Candy!
Disclaimer: Naruto and all its characters are Masashi Kishimoto's legal property. I'm not making any money off this story; however, all the Original Characters, Original Plot-lines, and Original Themes are my own.
AN: The story has been re-posted due to reviews that contained slurs. As I can't delete the reviews (or delete the stories with good reception), I thought it prudent to repost it.
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On the day when he got into the Genin Academy, he was deemed a trouble-maker, an outcast, a misfit. They talked—they always did; yet overtime, in their eyes, something changed, gained fury that flowed trickle by trickle at him. A vengeance that was nigh silent, a noise in their gaze that haunted his reveries. Why? is what he thought; let me play, is what he wanted to speak of.
Dark and distant, nights passed him by. Surely, all boys wished to be alone, by themselves, their own confidants? Mother . . . ? What are you like . . . ? he thought of her often; in the mind, she was vibration, distortion, contortion of many aspects, but none possessed the shape to hold his hand, heart, any piece of him.
Still seven and chaste, none came easy. The room where he slept, untidy, its window let leaf in; but it did not let him out, not in a way he would have liked. Why won't you let me in? he would ask himself–it, whisper to the night with a boy-child's idea of interrogation; leaf was silent, its eyes shut tight; and about its visage, omens blinked.
Many a night, he would lay prone in the bed, face pressed into the pillow, look out to the sky . . . at the moon enjailed by night. He could not see its teeth that created an enclosure, kept him within—all else without. There was joy past the window, colours that burst from morn's breast; yet to him, world was rendered mute. The pillow's part, drenched, briny like the lake . . . and he would touch the heart, feel it hurt, but no taint came away with the palm, not the way Shinobi told him.
Pieces of spirit they maimed; but love was in candy, its syrup saccharine, glaze miracle. Thick, gooey, fragrant, his dream's structures before the theft. Iruka-Sensei, he knew that this was the spirit's balm, dirt to choke up the hole he felt in the bosom. The one that fell deeper than terror, a pit unto which he cast his joyless trinkets, his days.
Yes, days tumbled on, and he could not follow them, their dull nature that kept him barred, away from their nexus; candy, special, vibrant in a way that bewitched! To whom would he say, to where the joy lay, heartless—why was Leaf never his? Maybe not now, for he was small; but someday!
Would you be my friend? he asked, too often, to his shame; they stared, and he would turn from them, hide, wipe away grief that shamed him harder. Boys are strong—boys don't cry! he would tell himself, grimace, remind his heart of the words a mother had said to her son. Would you tell me this, too? he would ask her that was gone by night, too sorrowful to look away from the moon that judged his smallness. No, she wouldn't! She . . . wouldn't . . .
So he went, a piece of candy in hand, wrapped in the cloth he had washed clean this morning. It smelt of soap and flower—artificial, he knew. He roamed about the grass, tall as his knees, studded with summer's flowers. Up above, evening sluiced over the horizon, beckoning him to return to the room that terrorised. No—no, not today!
Chomp-chomp-chomp, unease at the heart, he was stubborn; you could not keep a playful boy down. The footfalls groaned on the jetty; winds and rain had got to it more. At the edge, he placed the candy—careful; saw red mellow down as pinks about the waters; and then he ran away and hid behind the tree that breeze caressed.
Hours vanished and evening turned deeper, richer; and that was when the boy came and sat down at the edge, legs dangling above water, eyes on the combers that flowed below him, distorting his shadow and reflection. What did the boy hope to receive from the deeps? His mother? he often thought. Silly, but to his joy, the boy took notice of the candy, unwrapped it from the cloth.
Tentatively, he smelt the sugar that affected the senses and took a bite—too sweet! He made a face. Go on, he thought, it's candy—you won't cry anymore! The boy looked at the gift . . . a reminder of one that had wounded the nights, stalked the village's husk faster than beasts; he wanted to be brave, different, so he ate the candy, almost smiling, imagining it to be poison that he would deliver unto his tormentor. End him. End the night that did not cease. Ah, candy!
And he looked on, happy, shaded by May's evening, for candy was where the love was!
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The End