The leaves rustled through the trees. The grain swayed in the wind, a faint moan rising as the susurrus of sound gathered around the darkening space.
Nōtō wiped sweat away from his face. He stared at the swaying stalks of grain. Why am I thinking about her at a time like this? He sighed heavily. Back to work. I have no right to worry myself over her actions now.
The stalks glimmered in the light. After a long moment, several of the grain stalks toppled downward.
A massive sword slashed through the stalks of corn, its blade darkening. Pieces of grass rested against the edge.
"Hey!" Nōtō shouted suddenly, his hands rising in the air. "What the hell are you—"
"You've changed, Nōtō-chan. And not for the better." Miyama sighed. She shook her head heavily from side to side. "Not for the better at all." She lowered the sword. "What have you been struggling toward, anyway? You got so weak you can't even detect the hulkin' presence of me?"
Nōtō frowned. "My retirement. I'm an old man now." He turned back to the rows. His hand dragged the stone through the earth.
"Oh, I see." Miyama raised her sword again. A fury-filled smirk crossed her lips. She slashed through the grain again.
"Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Nōtō demanded viciously.
"Ain't it obvious? I'm harvesting. If you got a problem with that, then you're going to have to cast aside this pretense of being a washed-up has-been. Farmers harvest grain, right?" Miyama went on.
"This is nowhere near the right season, you dumbass!" Nōtō shouted. He closed his eyes after a long pause. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"This isn't your true nature, is it?" Miyama's eyes narrowed. "I don't believe it." She unshouldered the sword. "And if that ain't the case, then you'll meekly give me your crops. Kiritsugomen, right?"
"That applies to peasants. I'm a monk!" Nōtō shouted fiercely.
"A monk?!" Miyama threw back her head, her crimson hair glimmering in the light. "You seriously believe that shit? I never thought you were that fucking stupid!" She swung her sword in a circle again.
Nōtō's hands rose rapidly in the air. He blocked the sword with the tips of his fingers.
"You're not the guy I'd peg as being a monk. I don't know what you are, but you shouldn't be cooped up here." Miyama's arm lowered. "You've still got your own life to lead, right? Why the hell have you buried your head under the sand?"
Nōtō's eyes narrowed. "My head isn't buried. If it was, I would still be there."
"Heh. You'd toss aside your bonds so easily, just from fear?" Miyama demanded.
Nōtō's fists rose in the air.
Miyama grinned. "Got you." She lowered the sword. Her crimson hair streamed down her back.
Nōtō frowned. "How so?"
"If you really had retired, you wouldn't rise to such a cheap provocation. You haven't been defanged. More." Miyama hesitated. "More you've said you'll accept whatever fate leads you to."
The pair regarded each other quietly for a moment before falling silent.
"Perhaps I have," Nōtō replied. "And what if I have? I have reached my own time, my own society."
Miyama chuckled. "That ain't the way humans live, you know," she said in a quieter voice. "If we could just commit ourselves to fate our lives would be a sight easier. But that isn't our nature."
Nōtō frowned.
"Well, are you going to invite me to your house, or do I have to cut down more of your wheat?" Miyama questioned.
Nōtō sighed. "Fine. You may enter it," he went on.
The sun set in the sky. The sky stained a bright crimson with the light from the heavenly sun.
"It pissed me off when I'd heard you'd retired, you know. I thought to myself, there's no way that old bastard kin say he'd be happy unless he was fighting." Miyama walked toward the house. "I thought you were lying, or pulling a long con, or something.
Nōtō followed. His feet sent small puffs of dust upward from the dirt path.
Miyama shrugged. She removed her shoes at the entrance. Her eyes narrowed. "But then, I saw you really had settled down. You weren't going on missions. You'd left your students to fend for themselves. I thought to myself you could not be happy. No way in hell. So I decided to see for myself." She walked to one of the chairs in the room and sat down. "And what do I find?"
Nōtō chuckled. He looked dryly at Miyama. "What did you find?"
"A man who's been lying to himself. Reasons I don't even know."
"I fucked up." Nōtō cleared his throat. He said nothing for a long moment, his eyes downcast.
Miyama raised an eyebrow. "Eh?"
"You probably cannot understand it yourself. There's nothing wrong with that." Nōtō exhaled. "But my existence. My reason for existing these days. It's to pass on the lessons I learned from painful experience to a younger generation. Yet they made the same mistakes. They fled to someone who could save them."
Miyama remained silent. Her hand tightened slightly on the arm.
Nōtō circled toward the fireplace. His hand set a log into the burner. "They did it because it was charming. They did it because they were afraid, and I couldn't protect them enough!"
Miyama rose to her feet. Quickly, she slapped Nōtō on the cheek.
Nōtō's brow furrowed.
Miyama grinned. "You dumbass. Fear is something no one can escape. As long as you live, you will be afraid."
Nōtō's hand fell to one side, rubbing the red mark.
"Hell, everyone is, so their action isn't your responsibility. You recovered them just fine, didn't you?"
"But I had no involvement in that! Well, practically none."
"Then they used the lessons they learned from you to succeed. The hell is wrong with that?" Miyama demanded sharply. "You owe me an apology for such a stupid reason!"
"I apologize for telling you the truth as I understand it." Nōtō's head bowed. His eyes flashed behind the glasses.
"It's fine. Whatever happened in your recent experience, it's fine as long as you continue. It's fine to be second rate or third rate. Why are you living? Who are you living for?" Miyama asked softly. Her eyes narrowed as she sat down again. "What are you living for?"
Nōtō's eyes widened.
