Note : I was on vacation for the last two weeks, I started translating again in the last two days. Sorry for the mistakes in the text. Enjoy your reading.
Chapter size : 14500 words
Opal and Obsidian
Part 3
Hinata
October 2, 1014, 6 :28am
Land of Iron
"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?"
The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the atmosphere was balmy. This is how the crossing of the peninsula could be summed up if one left the land of the Fangs in time. This is how Razan, a thinker of the early Sengoku era, summed it up in his autobiography.
If you fear the heat, leave the Claws and Fangs before spring arrives, otherwise the sirocco of the Windy Deserts will get the better of you.
She would never read one of his books again. Never again.
It had been more than two months since they left the Mount. More than two months of walking to the north, more than two months of avoiding the Earth, Fire, and Wind fronts. More than two months before spring.
Before... spring.
The snowy mountains of the Claws and the craggy mountains of the Fangs past, they had braved the icy wind of the grassy plains of the Birds before tasting the endless cold drizzle of the Rain. And as one misfortune followed another, the temperate climate of the lush forests of the Grass and the sparkling lakes of the Waterfalls at the vernal equinox was simply swept away by a storm from the Teiryuu Ocean.
The torrents of hellish rain and the gusts of wind that tore down trees had accompanied them for more than ten days, multiplying the crossing of Kusa and Taki by two. And, of course, the Ryu Storm had lasted exactly as long as it had taken them to reach the northernmost minor nation on the peninsula. Tetsu no Kuni, the Land of the Samurai.
Here again, she had forgotten the color of the sun.
In the land of Iron, hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds, the sun only came out for about ten minutes a day, or never if the fog from the North Sea was out.
Claws, Fangs, Birds, Rain, Grass, Waterfalls, and now Iron.
The boring, the dull, the foggy Iron...
Hidden under her hood, she turned her attention back to the gray sky when a flash of lightning ripped through the sky. Turning her attention back to the ground and the raincoat on her left, she finally observed the one with golden reflections on her right as a sound came from it.
"Okay, okay, I got one."
A clearing of throat and a deep breath later, the teenage tone spread through the dripping bamboo forest.
"It's a snake encountering another one. Ouch! he screams. Be careful, you just stepped on my foot! But snakes don't have feet! replies the other. And he walks away with a shrug."
Silence... was something she had learned to appreciate during her years of captivity. And considering how rare it had become since she'd met them, she cherished it more than ever. However, the lull that followed the joke forced her to try to put an end to it, with a laugh or a remark, but nothing came out of her half-open lips, even when the azure gaze fell upon her.
"Was it really that bad?"
She could only look at him with a sorry look.
"Let's just say it was a little-"
"Bad. Very bad. That was the worst joke I've ever heard."
With round eyes, she stared at Master Jiraiya's well-established smile to her left.
Round one thousand three hundred and twenty, go on.
And it wasn't long before Naruto's voice was heard.
"Oh yeah!? Go ahead we're listening!"
The challenger stopped suddenly, and she had to step aside to avoid running into him.
Coming to a halt, she observed the fist raised halfway to the former Sannin's height as well as his ink-black irises pointing to the horizon.
"Sex is like a game of cards, if you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand."
She... had to admit that at first, Master Jiraiya's jokes had made her feel uncomfortable, but now, after thousands of them, it no longer bothered her. She simply didn't care anymore.
"And you dare to say that mine sucks? SERIOUSLY?!"
Without paying the slightest attention to his noisiest disciple, the fifty-year-old resumed his walk, and she had no other reflex than to follow him, falling back into her thoughts.
"Young people these days, no sense of humor."
Five months.
"Don't blame us, you pervert!"
Strange as it may seem, they had stayed on the Mount for five months. And even more surprisingly, it was on the initiative of Master Jiraiya.
"You are a generation of uptight people, when I was your age, I already did it all."
She still didn't know why he changed his mind, but she didn't care. Four more months of reading every book in the Great Gama's library.
"Are you proud of the fact that you were a pervert at fifteen? Do you understand that you are the problem?"
What more could she have wanted?
"Proud? I am not proud of it, I am honored by it. It is a gift from Kami. He gave me eyes to observe, and I observe better than anyone."
She had learned so much that she was sure she had forgotten half of it, if not more. Whether it was the ancestral wars, samurai wars, clan wars, village wars, the relationship between the Mount and the Land of Fire over the centuries, or even the men and women who had managed to find the entrance to the mountain.
"Is that so? Yet it seems to me that it is the man who invented binoculars and hot spring baths, not sure if that is part of your god's plan."
Well, in reality she had only found the memories and notes of one woman for about twenty men, including Master Jiraiya and the fourth Hokage.
"Therein lies the subtlety. It's man who invented all this. But you are too young and too naive to understand."
A certain Yasaonna, who had lived eight centuries ago. Her memoirs told of the conflicts that ravaged the peninsula at that time, at least if she understood everything correctly, since much of the text was written in a language she did not know.
"Yeah right, in the meantime, you should focus more on writing than observing, considering the money you're taking from me you must not be selling many books you dirty crook."
Aside from the wars, Yasaonna talked mostly about her great-grandfather and the two centuries that separated them. That in only two hundred years the people had managed to forget what he had left them. And that could only be true, since she had never heard of it before her reading.
The Ninshū.
"Well, just ask someone who read me recently and you'll understand that I'm a hit with both men and women, right, Hinata?"
Surprised to hear her name, she raised her dilated pupils and studied the faces of the two men who shared her life, especially the one to her right. She was used to seeing an amused expression on Master Jiraiya's face, but she hadn't seen Naruto's shocked expression for a long time.
Having deliberately not listened to their conversation, she stopped on the path and did what she did best: admire the azure irises without saying anything.
The eyelids opened wide, he recoiled abruptly, frightened. Not understanding, she made a move in his direction, and he stepped back even further, making her raise an eyebrow in surprise.
Perhaps she should have listened to their conversation.
"When did you become a pervert?"
Yes, she definitely should have.
A hundred images flashed through her mind suddenly, peony red, her eyes again wide open, she watched the former Sannin from the corner of her eye, even more amused and attentive, before finally returning her embarrassed look to her indiscreet interlocutor.
"What on earth are you talking about?"
She had no doubt that Master Jiraiya had heard her despite her whisper.
"Have you really read one of his crazy books?"
And even less about the relieved sigh she let out.
He wasn't talking about what-she-believed-he-was-talking-about.
In order to put a gesture to her innocence, she raised both her hands to the height of her shoulders.
"It's not what you think, it was an adventure novel. The tales of the utterly gusty shinobi, it is very well written you should read it."
The azure and suspicious gaze shifted from her to the writer, who was watching them with an even more suspicious gaze.
"Since when can you write anything but perverted things?"
The answer never came. Arms crossed and eyes squinted, Master Jiraiya stared at them, and the huge proud smile that distorted the red ink terrified her to no end.
"Where, when, how? I want to know everything."
At first she did not understand the question. Then, slowly, everything became clear, unlike her complexion, which had turned crimson. She gave an umpteenth embarrassed glance at the quinquagenarian, who in less than a second pulled a notebook and pencil out of his raincoat.
Like a reporter on the verge of an earth-shattering scoop, he wrote a few hesitant words before embarrassing her even more.
"Did you stop at the preliminaries or did you go further? Was it this morning in the cave or the day before when I was away for a few hours?"
The rain and light around her redoubled at such a crazy pace that she didn't even have time to feel her heart race. Turning her attention back to her right, she was forced to blink.
Blinding and beautiful, the condensed sphere of chakra swirled so fast that it sucked up the rain and spat it violently at the surroundings, including herself.
Just as she had done a few seconds earlier to clear her mind, the part-time reporter raised his hands, but this time over his white hair and in fright.
"Just kidding! Relax!"
The bluish light doubled in intensity, carrying away the embarrassment she had felt.
