Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kaya’s feet hurt. There were other things wrong, but they were less related to walking so they mattered less than her shitty straw sandals not doing enough even on a paved road.

Buildings stacked high and uneven like unwashed dishes on both sides of the road. She knew fuck all about big places—the word “village” for this was utter bullshit and she knew that much at least—but this seemed to be the poorer half. Maybe that's why the shinobi at the gate hadn’t tried shit when she'd come in. Not that she'd know; someone had to shake her awake when the trading cart stopped to set up and…here she was.

(Thank god no one had kicked her in the gut yet. Every day for a month of traveling, and still no one had done it. Then again, that would’ve been one way to go. Painful, but it would’ve done the job, probably. Hopefully.

But Kaya was never that lucky.)

The only reason she found the healer's building was because someone in a crutch hobbled in first. The doors were glass, holy shit. Why the fuck were they using that much glass and why did it look smooth and clear and not fogged up like stale piss?

…The folks in there looked clean. Kaya hadn't washed in ages. She probably smelled like sweat and shit.

Fuck it. She had nowhere else to go. In she went.

The doors opened without so much as a creak. The lights inside shined weird as shit, all sharp and unnatural. They made her straw sandals look like they'd fit better on a barn animal. Ah, shit, right—she had to watch how she spoke. Civilized people didn't talk like she did. Like they spat mud when they opened their mouths. Fuck, she needed to remember—shit, dammit. Okay. Fine. Just do it. Just say it quick and shut up.

Kaya told the woman at the front desk what she was there for. The woman did not call her a dirty whore and throw her out onto the street. A bloody miracle. Instead she smiled and gave her a stack of paper— holy shit that's so much paper. Three sheets! What the fuck!

Kaya was too busy gawping at them to say that though, thankfully. The woman said some things that she also missed. Then she told her last room on the right so that's where Kaya went.

The building was bigger than any she’d been in. In most places, a healer either went visiting or did healing out of their own house. Meanwhile, the end of the hall had a stairwell that led up to at least one more floor, if not more. This place looked big enough to shack up a dozen families and still have room. Not that a sane person would want to live there, with the lighting and the smells and the strange looking tools in the room she went to.

The door opened and a shinobi walked in— what the fuck. Why were they everywhere?! It was a shinobi village but shouldn’t there be civilian streets too? Or what, did they go and give every street its own shinobi?

No one wanted to deal with shinobi. Violent bastards, always making trouble and wrecking shit. The entire point of the villages was to get them away from common folk just minding themselves. And here Kaya had the great idea to stroll right into one of those villages and come face to face with one such bastard, fuck her tiny, mortal life.

The unnatural woman smiled like Kaya didn’t want to kill herself out of self-preservation. “This clinic is funded by a council member. There will be no extra charges if I or the other iryo nin here treat you, so don’t worry.”

Council? What council? What was she talking about? Did “clinic” mean the healer’s building? And what did she mean medic nin? Ninja ain’t medics!

“…’m sorry, but I don’t…” don’t cuss, don’t cuss, don’t cuss, “…uh, I don’t understand what…?”

“Oh right, they’d said at the front, hadn’t they? You have no funds yet? That’s fine, that’s fine, we’ll handle it later. Let’s take a look at you first.”

The woman’s hands moved. Kaya twitched. Except…nothing happened. No glowy hands. No fire or weapons or pain. Just her waving her hands about and staring real hard at Kaya. Oh shit, what if this wasn’t a shinobi at all and just some crazy person? She wasn’t being stabbed with one of the pointy things on the desk but that could change. What was she supposed to do now? How could she get out of this? Where was the window—?

The woman suddenly smiled real big. "It's very strong. Everything seems to be progressing nicely...I see no issues. I want to examine you again—shall I set up an appointment for next week?"

Kaya gawped at her. The woman kept smiling.

“…I don’t have money.”

“You don’t have money yet. I have a solution for that. Here, let me see those papers.”

The papers were useless to Kaya, but the shinobi woman got out a small stick, asked Kaya if she could sign her name (no she couldn’t), put away the stick and got out an ink pad, and then made Kaya press her thumbprint onto one of the pages plus half a dozen more. She—the woman’s name was Arakawa, and people called her Arakawa-sensei—walked them back to the front desk and next thing Kaya knew she had a job at the clinic, a fistful of cash, and a scrap of paper that she was supposed to give to the first…inn? Apartment? That she could find.

…Was Kaya actually still asleep? Was this some strange dream she was having?

This was not supposed to happen to her. Things like this did not just happen to people like her. She hadn’t had much of a plan to begin with but it’d never included this.

What was going on in this place that she could just get a job?

The warm air became thicker. The buildings teetered inwards, moving closer like they planned to fall on her head. Kaya couldn’t stay here. She had to—she needed to go.

A door across the street slid open. It stayed open long enough for Kaya to dart in and be met with tables and chairs and then off to the side these long benches that were just right for sliding into and hiding in a corner of.

Kaya gripped her head in her hands, knuckles pressed into the cold, smooth wooden table top. Her heart rabbited in her chest, which was horseshit because there was nothing hurting her. She was already fifteen, for fuck's sake. Women got married at her age. She shouldn’t be acting like this. If she could just calm down for once…

“Are you alright, okyaku-san?”

Kaya jerked sideways. Her eyes went up, then up some more, until it finally reached the head of the biggest man she’d ever seen up close.

There were only two reasons she knew for people being fat. One was if they were so rich they could eat as much as they wanted. The other was if it wasn’t fat that covered them but muscles so big they could fit an ox and strong enough to match. The man’s clothes weren’t fancy enough to be rich people clothes, which made him the second one.

…He’d called her a guest. Was that what she was?

She didn’t know what to tell him, was what. Her throat was too dry to make words.

“Would you like to eat?”

Did she want to? Yes she did. But she didn’t have—oh shit, the money. Kaya grabbed it from where it’d fallen on the table. She stared at it, stared at the man, stared back at the money. “…Yes.”

“What would you like?”

“…I don’t know…” She didn’t even know where the hell she was.

“…You don’t know what you want to eat, or…?”

Kaya shrugged. What could she say? ‘I’ve lived out in the sticks my entire life and I’ve never eaten rice’? Or ‘I spent this month sleeping outside and taking what I could get’?

The only thing she could really say was, “‘m sorry.” And then, “I have this much money. If—if you want some.”

The man waved away the money she held out. “It’s fine, there’s no need for that. Hm…say, what if I brought you something? Would that be fine?” Kaya nodded. “Good. Any preferences? You’re not allergic to anything?” Kaya didn’t know what that meant. She shook her head no. “Alright. I’ll be right back.”

He walked away, going around the big desk thing on the other side of the room and through a door behind it. Most of the other tables looked empty. She couldn’t say for sure from where she sat, though; the seats were tall and her view was short. Her corner made it so that she couldn’t even see the front door. But it meant no one else coming in would see her either. Thank fuck.

The man returned with a bowl. The moment it slid before her Kaya’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. Steam floated in her face from the pile of noodles. Bright, fresh vegetables lay on top, as well as an egg cut in half. A whole egg! The yolk looked so yellow, and the vegetables looked so green, and they were so bright and—and deep that they didn’t look real. That wasn’t the right word, but they sure made it very hard for Kaya to stop looking and eat.

Or it would have, but the steam smelled so good that the next time she blinked half the noodles were gone. The man leaned on the table smiling at her. Kaya slowly chewed and swallowed her mouthful. “‘m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s a compliment. By the way, are you from around here? I haven’t heard your dialect before.”

“No. I just got here today. To the village, I mean.”

The man whistled low. “Wow. That’s amazing. Well, if you need help you just let me know. And you can keep eating, don’t worry.”

Kaya’s mouth wrinkled, but she ate some more anyway. How did he expect to help her? There was nothing she could think to ask him for, except, “…Um, you know what this is called? So I can eat it again.”

“It’s ramen. You haven’t had it before?” Kaya ducked her head. “Really? Never been to a ramen stand? Izakaya? Restaurant?” Kaya sank lower in her seat.

“…Huh. Then I guess I should feel honored that you came here first.” The man sat down in the seat opposite hers. “My name is Akimichi Daisuke and I work here. What about you?”

“…Tsu–Tsukauchi Kaya. My name is Tsukauchi Kaya.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tsukauchi-san.”

He talked some more at her. The place they were in was called a restaurant, and he didn’t just work there but he’s the one who owned it. He’d only just turned twenty and finished his apprenticeship a few months back. Kaya told him she’d also gotten a job, and it turned out he also spent the afternoons helping at the exact same clinic she’d visited. So not only would they see each other again, but he’d be her senpai.

Kaya couldn’t finish her ramen. She tried. She ate so much she wanted to puke, but she still couldn’t do it. It was so fucking unfair that she’d just had the best meal of her entire life and she couldn’t even eat all of it.

And what would Akimichi-san think of her then, wasting food like that? He's the one who’d have to throw it away when she left. If it were her she'd hate herself too. Kaya glared at the bowl, tears starting to crowd her eyes. 

“—though I'm sure they'll tell you more about that when you go in tomorrow—oh, are you done? Do you want me to pack that for you?”

Kaya blinked at his hand suddenly lifting the bowl away. She had no choice but to get up and follow him to the big desk. Most of the tables stood empty. So that's why he'd had time to sit and yammer with her. But why would a restaurant be so empty in the middle of the day? Was it because it was new? Or for something else?

Kaya had questions, but she kept her mouth shut. She dumped the money on the front desk thing for him to sort out, then she grabbed the money left over (most of it) and the bag and walked away. 

Too many buildings stood on the street with no way to know what they were for. In most places, the only thing to do would be to go in and ask. The idea made Kaya’s teeth clench. No. Fuck no. Fuck that. No one who looked and smelled like shit got to do that. Not unless they wanted to get chased off.

The only reason Kaya marched into the last building on the left was because it was the only one that didn't have a sign or big glass windows full of strange shit. The woman smoking at the front desk didn't look up until Kaya put the money and the scrap of paper in front of her. Then when she'd taken all of the money, her eyes went real big on the paper for some reason and she threw a key and half the money at Kaya and told her to scram.

The key had a weird, flat chunk of a thing attached to it that had some symbols carved on. Kaya would've asked, except the front desk woman had just run out the doors like there was a fire. What the fuck was that about?

Kaya did not go to every floor and stick the key in every door. She stood at the front desk and stared at the big poster behind it until the writing swam in her eyes. Then her eyes drifted up to the sign next to it that had one of the symbols on it. But the first one was different. Kaya walked up the stairs that started off to the side of it. On the next floor was another sign nailed up, only this one had a different symbol in front of the one that matched her key.

Kaya walked up two more floors before the sign almost completely matched. The first door she slid the key into opened up to her new home.

The place was big. It was dark. The hallway led to two different rooms, each mostly empty but with a few things here and there.

Kaya walked into the big room in front of her, the one with a window that had that same kind of smooth, clear glass. The floor had dust on it. The wall had stains on it. It was the nicest room she'd ever stood in.

…What the hell was she supposed to do now?

Kaya was fifteen and alone, with no idea what to expect in her future. 

Kaya was fifteen and alone, and pregnant.

Chapter Text

It took less than one day for Kaya to prove, again, that she was a fresh idiot and her life was a joke.

Kaya arrived at dawn, which was fine. Her days had always started before the sun. But the nurses took one look at her sitting in a chair, whispered to each other, and then one of them came up to her and asked where it hurt.

They thought she was eleven. Fucking eleven.

And then when she tried to say she’d just started working there, they didn’t believe her. She couldn’t even tell them what job she was supposed to do because no one had told her fuck about shit. One of them laughed and told her to watch her language, but she didn’t know how to do that and it made her so pissed she started crying, and then they laughed even more.

So of course she cussed them out but it didn’t do shit when she was still hiccuping and blubbering and they couldn’t understand her. One of them just brought her a cup and went here now no more crying why don’t you drink this water, there's a good girl, and then we’ll call your mom and all will be well so just relax and be patient, okay sweetie?

No. No, she wouldn’t calm down what the fuck. Fuck them. Fuck everyone. She tried to do one good thing and it didn’t mean shit.

