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Chapter 18

I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing

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Part II — Way Down We Go

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whispers of greed in his relentless speed,

yet driven by passion, his goals take the lead

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At first, there's nothing.

No thought. No memory. No pain. Just an infinite vastness of silence, as if he exists in a place where even time and space have been swallowed whole. As if he were in a black hole of sorts. Everything is grey. It's neither cold nor warm. Neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It just is.

Then, something shifts.

A ripple in the nothingness. A whisper of sensation.

A breath.

It drags in thick and heavy, scraping against his throat like sandpaper, stirring a deep ache deep in his chest. His lungs pull in air, slow and unfamiliar, like they've forgotten how to expand. Too shallow. Too stiff. Each breath is a battle against his own body.

Sound comes next. It filters in, muffled. Distant. Faint singing. Like a lullaby carried on the wind. Murmurs. Sounds wrapped in cotton. The rustle of fabric shifting. A chair cracking under someone's weight. A quiet beeping, steady and as unchanging as the seasons. Like a metronome. A heartbeat. His heartbeat?

Then, weight.

A pressure against his body. Too much, too wrong, too heavy. He's sinking. His limbs are caged in invisible binds. His fingers twitch— at least, he thinks they do. His arms and legs feel like they belong to someone else, limbs long forgotten, heavier than they should be.

He tries to move. His body resists, stiff, like he's wearing a corpse's skin. His muscles ache. It's a deep and dull sort of ache, like his muscles've been asleep for too long. The steady beeping of the monitor skips a beat, betraying the fragile thud in his chest. Too slow. Too unsteady. His body doesn't remember how to be awake.

Pain.

It comes slowly. It comes in waves, rising from nowhere, creeping into his bones. Like old wounds long healed but never truly forgotten. A throbbing pulse at the base of his skull. The sharp string of cracked lips. The raw burn of a throat too long without water.

Smell returns next. With the following breath. Antiseptic. Something metallic, like rusted steel and dried blood. Clean linen. Something floral but artificial, lingering too faintly to be real. His stomach twists in vague recognition, but his mind refuses to offer more.

Light presses against his eyelids, a bright white against the dull grey. It flickers, shifts, grows stronger. Too bright. Too harsh. He wants to turn away, but his body refuses to obey. The effort is monumental. Too much. Like fighting against the current, like trying to swim through wet cement, like a war against gravity itself.

Hands. Warm. On his wrists.

Then—

A voice.

"…Akuto?"

Soft. Careful. Almost shy in its quietness. It reaches through the haze, the nothingness, the cotton, and cuts through it like a knife through silk. His breath stutters. His ribs ache. His lips part but no sound comes. It's too much, too foreign— his voice a ghost of itself, lost in the dead air.

A spark of recognition flares, weakly, unsteadily, trying to break free. He knows his name. Knows where he is. But the last thing he remembers? Blank. Gone. The past feels too far away. Like another life.

His eyelids are too heavy, like lead weights have been stitched to them, but he forces them open. Just a sliver. Just enough to see. Blurry at first. Shadows and shapes, figures bending and shifting, refusing to take form. He blinks— slow, sluggish, exhausting.

Then, clarity.

Nanami.

Her face is the first real thing he sees. Wide purple eyes, shimmering with something he can't quite place, something unsaid, something fragile. Her lips part, his name forming again, softer this time. More real.

And then, everything crashes down at once.

The nothingness vanishes. Replaced by reality. Memory slams into him like a collapsing dam—

The battle. The pain. The last thing he remembers—

And yet, somehow, he is here.

Alive.

Awake.

And she is looking at him like he is both a miracle and a ghost.

"You're awake."

He forces his mouth to move. Hopes it looks more like a smile and less a grimace. Then, he pries his eyes fully open and takes a good, real look at her. She's sitting beside him, to his right, curled in a stiff plastic chair that doesn't deserve to hold her weight. One leg tucked under the other. Shoulders hunched. Still no hair, still sharply buzzed. Dark bags so deep they might have bags of their own under her eyes, exhaustion written all over her.

And— scars.

Her scars. Old they might be and he might've seen them countless times before, yet here he lies, looking at them like he's seen them for the first time.

Because the guy who left them, the same guy who left him half-dead, bleeding out in the dirt, barely breathing through broken rips, is the same guy Akuto watched Orochimaru almost kill. The same guy Akuto—

A sharp, ugly feeling coils in his gut. His breath goes shallow.

He didn't save Hijiki for any noble reason. He didn't do it because he thought about it, because he believed in some higher code. He did it because— because—

Because he saw it happening and reacted. Because some deep, stupid, instinctive part of him decided to interfere. Because when it came down to it, between making the right choice and just doing something, he picked wrong.

