked for nothing. He had accepted, but it was she who had forced him to do so. Saying no to the compromise she proposed would have put him in a complicated relationship with his father, with his family, with the palace.
In the end, she was the villain of the story.
"I'm going back to the capital."
She placed her heart of lettuce next to the sliced tomato.
"To Isanawa? It's... a two-day walk."
For the first time since his arrival, he smiled at her.
No, it wasn't just since he arrived. It was the first time she had seen him smile, literally.
"I'll be there in two hours."
Two... hours? She could only stare at him skeptically.
The capital was more than eighty kilometers away, how fast could this man run? Could he keep up that pace for more than two hours?
"You can sleep here, I don't mind, I'm used to falling asleep on the saloon chair..."
"Don't do this to yourself."
Cut off in her kindness, she overcame his look, not understanding what he was getting at.
"Forget the promise you made to my father. From the moment you signed that paper, he had no longer any authority over you, even if you live here, even if you accept his food and hospitality. Don't be fooled by these kinds of things, as long as I'm alive, you can do whatever you want. I will not force you to do anything. Take your time to get to know me, I'll visit you more often from now on. If it takes years for you to accept me, it will take years, I don't care what my father thinks, I don't care about his thoughts, I care about yours."
[...]
If six months had passed in a heartbeat, the year that followed was the blink of an eye. Just as he had promised, he returned. At first, it was once a month, but as the year passed, the month of waiting became weeks, and then days.
Hardly a day passed without someone visiting her. The merchant who brought her daily food and questions, Mitsunari, Shikaku and Kenshin.
If she were honest with herself, she would say that she was starting to like him... maybe a little too much. But if she were to be completely honest, she would have to admit that as far as her feelings were concerned, he was like a band aid.
Every time Kenshin was here, visiting her, talking, getting to know each other, philosophizing and laughing together, she forgot about him. Strange as it might seem, even after three years, she still couldn't get him out of her mind. This was certainly due to the brutality of their separation, as well as the lack of information. But she had taken a step forward. Kenshin's presence had helped her to take a step forward.
She managed to forget him from time to time.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the snow-covered clearing, she sighed softly and exhaled a thick puff of white smoke that rose into the cloudless blue sky. Dressed only in her jikatabis, thick black pants and a purple sweater, she closed her eyes and rested her palms on her hips.
A breath passed, then two, and a faint whistle was heard on the other side of the clearing. A whistle that she described as a sharp point tearing through the air and that, when it arrived less than three meters behind her back, at one hundred and seventy-five degrees, awakened every one of her reflexes. With a quick movement, she opened her legs forward and swung her body backwards. She somersaulted over the kunai, which landed in the exact spot she had occupied before, and threw herself into the air with her hands to dodge the second volley that grazed her obsidian hair.
More than six meters above the ground and in free fall, she retrieved the kunai, which appeared in a cloud of smoke in front of her and deflected all the shurikens that tried to attack her life. She then landed on the snow between the house and the tracks of her former position and dodged the inquisitive punch that grazed her nose and jaw. Grabbing her assailant's wrist with her right hand, she released the kunai she was holding with her left to point her index and middle fingers at her assailant, and swing them to a precise spot between his biceps and triceps.
The purple sweater disappeared in a puff of smoke.
The memory of a pain in her arm, between her biceps and triceps, came back and confused her for a split second, but that didn't stop her from dodging the umpteenth attempt to reach her, and with a movement of her chest, she moved away from the kunai, which ended its journey in the dry bark of one of the many bald trees around.
Raising her face to the sun, she instantly activated her Byakugan to get a clear view of the chakra-like figure lunging at her from the black glowing orb. With the same gaze as hers, the figure tried to reach a precise spot between her heart and her left lung with its phalanges, but catching its arm in the process, she sent it flying at her third assailant who had tried to sneak up behind her. The impact between the two bodies produced two painful sounds before smoke dissipated them.
A shiver ran down her back and chest as memories of the collision came to mind, but she did not care as she focused her attention on the man watching her, his back resting on the trunk of one of the trees that lined the path. Several small, muffled sounds were heard nearby, hidden behind the still intact trees and vegetation.
Short of breath, sweaty, and increasingly tired as the memories flooded in, the veins around her temples deflated and then, with a small smile, she began to watch the black outfit about twenty meters away.
He was early.
Instead of going to meet him, she turned and walked toward the porch of the hovel, and it didn't take long for him to follow her.
When she reached the wooden railing, she slipped her hand between the bars and retrieved the metal canteen that lay behind it. Drinking, she finally turned to the Second Prince, who was standing less than a meter away from her.
Dressed in his usual black outfit and straw headdress, hands behind his back, he offered her a friendly smile.
"You almost got tricked."
Bringing the gourd down, she raised her index finger as her amused grin reappeared.
"Just almost."
Then she put the gourd back where she had found it and grabbed her hair to tie it into a ponytail with the help of the small elastic band around her wrist.
"You arrived earlier than expected, you told me you would be back in two days at night."
The smile he addressed to him slowly faded.
"I wanted to surprise you."
She raised her eyebrows... surprised.
"Why?"
Having kept his hands behind his back until then, he brought his right arm toward her and, with the crumpling of what she observed to be papier-mâché, handed her a wrapped, rectangular object measuring a little over one meter.
With his other free hand, he put his fist in front of his mouth and, coughing awkwardly, finally explained the reason for the gift.
"You turn eighteen today, if I'm not mistaken."
Her expression changed from surprise to disbelief.
"It's my birthday...?"
A year could really go by in the blink of an eye.
Wiping her wet hands on her pants, she picked up the gift.
Was this the only one related to her birthday in the last three years? As far as she could remember, it was, and she realized that she didn't know how to react. Hesitantly, she lowered her face.
"T-Thank you."
She looked at the papier-mâché in her hands for long seconds and thought she knew what it was by its weight and shape alone, even before she had to open it. An act that was actually recommended to her in the next second.
"Open it."
Nodding, she pulled at the pieces of tape and the ripping of the paper revealed the black cloth with gold lines. She removed the paper completely and threw it awkwardly onto the porch before untying the string from the second wrapping. Gravity inevitably dropped the silk around her one hand which was now holding the scabbard and katana.
Even though she had imagined it from the shape of the paper, she was shocked. It was... beautiful.
The saya - scabbard - made of magnolia wood was lacquered black. In the center was a white kanji, only one, which meant honor. A golden string surrounded the end of the scabbard as well as the part near the tsuba, the guard. A guard that also had the kamon of the Teitarō family: a black circle intersected by two white stripes that stopped just before the end of the circle.
The tsuka - handle - was made of two half-shells of magnolia wood covered with black braided leather. Only four diamonds in groups of two at the top and bottom of the handle showed what appeared to be scales.
But what surprised her most was not the beauty of the katana as a whole, but its lightness. Despite its size, and even taking into account the scabbard, it could not weigh more than a kilo.
"It has been in my family for more than seven generations. It is the last katana forged by Masamune, one of the greatest blacksmiths the Fire Country ever knew, when this land was still theirs. It was given to me by my great-grandfather when I was ten years old. According to the legend he told me, the hilt was covered with the skin of a dragon that Tomoe Teitarō, the greatest samurai our family had ever seen, had defeated. As for the blade, it would have been reinforced with the bones of the beast, which explains why it never dulled or oxidized, despite the centuries that had passed and the blood that had been spilled."
She swallowed her words as if she was dehydrated and her first thought after what she had just learned was to logically refuse the gift, but she understood very quickly that if he offered her this katana, it was not without thinking. He wanted to do it and returning it would be the worst thing she could do.
An easy conclusion, and one that certainly brought out her selfish side a bit. But she accepted it.
Holding the slightly curved scabbard firmly in her right hand, she placed the fingers of her left hand on the black leather of the hilt before turning her attention back to the Second Crown Prince.
"May I?"
He nodded without the slightest hesitation.
"It's yours now."
She pulled on it and... the tsuka did not move a millimeter. Pulling a little harder, she realized there was a problem, and at that moment, after he had brought his closed fist to his mouth and coughed for the second time, the somewhat amused voice in front of her rose.
"You have to... press on the top of the guard with your thumb to remove the safety."
She opened her lips and, with an understanding onomatopoeia, did what he had just explained. A soft clanking sound echoed on the porch, the blade was pulled out ten centimeters without the slightest harm, and she thought her hair was on it.
Black obsidian and charcoal, the blade was divided into two oscillating shades by the line of temper - the hamon - that looked suspiciously like flames. Never before had she seen such a beautiful blade, it was so disturbing that she doubted that a mythical flame-breathing beast could exist.
"If you wish, I will teach you how to use it."
Her mouth still open, she raised her face without a word.
Was he offering to... train with her?
Fortunately for her, her cheeks were already flushed from the effort of her training, and the freezing temperature, as well as the smoke she spat out with her breath, allowed her to hide her embarrassment even more.
She stood up and smiled as pleased as her tone.
"With pleasure."
The smile in front of her slowly faded, which in turn made hers fade.
