Chapter 9: Exotic Feelings
When Naruto's hand rested on his head, Deidara was reminded of all kinds of things, one of which was how he missed being touched. Feathery touches – those unstained by malice, leaving warmth instead of clawed skin, broken bones, breathless lips. Those that invoked longing. Those that were remnants of his adolescence: the overly enthusiastic post-mission high-fives, the cheesy fist bumps he once hated doing with his old teammates – he could hardly do with his current one.
Deidara sighed.
"You didn't have to hit me!" Naruto rubbed his sore arm. "I thought my patting would soothe your nerves."
"A dog should not pet its master. And you should've known that an artist of my level can never get shaken up by this amateurish competition."
Naruto stuck out his tongue in childish protest. This kid. He was not at all aware of the fact that Deidara could kill him at any moment. But that made his company somewhat entertaining.
"I'm not your dog! And—And just to let you know, I can clearly sense your anxious chakra vibrating in the air!"
"If you don't start cleaning now, the only thing that's going to be vibrating is your skull as I whack it with this hammer, got it?"
Two hours until the festival started, and there was little left to do. Deidara's stand was fully dolled up, with the sky as its roof, walls spreading sideways. Black ink crawled across the back of the walls like spider legs. At the junction of those lines fixed several seal tags; Deidara ran his fingers over them and channeled a pulse of chakra. Then one more. Another. "Does it work?" he asked.
His assistant, who was scrubbing the front of the walls so aggressively he could feel it on the other side, yelled out an affirmative. Deidara reapplied the seal with a satisfied smile. After a few strolls around the stand, he retired to the spot next to a working Naruto, watching swarms of people scuttle past.
A group of traditional dancers nearly broke loose when one of them tripped on their kimono as they hurried toward the main stage. A woman trudged through the crowd with a massive pile of paintings in hand, its height dwarfing her own. A young man clambered to Sasori's stand, asking for some colored paper to perfect his origami collection. The air was trembling with excitement, sweet with the smell of sawdust and paint fumes and dried glue—
"That beggar girl. I heard some rumors about her," Naruto whispered; Deidara's fascination subsided.
What about her? Just a random brat who came here yesterday, glued her back to the back of his stand, and refused to budge. A worthless parasite with no fire in them. Why think about such a meaningless being when a miracle was unfolding right in front of their eyes? This assemblage of artists. This convergence of beauty.
What came out of Deidara's mouth was monotonous platitude, "So? What do they say?"
"That she brings bad luck or something. That if she visits your stand, you will surely fail," Naruto said. "Like, should we kick her out?"
"Luck. Some people will blame anything but their own incompetence and stupidity for their miserable life."
"You sound like an asshole I know."
"I am an asshole you know, yeah?" Deidara's exasperated sighs were lost among the echoes of their heels as they made their exit, heading towards the space behind the stand where the girl was staying.
They found her in the same position they first saw her in. Scrawny arms hooked around her knees, black eyes cursing at the sun, tell-tale traces of malnutrition on her face. Deidara had caught glimpses of her here and there while walking around the venue, her tattered sandals imprinting filth onto nearly every stand, her evading every thrown tin can, old brush and pink slipper, but he hadn't expected it was going to be his turn.
"If you're going to leech off us, at least introduce yourself," Deidara said.
Naruto elbowed his side. He only smirked. "What? This brat's ridiculous. Do you expect me to spare you some sympathy and give you food if you stay long enough?"
"Open your mouth and beg for a loaf of bread or two, then I may consider it. It's like you don't even try," Deidara said, his patience wearing thin by the second. Then he kneeled down and shook her shoulders when no reply came. "Hey, are you deaf?"
Naruto shrieked. "Stop! Don't bully children!"
The girl's first words seemed to come out of his wildest dreams.
"Let me go, you fuck!"
"Ah, that's the spirit." A grin split Deidara's face after an initial moment of shock. "I see why people shoo you away the second you come to them."
"Get your nasty hands off me before I chop them off!"
When Deidara held his arms up in surrender, the object dangling from his right hand glowed a faint blue. The three of them lapsed into momentary silence: Deidara in prideful quietness, Naruto in muted realization, the girl in resentful reticence for her secret had been spilled in daylight. Deidara had seized it while he was rattling her, a tear-shaped pendant embedded with dozens of sparkling jewels. An accessory stand stood a few blocks away from their place; lost property announcements had been ringing every lunch hour.
