Tamaki and Takahashi called truce.
After the police arrested Shao, the school fell into chaos. The school never needed to close, thankfully, but the student council needed all the help it could get.
Because we suspected Takahashi and Takahashi suspected us, we never talked to each other about the Mimi case.
When we really should have worked together.
We would have told him there was nothing wrong with the summoning scroll.
Takahashi would have pointed out explosion powder was illegal.
Neither side would have wasted days looking in the wrong places. We might have been able to figure out it was Shao before the police got involved, before the civilian council heard, before everything went crazy.
We might have still been able do something.
I stared at my second wristband.
Shao was going to be deported in two days.
He wasn't going to be able to come back to Konoha, ever.
Ise was going to lose her friend.
I shrunk.
I couldn't handle it anymore.
"Ayae?" Setsu called, noticing me get up.
I told my friends I would take care of the school paperwork later. I was going back to the police station.
Takahashi wanted to know who had hurt his sister. Once he knew it was Shao, he had no more questions.
I realized I was unhappy with just knowing who. I wanted to know why.
Why would Shao do this? He had Ise and Ise had him. Weren't they happy? Why do something so stupid and ruin everything!
My uncles never asked why either.
It was their job to solve the case. It wasn't their job to be curious.
Asking why would not help the case, and it would not help Shao, so they did not ask. They tried to not ask more than what was needed out of respect.
Despite looking and sounding mean at times, my uncles didn't want Shao punished any more than I did. They understood kids did dumb things. People in general did dumb things when they felt frustrated or upset.
My clan knew that the civilian school had some bad thoughts spreading amongst the students. Thoughts that could get you in a lot of trouble, even worse trouble than stealing explosive powder. For this reason, my clan was very careful to not question Shao's motives. They didn't want him to be in even more trouble than he already was in.
For this same reason, they wanted to close the school altogether. They didn't want to arrest another kid for bad thoughts. No one wanted to see families torn apart. My clan was tired of taking the blame for tearing them apart. They were tired of always having to play the mean guy.
So even though Uncle Tekka found me weird and silly, he did like me around. I gave him an excuse to play the nice guy. I let him do nice things, and not just mean things.
When I asked to talk to Shao, for the hundredth time, he gave in. Ignoring Uncle Inabi, he led me to the back.
The back rooms looked similar to the front rooms. We passed the filing rooms, the archives, and the meeting rooms. There was a kitchen in the far end down one hall. He took me down the other, to the stairs. We went down three floors before turning into another hallway.
There, we stopped before one door of many. I watched Uncle Tekka perform a few hand seals. The door unlocked.
I peeked in and saw a row of jail cells. There were four of them. All were empty except the last one.
With Uncle Tekka's permission, I carefully walked over to Shao's cell.
Shao was huddled by the wall, with heavy shadows under his eyes. He looked a bit ill. He noticed me but didn't say anything.
"Shaochin?"
I realized I had never called him by his name before. I realized I had never given my name either.
"I'm Uchiha Ayae."
I tried extending a hand but realized my hand could not go past the bars. There was something invisible stopping me.
Shoulders lowering, I got down and sat cross-legged on the other side.
I breathed. I had so many questions, I didn't know where to begin. I knew I didn't have much time.
Finally, I went with the most important one.
"Do you know how I can help you?"
.
Shao looked at me.
Unlike Ise, Shao was very calm. He looked accepting of his situation.
"Actually, there is. Can you give Ise my bank account? She doesn't have her own. And my lease too, if she wants to keep the room."
Shao gave me his bank numbers.
Done, he sighed, looking relieved.
That was all he needed.
"You want anything?" he asked, surprising me.
We only talked for a few minutes, but in those few minutes, I understood what Murasaki meant. Shao had the same style of the bad girls. He wasn't polite with his words. He had the same rough, harsh tone Ise did, with no respect at all. It was easy to mistake him for a bad boy.
But he truly wasn't like the bad girls.
His words were harsh, but his meaning was kind. It was very strange. I wasn't used to it at all.
I was used to the opposite. I was used to the way Tomoe spoke, the words all polite and respectful, but the meaning very cruel.
But Shao had no cold shoulders or upsetting questions or mind tricks. He gave nothing but earnest answers. He noticed where I was confused and set me straight.
"I didn't set off the explosion, Miss Rep," he said. "But I did give black powder to the person who did."
"Why?"
"Because they wanted it."
Shao had been secretly giving small packets to anyone who did. If someone in school needed explosive powder badly enough, it wasn't hard to trace the rumors back to him.
"You didn't ask them what they wanted it for?"
"No. I see no purpose in asking."
"No purpose? What if they do something bad!"
"I trust them not to." He looked at me. "Isn't that what you did too, when you gave students summoning scrolls, and shinobi pills, and all the other things?"
"Yes… but those things are okay. Those things aren't for hurting people!"
Shao continued to look at me.
"And black powder is?" he asked.
His question caught me off guard. It was a very baffling question, and Shao asked it so seriously too.
At my silence, Shao exhaled. He closed his eyes.
"Anything else you want to know?"
"So you know who hurt Mimi?"
"Yes." Shao kept his eyes closed. "Don't ask me."
Just like how Shao trusted the person, the person trusted Shao. They trusted Shao to not reveal who they were.
Trust was important to Shao. It was how he had been able to give people things for as long as he had.