She was so fascinated by this technique that everything seemed ridiculous when she admired it. Every time they used it in training, she couldn't help but stare at it, even if it blinded her.
The Byakugan allowed her to see through every atom, she had come to understand that, but she could not see what was at the center of that sphere of pure energy. There was no doubt that it was chakra, but it was still insane that such a jutsu could exist. When she looked at it, she literally felt like she was looking at a miniaturized star.
Uzumaki Namikaze Minato was a true genius, she understood that even before she read his writings.
"Stick to your own stories instead of interfering in others you pervert! And stop smiling like that for God's sake!"
The miniaturized star disappeared, and the darkness took place again, to her great dismay.
"Smile how?"
"Like this!"
She watched Master Jiraiya's proud smile disappear as he nodded with a jaded sigh.
"I can't even smile anymore."
Once again the red getas clattered on the earthy ground and once again she followed in their wake. Silence returned for a few seconds, before the hoarse voice of the unemployed reporter broke it.
"There's a village two kilometers north, can you see it?"
Realizing he was talking to her, she lifted her face and looked north, past the lush, wet bamboo forest.
"Yes, I can see it."
Thousands of souls for five, maybe six hundred buildings. Rice fields, candles and fires as the only sources of light, no active chakra coils.
No doubt, they were in the Iron Land.
"Good, very good... now you can tell me which brothel is the clos-"
If a few seconds earlier, the rasengan had been twenty centimeters in diameter, this time the one that crossed her field of vision, causing her obsidian hair to twirl, was more than two meters across.
Forcefully closing her eyes as the orb blinded her, she jumped back as she followed the source of light through her eyelids. Thunder rumbled as the orb hit the ground, imploding in the exact spot where Master Jiraiya had been.
Upon landing, she opened her eyes and watched the numerous explosions that followed at five, ten, then twenty meters, and shielded her face from the debris that whistled at her ears.
For the first time, she giggled under the echo of the master's laughter and the disciple's insults.
They were unique, and that was why she loved them so much.
[...]
"February 9, 1019,
The war has been over for two years now. Where are you, what are you doing?
Do you even know?"
The Mittsuokami Mountains of the Iron Land, more commonly known as the Three Wolves, were of a monstrous... bewitching. In the shape of a mouth with sharp fangs, the mountain range had such surreal reliefs that she wondered how gravity had not yet disintegrated it.
If the Honryuu waterfalls of Taki had astonished her with their power and noise, even covering the storm, the three mountains of Tetsu left her speechless with their magnificence. Every time she stopped for a moment to look at them, she had this feeling in her stomach. That feeling of inferiority that ran through her and prevented her from taking her eyes off them.
Unfortunately for her stomach, the pride of the samurai nation was visible almost everywhere in the country, and that was one of the reasons why the inhabitants worshipped it.
Wherever you are, Mittsuokami is watching over you.
They had been at the Iron for twenty days. Twenty days of traveling from village to village, twenty days of avoiding meeting new faces. Twenty days of looking at the landscape.
They had followed the Fuyubara River for the first ten days, and bypassed Miasao, the capital, for the next week. The last three days had consisted of traversing the mountains and wilderness until they reached Shinjō, one of the few villages to the east, just a few miles from the borders of Oto, the Nation of Sound.
Everything suggested that a trip like this, despite the bad weather, could only be idyllic, but this was not really the case, especially since they had arrived at the Iron.
If she had gone unnoticed on their way to the mountain last summer, it was only because they had only stopped twice in this country, moving from border to border in a short time. But without her knowing why, Master Jiraiya had decided to take his time on the return journey, to admire and discover all that he had not been able to experience in his fifty years. And therein lay the problem: she attracted too much curiosity.
A teenage girl walking around with sunglasses under a cloudless sky doesn't attract attention. But a woman strutting around with opaque glasses in the rain, it magnetizes the slightest glance.
She did not even mention the merchants they had passed on their way. They had spent more time staring at her than listening to Master Jiraiya's words about the fruits and other vegetables he wanted to buy.
She would have given anything to have a chakra reserve as large as hers to sustain a metamorphosis for several hours, but if one day she could hold a Henge for more than fifteen minutes without passing out from exhaustion, it would be an achievement.
To make a long story short, they had been sleeping in the caves and on the damp ground since they left, and she was really starting to miss a mattress and an air-conditioned room. But her moods, like her other petty worries, she kept to herself, and she had really become an expert at it.
At least that's what he'd made her think.
Leaving the three giant wolf mouths on the horizon, she took a quick look at the village below her elevated position before turning back to the center of the mountain she was standing on and taking the dirt road.
Disconcertingly flat, Henpei Peak, which they had discovered only two days earlier, was covered by a forest of Betulaceae trees that hid a colorful and beautiful clearing in its center.
The deeper she went, the more the smells hit her in the heart.
If they had arrived in the Iron Land in early spring and the snow had lingered on the paths for more than a week, a month later, and even at a height of more than five hundred meters, it had completely disappeared, leaving the lilacs blooming in red and purple.
For the past three months, they had only experienced rain and snow, but in this early April, the weather was beautiful. It was sunny. Cold, of course, but the light was out, and nothing could make her happier.
The pounding of the hammer in the center of the clearing lifted her thoughtful expression, and with a slight smile, she looked at the foundation of the wooden hut and the ropes that held up the first of four load-bearing walls. Focusing on the logs, she admired the bluish figure striking the ground with a hammer and getting up to walk toward the only window that looked out onto the pathway.
From blue, the hair turned to gold.
Lips closed over half a dozen nails, he called to her with a wave of his hand that only widened the smile she gave him. Fingers shyly intertwined behind her back, she inhaled the harmonious scent of the clearing before moving toward the half-built hovel.
It had been two days since he had decided to build a house for her. A wish he had not hesitated to fulfill when Master Jiraiya had told them that they would be staying in the area for at least a month. And from what she had heard a quarter of an hour earlier, it would be another four days before she could sleep in a soft bed.
The only thing she could hope for was that the sun would stay out for that long.
[...]
"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."
"And this one?"
Lying on the floor of the open-roofed hovel, her head resting on a comfortable belly, she shifted her gaze below the hand pointing to the cluster of stars.
The answer came to her naturally.
"Yamata."
The darkness and silence, punctuated by the hooting of owls on this half-moon night, lent an air of mysticism to the thousand-year-old name.
"Yamata? I don't see its heads anywhere... let alone its tails."
From the belly, she moved to the shoulder and took hold of the uncertain hand. With gentleness, she began slow, straight movements toward the infinite.
"The eight tails, the body, the legs... and the eight heads."
Her gesture finished, she lowered her hand and returned her gaze to the azure. Accustomed, she was not at all surprised that he was already watching her.
Did he listen to her explanation? Perhaps, perhaps not. Had he looked at the constellation? Absolutely not. Again and again he had not stopped staring at her, and again and again she blushed more and more.
One day she would get used to it, she was sure of that, even if she hoped to enjoy the sensation for a few more years. The one that made her tremble every time he looked at her. Every time she admired him.
With her head still resting on his shoulder, she felt him move, but did not care, and when he gently wrapped his forearm around her neck, she glanced briefly into the darkness and at the four wooden walls.
A curiosity that did not escape him.
"I'll finish the roof tomorrow morning and buy the mattress later in the day."
With her only free hand, she pointed to the rectangular piece of paper hanging on the wall next to the entrance and spread her fingers to enjoy the warm breath the seal gave off.
"There's no need to hurry, as long as it's here, I can spend my nights watching the stars."
The long sigh he let out warmed her face and gave her an amused smile.
For once it was she who was teasing him, she had the right to enjoy it.
"You've been talking about it ever since I put it there, I'm going to get jealous."
She looked back at the paper and simply nodded at such a truth.
It was true that she was only talking about it, but she had a good reason: if there was one thing she hated more than boredom and spicy food, it was the cold. So it was only natural that this seemingly simple piece of paper would fill her with joy.
"You'd be right to be... I think I'll marry it."
