Chapter One:
She brings the style of melancholy

When the paper plane came through the window, Naruto was finishing heating ramen in the microwave.
It slowly glided in, almost too much, as if it had a life of its own and chose to show itself in all its elegance and simplicity to its recipient. After all, this was no ordinary paper. It was her paper. And she could do whatever she wanted with paper: fold it, stretch it, segment it, accumulate it with other papers and fold it again into strong angles that, formed into an endless succession of layers, making it harder than metal; curve it into soft folds that could caress the skin and dance in the air like cherry blossoms in free fall.

Paper was, simply, an extension of her.

In a gentle, curved descent the little plane landed on the counter, and stood there, motionless, as if it had once again become an inanimate, inert object. As if she, from somewhere else, had stripped the plane of its will.

He wondered if there was indeed a connection between them. Naturally, the paper was influenced by her chakra, but was there something else? Perhaps the paper felt for her, even if only in a small way. Sounds, temperatures, the wind, the presence of other people. The microwave gave the alarm of having finished its heating. Naruto didn't open it. He kept looking at the plane.

He stretched out his arm.

He opened it:

East Park

A bench

Under the red maple

He read it back.

And a third time.

He automatically read it in her voice. That cold, slow voice with a delicate feminine inflection. She could turn into poetry anything she said and wrote. The message was imprinted with the austerity of words that characterized her. A park, a bench, and a maple. There would also be shade, branches, red leaves - both above and below -, and the coolness of autumn.

.

.

.

Naruto finished the ramen in less than five minutes. Anyone would have choked, but after years of cultivating the specific skill of gobbling up that dish in a variety of situations and emotions, he had not felt any discomfort.

He soon arrived at the village's East Park. It was large, but he knew the location to which he had been summoned. He walked first along the winding paths that showed him back and forth the children playing with their parents under the light of dusk. Then he turned away from the dirt road and went into the low, faded grass. Autumn slowly gave way to winter, and with each passing day, the green of the village diminished. Naruto had heard that Kumo was very beautiful during winter, with its high houses in the mountains, covered with snow roofs, and its cozy interiors, warmed by the thick wooden walls and homes that all the houses had. But Konoha was not like that. Spring and summer was the time when it shone with its clear skies, its endless leaves, its endless cool shadows cut into the ground against the sunlight.

Isolated from the rest of the park, alone, Naruto saw the great maple. It looked like a flame, like those born from candles, perfect in its drop shape. The tree stood out from the ashes withered in the distance. And beneath its great treetop, as lonely as the tree itself, was a dark wooden bench, and sitting on it was Konan. She looked as usual: quiet, upright, not resting her body on the back of the bench, legs together and hands together, one on top of the other, looking at the leaf litter around her feet. She wore her usual coat, the one she had made after she had decided to stop using the one with the red clouds. But she hadn't thrown it away. Naruto knew, more than anyone, that it would be the last belonging she would ever give up. Konan kept it zealously in her little apartment, in a drawer dedicated exclusively to it, where it remained clean, folded and perfumed.

But now Konan wore a black overcoat, simply black. It had the same loose sleeves, the same extension to her ankles, the same zipper, and the wide, high neck that covered half her head. Konan used to wear the zipper all the way up, as if to maintain a wall between her and the rest of the world, a wall that covered her mouth that she rarely used to address others. Over time, however, as the months passed, she began to zip it down halfway, showing a round-cut black shirt and the lines of her pale neck. Naruto thought that at least she had gotten used to interacting with him and no longer saw him as a stranger.

Because during all those months Konan had not had any significant contact with anyone else but him. The rest of her interactions were limited to carrying out tasks and functions that had been imposed on her since the Great Conflict ended. And in her laconicism, in her ostracism, Konan just did, only did, and then leave for her apartment. Every now and then, when the natural urge to share time with someone pushed from her insides, she would look out for him, only the time necessary to be alone again.

The crunch of his steps on the leaf litter made Konan come out of her self-absorption. It took her a moment to look up. They locked eyes, but no one said anything. Naruto passed in front of her and sat down on the bench, facing away on the other end. He folded his neck up and looked at the treetop. It was as mesmerizing as a fire in the night. The leaves swayed in the breeze, and for brief moments here and there small gaps between the leaves revealed the grey sky. The thick trunk on his right protected his eyes from the final glimmerings of the sun. And Konan still did not speak.

Naruto lost his sight in front of him, in the lush forest beyond the park.

"I liked the letter you sent me. I thought it was a nice poem."

When he turned his head to Konan, Naruto saw her eyebrows raising a bit. She kept looking at the ground.

"A poem?"