Even now, Shao trusted the person who had hurt Mimi. He did not know their motives, but he believed they had not meant to get him caught or cause harm.
I swallowed.
"Okay," I whispered.
I had one last question before I really had to go.
From what I heard from my uncles, Shao dumped all the explosive powder into the river. But he still kept a small bag for himself and for other civilians who might have wanted a few grams.
He only got caught because he kept that bag.
If it wasn't to hurt people… then what was it for?
Shao said nothing at first.
Then, he grinned.
And I saw why Ise might like him so much.
Why dry out his hair? Why smoke on rooftops? Why do any of the things they do?
"For fun."
.
The school was empty. It was late. I finished the paperwork and was about to lock up when I remembered something.
The box.
Ever since I announced the box, students had been putting in messages inside. Some of them had been nice. Some of them had been mean. Some had been rude drawings or other prank pictures.
The box had opened my eyes. Even though everyone was friendly to my face, not everyone liked or agreed with me. The messages showed there was plenty of unhappiness.
Some didn't like my classroom having more say than others, just because I was closer to the people in my class.
Some didn't like the exams getting pushed. They had studied hard and thought it unfairly helped the slackers.
Some thought we were too nice to the delinquents, that we didn't do enough when they ruined our new bathroom stalls.
At least one person hated the soft-boiled eggs at lunch. It was overcooked and gross and a choking-hazard and honestly a hard-boiled egg at that point, and they strongly believed this problem had been overlooked for too long.
I read through the new batch. There weren't too many messages this time, just a short thank you note and a question about the new math teacher.
I noticed there was one last thing inside the box, different from the other pieces of paper.
I pulled out the photograph.
It was a girl about my age, with bright golden eyes. She was smiling and posing beside other kids, but I had no idea who they were, since the photograph had been cut so that only her face showed. She wore our school's wristband, but no white half shirt. The kids around her didn't wear the white half shirt either.
Instead, everyone was in the same dark blue with red stripes on the collars. Over her shoulder was a backpack with many button pins of cute cartoon characters.
Confused, I flipped the photograph over. There was no name on the back, just an address written in pen.
Now I was super puzzled. Why would anyone give me this?
I ended up bringing the photograph with me, staring at it the whole time.
My house was empty. On the fridge was a note from my dad. Something important came up at work. But he really wanted to know how school was going. He asked how my trip to the police station went. Did I learn why Mimi was hurt? Did I learn anything more about the bad boy? How was I feeling?
After a pause, I picked up the pen.
'Hi daddy,
'Yes, I spoke to him. He gave me his bank numbers. He wants to give his bank account to his friend because she does not have one. Can you go with me to the bank this Saturday?'
I stopped. I breathed and started again.
'His name is Shaochin by the way. I think I was wrong to call him a bad boy. He must be feeling alone and scared, but he still tried to help me with the case. His friend's name is Ise. I wish I could do more to help them both.
'I still don't know who hurt Mimi. But I did get a photograph in the Talk Box. I wonder if it's a clue. There's an address on the back. I think I'll go there tomorrow.
'Love, Ayae'
I ate leftover noodles. It was cold. I didn't feel hungry and cleaned up early.
Under my bed covers, I stared more at the photograph of the girl with the golden eyes. She didn't look like anyone I knew at school. Then again, I didn't know everyone.
She looked happy in the photo. It looked like she had lots of friends.
Just as I was about to put the photo down and go to sleep, something on my nightstand caught my eye.
A button pin.
'Peace is not the absence of war.'
Blinking, I took another look at the photograph and the girl's backpack again. I placed the button pin next to it for comparison.
My shoulders lowered. The button pins on her backpack definitely looked like cartoons, not words.
I fell back onto my pillow. I crossed my arms over my eyes and tried to stop thinking about Mimi, about Ise and Shao, about Sekai Heiwa. Just for the night. Just long enough to get sleep.
When morning came, I dashed down into the kitchen.
To my surprise, it was empty. My note was still on the fridge, untouched.
Did my dad not come home last night?
I checked back upstairs, peeking into my dad's bedroom, and slowly came back down. The house was too quiet.
I ate a bowl of frosted banana-nut, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach.
The school turned out to be super quiet too. Students were concentrating on exams. It was the big test day. Even Tamaki was writing at her desk, trying to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
The exam was so far from my mind, I had forgotten I needed to take it too.
I realized I didn't care and walked out the school building.
My heart pounding, I took off my school wristbands, joining the adults in the streets downtown. I passed one district after another, stopping only to check my direction.
My destination turned out to be a two-story house very close to the Konoha hot springs. The neighborhood was open and peaceful, with many pedestrian bridges passing the natural springs. Lots of friendly cafes and bars sat just around the corner.
Two shinobi friends waved to each other from opposite ends of a street. Chatting excitedly, they met up and disappeared through the curtain of one the cafes, trying to catch a late breakfast.
The door to the house slid open. The person who stepped out was also shinobi. He was younger than the other two I just saw, maybe around the same age as Uncle Tekka. He held onto the door frame while fastening on his sandal. There was a call from inside the house. He replied back, "Okay yeah!"
I stepped up.
"Excuse me! Hi!"
The shinobi looked up.
Immediately, I knew I found the right place. He had the same golden eyes as the girl in the photograph.