He tightened his grip on her neck even more, and with a chuckle, she had to stop looking at the seal.
"I knew it was a bad idea... I never should have created it."
Smiling, her right cheek resting on the gray jacket he wore, she listened to the melody of his heartbeat while admiring his dilated pupils. A melody and an exchange of glances that made her gradually lose her smile.
The time of an inspiration, the lullaby took place in her eardrum, and her own heart rhythm did not take long to play her a song. Ecstatic, she lifted her head and placed her only free hand on the gray jacket he wore before slowly approaching her seductive lips. So slowly that a dozen heartbeats had time to beat in her palm.
Breathless and with her eyelids closed, she placed her lips on his gently, and he returned the kiss even more tenderly.
Grabbing the base of her spine, he rocked her on the floor of the hovel and, her back slightly bent, the wood cracked under their weight.
Despite the pressure that he exerted on it, she could not retain her smile to resuscitate.
[…]
"June 2, 1017,
Two men woke me up this morning. You might think it was the beginning of a sensei joke, but it isn't.
The conversation, if I may call it that, was... surprising?"
Drowsily, she slid her fingers along the pillow, touching the softness and coolness of the sheet. Intrigued by the lack of warmth, she opened one eye. The sun's rays were not kind to her retina. She immediately moved the palm of her hand to the window and slowly sat up.
The vision of the bluish silhouette outside the hovel calmed her features in an instant.
With a mechanical gesture, she pulled up the strap of her nightgown and stretched out her entire being. A yawn escaped her, and the question she asked herself at every alarm sounded in her half-sleeping mind.
How long had he closed his eyes?
She was dead tired, and from the look of the sun through the window, she had only slept two, maybe three hours, so it was quite legitimate that she was. What was less legitimate was the energy she could feel about thirty meters away in the middle of the clearing. If she was to believe the way his chakra was flowing, he was more than fit.
As she set her eyes on the half-lit ceiling of the hut, the burlesque memory of a statement he had made to her in the Grass stole a morning smile from her.
In the end, if you put aside the percussion and the danger of dying at any moment, having a demon sealed inside you, if it allows you to be in great shape after closing your eyes for half an hour... it's not so bad.
The Anthropology of the Whirling Tides Clan was the modest title of a half-century-old book she had the honor of reading on the Mount. Since it was just a collection of pages bound together, she had initially thought the author was a toad, but the pronouns and nouns used as she read had proven her wrong.
Hana Senju had dedicated her life to the study of the chakra, both on animals and on the human body, and this book was a long summary of it.
The first hundred pages told how the chakra had been transmitted like a virus over the generations to almost every living being on the planet - apart from a few outliers - and yet, only a tiny fraction of those could feel it. The next two hundred pages were, to her surprise, entirely devoted to the Fox Demon and the Uzumaki clan, then considered one of the most influential and powerful on the peninsula.
In those two hundred pages, which made up almost half of the book, one name stood out more than the others.
Mito Senju Uzumaki, wife of Hashirama Uzumaki Senju, the first Hokage.
If the name of the most famous woman of the shinobi era was written in this book, it was not without reason. Mito Uzumaki checked all the boxes. She had been both a member of the Whirling Tides Clan and the host of Kyūbi no Yōko, the Nine-Tailed Fox Demon, the first Jinchūriki in living memory.
Hana had analyzed the demon's chakra for almost a year, just before the outbreak of the Second Great War, and had come to a conclusion: if there was no physical damage, Kyūbi's Jinchūriki could only die of old age.
The host couldn't get sick, poisoned, or even drunk. Well, that wasn't really true. He could, but the effect lasted only a few minutes before the demon chakra filtered through and cleansed absolutely everything, including organs, blood, and chakra.
In the course of her research, Hana had realized one thing long before anyone else: the chakra of the beast and the chakra of the host were so intertwined, so fused, that if the demon were ever extracted, it would take almost all of its host's reserves with it, and the host would die instantly.
This was information that Konoha had been able to confirm in neighboring villages in the years that followed. Although Mito was the first Jinchūriki, no extraction was considered for over thirty years, even after three deliveries. Unlike the hosts of Suna, Iwa, Kumo and Kiri, the Uzumaki princess was doing well. Very well. So well, in fact, that Hana thought the Uzumaki's body had been molded for this very purpose.
Years passed, the war continued, and as she grew old and tired, the former leader of the Leaf asked to have the demon removed before it was too late, before the Uzumaki heiress died prematurely. She had lived long enough and was ready to join her husband. A request the third Hokage accepted.
Years passed, the war continued, and as the widow of the Leaf grew old and tired, she asked to have the demon removed before it was too late, before she died prematurely. She had lived long enough and was ready to join her husband. A request that the third Hokage accepted.
Contrary to what Konoha had led the neighboring countries to believe in order to keep Uzushio out of any conflict, Mito was not killed by Kyūbi's extraction. A first in shinobi history. The Uzumaki's surreal reserves left her with enough chakra to survive. A piece of information that only the top leaders of the Leaf knew.
Despite this, Mito, who was very old and had not had to fight disease for over thirty years, and therefore had no need to create antibodies, succumbed to the separation with the Fox Demon Chakra the following month. Becoming seriously ill, her transport to the Leaf Hospital only made her case worse.
Mito Senju Uzumaki died on January 6, 982, exactly sixteen years after her husband.
The Anthropology of the Whirling Tides Clan was never published. Not because the document contained compromising information - although she was certain it would never have seen the light of day - but because Hana was killed in February of the year 974, during the Second Great War, the last date written in the book, and was never able to finish it. What she had read was only a draft that was never published.
The information she knew about the writer's death came from Master Jiraiya himself, who had brought the unfinished book back to the Mount to study it, and for a reason Naruto had already told her: the poor soul in whom Kyūbi was sealed after Mito was none other than Kushina Namikaze Uzumaki, his mother.
"The fact that Mito-sama died before the start of the Third Great War is... a good thing... I think."
After having spent several hours talking to Mito about his deeds during the Second Great War, the same deeds that had earned him his former title of Sannin, Master Jiraiya had ended his explanations with a monologue that had made him understand a part of the admirable Senju's personality.
"When Hashirama-sama died on the battlefield during the First Great War, she was inconsolable. It was perhaps the only time the villagers feared that she would lose control of the Fox. I was young at the time, but I remember the rumors that spread through the village. The Uzumaki heiress tried to kill herself, but the demon resurrected her. Even today, I can't say if this rumor was true, but I can say that it would have come true if Mito had been alive when Kumo destroyed Uzushio."
The wooden door of the cottage closed behind her with a creak. Breathing lightly, she blew on the hot mug in the palm of her hand before taking a sip and placing it on the railing of the wooden porch. Accompanied by a soothing breeze, she admired the golden hair about twenty meters away in the middle of the clearing.
Sitting cross-legged, his azure gaze was focused on the piece of paper he held between his fingers.
When she thought about it, maybe it was a good thing that he didn't have to live in Konoha. Maybe he would have lived a less happy life. A life filled with loneliness, filled with rumors, filled with nightmares.
Was it a good thing... for her too?
Barefoot, she walked silently down the three wooden steps and ventured out onto the dirt path.
After that night when he had explained the circumstances of her abduction by Kumo ten years earlier, she had been so upset by what he had told her that she had been locked in her thoughts for several weeks. Forty days in which she had paid no attention to him. Forty nights in which she hadn't noticed: he never slept. He just sat down with his arms crossed and closed his eyes for an hour, sometimes two, before getting up in full form. Last night she had fallen asleep in his arms and she didn't have to bet that he hadn't closed his eyes.
A cool, periodic wind blew her obsidian hair around, and dressed only in her white nightgown, she shivered as she walked toward the center of the clearing.
She sat down on the ground among the wild grasses and purple lilacs, and wrapped her forearms around the simple black t-shirt he wore.
The incredible source of heat put an end to her shivering, and the tone of his voice caught her attention.
