No different, really,
a summer's moth visible burning
and this body transformed by love.
-Izumi Shikibu
The Kamizuru and the Aburame walked in silence through the bamboo forest, as silence proved to be the one language by which they spoke most naturally with each other. Unburdened by the violence of the past and long-held misunderstandings of their family names. A silence made only more precious by this rare chance of just being present with each other, in sharing the quiet world they had made together in this bamboo grove.
And so, the Kamizuru didn't mind the silence with Shino at all.
Words had done enough damage between their clans already.
And she liked that Aburame knew how to use so few of them to say so much to her.
Besides learning how to kill one of them in battle, she'd never given more thought to the Aburame, or the gentler stories untold of the insect warriors off the battlefield that deepened the alluring mystery of Shino beside her.
'Could it be that we've always had this much to learn from each other?' she lost herself in thought about her silent beetle companion, the softness of her gaze catching him in quiet ambush over and over again as they walked deeper into the forest.
'How different I wish things had been between the Aburame and Kamizuru...Maybe then...It wouldn't be so hard to stop myself from wanting something I can't have.'
And as the Kamizuru dared to ask herself what exactly it was she really meant by that, Shino stopped walking.
"This is it," he said, a hint of excitement brightening his habitually sober voice.
And dragging her honey gaze away from Shino's, the Kamizuru realized all at once that he'd brought her back to the river. Set to burning embers by tiny lights dancing like golden galaxies in the mist over the quietly incandescent mirroring waters.
"Fireflies?"
Hundreds of them!
Like the stars she'd been missing that night, their trailing lanterns made her eyes into a gold-fire twilight as she followed their sleepy flight.
Her own excitement entwining with the twin-flame of Shino's fascination, the moment he'd first discovered the firefly mating grounds in the bamboo forest.
"It's taken me years to find so many of them," Shino told her. "As a fellow bug user...I hope you can understand."
'I do understand, Shino," she whispered back to him. 'I know exactly what this means to you. It truly is a rare find."
And passing him a knowing smile, she unwittingly squeezed the Aburame's arm tighter, drawing him in closer to her by their linked elbows.
Unaware of the effect her sudden closeness had done to Shino, with him being so perfectly hidden from her behind the protection of his gray hoodie.
And studying the glow of fireflies on her face, the Aburame unwittingly found himself thinking, 'If there's any beauty in this jutsu, it's her.'
Yet as the Aburame dared to ask himself what exactly it was he really meant by that, an unexplained sadness lingering in his secret heart came between him and his bee companion like a fog.
Why, you ask?
Because the key to breaking the Beekeeper's jutsu was still just out of reach of Shino's understanding.
And what if...like the fog...this moment between them was just apart of the jutsu's illusion, created from the most vulnerable and untold parts of himself...like his memory of Firefly?
Just as the jutsu preyed on the doubts of its victims, could it be that it also preyed on their deepest desires as well?
Forcing Shino to choose to submit to its power, remaining forever in this bamboo grove...or leave behind the companionship he always yearned for most?
A true friendship, like theirs, that the outside world and its brutally cut-throat shinobi politics would never let him have.
If Shino were to find the answer to breaking himself free from the Beekeeper's jutsu, what would happen to him and Firefly in the end?
Would she fade away like the fog summoned by this dreamed-up reality?
Would he lose her, the same way he'd lost her years before in the Leaf?
'How am I to leave this bamboo grove now and go back to my life out there, knowing I've found her again here, and that this grove is the only way we can be together like this?...Because...for once in my life...I'm not alone...And I like how it feels when she's by my side...I like...her.'
But knowing he was just an Aburame, who'd always been trained as a ninja to hide his true emotions, and was still very unsure on how to use words to describe these budding feelings for her, Shino spoke of them in the only way he understood how.
"Did you know fireflies attract their mates by the way their lights dim and flicker?" Shino told her softly. "The male flies to her with his light-song. If the female is drawn to it, she'll answer him with her own light-song...Why, you ask?...The reason is because they are soulmates, and his light-song is only for her."
The Kamizuru hadn't thought of it that way.
How beautiful this never-ending dark fog actually was to the firefly insect, and its light show of reconciling soulmates, with the eternal night of the bamboo grove leading them to finally find each other at last.
'If it took you so long to find just one firefly," the Kamizuru asked the Aburame. "Wouldn't you want to catch one here and study it for your collection?"
But Shino didn't seem interested in collecting any fireflies for his bug jars.
He didn't want to move to catch the insects yet, if it meant having to let her go from his arm, and abandon that warm and cozy feeling of her being snuggled up so close to his side.
'The reason catching one now doesn't matter is because...' Shino never found the courage to tell the Kamizuru out loud in the end. 'It's because you will always be my Firefly...even if I can never find the words to tell you that you are.'
And those precious few words were forever lost to his stoic silence, remaining as the enduring true love for her the Kamizuru never got to hear the Aburame confess.