"My name is Uchiha Ayae. I, ah, work for the Konoha Military Police Force," I said, scratching my cheek. "May I ask you a few questions?"
The shinobi recovered.
"Err, yeah, sure."
He didn't look scared the way my classmates did whenever they heard the word police. A bit caught off guard, but not suspicious or guilty or mean.
That he was not scared… made me so relieved.
I didn't realize I had gotten used to people being scared. I didn't realize I was waiting for people to get scared.
How long had I been holding my breath? Holding back? How long had I been comforting people, that it was okay, they could just say what they mean, that I wasn't upset, that I wasn't angry, that I wasn't scary?
When did I become scary?
When had I become Miss Rep, and no longer Ayae?
"Ah! Sorry mister, your name…"
"Oh right! Sarutobi Kenichi. Nice to meet you."
.
Mr. Kenichi's living room was a little messy but wide and spacious, with lots of carved furniture and leafy plants. His family had strange tastes, all the decoration very… unique. Not all the decorations matched, looking like just things they found cool at some point in time.
One of the decorations was this funny statue on their table. It was a wooden carving of three monkeys, one with hands on the eyes, one with hands on the ears, one with hands of the mouth. The monkeys were cute, but also kind of creepy.
Mr. Kenichi came back with a teapot.
Before I could speak up, he had already poured me a cup.
"Pardon the quality, but I hope hojicha is okay."
"Yes, yes, more than okay," I said, waving my hands.
"I told you we needed to restock the tea!" came the call from the kitchen.
"I know! I know!" Mr. Kenichi called back.
Sweating, he gestured to me his apologies.
"Sorry again, we really didn't expect visitors like this, much less the Uchiha clan. You caught me off guard, but now I think I know why you're here."
"You do?"
"Of course, of course!" he said. He looked embarrassed for a moment, then coughed and lowered his voice. "It's about the local panty thief, isn't it. We don't know much, unfortunately, but about two days ago, we heard some movement on our rooftop-"
"It was a racoon!"
"Since when did racoons get that fat?" Mr. Kenichi said, exasperated.
"Since when did perverts get that small?" was the snap back.
I sweated, as Mr. Kenichi and the person in the kitchen argued some more.
"Actually… I'm here for something else."
I showed Mr. Kenichi the photograph.
"Someone left me this photo. Do you know who she is?"
Mr. Kenichi glanced at the photograph.
I held my breath, waiting.
He simply shook his head.
"No, sorry."
"No?"
He shook his head again.
Confused, I took the photograph and looked at it, then looked at him. Sure, Mr. Kenichi and the girl in the photograph didn't look very similar. But the eyes…
How many families in Konoha could have eyes that color?
"Are you sure she isn't someone in your family?" I tried again.
Mr. Kenichi took the photograph for another look.
"Hey, sis?" he called.
"What!"
"Do you know this person?"
Mr. Kenichi's sister finally stepped out of the kitchen. She was wearing heavy gloves, but they weren't for cooking but for gardening. She wiped her forehead with her arms, leaving a small streak of mud.
"Who now?"
Mr. Kenichi's sister, I realized, was not the girl in the photograph, not even grown up. Mr. Kenichi's sister was a kunoichi and looked very much like Mr. Kenichi, with the same hair and brows and nose. The only big difference was that while his eyes were bright golden, hers were dark brown.
This, compared to the girl in the photograph, who looked nothing like Mr. Kenichi except for the eyes.
"Eh?!"
Mr. Kenichi's sister looked closer at the photograph, before looking at Mr. Kenichi. She saw what I did.
"Hey, it's your eyes!" she exclaimed, removing her gloves to hold the photograph.
To me, she asked excitedly, "Do you know her name? Is her family still in Konoha by any chance?"
Mr. Kenichi recovered from his shock. He snatched the photograph back. Lots of emotions flashed through his face. He blinked. Slowly, his mouth formed a smile.
"So this is her."
I learned that Mr. Kenichi fought in the third war when he was twelve. He ended up in a dangerous battle against enemy shinobi. The enemy had specialized in poisonous powders, and he had gotten blinded by one of them.
His eyes became completely ruined. There was no way he could ever see again. His teammates had to take turns carrying him back.
But when he woke up at the hospital, he could miraculously see again.
As it turned out, Konoha had found him a donor.
Both Mr. Kenichi and his sister were really grateful to me for showing them who that donor was. They hoped to pay her lots of respect. They wanted to show her family gratitude too. After all, she was the reason Mr. Kenichi was not a cripple for the rest of his life.
She had saved their family from despair. She was their light.
When I left Mr. Kenichi's house, I felt dizzy.
I realized the knot in my stomach was getting tighter and tighter.
Something was wrong.
Something was really wrong.
I found myself running back to the school.
In the club room, I flipped through our folders. I ran to the teacher's office.
I opened the back cabinets and pulled out the school records. I was halfway digging through them when the door opened. It was Takahashi, carrying a pile of completed exams. He frowned at the mess of papers thrown all over the floor.
Before he could say anything, I held up the photograph.
"Do you know who she is?"
I could tell from his reaction that he knew.
"Who is she?" I asked, a little too loud.
Takahashi closed his mouth, his lips in a thin line.
"We don't talk about it, Miss Rep."
After days upon days of questions, my patience was gone. I got up from my knees, papers sliding off my lap.
"Then I change the rules. From now on, we talk about it."