But if that wasn’t bad, it got even worse. The sun was high in the sky—wasting daylight, was what she was doing, they should’ve put her to work by then—when a woman with grey hair and a body made of lumpy rolls of fat came in. The people at the front desk went right to her, started whispering and pointing at Kaya, and then the woman walked over and announced herself as Kaya’s new boss. She made Kaya get up and brought her to the front desk to introduce her to everyone, and there were so many names that by the time it ended Kaya forgot every single one, including her new boss’s.

New boss led them to a room she called a break room and talked on and on about things Kaya didn’t understand, telling her about the job and that they’d just start slow, don’t worry too much, it’s real easy so there’s no need to come in too early. Speaking of, why hadn’t she just come at nine like the rest of them?

What did she mean by nine?

Why, the time on the clock, of course.

What was a clock?

New boss stared long and hard at her, then sat them down and asked her even more questions. Kaya…Kaya had made a mistake. Because—she’d travelled for a month, okay? People didn’t just travel for a month and know fuck all. And even if she’d done her goddamn best to keep her bumpkin mouth shut and only open it when she really had to, travellers still talked. They talked even more when the only one there to hear it was the mute street rat. Just because no one had sat down and explained things to her didn’t make her also deaf.

But there was no point trying to talk about what she didn’t have the words for, so Kaya didn’t. She just told what she knew for sure. She’d arrived yesterday. She owned nothing but the clothes on her back and the sandals on her feet. She could…sweep, scrub, look after livestock. Carry some shit. That’s it.

New boss did not put her to work. She didn’t kick her out either. What she actually did haunted Kaya for the next several months.

After putting some things away, the woman made them both walk out of the clinic and then walked all the way back to Kaya’s apartment with her. She looked at every single corner of the place and Kaya just stood there and gawped like a useless post. And then—and then, the woman took her outside and one by one made them visit the closest shops and started explaining them. In one shop she bought a clock, a calendar, scissors, soap, shampoo, detergent, bleach. In another it was a knife, a pot, a lighter, bowls, plates, cups, chopsticks. In one more it was bedsheets, curtains, towels, and two sets of secondhand clothes, one of which she made Kaya change into immediately.

Kaya broke and told her she’d never be able to pay back the money.

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s your money. This will be taken from your paycheck—not all of it! And not all at once, relax. It’s just that whatever you would be getting every week will be cut in half for a little while, that’s all it is. You’ll still have enough to buy some things if you want to but otherwise this much should do it.”

They went back to the apartment. The woman found out that there was a laundry room in one of the lower floors, and immediately made Kaya learn how to wash her clothes, curtains, bedsheets, and towels with a washing machine, and then dry them with a drying machine. She told her what electricity was, and found the main electricity board and then a boiler room, and explained those too. They went back upstairs with the cleaned clothes and the woman didn't leave until after Kaya could use the light switches, the hot and cold water, the heating coil, the fridge, and the microwave.

Kaya wanted to fucking die. What the fuck. First the nurses calling her a child, now this. Just because she didn’t know how things worked didn’t mean she’d never seen them before. Just because she didn’t know the right words didn’t mean she knew nothing.

The boss woman herded them back to the clinic and talked about something Kaya completely missed for being so fucking pissed she could eat rocks. What was with these people?? What—did they expect no one outside Konoha had seen a street light? Or a newspaper? Or a fucking toilet? Did they think people wore animal hides outside like fucking oni? Kaya might be an idiot but that didn’t make the country's minister or even the next farmer an idiot too. And she had to work with these people!

They ate lunch at the clinic. Kaya stopped being pissed just long enough for her boss’s voice to cut in and say that from now on Kaya’d be eating at the clinic. “The kitchen isn’t just for overnight patients but for all of the staff. We know what neighborhood we’re in. And you’ve never cooked before, right? You can eat your meals here and whatever you don’t just pack it and bring it home with you, got it?”

Next came the task of finding out what the hell they could get Kaya to do. After 2-fucking-o’clock. This shouldn't have been a problem when she'd already told her new boss what she could do: livestock, cleaning, doing the shit that no one wanted to touch. But noooo, instead of listening to the country hick people wanted to make her pissed in new directions. They didn't want her to clean. Sweeping, mopping, scrubbing—none of that for her. They took one look at her bony arms and chicken legs and fucked right off before she could break like a twig from staring at a broom. Carrying anything heavier than a book was off the table. They called that “back breaking work” and “not suited for a young thing like you, why would we ever”.

There weren't even any animals that needed looking after, which was a fucking shame because at least Kaya could handle getting her hands covered in shit instead of having to put up with this new shit. Her boss made her put folders into boxes; different colour, different box. Then other people caught on and she became the sorting folders into boxes girl. Break room, front desk, a fucking closet, fucking mountains of unending folders that she had to sit on the floor to deal with because no table was big enough. When Arakawa-sensei finally found her, she decided it was a great idea to make her do hers too and no it fucking wasn't. Her office shat out folders like bloody lice, they were everywhere.

When the sorting ended (not really) (maybe someone decided half a mountain was good enough for now) she went from being the sorting folders girl to the giving folders girl. If there was a file that needed to go from one end of the floor to the other, she was the one called on to get it there. Folder. File. Whatever the fuck they called it. People probably expected that this would make her learn that and also other people’s names, when what it really did was give her a better idea of where different rooms were.

If she wasn’t doing that, then whoever decided to would try their hand at making her learn a new thing. The first one learnt the hard way that not knowing how to read anything meant not knowing how to read anything. The next one showed her a page so full of numbers they just looked like writing and told Kaya to try and solve them. It took Kaya needing to have each number written off to the side, with little stick marks to show what they meant, and slowly read the numbers out loud for the fifth time before that nurse figured there were faster ways to work. The nurse with the most success was the one who printed out a list of little pictures with names next to them, showed Kaya what each item was called, and then made her count them and write those out in stick marks (tallies, they were called tallies) but then other people caught on and that's what she did for three fucking days.

And every time Kaya finished a task, every time she gave things to other people, they’d tell her how well she was doing, how good she was being, after the hardship she'd faced out in the world and here she was making the best she could of her life. If she ever needed help, she just had to let them know. They always wanted to help. And their words said it like that, but their eyes called her stupid and their smiles called her weak and their hands waited like they expected her to fuck up the most basic shit they could come up with special just for her and when she didn’t they'd talk to her like a good little nanny goat and shoo her away.

There had to be a word for them, or for what she was going through, because it was bloody fucking stupid was what it was. She was fifteen dammit! She wasn't a soft-headed baby!

But it wasn't always dealing with them that she had to do. The other half of it put her in the kitchens with Akimichi-san.

Who the fuck decided to do that? They must’ve lost their fucking mind for that to happen even when she’d said she’d never cooked but no one ever listened to her and no one cared what she thought.

Hell, no one’d ever let her in a kitchen neither. Always said she’d steal shit, or make it go bad from how much she stank of piss and shit. Even though they’d made her look after the animals. Really, they were just fucking themselves over putting her there. So what if she’d started washing every day since she’d first started there, what if she fucked up? What if there really was something wrong with her and she cursed their food? Then what?

Shit, that could actually happen. Shinobi village meant shinobi shit everywhere, and magic was real and monsters were too and she was so, so fucked.

Akimichi-san told her to wash her hands and brought her to the counters. Didn't order her to do the dirty dishes. There were people for that already. Didn't tell her to carry things in or out of the kitchen. He did that himself. No, he put her at the counters where all the food was like he expected her to help with them.

Why couldn’t people just look into her head so she didn’t have to say shit out loud? She didn’t want to say it! She didn’t want to get fired for cursing food and making it go bad! Dammit!

(They didn't actually touch the food. They wore ‘gloves’. Thin, stretchy things like animal intestines but not slippery.

“…Do…do y’all have to wear these to cook?”

“I reckon most people don't. Gloves aren't a requirement for cooking, mostly, especially if it's just for yourself. But this is a hospital, so. Gotta watch out for germs, you know?”

What the fuck did that mean.)

But he didn't make her actually do things with the food…mostly, on that first day. Just hold stuff—cup or bowl or plate—while he talked about what he was doing.

There didn’t seem a point to it when most of what he said left her by the end of the day. But the next day and the ones after he kept saying things and…and they sounded familiar.

"You'll want to add the onions before adding garlic, since garlic burns easily. We reduce the flame like this, and give them just enough time to cook before adding vegetables next."

"You can use the back of your hand to check if a vessel is hot. Just hover it near, don’t touch, and if you can feel some heat even from here then it’s hot."

"You fold your fingers before using a knife, understood? No need to make the slices perfect, but don’t rush yourself either. Now you try, Tsuki-chan.”

And that was another thing. And as soon as he started calling her that, other people did too and soon everyone she had to talk to called her Tsuki-chan.

“Tsuki” meant “moon”. It was a word used alongside women with moon pale skin and hair as black and smooth as midnight. The ones who were so beautiful that there were songs and stories made for them. Kaya wasn’t that. Her skin was brown and covered in spots from too much sun and her hair was brown like a pile of shit. Just a few months back one of the travellers had fleas and while everyone was shearing themselves like sheep they’d really had to hack at the rough, matted thing on her head just to get to the scalp. It’d grown a little since then. Still fuzzy. Still shitty.

As far as she knew, the only reason they’d ever called her Kaya was because it’s easy to yell. Other names for her were idiot, ugly, bitch, and whore. They even combined things with the names, like “lazy idiot”, “ugly bitch”, “useless whore”, or if they really felt like it, pile them up like, “You shitstained, good for nothing, stupid, pigheaded, ungrateful—”.

None of them at the hospital called her that. Or even seemed to use those words. And “Tsuki-chan” was better than if they’d called her “Kaya-chan” (any of those other names were better than if they call her that like some fucking toddler) but it still felt wrong and she couldn’t say shit about it because they were older than her and she was just the runt they gave chores to.

No one talked to her or treated her like what she was used to, like how she deserved after what she'd done, and it felt wrong.

But she hadn’t cursed the food yet. No one’d gotten sick from what she’d touched. No one yelled at her or hit her neither, no matter how much she didn’t know and how bad she fucked up. Whether she liked it or not, whether she wanted it or not, she actually learned some things after a week.

And…she wanted to cook.

She didn’t have to. Just like Arakawa-sensei said, the employee card let her eat in the kitchen. Whatever time she came there, however many meals it was, no one stopped her. But her salary had come that week. And she hadn’t cursed the food she’d touched, and she’d learned a few things. And it'd been more than a week since she'd eaten ramen and no one was making it at the clinic so…she wanted to try.

She still couldn’t read for shit. But she told the shopkeeper what she was going to do and he showed her some things she could use. So now she had them and she also had a pot and a pan and chopsticks and a knife at home, and she wanted to try.

Those bags should've been easy to carry. They were not. Her arms shook up the stairs. A few months back she'd been carrying buckets of water on her shoulders every other morning so why suddenly…?? And were the bags made of the same shit as gloves because they were thin.

The second she reached her floor one of the bags split and Kaya cursed bloody murder at it. She fucking knew it. She fucking knew it had to go wrong somehow. And after that entire day of work and then the shopping and all those stairs and…the only thing she could do was sit on her heels and stare at it. At the mess she’d just made.

…If she’d had one of them thickass potato sacks this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe that's what she needed to buy instead of wasting her time on this.

It was right then that the door at the end of the corridor opened. Out popped a little boy. His hair looked like butter. He stared at the onion at his feet, at the rest of the shit scattered about, until his eyes—what the fuck was wrong with those eyes—landed on her.

“Who are you?”

Chapter Text

Before Kaya could speak, the little boy ran over to her.

“What’s your name?!” he half-asked, half-shouted, as he crouched on the floor too.

Kaya blinked once. Twice. The yellow hair didn’t go away. Those blue eyes—how was that natural? Was there other people who had blue eyes too?—stared big and wide at her.

“…Tsukauchi Kaya.”

“My name’s Uzumaki Naruto nicetameetchalet’sbefriends!!” he gasped. He barely sucked in a breath before he added, “Do you need help? I’ll help you, dattebayo!”