Instead, Shino said to her, "Thank you for coming here with me...Even if we forget everything after breaking this jutsu, I hope I never forget this. So that one day, when I know your true name, I will find you again, and whisper it all back to you in a light-song of fireflies."
'Is that what really happens in the end...if we ever break this jutsu?' the bee user wondered to herself. 'We forget everything about this night?'
Or would there be more nights like this one waiting for them in the outside world?
Would Aburame still share his world with her like this in the alternate reality they both belonged to, if he knew everything about who she really was?
Could they ever really go back to just being like this with each other again?
It was only a matter of time before Shino found out her true name outside this bamboo grove.
And by then, they would likely be in battle with each other fighting to the death.
She didn't want Shino to discover her real name that way.
If the Aburame would learn her name eventually, she would rather it be in a beautiful place like this, as they stood there watching fireflies together.
She was so sure she'd rather have Shino know the truth about her now, than on the day they ended up killing each other in a fight.
And so, as gently as he had taken her arm before, the Kamizuru pulled hers away from Shino's at last, and faced him again.
And when Shino met her gaze, he tried to guess at the meaning behind the look of melancholy he found in her golden eyes.
"Are you feeling tired now? I didn't realize I had kept you here so long," he told her in endeaering concern, reverently brushing the few stray snowy locks on her cheek behind her ear. "If you're ready to sleep, I'd be happy to walk you back to your hut."
Why...why did he have to make it so hard for her?
She took a deep breath, finding her courage to go through with her determined plan in making him know her.
"Shino...There's something you should know about me," she whispered to him. "I think I do have an answer for you now...for that question you asked me before about my name...I can never know how it will change things for us out there in the shinobi world, once you know it...But, no matter what happens to us after we break this jutsu, I want you to know the truth about who I am...That my real name is N-"
Her voice broke off suddenly, just after whispering the first syllable that breathed into the initial letter of her name.
Her eyes squinting at something just beyond Shino's shoulder, catching the dark ominous figure that emerged from the foggy line of the bamboo forest in a suit belonging to a-
"Beekeeper?"
She swore she had to be seeing things. Another disorienting illusion of the fog.
Endless days stuck in this bamboo grove, and she hadn't seen any other person there besides Shino.
Had Aburame been right all along?
Had the beekeeper been hidden in this forest the whole time, waiting for his chance to ambush them when their guard was let down?
The same Beekeeper who attacked her before with the 1000 Bee Stings Technique? This beekeeper, who had summoned the Queen Bee to fight her and Shino in the grove?
It didn't make sense to her why any fellow Beekeeper would.
Why would a Kamizuru attack another Kamizuru?
Unless...
"You," she vaguely remembered the Beekeeper declaring to Shino, in the fever dream of her poisoned delirium. "You're from the Aburame clan of the Hidden Leaf. I warned you that showing your face to me again would mean only one of us walks away this time."
Her heart sank for her Aburame friend then.
Was it Shino that the elder bee shinobi wanted dead all along?
Was it his hatred for the Aburame Clan that baited the Beekeeper out of the protection of his bamboo forest, all for the glory of finishing Shino off himself?
"Honeycomb Prism Jutsu!" the Beekeeper declared, his quick fingers shifting into his hand seals as he advanced toward Shino and the stunned bee kunoichi.
No, this was all a fatal misunderstanding.
And the Kamizuru knew she had to intervene, and make the Beekeeper see that Shino was never a threat to them.
But the art of peaceful persuasion seemed to be the last thing on the Beekeeper's mind.
Knowing that she had no time for anything else against the Beekeeper's agility, the Kamizuru grabbed Shino's arm, shoving him out of the path of the Beekeeper's jutsu to protect him from the attack.
"Wait, he's-" Shino tried to stop her.
But the Aburame was too late to pull her back, when the Kamizuru advanced on the Beekeeper. A rageful storm of bees humming formidably as they charged with her to oppose him.
"Call back your bees or lose them in this fight. I won't let you have him," she warned her opponent, building up her chakra to cast a jutsu that would immoblize her clansman. "Golden Honey Jut-"
"Bee buzzing illusion!" the Beekeeper countered her attack quickly.
Her heart throbbed twice in her inner ear, making her eardrum feel like it would burst under the earsplitting decibel of buzzing yellow jackets. Disorienting her as she dizzyily held her ear, and tried to keep focused on her opponent.
But now, there were two of him.
Three...four...six?
She couldn't tell which hallucination of him was the real Beekeeper anymore.
And it happened so fast. Before she could pull herself out of the crossfire, the Beekeeper's yellow jackets closed in to form a solid bee wall that claimed her as his hostage.
Shino countered immediately, sending his kikaichū burrowing underground to break the solidity of the Beekeeper's wall and crumble its foundation.
But only a second too late.
The wall of yellow jackets hardened its imprisoning seal around Firefly, locking out Shino's beetles and tearing her from his reach.
And by the time Shino's insects rained like hellfire from underground, the beekeeper and the impenetrable wall were gone.
With Firefly vanishing with it into the empty silence of the unsettled mist surrounding the Leaf insect shinobi left behind.