"Miss Rep-"
"Who is she!"
Takahashi looked like he was still about to refuse me. But then, he got my Uchiha glare. He looked down at my wrist and noticed I did not have my wristbands on.
I knew I was being scary right now. I even made Takahashi, one of the few people left in the school who dared stand up to me, back down.
I knew what I was doing was wrong.
But everything felt wrong. My head was hurting, pulling. My heart was skipping beats.
Ever since Mimi's scroll exploded, everything had turned upside down.
One student was in the hospital. One student was in jail.
And one student was…
"Her name is Shiragi Ryuu," he whispered, swallowing.
I knelt down, ready to shuffle through the records again for that name, when Takahashi told me to stop. She didn't exist in the school records anymore. I wouldn't find her there.
"Then where can I find her?"
Nowhere. Her family had moved out of the village years ago. The government had long purged her name from the registry.
If a record did still exist, it would have to be kept outside of Konoha's main government. Somewhere separate.
I breathed.
"Thank you, Takahashi. I'm sorry if I acted mean."
At the door, I paused. "Takahashi?"
He looked up.
"When you see my friends, can you tell them… I hope their exams went well?"
.
At the station, my uncles were having a tough time with something. There was a lot of yelling. Both Itachi's father and Tomoe's names were brought up.
No one thought it strange I was there during school hours, on a day outside my apprenticeship. Outside of Uncle Tekka, who wasn't on shift on Fridays, no one knew enough about me to know my schedule.
Getting in the back was not hard.
I simply grabbed Uncle Tekka's mug from his desk and followed one of my uncles through the door. I figured if anyone asked, I could say I was going to the kitchen to fetch tea.
But no one asked.
Everyone had bigger things on their minds.
I immediately went to the archival room and shut the door behind me. It was dim but I didn't dare turn the lights on.
As I walked through the aisles, I realized the room was a lot bigger than I thought. There were thousands of bins all neatly organized.
Despite not writing as much, my clan valued writing. We made sure all paper was properly sorted and preserved, sometimes even making copies if it was super important.
I also knew because of our tradition, we wouldn't destroy records.
I had done enough paperwork to know how we organized the files. We didn't sort by names but by time. Specifically, the year and the season.
Mr. Kenichi said he got his eyes at twelve years old, so it had to be many years back, before I came to Konoha.
I tried to remember what my friends once said. A civilian girl disappeared after making a speech. If she made the speech to the whole school, it had to be the annual speeches. That was during the summer time.
I found the right bins. I went through one row after the next, trying to read in the dark. A few times I had to freeze, waiting for my uncles to pass by the door. I could hear them talking loudly. I closed my eyes and held my breath.
Finally I saw it.
Shiragi Ryuu.
Shiragi Ryuu, heiress of Shiragi Corporation.
Shiragi Corporation made the electronics in Fire, I learned. They made most of our clocks and our walkie-talkies and our televisions. They were most famous for their games, like the Nindo Eight.
After the second war, the Shiragi main family moved to Konoha. The place they had originally lived had gotten ruined in the fighting. They thought Konoha would be safer.
Ryuu was not born in Konoha. She came when she was seven.
At the time, bombings had destroyed all the normal school buildings except one. The number of ninja children was down while the number of civilian children were up. Many people had come to Konoha looking for safety after the war. Too many. Lots of the rich and powerful families across Fire got accepted in.
The normal school ended up not having enough room while the Academy was too empty.
And so, Ryuu was in the first class of civilian kids to attend the Academy. She only stayed a year.
It wouldn't be until later that the village learned that blood didn't work the way people thought, and that civilian kids might be able to learn ninjutsu. It wouldn't be until much later that teachers of the Academy proposed the two-track system, giving civilian students a chance to be ninjas.
So Ryuu went straight to normal school, and made normal friends, and had normal hobbies.
She was smart and funny. She was rich and happy and well-loved. Some would even say too well-loved, to the point of spoiled.
She should have been okay.
She should have grown up fine, now a young adult going on dates and falling in love.
But somehow, somewhere, it all went wrong.
For some reason, she stopped being happy. She started getting confused, then sad, then angry. She started locking herself up in her room or the library. She started causing trouble, small at first, but then bigger and bigger.
She started getting loud.
She got louder when the third war came. She started doing things that were not okay. She badgered officials. She stood in the soldiers' way. She vandalized posters and buildings. She even got caught trying to break into a military supply warehouse.
The speech was the last straw.
Hundreds of soldiers were dying. And instead of thanking them for protecting her, she spat on their sacrifice. She turned her back on her very own people and home.
Something was wrong with her. She was sick in the head. Her brain wasn't right.
She disappeared when she was thirteen years old.
Three years later, I arrived at Konoha.
The first clan lady of the Uchiha thought it was important to let history stand without judgment. She made our clan very hesitant to burn the past, even when the village thought it was best we did.
Her decision let me read Shiragi Ryuu's story.
It also let me understand how she disappeared.
For three counts of treason, she was deported to the correctional facilities. Her family never saw her again.
Later the same year, Sarutobi Kenichi could see.
Ryuu had some very good, very faithful friends. They saw Mr. Kenichi and understood.
And with their help, I now understood too.
.
I stood outside Gin's apartment, dry-eyed and miserable.
Opening the door, he beamed. Then he saw my expression.
