I wrote this chapter years ago. This is a rewrite to better fit the consistency in Dead Tales. Enjoy!
It is fascinating what one can get used to.
He wedged the door shut with his hips, wincing as it banged shut unexpectedly. Slipping his shoes off, he navigated to the kitchen counter, the tiles sticking lightly to the hints of moisture under his feet. Once upon a time, he'd have made a clone. But now, with his ongoing… commitments, he practically lived like a civilian.
Or what he imagined a civilian would feel like.
It's depressing being so weak.
It was taking nearly all he had to maintain Kurama's recovery, even with Kioku's help.
Of course 'weak' was a very relative term. Compared to others where he found himself, he might as well be a demigod—which was a massive boon for him in his cleaning job.
Crossing the tiny sitting room, he was in the kitchen in five steps. It still seemed unbelievable to him that he could live in an apartment even smaller than that of his previous life.
Especially given his status now.
If the boys saw me now…
His body moved on autopilot as he arranged the groceries he'd bought. Cans of cheap food lined the open shelf to his left, arranged by expiry date. He had diversified from his one true love—every bit of chakra that wasn't being used to nullify the effects of the excessive, one dimensional eating habits he onced possessed was chakra that Kurama could use.
He resisted the urge to sigh. As always, thoughts of his partner made him sad.
Kurama had woken up briefly a few months back—enough to assure him that he was still alive. He'd been sleeping ever since, the link between the both of them functioning in the reverse for the first time since it was applied to him.
Possibly for the first time since it was ever conceived in the mad minds of his long dead ancestors.
His relationship with Kioku made it possible for him to act as a conduit, enabling the avatar to channel nature chakra directly to Kurama without him needing to convert it to Sage chakra at all. It was the only way to ensure he didn't get addicted to Kioku's chakra.
I'd be worried about the effects on Kurama, but he kinda needs to be alive before I can do that.
Over the years, his interaction with Kioku had dwindled to almost nothing. It was likely because the avatar had no functional idea of time that was not measured in literal centuries. As far as 'she' was concerned, their 'conversations' over the period of almost half a decade probably happened practically simultaneously.
He snagged a drink from the fridge as he moved to his room, tucking the bottle under his stump and pulling out the mail he'd stuffed into his pocket as he made his way into the house. The address on the envelope got him excited.
With a deft twist, the cap of his drink came off, and he let it drop, absently kicking it into the bin at the other end of the corridor just before entering his room. He hit the light switch, drink in hand, as he dropped into a chair, sipping the drink a bit before balancing the bottle on the arm of his chair.
The envelope contained something he had been expecting since his interview three days ago. The quiet hum of the air conditioner was the only sound in the apartment as his eyes skimmed the letter.
Finally, he thought with a smile.
He'd made some money while he was laid up in the hospital, as weird as that sounded—mostly from compensation and reparations. Even though it was basically chump change compared to his standards now, it was better than nothing. His complete lack of records was a legal problem at the time—at least until he became a retainer of the eminent right wing representative of the Tokonosu district, Takagi Souichiro.
Without someone that powerful taking personal interest in him, he would probably have ended up like all the 'special interest' cases of this world—disappeared for the 'greater good', at least until he woke up and gave whoever was foolish enough to do that to him a very, very bad day. As Takagi's retainer however, he was able to wrangle compensation for the attempts to study him—attempts that yielded nothing as far as he knew, but gave him a nice seed fund.
Of course, there could be only one real use for a shinobi retainer.
His cleaning business started very shortly, and with his exclusive focus on Takagi, his allies, and the Japanese Intelligence as clients, he became highly recommended.
It was only right he diversified into real estate.
Despite not being known except in very niche circles, he became one of the wealthiest individuals in Japan. Unofficially, of course—easy to do when you had officially lost an arm. No one wanted to believe that a one-armed man could be rich enough to own land the size of a modern village in a city like Tokonosu.
It helped that he had very few modern scruples, and zero interest in fame.
He still needed a front though.
That was the reason for his small apartment. That was the reason he was applying at one of the more prestigious institutions of 'learning' in Japan—the much vaunted Fujimi High—after just over half a decade in cleaning and real estate. For a school, the level of corruption was, quite frankly, startling to the displaced transmigrant. It was probably the reason his patron wanted an inside man in the school his daughter was set to attend.