The back of his neck prickles.

He feels sick.

Aneki's watching him carefully, eyes scanning his face like she's trying to read every thought, every emotion, every regret. Her hands are clenched in her lap, fingers digging into the hem of her sleeve. She looks… smaller. Like a candle burned too low, the flame barely holding on.

He opens his mouth, but still nothing comes out. His throat is raw, dry as sandpaper. He swallows, tries again.

"Aneki…"

Something breaks in her expression. A sharp, small inhale.

Then, carefully— so, so carefully— she leans forward. Her fingers twitch, as if she wants to reach for him, do more than hold his hands, his wrists, but she doesn't know how. She hesitates. Then— so, so carefully— she curls her fingers over his wrist. His pulse beats weakly beneath her touch. Proof.

"You almost didn't," she says, voice trembling. "You almost didn't come back."

Akuto freezes. His eyes widen. The words sink deep— too deep. They hit something raw inside him. His breathing shudders. He tilts his head slightly, turns it away just enough—

His arm. Or rather— the space where it should be.

A sharp inhale. A slow exhale.

It's wrong. It's all wrong.

His sleeve is folded, pinned neatly where it ends at the short stump. Where his arm ends. Where he ends.

No. No. No. His brain rejects it. He rejects it. Some deep, primal instinct rebels against this absence, screaming that something is missing, something is gone, something is wrong wrong wrong—

His fingers twitch again. His one hand.

He tries to move the other. Feels nothing.

His chest tightens.

He tries again.

Nothing.

There should be something. A weight. A presence. A limb.

But there's nothing.

A chill crawls up his spine, slow and awful. Like a very hairy spider. His throat closes. His heart pounds against his ribs, against his temples, against Aneki's fingers where she's still holding his wrist— his only wrist. The pressure of her grip is the only thing anchoring him, keeping him sane— keeping him from drowning fully in the rising panic.

It's different now.

He is different now.

Unbidden, he thinks of Orochimaru, his mind flashing back— to his golden eyes, glinting like a predator's. To the sickening sound of Kusanagi cutting through. To the shock before the pain. To the sight of his own arm, still gripping his ninjatō, lying severed in the dirt.

A harsh breath escapes. His stomach twists violently.

Nanami follows his gaze. Her fingers tighten around his wrist. For a long, silent, heavy moment, she says nothing. Then, softly, like a whisper meant for no one, she starts singing again. The same song. He can tell now, by the melody and the hums. The one from before. The one from when Okan would still sing them to sleep every night she could. But Aneki's voice is quiet, shy. Fragile. Like she's singing just to hold herself together.

Akuto closes his eyes. Lets the song wash over him.

"…because I had a sad dream last night…"

He doesn't know how long they sit like that— close but not really touching. The silence between them, after she finished the song, fragile as glass. His breathing slow, hers even slower. Minutes? Hours? Time feels stretched, warped, like it belongs to someone else. Like he belongs to someone else. Some other version of himself that never left, never fought, never failed.

He tries to shift. Fails. His body protests. Every inch of him still feels stiff, weak, like he's wearing himself wrong. His skin is too tight, his bones too heavy. He's here, but not entirely in himself.

Then, the door clicks open.

A nurse steps in, moving quickly. Her eyes flick over him. She lingers for no more than a second before nodding, muttering something about Iyokan-sensei and disappearing.

Nanami straightens. Not tense. Bracing. Like she's expecting everything to come crashing down the moment the doctor walks in.

Akuto exhales through his nose. "Great," he mutters, voice hoarse. "Company."

Nanami side-eyes him. "You've been asleep for three months," she says flatly. "What, did you think you'd just wake up and go home?"

Akuto blinks. Three months?

This isn't right. Three weeks, maybe. Three days. But— three months?

Three months means Nanami sat here. Waiting.

It means they missed his birthday. He turned eleven in a coma.

The thought lingers. Cold and unwelcome. He doesn't know how he feels about it. It's not like birthdays ever mattered much, but something about not being conscious—not being able to celebrate with his family—makes it feel like it's never happened. Like it was just… skipped over.

His stomach churns. How much else did he miss?

Before he can say anything else, the door swings open again. Someone strides in, presumably this Doctor Iyokan.

She's tall. Broad-shouldered. Her steel-grey hair is twisted into a loose bun, and there's a faint scar running from her temple to her jaw, cutting through one eyebrow. Her jōnin uniform is crisp and pristine, as the white coat over it, and her eyes pierce straight through him like a kunai to the ribs.

"Well," she says, scanning him with a quick, professional glance. "Would you look at that. You're still alive."

"Unfortunately," Akuto mutters.