"I'm going to ask you a question, please do not look back."
Just as gently, she lowered the katana to her hips, keeping her expression as neutral as possible despite the fact that she didn't understand.
"My father, does he have you followed?"
She still didn't understand what he was getting at, but answered anyway.
"No, at least I didn't see anyone."
When she said "saw", it wasn't just seeing, she was talking about her Byakugan, and it was unmistakable.
"At two hundred meters, at seven o'clock, do you see a person?"
The black clothes turned white at less than a meter, and the snow turned to coal. She immediately focused on a precise point, two hundred meters and seven o'clock in her back, beyond the walls of the hut and close to the huge betula covered with its winter coat as dark as the ground.
"No, I see no one."
Her vision returned to its original colors and then she looked at the slightly wrinkled eyelids in front of her.
"It is strange. I felt a presence when I first arrived, but it was so in tune with nature that I thought it was an animal. But its intensity has only increased since I got closer."
He blew softly, and the smoke he released only obscured what she was thinking.
An... animal?
"Do you mind if I touch your face?"
She inevitably frowned, but saw no harm in it, and nodded awkwardly.
She had to think of thanking the cold when this strange situation was over.
He moved closer and, less than twenty centimeters from her and towering over her with his inky black irises, caressed her cheek before pulling back a rebellious lock behind her ear. The jasmine intoxicated her even faster than the resonance of her heart.
In an instant that almost made her jump, the pupils she had been admiring moved from hers to a specific point on her back, instantly ending the contact on her skin.
"I've got you."
He... literally disappeared from her field of vision, and she weighed her words. The gust of wind caused by his disappearance dried her retinas and almost made her lose her balance. But not enough for her to lose her footing, and this time she understood exactly what was happening. Turning around, she activated her Byakugan and realized that he was already a hundred meters away, halfway to his destination.
He moved so fast that she only had time to inhale once before he reached his target, and all she could think at that moment was: thank Kami she had inhaled, because now she could not even do that.
The katana slipped from her hand and fell to the snow, her knees buckling and joining the blade, and then the tears came.
In the exact spot Kenshin had reached, or rather a fraction of a second before he had reached it, where she could see nothing but nature, where she was not supposed to see anything, a pulse of chakra had appeared, and even from her position, she could feel it as well as see it.
A flash.
"December 27, 1018,
This presence in the woods, was it your gift or my imagination? I don't know what to think, what to believe. Whom to believe. You are nowhere and everywhere at once. I am lost.
You have lost me."
[…]
"The Butterfly Effect" was a book written by Teiji Takagi, a famous mathematician of the Sengoku era, who had managed to summarize the theory of chaos in less than three hundred pages. The paragraph that interested her the most was the one in which the court member of the Suijin Wind Dynasty said that if someday somebody managed to go back in time and save or kill a simple butterfly, the effect it would have in the long run would be so unpredictable, so beneficial or destructive, that it could change the shape of the world and even the universe.
This metaphor meant that it only took a small deviation for history to change. If a person died and was destined to do something important, the world would be turned upside down.
But this was a paradox because, ultimately and fundamentally, one could not know what the other alternative, the other reality, would be, given that one was living in the one in which the person had died or had been saved. That we suffer the consequences of his death.
It was precisely this that had fascinated her, that had made her dream.
Was there a reality where she had not been kidnapped, where she had lived her whole life in Konoha, with her family, her friends? In that reality, had she met him, had they had children?
Her sigh was diluted in the temperate atmosphere of the cottage. Sitting in the living room chair, her legs curled up on her chest, she turned the page of the book she was reading and highlighted a name in the middle of the first paragraph of the new page. She exchanged her blue marker for a pen of the same color on the nightstand to her right and wrote on the paper.
Her sigh was diluted in the temperate atmosphere of the hovel. Sitting in the living room chair, her legs curled up on her chest, she turned the page of the book she was reading and highlighted a name in the middle of the first paragraph of the new page. She exchanged her blue marker for a pen of the same color on the nightstand to her right and wrote on the paper.
Danzō Shimura. "Amegakure, Rain, September 999."
She turned her attention to the katana and its scabbard lying on the corner of the two walls of the living room and sighed again.
It had been two months since Kenshin had given her that gift. Two months since the flash had lit up the horizon.
That day, the Second Prince had come back to her, not knowing what to do in the face of her uncontrollable tears. She had kindly asked him to leave, and that's what he had done.
He had seen no flashes, felt no chakra pulse. There was only a snow fox, which had fled at his sudden arrival.
Maybe it was all in her head.
She was losing her mind.
That day, she hadn't practiced in the afternoon, she hadn't eaten lunch, and her dinner had ended up with air and salt water.
She had stayed at the exact spot where the phenomenon had supposedly taken place, asking herself the same questions over and over again.
Why? Why now, why this particular day, the day she turned eighteen. After all these years, her observations, why did she have to hallucinate at this moment?
Returning to her book, she drew for the second time with her blue marker.
Kenshin had returned more often than he was used to, to teach her Kenjutsu, the art of swordsmanship. Every day, for more than a month, and it had caused quite a stir in the village of Shinjō.
The Second Crown Prince stayed in a makeshift inn. It had to be seen to be believed.
Especially when, in mid-January, she had to go down to the village in heavy snow to get her supplies.
In December and early January, during heavy snows, the path to her hut was impassable for the caravan. So she used a henge for her eyes and came down from her mountain. No one in the village had made the connection between Yuki Onna and her person. Maybe because this time she was dressed in thick winter clothes and not just a soaked nightgown.
A year and a half without an event seemed to be enough for a ghost to come out of people's heads.
If only it could be the same for her.
Without her noticing, without her asking, Kenshin had come out of his inn in front of the whole village and helped her carry her fruits and vegetables to her house.
A suspicious behavior that had given rise to rumors that were still circulating a month later, even though he had left the village.
The wife of the Second Crown Prince lived on the top of Henpei Mountain.
In the weeks that followed, it was not uncommon for curious people to walk along the mountain path and eventually come upon her hovel. But none of them had dared to knock. Two weeks ago, a sign with a royal decree had been placed at the bottom of the path leading to the top.
The many cliffs along the way were unstable and access to them was forbidden. Anyone who ventured there and was caught would be punished immediately.
A lie that only increased the rumors, but strangely enough, it worked. Since then, she had seen no one but those who visited her, starting with Mitsunari.
A week after her older brother had interrupted them a year earlier, the Third Prince had brought her back what she had asked for, colored markers, and since then she had devoted herself to another hobby: instead of taking a nap, she tried to trace important events and the presence of important people through the books she owned.
The timeline and consequences that had led to Danzō Shimura's investiture, to her abduction, and she had come to a conclusion.
Everything had changed the day the Third and the Fourth had died. Everything had changed the night Kyūbi had attacked the Leaf, the night something, someone, had gotten wind of Kushina Uzumaki's delivery. The night when Hiruzen Sarutobi had mysteriously disappeared and when no book recounting the events of that tragic night mentioned Danzō Shimura in any way.
The man for whom everything had fallen into place that day was absent.
She had finally found her butterfly effect.
"February 9, 1019,
The war has been over for two years now. Where are you, what are you doing?
Do you even know?"
[…]
Sitting on one of the kitchen chairs with her back slightly bent and her legs crossed, she finished writing the last word on the letter on the table.
I'm coming.
Then she got up, folded the paper and went to the nearby window to put the letter into the dove box that was waiting patiently on the windowsill.
"You can go, Hayato."
With a coo, the bird took flight toward the mountains to the north, and she watched the movement of its wings until it entered the periphery of the sun.
Closing the window, she turned and walked to the table to pick up the pen and resume her place in the chair. With a flick of her arm, she picked up the yellow-bound book and opened it to the three hundredth page.
"October 10, 1020,
After all this time, all these years, there is still this question that prevents me from drawing a line, from forgetting you. The only one that can make me stay.
Tell me, are you alive, somewhere?"
She gasped.
Not because the roof cracked for the millionth time, but because she realized that she hadn't heard him, again. She hadn't seen him, hadn't felt him, but he had just knocked on the door, again. A feeling that made her sigh for a long time.
Couldn't he even warn her? What was the point of sending her letters if he was coming here?
The floor creaked several times as she walked to the front door. She pulled the handle and gasped a second time, this time inwardly, and her heart began to pound in her eardrums.
In front of her was a completely black outfit, just like the Second Crown Prince used to wear, but the face that wore it was nothing like that.
Standing at a height of more than one meter and almost touching the upper frame of the door, the most feared man of the entire ninja peninsula watched her. Shisui Uchiha's two Sharingan watched her.
The ember pupils faded and returned to their original color, taking her breath away.
Considering that she had just been looking at the most powerful Sharingan on the peninsula like a fool, only one logical question came to her lips, and it went without saying that greetings could wait.
"Am I... under your control?"
In the past two years, the two years between their last encounter, she had practiced a lot in recognizing and extricating herself from an illusion, but she was not fooled or full of herself. A lifetime of training, even a century, would not be enough to get out of such a Genjutsu.
