You ask my thoughts through the long night?
I spent it listening to the heavy rain
beating against the windows.
-Izumi Shikibu
That arrogant cockroach-breeding fruit fly!
She fiercely bludgeoned a bamboo limb with a blunt rock, pretending it was Shino Aburame's bug-stuffed head instead.
In fact, she'd spent all afternoon beating "Shino Aburame" to a pulp, breaking bamboo limbs off from the forest to build herself something of a competent shelter on the sliding mud around her.
But building a shelter was much harder to do without her ninja tools, and splitting bamboo shoots with just rocks took literally hours.
How could one bug-kisser be so infuriating!
Would she even be in this position if she had brought herself to kill Shino when she had the chance?
Wet, shivering, and covered in sticky mud, her numb fingers slipped off the bamboo she was beating, leaving her other hand exposed when her rock smashed down again.
"Gnats!"
Waving her injured hand that dripped blood from under her crushed fingernails, she frustratingly threw the useless rock back into the forest.
Sighing deeply, her melancholic honey eyes sullenly studied the broken bamboo pieces in front of her.
All she ever really wanted in the end was to be home.
And she missed her village now more than ever.
She wanted to feel warm, and safe, and clean, and in control again, with a nice steamy cup of honey flower tea back in her own cozy apartment in Iwagakure, and to forget that all of that hadn't just fallen apart for her in a matter of days without her truly understanding why.
But it was useless.
The bamboo was just too strong to break without any tools.
She wouldn't be able to finish her shelter by dark at this rate.
'But if I don't, I'll freeze to death when the storm comes,' her worried thoughts drew her eyes back into the stirring mist around her.
"You should know, if you don't find shelter soon, you'll freeze out here," Aburame's voice echoed her thoughts, coming suddenly from behind her. "The reason is because the insects around here are getting quieter, which means it will rain soon."
She rolled her eyes.
Did he really think she didn't know that, and that she wasn't already ahead of the egotistical know-it-all?
"Even a common housefly can predict the weather," she answered him dryly. "The bees in this forest flew back to their hives hours ago, which obviously means a rainstorm."
Which also meant that, despite what Aburame obviously believed about himself, his insects were nothing special.
And holding her stubborn head proud and high, she went on pretending Shino Aburame was invisible, choosing another rock and continued working at her shelter.
Beating his imaginary face and sunglasses into the bamboo limb again, as she ignored him and his hellacious obsession with his little bug pets.
But if pretending he didn't exist anymore was her silent way of saying 'just shut up and go away already', Aburame didn't seem to take the hint.
"As for me," he informed her, as if she absolutely wanted to know anymore. With that subtle lift in his tone that might've sounded optimistic and cheerful, had it not been for that stink bug of a crowing taunt for her lurking somewhere underneath it. "My insects will encase me in a warm protective cocoon for the night. It will keep me dry and cozy until the rain stops."
The bee girl stiffened.
Her eyelid twitched.
Squeezing the rock ever tighter in her bleeding, trembling hands.
Was he doing this on purpose, just to spite her?
Or did he always have this aggravatingly precise timing for popping up when he wasn't asked for or even wanted?
Was it just coincidence that he did so when her hatred simmered for him most, pushing the limits of her endurance to stay sane around him, like some sick psychological warfare between them?
Was she just overthinking it, or did it feel as if he was mocking her by rubbing salt on the slug of her pride, to prove that his bugs were in fact more superior in such a case as this?
But even still more egregious...was it only in her head that...even when it rained...luck smiled down on Shino...as it seemed the universe still found some way to lay itself down at an Aburame's feet?
"Now that your bees have returned to their hives," Shino went on. "It seems it will be harder for you to stay warm tonight."
"That's because I'm not a sissy little larva creep who sleeps in cocoons!"
And grabbing the closest bamboo limb in reach, she swung everything she had at the aggravating pest.
But Shino's quick reflexes blocked the bamboo limb with his arm, leaving her in stalemate once again with her beetle rival.
And there they stood.
Toe-to-toe. Arm against arm. Their faces simmering within inches of each other.
The bee mistress glaring back into his obscured eyes, and Shino's dark brow bent down tensely at her over his sunglasses.
"It seems you're still determined to fight me," he told her quietly. "Does this mean you're ready to tell me your real name?"
Damn him!
Damn him and his presuming arrogance that only he would be the one to decide the terms of their fight.
He'd cooked her last grasshopper, which meant now he had no choice but to defend himself or face his doom.
Breaking their stalemate, she swung the bamboo limb around to attack him again, with a fluidity that actually wasn't half bad, and might've given a few nods to Tenten's style in battle. Had the bee mistress enough patience to polish her technique with more concentration and training, that is, rather than just pure fury.