"This isn't about community service, is it," he said, serious.
I shook my head.
He looked back into his apartment, before lowering his cap and closing the door behind him. "What's up? You need something?"
I nodded.
I needed a really good friend right now. I need a friend who I could trust wholeheartedly with what I was about to do.
Gin didn't ask questions. He went back inside to put on his shoes. He was about to remove his ninja gear when I stopped him. He raised an eyebrow at that but went along with it, strapping back on his weapons pouch.
After shouting a goodbye to his mom, he closed the door for good. To me, he grinned.
"Alright, let's go."
I told him everything on the way. Gin thought I was one hundred percent crazy and that this had to be, by far, the stupidest idea ever. He loved it.
We didn't have much time. Shao was about to be deported tomorrow morning. And no matter how I begged, my uncles refused to budge. They wouldn't hear me.
During our run, I noticed Gin had gotten faster than me. Not the centimeters ahead or behind we had during our Academy days but truly faster. While my training had stopped, his had not. Unlike me, he was a real ninja now, who could walk up trees and across water, leap and duck and disappear with the wind.
When Gin noticed I wasn't keeping up, he frowned. But he didn't slow down, instead grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. I almost laughed.
We stopped in front of my district. Like many of the other times we stopped at this very spot, it was twilight. Only, this time Gin was not dropping me off. We were not saying good night.
He inhaled.
He was ready.
We had barely reached the gate when we heard screaming.
One of the guards was restraining someone.
It was Ise, who screamed again, trying to reach into her pockets. She was easily overpowered. My uncle did not even need two hands to hold her.
I was about to say something. I stopped, closed my mouth, and opened it again.
"Is something wrong?" I asked instead.
Both of them looked up.
My uncle looked annoyed, trying to pull Ise away so we could walk through.
"No, it's good. Just caught this one trying to trespass."
"She's not trespassing," I said calmly.
"What—"
"Her name is Ise," I continued, pointing to my own wristband, so he would notice hers. "She's my friend from school. I told her to meet me here." I glanced at Gin, who slowly lowered the kunai from behind his back.
"We're… having a sleepover!" I said, giving a big smile.
Slowly, my uncle let go of Ise, who stumbled away.
"Give us some notification next time, okay," my uncle told me, grumpy.
"Sorry!"
With that, I walked into the district, cheerfully asking Ise about her exam and sometimes doing a skip or two.
Once we were out of sight, I got serious.
Ise already had her knife out, keeping distant and pointing it at me. By my side, Gin had his own kunai ready.
I ignored them both. "Ise, this is Gin. Gin, this is Ise," I said. "It's okay, we're all here for the same thing."
"Are we?" Ise challenged.
I said nothing.
In the end, I held up my wrist and showed my extra wristband.
"Will you trust me?" I said softly.
Ise faltered.
Her lips tightened, and her hand veined. Her eyes got glossy. She didn't trust me.
For almost a week, she had been waiting for me to bring her friend back to her, and I hadn't done that. For almost a week, I had done nothing but give her bad news, again and again and again.
If she trusted me, she wouldn't have come here tonight.
Ise didn't trust people. She didn't trust me.
But there was still someone she did trust. And even if she didn't believe all of his words, she did love hearing them.
She lowered her knife.
I lowered my wrist.
It was late enough that the police station had gone mostly empty. It was Uncle Inabi's shift tonight, but he was not alone.
To my surprise, my dad was in the station. He was talking the ears off Uncle Inabi, who looked like he wanted to strangle him.
Uncle Inabi had to push my dad out the door.
"Good! Night!"
The door slammed close.
My dad deflated. Then he saw us.
Ise and Gin braced themselves.
"Honey?"
"Daddy!"
"Sweetie!"
We hugged.
"Hello Ginjiro," my dad said, waving. He then noticed Ise and thought hard. He tapped his head. "And you must be Ise!" he said, remembering her name. He must have read my note.
Ise just stiffly stared back, not lowering her knife. My dad wasn't very bothered by it. He already knew from me that the bad girls carried those things.
"Sweetie, what are you doing here?" he asked me.
"I'm here to do the right thing, daddy," I said, very serious.
He patted my head and laughed. "Look at that! Me too! Well… trying to." Softening, he crouched down. "But I seem a little bit stuck. Maybe my little genius has a good plan?"
I nodded.
"We are going to bust Shao out of jail," I said, pointing to the station.
Gin choked.
"He can't get deported," I continued. "He can't!"
My dad smiled softly. "No, he really can't," he agreed.
It was decided. We hugged again.
My dad was okay with my plan. He would lend us a helping hand.
First, Uncle Inabi had to go.
My dad knocked on the glass to the police station. He knocked and made some gestures through the glass and knocked some more. My dad was patient. Uncle Inabi less so.
Uncle Inabi finally gave in and threw open the door with a "WHAT!"
"Just one last thing," my dad promised, laughing.
We watched my dad go back inside the station.
A few minutes later, we caught Uncle Inabi standing up from his desk, looking steaming mad. All over him was hot tea. My dad waved his hands in apology, trying to wipe the spill.
Uncle Inabi did not want my dad's help. Scowling, he pushed him away. He yelled and then yelled some more, pointing to the corner chair for my dad to sit in. Having enough, he disappeared through the back door.
That was our cue. I beckoned to Gin and Ise.