No one could escape the illusion of Shisui Uchiha, that was the well-known saying in the enemy ranks of Konoha. It was what Shikaku had told her during one of their many conversations and to be honest, she wished she would never have to confirm it.
"No."
She blew discreetly. Was he lying to her? She would never know, so she could just assume that he wasn't.
She nodded stiffly before stepping aside from the entrance, leaving the way clear for the Konoha ninja to enter.
"Thank you."
Dressed in black open-toed shoes, black pants, and a black t-shirt, with only the bandages on his ankles and wrists providing contrast, he passed in front of her before pausing between the living room and the kitchen.
The cool autumn air rushed into the hut and made her shiver. Just enough for her to hurry and close the door with an eerie creak. The click of the handle echoed through the wood as she watched the back of the most feared Uchiha. Then she acted quite... strangely? Or let's say intimidatingly.
With her hands clasped behind her back, she leaned against the door, not daring to move.
"You like to read."
The statement spread through the hovel as she also looked at the collection of books in her living room, and although it was a statement and not a question, she answered without even realizing it.
"Yes, I love it."
In profile to her vision, he opened his mouth, but quickly retracted. Not seeming to want to continue on this topic of discussion, he began to look around her bedroom, and she lost all contact with his face.
"I found him."
At first she didn't understand, but then she remembered their last conversation, the one she hadn't stopped remembering for months in order to keep a tiny hope alive.
She knew of who he was talking about, and the mere thought of it had just made her cross the two meters that separated them. Another movement of her bare feet and she found herself between the bed and the impassive air.
The most existential question of her life took only one breath to be heard.
"Is he alive?"
Mouth open, eyes dry, the second of waiting seemed like an eternity.
"Yes, he is alive."
Tears came to her eyes, a breath of relief escaped into the air, and she moved the palm of her left hand to the bottom of her face. She wanted to jump for joy, but feeling her legs give out, she stepped back to sit down, or rather, fell onto the mattress.
A jerky exhale followed, then she forced herself to recover from her emotions, just in time for a flood of questions to overwhelm her mind. The next second, she removed her hand from her mouth and again began to look at the black pupils.
"Where is he? What is he doing? Why didn't he... come back? When did you see him?"
Her last question made her move toward the closet, ready to pack her suitcase and leave immediately, but she remembered that the suitcase was already packed and waiting for her in the corner of the living room.
Thirty seconds earlier, she would have been on her way to the capital. Thirty seconds earlier, she would have gone to the palace. Thirty seconds earlier, her life would have changed. But it was no longer the case.
"Tell me, if you had to describe him in a few words, what would you choose?"
Her face frowned.
Why didn't he answer her?
"I... why do you want to know that?"
He shrugged, as if it were a question like any other.
"I'm just trying to understand."
Wanting nothing more than her answers, she inhaled immediately.
"He... he's... full of joy. He is... smiling, humble and kind."
And the spigot opened wide.
"He is a real ray of sunshine. When you first meet him, you think he's a prankster and doesn't take much seriously, and it turns out that first impression is right, but that's what makes him... who he is. Why you begin to love him. If you give him affection, he will give you everything he has. He always puts his friend before himself. He is... very generous, too generous. He doesn't look for trouble and is content to live a simple life. When you feel bad, when you don't know what to do, what decision to make, you just have to look at his smile, listen to him talk, and everything will be fine. He is... Naruto. He is... my Naruto."
Her last praise flew out in an imperceptible whisper.
It was more than a few words, she had to admit, but she couldn't stop speaking. It had come out all by itself and the whole time, the Uchiha had listened to her in silence.
"I see."
With a wave of his hand, he pointed to one of the two chairs next to the table in the living room, and she nodded at his silent request. The chair scraped the floor and turned toward her before he sat down. Supporting himself with his elbows on his knees, he leaned in her direction and watched her for a few moments.
"Where is he now? I don't know. I met him at the Grass, today he could be anywhere. What is he doing? He is preparing something I asked him to do in exchange for me doing something for him. Why didn't he come back? I didn't ask him, I'm sorry to say. When did I see him? Two months and ten days ago, at the Grass."
Although he had just given her very little information, she was satisfied for the moment.
He had been in the Grass, two months earlier. Seventy days before that, he had been less than a thousand miles from her and... he had agreed to do a job for the man sitting across from her... why? What job?
She wanted to ask her new questions, but another, more important one took the lead. Much more important.
"There... there was no one with him?"
"You mean the Great Sannin Jiraiya? No, he was not with him."
It did not matter to her that he understood the depth of her thoughts. He certainly knew more than she could imagine... and more.
"What did you ask him?"
He hesitated to answer her, she saw it very clearly, but finally decided to do so.
"Recently, I learned that a person to whom I owe a lot is still alive, trapped in the enemy ranks, but I can't do anything about it. I asked him to save her and in return this person would help him solve his problem."
"His problem? What problem?"
He leaned back on the wooden file and watched her for a long time. Again, he didn't seem to want to bring up the subject, but after a few seconds of thought, he did, to her great satisfaction.
"Have you ever heard of the Akatsuki?"
She wiped away the tear of joy that ran down her cheek and sniffed before moving her face from left to right.
Akatsuki...? Was it a sun worshipping cult?
"It's a criminal organization with many goals. One of them is to capture the Nine Tailed Beasts."
Her eyes widened in curiosity and amazement and she immediately remembered what Kenshin had told her about the Jinchūriki of the Waterfalls, but not wanting to cut the Uchiha off from his explanations, she remained silent.
"I have interviewed thousands of people and no one knows their intentions. I don't think even their members know. The war has allowed them to stay under the radar for many years, to recruit influential and powerful people, and now they are just too influential and powerful for any country to do anything without risking losing a wing. According to the latest classified information received by the Konoha High Council, they are behind the disappearance of Nanabi's host and the attempted kidnapping of Ichibi, although this has yet to be proven. No one really knows."
He paused to let her digest the information he had just given her.
She was not surprised to learn that Konoha knew about Nanabi and wanted to tell him that the host had been found. And that although Taki seemed to keep it a secret, the demon had indeed been extracted and might be in the hands of that organization. But not wanting to betray Kenshin's trust, she remained silent. She left it open whether Taki still had its weapon of mass destruction.
"The nations are far too focused on the coming war to realize the danger. I wouldn't be surprised if the moment war is declared, Akatsuki takes the opportunity to blame each other and gather the Beasts without any coalition to stop them. And if that were to happen, not even a peninsular unification would be able to stop them. Even if the Demons, the Swamp, and the Great Nations of the West and South were to help us, we would lose in a heartbeat. It has been so long since anyone has seen them in action that everyone seems to have forgotten what the power of a single Bijūs is like. The First Great War was so long ago that only a handful of people seem to remember that without Hashirama Senju, the peninsula would be nothing. Everyone has forgotten that we came so close to mass extinction."
She watched as Shisui's index finger and thumb were separated by an inch before he continued.
"Most books devote only a paragraph to it, but what the Jinchūriki of Yonbi did at the beginning of the First Great War should be remembered. The thirty-two villages on the borders of the Grass and Waterfalls still remember it. The thirty-meter lava flows are still there, marking the border between the two countries. As do the sixty thousand souls fossilized within."
She swallowed.
It was true that at the beginning of the First Great War, the Four-Tailed Demon's host had lost control, and the Giant Ape had ravaged both the South of the Waterfalls and the North of the Grass. At that time, Wind, Lightning, and Water rightly believed that Earth had deliberately released the Four-Tailed Demon to destroy the neighboring countries that threatened them, and fearing that the Demon was approaching their border, the Wind was on the verge of releasing the Seven Tails in the face of the growing threat.
If that had been the case, if the Shodaime Kazekage had made that decision, then there would have been an escalation that no one could have stopped. If Suna had released Nanabi, then Ichibi, Kumo would have done the same, Kiri would have done the same, and Iwa would have released its second demon.
The Bijūs knew no fatigue, otherwise the confrontation would have lasted for years, decades, centuries, and the peninsula, the continent, would have simply vaporized. Although Hashirama had succeeded in controlling and sealing the Nine Tailed Beasts, he had done so separately, over a four-year journey around the planet, one after the other, not all at once.
No one could have stopped the cataclysm, not even the Great Shodaime Hokage.
Whether by luck or great wisdom, it was hard to tell, Hashirama had intervened in time and sealed Yonbi for the second time before Suna had released its demon. Under the threat of releasing Gobi, Iwa had managed to get the Four Tails back and the situation had returned to normal. At least the war and the atrocities had continued without any demons being released again.
After the death of the Senju at the end of the war, the Second Council of Kages was held and an agreement was signed by the Five Great Powers: no more demons would be released during a war. With Hashirama gone, if a second Yonbi were to occur, no one would be able to stop it, and only the ashes would be victorious.