In the next second he jumped up and ran around the floor picking up her food. Kaya sat there open mouthed until he bounced back to her and dumped his armful on her lap, making her yelp. She had just enough time to stuff them back into the torn bag in a way that wouldn’t make them spill again (they BETTER fucking not) before Naruto ran back with the rest of the shi—with the rest of the things.

Right. She had to talk nicer in front of a kid. Even if it was trying to hold her leg and jump up and down at the same time.

"Kaya-nee! Kaya-nee! Can we play? Let's go play! Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease—"

"I gotta..I have to make dinner—"

"You can make it at my house! Come on come on come on—"

His height meant his arms reached her back but his face reached her ass—butt, and putting his entire body into pushing her meant she’d have to fall to the ground or move.

The rule was: don’t mess with kids. They do stupid shit, and their stupid shit gets both of you in trouble. It was never worth it. Besides, most kids smelled her stink before they saw her so they left her alone (or laughed at her), and if they didn’t then they got bored with her ignoring them. This one didn’t let her talk. What did he even expect her to play with him? Didn’t he see that she was hungry and tired or did those eyes make him blind, too?

Kaya could tell him no but then what would he do? She couldn’t stick her feet to the ground either and her arms were full. The boy’s pushing had her standing in front of the door he’d come out of before she could decide either way. He bumped past her and ran inside, leaving her blinking at the dimness.

And the smell. It was bad. It was…also not the worst she’d smelled either. She’d literally been covered in worse. But it sure smelled a hell of a lot like what happened to a rain-soaked cart full of sweaty, tired people and no space to even scratch yourself. Stepping into the genkan made her sandals crunch— crunch. What was—oh shit what did she just break??

…A bag. Just a bag. So, not broken, just weird, shiny, and full of crumbs or some such spilling out of it. The whole genkan and corridor was filled with a bunch of shit that belonged in the garbage.

Naruto’s yellow head popped out of a room on the left to glare at her. “Kaya- nee. The kitchen's over here, hurry up!"

She really should. Her arms had started shaking again. Kaya shuffled into the kitchen and— holy fuck that’s so many boxes.

Sort of? Bowls? Something?? The ‘boxes’ were small, yellow things with writing all over them dumped all over the counters and a few on the floor. Did the sink even work? Would the stove turn on? Was there a cooking pot or knife or chopsticks anywhere?

Oh, for the love of—

This… none of this was her fucking business. This kid was none of her business. If this was how he wanted to live—she used to sleep outside and even she didn’t treat her apartment like this! Did this brat know what a broom was?! Did he know how good he had it?! What the fuck!

"Kaya-nee! I can carry that! Gimme!"

Kaya ignored his grubby hands to stare at him. Dirty face, old clothes, bare feet, smelly—he looked as broke as a street rat. So fucking what. Lots of folks were poor, especially out in the country, but that didn’t stop them any from keeping them and their shit clean when they actually owned shit to keep clean! She didn’t! She’d never had none! Ever! And this ungrateful little—!

“What are you gonna make? Are you making ramen?” The stupid welp smiled real big at that. “I love ramen! I love it, love it, love it! Do you like ramen?”

The only thing that stopped Kaya from smacking him was her arms shaking so bad she had to stumble to the counter and let her bags fall on it, which teetered a stack of those cup things in her direction…but didn’t fall. But from out of one of them flew a fat little fly.

A full body shiver went up Kaya’s back and suddenly it was too much, the smell was too much, everything was too much, it was all so fucking nasty—

A step back. Hands clapped over her mouth. Her stomach squeezed once, twice…

“I,” Kaya swallowed. Breathed through her fingers. “I am going to clean.”

Ignoring the brat, who whined something stupid, Kaya turned on her heel and left. 

She came back with a broom, a mop, and a bucket with the bleach bottle in it. And then she stood, staring at the kitchen, at the mess, at the rest of the apartment.

Did she really have it in her to clean every single thing? When she was hungry and tired and just wanted to try something new by herself but here she is dealing with the mess of a boy who couldn’t find the decency to take care of the things he was lucky to have that she’d never had and it wasn’t fair and the sun was already down and she was still hungry and tired and angry and she didn’t want to.

…Kaya needed food and she needed to make it. But for that, the kitchen had to smell less bad.

“ Nee, are you going to clean now? Can I help? I’ll make it go super fast! What do I do?”

“…You get those things off the counter. Put them in the trash.”

“Okay!”

While he did that, Kaya tested the stove. It worked, thank fuck. She tested the sink. Also worked, and some of the smell was coming from there. So Kaya poured bleach into the drain and then to the rest of the sink, waited a few seconds, and rinsed it—or tried to. It was hard to do when she didn’t have a scrub brush and didn’t want to touch the strong smelling poison with her hands. Once the sink was mostly rinsed, Kaya filled her bucket with a cap-full of bleach and more water.

By then the kid had taken the cups from the middle counter so she took a look at it, wrinkled her nose at the weird stains, and moved her bags to the table outside the kitchen. The mop and the broom she’d brought with her went back to her apartment.

“What do I do now?” the boy…what was his name again? Na…Nami? Namu? Fuck’s sake. Nevermind. It didn’t matter. For now, he’d be Na-kun. Na-kun wiggled from foot to foot, staring up at her.

“D’you have an old cloth you don’t mind throwing away?”

“I’ll check!”

He came back with an armful of smelly clothes with holes in them. Kaya chose one, dipped it in the bleach bucket, and wiped the counters. She had to do this a bunch of times, until the counters smelled more clean than not and her cleaning water looked more brown.

Kaya left the rag outside and emptied the bucket into the sink. Then she went back to her apartment to get what she needed and finally got to work.

Though she still kept her sandals on.

Na-kun placed two cup-box-things with the writing on them next to her ingredients. Unlike the ones that’d been stacked on the counter earlier, these ones had some kind of shiny paper covering their tops. Kaya glared at them. “What’s that.”

“Ramen.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Is too!”

“Well, I’m not making that.”

“You’re not making ramen?!”

“No, I am making ramen, I’m just not gonna use that.”

Since he wanted to be helpful so bad, Kaya ordered him to deal with the trash in the corridor. Then she set up a pot of water for boiling and a pan with some oil for heating.

Next came the vegetables. Which wasn’t very many—just onion and ginger. They needed to be chopped up before they could go in the pan. As soon as they hit the oil, they sputtered and popped so bad that drops flew out and hit Kaya’s arm even as she backed away with a yell.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” The boy jumped back into the kitchen and just barely avoided slamming into her and keeling them both over.

“Nothing! Just the pan.” Kaya waved away the sudden puff of smoke. She scooted back to the pan and lowered the flame. The veggies weren’t hurt too bad. Probably just the high heat that’d made them act up. By the time she turned around, the boy was still there. “It’s okay! Nothing happened, shoo!”

She sent him to search for a broom. She needed to get this as right as she could. The things the shop keeper man had given her had used up most of her salary, so she needed to make the most of them. Taking a lesson from the pan, she lowered the boiling water in the pot to a simmer and added the noodles. That taken care of, Kaya stirred the onions and ginger around until they looked cooked and then held the soy sauce over the pan with a prayer. Please, please don’t splash. The shop keeper had said it was special garlic flavored soy sauce. She'd paid her own money for that. It didn’t deserve to be wasted, right? Right?

The soy sauce went in with a low sizzle. Thank god. Kaya put some dashi powder in. Tried to. Had to figure out how to unwrap it first, then figure out how the lid worked. She also opened a really pretty looking bottle of rice wine vinegar that’d been on sale and added in a capful—shit. That was…a little more than a cupful. Well. Might as well add water to it and hope the flavor didn’t end up too bad.

The box of stock had a picture of a bowl of noodles on its cover, which the shop keeper had let her know meant it’d be just right for her ramen. The stock ended up coming in little, even sized chunks, and since there’d be two people eating Kaya added in two.

The pot needed stirring for the stock cubes to melt. While waiting for that, and for the whole thing to get to a boil, it finally dawned on her that kids have parents.

…They did normally have parents, right? Yeah, they did. It’s just that growing up without any had made it easy to forget. And the boy looked and smelled like he’d fit right in on the streets and street rats didn’t have parents either.

Then again, aside from fucking and making kids, what did parents do exactly? Have a house. One they’d want to keep clean, including their kid. Probably. Feed the kid…maybe? Have a job? Something? What was the point of a parent?

Whatever. Kaya could sort that out later. The pot had reached a boil and it was time to put it all together.

First came the broth she’d made. Next came the noodles. Then came the really nice parts: one of them a cut of seasoned, precooked meat that was the size of her fist and cost half of what she’d spent, while the other was a small jar of fermented eggs, which had also cost a lot, but the shop keeper had promised it’d be worth it. These two things needed to be cut into thick slices and went on top of the noodles. Just like in the pictures.

Kaya had just put the bowls down when Na-kun snatched an egg from one of the bowls. “Oi!”

“Tasty!” he hopped from foot to foot.

“Will you sit down and eat it properly?”

“Yeah!” Kaya snatched the other bowl away before he could get it. He grabbed a slice of meat with his bare hands and gobbled it. “It tastes really super good, dattebayo!”

“You didn’t even try the noodles.”

Instead of bothering with chopsticks, Naruto slurped from the bowl. He lowered the bowl, smacked his lips, and made a face. “…This tastes different from ramen."

Kaya’s mouth flopped open. How dare he! “What do you mean it tastes different?”

“I don’t know, it just does,” he shrugged, as if he wasn’t close to getting smacked this time around. Then he grabbed the rest of the egg and meat and ran off giggling.

Fucking ungrateful— she’ll show him ‘different’! She’d done her goddamn best, what right did he think he had to say that about her when she…

…oh. It did taste different. Kind of…sour and boring. Except for the meat and egg, which tasted amazing. It’s like they’d sucked all the flavor out. Even the noodles had something weird about them, making them taste even more flavorless than the broth.

Overall, it wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever had. But it also wasn’t really ramen. Well, shit.

Na-kun came running back to her. “Hey, hey, hey, I have a question.”

“My ramen tastes bad.” Kaya drooped. She’d still eat it, because she’d spent her money on it, but she’d fucked it up somehow and that’d never change.

“Not bad, just weird.”

“Liar. That just means it’s bad.”

“I’m not!” The boy puffed up his little chest. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto and I never lie about ramen, dattebayo!” He flapped his hand. “Anyways—I wanted to ask! Can you help me?”

Kaya grunted, sulkily eating her noodles.

“Okay, good. I need you to do homework.”

Kaya paused, swallowed her mouthful, and asked, “What’s that?”

“It’s homework, duh. You know how to do it, right?”

“…I don’t know?”

Naruto rolled her eyes. “You’re a grown up, and grown ups know how to do it, so you have to help me. Come on! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go—!”

Naruto didn’t shut up until she got up. He grabbed her hand and dragged her around the table, to the front room where another low table was. She was made to sit—she still had her straw shoes on—while he ran away.

He came back with an armful of books and dumped them on the table. “Here! Look at this!”

Kaya looked at them. She looked…and stared.

Chapter Text

In Kaya's short life, she could count on one hand how many times she’d seen shit like glass and paper, and all of those times had been in the one month she’d travelled. As far as she knew, those were the kind of things only rich people owned.

Well joke’s on her because here she sat in front of more paper than a dirty orphan like Naruto should've ever seen outside of the village in his tiny life.

And what a fucking mess it was. They fell like leaves all over each other. And on top of that Naruto opened a book covered in wriggly drawings and black smudges.

“What is this.”

“School stuff, duh. I already told you,” Naruto huffed, because what he knew in his head was what everyone was supposed to know, probably. Little shithead. He yanked out three sheets of paper that looked a bit fresher than the rest. “Here’s my homework. Help me do it.”

By that point Kaya’d had to deal with so much paper that she’d started to be a little less impressed by it and a little (a lot) more wanting to stab her eyes out before she had to deal with it. And when she’s not even getting paid? Really? “…I don’t think I can do that.”

“Kaya-nee, you’re not looking!” he flapped the papers at her.