The girl snatched her item back at amazing speed. Deidara let her.
"Yours is the worst," she said and stuffed the pendant into her jacket. "It's ugly, has no roof and nothing worthy of stealing."
Naruto chimed in, "A thief has no right to—"
"Hello, Naruto? You stole 10,000 ryo from a man who didn't know better." Deidara put his hand on her head. "This girl's going to be my lucky charm."
Everything's fine.
The words played on repeat in Deidara's head as he waited, drowning amid Naruto's almost-too-spirited pitches to invite people to his show. No screw would fly off their joints and crumble the stand mid-performance. No insect would enter his mouth as he spoke. No Leader's static slur popping into his ears, demanding his immediate presence. No undercover hunter-nin descending from the foliage above.
In his mouth, the rich aftertaste of bakudan-yaki provided short-lived distractions. How ironic it was that he now had a nearly one-year supply of his favorite snack that would expire in a few days' time. Just yesterday he returned to the inn to retrieve some blueprints, saw what he suspected to be a body bag in Sasori's room, but it turned out to be a mountain of bakudan-yaki boxes. When confronted, Sasori only explained that he planned to bribe Deidara again and again if he hadn't succeeded the first time.
The memory sweetened his anxiety somewhat, but he couldn't bring himself to feel nor act the way he would before raining bombs on a village, brightening the sky with red clouds. Confidence came easily when the audience's reactions were buried beneath rubble, but now, his mood would plummet upon their every slightly twitching brow, heavier-than-normal flow of breath.
"You ready?" Naruto slapped his shoulder.
Deidara forced himself into action. He flipped the welcome board, stumbled a few steps forward, and positioned himself so as not to obscure the stage, half facing the audience and half monitoring the performance.
"Everyone, welcome to Deidara's explosion show!" Naruto took the words right out of his mouth.
And then everything rolled: every step of their well-designed, impeccable plan.
First was the stage setup. True to the expansive nature of his art, Deidara's stand was not a closed booth but more so a giant folding screen with moveable side panels. One Naruto clone stood on each side and pulled these panels open using ropes hooked on the walls' backs. With it the stand bloomed.
Second was the decoration. Everything had paid off, every minor annoyance, from his paint-clogged nails, uncooperative brushes, dirty apron to sleepless nights powered only by coffee and self-made daydreams. Thanks to the disguise seals attached on the walls, he was able to paint multiple paintings atop one another and switch between them during the performance – a kind of magic that, he imagined, would draw awestruck gasps from the most somber of children. A third Naruto clone hid behind the stand and unfurled the seal, and the blank backdrop came to life – a gorgeous dragon spanning across all three panels.
Third was the promotion. At Naruto's suggestion, the two of them had hung numerous posters around town and slid invitations into the pockets of many unaware villagers. The horde of viewers loitering before his stand now, mostly starry-eyed kids and their parents, was the result of that hard labor.
Fourth was the explosions.
Deidara threw explosions of all shapes and sounds, and dynamicity and intricacy into the stand's stomach, sparklets disappearing as fast as they ignited from his explosive clay. The two side walls swayed back and forth under Naruto's control. The blast blossomed in front of the dragon's sharp-toothed snarl. It was exactly what Deidara had envisioned: a living artwork.
"Mom, look! It's a fire-spitting dragon! The fire-spitting dragon is flying!"
There was a tug at Deidara's pants. "Mr. Magician, why isn't the dragon high up in the sky yet?"
Deidara was sure what he felt then was undiluted happiness.
The kind of happiness that existed only in his daydream.
The kind of happiness that once he opened his eyes, it would all shatter.
So he didn't.
He didn't open his eyes to see the child's face burn, struck by a wandering spark, or whatever disgusted grimace the mother must have donned. He was a little too excited, the boy was a little too close, the heat was a little too much. Despite his effort, one moment of ecstasy ruined everything.
Footsteps scattered in all directions. Naruto's distressed voice muttered something to his ear then faded, swallowed by the festival's orchestra. Soon Deidara was left alone with deafening reminders of his reality. He had willingly practiced self-harm during practice, tested hundreds of clay and chakra mixes to produce safer explosions for what? People turned their backs the moment he made a mistake.
Something welled up inside his chest, ugly and poignant. Ten years ago he left Iwagakure in a sea of flame, and this time it wasn't going to be any different.