"I was there when Kyūbi attacked. I was there when the Yondaime saved us all. The villagers were too frightened, too hidden, to see what most of the shinobi in the village had seen. What we saw that night is not written in the history books. That opaque, round and unstable form. That ball of matter more than twenty meters in circumference of unimaginable power. If the Fourth of the Name had not teleported it out of the village, I would not be here to talk about it. The resulting explosion eighteen kilometers away is still etched in my retinas. I've never seen that before, and I never saw that since. It's not something you can imagine, it's not something you can comprehend until you've seen it. The light was so intense that some people lost their sight for days. A Hyūga who was there that day told me that the earth merged with the air and a whole mountain was swallowed up. It is said that the fires and the demon's claws caused most of the deaths that night. This is not the case. What caused the most deaths was the earthquake that resulted from the Bijūdama. The ground shook for more than three minutes, collapsing dozens and dozens of buildings everywhere that were not designed for this kind of natural disaster. Rocks weighing several hundred kilograms traveled eighteen thousand meters and crashed into houses, even reaching neighboring villages more than thirty kilometers away. The ash and dust generated by the impact plunged the region into fog for more than two days, two days during which, if a neighboring country had known of the attack, the Fire would have fallen."
Despite the fact that Shisui had just told her a traumatic part of his life, of thousands of lives, he had not let her see any emotion, except for a flutter of his eyelashes.
He was rightly named.
"If a single demon can destroy thirty villages in two hours, if a single demon can wipe out a million people and one of the most fortified strategic points on the peninsula in a single attack, what about nine together? If this organization succeeds, they will have the power to wipe a country off the map. No one should be allowed to do that, and your Naruto understood that."
She tensed on the mattress. On the one hand, because what she had just heard was terrifying, and on the other, because he had heard what she have whispered, and the way he had just repeated her appropriation made her think that she was wrong.
He did not belong to her, at least not anymore.
"The boy you described is not the man I met. The smile you mentioned, I didn't see it at any time. The one I met was cold, calculating, and did not seek to know how you were doing. It may have been a facade I could not penetrate, but if there is one thing I am certain of, it is that what he was trying to show me was a world away from anything you said about him."
She was still... tense and sadness took over her every thought.
There was no doubt that the Uchiha had met Naruto. He didn't seem to be in the mood for jokes. If he told her that the one he had met was Naruto, then it was Naruto.
There was only one question that plagued her at that moment, and it was the one that caused her to feel a deep sorrow: what had he gone through to lose his smile?
Despite her reflection, she could not help but ask the question.
"Are you sure it was him?"
And he nodded without the slightest hesitation.
"He is the spitting image of Minato Namikaze, and he used the Hiraishin in front of me, which is very disturbing. He doesn't seem to be trying to hide anymore, and with what he's about to do, the world will soon find out about him. If the Peninsula finds out that the son of the Yondaime and moreover the Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon has been roaming freely from country to country for years, I can only imagine the repercussions, the actions of the nations, and the threats that Konoha will receive."
In her, a semblance of contentment drowned in incomprehension. A drop of joy in an ocean of sorrow.
He had managed to master his father's technique. He had succeeded. Which meant it was really him who had been here a year and a half ago, she had not dreamed it, she had not imagined the flash.
She wasn't crazy.
But if that was the case, why hadn't he come to talk to her? Why did he hide from her? And where the hell was Sensei?
"Do you have any more questions?"
After lowering her gaze for the time of her reflection, she raised it back to the Uchiha.
She had hundreds of questions, but at this moment, only three came to her mind.
"Why are you helping me? What do you get out of it? Why are you betraying Konoha?"
He watched her with his usual neutral expression. Nothing seemed to make him feel the slightest emotion, not even when she confronted him with his own beliefs.
"Shikaku Nara told you all about what I did, didn't he?"
She simply nodded.
Shikaku had told her everything the Uchiha had done, could have done, would have done and much more. The man before her was the cause of the greatest misery the peninsula had ever known. The cause of thousands of deaths. Hundreds of thousands. He was the head of those who had organized her kidnapping, those who had ruined her life.
One of the people responsible for the Fourth Great War, if not the most responsible. Yet she could feel no hatred for him, because she knew that he had not done it willingly, but under threat.
She sighed softly.
Why did she have to be like this? Couldn't she hate him just a little?
"I am not a religious person. I don't believe in life after death or reincarnation, I'm not doing this to try to wash away my sins. I am not doing this to try to make it up to people I may have hurt. I'm not looking for redemption."
He paused for a moment, seeming to consider his next words.
"Although it is too late to correct what I have done, I can still try to help all those whose lives I may have affected, to try to help them close their eyes at night. Despite all that I have done in the name of an ideal forced upon me, in the name of Danzō Shimura, my nights are peaceful. Of all people, shouldn't I be the one who can't sleep?"
For the first time, she heard sadness in his voice, and it upset her more than she cared to show. With a simple blink of her eyes, she managed to pull herself together, to get rid of her emotions. That's why her voice was completely free of them.
"Have you given up on saving your little sister?"
The billion ryōs question was asked, and the answer took a few seconds to come. He didn't try to figure out how she knew that, he... just answered as calmly as possible.
"She's dead."
Which made her regret it.
This man had just told her about his sister's death as if nothing had happened. He seemed more inclined to feel grief for others than for himself. It was...really sad to watch.
He said he slept peacefully, but were his nights filled with dreams or emptiness?
Not knowing what to say, she awkwardly tried to change the subject, which reminded her that she really didn't know how to behave in society.
"And how are you going to help me sleep at night?"
Although the words of the Uchiha sounded beautiful, they were also utopian. Was he going to give her back the life she had not lived? Was he going to give her back her family? The years of her life that were gone?
The thought frightened her. Her inner questions scared her.
Knowing a little bit about how the Sharingan worked, but especially about the two she was facing, she knew in her heart that what she had just asked herself was possible. It would be an illusion she would never be able to get out of, but it was possible. With a simple look, he could breathe into her a life she had not lived, emotions she had not felt, and erase everything that made her who she was. And the simple fact that it was enough for the two opaque pupils she watched to turn scarlet for that to happen frightened her a little.
That was why she looked away, which did not go unnoticed by him.
"I will not use my eyes on you again without your consent, though I am not worthy of it, you can trust me on that."
From the corner of her eye, she saw the black irises again and, realizing that she could not trust him completely, she understood from this simple feeling that she was not under his influence.
This relieved her strangely.
"Have you ever seen a Sharingan other than mine?"
She didn't understand the reason for the question but answered without hesitation.
"No, I haven't."
It wasn't every day that one saw those eyes that had engraved many legends over the past centuries, especially the last one. It was not easy to forget, so she was sure that she had only seen two in her life, and they were less than three meters away from her.
"I can take you out of the illusion you're in if you want, if you trust me, it's up to you. My eyes have rested enough now. Do you want my help?"
Undo an illusion? What was he saying?
"What... what do you mean?"
He smiled. He... was smiling at her. An Uchiha was smiling at her. This was against the most basic rules.
She was definitely under an illusion.
"You forgot what I told you two years ago, didn't you? It's normal, don't worry. It's a well-known mechanism we use when we want to manipulate someone. Do you have memory loss? Recurring nightmares, things you can't talk about, things you forget easily?"
She... didn't know what to say. Everything he had just said was the simple truth. Everything he had just said had been happening to her every day.
"It's the effects of prolonged exposure. Whoever's manipulating you has been doing it for years. You must have spent days, even months, in their presence without even realizing it. They could be in the room right now and you wouldn't know it."
Why couldn't she talk?
"Once the damage is done, there is almost no turning back, which is why our eyes are so feared. There is only one way to get out of an exposure like this. Another, more experienced Sharingan must get you out of it. You are lucky, there is no better one than mine when it comes to manipulating and destroying someone's life."
Following his morbid sarcasm, he stood up without her taking her eyes off him for a second.
Was he trying to lighten the mood? Were all Uchiha this bad when it came to making a joke or was he a special case?
Grabbing the wooden back of the chair, he moved to where she was sitting on the mattress and placed the chair directly in front of her before sitting down again.
"Do you feel tingling in the back of your neck? Is your heart starting to race? Is your throat starting to feel tight? This is usually what our victims feel when someone is trying to make them talk."
To less than a meter from her and still a head more, even seated, he resumed his previous position and put his elbows on his legs to get yet closer to her.
Both hands on either side of her hips on the mattress, she backed her face away.
Why... had he come so close? Couldn't he move back, even by a few centimeters?
"I know you can't say yes. But if you accept my help, just try to relax, I'll do the rest."
An unpleasant sensation came over her neck as she tried to open her mouth, but only her lips moved, and the feeling of helplessness made her heart beat even faster. Her throat tightened and she took a long breath through her nose and exhaled just as slowly to calm herself.
To her surprise, she managed to relax in no time.
Maybe she trusted him more than she thought.
"Don't look away, this is important, I need your full concentration, don't struggle, don't use your chakra."
It wasn't an order she had to obey, he hadn't used his Sharingan yet, it was just a request. She could use her chakra if she wanted to... or was that another way to trick her? Did she really have this free will?
Sensing that she was about to use her chakra, she closed her eyelids tightly. All this talk of reality, of Genjutsu, of pretending, was beginning to make her head hurt. She was more lost than ever.