"If the answer is yourself, it's fine. If you're fighting because you want to achieve some personal goal, that's fine, too. If you want to fight to protect them, that's fine as well." Miyama squatted in the grain stalks. "But if you're conforming to other people's desires just to fit in, that's the crappiest logic I've ever heard from someone who isn't a twelve-year-old girl. I just never pegged you as the farming type." Miyama's eyes narrowed. "Then, speaking of your abilities. What would you say your current reason for action is? Is it because you want to retire for yourself? Or are you doing it because it's what you want to do?"
Nōtō avoided Miyama's gaze. His mind traveled backward, returning to the far-distant days where he had visited the North Star Village. He thought of meeting Aka, and the lessons of that peaceful retirement.
"It's the former, then." Miyama paused. "I won't insist further. I will only say that your life will be sad if you pursue that path to its end. I always thought you better suited to a wasteland than a land of plenty. I don't mean to offend."
Nōtō sat motionless for a long moment. He stared into the flames in the fireplace. "Do you remember the first time we fought?"
"You were a wild animal. The look in your eyes, and the taste of my own blood. It was the first time I had felt fear in my long life." Miyama smirked. "Pure killing intent. That was the only thing I could feel from you. No impurity—no desire, no hatred. Merely that killing intent. Like a monster of the forest that had somehow emerged, or a Tailed Beast of fury and fangs." She paused. "That killing intent of yours has been tainted with dozens of things. Concern for those under you. Worry about the outcome of events. But in a regard that's unavoidable. The young are the only ones who can cast their tiles with no concern for the outcome. Them, and the insane." She hesitated. "But then, you are stronger than you were then."
"Because of Susano'o Mikoto?" Nōtō chuckled. He turned and sat down in one of the chairs.
"Hardly. It's simpler than that. You cast it away. Your doubt, your fear, your reality. Every element of a 'reasoned happening'. It was cast away for reasons you didn't understand. But that wasn't a firm foundation. During our fight you too realized what fear was." Miyama gesticulated with her hands. "In a word? You never felt afraid because you had never known what the emotion was like, to begin with."
Nōtō frowned.
"You grasped it because the foundation of your fearlessness was built on such shallow ground. You declined it, and it seeped in gradually—because you, to that day, had never needed to feel fear." Miyama hesitated. "Now, you know what that fear is. You understand it. In a very true sense you own it. That fear has become a natural part of your existence. It's true that your killing intent has been tainted by external forces, but this is not a bad thing. Quite the contrary! On the whole, you have accepted a thing—a detail, an ideal, an idea—that belongs to an entirely wondrous and brilliant world. You have grown up past the child's play of those days back then."
"Did you grow up?" Nōtō questioned, one eyebrow quirking as he made the statement.
Miyama shrugged her shoulders. "If someone were to learn I was here, they could very easily place me in a difficult position. And my village, too. I think that the fact that I'm here despite such prudent warning demonstrates my youthful thought. I still haven't really grown up. Not yet."
"Hmph." Nōtō sighed heavily. "You really haven't, have you?" He turned his gaze toward the far-distant plains.
"We humans can't live like wild beasts. Only children can think that way. We have our own society, our own life." Miyama adjusted the window briefly. "That's all."
Nōtō remained quiet. He folded his fingers together.
"At a guess, I'd say that heart is with your students. Am I wrong?" Miyama questioned. "That's what you really want to do. Not this meal and grain thing."
Nōtō shook his head. "I'd certainly like to be there. But the time has passed."
"There is only one Team Seven in Hidden Leaf. And there is only one sensei of that team." Miyama slapped Nōtō hard on the back. "Go get 'em, Nōtō-chan."
Nōtō smirked. "I don't know they'll accept me. But if it'll get such a garrulous woman to stop chopping down my grain, then fine. By all means." He rose to his feet.
Miyama grinned fiercely. Her eyes glittered in the fading light of the sunset.
Nōtō's eyes narrowed. "There's one more matter that troubles me. Regarding that person, have they been located?"
"That person?"
"That person."
Miyama's brow furrowed. "Well, Kūkyo is still on the move, so."
"No, the other person."
Miyama's head tilted to one side. "I fear you've lost me."
Nōtō exhaled. He looked down at his scarred hand. "The only person, besides you, to have left a serious wound on this body."
Miyama blinked. "Who?"
"Shinnō." Nōtō looked Miyama in the eye. "The man who once bore the Zero-Tails."
Miyama raised an eyebrow. "What a vile memory. The Land of Sky didn't need such a savior." She paused. "Well, in that regard, I can't say I have any information. Our spy networks have uncovered traces of his actions. He was in the midst of the incident in Wave, and he may have been involved with the resurgence of Hakubo. But with regard for his current location, we don't know anything. We haven't had news of his actions in almost ten years. Admittedly, he was good at hiding his information, but not that good. Unmei-san believes he's dead. And, lacking any evidence to the contrary, I agree with him."
Nōtō sighed heavily. The window darkened. "I thought as much. Thank you for your honesty, though."
Miyama sighed.
"I cannot believe that man passed so easily beyond the bonds of life." Nōtō looked toward the window. "That is the nature of the heavens. We fear what is beyond our power only. And he was such, as few before him." He rose to his feet. "Well, I have a young man to recover." He started through the fields.
Miyama yawned. She covered her mouth with one hand. "Remember, you have to pay me a visit again."
Nōtō did not bother responding to this. He started across the field of grain, the shadows gathered in the dark. The fields, like a sea of grain, rippled in purple and gold.