Jei, Emu, and En took the news less calmly.
"Say what?" Jei demanded. "The evil forbidden ninja place?!"
"How did you escape?" Emu asked.
"Huh?"
"The military villages are for life," Emu said grimly.
"They track you down and kill you if you try to leave," En said grimly.
"Hold up! Are you wanted?" Jei asked. "Are you in deep shit? Should we be on lookout?"
"What! No, I'm not a rogue-nin! I told you, I'm not a ninja!"
I palmed my face. I had forgotten people from Lightning were not allowed in Konoha. It took time for my new friends to understand Konoha wasn't some creepy, shadowy place of knives, blood, and doom, but a town like any other. With, you know, shops and restaurants. We had hot springs with lazy monkeys and grandpas in them!
I didn't sneak out. I left the normal way. With paperwork.
"That easily?!"
I nodded. "For me, yeah. For my dad, it's harder, I guess. I hope he can join me soon."
They slowly began to believe me the more I told my story. About not having chakra. About dropping out. I confirmed that I never went on a mission, and I certainly never killed anyone!
I was just… me. Ayae.
Despite the secrets, who they knew was who I was.
Really.
Jei, Emu, and En huddled together. They eyed me, then Jii, and then back to me again, whispering furiously.
"Alright, we accept you," Jei said.
I beamed.
It was settled.
Jei and Jii got ready for the night. I was by the door, putting back on my shoes.
"You eaten yet?" I heard Jei ask Jii. "Want to have some sushi sent up?"
I felt my own stomach grumble. I wondered what leftovers I might get from the fridge for a late dinner. That was when I remembered Otoha. Dread hit me.
"Emu? En?"
The twins turned their heads.
"Is… it okay if I stayed with you guys? Just for tonight. I can sleep on the floor."
They exchanged a look with each other.
"You Z's girl now," Emu said.
"You can take one of the beds," En said.
"We'll call room service."
"Order whatever you want."
I breathed in relief. "Thanks."
I blinked.
"Wait, girl?" I stammered. "L-like..."
"Girlfriend," Emu said.
"Sweetheart," En said.
"Bae."
Jii overheard. "Stop it. If Ayae doesn't want—"
"I want it!" I blurted out. I turned back to Emu and En excitedly. "Does that mean Jii's my boy?"
They nodded.
"BF."
"Love."
"Boo."
AHH! Lucky!
Jii blushed. He rubbed his neck, caught in a happy surprise.
"See you… tomorrow?" he asked.
I nodded and waved good night.
Pleased, Emu and En led me back to their room. We got an order in before the kitchen closed. The hotel was one of the best in the capital, so the menu had a lot of choices for food. Emu and En said to get what I want and not to worry about the bill—their program was paying for everything.
"Ah, really?! Can I get extras?"
I explained I lived with a lot of people, so we always needed more food.
Emu and En exchanged a look.
"Sure."
They didn't see any problem with me ordering a whole crate of dried ramen. They turned out to be fancy ramen too. The noodles were made with eggs in them, not just water and flour!
We settled down for the night. I rolled in the bed. I hugged a pillow, feeling really warm and happy one moment, but then confused and cold the next.
I thought over the things Jii told me, replaying his words in my mind again and again. Every time, I hit the same wall.
My arms loosened around the pillow.
"Emu? En?"
They looked up from their handheld games.
"Yes?"
"Why did Jii's parents kick him out?"
Emu and En stopped.
"Z didn't tell you?" Emu said.
"He told me he's Sayuu, and they're Jouge," I said.
They shrugged, as if I had just answered myself.
"Don't they love him?" I asked.
"No," they said.
My eyes widened. I had not expected them to be so blunt.
"H-how is that possible?" I asked. "Didn't they raise him, take care of him? Didn't they live together? See each other every day? They're family, how do you not—"
…love family?
I couldn't understand it. I tried and failed to imagine my dad and I not loving each other anymore, much less over something like who we thought should rule a city.
"Most families don't love each other," Emu said, looking at me funny.
"Most people can't even love themselves," En said, scoffing.
"And you're the person you spend the most time with," Emu agreed.
"Z's parents raised him to make themselves happy..."
"When it was clear he couldn't..."
"They threw him out."
"It's fine," Emu said, seeing my reaction.
"Z doesn't love them either."
"Hasn't for years."
They paused. They put down their games, sitting up on their bed.
"He's had a hard time."
"Still healing."
"Healing?" I echoed.
"Z used to be the most popular kid in school," Emu explained.