Kaya took them just so he’d stop doing that. The first two had words all over them. The third had…numbers that were weird. They were in rows that went down the page, with gaps in between them. The fact that she could even understand that much by then…which meant the first two sheets were impossible. She put them down.

On the third sheet were twelve rows of…ohh those were numbers. Oh wow, she knew those. The numbers were printed big. Each row had a space somewhere in it. Like the second one: 

     1. 14, 21, _ , 35

Kaya repeated the numbers under her breath. The only row that wasn't numbers was the one at the very top. "...What’s this at the top say, Naruto-kun?"

Naruto snatched the paper back. "Find the missing numbers," he read outloud. Then his cheeks puffed out, which looked kind of stupid. "But it's really hard. And boring and long and I don’t like it."

Kaya pushed some trash away (but it wasn't trash, it was paper, paper that's expensive and treasured and important, and he was treating it like shit-) to clear a space on the table and take back the numbers paper to smooth it out. Kaya hunted down a pencil and wrote her own row of numbers on the side, with tally marks next to them so she'd know what they were. She read the printed rows out loud.

The one thing that was the same about them was that the numbers got bigger. No matter what number it started at, the ones at the end were always the biggest. Most of the questions had spaces in the middle of front, but a few had space at the end, like the seventh one:

     7. 5, 10, 15, _ 

…They reminded her of something. One, two, three, four, five. Five for five fingers. One five for one hand, ten fingers for two hands. And the next five for five toes on one of her feet, which meant that next—

Kaya dived for the trash pile. She dug out a wrinkled sheet and a pencil. On the right side of the page went numbers starting at one. “Look at this—” She pointed to five. “Five. Then one, two, three, four, five—” She pointed at ten. “Ten. Then one, two, three, four, five—” Her finger landed on the next number. “Fifteen. Each number is five apart. So the next number is five apart, which is—”

“Twenty!” Naruto pointed too. “Yay! We did it!”

And if that question was like that, then what if the others were also like that? They had different numbers, but if those different numbers were in the spaces between…?

Naruto wiggled next to her. “Okay, we did that one. But what ‘bout the other ones?"

“Gimme a minute, I gotta…”

Kaya picked another question, one with the missing number also at the end. This one was for 8. Eight, and then after eight was sixteen. And after sixteen was…?

Uhhh…

Why did that have to be so hard to do in her head, she needed to—where was that pencil—?

Kaya flipped to the back of the sheet. The thing was, numbers sucked. Trying to count numbers in her head sucked. If she did that for all of them, she'd be stuck all night. But if every question was like that five one, then what she needed to do was follow the rules of the five one, but do that for the rest of them. Start with one, then with two, and then…

"Oi, I know that! That's the multiply table!"

"…The what."

"Yeah! I'm gonna try!" He ripped the paper and pencil away and set to work.

Five minutes later, he threw down the pencil. "I don't know how!"

Motherfucker, this idiot. And Kaya thought she was stupid. Digging out another loose sheet—this one with a big chunk taken out of a corner—she began another set of rows. She made each one up to ten, counting out loud and using the back of the sheet to check if it was right or not. In the end, she was left with ten rows that all ended in a corner at one hundred. (She’d forgotten the kanji for hundred until Naruto showed her.)

“My sensei does that up to twelve."

"Well for this one I think we'll be fine with ten."

They were not fine with ten. But by then Kaya knew the rules and just used the back of the multiply sheet to add or subtract the spaces in the new numbers. This question was so twisty. Like standing upside down to look at the same tree, or staring at something from underwater. This was so much more different than just learning to write numbers. This was being able to feel her brain figure out a new way to think.

Was that what this ‘homework’ thing was about? Was that what they were doing in those schools? How could Naruto ever find this boring of all things?? It felt freaky as hell! It was changing her thoughts! It was giving her new thoughts! Holy shit!

And all that from just twelve rows of numbers. Just a page with scratch on it. That…was that it? But they were done so soon? Shouldn’t there be more? She could do more. But the other ones had kanji on them. She couldn’t read kanji so she couldn’t do them. But if she could…

Kaya gave the numbers page a long, hard look. She checked over her answers one more time and, finally, nodded. "Done."

"YAY!” Naruto cheered. “We did it!”

“…No. I did it.”

“But it’s my homework and you helped, so we did it.”

“Who’s the one holding the pencil, huh? Not you. I wrote it so I did it.”

“So what?”

“So,” Kaya held out her hand, “give me something back.”

Naruto stuck his tongue out. “I got nothin’! I don’t even got money, dattebayo!”

“I don’t want your money. I already have my own.”

“Then what d’you even want?”

“I want…” Kaya turned back to the table. “…Give me your oldest book. Whichever ones were there when you first started reading. I want that.”

“Ehhh? But that’ll take forever! I don’t know where that is, and why do—”

For someone who couldn’t find the energy to do one page of homework, Naruto sure had a lot of it to explain why there was no way for him to hunt down a single book. But for one thing, it wasn’t Kaya’s fault he kept his school things in such a bad state, and for another, either he gave her something back or she’d never do his homework or make him dinner or visit his place or be his friend ever again not even if he asked.

So Naruto went looking and Kaya stumbled back to her shopping bag and got out a plum to eat. Apparently being pregnant meant she was supposed to eat more, which made sense if all of it was going into making a new person inside of her. But it still felt like bullshit on bullshit that she’d already eaten dinner but now it was dark out and suddenly she needed to eat again. She’d been getting hungrier that entire week. So what if the boss lady said she could take home clinic food? At the rate she was going she’d wake up in the middle of the night hungry, and then what? She’d need to keep something at home. The only reason she’d gone with plums was because she didn’t need to read a label to know what they were. It still felt wrong, when shit’s probably expensive and she didn’t want to spend that kind of money on food that’d make her blow up like a cow when she was already ugly enough.

If it ain’t fat and sweets, it should be okay but…she’d never had a plum before. Or a fruit. That’s for other people. Not her. She shouldn’t be eating them.

That didn’t mean she just gave one up to Naruto when he asked, though. “I’m hungry so I’m eating it. What about you?”

“I’m gonna be a ninja and I’m growing, so I need it. Gimme!”

“Where’s that book, then?”

Naruto didn’t just bring her one. He handed over four. They were still the oldest, grubbiest of the lot, so Kaya gave him a plum. But instead of eating it, he sat wiggling next to her. “What?”

“…So we’re still friends?” When she didn’t talk immediately, he went on. “You promised if you got a book then you’d do homework with me and make us dinner and visit my place and be friends with me, so…”

She’d promised no such thing. She’d said she wouldn’t if he didn’t, not that she would if he did. But…he did find a book. And she wasn’t in a mood to just fuck off back to her place when they lived next door and there was the very real chance he’d run into her again. She’d rather deal with this than that. So she sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

“Yatta! Thank you!” Naruto threw himself at her, plum still not eaten. His arms were so thin they barely reached around her shoulders. His fuzzy hair itched her cheek. It smelled a bit like old milk.

Kaya let it stand for a minute but told him she really needed to go back and sleep early for work. She made it to her place with her bags and new-old books still with her.

…Oh wow, she had books. Books. They were old, but for her they were new. She could grab them whenever with no one to jump out and start beating the shit out of her for it. She could put them wherever without someone about to take them or break them. She didn’t have to earn them. They were hers.

And more than that, more than the books and things being hers, there was one more thing she had now. A boy next door who went to school. A boy who wanted her to come back and he’d just let her do his homework and let her read his books. And if she could do that, if she could learn to read them, then…then…

What if she could do it?

If she could learn to read, then what else could she do?

Even if it came from a kid wanting to be her friend. He wasn’t actually her friend. She didn’t trust him or like him or want to be with a loud, smelly brat like him. But if he kept thinking they were friends then all she had to do was shut her trap and she’d get to keep coming over to do his homework and read his books. How else would she get to have that same feeling again? Of watching her thinking and the way she thought change? There was no other way she’d get to have that again. She wanted to have that again. She wanted to do that again. There was nowhere else to go and no one else to ask. It had to be him.

She was basically using Naruto to get what she wanted. That wasn’t something a good person would do. But if it helps him in the end, and if it helps her too, then…was it so bad?

If it turns out okay, then what if it didn’t matter how she gets there?

Chapter Text

A few days later and Kaya was ready to quit.

The books were useless. They had whole sections torn out, if they weren’t blurry, dirty, or scribbled on all over. Naruto’s notes were just the same, but even worse because he just didn’t even write down most of the things. At all. Asking him to read out loud to her since she couldn’t do so herself only showed her that Naruto hated reading. He got bored and distracted so easily and she didn’t know what to do.

Also, she’d been making her “not-ramen” noodles every single day because those were the only ingredients she’d gotten from the store and even if there was money enough left over to buy other stuff what would she even make?

“Why's your face like that?”

Kaya stabbed the cloth extra hard. They'd been starting her on sewing lessons as of late. The lessons were…going. "My face ‘s always like this."

"That's not what I mean," said Sayaka, one of the front desk ladies, sitting next to her. The only front desk lady she knew the name of.

Kaya would’ve called her by her family name but she didn’t remember it and it was all that woman's fault. In one of the first few days she'd introduced herself and two others as Sayaka, Sayuri, and Sango. Sa-Sa-Sa. Easy to remember. But that’s the only thing that stuck in Kaya’s head and now she couldn't get it out without embarrassing herself.

(They all wore name tags. And she couldn't read them.)

Kaya dealed with it by sticking "onee-san" at the end (and in Sango's case, "obaa-san”) and hoped she'd get over the awkward familiarity soon.

On the couch, Sayuri—the one who’d tried to make Kaya do the accounts that one time—looked up from her clipboard. "You might as well just say it. Once Saya-chan catches onto other people's problems, she doesn't let go...despite other things."

Sayaka stuck her tongue out at her. ”Just ‘cause you wouldn’t spook by the next coming of the Sage—”

“Maa, maa, you two,” Sango didn’t even turn from her desk or her papers. She was the boss lady of the break room. She was Kaya’s boss lady, Kaya finally learnt. She wasn’t so stupid that she thought Sango was the one actually in charge—there was probably some man who was—but whatever she did was important…probably. Kaya wouldn’t know. “Save your bickering, the both of you. Tsuki-chan can share if she wants, but she doesn’t have to.”

She looked up to catch Kaya’s eye. “Nonetheless, you just remember that we will be happy to listen if you ever need someone to hear you, alright?”

At that point, Kaya was ready to try it. She hadn’t done a single thing by herself. But what to say…

“…There’s this little boy...”

“Oh?” Sayaka tilted her head, looking mildly surprised.

“…I’m trying to help him with school, but I don’t know how to.”

“What do you mean?”

Kaya frowned at her cloth, stabbing it again. “Well, he’d asked me for help, but now it’s…it’s like he just expects me to do it for him, and—what I mean is—if I ask him to try doing something, he tries, he really does, but then he gets bored a second later and he throws it down and tells me to do it, but I can’t, and he keeps forgetting that no matter how many times I tell him. He forgets so many things, like his head has a leak in it, and all he does is say “boring! boring!” at me and he can’t sit and he can’t focus and he just—flaps around, and I don’t know why …”

For some weird reason, Sayaka’s eyebrows had been going up and up, “Flaps around, like…?”

Kaya sent her a flat stare. “Yesterday when I told him to read, he put his shirt in his mouth and did this with his arms.” Kaya put her own shirt in her mouth, stuck her arms out both ways, and flapped her hands.^[1]

Sayaka burst out cackling like a creepy ghost and nearly fell over. “Ha! Sounds just like me as a kid!”

Kaya stopped doing it, and also stopped herself from hiding her face in her shirt. “Really?”

“Yes, really! I used to be a menace—”

“So you’re saying you’re not one now,” said Sayuri, but Sayaka didn’t seem to notice or hear her.

“—but then I went to live with my grandmother and she knocked it right out of me—man, I wish you could’ve met her. She’s so strict. I mean, I respect her a lot, but she didn’t let me get away with anything. I remember that first day, she made me stand against the wall for five whole minutes just so I wouldn’t go tearing around her shop and crack my head open—hey, hey, quick question,” Sayaka bounced where she sat, “does your boy do this thing where he talks really fast? Mashes his words up? When he reads, does his eyes skip over words and stuff?”