"If I am right, you will remember all that you have forgotten, all that the Sharingan you have observed has sealed and continues to seal. It is possible that I am wrong, that it is not so and that your behavior, your way of speaking is natural, but I doubt it."
The mint breath brushed her face and she opened her eyes again to the two scarlet pupils with three tomoes. The activated Sharingan less than thirty centimeters away from her did not bother her at all. At that moment, her thoughts were focused on one subject.
Had he just insulted her?
"It may be confusing, your memories will get mixed up, your feelings will get mixed up, it will take time to put it all back together and understand. I will take care of you as long as it takes, don't worry."
She looked intently into the eyes in front of her and only had time to inhale. She took a breath and held it, thinking it would be painful, but it was not. First she lost the feeling in her legs and arms, then her whole body gave up. She exhaled quietly and the natural mechanism took over. Then the first memory came. The second. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth... the thousandth, and she finally understood.
Her vision blurred and she lost contact with the six tomoes. She tried to find them again, but her thoughts were too overwhelmed to concentrate.
It was all her fault, everything. Absolutely everything. She was the reason he never came back. The reason he stopped answering her. The reason Sensei never came back. Kumo had not lied completely. She had died at the age of six, or at least disappeared from her cell, vanished.
The troubled face in front of her was not wrong. This was not the first time she had seen a Sharingan. It was far from the first time.
Her opal pupils fluttered out of their orbits and she tried in vain to sit up with her hands before she finally fell backwards onto the mattress.
Everything came back to her.
«
Thunder rolled and lightning cracked the cloudy sky through the window and the bars of the room. Lying under the warm blanket, her breath ragged, she managed to stifle her sobs with a childish whimper.
A thud to her right startled her. It took her a minute to gather the courage to pull one of her Byakugans out from under the thin white cloth. What she saw took her breath away before her legs panicked and threw her back against the concrete of the white cell, forcing her to take a deep breath. Her skull hit the wall, and a grin of pain distorted her six-year-old features.
Next to the only white, airtight door in the room and leaning against the wall, a human-shaped figure sat on the floor watching her.
Dressed in black, she couldn't see his face, though it looked misshapen and colorful. One leg was folded to his chest and the other was stretched out on the white tiles, his arm resting on his curled knee.
The opaque figure began to move his arm toward his head, which was hidden in the darkness, and, closing his gloved hand so that only his index finger protruded, he moved his torso forward to place his finger at the bottom of the orange and spiral mask he wore.
With short black hair and a single hole at the level of his right scarlet eye, the man let his hand go down and rose to move toward the bed in a silence that was at once unreal and suffocating.
She didn't know how she managed to keep her bladder from emptying.
"Good evening, little wolf."
»
She reopened her eyes, disoriented and excited at the same time, and realized that he had moved her.
She stood up abruptly on the bed, glanced frantically to her right and then to her left before staring at the man sitting in the chair in front of her. Before she examined the black pupils of Shisui.
Had she been unconscious for a long time?
Once again she moved her opal irises to the window on her left, and the same position of the sun in the sky made her realize that this was not the case unless a whole day had passed, which she doubted since she was not thirsty.
Without knowing why, a strong nausea forced her to put a hand over her mouth and close her eyelids to concentrate on not throwing up. Gradually, the sensation faded until it was gone, and then she opened her eyes again to see the Uchiha, arms crossed, motionless.
"How do you feel?"
How does she feel?
She moved her right hand to her chest, to her heart. The beating of her heart told her that she was alive, and the accuracy of what she heard in her eardrums told her that what was before her eyes was real.
A memory pounded her mind. A memory in which she grabbed a gloved hand, in which she went from a white cell to a Genjutsu. From a reality to an illusion. From her six years to her thirteen.
How... does she feel?
Gritting her teeth as hard as she could at the moment, she moved her hands to her hair, tangling her fingers in her obsidian locks and pulling hard to stop the hoarse voice that was nagging her. To stop the sweet nickname.
«
"How do you feel, little wolf?
She looked up in panic at the airtight door of the white room. Again, she hadn't heard him come in. Had he even bothered to open the door?
Was there a door?
The clean, smooth, white walls became rough and gray. The only window at the side of the bed disappeared, letting the cold, harsh rocks of the cave isolate them even more. The ceiling lamp turned from white to yellow and the blackberry vines spread over the walls.
It was at that moment that she saw him among the wild flora, hidden in the half-light. The one she had mistaken for a giant flesh-eating plant. Out of the corner of her eye, she stared at the newcomer's two-toned face, half hidden behind the huge green wooden shell that covered the upper part of his body. Reaching over three meters and almost touching the ceiling, it looked strangely like the mouth of an alligator, ready to neutralize its prey.
Dressed in a black tunic with a red cloud, the man had a golden and icy look, but that was not what fascinated her the most at that moment. What fascinated her were the two faces facing her. The two personalities, the two complete beings.
A white side, a black side. A visible side, a hidden side.
If the white face looked at her in a bored, accustomed way, the golden pupil of the black face admired her. He looked at her - or at least her Byakugan - as if she were a ghost from a past life.
With a simple movement of her eyes, the room returned to brightness, the illusion returned, and the two faces disappeared, leaving only the black clothes and the orange mask in contrast to the white cell.
Sitting on the white mattress with her legs under the sheet, she smiles kindly at the man standing to her right.
"I feel great. Did you bring me a new book today?"
Softly, he knelt in front of the bed and, with a slow movement, took the sheet at the level of her hips to slide it down her legs.
The scarlet spread at the level of her white pants, the white mattress and her crotch revealed the lie she had just told.
She grabbed the sheet with a panicked hand and folded it over her abdomen, and the panic reached her voice.
"Th-They can't see it, do you think you can get me clean clothes and something to clean it? I-I can wash everything, they-they won't see it."
She shook her face and tears trickled down her porcelain cheeks.
"I-I don't want them to... I-I don't want them to touch me. Please do s-something, help me. I-I... I..."
She met the fiery gaze in the slit of the orange mask, and every frightening thought left her. Her breath calmed, her nose cleared, and her chest stopped pounding.
She was no longer in control of her emotions.
"All right. I'll get you out of here. It all starts now, little wolf. Follow the sun until you come down from the mountain. You will meet him near the river. Get his attention, make him see your eyes, that should be enough. Then use the brightest star in the sky. Make him fall under your spell, make him can't get enough of you. This is the easy part. When the sun rises again, follow the mountain range to your southwest. For the moment, he is not a threat, but when the day comes, when he tries to control his demon, come back here to warn me. Continue without stopping in the forest until you cross the path of the river. His name is Naruto. Follow the river for the next two days. He is the Jinchūriki of Kyūbi no Yōko, Uzumaki Namikaze Naruto. You will reach the Land of Fire. And you will be his greatest weakness."
»
She fell between the window and the bed in tears.
How... does... she feel?"
With her hands clutching the blanket, she pulled herself up onto the mattress and walked over to the Uchiha who was still sitting in the chair. She dropped her knees heavily to the floor, not even thirty centimeters from chair, and let go of the beige fabric to grab the black pants.
"P-Please stop I-I don't want to know anymore... I... don't want to... make it stop..."
"I can't. It's too late for that."
The calm tone caught her distracted attention, and she stared into the inky black gaze as the umpteenth memory seized her every thought. The one where she had returned to the cave as soon as they had left for Kumo. The one where she had been the reason he had stopped answering her.
«
"We just stopped in a small village on the border of Sound and Fire, why? Tomioka, east of Nemuro."
The hoarse voice stopped reading and the gloved hands closed the yellow-rimmed book.
"He's going to Kumo to control Kyūbi, are you sure?"
Looking pale, sweating, breathing erratically, she nodded, the sigh behind the mask echoing off the sweaty stones of the cave.
"This is annoying. The war isn't over yet, how did that damn Sannin get Kumo to agree?"
She remained silent at this question. She did not know herself.
The ground shifted to her right, between the stone the man sat on and the bars of the cell where a greenish, mildewed mattress lay, and the bipolar face rose from the damp earth.
"Go and warn him, time is against us. As long as they are in the Sound, we can reach them, but they must not reach the Lightning. Tell him that I will wait for him there, it is time for him to see his master."
"Very well."
The combination of high and low tones spread around her, and the green bark returned to where it had come from. Seconds passed and she did not move a millimeter. It had not crossed her mind at all. Nothing crossed her mind. All she was waiting for was his voice. His command.
"He seems to be very fond of you. You've accomplished your mission, little wolf. How do you think he will react when he learns the whole truth? Do you think he'll be upset? Do you think he'll lose control? I can't wait to see."
Without being able to control it, her leg began a stern movement toward the rectangular stone, toward the obscene words, but she managed to withdraw the gesture as quickly as the void took possession of her thoughts.
The only eyelid visible behind the orange mask crinkled inexorably.
"This is no longer a mission, is it? Do you even know? Do you think it was fate that brought you together? Do you think any of this is real? Nothing is, little wolf. There is no destiny, you were not meant to meet. Everything you feel, everything you are, everything you've decided to do, is mine. All your feelings, it is I who asked you to feel them. Do you really believe they are real? Do you think you really love him?