"You already awake?"
She looked over his black shoulder at the forest that surrounded the clearing, that surrounded them, and moved a little closer to the turtleneck to inhale the scent of jasmine.
"Yes, I was cold, the seal ran out of chakra, but I'm feeling better now."
He immediately turned his face to hers, and she exhaled softly into the hollow of his neck, which had no other effect than to steal a smile from him.
"Sorry I didn't think to check, I didn't want to make any noise so I came here as soon as the sun came up."
"It's okay."
Curious, she lowered her opalescent gaze to the paper he held between his fingers, and when she recognized it, she could not hold back her question.
"Is this your father's seal?"
As if she had just reminded him of some bad news, his grin disappeared and he turned his stolid face to the black ink.
"Yes, I thought I had found a solution, but it doesn't work."
Somewhat confused, she examined the paper in turn.
"You managed to do it the other day, though."
And he nodded slowly, thoughtfully.
"I can perceive it, I can switch from one seal to another, I can reproduce it, but I can't change it."
She looked at the pictograms written in indelible ink on the rectangular piece of paper, once again not understanding what he was getting at.
This seal was the one that had formed the legend of Minato Namikaze. The Hiraishin, the Yellow Flash of Konoha. A phenomenon she had seen with her own eyes two weeks ago when he had disappeared in a flash only to reappear on the other side of the training grounds. She still remembered Master Jiraiya's wide-open eyes. Livid, he seemed to have seen a ghost.
"Do you remember that I fainted after I first used it?"
Maintaining her silence, she did not answer the rhetorical question, only tilting her head to the side, inviting him to continue.
It was true that she had put that detail aside, but she had also blamed it on the fact that he had been trying for two days. Had she misjudged?
"That is because this seal is an old one that my father used. It is the only Sensei has. It can only carry a short distance with a limited weight. But that's not the problem, I'll look for how to modify this part later, it doesn't seem complicated. What is complicated is this part."
He brought the seal closer to his shoulder, where her head rested, and tapped with his index finger on the upper right side of the paper, where there was a concentric circle connected to several pictograms, which in turn grouped the whole.
"Because of that, I fainted. In fact, I almost died. These circles control the chakra that goes in and out between each seal, and my father drew them for him. Only him. When I transferred, the seal only let a tiny amount of my chakra through, which almost killed me."
Her eyes suddenly wide, she released her hug and lifted her head to stare at him.
She... knew nothing of this. He hadn't told her anything. It had been two weeks since he had fainted, and all that time she had been lecturing him about his training. He had almost died and all she had done was blame him...
How could she keep her stomach from knotting up?
"It seems I have a lot more chakra than my father... and until I can change that part, I can't use his technique."
With a simple sigh, he scratched the ink of the seal with his index finger, as if the secret was right underneath, before feigning a disappointed look.
"It's a shame... Nidaime Kiiroi Senkō, it sounded good, didn't it?"
The guilt overwhelmed her even more, and she embraced him again to drive it away. With her left cheek resting between his shoulder blades, she brushed away the tear that ran down his cheek with a wave of her hand.
"What is it... are you crying?"
With his head turned toward her, he watched in surprise as she moved her face from left to right against his back.
"Why... didn't you tell me? I thought that... and also, I..."
Faced with her lack of vocabulary, stuck behind her tight throat, he offered her a sorry smile.
"I didn't want to worry you."
And she only hugged him tighter under the light, fresh breeze.
Again and again, he acted recklessly in order to protect her. Again and again, the truth was being kept from her.
Taking a deep breath, she sniffed her pain.
"Don't do it again, don't hide things like that from me. I have the right to worry about you, don't take that away from me. How bad do you think I'll be if you ever..."
She shook her face, shaking off the horrible thoughts, and the calm tone he gave her stopped her from continuing.
"I know."
Slowly, she raised her numb face and realized that he was no longer watching her. With his back as straight as her hanging presence would allow, he was looking at the forest of Betula plants.
"Sometimes I forget that you're not made of porcelain, forgive me, it's just that..."
He took a deep breath before sighing.
"I don't like to see you sad, so please don't be."
She moved from a cross-legged position to a seiza position, and this time she wrapped her forearms around his neck and pressed her cheek against his. Looking out over the field of flowers, she watched the lilacs twirl about twenty yards away, and when the wind reached her and her obsidian hair, she put on a cheerful face.
"Then I won't be, but you have to promise me something."
"Anything you want."
"Don't hide the truth from me anymore, even if it hurts me."
"I promise."
[...]
"April 28, 1016,
It's been a year. After what you did for me, I don't deserve much from you, I know that, but to know what happened to you is all I ask.
Can you answer me?"
"At least two months."
A palpable silence settled over the hovel. Eyes wide open, she could only stare at the former Sannin sitting in the chair on the other side of the table.
Was he... serious?
"Two months? You're kidding, right? I won't do it. I'm not going. I don't care about controlling this demon, it's of no use to me and I'm doing fine without it."
Silently, she had listened to the conversation for several minutes without daring to say anything... did she have anything to say at all?
After being gone for several weeks, Master Jiraiya had returned from the Sound late in the evening and the least she could say was that the news he brought was surprising: they were leaving. They were leaving for the Lightning and would have to leave her here alone for at least two months.
It was clear that, of all the countries she could safely travel to, Kaminari was the last on the list, preceded by Hi. The higher-ups in Kumo knew she was alive and was actively searching for her, so she simply could not go there, it would be suicide, pure and simple.
Master Jiraiya was right, if they were going to the Land of Lightning, there was no way she could follow them.
"She is safe, no one will venture here, Tetsu is the safest place on the peninsula for a reason, so stop being cheeky and get used to the idea, we are leaving tomorrow."
Fingers clutching the white pants she wore, she lowered her face in silence, afraid to be alone.
An idea she would have to make a reason for, and quickly.
Arms crossed, the former Sannin's impassive expression did not flinch when the chair his disciple was sitting in fell backwards, unlike her, who flinched with every fiber of her being.
"Have you no heart? Are you not her master? Why do you waste your time training her, why does she waste her time listening to you and calling you that if she is to be treated like that? How can you leave her behind like a stranger?"
The tone rose a notch at the last words, and she knew that if she did not intervene at that moment, he would end up saying some words he would regret. So she turned to him and grasped his with her sweaty hands, inevitably attracting his azure and irritated attention.
"Two months is nothing, I will not even have time to be bored that you will be back."
Despite the stunned look he gave her, she continued with a smile.
"It's not worth getting upset about such a tiny thing, haven't you heard? It is important that you go there, I will wait for you."
Gently and with his other hand, he grabbed her wrists one by one, forcing her to let go.
"Tiny?"
Then he stared at her. However, his tone was the calmest.
"Even if the chances are small, they are not zero. If something happens to you, I won't know until I come back, until it's too late... do you realize that? Do you really think I can train if I worry about you every minute?"
Seeing her silent, half-open lips, he broke the complicity of their gaze and moved with a heavy step toward the entrance, not forgetting to give the former Sannin a scornful look. The wooden door slammed on its frame, making her jump a second time.
She hadn't known how to answer without lying, and that was because he had simply told the truth: the chances weren't zero. If something happened to her, she would have to deal with it alone. A situation she had never been in before.
She was lying to herself and he understood that perfectly. Even though she was now sure that she could defend herself - the mere fact that she could compete with Master Jiraiya in Taijutsu was proof of that - the unknown frightened her.
Two months was a long time, a very long time, and a lot could happen on either side.
Rising from her chair, she watched the darkness outside through the kitchen wall as he walked down the wooden steps and onto the dirt path.
Rarely had she seen his chakra so angry.
"Leave him alone, he'll calm down and come back."
She had to blink a few times to get rid of the thought of joining him and stopped looking at the wooden wall before turning her attention back to Master Jiraiya. His eyes closed, he pinched the bridge of his nose before he sighed.
"I'm sorry to have to do this to you."