My dad opened the front door for us.
Without wasting time, we went past him and straight for the back door. I took out my hair clip. Gin shut his eyes, counting the seconds while I twisted it forward and back.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes too, feeling for the metal.
It unlocked.
I led Gin and Ise straight to the stairs.
Then to the correct door. There was no lock on this one for me to pick. I remembered it needed a combination of hand seals.
"Which one was it, tiger or ram!" Gin hissed.
"I don't know! Try both!" I hissed back.
Ise had enough. With the handle of her knife, she tapped the door. Then she tapped in several other places, before moving onto the wall left of the door. Then she tried the wall right of the door.
Smirking, she flipped her knife and plunged it straight in.
When she pulled her knife out, there was a break in the wall, paint chips coming out.
Gin closed his mouth.
That works.
He got out his own kunai and helped her break the wall more.
The hole we made was just big enough for us to crawl through.
Shao had heard the noise, watching warily from his cell. He was surprised to see Ise bust through the debris. He immediately leaned against the bars.
Seeing him, Ise nearly cried. She ran to him and tried putting her hand through the bars to touch him.
Something invisible blocked her. Confused, she tried again, before giving a silent scream. She pounded on the chakra barrier.
Up until now, every obstacle had been for our safety. They were only to make sure no one accidentally stumbled into the wrong room.
Now that we reached the jail cell, we had come to the real obstacle.
It wasn't the stone walls or the metal bars that would be our biggest challenge.
It would be the chakra barrier.
.
After lots of effort, we had gotten the bars unlocked and pushed aside. But the chakra barrier, we had no luck.
We tried everything.
We tried stabbing it. We tried punching it. We tried burning it. We even tried flickering through it.
Gin explained to me there were many types of chakra barriers. There was no one here holding it up, so it had to be a passive barrier. There were probably seals hidden somewhere in all the stonework.
While active barriers depended on the caster, passive barriers were like summoning scrolls. Depending on how they were set up, each had their own set of rules. How to activate, how to deactivate, what to let in, what to let out, when and how.
The rules made it so that air, for example, could go through. But a yo-yo would bounce right off. A hand would hit a wall.
The best way to remove a passive barrier was to get rid of the seals. But we had no idea where those were or how many there were.
And no matter how good Gin was, there was no way for him to overpower the barrier by force. Given that my clan had set this barrier up, not even A or S rank ninja would be able to overpower it with chakra.
Ise kept trying. She tied for hours and hours. After a while, her knife broke, the blade detached from the handle. She kept trying after that, not caring if the blade bruised and cut her own hand.
Finally, Shao told her to stop.
Ise fell to her knees.
She didn't move.
She wouldn't move. She wouldn't leave. When it came time to deport Shao, she would go with him. She had no home in Konoha without him.
My heart broke.
I didn't know for how long we sat in silence. I wondered if my dad was still upstairs or outside in the cold streets. He must be worried.
Ise and Shao sat on opposite sides of the barrier. They were both tired. Neither had slept since the beginning of the week. But they couldn't lie in each other's laps, only lean side by side, shoulder to shoulder, head against head.
I stared blankly at the stones. I was still hoping to find some hint of a seal, when I noticed Gin turning his head. He lowered his cap, looking away. I realized why a moment later.
My eyes went wide.
Ise and Shao were… kissing.
Both their lips touched opposite sides of the barrier. It must have felt like kissing a wall, but they didn't care.
My whole face went red, but I couldn't look away.
Eyes closed, they kissed each other gently. They kissed each other hard. Without them even looking, without them even knowing, their hands mirrored each other, as if trying to connect.
And suddenly, they did.
Their fingers interlaced.
And their lips touched.
Both Ise and Shao were so lost in the moment they didn't realize what was happening. They would have thought it was their imagination.
It only lasted a second. Then the barrier violently separated them again, both their hands forced apart, a wall between them once more.
It all happened so fast, they would have thought it was their imagination.
Except it wasn't.
I had seen.
I had seen that one second.
It had looked like magic.
.
Everyone looked at me as I stood up and walked to the barrier again. I pressed my palms against it, pushing softly then firmly. Solid. It wouldn't budge.
I frowned.
I wasn't giving up.
The barrier had rules. There was no way to break those rules. Our only hope was to understand the rules and break Shao out within those rules.
It didn't matter if you hit the barrier fast or slow. Hard or soft. It didn't matter if the object was big or small. It didn't matter which side you were on. The barrier was strict on keeping the things inside, in, and the things outside, out.
And yet, it let air pass. And for a single second, it let Ise and Shao interlace hands and kiss.
"Shao, can you press your palm here?" I asked.
He did.
Leaning in, I inhaled and blew out a big breath of air.
"Did you feel that?"
He shook his head.
I bit my lips.
What could the rule be?
"I felt your breath before," Ise whispered.
Shao had too.
What had happened in that one second?
Curious, Ise and Shao faced each other on opposite sides of the barrier again, palm against palm. They tried a kiss. But it was the same. A wall.
Finally, they stopped trying to kiss and just pressed their foreheads together.
They simply closed their eyes and breathed.
Both their eyes snapped open. It wasn't just their own breath that they felt.
That was the moment Shao understood.
Once he did, he chuckled, then laughed, fingers combing through his dry hair.
"Miss Rep, I didn't know your clan was so poetic."
