A/N: Surprised to see so many story follows off of one chapter, I won't lie it motivated me a bit to get this chapter out sooner than I had planned. Additionally, the previous chapter had minor edits, nothing that changed the story. I just realized that the symbol I was using to break up certain parts of the chapter wasn't able to be read by this site for whatever reason. It is what it is I suppose.

Chapter Two

That dread that Shiemi had felt about coming home had only continued to grow as Norio brought her inside the main building. She couldn't shake how unnerving it was to her that a building she by all means should know, felt so foreign.

"Glad it's still the day…" She heard Norio mutter to himself as he removed his shoes and carefully placed them into an empty space on the rack. Not wanting to come off as more weird than she felt, Shiemi copied his actions before following him into the hall.

"Your father should be home soon, if he's not already." Norio took a left and walked down yet another hallway. Shiemi's eyes fell to the paper doors to her immediate right. Carved into the slim frames she could just barely make out the shape of vines, vines that when she looked at the doors as a whole, she realized lead into the painted flowers on the thin paper. It must have cost a fortune to make them as ornate as they were.

Shiemi glanced up at Norio's back. She didn't know him, but she felt some sort of… adoration? Like she looked up to him greatly and would be upset if she ever found out that she had disappointed him. He came to an abrupt stop next to a set of doors and he turned, almost hesitant to make any noise. She had nearly run straight into him, only managing a quick stop herself by placing her right foot behind herself. He didn't look at her, seemingly too absorbed into his own thoughts to pay her any mind. Something deep inside of her found it insulting, but she couldn't quite place why.

He let out a quiet sigh and knocked carefully.

"It's me, Syouta-sama. I've brought Shiemi home."

Oh. That's why he was so hesitant. The dread from before crept back up her spine as she too finally turned to face the door. Why was she so scared of her father? She felt like that was something she should remember but every time she thought about it, she just wanted to cry. Though if she did she'd be listening to the little voice in her head telling her to cut it out and not make things worse.

Was he a bad person?

The two stood there in awkward silence for what felt like an eternity until Norio placed his hand on her shoulder and turned Shiemi so that she'd walk down the hall.

"He must still be out. Let's get you to bed then, shall we?"

There was a hint of relief to his voice as he spoke and he didn't wait for her to answer before pushing her off in the direction of her own room.

0o0

Norio had seemed more than happy to finally be rid of her. The second that she had gotten into her room and turned to try and talk to him at the door, he was already halfway back down the hall. He had looked tired that morning, so maybe he was going to rest. Given where they were, she hardly needed any guarding. There were probably people stationed all around the place for that reason.

The young blonde slid the door shut and turned back to her room. It was mostly empty, aside from a low table that was placed against one wall and some wooden contraption on the other. She took a few more steps inside and on instinct pushed open the door to her closet. Her futon had been neatly placed back inside the space, awaiting future use. She was relieved, in a way, that she'd be able to get some rest after the hospital trip.

With some struggle, she managed to pull the futon into the center of the room and unfurl it. It was a lot harder than it'd look like it'd be, the thick and heavy matt had looked so deceptively light. She didn't bother with grabbing the blanket that went with it, opting instead to flop down and close her eyes. It felt so weird to her, feeling so tired at this time of day. It wasn't long before her thoughts had started to drift away and sleepiness overtook her.

0o0

The steady hiss of gas from a gas stove followed by the quiet woosh of ignition filled Shiemi's ears. Tired eyes drifted down to the pot on the stove in front of her and she focused in on her hands. This time, upon the realization they were the correct size, Emilia relaxed.

The woman blinked.

"... I need to stop reading so late." She adjusted the handle of the pot so she wouldn't knock it off if she passed by it. Her body felt heavy as she trudged her way to the kitchen table, dropping unceremoniously into the chair. The dream she had the night prior had been so…odd. She glanced around her apartment, trying to retie herself to reality.

The floor beneath her rumbled as other residents washed and dried their clothes. She kicked herself sometimes for choosing the apartment above the laundry room. There was always noise in her apartment because of it. It certainly contributed to her poor sleep schedule, she'd use the noise as an excuse to read just one more chapter and the next thing she'd know, it was morning.

"You need to get out." A voice not belonging to herself had called to her from across the kitchen, causing her to freeze. She lived alone, hadn't she? Emilia turned her head over her shoulder cautiously, following the source of the voice. There, in the doorway, stood a small shadowed figure.

"Get out." It repeated to her, in what she recognized now as a child's voice. A very angry sounding little girl. Emilia pushed herself out of her chair and made for the doorway, feeling uncomfortably warm all of a sudden.

"You can't be here sweetie, I think you've got the wrong-"

She didn't get the chance to finish her sentence or to even make it across the kitchen before the girl cut her off again.

"Out!"

