My mom didn't have blood relatives. Her family were the people she made her family. One by one, I got to meet them all over again. Grandpa Sudi. Uncle Farusha. Aunt Benadetta. Mayu.

Uncle Farusha held a big feast for me that day. His cooking was tear-worthy. It was so good, I had three servings of everything.

If my dad's side of the family was all formal and distant, my mom's side was full of chaos and cheer. They drank heartily, everyone excitedly sharing stories of the past. I got to hear a lot of things about my mom that I never knew before.

My dad always spoke about my mom like she was an angel who fell from heaven. In reality, she was a demon who rose from hell.

Aunt Benadetta told me she and my mom grew up as street kids. They came from the lowest of the low. In the summers, they'd dip their legs in sewage to cool down. In the winters, they burned garbage to keep warm. They had eaten bugs and rats and all sorts of gross things to survive.

For kids like them, they almost always end up dead, or in jail, or, best case scenario, as a servant for some family or business. That was just fate.

My mom spat at fate in the face.

Literally.

When some businessman tried to coax her and Aunt Benadetta to work in his factory, she spat in his face. She laughed and said she ate cockroaches, not worked for them, and that he should crawl along before she got hungry.

"Your mom was insane," Aunt Benadetta said, laughing. "But in the most delightful way."

At the time, Aunt Benadetta had been very dismayed by my mom's actions. She had demanded why my mom had ruined their one chance at a decent living.

But my mom just made a face. Ruined? She had saved them. The factory would have stolen their whole lives from them, all to make a rich man richer.

She took Aunt Benadetta by both hands and told her to remember her dream. Aunt Benadetta wanted to grow up beautiful, with a family and a home, where she could spend her days making jams and sewing quilts and playing music. Where in her dream was there some stupid factory?

Aunt Benadetta tearfully stomped her feet and said all that House stuff was play pretend. They were just pretending.

My mom's expression darkened. She said she didn't pretend. The word Aunt Benadetta was looking for was practice. They were practicing.

My mom told Aunt Benadetta to just wait and see. Unlike some stupid factory, she'd get Aunt Benadetta her dream.

And she did.

My mom had gathered all the orphans in the district and created a gang. And using their numbers to their advantage, she turned them into a kid-lead, kid-run business. Needed a delivery person? A messenger? A pest catcher? A spy? Immediately, there would be a kid to do it for you, small and fast, no questions asked. The business was so good, it became the most hailed service in Ibunshi. The money was so good, kids with parents would try to join.

Aunt Benadetta not only got her home, all the street kids did.

My mom didn't stop there.

Twenty years ago, the Ibunshi district was extremely poor, filled with trash and disease and violence. It was the only place many immigrants could move to, when they couldn't afford anywhere else. After my mom stepped up, Ibunshi became the most prosperous of all outer circle districts in the Fire Capital.

She did it by finding common solutions to common problems. Because of her business, she knew exactly what were the most frequent needs in the community. Instead of individually taking care of them one by one, she believed it was best to do it all at once. Everyone had trash, so she got the people together to engineer a single garbage collection system. Everyone got sick, so she got the people together to build their own medical center and apothecary. Everyone had questions, so she got the people to put all their books together in a single library and learning center.

Everyone needed food, so she helped make the entire district a garden. Ibunshi had a very distinct smell. That smell was the smell of plants: the grasses and herbs growing along the walkways, the many fruit and nut trees in between all the buildings.

And it was under the orange trees that my mom took Aunt Benadetta by both hands again and said, okay, rehearsal was over. Aunt Benadetta better get started on making her those jams for real now.

"Wah, so romantic," I sighed.

"Your mother is dramaful, yes," Uncle Farusha laughed.

"What about you? How did you meet my mom, Uncle Farusha?" I asked excitedly.

"He was her bread dealer," Aunt Benadetta answered.

Before Grandpa Sudi and Uncle Farusha had the money to set up their jewelry shop, they had been peddling on the streets selling bread.

One day while pushing the cart, Uncle Farusha saw my mom in an alleyway. At first, he thought she was a raccoon by the way she was hissing at him from inside a garbage can.

When he realized it was another kid, he secretly took one of the bread from his cart and threw it to her. She jumped and caught it with her teeth.

Her first words to him were: "This tastes like shit. Get me the braided kind next time."

"And he, the dumbass, did," Aunt Benadetta said, bursting out laughing. "He got her all the bread she wanted, and kept coming back with more. Muwana was so pissed. She had gotten addicted to them, so she couldn't stop accepting even if she wanted to. She was like, damn it all, how the hell are we paying this idiot back. And I told her, what is this we. That's your bread debt, not mine!"