Either way, it was perfect for his own ambitions. Doing the Takagi patriarch a favour as well was just icing on the cake for him.
Jiraiya would have approved. For all the old toad's appearances, he had a nationalistic streak a mile long.
Thoughts of his previous life always made him melancholic, but thoughts of them always dragged him into the dumps. He felt Kioku's reassurance swirl around him. Sometimes, it was merely cold comfort.
Now was one of those times.
The morning began as normal—for him, that is.
Kohta's chest heaved as he dragged himself through the school gates, already exhausted. Even after a week of this in the new school year, it still took a lot out of him. As always, the new martial arts teacher was just inside the gates, watching him as he ran past.
It was starting to creep him out.
Though to be fair, to say that the man was watching him would raise all sorts of red flags. The man watched everyone who entered the school. Most people learnt to ignore him after the first few days, but Kohta never could.
If pressed, he would say that it was the teacher's eyes.
Why did a teacher have the same kind of eyes as the veterans he saw in the States?
When the man was introduced during the first assembly of the term, Kohta could not help but be struck by him. Short cropped reddish hair made him look young—almost feminine, despite being taller than all the teachers on the dais. He carried himself confidently, but not overly so. He was normal, lean muscle rippling under his well-tailored shirt.
Kohta remembered wondering how a teacher could afford such a nice shirt.
Even ignoring his foreign looks, he gave off the strange impression of some mismatched article of clothing. His missing right arm seemed even more brutal—a lingering sign of violence that didn't belong in a school, no matter how much it fit on the man. His voice, when he eventually spoke, was as unique as his appearance. It came with a slight rasp, as though he'd shouted himself hoarse a few minutes before speaking. Worse, it had a hint of femininity.
Somehow, the voice had seemed more of a mismatch than his missing arm.
He put his thoughts aside as he moved further into the school.
He was not surprised to find himself alone as he half ran, half limped to his destination, his backpack weighing him down. He deliberately arrived this early—something from his days as the class' football. His chest tightened almost to bursting as breath seemed to be driven from his lungs with every staggered step.
I flew to America just for a chance at turning my life around.
He stumbled forward, heart pounding, the sting of sweat dripping into his eyes forcing him to squint.
This is nothing!
He saw the doors of the entrance hall ahead, and pushed himself on with a last minute burst of energy, staggering to a halt at his locker.
He draped himself on it, wheezing. His sides hurt, and he leaned into the pain, curling up around it.
He took a moment, swallowing rapidly as he fought down nausea. Reaching down into his carry bag, he grabbed one of his bottles of water, twisting the cap and gulping down the lukewarm liquid.
No one was around to see some of it spill down his chin, and onto his chest.
As he regained himself, he slowly made his way deeper into the school campus, his thighs burning in exertion. His destination—the sports complex—was only a few minutes walk away from the entrance hall. Like the rest of the school, the complex was empty.
He slipped in and went to the showers.
The cold water of the showers helped to calm him. Normally, that would be the prelude to a good day—a day where no one bothered him.
It was not to be.
He slogged through the first two classes. His eyes were heavy, and the rhythm of the ceiling fans created a background that threatened to lull him to sleep. He forced himself to remain awake, the words of the SEAL instructor room six months ago echoing in his sleepy mind.
The third class was when it started going downhill.
The teacher for the class was a strangely charismatic man. He insisted they call him by his first name—Mr. Shido—instead of the normal method of address. It made him popular in a way. He styled himself as a westernised man, and the people loved it.
Shows what 'the people' know.
"Put your books away," he began in his affectatious parody of an American accent. "We will be having a test."
Everyone groaned, doubly so for Kohta. Hearing the fake accent hurt his ears anew every time it happened.
As the papers were handed out, he took a couple of deep breaths, centering himself. He always seemed to do poorly on the tests for this course—not enough to fail, but enough that his average was always weighed down.
But today would be different. He was actually ready this time.
When Mr. Shido called to begin, he flipped the papers over. The thin teacher began walking the rows as he was known to, squinting as though it would help him fish out those trying to cheat on the test. Kohta pushed this to the back of his mind as he lost himself in trying to beat the questions before time.