Even though his eyes were closed and he was not looking at her, she bowed her head in respect.
"It's all right, Sensei, I..."
"No, it's not."
Cut off in her curve, she straightened up in surprise.
" Leaving you here alone is inconsiderate. I've been thinking of another solution since I left the Sound, but there isn't one. Taking you with us would be even more dangerous and leaving you in the Frost for two months is not an option. The only solution is for you to stay here and keep a low profile."
She just nodded.
She couldn't explain why, maybe it was the stories she had read about him over the years or the time she had spent with him - maybe both - but a blind trust in the former Sannin animated her.
If he said this was the only solution, then this was the only solution.
"Do you think they will accept? In the middle of a war, isn't the risk too great?"
With that question out of the way, she grabbed the back of the chair on the floor and sat back in her own chair without a sound.
"I already have a tacit agreement with the Raikage."
To her surprise, when she turned her attention back to the inky-black irises, she felt nothing, not even anger, as the word echoed through the kitchen.
Raikage.
Although this qualification might mean courage, value, and other flourishes to millions of men and women, to her it meant nothing more than nine years of her life gone. But she felt nothing when she thought about it. A past life of which only fragments came back to her from time to time in her nightmares.
Bad dreams of which he extirpated her with softness.
Mechanically, she turned her head toward the window once again, worried that she wouldn't see him anymore, that she wouldn't know what he was doing. After more than a year and a half spent at their sides, at his sides, she could affirm it: he had held the promise which he had made to her at the time of this famous night at the Hot Water.
She had forgotten.
The princess locked in her tower in the clouds was no more. The white room was no more. The intangible guards were no more, the white vests were no more, the atonal doctors, the rigid nurses, the white coats, the white gowns, the incessant osculation, the blood tests, the eye tests, the bland meals, the cold showers, the monochromatic clothes, the bars, the loneliness, the discussions, the questions, the books, the orange m-
"Don't worry about us, we'll be fine."
With a deep breath, she brought her vision back to the husky voice, and the memories of her former life faded as quickly as her bright smile appeared.
Yes, forgotten.
[...]
"Good morning. Yes, I slept very well.
Here the day is rising. The sky is gray and gloomy, the rain should come soon. What is the weather like where you are? Is it sunny?"
At 7:30 the sun rose, at 7:44 its rays crept through the bedroom window and reached the sheets of the bed. Then, at 7:52, after the morning frost had disappeared and the mist on the windows had dissipated, the light warmed the pillow and her eyes.
This morning, none of that happened.
With numb legs, a stiff back, heavy eyelids, and half-consciousness, she opened one eye and looked out the window at the cloudless blue sky. There was light all around her, but not in the usual places.
"Hm...?"
Head resting on the table, arms crossed, she straightened up with a grimace on the wooden chair that cracked under her weight. She rubbed her eyelids awkwardly and with her attention focused on the forest outside, she tucked her obsidian hair back into place. Her first reflex was to glance at the bed in the room, before freezing in the gesture that mistreated her hair.
Slowly, she brought her opal irises straight in front of her, to the exact spot where Master Jiraiya had stood before he left a few hours ago.
Surprised, she met the azure eyes that seemed to have been admiring her for a long time. His chin resting on his two crossed arms on the table, he watched her.
She smiled at him, but the impassive air he returned to her made her take part in the little game and, like him, she placed her forearms on the wood. The second that followed, she imitated his posture and stared at him, less than a meter apart.
Master Jiraiya had said that they would leave in the late morning and by the look of the light outside, it seemed to be almost over. There was only a short hour, maybe less, before they left.
Before she was alone.
"When did you get back? I didn't hear you."
Her question was accompanied by the distant chirping of birds, and it was in a whisper that he answered her.
"Three hours... maybe more."
Raising her eyebrows, not expecting this answer, she looked at the sunlight streaming in through the bedroom window, then whispered back:
"What... time is it exactly?"
"A little after one."
A surprised look spread across her porcelain face and put an end to her recent whispering.
"Sensei told me you were leaving late in the morning, did he change his mind?"
With a sigh, he extinguished his newborn hopes and took a quick look outside the house.
"He's waiting for me."
The bluish figure about fifty meters away, sitting on a branch and writing, reached her without her having to turn her head.
"Oh."
Slowly, she sat back in her chair.
"Oh..."
And realized that it was already time. Not in an hour, not in ten minutes, now.
She watched him as he straightened up, and was quite silent as he reached into his gray jacket and pulled out several rectangular papers.
"You've got enough food in there for six months. We won't be gone that long, I'll make sure of that, but at least you won't starve and you won't have to show your face in the village."
She looked at the seals on the table, still in shock at the news.
Why had she fallen asleep? She could have enjoyed her last moments for a long time... she was really angry with herself.
In an excess of courage and in order to hold back her tears, she still managed to smile tenderly.
"Okay, thank you."
As if her thanks bothered him, as if it sounded wrong, he clenched his teeth and shook his head again, pointing to the kitchen window.
"It's not me who should be thanked, it's... him."
She stared at him without meaning to.
He had said his sentence with so much resentment that it had taken her by surprise. But knowing that he was not resentful at all, she ignored it. Something else had just piqued her curiosity.
"Sensei bought me food for six months? Where did he get the money? Just three weeks ago, he asked for yours."
He just shrugged.
"I don't know, I just hope he didn't attract too much attention from the villagers by buying half the market."
"Half the market?"
He picked up a seal randomly on the table and put it in evidence.
"In there is furniture, in there are clothes, in there are first aid and kitchen utensils, in there are books, in there..."
He went on like this for more than a minute, and all she could do was stand there, mouth agape, stunned.
Master Jiraiya had literally bought half the market of a village of several thousand people. Once again, and at the risk of repeating herself, she wondered: where had he found this money?
It was clear that even if she multiplied the income Shima-sama sent her every month by a hundred, no, a thousand - much to her embarrassment, but passing through Naruto, her opinion didn't seem to be wanted - she could never buy all that.
Was he lying to them in order to better extort them with each passing day?
She shook her face and her shocked smile to chase away her hasty judgment. She didn't know and had no right to have such thoughts.
Seeing the sudden calm in the pupils before her, she knew that he had not come to that conclusion yet, or else the confrontation that would have followed would have inevitably awakened her.
The more she thought about it, the harder it was to imagine the peaceful journey to the Clouds without things getting out of hand. All it would take would be for Master Jiraiya to ask him to stop his tantrum and the situation would degenerate.
She opened her lips to speak, to ask him to talk calmly on the way, but stopped when she saw him dip his hand into his gray jacket a second time.
Thicker and of a different color, she tilted her head slightly to better observe the two small yellow books he placed on the wooden table.
"I spent the night on them, they are rudimentary, but I think they will do."
She grabbed one of the two books he handed her, and a very cheerful question naturally followed.
"Have you started writing? Reading?"
She surprised herself as she heard him laugh.
Taking her eyes off the small book, which had no cover and was no bigger than her hands, she returned her gaze to the azure one.
"No, you know I don't like that."
Yes, it was true that he didn't like to read, let alone write, but she couldn't help but hope. It was a problem she had been trying to solve for over a year, to no avail. Even blackmail hadn't helped.
She still couldn't believe that he wouldn't try - just try - to read the book she'd offered him, even though she'd offered to pay for his twenty bowls of ramen.
A lost cause.
"I used the bases of my father's seal to design it."
Opening the yellow, unpatterned front cover, she found blank pages and was even more confused.
Nothing. There was nothing. All the pages were empty of stories.
"Am I supposed to understand anything?"
She took her eyes off the book again to study the expression he gave her: a simple smile.
Was there some hidden, subliminal message? How could this book have taken all night to design? It was basic, a notebook at most.
Without waiting, he grabbed one of the seals on the table and, seeming to concentrate for a few moments on what was on the piece of paper, a fleeting puff of smoke came out. The pen did not have time to touch the wood before he caught it on the fly.
"Here, write something down, anything."