Gin stood up. "What are you talking about? Did you figure it out?"
Shao closed his eyes, still chuckling, his body shaking.
"Nothing in and nothing out. No give and no take. But it will accept one thing." He kept his eyes closed. "Exchange."
Perfect, simultaneous exchange.
Ise's eyes went wide. Immediately she turned to me.
"Swap us!"
Shao had stopped shaking, now only smiling wryly. He wasn't worried about Ise taking his place.
"You can't do the exchange, can you, Miss Rep?" he said. "Only your friend can."
When he reopened his eyes, he didn't look at me, only at the opposite stone wall.
"Can your friend swap two people with each other? Or just someone with himself?" He leaned back. "Just a warning, it feels like shit in here. I can't stand. Don't count on him doing anything once inside."
I couldn't say anything.
I looked at Gin. Substitution had always been his strongest jutsu. If the barrier needed exchange, no doubt he could swap Shao out.
But Shao had hit the nail on the head.
The difference between substituting something with yourself and substituting two other things with each other was the difference between earth and heaven. Most shinobi wouldn't dream of the latter. No matter how much Gin had improved since becoming genin, he wasn't that good.
The person to take Shao's place wouldn't be Ise. It wouldn't be me.
It could only be Gin.
Shao still stared at the wall, not looking at me, not looking at Ise. "You can say no, Miss Rep. It's okay to put your friends first." His gaze lowered slightly, before he closed his eyes again. "Their feelings matter too."
.
"Have I mentioned... this was such a stupid idea."
"Only eight hundred times."
"This was such a stupid idea," Gin groaned, putting his cap over his face.
"Eight hundred and one."
He lay flat on the floor of the jail cell.
Gin told me Shao had not been exaggerating about the inside of the barrier. Forget standing. That Shao had been able to sit was a miracle.
On the other side of the barrier, I was on the floor too.
"Thank you for doing this, Gin."
He snorted. "Are you kidding?" he said to the inside of his cap. "This one night has been more exciting than all my missions put together."
He raised his cap and turned to his side, so we faced each other.
"I thought you'd be, I don't know, dancing or something. What's all this 'Miss Rep' nonsense?" he asked, grinning.
"I do dance! But only for fun now. I'm too old for the intermediary competitions, but I'm not good enough for advanced," I said, sweating. Smiling, I showed Gin my extra wristband. "So I spend my time being the student representative. I don't want to brag, but it does mean I'm number one."
He laughed.
I giggled.
We exchanged more stories.
It was hard for Gin to fall asleep inside the cell, so to pass the time, I took out a packet of cards.
They were cards from Reina. As a thank you for allowing chakra cards, she had given me some of her old decks.
Together, we played Magical Girl Veda. We played a few rounds on power mode. I won the first time, but Gin won the second time. In the end, we tied 3-3.
We then tried love mode.
Turns out, we absolutely sucked.
One of my cards died on the first turn. Gin got another three of our cards killed.
"Wait, wait! Let me read that one again?" Gin squinted.
I hid my face in my palm, crying. I held the card he wanted up to the barrier.
"Okay yeah, play that one."
I flipped it to see what it was.
"No, that's the wrong one!" I whined. "That one will attack my Chain Mistress!"
"How was I supposed to know that!"
"They're from opposite sides of the river!"
"Well… he's not that strong? I'm sure she'll survive it."
"He won't," I squeaked.
"What?"
"She's aggro."
"How would I have known that!"
"Her name. Is. CHAIN MISTRESS!" I cried, pointing to her picture. What about that picture looked understanding and patient?!
Gin groaned.
Forget about saving all the cards, we'd be lucky if we saved even one.
Neither of us knew how the game ended. We both passed out sometime in the night, all the cards scattered on the floor.
When we woke up, it was to lots of anger and stammering.
At the door was one of my uncles. There were two people behind him, looking like they might be from the facilities.
"This… doesn't look like the child in the report, sir."
I was dragged up by the arm.
"What did you do?!"
I rubbed my eyes, still a bit sleepy. When I remembered what was going on, I puffed my cheek.
"I busted Shao out of jail," I said.
"Why would you do that?"
I stared at him like he was stupid. "Because he shouldn't be in jail. He shouldn't be going to some stupid facility."
I was only repeating myself. I had already said this yesterday, but no one listened.
They still weren't listening. It was all cursing and "Find him!"
For not cooperating and being "a brat", I got put into the cell next to Gin's until they figured out what to do with us. They thought maybe it would scare me and make me regret my actions.
It didn't.
It did suck though.
Both Shao and Gin were right. The cell was awful.
It was like having the flu while also being hit with a flying cart. Ten flying carts! Just the first hour was miserable. I couldn't imagine a week inside this. I'd go insane.
Gin and I talked through the wall to feel better.
Gin sighed and said well, his ninja career had a good run. I said we should start planning now, if we did get deported to the facilities. It would be harder to coordinate an escape once inside.
Gin wondered what ranking criminals we'd be.
I said B. B was a solid grade.
Gin said B was lame. We should aim for the top. We should aim to be S-rank missing nin.
Gin got excited at that idea.
I didn't need to graduate to be a rogue nin, he pointed out.
We could still be ninjas together, traveling the world.
My clan came back to the jail cells to find the two of us giggling.
Uncle Tekka was there, looking baffled and dismayed.