Iyokan snorts. "Good. If you're well enough to be a little shit, you're well enough to listen." She crosses her arms. "Let's start from the top." She doesn't sugarcoat it. Doesn't ease him into it. Just gives him the facts, the story. Blunt, clinical, and undeniable. "You should be dead."

Akuto blinks. Well, that's a start.

Nanami's grip around his wrist tightens again.

"Utakata dragged you from the Land of Grass to Kiri. Coated in Saiken's chakra the entire way. By the time you got here, your wounds had already been burned shut."

Burned shut. His fingers twitch. The phantom sensation flares— something there, something missing. Raw, unhealed, cauterized in a way that wasn't meant to be clean.

Iyokan doesn't let him dwell on it.

"That wasn't what kept you alive, though." She flips a page on her clipboard, completely unfazed. "That was Utakata force-feeding you an almost criminal amount of soldier and blood pills while dragging you across the damn ocean."

Akuto exhales slowly. His chest is tight, his breath shallow.

"Your heart should've given out halfway here. Your chakra system should've collapsed completely." Iyokan glances up, meeting his gaze for the first time. "By the time we got to you, your reserves were almost gone. Your body was burning itself out. If Utakata hadn't kept shoving pills down your throat, you wouldn't have made it."

Akuto swallows. The thought, the idea of it, sits uneasily in his chest.

"We put you in a medically-induced coma for three months." She flipped back to the first page. "Now, you'll be in the hospital for a few more days. And no training for at least four weeks after being released."

Akuto stares at her. Blinks once. Slowly. "I just woke up from a coma and you're already giving me rules?"

Iyokan snorts. "Damn right I am. Unless you want to completely destroy your chakra system and go right back under?"

Akuto exhales through his nose. His jaw tightens. He's too tired to argue, too tired to fight back, too tired to do much beyond just lying here. But that doesn't mean he likes it.

Iyokan watches him for a second longer, as if deciding whether he's worth any more of her time. Then, she exhales sharply through her nose and turns on her heels. "I'll go notify your mother. And Fuguki."

The door swings shut behind her.

Silence settles over them. Nanami's been quiet since Iyokan arrived, only her steady grip around his wrist assuring him of her presence.

Akuto shifts slightly. He's still weak. Still stiff. His body still feels like it belongs to someone else. Like it's been borrowed for three months and returned to him with pieces missing.

Nanami still doesn't say anything. She just watches him, unreadable.

"They know?"

He still sounds rough. Still sounds like he hasn't used his voice in years.

Aneki exhales, rubbing at her temples. "Of course they know. You think Oji-san wasn't breathing down their necks the second he heard?"

Akuto grunts. That… yeah. That tracks.

Minutes pass. Neither of them moves.

Then, footsteps.

The door opens again, and this time, Fuguki-oji walks through it.

He looks exhausted.

Not just tired. Worn. Hollowed-out. Stretched thin. His hair is tied up as usual, but oily and unkempt, and his clothes are slightly dishevelled, and the dark circles beneath his sharp eyes make him look older.

Behind him, Kisame stands at his shoulder, somehow smaller than usual. More subdued. None of his casual confidence and predatory air about him.

For a second, no one speaks.

"I'll leave you to it," Kisame says, having read the room. He shifts, glancing at Fuguki. "Meet you tomorrow, Sensei?"

Fuguki nods, barely acknowledging him.

Kisame hums softly, then steps back, closing the door behind them.

The awkward silence from earlier seeps back into the room. No one knows how to start. Fuguki just looks at him— taking in the bandages, the IV line, his pathetic self.

The missing arm.

Akuto is the first to speak. "It was Orochimaru."

Fuguki exhales, closing his eyes for a second. Like he already knew, of course he did, but needed to hear it anyway. Then he walks forward, lowering himself into the other plastic chair beside Aneki and the bed. On his good side.

"I know." His voice is low and steady, but there's something to it. Something barely contained. Something he can't quite place. "Asagiri Rin, Hijiki Katsuro, and Utakata told me what happened. They and three others are the only survivors."

Nanami groans. "The bastard survived?"

Akuto grins. A reflex. A habit. A shield. "Unfortunately."

The word tastes wrong. Like ash. Like really stale, mouldy pita.

Because he is the reason Hijiki is still alive.

The back of his neck prickles. His stomach twists. The weight of his choice sits like a stone in his chest, heavy and final. Breath comes too shallow, too fast, like his body is trying to outrun something it can't escape. His hand— his one hand, the only one left— clenches, then unclenches. Restless. Useless. It should've been different. Better. But it isn't.

And it never will be.

"I must do everything myself," Nanami says, returning his grin. "Useless, these Sannin."

Fuguki-oji sighs. "You two are too young to be driving me insane already."