Shino's arm shot out to block her next blow, reaching to disarm her from her bamboo weapon, but she used his own momentum to swing herself over his shoulder and land behind him.
Taking her chance, she jammed the sharp end of her bamboo limb into Shino's back.
Frustrated, but not surprised, when Shino's body dissolved into thousands of tiny kikaichū again.
"Stop running from me, you coward!" she ordered him, shaking her bamboo stick menacingly at the fog.
Her gaze quickly darting around to pinpoint his true form in the disorienting whirlwind of mist and buzzing black insects around her.
Until out of his stormy cloud of dizzying beetles, Shino reappeared in front of her again.
"I see you're still not ready to give me an answer," he said calmly. "Therefore, I withdraw from this fight until you are."
"If you take one more step out of this match, I'll-"
But before she could make him tremble upon the iron assertion of her unbroken will, the Aburame was gone.
Leaving her alone and heaving again in the unsettling solitude of the darkening forest.
"For the love of blowfly maggots!" she cursed into the fog.
But the bee mistress had bigger problems than Aburame to worry about soon enough.
Just as Shino's insects and her bees predicted, the mist around them turned into rain.
And by that time, she had only managed to hammer 4 bamboo stems into the ground, before the storm took her by force.
Desperate to stay dry, she tacked sticky honey on the undersides of large bamboo palms to secure the 4 corners of her hut, holding it in place with her own hands as she crouched down to protect herself from the onslaught.
It did nothing to keep her clothes from getting soaked, but at least it protected her head from the violent tsunami mercilessly coming down on her.
Until not even her bamboo palm could stand the assault, ripping out of her hands and tumbling away into the wind.
She blindly felt around her to find something else to take shelter under, but it was too dark and chaotic to see anything.
And without the bamboo palm to keep her bamboo stems in place, the 4 corners of her hut started blowing away with the mud too.
The bee ninja frantically scrambled to keep her sad little hut together, but all she was left with in the end was one thick bamboo limb with a few sparse leaves attached.
Can't this one thing go right just this once?
She held onto the bamboo stem for dear life, using the leaves as a soggy umbrella wrapping around her whole body.
It wasn't enough.
Her clothes and hair were soaked with mud, and she couldn't stop shivering.
But she was exhausted, and didn't have the energy to keep fighting.
Yet even in her dreams, she could not escape the fear of being left alone in this forest in the dark.
"Listen to me! Stay hidden and do not leave this spot," Nao had instructed her. "My bees are using a jamming barrier technique around you. It will make it harder for their insects to detect your chakra."
"But why can't I go with you?"
"Kenzou is taking on the Aburame Clan alone," Nao told her. "He won't be able to hold them off long. When that happens, all that will stand between you and the beetle users is me."
"You mean us," she corrected him firmly. "I may not be as strong as you, but fighting together is better than you fighting this battle alone. You have to take me with you."
"You're a daughter of the Head family. I can't allow it."
"That doesn't matter to me!" she objected. "Fighting for our clan is my duty as a ninja as much as it's yours."
"Our clan is dying of this genocide, and you want to throw your life away like this? Your duty as a member of the Head Family is to negotiate peace," Nao countered her. "Our clan will only live happily once that happens. I beg you, save us from this endless nightmare by finding a truce with the Aburame Clan. The one your father refuses to let happen. Survive and put a stop to this."
"How can you say that? Father isn't the reason it won't stop," she defended the Kamizuru head. "It's the Aburame who refuse to back down."
"Your ignorance is a dishonor to your brother's death. Kaiyobachi was my best friend. I loved your brother more than I can ever explain in words. I was the only one who he told the truth about his mission, and in doing so, he made me promise to always protect you. Especially from your father," Nao confessed. "I realize now, my feelings for Kaiyo found their place with you after his disappearance. That is why I could never truly be your Sensei. You are more to me than just a teammate. And though I love you dearly as a sister, that love has always held you back as a shinobi. My greatest fear was to lose you the same way I lost him. But now I understand, it's time I let you fly on your own, my little honeybee. Because it is up to you to challenge your father and lead our clan back to honor. As it is my honor to die protecting you, the only family I have left to love in this world."
"Nao, please! I can't let you fight them alone. Please don't order me to stay behind again."
"Wait until morning, until the Aburame have stopped looking. Then keep moving on your own to the Land of Storms. Whatever happens, don't come back looking for us," Nao instructed her. "Those are my orders."
"Nao, wait!"
But Sensei never came back.
And all night, she obeyed his order and stayed hidden, even as she listened to them ruthlessly kill him.
Watching the bee jamming barrier he'd left to protect her, slowly flutter away into the silent void of his death.
But even then, knowing that she was no longer hidden by Nao's bee jamming technique, she couldn't move and make a run for it.
Hugging her knees against her chest and trembling with fear and indecision, she still could not make herself leave her teammates behind and abandon their mission.