Whispering a silent apology to Naruto and Sakura, Deidara reached for his pouch and—
He saw the girl, his proclaimed lucky charm, sitting in place of the already-dispersed audience. No matter how many times he asked, she didn't say a word.
"Do you want… to see it?" he gulped.
The stand sprung open again, bursts of beauty in its gut. Deidara showed her all the sets he had prepared: not only a fire-spitting dragon but a fire-juggling acrobat, a phoenix burning to ash, a volcanic blast that cremated a bustling town—nothing too sophisticated, just stuff he thought children would enjoy.
Since Naruto had run off somewhere, he had to operate the show by himself and his own pack of clones, but it didn't feel at all awkward. Awkward was better used to describe how he felt when there was only one spectator, whose flat countenance would soften at times frequent enough to be rewarding, yet infrequent enough to keep him on the edge of his seat.
The girl was motionless, but her eyes never left the stage. After a while, she withdrew something peculiar from her coat—it was only when she put it against her lips and noise streamed out did he realize it was a flute.
The tune made little sense at first, just a jumble of random, scratchy notes. As minutes passed it picked up, evolving into an acceptable melody, mirroring the rhythm of his explosions. Deidara rubbed his eyes in disbelief: People were flocking to his stand once more. They cheered, clapped, shoved voting tickets into his box.
Is this genjutsu?
Of all the scenarios he invented, one did happen: someone did drop from the foliage above, but they wore decades of tiredness and a security badge instead of a hunter-nin mask.
"I'm sorry. Due to safety precautions, we'd have to ask you to close your stand."
Deidara went back to the inn right after his dismissal, his head hanging low in defeat, but the urge to destroy the village had disappeared. He was about to enter the accommodation when he turned around and slumped down on a nearby bench instead.
"My room doesn't have anything worthy of stealing either, Tayuya."
The girl's skinny frame and pinkish-red hair emerged from the shadow. She stepped out from behind the tree next to Deidara and punched his hands, yanking her flute out of his grip. It was a long, sturdy-looking bamboo tube engraved with her name.
"Stop stealing my stuff!" Tayuya prodded the instrument as if looking for any damage, after which it vanished into her layered clothes.
"Just wanted to know how I should address my stalker. Silently following people around isn't going to earn you sympathy, you know?"
"Who needs your sympathy? I'm here because I have something to discuss." She sat down beside him, dangling her feet over the bench. "So. I was wondering if some of them were genuine. The people's reactions."
"What do you mean?"
Tayuya pointed to her stomach and then to her mouth. 'Food in, answer out'—her smug face said it all.
"This is the worst robbing tactic I've ever seen in my life."
Still, curiosity got the better of him, and he did have abundant food surpluses. Deidara walked into the inn and exited five minutes later holding two boxes of bakudan-yaki, the other ninety-eight sealed within a container scroll in his pocket. Their conversation resumed with occasional breaks, during which Tayuya barely finished swallowing a portion before another was stuffed into her hands.
"Because I was hungry, my genjutsu might have been not as strong as usual. There could be some people that weren't affected."
"You're not sure," Deidara said. "This 'might have' happened. That 'could be' true. Might as well say there's no chance."
Tayuya's suggestion didn't ease his pain a little. Slim threads of hope, near-zero possibilities, his laughable desperation. He was desperate enough to await cracks in the heart of a living doll, to find encouragement in a little girl's empty gaze. What's next?
The bench creaked as Deidara leaned further into it.
"Fine, I'll tell you the truth. Just stop staring at me. It's gross." Tayuya wiped off some sauce on her lips with her sleeve. "The thing is, I'm not sure it worked all way through. At first, it was genjutsu, of course, but then I lost track, kinda. I was too focused on matching your rhythm and—
"Whatever. What I meant is that at some point the genjutsu likely stopped, and I was just playing the flute. Playing music. I never thought I could do it until now."
A long pause.
"Why aren't someone like you not in a shinobi village, or rounded up by a mercenary? Even as a child, you can easily make a living with skills like that."
"I can't leave this place."
"Do you have a home?"
"I haven't bothered to find one. My old house was flattened because of neighborhood restoration program or some shit." Tayuya tugged at her beanie, annoyed at words she clearly didn't understand.
"Do you want one?"
"The villagers won't allow that. Every time I set up something they take it away," she replied with a grunt. "People here don't like outsiders leeching off them."
"Amateur. Come, let me show you."
Deidara led Tayuya into town and told her to obey if she wanted this "awesome new home". She came out of a gardening equipment store grinning with a spade in her hands when he told her to find one.