Did he do that? “...Maybe? I know he doesn’t like reading, he forgets things a lot, and he can’t pay attention.”

“…I know it’s too early for me to say but, oh wow. I used to be like that too. Maybe it’s not the same, maybe it is, but I want to meet him sometime. Can I? I feel like we’d share a lot in common.”

She sounded so happy about that that it made Kaya droop. Why couldn’t Sayaka be the one helping Naruto? At least both of them could understand each other better. It was like god just wanted to keep handing her problems she couldn’t fix, cooking and reading and Naruto and on and on and on…

Sango’s nails tapped her desk. They looked up at her. “Whether he is or isn’t, I think what Tsuki-chan needs is some advice. Do you remember what helped you, Sayaka?”

“My grandmother, of course. And she didn’t do it by smacking it into me or something like that—people always seem to think that the way to deal with a rowdy kid who acts like that is to beat it or scare it out of them but she didn’t do that. Like she was a really strict lady, but I really do respect her for helping me how no one else did. It wasn’t just the running around everywhere she handled, either. I remember I used to talk like how I’d said earlier. Really fast, and I’d only open my mouth halfway, and my words would all slur together. She made me practice talking clearly so that people would actually understand me. And she also made sure I’d take care of myself, like remembering to eat, or doing my chores, and being able to complete important things I’d started—it’s really frustrating, when you have projects that are important to you but you keep abandoning them and-”

“Saya-chan, tips. Give examples, please. What exactly did she do?” Sayuri interrupted.

“—Oh, right, okay. Uhh…I think the thing she did was make me slow down? She’d make me stand or sit still when I got too jumpy. If I moved even a little in five minutes, she’d add another minute. Or she’d put me in the backyard and I had to stay put there until I couldn’t stand it. I had to practice reading out loud. And I’d write down what she wanted me to remember again and again, until I could remember it and I got a lot of practice at writing things down. If I spoke too fast, then she’d make me repeat it from the beginning extra slow just so I’d really focus on the words. There were these games she’d play, like with a place in the house, she’d tell me there was an imaginary string tying me to that single place that’d stay until I completed all the chores surrounding it—like my room, for example. And what else…”

Kaya frowned as she listened to her. “...That’s just a lot of practice, then? I need to make him practice slowing down?”

“Well, yes, basically. It’ll probably need a lot more time than other kids, but that doesn’t mean he can’t ever do it. If he has to stay put, then he needs to practice it. If he needs to read, he needs to practice it. It’s about building his focus from zero, and he can do it. He just needs to keep trying until he does.”

Sayuri hummed. “What you practice is what you excel in.”

“And when you don’t underestimate a kid just because other people decide it’s impossible,” Sayaka added.

The longer Kaya thought about it, the more it sunk in that what they said…it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to be really, really hard, actually. Even for her, reading was hard, but what was worse was that Naruto didn’t even want to do it. He hated reading. He hated sitting still. Sometimes he’d try for a minute to prove that he can, but only for a minute, and then it was back to whining. The only thing Naruto really wanted to do was be a strong shinobi, but he just said that. He didn’t even know how to be that yet. But if she gave up now then she’d never read. As it was, how could she read…

“…I want to try, but his books are trash. They’re dirty, and pages’re missing, and he doesn’t take good notes in class, either.”

“Oh, I know a guy.”

Kaya’s head whipped up. Sayuri shrugged, like Kaya wasn’t staring wide-eyed at her. “Or at least, I know a guy who knows a guy. I could ask tomorrow.”

Sayaka dropped her needle and clapped. “I know! We can go get the books together! Can we?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.”

“Let’s do it tomorrow, Tsuki-chan, after your appointment. We can make a day of it.”

“Bright and early it is, then.”

Kaya’s mouth flopped open. Did they just—and then they—

…Was this…did this mean she’d get a new book? Books? Just like that?

From the desk, Sango’s files went back to shuffling. “Well, that solves that. Don’t overdo it and wear her out, you two.”

“Okaaay.”

“Got it, boss.”

“…Um…are you…?”

Sayaka flapped her hand at her. “It’s fine! It’ll be fun, don’t worry.”

Kaya turned to Sayuri. Sayuri grinned at her. “I’m the one who offered. Free books for you, free socializing for me.”

Kaya could only bow her head and thank them. They waved off her thanks like it was nothing, and the talk moved on. But for Kaya it was not nothing. It was her getting books. Precious, treasured books. For free. It was getting the chance to read, a real one this time. And—did they know it was for her? Did they find out? What would they expect her to do? If it wasn’t money, then what did they want?

She needed to find out. She’d need to prove to them that they didn’t help her for nothing and make it up to them…

She stood mulling over her thoughts and trying not to let nerves about the next day get to her.

Akimichi-san noticed. “What are you thinking about?”

‘I’ve taken on a debt for an ungrateful brat and I don’t know how to fix it,’ didn’t sound like a thing to say out loud. Ignoring the weird twisting in her gut, Kaya ducked her head. “…It’s just that I’ve been making the same thing for dinner all week and I was wondering what to do. I can’t buy new stuff, so it’s just what I have left over, and…” She sighed.

“Ahh, I see, I see. Do you have any old rice?”

Rice, along with miso soup, was a simple and straightforward affair. She’d been having it every day for breakfast. “Yeah.”

“And do you have some eggs and condiments—I mean…ketchup, soy sauce, that kind of thing? You do? Then I know something. Hold that wok steady, it’s not going to bite. We’ll finish this and I’ll tell you.”

Kaya tried to do it, and tried to ignore the way he was chopping garlic and ginger so fast the knife blurred.

The cooking that followed felt both like it took a long time but also no time. She was getting a little better at following the steps, but only a little, so she didn’t really remember most of what happened except for getting to eat a hot bowl of the results after. While they ate, Akimichi-san gave her the recipe to try out herself. He also said it was part of a different recipe.

“But that's something for another day,” he added, smiling at her. What he meant by that was none of her business when she was busy putting food in her face.

The recipe went like this: stir fry onions, followed by whatever old produce she had left over, finely chopped. She used cabbage, carrot, and a big, mild pepper that had started to wrinkle. As that cooked, she cracked two eggs in a bowl and mixed them with milk, salt, and pepper, which she then poured into the pot, in the space cleared by pushing the half cooked vegetables to the edge and adding more oil (he’d said butter, but she couldn’t find leftover butter, so it’d have to be oil).

This needed lots and lots of mixing over the high heat or else it’d stick or turn out bad. When the eggs was almost cooked, the vegetables were scooted back in and then the cold, leftover rice dumped on top of that. No mixing for this part; she had to “cut” the cold rice with the big mixing spoon and make it into little chunks. Mixing it would mash them and she wasn’t supposed to do that.

The seasoning was a spoon of salt and pepper each, a big squeeze of ketchup, and finally a splash of soy sauce added from the edge of the pot and only mixed in a little bit. ‘For a nice smell’, he’d said, but Kaya wouldn’t know. Eh, whatever. In it went.

In her head, Kaya named the dish ‘Leftover Ketchup Rice’.

“That smells good!” Naruto’s voice echoed with the door slamming shut. He skidded into the kitchen and stopped in his tracks. “…That’s not ramen.”

“It’s ketchup rice.”

“Why didn’t you make ramen?”

“Because I made this. Didn’t you say it smells good?”

Naruto made a big face at it. But he didn’t say no, and when Kaya scooped out a bowl for him, he stuffed his face with it.

Naruto didn’t want to do homework after. Kaya didn’t either. What was the point of using his trashed books when she’d be getting new ones soon? But at least she sat at the desk while he flipped and flopped the entire time. She’d have just kept ignoring him if his heel didn’t decide to smack into her chin.

“Enough! I’ve had enough, you—!”

Kaya grabbed the idiot and squeezed him in her lap, his back to her front, even as he tried to wiggle out. “Oi! Lemme go!”

“You are going to sit for five minutes!” Kaya snapped.

“No!”

“Shut up!” Her arms locked over his, so that they stayed crossed over his chest. Like that, he could’ve bit her if he wanted to, but he didn’t. “Just shut up! You wanna be a ninja so bad but you can’t even sit a minute! You don’t wanna read, you don’t wanna sit, you don’t wanna try! Why can’t you just do it?!”

“It’s boring!”

“So what? Who’ll make you a ninja if you can’t even sit for five minutes, hah?! You ever heard of a ninja who can’t do that?”

The wiggling stopped for a second. Kaya knocked her forehead into his hair. “I know it’s boring but you have to try. You’re going to learn this. You can learn this. You can get better at reading, you can get better at school, and you will learn, and both of us will do it. Okay? So just…just try.”

As long as you try, you keep going. You can be different, and I can be different, and we’ll both be better. I’m going to be better. I’m not what they think of me. I don’t want to be.

We will learn. We will do it.

Chapter Text

Kaya's second check up happened on a day when the skies dropped more rain than she’d ever seen in her short life.

It was also one where Arakawa-sensei was more hands-on than she’d been before. For this, she did something with her palms on Kaya's bare stomach that had them warm and glowing in a way that could be felt all the way to the back of her spine. Sensei said it was an “exploratory” check in, as well as “giving you and your baby's chakras a little bit of additional stability,” which…okay. Whatever that meant.

Sensei tried to explain, something something chakra’s a life force that exists in all living things, but her voice kept going on and on, and the rain drummed on and on outside, and Kaya sat there trying to not fall asleep while Arakawa-sensei frowned at her for some reason.

“…—ear, Tsuki-chan?”

Kaya jolted at the snap of the fingers near her ear.

Arakawa-sensei smiled a bit. “I said, do you have a little trouble hearing in your left ear?”

Kaya opened her mouth, paused, and froze from the memory that problem belonged to. She …really didn’t want to remember that. Ever. But then why did her doctor…?

“It’s just that while I’d been doing a full body scan, I noticed an old wound there. If you’d allow me, I could fix it.”

That.

That sounded terrifying.

Because what if it hurt? Or what if it didn’t work at all, and she wasted Sensei’s time? Worse, what if it took too long and she’d be late to meet Sayaka and Sayuri and then they wouldn’t get the books and all those plans ruined—

Before she could think more, Arakawa-sensei reached out a glowing hand and pressed it over Kaya’s ear. An immediate, cooling feeling wrapped the left side of her head, followed by the loudest sounds she’d heard in it in years. It…it didn’t feel painful. But it sounded like her ear was being cleared by the world’s longest stick.

The crunching noises slowly stopped. The hand left. It was like that time she’d gone in the river and woken up again.

But this wasn’t that. This was the other end of that. It was so different that Kaya started to cry. Her ear worked fine like it hadn’t in years. Sensei had fixed her ear—just like that! She’d used magic on her to fix her ear. Kaya suddenly wanted to jump up and hug her. But Arakawa-sensei just patted her head and gave her tissues before she left, while Kaya sat there and cried.

When she’d calmed down enough to finish the check up, both Sayaka and Sayuri were waiting outside, umbrellas up and chatting. One umbrella was bright pink. But the other was made out of a clear, thin thing that looked like a big bubble of water floating in the sky. Sayuri could stare as much as she wanted and never get touched by the rain.

Sayuri noticed her gaping and grinned. “Like what you see?”

“…It’s my first time seeing it.”

“We can buy one for you today!” Sayaka nearly glowed with how happy she was. “Let’s do it. We can fit it in after the school, oh! And also trying some snacks later, but then it’d be near lunch time, wouldn’t it? So maybe after? Or we could—”

“One thing at a time, Saya-chan.” Sayuri hooked an arm around a bug-eyed Kaya. “Word of advice: don’t let Saya-chan lead you anywhere. She has the direction sense of a headless chicken.”

“Hey!”

“Am I wrong?”

“No, but hey!”

Sayuri laughed, and kept picking a fight with Sayaka, who picked a fight right back. But they looked like they were happy, which was weird. It didn’t make sense, so Kaya didn’t pay attention. But she did listen in when Sayuri told her the plan. The place they’d be visiting was the main shinobi school. They were going to meet a teaching assistant that was also a friend of Sayuri’s new neighbor. It’d be the first time Kaya stepped out of the street she’d lived in since arriving.