If they died protecting her, how could she ever live on after this moment knowing she had done absolutely nothing to avenge what was taken from her? Knowing that every death of her comrades brought her clan closer to extinction, and herself closer to being alone.
And with Nao no longer there to defend her, she heard the buzzing of beetles' wings swarming in around her as they picked up on her tracks in the darkness of the Leaf forest.
The Aburame Clan had found her.
Vulnerable and outnumbered by the enemy hunting for her, she hugged her knees tighter and closed her tearful eyes, waiting for the beetle clan to slaughter her too.
Scarcely hearing his footsteps approach from the forest, his footfall coming so gently toward her.
So quiet was he, a truly skilled tracking ninja of the Leaf, that he might've easily ambushed her, bringing her life to an end in that very moment without her putting up much resistance against him.
But as Shibi Aburame led to her secret brush in the forest, where his insects had alerted him to the enemy hiding, the child he found there was not much older than his son, Shino.
Her fragile body trembling as she silently sobbed into her knees held against her chest. Too devastated by the heartbreak over her teammates and terrified of the dark forest to pose any real threat against him.
Shibi could've made it quick.
Better he eliminate her as quickly and gently as possible before she was found by his more stoic clansmen who were fast approaching.
And realizing that the Aburame standing in front of her was taking too long to finish her off, the child slowly rose her eyes from her knees up into his dark shades.
Her golden honey eyes glimmering warmly like a falling evening star lighting the dark forest around them.
Igniting a distant, unforgotten memory in Shibi of the one he'd lost long ago, whose eyes, so much like hers, once pierced his heart the same way.
'One last favor before I go?' the one he'd lost had once whispered to him, during that last moonrise they had saw each other. 'Let's visit that cricket nest you showed me. The one you love studying so much. One last time before we say goodbye? There's no forest blocking the moon out there...And then maybe...just maybe...you can try to convince me again why you think the big dipper is actually a firefly.'
And as the young Kamizuru girl looked up into the face of the shinobi who would soon kill her, watching the tension in his brow harden into what appeared to be subtle anguish rather than cold-blooded and unquestioning duty, she couldn't begin to imagine what was going through the Aburame's mind in that moment.
Conflicted and undecided, as she was, in knowing what to make of each other then.
And hearing his Aburame clansmen coming up behind him, Shibi was once again forced to choose between obediently following orders without exception, or defying command in favor of a small, precious memory that meant everything to him and nothing to the village or clan he fought to protect.
In favor of how much this girl reminded him of his only son.
In favor of his fleeting hope that even as a child ninja of his enemy clan, she would be different, like the one he once knew from his untold memories, who also had honey eyes that moved him like hers.
In favor of that off-chance that she would not grow up to make him one day regret his split decision to save her in the end.
"Go," Shibi ordered the Kamizuru child. "If you wish to live, never return to this village again."
And using his own kikaichū to rebuild the protective insect jamming barrier around her, Shibi turned his back on her, leaving the girl to find her own way out of the forest.
Returning to his clansmen to redirect them down a path that wasn't hers.
"It was only a jamming technique," Shibi had said to his comrades. "If the enemy came through here, there is no one here now."
The bee kunoichi's eyes fluttered open from her sleep, panting to catch her breath against her pounding heart.
Realizing that the 1000 pricks against her skin weren't actually killer kikaichū beetles.
Only goosebumps.
And the thousands of beetles' wings she'd thought were closing in on her was only the sound of the rain falling in a drumming song around her.
But she couldn't feel the storm ravaging her vulnerable and shivering body anymore.
Instead of an open punishing and tempestuous sky above her, her eyes turned up to the roof of her bamboo hut, with leaves and shoots now thatched together by some kind of insect husk casing. Protecting her from the worst of the storm raging on around her.
"Aburame?" she whispered in dizzying confusion. "Did he use his insect cocoon...to make this roof for me?"
But she was too exhausted to keep her heavy lashes open long enough to find out.
Falling back into a feverish coma, and dreaming of nothing this time, but of insects, and warmth, and that cozy feeling of safety upon being "caught".
Knowing that she wasn't alone anymore, and that for once in a very long while, someone else was looking out for her now.
Shino lingered outside her hut, keeping watch over her and waiting for his captive to soundly drift back into sleep, after he'd heard her whimpering and fidgeting in her restless dreams.
Confident now that his cocoon-thatched roof would hold strong for her through the storm, finally bringing her some much needed solace the rest of the night.
But just in case her nightmares came back, Shino guarded outside her hut until morning as the rain steadily fell around him in mists.
Analyzing and reanalyzing every one of his theories as to what endless war tormented the bee kunoichi so relentlessly, that she could not find peace with it, even within the most intimate depths of herself.