A tear trickled down her cheek and dried on her arid hair.
He stood up to approach her and, bigger than she was, placed his hand on the right side of her face to wipe away the second tear that followed the trace of its elder.
Stoic, or rather incapable of commanding the slightest movement of her body, she watched the black sweater without blinking.
"Interesting. Even after all these years of formatting you, inventing memories, emotions, making you believe in your free will, you are still there, you still exist, somewhere. That's a first."
He removed his gloved hand from her face and handed her the book, and she took it immediately.
"Go back to where you came from in case he decides to turn back. Keep doing what you are doing and wait for my instructions. It won't be long."
»
How… does… she… feel?
The instructions came a week later. She lay on the bed in the cabin and did not move for three days. Three days in which he had written to her, three days in which she had not answered. Three days in which she didn't know what had happened to him. Neither to him nor to Sensei.
Three days in which she had forgotten everything for the umpteenth time.
She remembered the orange mask as the man who regularly visited her in her cell, the one who made her laugh, who made her read, who had brought her hundreds of books and comfort. The one who had helped her escape during her first menstruation.
Everything was fake. Everything. He had used them to reach Naruto. To watch over the only free host on the peninsula. And she had unknowingly helped him with his plans. One stone, two blows. He had taken the Byakugan from Kumo, raised the tension in the country with the Fire and gained someone who could approach the Great Sannin Jiraiya without attracting attention.
A genius.
Tears streamed down her face, and she thought she was about to have an aneurysm as the hundreds of memories came flooding back.
Tears streamed down her face, and she thought she was on the verge of an aneurysm as the hundreds of memories came back one after the other.
The night she had fallen from the kitchen chair, she had not been dreaming. Fear had left its mark on her memory, which was why she had managed to remember it. At least it was the only plausible explanation. She had not been dreaming, she was not crazy, he had actually been there, asking her if the Jinchūriki of Kyūbi had come to her, if he had tried to contact her.
He was the person Kenshin had sensed in the hovel before his first visit. He had been standing in the corner of the living room for more than half an hour, watching her cooking, listening to her discussion with Mitsunari.
This simple vision made her blood run cold.
"The man who did this to you, is he wearing an orange mask?"
Leaving her thoughts for a moment, she turned her attention back to Shisui and it took her three seconds to remember the question he had just asked her. Then she opened her eyes in surprise.
How did he know th...
Kneeling down and still with both hands firmly clasped on the Uchiha's left leg, she at first did not want to believe it. She closed herself off to the idea that it was the case, then slowly and following the lines of the inky black gaze, she turned to the corner of the room behind her.
In an instant she released his leg and, following a long suffocation, backed away with a frightened gesture toward the front door.
Standing between the bed and the window, dressed in black and red clouds, the orange mask scrutinized her.
Now lying between the chair and the door, in the middle of the living room and the kitchen, she couldn't take her eyes off the slit of the spiral mask. At least until the chair in front of the bed creaked and Shisui stood between her and her savior, her jailer, her executioner. This man with whom she had read thousands of hours, talked hundreds, and laughed dozens, and whose name she didn't even know, and that terrified her.
It frightened her because he had not manipulated her to share these moments of life with him. He had manipulated her to at least listen to his orders, to believe that she was still in Kumo, nothing more. Everything she had experienced with him, she had done willingly.
How could such a treacherous being exist?
A feeling of laxity and helplessness spread through her.
She had trained for years, perfected her arts and her mind, only to be paralyzed with incomprehension at the first difficulty.
She hated herself.
"I knew it was you. Who else but Shunshin could have destroyed in a few seconds the bond I've spent years creating."
Standing with his back straight, she couldn't see the Uchiha's expression, but the tone he expressed told her that he must be calm. Very calm.
"You waited for me to use it to appear, you are a coward."
Over his shoulder, she watched as the orange mask swung about ten degrees.
"You could have avoided a war by keeping your eye, by using it at the right time, but you chose to use it on her. You used the most powerful weapon on the peninsula for nothing. If I am a coward, then you are an unbelievable idiot, Uchiha Shisui.
"Have you forgotten that I have a second?"
The little laugh behind the mask frightened her to the core and brought back thousands of childhood memories.
She didn't understand anything.
"Your bluff doesn't work on me. You know you still have seven years before you can use it. Come on, have you forgotten who you turned three years ago? Are you that remorseful?"
She could hear the malice in the hoarse voice and despite the few explanations Shikaku had given her about Shisui's Sharingan two years ago, she could not put the pieces together.
The conversation was completely out of her hands. Or was it because the presence of this man prevented her from even breathing?
After a few seconds of silence, Shisui's still calm tone startled her.
"The Mangekyō in your right eye looks familiar, as does the technique that brought you here. Shouldn't you be dead, Uchiha Obito?"
Uchiha... Obito? Was that his name?
Several short, gloved claps echoed between the four wooden walls.
"A perceptive Uchiha, I never thought I would see one in my lifetime. You are not of his lineage for nothing."
The gloves tapped one last time before sliding back down to the black and red dress.
"Here I am in a compromising situation, right? You've just deprived me of my most trusted and closest source of Kyūbi. This is very annoying. That boy is very annoying. Is he the one who asked you to do this? He seemed very upset when I told him the truth four years ago."
She straightened up a little on the floor.
Was he talking about Naruto?
"W-What did you tell him?"
Her hesitant yet soft tone rose and she immediately caught the scarlet, sadistic gaze.
If Shisui hadn't stood between them, she was sure she would never have dared to speak. She would never have dared to look at him.
"Why is your voice shaking, little wolf? Are you afraid that he knows? You can be. He knows that you betrayed them. He knows his master died because of you."
A slight whistling sound erupted in her right eardrum before spreading to her left, causing her to lose her balance. Seated, she miraculously managed not to collapse, unlike her attention, which collapsed to the floor.
The hum of the cavernous tone intruded on her thoughts despite herself.
"Oh... you didn't know? Then let me tell you again, in case you misheard. The Great Sannin Jiraiya is dead. He died because of you."
She... she...
"Does it amuse you?"
"Very much so."
She had...
"Come on, come on, you are very impulsive, it is useless to bring it out here. You can never touch me. If you use it in this place, you'll just destroy it, you don't want to destroy the only thing she has left, do you?"
What had she done?
"'Leave.'"
"Now you give orders with words, that's cute. Have you noticed that your illusions don't work on me?"
She had killed him. She had instigated the death of Sensei. She had extinguished one life and ruined another.
"Don't worry, Shunshin no Shisui, I won't come back here, she's no use to me now. She's just an empty shell, you can do whatever you want with her. Oh, I almost forgot. If you ever see him again, tell him that if he is looking for his master's body, it is in my possession. I will gladly exchange it for the one he has."
She understood now. She understood why he had left her. Why he had never returned.
She was in so much pain that it was unbearable. That's why she had always wanted to take her own life, without really understanding the reason, blaming it on loneliness, sadness, fear. Deep inside, her sealed memories were screaming at her to do it. She should have gone through to the end. She should have taken her own life. She didn't deserve one. She had no right to breathe after what she had d...
"Breathe, you'll pass out."
She lifted her eyes, troubled by her tears, and could only catch a glimpse of the scarlet and swirling eyes before they turned to coal again. Kneeling before her, he watched her with a worried look. She studied his face in return before glancing in panic to the corner of the room.
No one. He was gone.
"You have nothing to fear."
The statement raised a question in her mind. A rhetorical question that made her even more upset.
Did she feel fear?
A question that made her forget what she had heard. No sooner had she filled her lungs with oxygen than the sorrow returned and her breath hitched.
"Don't believe what he implied. He doesn't hate you. I didn't tell you the whole truth earlier, I hope you'll forgive me."
He asked her not to believe that, but not in Jiraiya's death.
A second confirmation that crushed her every thought, even stopping her from crying.
She stood up awkwardly with the help of her hands, not knowing what to think or do, simply watching the black irises above her.
"When I told him about you, he was not surprised. He knew I had met you. He never took his eyes off of you. That's why he didn't ask how you were. You see, the task I have asked him to do is not without risk, but the person he is about to save is of great importance to me, and will be to him. She will play a crucial role in the realization of his plans, that's for sure, and that's why he agreed to help me. But there is another reason. Another condition for him to do this. That I, in return, free you from this man's grip over you. He didn't know that I was already planning to do that, so he forced it on me. Despite what you have heard, you should know that he does not hate you."
She didn't know whether to cry or not. The information she had just received was so pleasant to hear that it prevented her from crying over Sensei's death.
Maybe he didn't hate her, but she hated herself.
[…]
Thunder rumbled as the rain pounded against the windows of the building.
"Take one, it'll do you good. It's on the house."
Sitting on a tall stool with a skeptical look on her face, she observed the strong-smelling glass resting on the wood in front of her. Slowly, she raised her turquoise eyes to the woman on the other side of the counter.
"Why do you think I need this?"