Then he asked Tayuya if she knew any discreet places in the village, and though with doubtful glances she said yes. They entered a dirty alleyway speckled with a few gangsters, toured a row of deteriorating terraced houses inhabited by stray dogs, and ended with an abandoned construction site reeking of sand.
Deidara pointed to her feet. "What are you waiting for? Start digging."
Part of him expected Tayuya to give up mid-way, but she responded with brave eyes and unthinkable determination. She gouged chunks of dirt half her size out of the ground and finally created a deep hole in the earth.
"Is this big enough?" She looked up at him.
"Perfect. Now hold my hand."
Deidara pulled her out of the hole and held her with one arm as they leaped onto a clay bird. As he dropped a bomb into the hollow she just created, she suddenly clapped her hands. The ground exploded soundlessly beneath them.
"Silencing jutsu," Tayuya said.
"Impressive."
When Deidara peered into the underground space, it had expanded enough to resemble a room.
"Not too spacious, but I think it's enough for a small one like you." He smiled at Tayuya, who smiled back while brushing dirt off her jacket. "I'll find a way to make this work. A trapdoor, maybe? And a ventilation system. It won't be funny if all I did was making you dig your own grave."
The day had swiveled past noon by the time Deidara finished sculpting the room into a normal box shape, using numerous Earth jutsu and extra help from Tayuya. In the end, they lied face up on a tarp they found nearby, engaging in idle chit-chat.
"I used to steal things when I was small, too," he said.
"Hah, I knew it."
Children are stupid; that's a universal fact, but their stupidity made them temptingly easy to share secrets with. Deidara talked about his childhood in Iwa Children House. There, he would often lay on the floor like this, staring at the walls long enough that the vines moved, stretching into never-ending swirls. One time, one caregiver gifted him a rosewood treasure chest on his birthday and despite not knowing what 'rosewood' meant, he held onto the item like it was the most precious thing in the world. He told her how his heart leaped every time the crate's tummy swelled, the lid struggled to shut, it took him extra minutes to cram the overweight box into the bathroom's vent.
"But what did you put in the box?" Tayuya's eyes seemed to sparkle.
"Little things I considered precious: a matcha-flavored cookie, a four-leaf clover in the backyard, a gold coat button of a wealthy visitor."
"Ooh, I love matcha."
"Right? But I can guarantee it doesn't smell nor look that nice when it goes bad a few days later."
"You should've at least wrapped it in paper or kept it in a separate container."
"Sorry I wasn't as smart of a thief." Deidara rolled on the floor, laughing at how serious Tayuya sounded, or how ridiculous this situation was.
"I rarely store anything, though. I just keep them in my pocket or sell them right away."
"But now you can. Here."
Tayuya propped her head up with her arm and glanced at the room's corner, where lay a fat stack of bakudan-yaki boxes. "You bet I can. My next heist is gonna be a cabinet to store all of those."
"Where will all that food go, though? You should consider a toilet firs—Stop! Stop attacking me!"
The next time Tayuya spoke, she did it with closed eyes and a satisfied smile.
"Thank you. For the meal, the house, everything."
The room's walls were still bare earth. The closer he looked, the more the patterns on them seemed to stretch in never-ending swirls, suffocating him, barring her escape. Deidara reached out to do something he wasn't sure—to flick the dirt off her nose, to brush the stray strand of hair off her cheek? His fingers curled back. Maybe he was angry at the villagers for dismissing her, calling her bad luck, at the world for berating his art.
Or maybe it was his half-baked humanity reminding him of the time he sliced the head of another girl off its place.
"No, I should be the one—" he halted, realizing she had already dozed off.
Most of all, she showed him that having an audience was not so bad after all.
"I'm running out of thanks today. Just say you're welcome."
Sakura replied with a slight bow, "You're welcome… and we're sorry. Our help is inconsequential compared to your ten thousand ryo, but still."
"I'm sorry too. I tried to run after people to apologize, but it didn't work after all," Naruto added.
Their words smelled of surprising sobriety. Deidara stopped in his track and faced his hostages, debtors, lifesavers, one-time allies – anything in-between those titles. "Stop being so polite, defiance looks better on you. You two have to go back soon, yeah?"
"This seems like a good place to say goodbye." He guided their gaze towards a lamp post on the street corner. The same lamp post once plastered with Unmei-sama's half-hooded face, now replaced by a poster for his show. "Go ahead. If I keep walking, I'll bump into Sasori eventually."