0o0

Shiemi woke with a start, her weak arms pushing her off of the futon and into a kneeling position. Tears pricked at her eyes as she took in her surroundings. There was a lot to unpack and even more she didn't understand. Why did she wake up feeling so distraught? Why was she so damned small again? She let out an involuntary cry as she tried to sort things out in her head.

Who was that girl? What sort of nightmare was that? Sniffling, Shiemi brought her sleeve to her face and wiped at her eyes. The room was dark now, unlike it had been earlier, but she could see the flickering of lit candles through the paper doors. Were other people awake at this hour? Her question had been answered almost immediately as a woman's voice called to her through her door.

"Are you alright, Shiemi-sama?" The door creaked open ever so slightly, like if opening it any further without her permission would be a great offense.

"M-mhm." She hadn't meant for her response to come out so pathetically, but the dream had still left her shaken. It felt.. Unnatural, being here at her home for some unidentifiable reason.

The woman seemed a little hesitant to challenge her on it and ultimately in the end, she chose not to. Instead she opened the door a little wider and slipped inside the room, bee-lining for the closet beside where her futon was usually stored.

"Breakfast is ready, I can't believe Norio allowed you to fall asleep in your day clothes." Her energy had seemed to change, almost like this is how the woman always was and her earlier hesitancy was based entirely on something else. Recognition flickered in Shiemi's mind as she remembered the reason she was in such a tough position to begin with. Her head injury.

"Who set out your futon? You could have caught a cold!"

Shiemi, thankful for the distraction, set her eyes down to her futon. She really hadn't bothered at all with the blanket when she went to bed, it was rather warm after all.

"...I did." She offered timidly. The woman's demeanor softened a little but ultimately she seemed to remain firm with the scolding that was to come.

"You need to make sure that you're taking the blanket out with it, even if you don't want to use it. You might need it at night." She looked like she wanted to say more but stopped herself. "Oh well. Let's just get you ready for the day, shall we?"

0o0

Norio sat inside Aihara Syouta's office, right across from the man himself. This had been the moment he had been dreading since Shiemi had injured herself. More so when he realized what the injury had done to her. It was time for him to give a report on his time guarding her and to explain why and how he had failed her.

The man across from him sat quietly with a ferocity in his eyes that Norio hadn't seen since he was younger, at the tail end of the last war. He fought the urge to fidget in place by steadying his breathing. Time hadn't been kind to the clan head, a fact accentuated by the silver hairs that were peppered into his rapidly fading blond. The man's hair was cropped rather short, opposed to the usual clan tradition of wearing it braided. Norio recalled hearing house-servants mention that it had been falling out rather quickly. Probably due to stress.

"I want to know everything, from the top." Syouta said coldly.

Norio flinched at his tone. There had been another error he had made when they returned home. Shiemi's nanny, Michiko, had been awake and in his tired stupor he had let her know about the young girl's odd behaviors. It was slip ups like these that kept him in the chunin position, he thought bitterly.

"Yesterday, to take a break from training, I brought Shiemi to the Hokage's monument for a history lesson. I figured it was as good a time as any, as her schedule was fairly full otherwise."

Norio's hands found their way to his knees so that he wouldn't find them easy to fiddle with when they were actively holding something.

"We had made it up to the monument just fine, using the intended path. She was excited to learn about the Hokage, specifically, Lord Fourth. We spent approximately thirty minutes going over the Hokage and then started our descent. It was fairly dark as the sun was setting but I paid it no mind, it was bright enough for us to see where we were going…"

He could feel his uncle's gaze piercing into him. It was worse when Syouta was silent during reports. He usually had questions that he would ask during, to get clarification for things to come. This time he was eerily silent.

"Shiemi-sama had tripped on something unseen on the stairs. She had fallen and struck her head on one of the stairs, rendering herself unconscious. I brought her to the hospital as quickly as I could where she was promptly treated and released just this morning."

He waited for what was to come as his uncle mulled over the events he had just given him. The older man crossed his arms and leaned back against the back of his seat, Allowing himself to get comfortable for the rest of the meeting.

"What do you mean by 'something unseen' as you made your way down?" Syouta finally asked, the tension in the room only growing stronger with the question and the follow up that Norio anticipated was to come.

"There wasn't anything visible that she could have tripped on. I can only assume that she-"

He was cut off by the older man raising his left hand. "Are you insinuating that my daughter is so clumsy as to trip on her own feet?"

"O-of course not."

"Then she fell because of your incompetence?"

That had been the question he was dreading. His ability to do his job was coming into question, that was never a good sign. Especially when your job consisted of watching over a five-year-old. His work, compared to some of the others in the clan, was incredibly easy. Still, if he lied here, he'd have it worse.