This one, curly-haired, dressed in black, a tattered apron, leaned against the sink behind the counter.
"I see people like you come in every day, full of loneliness, searching for something unattainable. There's no better cure than a good glass of sake, believe me. One sip and you'll smile again."
She raised one of her obsidian eyebrows.
This woman, did she have any share in the alcohol business? She sold it to her like it was a magic potion.
What about the next day, would the magic still work?
She might live alone, far from civilization, but she wasn't stupid anymore. Alcohol made you forget, it was well known, and so the men and women who had the most to worry about were the ones who drank the most.
But there was one small problem with this liquid. A single, game-changing factor that meant she'd never had a drop of alcohol before: she didn't want to forget. She never wanted to. She'd lived with it, and she'd die with it. She had to remember what she had done every second of her life.
She will remember it when she's sad, when she's crying, even when she's smiling. She had to accept it and one day manage to forgive herself. A thing that should be unattainable.
She inhaled gently and the smell of sake intoxicated her. Many memories of Sensei drinking until he could no longer walk came back to her, and with her eyes lowered, she cherished her thoughts with a wry smile.
"You must have had a lot on your mind, Sensei."
"What did you say?"
She turned her attention back to the fifty-something tavern owner, and the wry smile she had been wearing spread across her lips in spite of herself.
"Thanks for the drink, but I'll settle for water."
She sighed. The tavern keeper sighed. The damp wind that came in through the wide open door sighed. Seconds passed, then a full minute, and the woman, wiping a glass, looked at her with her green eyes.
"May I ask you a personal question?"
She took the umpteenth sip from her glass of water, nodding before swallowing and setting it down next to the alcohol.
"What happened to you? I mean, you're young, you're beautiful, and your wet hair, despite your raincoat, tells me you don't live in the village."
She thought the question would end there, but surprisingly, the fifty-something continued to express her sorrow for her.
She continued to lecture her discreetly.
"You're so oblivious to danger that it's frightening. I saw you for the first time three months ago, if I'm not mistaken, and I noticed something strange. You come once a week, and only at night, when there's no one or very few people around. You come for half an hour at most, around one o'clock, for a glass of water, and then you leave without a word."
The woman's green pupils opened wide.
"Aren't you afraid to walk alone in the middle of the night? We may be a friendly little village, we may all seem nice and tell the truth, but psychopaths are still the best liars."
The woman sighed a second time and, lowering her eyes to the sink, set about cleaning another stemmed glass.
"All of which is to say, please take care of yourself. When I see you leaving like this in the middle of the night, I can't help but think it might be the last time I see you. And that saddens my heart.
Still sitting on the stool, dressed in a dark green k-way with her legs dangling, she was both speechless and stunned.
Wasn't this supposed to be a personal question? Because now she had the feeling that she hadn't cleaned her room.
Well, to tell the truth, even though she fell into the category the woman had mentioned, she didn't mind. In fact, she... liked it. Knowing that a sane person cared about her was always nice to hear.
Tilting her head back, the tavern maid blinked excessively.
"Excuse me, we don't know each other and I'm lecturing you. I just happen to have a daughter your age who has gone to the capital, and I can't help but see her in you."
She smiles tenderly at the woman.
"It's OK, don't worry."
Before pointing to the alcohol on the bar.
"But why offer me a glass of sake if you're so concerned about my health? Are you the serial killer?"
The tavern owner returned her amused grin.
"Tonight you stayed longer than usual, which gave me time to think. I wanted to get you drunk so you'd stay longer, so you'd leave at dawn and not in the middle of the night. But it wasn't a very good idea, I have to admit."
That was why she didn't drink. Just imagining falling asleep on the bar and waking up without Henge, with two Byakugan in a crowded tavern, was enough to make her frown.
Alcohol really wasn't good when you had to keep a secret. Really not good.
"Besides, it's a two-hour walk to the nearest village, don't tell me you're..."
A flash of light illuminated the interior of the tavern, leaving a shadow on the north wall.
Thunder rumbled, and with a common movement, they turned their faces toward the entrance, toward the man standing nearby, and the fifty-year-old spoke before she could.
"Can I help you, sir?"
Soaking wet, dressed in a black k-way and muddy brown boots, the new arrival, with graying hair and probably in his forties, bowed to the stools.
"Sorry to disturb you and for being late, Your Highness, but I saw you passing by and thought I'd let you know I'd just arrived. Your provisions are in my cart by the stables, and if you wish, I can bring them to your home."
Leaning back, she brought her arms toward her and climbed down from her perch. Standing in front of the stools and counter, she lowered her face in greeting.
"That's all right. Take your time, feed your horses, I can wait until tomorrow. It's raining too hard for you to get up there. I'll stay here myself, I don't want you to get caught in the storm."
The man bowed to her again.
"Your kindness is admirable, Your Highness, and I thank you for it. It's true that my horses are tired, and a little rest would do them good. I'll... I'll leave you to it, Your Highness. If the road is clear, I'll come tomorrow morning, if not in the early afternoon."
"That's fine with me, rest well, Baiko-san."
The man bowed, turned, and walked back into the rain.
Usually she'd pick up a few provisions and wait for the rest when the bad weather stopped, but this time the shadowy cloud was only twenty kilometers away. Another hour or two and the rain would stop. Besides, Baiko seemed to be really tired today, and had even forgotten that when that happened, which was every other time, since it rained or snowed here all the time, she left with at least the first necessities.
A night's sleep would do him good, too, which was why she hadn't dared to bother him with her moods, which was why she had lied to him. She didn't want to stay here, but she could wait until tomorrow.
"Why did that man call you Highness?"
She returned her turquoise irises to the tavernkeeper.
"Oh."
At that moment, she didn't know what to say.
Everyone in the village knew her, absolutely everyone. From the first time they'd seen her in the company of the Second Crown Prince, everyone had etched her face into their memories, along with her turquoise pupils. And it was quite disturbing. That's why three months ago, when she had come here just out of curiosity - and especially to get out of the rain - while waiting for the horses to arrive, she had been surprised to find the tavern empty, and that the tavern owner didn't recognize her.
A simple thing that had given her new hope in humanity. Not everyone was a gossip.
"Does this man bring you food personally? Don't tell me you're... you're... you're..."
The owner's hiccup of terror echoed through the tavern, causing the glass she'd been cleaning to fall and explode on the floor. With a hand over her mouth, her muffled voice picked up the pieces.
"Are you the woman the village was talking about over a year ago? The wife of the Second Crown Prince Kenshin Teitarō?! That... that can't be..."
But tonight, on this night of January 1st, 1021, the New Year, it was all over. She would no longer have this haven of tranquility. She would no longer be able to rub shoulders with anyone but herself.
"This is me."
The pallor of the tavern keeper frightened her. She thought she was going to faint, but instead she quickly took the glass of alcohol from the bar and drank it down. Then she smacked her lips again and again and again. Until the hand having abused her face laid on her chest, then she observed her again.
"Please forgive me, Your Highness, I... I didn't know. Please don't punish me, don't take this place away from me... this tavern is all I own, don't say anything to the court, I beg you... I... I regret having spoken to you in familiar terms, having lectured you, if only I'd known who you were, I'd never have dared to speak to you like that."
With one hand on her chest and the other clutching her apron, the woman was on the verge of tears.
There was nothing to say. The more time passed, the more she hated this fear and the exaggerated politeness people had toward her. It only made her feel better to stay cooped up in her hovel.
"It's no big deal. Nobody died."
The tavern maid bowed so quickly she thought she would hit her head on the sink.
"Thank you, thank you, Your Highness, this man is right, your kindness is admirable."
She smiled, and the woman smiled back, allowing the latter to block her tears under her curved eyelids.
"I was going to give it to my mother, but I forgot to take it to her this morning. I would be very happy if you would accept them."
Bending down on the other side of the counter, the woman stood up with a plastic bag in her hand filled with vegetables of all kinds.
It took her only a fraction of a second to raise her hands in disagreement.
"I can't acc..."
And the tavern keeper was even quicker to cut her off.
"Please, as an apology, accept."
The plastic bag trembled. She terrified her.
If she stopped her metamorphosis right now and her pupils went back to opaline, she couldn't tell if Yuki Onna or Hyūga would come out of the woman's mouth, but what she was sure of was that the next second would be the last straw and she would go into cardiac arrest, no doubt about it.
She approached the counter and took the plastic bag.
"Thank you very much."
"N-Don't thank me, it's perfectly normal. It's the least I can do to thank you for your extraordinary mercy."
She gave a forced smile.
Yes, she definitely wouldn't come back here.
With the plastic bag behind her back, she took a step back before lowering her face a little, but not too much. She'd learned over time, and on her four trips back to the capital, that with her brand-new status, showing respect to the people was frowned upon, especially by the people themselves.
Strange, wasn't it?
"Thank you for the water, thank you for the vegetables."
"You're leaving already?"
One might have expected the woman to be surprised, even offended, but there was nothing of the sort. Behind the disappointed look on her face, there was a hint of relief. It had been like that since the beginning of time. You gossiped, discussed, assumed behind people's backs, and when they faced you, all you wanted was to see them go.