To finally hear her voice was like taking the first sip of tea after a strenuous day.

"Yes," Naruto said. "You like poetry a lot, don't you?"

It took Konan a moment to answer.

"Yes, I do. Although I didn't think of it as a poem".

"Well," Naruto said, smiling at her even though she didn't look at him, "I found it poetic. Haven't you thought of writing poems?"

The corners of Konan's mouth rose slightly for the first time in the day. Her eyes rose for a moment to the distant pastures, blinking her made-up eyelids, and then she looked up at Naruto. The angular chin and pale skin of her face turned to him, the amber eyes imprisoning his with an unexplainable force, with their melancholy influence. And the eyelids, those eyelids always shaded, always lavender, a little darker than her short hair that reached to her jaw. The rose on her head was the same color. Of course, that was no coincidence. When it came to Konan and aesthetics, nothing was left to chance.

"I've already written quite a few, Naruto."

And as if Konan forgot he was there, she looked at the fallen leaves on the ground again. Konan still wore the white ring on her right middle finger. She never took it off.

Now that he was thinking about it, Naruto remembered that next to the red cloud cover there was something else. Nagato's ring. Or, rather, Deva Path's, Yahiko's. He had only seen it during the battle he waged against Nagato that day, but he met with it again many months later. It had been one of those many nights when Konan simply broke. She lost her toughness of character and crumbled like a house during an earthquake. And in those moments Naruto had gone, time after time, to help her maintain her apartment. Every time Naruto arrived it was late because it wasn't until he didn't see her for a few days that he knew she was going through difficult times again. The apartment had the natural disorder of not being maintained during the week: she didn't have her shopping done; the books of poetry were scattered on the couch, all across the living room, and on her bed; the flower arrangements to which she usually devoted herself with care every day were withered and smelled bad; the clothes were scattered on the floor. And then Konan, alone, with her coat, sitting in a corner. Quiet and memorial, as always, but with the sadness sinking her, drowning her. When Naruto saw Konan in that state, he noticed her desire to scream, to cry out in despair, not knowing where to hold on. He saw, with the ease of someone who has had the same experience, the oppression she imposed on herself by keeping her cries silent and remaining mute.

"How is your sword training going?"

The question took him out of his thoughts. She turned to Konan, who was playing with one of the red leaves she had picked up from the ground.

"Good," Naruto said, "Very good indeed. It is a new passion. I never thought I would like it so much. Swordsmanship is an incredible thing in many ways," As he spoke he clasped his hands in front of his torso, as if holding a katana in his hands, with his wrists well placed on the imaginary hilt, and moved his hands back and forth, simulating successive cuts and blocks, "Did you know how important the hip is when cutting? If you don't put your body behind you, the cut won't be strong. And despite what most people think, you shouldn't put strength in your arms, you should concentrate on..."

"The little finger."

Naruto stopped his imaginary training, still sitting on the bench. He put his hands on his thighs and looked at her, quietly. Konan had lost her sight again, this time in the distant forest.

"The use of the sword is in the hips, the wrists and the fingers," she explained, "especially the little fingers and ring finger." When Konan said this, with her left hand she squeezed the last two fingers and extended her wrist, just as someone would throw a fishing rod, "Focusing on the left hand is important."

"Yes...," Naruto muttered, "How do you know these things?"

Konan smiled again. A light curl on her lips.

"He was an awesome swordsman. Especially considering his age."

The wind blew. Naruto stood stiff as the silence enveloped them, mortally, coldly. There was that silence again. He didn't know how to beat it. It was so huge, so unassailable. He already lost count of the times he faced it. It seemed to emerge from within her with its gargantuan size and weight, like a thick wall, like a huge lake at dawn.

But he wouldn't surrender: "It's getting cold," He rubbed his hands, "Maybe we should go? I can accompany you to your apartment."

Konan looked at him, her face emotionless, as if she was one of those bodies he fought two years ago.

"Thank you, but I will stay here some more time."

Easy, Naruto said to himself while he stood up, Water penetrates stone not for its strength, but for its consistency.

"Alright. You may get an idea for a new poem by contemplating the sunset. Or by being alone and erasing internal dialogue from your mind. It amazes me how fencing shows that. How the sword cries when the mind cries, how it calms down when the mind calms down, how it moves clearly when the mind is clear."

He found himself smiling when she, in fact, wasn't. She was again looking at the leaf litter. Naruto put his hands in his pockets and looked at her for a moment before turning and walking towards the path that led to the park entrance. In that moment it started to rain. He stopped, but didn't turn around, for he knew the answer would be the same, and kept going.

Konan watched him walk away, her hair covered already in tiny drops.

"Yes," She said. "It does."