As they started walking out of the poor, civilian district, the roads were soon lined with nicer-looking shops, which suddenly got them to a really busy main road. There were lots of people wearing that headband with the carved metal plate on it walking around. Kaya tried not to stare. Those were shinobi. There were so many. In her head she knew that Naruto went to shinobi school to learn shinobi things, but thinking it didn’t make her ready for seeing it.

Or for the school being right smack under those huge stone faces in the mountain, and right next to the Hokage tower—or that’s what one of them said the big red building was. Kaya felt like a tiny cricket walking into a bird field.

The two led her past the gate and up the stairs of the building, where they shook off the umbrellas. They had to wait in the front room for the teaching assistant to show up. It was…surprisingly normal on the inside, or at least as far as Kaya knew. The walls were plain. Except for the person at the front desk, the corridors were empty.

But then Sayuri’s friend’s friend found them. A tallish, brown, okay-looking man. Maybe even her age, actually. The only thing about him that stood out was the scar across his nose. He looked just like a normal person she’d meet outside. How was he a shinobi when he looked so normal?

Even the way he talked to them was normal as they walked down the corridors. “There are plenty of old textbooks we’ve kept over the years. I hope you don’t mind—”

“Not at all. S’long as no one’s going to miss them, then we’re happy with whatever you’ve got,” Sayuri waved him off, like it wasn’t Kaya who’d asked or was now walking next to her and squeezing her hand.

They made it to a messy room filled floor to ceiling with books. It looked like it hadn’t been emptied since the school was built. Kaya nearly tripped over herself staring at it. At the same time, their guide groaned. “Oh, come on. ”

At the front was a desk with a big stack of papers. He picked up the first one and glared at it. “Did they really—of course they did. Ugh. They knew I’d be showing guests around. Why do they keep making me their errand boy? Honestly…”

Whatever he meant by that, all Kaya could see was the endless books. Who knew how long it would take to find ones that she needed? What if they spent the entire day there? What if they didn’t get to shop at all. After those two had brought her all this way, after Sayuri had asked someone else to help? How could she ever apologize for making them stand around wasting their time on her—?

“Ne, Iruka-san, we could take those for you.”

Both the man and Kaya turned to Sayaka.

“What?” he asked.

“We will?” said Sayuri.

“Yes. Us. We,” she pointed to herself and Sayuri, “me and Sayuri, can take care of those papers, if that’s okay.”

Sayuri’s confused face suddenly became a smile. She started nodding. “…Ohh, yeah, yeah, of course.”

“Besides, it’s not like we’re the ones who need the books anyhow.” Kaya’s face went even warmer. “You can help Tsuki-chan and we’ll catch up with you at the front desk. Or do you want us to come back here?”

“…I, uh, I think we’ll be done here pretty quickly. So front desk is fine, but you don’t have to—”

“Great! See ya!” Sayaka grabbed the stack of papers, Sayuri grabbed half of them, and the two of them skipped out the doors.

Kaya and what’s-his-name were left staring after them.

“…Well. Alright, then.” The guy turned to her. He really did look somewhere around her age, but he bowed stiff-backed to her. “I’ll get those books for you, if that’s okay.”

Kaya awkwardly bowed too. “Thank you very much, shinobi-san.”

“Ah, it’s no trouble. I’m Umino Iruka, by the way, an assistant teacher.”

“Um…thanks, Umino-sensei. For this, I mean. I am Tsukauchi Kaya.”

He waved her off. “Just Iruka is fine. I’m still a long way from sensei. So? What kind of books are you looking for?”

“Well…school books, I guess. They’re for this small boy I’m helping out with.”

“How old is he?”

It finally dawned on her that she never asked Naruto his age. Right when she’d gotten her face to a normal temperature, too. “He’s very small, still, I think. He needs some basics.”

“…Okay. I know just the thing.” Iruka walked into the stacks. He came back with a ladder that had wheels in it. “We’ll start off with language, maths, history, and geography. No chakra or jutsu theory, sorry. Those books aren't allowed outside school grounds.”

“That's fine. He, um…he needs help with kanji?” Kaya dared ask. Kind of. Really, she was the one who needed the help, but still.

Iruka added another book to the stack in his arms, while standing without any trouble on the ladder. “Kanji dictionary, sure. Anything else?”

Kaya paused, struggling to think of what to say. It wasn’t as if she knew what all his subjects were, with how much he just complained about studying being boring.

“If you’re unsure, you could tell me his name. I might know which class your kid’s in,” he said, hopping down the ladder.

“…Okay. His name is Uzumaki Naruto—”

Iruka tripped on solid ground.

Kaya jumped forward, even though he caught himself in time. “Are you okay?! Are you hurt—?”

“I’m fine! I’m fine. It’s fine, just uh, accidentally stepped on a paper, is all.” He smiled but it looked stressed and kind of fake. “I…I know him. I’ll get you what you need—here, you hold onto these, I’ll be just a minute.”

In the end, there were enough books for Kaya to pull out the cloth bag she’d come prepared with. (She was right. Cloth bags are great. ) And it was a good thing too, because they ran into Sayaka and Sayuri on their way to the front desk. They talked the rest of the way there about their adventure and asking Iruka questions about the teachers they’d met. He waved goodbye at them as they went back out into the rain.

“The only time of year Fire Country acts like Hot Springs Country,” Sayuri huffed, flicking drops from her hair. “Did you know, you can measure how long an autumn will be by how much it rains? It’s what keeps all the trees here so green year ‘round.”

She didn’t just mean the giant trees outside the village. The whole village had trees in it, growing in all sorts of places. In the park, next to stores, behind and between buildings, towering above. It was only then that Kaya was seeing so much of it. So far she’d just stayed on the one street and before that she’d been asleep when the cart had first passed the gates. But now…

…Now, in every corner, there was always a patch of green. What would it look like from above? “…Oh.”

“Hot summers, rainy autumns, mild winters. That’s how it is in Konohagakure.” Sayaka sang, twirling her umbrella so that the white flowers blurred. She grinned at the two of them. “And it’s the perfect weather for snacks and tea! I’ve been looking forward to this all morning. You will not believe this place I found, it’s so cute! And they have the prettiest pastries I’ve ever seen.”

They went off the main street and into a different side street. The stores lining it had big windows and bright colors. The one Sayaka pointed out to them was pink all over. Its insides were so clean and pretty . The air was warm and sweet, almost stuffy from how many people there were. Pressed up to one wall was a weird kind of table covered in a big, long bubble of glass that had rows and rows underneath it of…fairy food. They had to be. No one but fairies could’ve made them. Many of them were covered in bright cuts of fruit that she didn’t know of, or dusted with what looked like snow. Some of them were sparkly. Some looked like flowers.

“Woah, this display case has a lot. They’re really cute, right?”

“…I’ve never seen anything like this…” Kaya mumbled, half to herself.

What strange, bright food. They must’ve been imagined in a dream, or taken out of a painting. Was this what rich nobles ate? For all she knew, maybe they did. The pastries looked just right for a little princess in the Daimyō’s court.

She sat on her heels staring at them until Sayuri tugged her up and led her to a round, pink table that Sayaka arranged—that was so much food. So much! Small plates of fluffy sweets covered the entire table, while three steaming cups of a fluffy drink stood at the edges—there were drinks that were fluffy.

“It’s called milk tea. The bubbles on top are made of cream. Do you like it?”

Kaya had never had tea before. None at all. This one was brown, not green. It was warm and sweet. Milk tea, she’d called it? If all tea were like this then Kaya wanted to have it every day.

By herself, Kaya would’ve been too scared to touch the other plates, but the two older women made her try a little bit of each. There were things like soft, melting cakes with chocolate in their middles, or crumbly, flaky hand pies filled with glazed fruits that they told her were strawberries, or cherries, or peaches. They found out that Kaya didn’t like the really sweet ones. There was more sugar on that table than she’d ever touched in her short life. The ones filled with custards or jams or coated in powder (the powder was sugar, not snow) were just too …rich for her. The tea was barely helpful in washing the taste from her mouth, until at some point there was a glass of water at her elbow that she switched to instead.

“I have an idea,” Sayuri held up a bun about as big as her palm that had criss-crossing lines on top. “Try this.”

Kaya didn’t think she wanted to by then. But still: sugar. When was the next time she’d see so much of it? So she took a small bite, and…it wasn’t too bad. Most of the sweetness was in the crust, but otherwise it was just this chewy, fluffy bread. It was light as a cloud. Before Kaya realized, it was gone.

“So you like the melonpan, then. I knew it. In that case, I’ll finish off this cheesecake, and you can have that custard pie, Saya-chan.”

Sayuri paid for the sweets, but Kaya wanted to pay for a loaf of bread for herself—there’s a difference between sweet bread and sandwich bread. Bread loaves were so much bigger and longer than little sweet rolls. People made “sandwiches” out of them. Kaya was going to figure out how to make a sandwich if it killed her. Sayaka liked her idea and bought several wrapped sandwiches for inspiration (but really to bring home for herself, apparently). She was nice enough to unwrap one triangle half and share a little with Kaya.

The shopping trip took them through more stores on the rest of the street. It was on the civilian side of the village so things were civilian made and civilian priced. Saturday meant payday, but even still Kaya was grateful about that. She soon bought her own clear umbrella, with a blue handle so it wouldn’t be confused with Sayuri’s. She could finally walk side-by-side with them without getting her shoulder wet. That was about as much shopping as she’d planned on. Plus her arms, weighed down with books and bread, were hurting. She hadn’t made up her mind whether or not to say it before Sayaka said it was lunch time, which she then said she’d pay for, since Sayuri had paid for the bakery snacks.

At least this time the place was a normal looking izakaya, with wooden tables and wooden stools and a busy, crowded front counter where food was brought out as fast as the late lunch rush could get them.

Since Kaya was still full with sweets, the other two ordered two tonkatsu meals, which ended up being curry over rice and a slab of fried pork, plus a bunch of side dishes. Kaya took little sips and bites of the side dishes while Sayaka and Sayuri let her and spent the entire hour talking about their purchases.

Throughout, the rain kept falling. Where Kaya was from, she knew rain. The kind of rain that was loud and scary, with bright flashes and wind that could cut. The rain was cold enough to bite you. But no matter how long they'd walked around under it, the rain in Konoha village had always felt warm. Warm like tears, like milk tea, warm like the people who kept helping her, even though Kaya didn’t know why. Her breath was warm, her belly was warm, and she felt warm, warm, warm…

The two older women were nice enough to walk Kaya back to her street. She said her goodbyes to them and slowly started back to her apartment, feeling both heavy and light. The books, the bread, and the umbrella were a lot to hold onto, but she was fine. Right up until the moment she’d reached her floor and was halfway to the door when there was a loud “Kaya-nee!”

A small body slammed into her gut. The only thing Kaya held onto was the bread. Everything else fell to the ground.

“Naruto-kun!” Kaya held the bread as far away as she could. If it ended up even slightly crushed—

“I missed you!” Naruto leaned back to smile so hard his eyes squeezed shut. Then he stared at her middle and said, “Why's your tummy glowing?”

“It is?” Kaya looked down. No it wasn't.

“It is! There's a light coming out!”

…Oh. Oh, did he mean— "There's a baby in there.”

“Really? It's a very bright baby.” He smushed his face into her stomach. Kaya didn't know what else to do but stay still, feeling awful about her precious books on the ground but not wanting to risk her bread.

At least Naruto’s attention was a short one. He loosened his arms but started hopping up and down. “Hey, hey, Kaya-nee. Can we go play?”

“…No.”

“Why not?”

Kaya looked at the bread, looked at her freshly fallen books, at her brand new umbrella, and waited. He stayed wiggling.

“…Because I have to put these away. And I have chores.”

“But chores are boring. ”

“Chores are important,” Kaya sighed. Boring, boring, boring—it was always that with him. “And they’ll take too long, so you better go without me.”

And then she had an idea.

“Actually…could you give me your key? Since you’re going out, I could clean up a little and have dinner ready when you come back.”