Lost, but still curious, she took the pen and opened the book. Faced with the blank pages, she didn't know what to write, but then, with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment, she wrote three words. Three simple words that made her blush.
"What did you write?"
In an instant, she closed the book and pressed it firmly to her chest.
"N-Nothing that concerns you."
Taking her at her word, he stopped insisting, to her relief. But without her knowing why, he opened the book he had kept, which, being similar to her own, made him laugh slightly before he managed to regain his seriousness.
"If it's not concerning me, who exactly should I be jealous of?"
Again she did not understand, then he turned the open book between his fingers toward her, and her incomprehension increased her blush tenfold.
There were three words written in ink on the first page. Three... simple words.
Removing the yellow ornament from her white t-shirt, she immediately opened her book again, only to find that her writing had disappeared.
"What the..."
She lifted her face to check the writing on the other side of the table, then moved it back down to her blank pages, then to the other side of the table, then to her blank pages, then... after more than a dozen movements, she finally understood.
Her blushes disappeared and tears of joy filled her eyes. Gently closing the most precious object she owned, she brought it back to her heart and, with blurred vision, observed her writing on the book on the other side of the table.
"I love you."
"I... can write to you at any time and you... can read it immediately?"
Smiling, he did not answer her. Instead, in a second cloud of smoke, he took out another pen and wrote a few words. Understanding the plot, she opened her book as he finished his gesture. A second later, two words appeared before her astonished eyes. Two... simple words that made her immediately sulk and stare at him, but the broad smile he gave her, amused by his joke, removed all her disappointment.
She had heard him say it enough times to be able to laugh at it.
"I know."
"There were two things to know."
She nodded, but said nothing, far too obsessed with the ink and excited to learn more about this book that had just made her future loneliness disappear.
He raised his index finger to begin his instructions, and she concentrated fully on his hand.
"The first is that the seal makes the ink disappear after three days. So if you write within seventy-two hours of one of your messages, change the page, otherwise it will be unreadable on my side. I didn't have time to do better."
She nodded again.
She would have to turn a lot of pages. She just hoped there would be enough for three days.
"The second is easier. When you send a message, infuse your chakra into the book. This has nothing to do with its proper functioning, it's just a warning. That way I will feel that you have written to me. Otherwise, it will take me hours to answer you, and knowing your impatience, I don't want to be yelled at."
This time, she was unmoved, and her cheerful face vanished. Her eyebrows suddenly furrowed and she glared at him.
"I'm not impatient."
Like her, he nodded.
"Oh yes, you are."
"No, I'm not, in fact, I'm extremely patient."
"But I do remember a lot of your complaining."
Still clutching the book to her chest, she put her two arms together and crossed them.
"All right, give me one."
And, thinking, he put his hand under his chin.
"The restaurant in Ōno where we had to wait several hours to be served, what was it called again... ?"
"Northern Sushi."
"Ah, yes. If I remember correctly..."
She raised hers over the table and shook it in protest, knowing exactly what he was going to accuse her of, which stopped him in his tracks.
"It had nothing to do with impatience. We were in a sushi restaurant and you ordered ramen, I was just outraged."
"Still, you asked me to speed up and I got a stomachache."
Seeing his fake traumatized expression, she couldn't help but giggle.
"We had been sitting for over two hours, I had finished for an hour, and this was your twenty-third bowl, your stomachache had nothing to do with me."
"Would you accuse me of lying?"
"Yes, you are lying openly."
This time, it was a false air of indignation that he let out as he put his hands on his chest.
"Me? Lying? I am the most honest person this peninsula has ever seen, how dare you? Give me the book back, you don't deserve it."
With an amused pout, she tightened her grip on the yellow ornament and leaned back in her chair as he held out his hand to her with a smile.
"No please it's mine I keep it."
Finally, folding his arm as she pleaded with her eyes, he rested his elbow on the wooden table, holding his head with his fingers. His smile quickly became a sneer at the corners of his lips as he watched her with both tenderness and pain.
She, in turn, made any form of mirth disappear.
"With whom will I be able to try to have the last word... huh?"
She quickly scowled and, still clutching her book, brought her chest closer to the table to look at him.
"Don't talk like that. You're only going for two months, maybe a little longer, why are you talking like you're never coming back? It scares me."
He removed his hand from his cheek and opened his mouth. Although she could have bet that this was not his intention and that he wanted to apologize, he preferred to remain silent and think about his next words.
Words that immediately calmed her.
"I'll be back in two months, I promise."
She smiled at him immediately.
"I have no doubt."
He rarely made promises, but when he did, she could be sure he would do everything in his power to make it happen. That was his credo. His nindô.
"To answer your question, Sensei is very good at having the last word, I think he is much better than I am. And you know that."
Crossing his arms and gritting his teeth, he turned his face away from her words.
"Yeah, we'll see. If I ask him how much time is left before leaving, it will be the end of the world."
Saddened by his words, knowing exactly what Master Jiraiya's thoughts were after talking with him for a long time during the night until they said goodbye, she did not insist. If she had learned anything from being around them, it was not to get in the middle of their disagreements. Whether it was over cooking a rabbit or a situation as serious as this.
As stubborn as each other, anything she could do to reconcile them would be in vain. Time was all they needed, as strange as it may seem, they always ended up talking again as if nothing had happened, without either of them apologizing.
Men.
"In that case, I'll continue to argue with you through the book."
He chuckled, and she didn't know how she was looking at him, but from the way he readjusted his position and loosened the collar of his jacket, she knew that her look was in no way polite.
But he didn't give up.
"Nice try, but don't count on me. I won't write more than five words, I don't want to end up with tendonitis."
At that moment the only thing her thoughts managed to convey to him was that, unlike him who had faked it a few moments earlier, she felt really offended.
He could spend hours, no days, on his scrolls making seals, brushes or pen in hand, but couldn't give her ten minutes to answer properly? Really?
She continued to stare at him, and the heavy silence of just a few seconds seemed to be enough to make him change his mind completely. Averting his gaze, he muttered a few words.
"All right... I'll try."
And she immediately regained her cheerful expression.
"Thank you."
She didn't need to activate her Byakugan to realize that Master Jiraiya had just come down from his perch, the sound of his landing on the earthen floor had just told her that, and the change in expression on the other side of the table made her realize that he had heard it perfectly as well.
Her heart pounded so hard against her chest that she thought she heard her last one, and everything she had thought about during the night came rushing back to her mind.
"I... it's... if you feel tired, don't tempt the devil and rest. Eat well and don't skip any meals. If Sensei says something you don't like, don't retaliate. I will write to you every day without fail, so don't worry, okay?"
Motionless, he watched her without a word for several seconds before giving her his best smile.
"Try not to get too bored, okay?"
She raised the exact same expression.
For the first time since her awakening, she left her seated position and stood in front of the table, while he did the same. Like two magnets whose separation was supposed to be the hardest, she immediately went into his arms and he embraced her. Her face sunk into his gray jacket, she sniffed her sadness.
The smell of jasmine intoxicated her one last time.
"If you cry, I won't go."
The unmistakable tone of his voice forced her to close her eyelids as tightly as she could to hold back her tears. She shook her head from side to side, trying as hard as she could to hide the sadness in her voice.
"I-I'm not crying. I'm just... just..."
Her labored breath between the last two words was the trigger. Tears streamed down her face.
She heard the guilt in his sigh and had no time to notice the movement of his arms as he stopped holding her to lift her face with both hands. Sobbing, she managed to overcome her sad expression only half a second before she tried in vain to turn her face away.
He pressed his lips to hers and her eyes closed of their own accord. Her chaotic and confused thoughts faded and she returned his kiss with ardor. Stopping her embrace, she stood on her tiptoes and tangled her hands in his golden hair. With her back slightly arched and completely against him, she let herself fall into her idyll.
Time went on and on and on and, both out of breath, he tried to pull away, but she managed to hold back her lips for a few more seconds, which turned into a soft smile.