My mom did end up returning the favor, when she shanked the tax collector who was harassing Grandpa Sudi.

She looked out for Uncle Farusha too. No one would be able to tell now, but Uncle Farusha used to be badly bullied. As a kid, he had been fat. People assumed it meant he was eating more than his fair share, so it was okay to punish him. He also spoke in a different dialect. People assumed it meant he couldn't understand them, so it was okay to say mean things.

After my mom came in, everyone quickly stopped picking on him. No one dared mess with Muwana's bread dealer.

"Whaa, my mom is a protector!" I said.

Aunt Benadetta snorted. "Your mom was a bully."

"EH?!"

"A sadistic one too," Aunt Benadetta said fondly, hand on her cheek. "She preyed on other bullies. She loved how good of a bait Fafa here was in luring them out."

My mom had been very disappointed when Uncle Farusha grew up very tall and handsome.

So that's how it is, I thought, sweating.

Watching me, Grandpa Sudi asked, "Your dad doesn't talk to you about your mom?"

"He does! Just… I don't think I heard many stories about her as a kid." I rubbed my neck.

"That's because he never knew her as a kid," Uncle Farusha said, scowling.

Uncle Farusha told me my dad grew up in the city inner circles, very pampered and spoiled. It was a different world there.

My mom and dad didn't meet until their early twenties. By then, my mom was already an important person, meeting eye to eye with government officials.

I asked if they had any good stories about my dad, but Uncle Farusha said he didn't have any, even though they were in the same friend circle for over a decade. Uncle Farusha was grumpy that I was even asking questions about my dad.

"Are you in love with my mom, Uncle Farusha?" I asked.

He spat out his drink.

"He's convinced if only he knew how to read, Muwana would have married him," Aunt Benadetta said flatly. She turned to me. "Listen Ayae, your uncle is biased. You must ignore him whenever he makes fun of your father, such as for his dumb glasses, or his scrawny body, or his concerning sunburns, or his weak stomach, or his terrible rambling, or his infuriating naivety, or his inability to cook, or clean, or sew, or make money, or save money, or dress fashionably, or…"

I sweated as Aunt Benadetta went on.

And on.

… and on.

"... or carry any ounce of dignity as a respectable man should, because the only thing that matters is Muwana chose him, and that alone makes him worthy to be in our circle. And to be our family. Even if he does not see the same of us," Aunt Benadetta finished.

"What does my mom like about my dad?" I asked.

Aunt Benadetta's eye twitched.

"Muwana told me he's… funny."

I beamed.

I waited for more.

Nothing.

I turned to Uncle Farusha to see if he had anything to add.

"He can read," he said.

"Ah yes," Aunt Benadetta agreed, "your mother was very obsessed with learning to write. She spent much time writing. And he can… read them."

After a long silence, Uncle Sudi decided to help them out.

"Kenta created the self-generating electric grid for our district."

"Ah yes, that too," Aunt Benadetta and Uncle Farusha mumbled.

… why did they both look so depressed?

Finally Mayu had enough. She put down her chopsticks and got out of her seat.

I was surprised when she grabbed my wrist.

"Ayae and I are off to play!" she said, leaving the mopey adults behind.

.

"Sorry about my mom," Mayu complained, standing on the swingset. "She always gets weird when your mom is brought up. She and Uncle Farusha both."

"Are they married?" I asked, tilting my head.

"Whaa?"

I pointed to my finger. "I noticed they had matching rings here. Those are fidelity rings, aren't they?"

Mayu blinked. Her mouth pulled into a wide grin. "You're quick!"

She looked up at the night sky. The street lamps were too strong for there to be stars.

"No, Uncle Farusha isn't my dad. But he did promise to take care of me and my mom after you and your dad left us." Mayu looked at me, pouty. "Where did you disappear to, anyway?"

It was my turn to be mopey.

"Mayu?"

"Yeah?"

"I think my dad lied."

Mayu's eyes widened.

"I didn't want to move, but he told me we had to. He said we had no choice. So I said okay and listened to him."

I frowned.

I went quiet.

"What are you thinking, Ayae?"

Cockroaches. I was thinking of my mom, who grew up eating cockroaches. She was a gang boss, not some frail flower.

I was thinking of my dad, who was very smart. If he didn't faint at the sight of blood, he'd probably have become a doctor.

I was thinking of my dad telling me we had to move.

I was thinking of Konoha, and why my dad would bring me there.

I knew why. He was my daddy. I didn't have to look very hard to figure out why.

I was thinking of my ninja textbooks.

"Oh nothing. Just wondering who assassinated my mom." I stopped my swing, my feet refinding the ground. "And why."