"You locked her up in there? Don't you know she can't use chakra?"
"Shao can't either!" I pointed out, though I wasn't too sure where I was pointing at anymore. Things were getting blurry. My head was light.
When I was finally taken out, it was a big relief. My knees were weak. Uncle Tekka helped keep me upright as I shakingly walked back upstairs.
I winced at all the bright lights on the ground floor. My clan was busy as usual, some sparing me a weird look on the way.
I wanted to ask Uncle Tekka where my dad was. I wanted to talk to my dad. But my head got dizzy again. I wanted to throw up.
We passed the main conference room, where Itachi's father stood by the door, listening to some meeting. He noticed me.
His expression changed.
"What's going on here?"
"Err, ah… we are…" Uncle Tekka stumbled.
"We're bringing her up for interrogation," Uncle Yashiro said, stepping up.
Itachi's father had not expected to hear that, his arms suddenly unfolded.
"What for?" he asked. The speaker in the meeting stopped. Everyone from the table looked up.
"This girl freed one of our prisoners," Uncle Yashiro said. "Don't worry, we have it handled."
"She…" Itachi's father clarified. "Freed. One of the prisoners."
That was definitely the scary voice. The voice that would make Sasuke jump and the other officers shrink.
"Just a civilian boy."
"And where is this civilian boy?"
"Ah…"
Itachi's father looked ready to fire everyone on the spot. While he held back his frustration, there came a chuckle.
"Well, it would appear our clan has at least one person not wholly incompetent."
Everyone turned to Tomoe, who had been sitting silently at the far end of the table.
"You know what the hell is going on?" Itachi's father asked her.
"How doesn't anyone not? Look at her wrist, Fugaku. Our clan locked up a civilian boy from the very school that she represents. If that is not obvious enough, she has explicitly told each and every one of you her objectives yesterday, which, one way or another, she would accomplish by today. And she did." Tomoe's eyes gleamed in amusement. "Cases of successful leadership are few and far between. You would all benefit to take notes."
Itachi's father clenched his jaw.
"It's fine. We have it handled," Uncle Yashiro scowled. "Once we have her tell us where she hid the boy…"
Itachi's father glared. "And how will you do that?" he asked coldly.
"We…!"
"I'm not explaining to Mikoto how I approved of the Sharingan on our clan's own chakraless child, because my entire task force is somehow unable to find one civilian boy, after having failed to detect her initial break in and his subsequent escape."
His voice was hard ice.
"Inabi was on the night shift-"
"I don't care who was on the night shift."
"We'll go through all the districts," Uncle Tekka proposed mildly.
"What a beautiful waste of resource," Tomoe said. "I'll spare you; she's placed them somewhere you'll never find."
My eyes widened.
Uncle Yashiro looked at Tomoe. "You know where he is."
Tomoe didn't look at him. She didn't look at me and my silent pleading either, just chuckling.
"If you know where he is, if you can retrieve him—!"
"And do your jobs? Sure, if anyone here would like to step in for mine."
She smiled at the following silence.
"No? Then, if you are done interrupting our meeting…" She beckoned to the speaker.
Itachi's father closed the door behind him, stepping into the hallway with us.
"Put this on hold."
"But the people from the correctional facility are already here."
"I want this on hold, is that understood." Itachi's father paused, studying me. "And feed her."
For the next few hours, I sat in one of the back rooms. I was given a cup of miso soup and a package of store-bought onigiri. Uncle Tekka sat at the opposite side of the table, in charge of guarding me. But mostly he just threw out the garbage.
The food did help me feel better.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Tekka," I mumbled, done eating. "I didn't want to cause trouble. But I couldn't let Shao go to the facility and I couldn't think of what else I could do."
Uncle Tekka sighed, annoyed but not angry.
"Well… lucky it wasn't me on night duty," he tried to joke.
"I'm very sorry to Uncle Inabi too." It wasn't his fault. He didn't deserve to get punished for it.
"You can make it up to us by telling us where you hid him."
I shrunk.
He tried.
Exhaling, Uncle Tekka switched topics. He was stuck in the room too.
He said his wife was cooking less sweet things now. They talked things over. It went better than he thought.
I beamed at that.
He was also going to get his wife some hooks and frames, so she could hang up art. And he was going to get some kind of tatami mat that had a special smell. Those things helped her feel more at home, now that she was away from her old clan.
Uncle Tekka wondered. Maybe, just maybe… there could be some way he could help me help him too?
He asked what he could do to make me tell him where Shao was.
"Make it so that he can't be taken away from Konoha!" I bursted. "Give him community service! For the lost explosive powder… we'll find some way to repay it! We'll do a fundraiser, or… we'll find some way! Won't that help Konoha a lot more? Letting him do good things to make up for the bad?"
To my disappointment, Uncle Tekka looked defeated.
"He's not on a minor misdemeanor charge."
"So?"
"I've told you, we can do community service for minor misdemeanors but what he committed was a felony. And felons go to the facility."
"Then change that."
He looked at me that way again, like I was so strange.
"We can't do that," he said.
"Uncle Tekka, do you think that what we have now... is better than my idea?"
"Yes… no. I'm not sure," he said honestly. "But regardless, we can't just change the rules."
I blinked.
"Why not? I'm only twelve and I change the rules all the time."
If I could, why couldn't the greatest clan in the world?
