There's a kid sitting in the scraggly red pine in his – actually his wife's - garden. Sakumo spotted him half an hour ago when the boy foolishly stretched his – no doubt cramped – legs. The small movement, seen only in his peripheral vision through a crack in the blinds was enough to alert Sakumo to his presence.
He has been watching the boy ever since, sipping bitter green tea while casting little glances over the rim of his chipped cup.
No doubt the boy has come to visit Kakashi, who is on a mission, has been away for some time and, or so it occurs to him now, might actually be scheduled to return soon. He should know this; he should keep track of his only son's comings and goings, she would want him to, but the truth is that Sakumo can barely even look at Kakashi.
All recent memories of his son are snapshots showing Kakashi entering or exiting the frame. Kakashi is the shadow that falls across the veranda a few seconds before Sakumo withdraws into the house. Kakashi is the sound of approaching footsteps that drive him into the dark corners of his room.
While Kakashi comes and goes, Sakumo hasn't left the house or opened the blinds since that mission.
Kakashi shops and cooks and cleans.
He leaves food for Sakumo in the same manner he places offerings at his mother's grave, dutifully.
Sakumo glances up again, through the steam rising from his cup, at his little kodama. What a ridiculous shade of green he is.
Were his wife here now, she would probably play a prank on him, startle him and make him fall out of his tree, but afterwards she'd invite him into the house to feed him and joke around with him.
Less than two months ago, Sakumo himself would have gone out and talked to the kid, would have invited him in, offered him tea to warm himself up. He would have made an effort for her sake, trying to act the way she would have wanted him to. So he and the kid would have waited for Kakashi together and Sakumo would have encouraged his son to train with the other boy. He would have talked about the importance of comradeship.
That was before.
Now, he knows that the boy must be freezing; he knows that his son, Kakashi, a chuunin since the age of six, won't give him the time of day, and yet Sakumo simply can't find it in himself to care.
He just looks through the fogged up glass out at the overgrown garden, once beloved by his wife and tended to in her memory, now left to the weeds. He looks at the oblivious boy who is staring hopefully into the distance; he notices the strips of bark that are gradually coming off the tree trunk.
It's already rotted inside out, Sakumo thinks.
At the back of the house, a window creaks open.
All around the boy in the dying tree, the sky is crisp and clear, endless and white.
Sakumo turns his back on the garden.