Akuto exhales slowly. Tries not to let it eat him alive. Because they don't know. Because when it mattered most, he made the wrong choice. They'd have every right to hate him, if they knew.

Fuguki-oji continues, "There's nothing we can do. Mizukage-sama is strongly considering a retreat—after the slaughter of our ANBU and the increased involvement of Orochimaru in the last few months, our forces took too many hits."

Nanami leans back, staring at the ceiling. Her voice is quiet, subdued, but firm. "War will be over soon."

She doesn't say what that means.

For Kiri. For them. For the people who won't walk away from it.

Fuguki exhales, heavily and slowly, then, without warning, pulls Akuto and Nanami into a careful hug. He stiffens at first. Then, he lets himself sink into it. Fuguki smells like water, salt, soap, and something he can't place. Hospital, maybe. Or maybe that's just the room.

"You did well." Fuguki's voice is quiet. Rough. "I'm proud of you."

He doesn't cry. Really. He doesn't.

But it's a damn close thing.

They stay like this for a long time. Until a nurse comes to kick Fuguki-oji and Aneki out.

And just as they're walking through the door, just as they're about to leave him alone with his traitorous thoughts, Akuto says, "I don't want to feel like that ever again."

Fuguki stops. Looks back.

"You won't."

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Kirigakure is louder than usual. Not the desperate kind of noise. No, this is different. The war is over, they say. People believe it. She can hear it in the way children play in the streets again. In the way adults talk. In the way the people bargain. Louder, freer, lighter.

Hiyu walks through the crowd of one of the markets, unseen and unnoticed. She isn't here for herself. She's here for Akuto.

Hospital food is awful. Akuto hates it. He has always talked about the sweets here, but she has never cared enough to stop by before. Now? She wishes she paid more attention. She eyes the selection of yokan, mochi, dango, and sugared citrus peels.

Which one was it?

Before she can decide—

"But Nee-san! I could do so much more than this!"

Hiyu glances sideways.

A young man with sandy brown hair and somewhat tanned skin— looking like he just returned from one of the many battlefields and camps on the Continent— stands at the neighbouring stall, arms crossed, expression set. Beside him, a small woman with sandy brown hair and brown eyes.

Kind eyes.

Hiyu does not mean to stare. But then—

"Oh?" The woman tilts her head. Her voice is light but not dismissive. "You sound certain."

The man exhales sharply. "I am certain. You won't even let me try. I could actually do something— do something good for once— if you let me train as a medic-nin."

She understands why the woman does not. It is expensive. Arduous. Despite Kiri needing many more doctors and field-medics, they do not just let anyone into the program. Do not just let anyone pass or progress.

Hiyu looks away. Not her business. She is already turning back to the sweets when—

"You're Akuto's mother, aren't you?"

She freezes.

Her grip tightens around the pouch in her hand.

The woman— Megumi remembers now— smiles, warm but not invasive. Hers must be the stall Akuto talked about. Not the one she's standing in front of. She continues, "I haven't seen him around lately. He hasn't been by in a while."

Hiyu doesn't talk about Akuto with strangers. She doesn't talk about him (or Nanami) at all if she can help it. And yet—

"…He's in the hospital. Just woke up."

It slips out before she can stop it.

Weak. That is what it feels like. Like an admission of something she should not be admitting.

Megumi does not react with pity. No hesitation, no awkwardness. She simply reaches behind the counter and pulls out a small paper bag. "Then you should take these."

Before Hiyu can refuse, Megumi presses the bag into her hands.

Light. Soft. Full of Akuto's favourite sweets.

Hiyu blinks. Wait—

Megumi gives freely, without expectation. Just kindness. Pure kindness, without a second thought. Hiyu does not know what to do with that. She has spent too long in war rooms, spent too much time on frontlines, in a world where nothing is given without a cost.

She shifts, gripping the back tightly, and glances at the man (whose name she still does not know. Akuto never mentioned him). Before she can think about it— before she can think of all the angles, think it through—

"If you're serious, I can show you some things."

The words are out before she can stop them. Too fast. Too easy. Her chest tightens, and a strange, twisting sensation, an invisible hand, grips her stomach— like a step missed on solid ground, like a lurch she cannot brace for. The air feels too sharp in her lungs, her pulse kicking up a beat too late, as if her own body is struggling to catch up. She does not do this. She does not offer. And yet— she just did.

He blinks. For a second, he looks genuinely caught off guard. Then, just as quickly, he recovers, straightening. "I am."

Megumi smiles softly. "I thought you might be."

Hiyu nods once, curtly.

She turns, something settling in her stomach. Not quite regret, not quite uncertainty. But the creeping but undeniable feeling that she has not done something like this in a long, long time. She has not acted impulsively, irrationally since she was young and desperate.

She hopes none of her children inherited this from her.