His heart nearly jumped out of his mouth when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Just barely stopping himself from jumping out of his seat, he turned to see Mr. Shido's eyes on him, the man's face framed by a severe expression.
"Drop your pen and stand, Hirano,"
There was a moment of confusion as Hirano felt his palms grow cold. He fought down his panic, and swallowed, reassuring himself.
It's nothing. I didn't do anything.
He repeated it to himself as a mantra as he came to his feet.
The teacher reached for his papers and rifled through them, his eyes getting even darker, if it was possible. He arranged them together with the sort of coolness that Kohta had learned to associate with his struggle in the man's class.
A feeling of impending doom loomed in the back of his mind.
The teacher looked at him, meeting his eyes as his face softened into a soft smile.
Against his will, Kohta found himself relaxing.
The smile stayed on Mr. Shido's face as he gently tore Kohta's sheets into two, then four. Balling the pieces up, his smile fell off his face.
"Get out," he said, as calm as a cat watching a mouse, and ten times as smug.
Kohta's heart dropped. "Sir," he bagan, stammering.
"I said get out!" Mr Shido repeated, his voice tightening into a snarl, the cat lunging for the hapless mouse.
Kohta jerked back in surprise, swallowing the fist in his throat.
He left the class without looking back. The quiet snickers as he left coated that fist in his throat in shards of glass.
But he endured.
Like he always did.
He walked, unaware of where he was going. The prospect of a lost summer was suddenly very close, and very real.
He didn't know how long he was in that haze until the bell rang.
She swirled her drink in her cup absently as she watched the rest of the cafeteria through her blonde bangs. For once, no one was bothering her. There was no need to engage in mindless prattle all in the name of interacting with her co-workers. At the other end of the cafeteria sat the object of her attention.
Uzumaki Naruto.
She remembered him clearly. During the final year of her training, he was the 'interesting case' that had the entire trauma department in a frenzy. The last time she saw him, he looked nearly dead, though on the way to recovery. Clearly she underestimated his healing factor. Five years had done a lot for the young man.
He sat surrounded by other teachers—the soccer advisor Koichi Shido, the ping pong advisor Hayashi Kyoko, and the judo advisor Maeda Teshima. For someone who was dangerous enough to be put in the state she saw him in, the man had managed to tone that down into merely exotic.
It was still seen somewhat negatively in a super conservative society like Japan, but it was better than the alternative.
He even managed to camouflage whatever might leak out from underneath his mask as a function of his martial art discipline.
Well, if some gangster decided to turn his life around after coming eye to eye with death, who was she to begrudge him his redemption arc?
He rode the tails of conversation like a professional, saying very little, but seeming to say a lot. If you asked a lot of teachers if he was a nice person, they'd say that he was. If you pushed them on why they thought so though…
Shizuka suspected that many would not find that question as easy to answer as they might have thought.
But then, a lot can be forgiven if a person is hot.
She should know—she was the poster child for exactly that.
Still, despite the urge to give him leeway—maybe even because of it—she was always… cautious around him.
Nothing personal, of course. But she was just leery of situations where it seemed like her animal brain wanted to abandon all rationality and common sense. It was a habit formed from adapting to the… advantages of being an exceptionally beautiful woman.
One of the four said something, and Teshima roared in laughter, his booming voice bouncing all around the teacher's lounge. The man was loud and bombastic, a chronic braggart whose only redeeming feature to her was that he focused all his energies towards impressing the ping pong advisor.
That the said ping pong advisor still had the hots for Naruto was an open secret to anyone who wasn't Teshima.
Shido was the least respectable of the four—at least to her. The man was a parasitic worm, intent on throwing his weight around like he meant anything beyond his daddy's power. He'd talk about 'pedigree' in what he assumed was a subtle, sophisticated manner, but class was not for sale.
Her pager beeped.
She eyed it balefully, before polishing off the rest of her drink. She kept her eyes on Naruto as she got to her feet.
His eyes snapped to me as soon as I moved, only dismissing me after a moment.
She was right—you could take the man out of the gang, but not the gang out of the man.