Then, finally and reluctantly, she let him go, and although the pain was still there, the tears were gone.
And so was he.
[...]
"I love you.
I know."
The hardest thing was not living alone. The hardest thing was waking up and remembering that she was. Getting over the loneliness once she was awake.
Had she flinched at the slightest creak in her sleep? Yes, and she had stopped counting. Had she fought against her own will not to write to him? Definitely. Had she managed to fall asleep only after putting a kunai under her pillow?
Lying on her stomach, dressed in her nightgown and covered to the base of her spine by the white sheet, she abruptly opened her darkened eyelids. Her heart pounding, she reflexively thrust her hand under the pillowcase.
The eerie creaking of the roof faded as the wind died down and silence returned.
With one eye closed against the dim light outside, she sighed heavily and released the handle of the kunai between her fingers. The annoying throbbing at her temples reminded her that she was not one to make hasty decisions, but for once, she would make an exception: she hated wood.
Gently stretching every muscle in her body, she put the back of her hand to her mouth as a yawn escaped her.
Her first night alone... and she'd barely slept.
With difficulty she managed to sit down on the mattress and with her narrowed eyes and slack arms, she watched before her without much conviction or energy. Seconds passed, then a whole minute, and not a sound dared to spread in the house, even the wind had changed direction.
She let out a dry breath through her nose. A strange mixture of mirth and irritation.
Now that she was awake, everything seemed perfectly quiet, too quiet. It was as if this hovel was trying to scare her.
Her attention was drawn to the kitchen table, half visible from the bed in the room. There she observed the various fruits, as well as the beige basket made of rope, which, along with the ten paper seals, had seen half of its contents disappear in the early evening.
Too busy unpacking the buckets by nightfall, she had not found the courage to go down the mountain to fetch water from the river to prepare a balanced meal. So the apples and oranges had largely been her meal the day before.
A few centimeters away from the seals, there was a stove and a small gas bottle. One a month, if she was paying attention, Master Jiraiya had logically bought her six. She still couldn't believe that he had even left her a small note to explain how it worked.
She didn't deserve her Sensei.
Just below, on the two chairs on the side of the living room before the entrance, were a stack of books she had sorted and a calendar. On the other was a pot and other kitchen utensils. At the bottom of the wood, on the floor, were sheets and a pair of candles.
Looking at the white wax for a long time, she suddenly remembered what she had been looking for yesterday before nightfall: matches. She had not found them, and she had to find them before tonight, otherwise, in the almost complete darkness, she would be forced to go to bed again, although she was not at all tired.
In the middle of the living room on the left, right next to the improvised heater, stood a huge wardrobe. Wide open, she observed the folded clothes inside. Once again, Master Jiraiya had done a great job. Made of solid wood and measuring more than two meters, the piece of furniture was so imposing that it almost touched the supporting beams of the house.
She still wondered where to put it, and how to move it once it was filled. But that wasn't the biggest problem. The furniture was big, but not big enough for her to put the sheets in, since he had bought her so many clothes.
Accustomed to the light outside, she stopped squinting and examined the fur coats inside.
Although Tetsu was known for its cold, it would not soon return. Spring had just begun, and she still had five or six months of respite left. So, her question was simple: why he had bought all this if he was only going to be gone for two mon-
Her thoughts stopped. She blinked several times to make sure she wasn't dreaming, then, realizing that she wasn't, she lifted the stained sheet at her feet.
… Dirt?
Her feet were literally covered in mud. It was... strange. She had no memory of going outside. Not a single one. With the fear that had overwhelmed her, she would never have dared to go out...
Since when was she a sleepwalker?
A cold sweat broke out on her lower back and, pulling back the sheet, she left the bed as quickly as she could. After a few steps past the closet, she stopped in front of the rolled-up carpet on the floor and an armchair and nightstand in the middle of the living room. She wasted no time in retrieving the yellow-rimmed book from the small cabinet and opening it.
She turned a page, then another, and looked at the last words he had sent her. The ones where she told him she was going to sleep and he wished her... a good... night?
What the...?
"Good night.
We just stopped in a small village on the border of Sound and Fire, why?
Tomioka, east of Nemuro. Weren't you supposed to go to bed three hours ago, little liar?
Very well, good night."
Why had he written that to her? Was it her... who had asked him where he was?
Kneeling in front of the bedside table, she picked up the fountain pen that had been placed on it and held it to the paper, ready to learn more. Doubt crept into her mind and she lifted the pen as soon as the small dot of ink disappeared.
Should she worry him for such a small reason?
It was nothing, just sleepwalking. She was just worried and had unconsciously asked him to reassure her.
If she told him about it, he would be capable of going back here, she knew him well enough to know that. And she didn't want to be the one to drive a wedge between him and Master Jiraiya.
"Good morning, did you sleep well?"
The words appeared before her eyes and she realized that she had been breathing chakra into the book since she held it. As soon as she read the question, all her doubts disappeared.
There was no point in worrying him.
"Good morning. Yes, I slept very well.
Here the day is rising. The sky is gray and gloomy, the rain should come soon. What is the weather like where you are? Is it sunny?"
[…]
The solitude of the first six days was not the easiest to overcome. However, she had hardly seen them pass.
The first three had gone like this: she got up, wrote to him, cleaned up, wrote to him, ate fruit, wrote to him, and went to bed.
It was not until the fourth day that she felt tired and even dizzy from her diet. So she had gathered her courage and gone down the mountain to the river. She did her laundry, wrote to him, got some water, wrote to him, and returned to the house to write to him.
The rice cooked on the stove was the best she had ever tasted. She did not hesitate to write to him about it.
On the fifth day, she did something unforgivable.
Around noon, she had stood on the porch and waited. Waiting. Waited again. Until, at one o'clock, a hare tested her reflexes and ran across the clearing at high speed.
It had never seen the other side of the forest.
Her kunai had split the air and lodged in its neck, killing it instantly. The animal's scream of surprise and pain from her blade instantly wiped away her satisfied smile, and the deathly silence of her walk to the center of the clearing was even harder to bear.
No matter how many times she apologized in front of her victim's corpse, nothing had helped. The guilt had won. She was a monster.
A hungry monster.
This, she had not written it down.
Watching Master Jiraiya slaughter an animal and drain its blood was one thing. Doing it was another. She had thrown away the clothes she had worn that day. Still, she had managed to cook it. Well, almost.
The hare cooked on a wood fire was not really good, but the proteins were welcome in her body, which was cruelly lacking.
The sixth day was the quietest and, even though it was the day before, the least memorable.
It had rained all day, and she had moved the small chair to the warmth of the seal and read even longer. So long, in fact, that she had pushed into the seventh.
From what she could see while organizing the books on the shelves in the living room, the books, with a few exceptions, were from the Fire.
Some of the ornaments were old, damaged by time, mostly from the Second Great War, which made her realize that all these books, more than a hundred of them, belonged to Master Jiraiya. He had not bought them on the market.
It was his personal collection.
So it was with even more curiosity that she began to read the great names of the Leaf. Senju, Uchiha, Sarutobi, Aburame, Akimichi... All of them. All of them, except for the Hyūga.
She was not fooled. Master Jiraiya had deliberately removed the books that had the name of her c... the same name as hers. But she didn't blame him. Having to deal with her morbid curiosity was not something she liked to indulge in. So, it was a good thing that she didn't get a chance to read anything about it.
At least she hoped so.
She opened her eyes. Lying on the bed, perfectly intact on her back, she scanned the ceiling beams with her livid eyes.
Yes, those were the words: empty bed. She felt empty. Of energy, of desire, of water. Dried out.
She moistened her chapped lips with her pasty tongue and nearly choked on the dust on her palate. She coughed loudly, so loudly that the coughing fit gave her a backache she had never experienced before.
The seventh day. The day the nightmare began.