"Everyone's crush."
"Everyone's idol."
They frowned.
"He became the most hated person in a week."
"We've never seen anyone fall like that before."
"It did something to him."
"Up here." Emu tapped her head.
"And in here." En tapped her chest.
"He doesn't care about his parents. He didn't choose them. But…"
"His last girl did break him. He did choose her."
They looked sad.
"She was special to him."
"He was blinded."
"They both wanted to believe the other was something they were not."
"But Sayuu and Jouge can't be together."
They sighed.
"Why not?" I asked.
They looked at me questionably.
"Why can't Sayuu and Jouge be together?" I asked.
They looked at me like I had just asked why circles were round and triangles were pointy. Then they remembered. I was an outsider. The words Sayuu and Jouge didn't mean anything to me.
"Ayae, the Jouge wants the genocide of the ten thousand people."
"And the Sayuu is trying to stop them."
"Genocide?" I echoed, not familiar with the word.
"The government wants to kill us," Emu explained.
"M and me," En said.
"If Sayuu doesn't get majority again," Emu said.
"We will be dead," En said blandly.
"Z and J are trying to flip every vote they can to make sure that doesn't happen."
"They're kind-hearted people."
"There is no amount of friendship…"
"Or shared history…"
"Or love…"
"That will make them accept…"
"Murderers."
.
Emu and En originally thought I was some uncomplicated country girl. They thought I was cute and funny and gave Jii a much needed break from the drama back home. My company was very wholesome. It helped him forget. It helped him heal. Anyone who could make him that happy was a keeper in their books.
Once Emu and En learned I was from Konoha, they saw me differently. They switched to speaking bluntly and straightforwardly. They figured whatever nightmares they experienced, Konoha had to have been worse, and we could all share in our pain. It was good to share the good, but they wanted to share the bad too.
It was their way of getting closer as friends.
We just didn't expect to hit a language wall, again.
I came from a military village, so it made sense in hindsight that I never heard of the word democracy. Militaries and democracies cannot co-exist. It was not possible to have one and still claim the other.
But genocide? En mumbled that that was like a butcher not knowing the word knife.
Being from different countries, we did sometimes use different words and slang. Sweating, I told them we used the word killing. That was close enough to genocide, right?
Emu and En bristled. They insisted that killing was absolutely not it.
Emu and En were specialists in rap. They were poets. For them, precision was important. Not in literal meaning, but in emotion.
Words don't just have rhythm and rhyme, they have weight and emotion. They tell us how to feel about something. Feelings, after all, are what we absorb, and ultimately drives us to act.
Killing is a word of ambiguous emotion, they said. It can be sad. It can be creepy. But it can also be powerful and triumphant.
I tried again. Massacre?
They shook their heads. Massacre is big and crazy and violent. It focuses too much on the blood and flesh and passion. That was not it either.
Genocide, they explained, is ice. Terror. A silent scream.
Genocide is a word that is created to shake you in ways other words cannot, to wake you up to reality, get you to hurry, to move, to fight, to flee.
It is a word that points a finger. Not at the sword or the violence or the destruction. Not at the enemy and their revenge. Not at the madman and their illness.
It points at your everyday, law-abiding neighbors and their thinly-veiled contempt.
Contempt for your being. Contempt for your existence. It is the sharp reminder how behind every polite smile and innocent joke is cold disregard and selfish apathy and one-sided power. The power to threaten you at whim, the power to destroy you at will. The merciless reminder that you are not safe, that nowhere is safe, because they have claimed the world for themselves and you have no place in it.
Genocide is not a word that has a substitute.
Hearing them talk about it made me shiver. I huddled in the dark. I could not imagine living in a place with what they described. I could not imagine what they must be going through, what awaited them if they went back home.
I got beyond scared for my friends.
Emu and En were more worried about me.
I came from one of the biggest and most powerful militaries in the world, housing more chakra than all the other nations combined, enough chakra to annihilate the earth a hundred times over, raging war after war in its never-ending hunger to be number one, to be the first, to be the best.
And yet, I barely knew anything about why these wars were happening. I barely knew anything about my country or others. I didn't know about broadcasting, how we had the capacity to talk to anyone anytime, how there could be shows from different countries showing different sides of the world.
I grew up amongst ninjas, infamous for their obsession with bloodlines and clan supremacy, yet I went twelve years without ever hearing genocide in conversation or reading it in the books.
It made them wonder who had been talking to me. Who had been writing my books.
Why did this word disappear?
More importantly,
"Who erased it?"