Sometimes, she thought back to the days after she just finished her training, bright eyed and hopeful. She would never have believed she would end up in a school clinic of all things—and by her own choice too!
The fact that she was earning almost twice her contemporaries made it an easier pill to swallow, but it would not be a lie to say that she was bored.
A small price to pay for the access to influence that came with this 'ordinary clinic job'.
There were rumors of another clinic that operated somewhere in Tokonosu for an exclusive clientele and paid extremely well. But all her attempts to learn more simply came to dead ends.
Eventually, she gave up. Better the job in hand than one in the city.
She arrived at the school clinic to see the reason for the alert—the horrible, life-threatening emergency of a bruised shin. Heavens forbid that the children of Tokonosu's finest endure anything more traumatic than clipping toenails.
God how she hated the little shits.
That national emergency averted, she settled down with her paperwork.
Vaccinations.
The schedule was set to start in a week's time, and was supposed to cover everyone in the school.
"Misuzu," she called. That was one of the students who spent their time volunteering in the clinic.
The mousey girl came over, her face conveying her eagerness to impress. "Yes, Ms Marikawa?"
"Have the vaccination schedules gone out?" asked Shizuka, still scrutinizing the proposed plan for the day.
"Ah yes, Ms Marikawa," replied the girl. "The final copy was forwarded to the students' council for dissemination this morning."
Shizuka raised her head to look at the girl. Her eyes shone with the desperate need for validation that plagued girls cursed with the "girl next door" aesthetic. Not that Shizuka would know what that felt like.
"That's good," she replied, giving the girl a bright smile. "Are you free for the rest of the day?"
"Yes, Ms Marikawa," she replied, eyes alight in adoration. "What do you need me for?"
Teenagers…
The girl did ask though… Shizuka's smile dimmed into a more thoughtful one.
"We need to design the consent and data forms for the vaccination exercise," she said. "We also need to coordinate some light paperwork with the students' council," said the doctor.
"Kazu and Okada are already on it," Misuzu replied, happy to have gotten ahead of something Shizuka might have wanted. "Okada is also working with the student's council to generate a vaccination ID that will bear the PRS-G617g and subsequent iterations."
"That's quite the initiative from the three of you," commended Shizuka, genuinely impressed.
People really will go the extra mile for some motivation.
"Well, the vaccine is interesting to all of us," replied Misuzu shyly, a light blush on her face. "To think that a single vaccine can cover all known viral infections—it is almost too good to believe," remarked Misuzu
"It's the power of science, Misuzu dear," replied Shizuka. "People like your parents work very hard to produce breakthroughs in medicine for the rest of the world."
Shizuka even meant it—mostly. Misuzu started out as one of those potential links to influence, but somehow forced herself into becoming more.
Upgraded from asset to subordinate… You go girl.
The brunette blushed at the praise, a shy smile sneaking its way onto her face.
"The difference between the both of us is simply this—I have failed more times than you have even tried."
The words called out to him as he fidgeted outside Mr. Uzumaki's office, trying to work up the courage to knock. Their simple black font stood out against the white and orange background of the plaque on the door.
Suddenly, the door swung in, opening to reveal the person he'd come to see.
"Hello Kohta," the teacher said. "Come on in."
"Yes sir," he stammered, as Mr Uzumaki moved to allow him to walk into his office.
The office was a plain room. There were no decorations on the wall besides a sort of leaf-spiral backdrop etched into the wall.
Mr Uzumaki had developed a reputation. Even as the martial arts instructor, he made time for students who could keep up with his standards.
"So," began Mr Uzumaki, "how can I help you, Hirano?"
That was why he swallowed his unease at the man's eyes and came here to him.
Kohta took a moment, gathering his courage and words. There was no easy way to say what he wanted. He had even prepared a small speech.
All that was just gone now as he sat under those eyes.
He wiped his palms on his shorts.
"Hirano?" those eyes softened.
Not a lot, but enough that he could blurt it out. "I want to learn martial arts!"
"Alright."
"I am a hard worker! And I am already getting in… huh?" he stopped in surprise as what Mr Uzumaki said caught up to him.
"I said, 'alright'," repeated Mr Uzumaki, a small smile on his face.
Kohta's face broke into a wide grin to match the teacher across from him.