She inhaled and her body went numb with the pain of her thoughtless action. For a second she thought she was going to die, then life slowly returned to her in the form of a tingling sensation. Her feet, her hands, her legs, her arms, her neck, and finally her whole body.
With a grimace, she sat up very carefully on the mattress. The dizziness almost made her want to lie down again, but holding on to the sheet kept her upright.
Her first reflex was to look down at her feet, and she was relieved to see nothing but white.
She had not ventured outside this time.
Pulling back the fabric, she lifted both legs off the bed and used the mattress to help her stand. Her leg muscles gave out without warning and she was on the floor in an instant.
Her hiccups of pain echoed through the hovel as she clung to the wooden frame of the bed to get up. With one hand on the wood to her left and the other on the bed, she made her way to the living room and kitchen. The bed frame passed, she only helped herself with the planks on the wall. When she reached the end of it, she staggered toward the kitchen table, her hands raised in front of her. Putting all her weight on the table, she grabbed the only thing she wanted: the water jug.
Against her own instincts, she slowly drank the first gulp and the next, and when the icy water no longer burned her windpipe, her greed drank without worrying about spilling. A moan escaped her and, as she continued to drink, the water trickled down her skin until it reached the floor.
She emptied the pitcher in a few seconds, and the object of all her desires became, in the blink of an eye, nothing but a vulgar waste. She dropped the plastic on the table, walked around the chairs under the incessant bouncing of the jug, and went to the kitchen counter. There she grabbed the rectangular piece of paper that had been placed on it and immediately put it to her mouth.
As soon as she infused her chakra into the seal, the water poured in her throat. Filled with happiness, she closed her eyelids and let herself fall against the kitchen furniture until she was sitting on the floor again.
She stayed like that, drinking without stopping, for more than twenty seconds. Then, slowly, satiety came over her and she divided her sips until she stopped completely.
With her eyes closed, she dropped her arm, holding the paper on the floor, and inhaled deeply.
What had just… happened?
Remaining as still as her erratic breathing allowed, she was forced to open her eyelids as the water caressed her right leg. Realizing at a glance what the problem was, she stopped infusing her chakra into the seal and the water on the wooden planks began to fade. She continued to watch the puddle where her hand was wading until disbelief overcame her.
Dust. A thin layer of dust covered the floor and furniture.
If she didn't sweep the floor every day, the dust would accumulate. That was a fact. But this much and in one night was a record.
Had the sand from the wind followed her here?
Taking courage from both hands, but especially from the edge of the counter, she stood up. With trembling legs, she placed the seal where she had found it before moving to the burgundy armchair in the living room. Sitting down awkwardly, she opened the bedside drawer next to it and pulled out a calendar.
Six crosses were drawn on it, including the one for the previous day, May 4th.
The situation was getting more and more strange. It was really starting to scare her. So much so that she wanted to tell him this time. She couldn't hide it from him. Sleepwalking was not dangerous. But waking up with no strength and close to dying of dehydration was.
She put the calendar back where she had left it and retrieved the yellow book. Opening it without waiting, she... just froze.
No...
Blank. The page was blank.
It couldn't be. They had written on it two days ago, and yesterday they had reached almost fifty pages.
No, no, no...
Three days, it took three days for the ink to disappear.
She turned the second page and the blank faced her. The third... fourth... twentieth... thirtieth... fortieth...
No, no, no, no, no, no!
Fiftieth.
White. There was only white. Everything was gone.
Everything was gone.
Her eyes were dry, her breathing stopped, only her heart was beating. Mechanically and in a last hope, she turned the page and looked at the one she was supposed to write on today.
If she had not been able to hold on to the book, she could have sworn that her heart had just stopped, too.
"Write a message anything
Hinata write something
Please tell me you are okay."
The calligraphy was almost illegible and did not follow the lines, proving that he had written in a hurry. This information alone made her blood run cold.
Shaking like a leaf, she grabbed the pen from the drawer as her tears fell on the paper.
"I'm here.
I'm okay.
It's okay."
She infused so much chakra into the book that the page crumpled. And it was in that moment, fully awake with her heart rate racing, that she noticed.
It wasn't just this page that had misbehaved. She wasn't the only one who had sent a lot of chakra through the book. This one was completely twisted. Even the cover had a crease.
How could she not feel his chakra coming out of the nightstand?
Filled with fear and tears, she turned to the fifty-first page, hoping to read an answer, but it was her own that awaited her.
The book only buckled more under the pressure of her fingers.
Her ink was still there. The one that usually started to disappear before she even finished her sentence was still there.
"Not that... everything, but... not that..."
A minute earlier she would have given anything to drink, but now she regretted it bitterly as her sobs prevented her from concentrating.
Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she sniffed and blew out a shaky breath. She wrote again, her words anchored to the paper. She breathed chakra into the paper, the seal on the first page, and even the entire book, but nothing worked.
Her ink would not dissipate.
The strength in her hands left her and she dropped the book and quill to the carpet. Her vision blurred, she put her trembling hands in front of her before grabbing her hair and staring at the floor, unable to elicit any reaction.
Her thoughts were chaos.
What was going on? What had happened? Why was the seal not working? Had something happened to him? They were supposed to meet the Raikage today, why had he only sent her three messages? And why were they so worried? How far back were they? Was it an hour earlier? Two hours? Ten hours? How long had she slept? Why was she so sore? Tired? Was she having a nightmare?
She picked up the book, leaned her back against the back of the chair, placed it on her legs, forced a smile, stood still for a few seconds, then opened it. She closed it immediately and waited more than a minute this time. She opened it and closed it again.
Her smile vanished, but her movements were similar.
Hungry, thirsty, she did not leave her position and continued. The minutes between each opening became dozens, then an hour, before she finally jumped and woke up in the dark, freezing.
As she stood up, almost falling over, she heard the book bounce on the velvet carpet.
Had she fallen asleep?
Feeling her way, her feet freezing, she returned to the kitchen. Passing the window and the night sky, she opened one of the drawers under the counter. The flame of the match flickered in the darkness and, careful to hold her breath so as not to extinguish it, she lit the wick of the candle.
The darkness dissipated.
She turned around and placed the wax in the saucer on the nightstand before turning to her right. With a single step toward the wall, she reached the seal next to the front door. Injecting her chakra, it began to spit out hot air again. Finally, she returned to her original position on the chair and looked at the yellow, distorted book at her feet.
The wind whistled against the wood, and fear overcame her. With a hesitant movement, she picked up the book and brought it closer to the candle.
Please. Please, please, please. Please.
She opened the desired page and watched what was left of her world crumble.
The tears returned to the dry traces on her cheeks and tinted the hell under her eyes with an absent color. The book inevitably slipped from her grasp and returned with a thud to the ivory carpet. She put her hands over her mouth and sobbed, then let herself slide along the armrest.
Three days.
The last messages he had sent her were more than three days old.
Only what she had written to him was still there. There was nothing left. None of his requests, none of his fears. There was nothing. No ink, no hope. The object of all her dreams had become her worst nightmare in a matter of hours.
Unable to breathe, she stood up hastily, clutching both hands to her pelvis and, after a jerky inspiration, managed to refill her lungs. She walked straight ahead until the living room wall stopped her stressful movement and turned to repeat it. Again, again, and again.
What could she do? What should she do? What was she going to do?
The rhetorical questions accumulated in her mind as the meters went by. As the minutes ticked by.
She couldn't leave this place. She couldn't join them. She couldn't do anything...
If she could get through Sound, Hot Water, and Frost without being spotted by the Fire that occupied those lands due to the war, that would be a feat. Then she would have to cross half of Lightning to get to Kumo, which was suicide, pure and simple. Besides, in this crazy scenario, she might not be there when they came back for her. A message would be waiting for them on the table, telling them that she had left for Lightning to find her. They would then go back to get her and die to save her.
If she moved, she killed them.
She shook her face.
She extrapolated too much. Nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing. Her ink would disappear and he would answer her, she was sure of it. She was just being dramatic, she was being stupid.
Yes, stupid.