Assuming was very difficult.
"Yes, it's late and I'm tired. Have a good night."
Turning back to the storm, she paused in the wide-open doorway and looked up at the sloping wooden roof that let the water run freely over the mud.
"Goodbye, Your Highness, I look forward to seeing you again."
She pulled down her hood and found herself walking in the rain and on water. Since the street was empty, she breathed a little more chakra into her feet and crossed the alley without sinking into the sodden ground.
She skirted several silent buildings, passed through several dark alleys, and left the village through the forest instead of the usual route. Since the ground was less pounded by the rain, she no longer had to use chakra to keep from sinking into the mud, and she took the opportunity to let her pupils return to their original color.
Just fifty minutes of using a metamorphosis on her eyes and she had used more than half of her chakra. Henge was truly one of the most voracious jutsu in existence, no doubt about it. Sensei had taught it to her from the very first training session. He himself, who possessed an oversized chakra coil, could only use it for five hours, no more. It was better to throw a glowing fireball several meters in diameter than to transform for twenty seconds.
Inconsiderable.
That's why infiltration was one of the most difficult and costly missions, and why it was often the ninjas with the most chakra who did it. It was often the shinobi with the most chakra who were the most fortunate.
Surprisingly, the two people who possessed the most were the ones she'd spent the most time with. In the two years that she'd been traveling around the peninsula, she'd had the opportunity to observe countless chakra pathway systems. Naruto had by far the largest reserve she'd ever seen. He had more chakra than a thirty-meter-tall toad, which was disturbing. If she had to compare, he had one hundred and fifty to two hundred times more than her.
She had been jealous for a long time, she couldn't hide it, but over the years she had learned not to care. Of course, she didn't have much chakra, but it wasn't the amount that was important, but how she used it.
The double entendre Sensei had once uttered brought a smile to her face, and as she continued to wander between the sleeping fauna and dripping flora, she found herself giggling.
In terms of chakra amount, Sensei was second, but he'd never had much money.
If her memory was still intact, the third person was a woman Sensei had met in the Waterfalls, near the Fire border. She hadn't been able to see her face, but she had witnessed their exchange in a stall eight hundred meters from her hotel room and had been genuinely surprised to see Sensei chatting with a younger woman without trying to seduce her.
Leaving the forest, she crossed the river with thousands of raindrops and made her way to the path leading to the top of Henpei Mountain.
Then came Shisui. And he was the one who surprised her the most. She could easily imagine a person with two hundred times her amount of chakra - she didn't have much and she could admit that - but for an Uchiha to have more than her, it was hard to imagine.
The Uchiha weren't known for having a huge amount of chakra, in fact, many of the Konoha clans beat them in that field, and this was the only one. She didn't pull that out of her hat, but directly from one of the books written by the Second Hokage before the First Great War.
Tobirama Senju had written that on average, an Uchiha had no more chakra than an ordinary ninja, but that the Sharingan allowed them to overcome this. He explained it this way: An Uchiha could reproduce a technique to perfection. All he had to do was observe it once and he could do it again without the slightest difficulty. As a result, every technique used by an Uchiha was meant to be mastered by the user from whom it was stolen. Thus, each jutsu an Uchiha threw was perfectly mastered and cost only a small amount of chakra, which explained why, despite the natural selection of battlefields, many Uchiha who didn't have a staggering amount of chakra had been able to procreate, unlike the Senju, where only the strongest had survived the centuries. This was also the reason why the Senju were known for their inexhaustible chakra. The incessant wars between the two clans for nearly a thousand years were the reason for this.
That was why she had been surprised to see that Shisui possessed so much.
On the other hand, according to Tobirama, the only Uchiha he'd seen in his lifetime who possessed the same amount of chakra as the Senju was Madara Uchiha, who was still in Konoha when he wrote his book.
Ever since he'd left, more than three months ago, she had been wondering.
Was Shisui Uchiha a direct descendant of Madara Uchiha?
He had stayed the night after his arrival at her request. She was not ashamed to say that she had not wanted to be alone that night. She had trusted him and he had watched over her sleep all night. At least they'd talked most of the night. She lay in bed and he sat in the chair across from her.
After what he had told her, the secrets he had told her, if she didn't trust him, who would she trust?
The eyes he possessed were special. Unlike the normal Uchiha Sharingan, his could reach a higher level than the traditional three tomoes. And she'd seen that with her own eyes when his pupils turned into the shape of a four-bladed windmill.
Again, his eyes were different from what he called the Mangekyō Sharingan. His Kaleidoscope was unlike any other, like those who had awakened it before or after him. Each Uchiha who awakened his Sharingan to the next level found himself with an array of new powers. Some could manipulate time and gravity, even summon inexhaustible flames.
Extraordinary jutsu.
Every time and since the beginning of time, when an Uchiha awoke to his Mangekyō, he systematically found himself with two abilities, two powers in each eye. But this was different for him. He possessed only one, and it was no lesser.
Kotoamatsukami. The most powerful Genjutsu of all time. The most feared technique that had ever existed. And he possessed it in every single one of his eyes.
When he used it, it took him ten years to use it a second time. So, on average, once every five years. He couldn't explain why he only had one technique and not two, but he admitted that perhaps his second technique was simply his ability to manipulate and control his victim. This had simply increased tenfold after his awakening.
With a simple look, he could order you to stick your sword in your belly. No orders, no words spoken. All you had to do was cross his Sharingan, and the next second, you'd be beheading your teammate.
It was after all this knowledge that he told her that he had used his Kotoamatsukami on her. That he had used his eye as a barrier against anyone who tried to manipulate her. Never again would a Sharingan be able to enter her thoughts, never again would she be able to be immersed in an illusion, never again would anyone be able to reach her brain. She was truly overwhelmed.
He had used a technique that took ten years to regenerate, just to make her feel better, safer, so she wouldn't have to worry about the spiral mask.
He had ruined her life, but that night, in that moment, she had forgiven him. She'd forgiven him for being the lynchpin of her abduction, of the Fourth Great War. Had he manipulated her? She would never know, but she was convinced that he had not.
A conviction that perhaps didn't belong to her.
Still dressed in her k-way and still carrying her plastic bag of vegetables, she came to an abrupt halt on the sodden dirt path. Her breathing stopped and her pupils dilated slightly. Gently, she blinked her eyelids to get a better look at the dim light behind the window of the hovel a hundred meters away.
What the...
It took only a thought to activate her Byakugan and observe the young woman sitting comfortably in the armchair in her living room, seemingly... reading?
It couldn't be an illusion...
Lost between incomprehension and curiosity, she resumed her walk and ventured into the clearing. The rain continued to beat against her hood until she finally reached the porch and the wood creaked under her weight. A sound that made her guest's heart race. It startled her enough to make her fall backwards to the floor.
She didn't know who she was dealing with, but one thing was certain: this young woman, though she possessed a calm, experienced chakra, was no killer.
Deactivating her Byakugan, she opened the door and stepped inside, and even without her eyes, she felt the fear her movement had caused, as well as the recoil on the armchair and the book that began to slip dangerously from the trembling hands.
She crossed the threshold and turned slowly toward the living room, careful not to scare the woman more than she already was.
Sitting on the floor, blonde-haired and wide-eyed, the somewhat thin young woman watched her motionlessly, tetanized.
A cool breeze rushed through the house, swirling the candle flames on the nightstand. Her K-Way released the downpour it had accumulated on the floor as she turned to her bedroom, where her bed was unmade, then to her kitchen, where a half-crushed apple lay on the counter, and finally back to the living room, where she examined her collection of books scattered across the floor, which irritated her somewhat.
She pulled down her overheated hood and blew out her breath, trying to calm herself and make sense of the situation.
The young woman seemed more frightened than ever. She didn't want to scare her any more. Maybe she had no home and had come a long way to get here, so she couldn't blame her for taking a little nap in her bed and eating some fruit... but touching her books...
She closed her eyelids for a second to banish her grotesque thoughts, then opened them again to welcome the torment of ocean irises. The question she'd been asking herself since her arrival in the clearing settled on her lips and she expressed it in a much softer and calmer voice than she was used to.
"Who are you?"
The young woman opened her mouth, but no sound seemed to come out. So, to make her react, she closed the door, which creaked incongruously.
She hadn't meant to scare her a moment ago, but now she did.
"I-I-I... N-Na..."
Na...?
Her heart missed a beat, but she remained silent. It missed a second when the oceanic irises turned to the bedside table and she, in turn, looked at the small piece of furniture and the many overworked books.
For a moment she forgot everything. She forgot the rain, her terrible evening, the young woman on the floor.
She took a step toward the living room, then a second. Somewhat breathless, she didn't care that her leg movements frightened her incongruous guest; all she cared about was what was on the bedside table.
Just fifty centimeters from the candle, she observed the reason for her sudden lethargy. She looked at the three-pronged kunai. She watched the famous weapon of the Kiiroi Senkō, the one she had seen in his hands four years ago.