Naruto sighed too, even heavier. So much that even his arms dropped from her. “ Fine. But next time we’re going to play.”

Before Kaya could even think what to say, he dug a key out of his pocket, dropped it in her hand, and ran down the stairs and out of sight. Good god. That boy was too much.

As Kaya unlocked the door and picked up her things, she thought about what she would do first. During that week, she hadn't had the time to clean like she'd really wanted to. She still had to wear shoes in the kitchen. But eating a slow lunch had helped, even if the shopping had made her arms and legs kind of sore. There was still half a day left and she wanted to use it.

So that’s what she’d do.

Chapter Text

Where Kaya came from, the food was animals. They were the only ones that ate the grass that grew on the mountains. There wasn’t much else that wanted to grow up there. Not when the rain was hard, the lightning was bad, and it was always too cold. So unless someone tried their luck in the fast running river, most people kept animals at home. Kaya had spent a lot of time dealing with animals and mucking out their stalls.

She’d spent much less time cleaning out homes that could be dirtier than animal stalls.

(Well, it wasn’t that bad. Mostly. It was just a home. It was just dirt. It wasn’t like she was cleaning out shit. Plus, no one was around to try to yell at her, bite her, or kick their hooves at her.)

Kaya tried her best to deal with it.

Like with the first time, she filled a bucket with water and bleach. But this time she let it splash all over the counters and onto the floor. Then she took a scrub brush to the counters and nearly worked her hands raw until the dirt started coming out. This got scraped in the general direction of the sink, though most of it just dripped down the drawers.

‘Huh…might as well,’ thought Kaya. Like an idiot. The first drawer she opened ended with her screaming and the first time she’d ever seen that many dead cockroaches at the same time. Kaya screeched again when a mouse went tearing out of the cabinet next to it, skittered over the very wet, very soapy floor, and out through the still open front door.

She had to go to the kitchen table and stay there with her head in her arms for a few minutes after that. When she could stand, she went back to her apartment to get some insect poison.

(She didn’t think she’d need it. Her apartment had been empty so long that it’d basically had some dust and dirt, but her coworkers always went on about how the heat in Fire Country breeds pests and the rainy season just makes that worse. And it’d been included with cleaning supplies, so.)

She cleared out the wastes, muttering and scolding herself for scaring that bad, and scrubbed about as much as she could get her hands on. She dabbed little bits of insect poison to the farthest corners, wherever kid hands wouldn’t want to reach.

But just to be safe, the yellow “ramen” cups (she still didn’t believe that but that’s what the pictures were about apparently) in the cabinets were moved to the fridge, which…wasn’t that bad, actually. Except for weird stains, which she didn’t know how to get rid of anyways. For now, food stayed in the fridge for at least a week or however long it took the pests to give up. She’d need to remember to tell Naruto.

In the meanwhile, Kaya had other things to do because by then the kitchen floor was a muddy, soapy, slippery mess. So she made it even worse by filling up another bucket of bleach water and pouring it all over the kitchen tiles. A scrub brush would never work on that—her back would die—but she did have a stiff broom to rake the suds out of the kitchen all the way to the genkan, then going back around to the living room, which just had that low table and a couch so that was fine, and continuing all the way to the bathroom to scrape the filthy suds down the drain.

This whole thing actually took several buckets of soapy water, back and forth from the kitchen sink, which was followed by swooning for half an hour on that ratty, lumpy couch, her wrinkly feet hanging over the side. She did make herself get up after and pour out a bunch of buckets of plain water and use the broom to chase away the suds. The stink had started giving her a headache. As for the water in the genkan, she just…shooed it out the door. At least the dirt was outside?

It wasn’t until Kaya squished back into the apartment that she finally noticed the puddles of water collected at odd corners. She’d have to properly mop if she wanted the floor to get dry. So she did. It had already been hours. Her knees shook. Her hands were red. She was tired enough that when she remembered the bathroom was still left over, she nearly cried.

…She’d just…leave it. For later. When she didn’t hurt so bad.

But there was also still mold on the walls. And she didn’t like the look of those dusty upper cabinets. She’d focused so much on the counters and the floors that for all that work it was like she’d done nothing. Not even a few months before she would’ve gotten twice as much, three times as much done—and now look at her! Nothing! If she had just started those upper cabinets first, she could’ve finished them when her arms didn’t hurt, and then whatever she found there would’ve just gone to the counters and the floor, which she could’ve cleaned up if she’d just taken a second to plan first but it was too late and she couldn’t, and she was bad at this and this was so stupid and she was so stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid—

Kaya sat on her freshly cleaned floors in her dirty, sweaty clothes and ate plums and seethed.

Months on the road and weeks being coddled at the clinic had made her weak. Now she had to do things like “be careful” and “mind her health”, or else there’d literally be no getting up in the morning. Back where she’d come from, there was one time she’d done chores with broken fingernails and a tooth punched out and had still kept going past dark. But now it was barely evening, what with the low, yellow beams of sun coming in through the open windows. And still she had to worry about such a thing as her job, and nosy coworkers who’d ask questions, and a doctor who wouldn’t be happy with her after telling her over and over every day to take it easy. She was a failure at meeting other people’s expectations, a failure at cleaning, and a failure at finishing things and this was all her own stupid fault.

Kaya sat and chewed and decided then and there that she’d only do two more things— just two—and admit defeat and deal with dinner—or actually, maybe take a bath first? But if she stayed in the hot water for too long, she might actually sleep there. So changing her dirty clothes for something else and scrubbing her arms and face it would be. Fuck her stupid, shitty life.

But first: the cabinets. She would not clean the insides. She might really start crying if she found more big dead insects. She wouldn’t sweep the dust off with a broom either, after going through so much trouble to clean all the counters and floors and everything.

What Kaya did instead was wet a rag. Then she climbed onto the nearest counter—her feet still kind of smelled like bleach, so it was fine—and one by one wiped the cabinets. At least the rag was huge. Even when one part got coated in wet dust, she could just unfold and refold it to a cleaner piece. Her journey soon took her to where the cabinets attached themselves to the wall, so they didn’t have to hang onto the ceiling, and she did try her best to reach the tops even though her arms were too short to go far. She carefully stepped over the stove and then it wasn’t long until she made it to the fridge. And since it was right there she just shrugged to herself, cleaned the top of the fridge too, then she sat on it to down the last cabinet.

Kaya wobbled down from there and gave the counters one last quick swipe with the rag (yes, she’d said it was fine but she still felt bad for stepping on them, so.)

The mold on the walls was the worst near the kitchen and in the corners. A few patches looked fuzzy. Kaya didn’t want even one of her cleaning supplies touching them, and she didn’t want to scrape it off. But she did have a spray bottle—it made water into steam! Wow!—but if she put bleach water in it, then what if it stayed in the air and she or Naruto breathed it in? What if it poisoned them too? No way was she doing that.

So instead she did something else. She filled the bottle with hot salt water and sprayed on the patches in easy reach. According to Akimichi-san, the salt and oil in pickling was what kept food from spoiling and illness away. It was the same as what sugar did in jams. But insects love sugar, or at least that’s what Kaya’s coworkers said, so she went with salt. Making it hot got salt to dissolve in it. Would spraying every now and then help? She hoped so, because she was done for the day.

Kaya kept her promise to herself to not bathe, even though she felt smelly and gross, and only changed her clothes and wiped her arms and legs. She came back with her dinner supplies and dragged a chair right over to the stove to drop down onto it. There would be no standing-up cooking for her.

Into a pot of water went a few eggs to boil for a while. She measured the time with however long it took to fill a large bowl on her lap with a bunch of mayonnaise, two spoons of vinegar, and a sprinkle each of salt, pepper, and sugar. The bowl went back on the counter and in a different bowl Kaya scooped out the steaming hot eggs that she couldn’t touch until they cooled down.

So she very carefully slid out the loaf of bread from its package and very carefully kept it on the cutting board, where she was very, very careful to cut a few thick wedges as evenly as she could. They fell onto the board as big, soft slabs, a few crumbs scattering here and there. Kaya picked up each and every crumb and tried really hard not to think about having bread and nothing else for dinner.

Even though the eggs were cooled down, picking off the shells took so much time, and they got everywhere. Ugh. She tried making her life easier and put one egg in the mayonnaise mixture to mash it with a spoon, but it jumped into her clothes. She sat there and took a minute to just stare at the ceiling. Then she fished it out and complained out loud the entire time she spent over the cutting board cutting each and every egg into tiny pieces. But then she couldn’t even taste the salt or anything in the mayonnaise mixture so she spent another few minutes adjusting the flavor.

Back when they’d been shopping, Sayaka had told her all about the sandwiches she’d bought. One of them was called an “egg salad sandwich”. It was Kaya’s luck that she had just enough of the main ingredients to make it herself, and what better time than right then to try it out?

One by one, Kaya spread a thick layer of egg salad on top of slices of bread, before covering them with the rest of the slices. It felt so good to see the sandwiches stacked on the plate. Even if her skills were less than perfect, to her they looked perfect. She wished she could get a painting for them, or show them to someone so at least she wasn’t the only one who’d remember. Kaya sat there and stared at what she’d done for as long as she could stand it before finally, truly, eating her dinner.

The bread was fluffy and light. The filling was creamy, with only a bit of flavor. Nowhere else in the world did it feel like a food like this was ever made. Sitting there in the small kitchen, eating her first sandwich, Kaya could not have felt more like she was eating a dream.

Down the hall, the front door crashed open. “I’M BAAAAAACK!!”

A second later Naruto came skidding into view. He took one look at the plate and made a huge frown. “What is that?”

“It’s dinner.”

“But I don’t want it. I want ramen.”

Kaya shrugged. “I made it for me. If you want, you can have some, or don’t. I don’t care.”

Instead of taking some of the treasure she very nicely offered, Naruto stuck his tongue out and ran to his room. He spent some time in there doing…something, and when he came running back out he nearly slipped to the floor. By then Kaya had moved on to her second sandwich. The bowl of leftover salad had gone back to her lap where she switched between eating it with the mixing spoon and eating her sandwich.

While she did, Naruto hung around nearby. Instead of just pulling up his own chair to  eat with her, he kept waiting for whenever he seemed to think she wasn’t looking to sneak suspicious bites of the plate of sandwiches she’d left out for him. The fact that he did eat it all could’ve said something about her cooking skills or about him being a starving hole of a boy who’d eat anything no matter how much he complained, but it made her curious. A part of her wanted to test that, to see just what she could make that’d get him to like other kinds of food, while the other part wondered why she’d go to that much effort when he was so happy to eat the same thing day in and day out no matter what new food was there outside his door. There was treasure out there and she was the only one who cared.

But Naruto was just a boy, and he’d do what he wanted. It wasn’t as if Kaya had been enough to teach him much. He was loud and rude and stubborn, and he didn’t care about school even though she did, and he wouldn’t care about other food even though she did. He’d just go on liking his things and that would be that.

But she was still going to learn. She really wanted to, and now she had the books to try. Whether Naruto wanted to or not was for him to think about, but she was going to do it no matter what. After all that trouble getting those books, she might as well.

…But not now. For now, a shower. And then bed. And then she’d start.

Chapter Text

There was a point between dreaming and waking where both felt the same. Sunlight melted with shadows. Faint voices from long ago came in and out of focus. Time moved like warm sludge through the still, dull air…

And then…

It crashed.

She gasped awake. Her body jerked, and pain shot through her. It was too bright, too fuzzy. Things were jumbled—what was happening?

The sound came again, BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG—

She breathed. Blinked the fuzz from her eyes. Her name was Kaya. Kaya lived by herself. She had a job and she’d moved and she was fine and she was safe. She was safe.

…And someone was still hammering on her door.

Kaya pressed her hands to her forehead. Pain squeezed her skull like a band tied too tight, wrapping around and arcing down across her shoulders. Kaya tried shrugging them. It hurt —why did it—? And she remembered. The apartment. Naruto’s apartment, she’d cleaned it, that’s why she…and now…

Kaya wanted to curl into a ball and die. But she always wanted that. And whatever was making all that noise wouldn’t stop if she didn’t get her ass up.