"...Yes, uncle." Norio resigned himself to the impending punishment. "I was careless yesterday and it…"

"It almost cost her life." Syouta helpfully finished for him. "Do you know how infuriating it is to hear about a blunder of this scale, involving my own daughter, not from whom I've been given her charge of but instead from hearing the maids gossip?"

Michiko had let the rest of the household staff know. That woman had never liked him and he had unwittingly given her the chance to mess with him further.

"It won't happen again." Norio bowed his head as low as he could, his forehead almost touching the table in front of him.

Syouta sat there, his pale green eyes trained on the young man before him. "There was something else I heard mentioned, from one of the day staff."

Norio opened his mouth to speak but shut it immediately, not wanting to dig himself any further. Instead, he let his uncle continue.

"They mentioned that she's not acting right. What can you tell me about that?"

0o0

Michiko sat stiffly across the table from the young heiress, who had been struggling for the last five or so minutes to use her chopsticks. She had offered help to her after the first couple of tries but after being declined, there was nothing the green-haired woman could do but watch. Shiemi had been proficient in using her tableware for well over a year now, for her to suddenly struggle like this was alarming. Michiko, while no doctor, knew well enough that head injuries could have other effects on people when they weren't fatal, but this was just… wrong.

The girl in front of her most definitely wasn't Shiemi. She was far too reserved to be the same girl. There were no questions, no stories about the previous day, no chatter. It was unnerving to be sitting in such a silent dining room. The girl in front of her seemed to pay no mind to her discomfort, instead smiling when she managed to finally get food in her mouth after so much struggle. She still wasn't using them quite right.

Finally, the young girl broke the silence and looked up at Michiko. She fought the urge to shudder, even the way she looked at the woman was wrong. It was like she was seeing her as a stranger rather than the woman who had been caring for her since her mother's passing.

"Why is it so dark outside? Are we up early?" Michiko couldn't hide the frown that came with the question and Shiemi seemed to take note of it, following it up with a subtle shake of her head. "Never mind."

"Well, I've woken you at eight in the evening, as I always do. Would you…like to get up earlier?"

This information seemed to startle the young girl and she mulled over the offer carefully. "I think I'd like to be up during the day."

Michiko blinked and set down her own chopsticks. "Then, when would you get your education?"

Another confused look from Shiemi and the girl swallowed the bite she had been working on. "During the day?"

"With whom?"

"My teacher?" Shiemi sounded unsure of herself now, like she wasn't confident with the answer.

"Your teacher stays up with you at night, remember? So that you may attend the Aihara meetings with your father in the evening?"

"...Oh, right. Silly me." Shiemi turned her attention back to her food, like she hadn't just given Michiko more of a reason to be freaked out. The other woman looked down at her plate, trying to calculate what she needed to do next. Syouta-sama was not going to like to hear about this in the slightest, but with the talk of betrothals coming up in the village, something like this could set the clan back. If she didn't get over whatever had happened to her, she'd be seen as damaged goods and they'd lose a valuable bargaining chip.

Michiko cringed internally at her own thoughts. She hated thinking of the girl in this way but she had to consider what her future in the clan would be like. If she was considered too damaged, she'd be cast aside by her father. They couldn't risk someone with potentially life-long memory issues to run the clan as a whole.

There was also the schooling comment to worry about, for as long as she could remember the Aihara heirs and heiresses were meant to be taught from within the clan until they made it to genin status. It was unheard of for them to go into schooling with the general public. Though if things kept up the way they were…

"I'll speak with your father about changing your schooling, should you really wish to be awake during the day."

The clan as an entity worked strictly through the night, so she'd be ostracizing herself from her clansmen should she really choose to go through with this. Or worse, if her father thought these were the appropriate measures to keep her away from the clan's business. That was something that would break Shiemi's heart…or, it usually would. Michiko wasn't certain that the girl sitting before her would care about that in the slightest.

"I appreciate it, mama."

The muscles in Michiko's body froze as she flicked her eyes up to Shiemi who was eating away at her food without much care for what she had said to the woman. She really must have hurt herself badly to forget something like her mother's death. That or maybe this was a delayed coping mechanism? She couldn't know for sure.

"...Shiemi, dear, I think you're confusing me for someone important. I'm Michiko, remember?"

There was silence from the young blonde as she finished the rest of her breakfast.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She seemed a little bothered by the notion but shook it off relatively quickly. "Can I be excused now?"

The woman hesitated but eventually gave the girl a small nod of her head. "Just don't go far and don't leave the house. Your escort for the night should be here shortly."

The girl didn't say anything else after that, she just slipped through the doors they came through and left a very disturbed Michiko alone with her thoughts. Why was the girl speaking so… odd? It was like Michiko was talking to a teenager or a young woman, instead of the girl she was used to. Her mannerisms and choice of words were odd, even for a child of the Aihara. With shaking hands, the woman started to clear the table. Just what exactly was wrong with this girl?