The idea only came when Naruto and Sakura had turned into mere silhouettes marching towards the collapsing sun. Deidara's wave remained frozen mid-air. He had forgot his plan to treat Naruto to some ramen; the boy had been raging about some ramen stall in Konoha non-stop.
His reunion with Sasori happened later, while he was strolling around town ripping posters off walls. The way back to their temporary home was longer than Deidara remembered.
"I can't believe I forgot to ask. Did you win?"
Sasori shrugged. "I left before the vote results were announced."
"What? Why?" Deidara asked, voice raised in shock. "Wait, what if I still get to keep my votes? How do we know for sure if you got more votes than me?"
"Guess we'll never know."
"I don't get how you're so nonchalant. You just flushed all our effort down the drain!"
"Should I hit you for wasting my time, then?"
"Why is it my fault?" Deidara felt the heat of an argument rising, but a thought occurred, substituting his irritation into something much, much softer. "Wait, don't tell me you left to look for me?"
"I was about to flee the country, Deidara," Sasori replied. "I wasn't sure when you would drop a C3 on my head."
The accuracy. "Can't say I didn't plan to. But really, all the past three days for an ending as lame as this?"
Sasori didn't reply. The wind murmured, their shadows elongated underfoot, light tapered off and time slowed as Deidara opened his mouth to admit something he normally never would: "No, you won. We don't need to hear the results to know."
Sasori's face showed a mix of bewilderment and contentment. "You haven't forgot our deal, have you?"
"I always keep my words. From today onward, Project: Re-humanizing Sasori begins!" Deidara followed Sasori into a turn on the street. "In fact, I'll give you an assignment right now."
"We're starting that quickly? Okay."
"Assuming that I'm sad because I lost, try to cheer me up."
"How is that related to studying emotions?"
"Emotions are not like maths or biology, it's all about feeling," Deidara said, making random hand movements to appear more convincing. "I know it's difficult to feel your own emotions since you've been out of touch for so long, so try to feel others' first. Sympathize with them. React accordingly."
Sasori's eyebrows creased and his eyes lowered to meet the ground. He always had that look when he was struggling, like he was about to implode.
"One person is enough." Sasori's answer was abrupt.
"Too vague."
"One person's approval is a big enough motivation for you to improve," Sasori clarified, voice a little strained. "Need I remind you that you do not have just one? You still have Tobi and Kanyu who like your art, Naruto and Sakura as your supporters, and… me, in some way, kind of, I guess. And that little girl—she stayed and watched your performance until the very end."
That hope again. That hair-thin shimmer of hope.
"Hey, danna?"
"Did I do well?"
"Perfect. Can we hold hands now?"
"What? Don't be ridiculous."
Deidara closed the gap between them so that their shoulders touched. "Physical translates to emotional, you know. Being emotionally open requires you to be physically open as well."
"Is this-"
"Yes, it's another task."
"But we're in the middle of the street. We can't do that."
"How about you get into Hiruko but secretly stick an arm out?"
"That's even more conspicuous."
"Fine, no hand—holding then."
It took Sasori the whole trip to figure out a solution.
"Help me find somewhere that has sand." Sasori pulled Deidara back when he was turning the doorknob.
Deidara did everything he could to steer Sasori away from the construction site that housed Tayuya's new home. They sneaked into an elementary school's campus to scoop sand out of a sandbox like the adults that they were, and Sasori flashed through hand signs, and with it, the sand rose, fine particles that made Deidara crack off a ragged chain of coughs. Seemed like his throat was still bad.
"If I remember correctly, sand particles should be able to bend light when polarised," Sasori said. "With this jutsu, you and I can appear invisible. Then we can—"
"Danna." Deidara let out a heavy sigh.
"Don't you want this?"
"It's already dark."
The sand dropped. Sasori stared up at the sky, dumbfounded.
"We walked for an hour just to find some sand. I didn't know you're so committed to learning." Deidara broke out laughing. "It's fine. I'm kinda not in the mood anymore."
When Deidara looked down, Sasori was silently holding out his hand. "There's no way I'm failing my first day of class."
"If you insist."
They linked hands, and silvery streaks of the starry sky linked above their heads, blurring out everything else.
A/N:
Sorry for making you guys wait so long :( I won't be making promises about when I can update anymore.
Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter! Tayuya is baby.