She struggled out of her covers and stood—ow, ow, ow, god, ow, oh god—stumbling off to see where the noise was. She tried to breathe and not fall. This wasn’t the most pain she’d been in, that wasn’t the most work she’d done, she was fine, it was fine—

If the whole place wasn’t burning down then she was going to kill whoever was banging on her door like that. Kaya opened it.

A solid weight crashed into her.

“GOOD MORNING!”

The voice stabbed her head. Kaya shut her eyes. “…Good morning, Naruto-kun.”

“Let’s go play today! I wanna play! You promised you’d do it—!”

“Oi.”

“—and we can go to the park, and I wanna—”

“I didn’t promise—”

“—you have to do it, you haveta see it, I want to go with you—”

Kaya groaned. Long and low, and didn’t stop until the brat holding onto her finally shut up. She opened her eyes to him staring up at her.

“…I said I didn’t promise. I made no promise yesterday.”

“But I want to. Please?” Naruto wiggled against her, his chin digging into her stomach. Too much energy to be still. “Don’t you wanna play together? We never play together, you always come back when I’m not there and then it’s always about dinner or studying or cleaning and it’s so boring and I don’t have school today so I want to be with you can’t we be together today I haven’t seen you all day I really wanna go to the park can we please—”

Kaya’s hands slowly wrapped around Naruto’s head. Her fingers clawed. If she put pressure in them, she could make the source of her headache crack like an egg. But they didn’t. They carefully pressed, thumbs sliding down until they burrowed into the hollow between his nose and eyes, most of the push angled at his brow bone. Naruto’s chattering interrupted with a giggle, his eyes squeezed shut as he smiled. His cheeks with the weird scars on them were already sticky.

“…I spent all day yesterday doing your chores. But I didn’t do my chores. I didn’t shop for groceries, and I can’t do it tomorrow. I need to do it today.”

“But what if we went and played first? And then we could shop together? I’ll carry your bags for you, dattebayo!”

“No.”

“But whyyyyy—”

Because he’d spend the entire time screeching his joy to the heavens and then it’d be a race between him and her headache to see which cracked her skull open first.

“There’s something important I need to do today, and I have to do it by myself.”

“Aww.” Naruto flopped boneless against her legs.

“It will take a long time and it’ll be very, very boring. You’d better go without me.”

Naruto stuck his lip out at her, but the word “boring” seemed to do the trick. He reached up and patted her cheek. “That sounds bad. I feel sorry for you.”

“…Yeah. Yeah, it will be. Please go out an’ have fun, okay?”

“Okay, fiiiiine.” Even so, he continued to whine and complain as he let go and started walking down the hall. “We’re gonna play next time! And imma take ya to Ichiraku Ramen and you can meet ojī-san! Dattebayo!”

…Nowhere else had she heard someone use that word. Or talk like him. Where’d he pick it up from? Hm.

The one clock in her apartment read eleven in the morning. The fuck. She’d never woken up so late in her life. Yeah, the sun was high in the sky so maybe she should’ve figured that out sooner but it hadn’t sunk in what that meant until she’d seen the time.

She’d lied to Naruto. She didn’t actually need to do things. Not even groceries, if she didn’t want to. Especially when there was a restaurant right on that street she could go eat at instead.

Or…she could make onigiri. Sure her onigiri didn’t always have the best shape, but they held together. Plus, miso was also simple enough, especially when she still had a little left over. But then if Naruto came back to that, he’d probably feel bad. And maybe she’d feel a little bad too, even if most of her just didn’t want to deal with him throwing a fit when she already hurt all over.

So, restaurant it was. Even though it was on her street and not that far and she was so, very lucky for it, that still didn’t stop her body from hurting each and every step of the way. The place was almost as empty just like when she’d first walked in. The one big difference was that as soon as Akimichi-san saw her, he smiled. “Good morning! Been a while since you’ve visited, Tsuki-chan. What can I get for you?”

Kaya slowly sat in a booth and tried not to wheeze. She hurt too much to be hungry, but if she didn’t eat now she’d have no energy later. And then what if she got sick and missed work? What if they fired her? They could hire someone better than her any day now, like someone who could actually read and do maths. In front of her was a thick, shiny sheet with pictures and writing on it. One of the pictures showed a bowl of noodles covered in big slabs of meat. Another showed an oily plate of skewers. Ewww. No, she couldn’t eat that. What the hell was she going to do?

As if he could read her face, Akimichi-san walked over to her. “Not feeling well?”

Kaya shrugged, then hissed at the pain. “…I think I…I just need to get something in me, first, um…I don’t…”

She didn’t know how to finish that, but Akimichi-san seemed to understand. “I know just the thing,” he said. And then left.

In the time he was gone, some people walked in. But they sat far enough away that their voices didn’t bother her. Kaya closed her eyes, breathing through the tightness in her head.

“Here you are. Easy to digest and good for sick days. Anything else?”

Kaya twitched. Her muscles seized. She bit back the whine that wanted to come out, grit her teeth against it, because she was not weak—she wasn’t— she was just fine and she was going to be normal and it’ll be fine. Even though Akimichi-san had put a bowl on the table, he still stood there and frowned down at her.

“…Are you sure you’re fine?”

Kaya really, really did not like that.

Every time. Every single time, people kept being so concerned about her. They could not seem to stop fussing. It was such a waste of their time to spend being worried on her when she’d manage either way. People kept going out of their way when she hadn't asked for it and couldn’t pay them back, when she had nothing to pay with, and they didn’t know how much of a burden it was on her. That shopping trip was bad enough, she didn't know how or if she'd be able to wrap her head around it, but this? She didn’t want this today. Not from him.

She pushed past the pain and tiredness to sit up straighter. “Yes. I will be. I’ll just—I just need to eat and go—”

“If you don’t feel better later, you could visit the clinic, you know? It’s open on Sundays. Do you…want me to—?”

“Could you get me two noodle bowls?”

“—go—what?” he blinked at her.

“You can decide which kind. The noodles, I mean. I know there are different types but I don’t know them or what’s good—I mean, I’m sure they’ll be good, but—there’s this little boy, the one I’ve been helping, did I tell you—”

“You’ve mentioned him before, yeah. I remember.”

“—okay, well, I don’t want to make something later so I thought I’d come here and…and get something. To share. With him. So, um, two noodle bowls for later, if it’s okay?”

Akimichi-san gave her a long, unreadable look. Or it was just unreadable to her. She didn’t know these things. She just didn’t want to deal with people acting like that today, especially not from him. He was one of the few who treated her like normal. She didn’t want that to change.

There had to be something else she could say. Something that’d get him to go back to being normal. Kaya looked down. The bowl in front of her had some kind of pale, soupy rice. There were a few bright green leaves on top.

“This, um. You’ve made this before. At the clinic.” Her hands wrapped around the warm bowl. The steam coming out of it made her thumbs wet where she’d put them on the rim. “It’s nice.”

Akimichi-san opened his mouth to answer. He paused, closed it, then sighed. “…Yeah, it is. I used bone broth for that rice porridge. I usually make a batch at the start of the week.” Someone at a different table called him over. He nodded to them. “I’ll get you those noodle bowls, then.”

He finally left. Kaya breathed, in and out, over her bowl. It smelled really nice. Rice porridge. So that’s what it was. She’d been half sure it was something else. There were different rice-soup things, and she kept mixing up their names. All most of them needed was adding rice and stuff to a pot and leaving them to cook. She’d have to learn what those were soon. Maybe it was pointless—if she didn’t remember them earlier, why would she remember them later?—but those looked way less complicated than the ramen she kept trying to make.

The porridge wasn’t too spicy or oily or heavy. The flavor wasn’t too much. It tasted like how a nice bath felt, so nice in fact that half of her wanted to just ditch the spoon and drink the bowl while the other half wanted to eat even slower. The heat and steam had lowered her headache a little. She could’ve laid sideways in the booth and fallen asleep then and there.

But that’d be stupid, and she wasn’t that stupid. It’d be wrong to leave the bowl on the table like that, so when Kaya got up to go to the front counter, she took the bowl with her.

Akimichi-san accepted it with a weird little smile. “You don’t need to bring it here every time. Next time just leave it on the table, alright?”

Ah, shit. Kaya ducked her head and counted out the money for the meal and the take-out.

“ Dōumo, ” he handed her the bag. “Take care.”

“You too,” she mumbled. A habit she’d learned from him. She tried to walk as normally as she could out the doors.

Across the street stood the clinic. Staring at her. Waiting for her.

…The lights were on. Was it open? Well…maybe. Probably. Hadn’t Sango or somebody said that it was always open? Then did that mean…?

What if she went in there? If she walked in, then could a doctor or somebody help her? Would they do that?

But Kaya already had a doctor. If she went in, then Arakawa-sensei would know. She’d know that Kaya had done this to herself. She’d know that Kaya had broken her rules, that Kaya had overdone it and ended up hurt. Even if she wasn’t there, others would be. They’d write down her visit, they’d talk about it, they’d see her the next day, and Sensei would still find out. If Kaya didn’t get better by tomorrow then she’d find out, and it would be bad, it would be terrible, and she’d find out—

But Kaya wouldn’t get better by tomorrow. How could she? Of course she wouldn’t. If she went inside, Sensei would find out. But if she didn’t, she’d still find out. No matter what Kaya did it was never good enough, she’d still get hurt, it was all her fault, everything was always her fault, she’d done the bad thing and she’d pay for it and she was trapped and she couldn’t breathe it was her fault she deserved this she’s trapped she’s trapped she’s trapped—

What could she do?

The world blurred at the edges. A faint, high noise started up in her head, louder and louder. Her face felt numb. It didn’t feel real. Oh…oh no. This was terrible. Was she crying? She couldn't feel anything. No, no no she couldn’t cry. Not in the middle of the street. She needed to go, she needed to…what did she have to…she couldn’t think…

Her fingers squeezed. They’d gotten red yesterday. They were red again. Kaya stared at them, at where they gripped the bag straps. What would happen if she gripped harder? Would the straps cut her skin? Would her fingers stop working? But then who would do her work? They'd find someone else, of course. But her coworkers would have to go through that trouble until they did. If she went to work struggling with pain, then her struggle would burden them. She'd do her job poorly. They'd hate her. They'd have to pick up her work until they found someone new, and they'd hate her even more.

Without meaning to, Kaya stopped walking. She turned, halfway down the street—when had she gone so far?—and started walking back.

Immediately, her mind screamed. A voiceless, senseless, wave of fear overtook her, but her feet were already moving. She had no control over them. The road stretched long and endless like a dream, a dream she couldn’t escape. Step by step, the clinic came closer.

Kaya walked through the doors without seeing them. She walked under the bright light, the world blurred. The woman at the front desk said something. But the ringing drowned it out.

“…I…I'm Kaya. I need help…I’m…I’m sorry…” Her voice came from far away.

“…—here, let me—”

The woman was closer. A hand on her arm. Kaya was sitting, the world still too bright, too much, it was too much—

Who were these people? Where was Sayaka? Sayuri? She didn’t know them. What was going on? What did she do?

“…hey. Hey. Look at me.”

Kaya looked. She looked and looked until things felt less fuzzy and the woman’s face became her world. The strange noise in her head had faded by the time the voice cut in again, though Kaya’s hands were cold.

“Okay, good. You go down the hall over there, right? You turn to your right. The doctor is waiting for you. Do you understand? You’re listening to me, right? Yes or no.”

The woman said the same thing again. Kaya heard the first time but it took that long for her mouth to work. “…Yes.”

“There we go. Go down the hall, you understand? First room on your right. Off you go.”

This was it. She was going to die. Time to go. Kaya stood and went.

The doctor was not Arakawa-sensei. But she waved her to a stool, and as soon as Kaya sat her hands lit up green. Kaya didn’t have to talk or explain, or even open her mouth. And next thing the pain was gone.

It was gone.

All of it. Headache, shoulders, hands, legs, feet. Even the tired was gone, gone so fast that Kaya sucked in a deep breath. The deepest breath, no band squeezing her chest, no hand crushing her heart. Her hands were warm. She felt so dizzy. So light, like the pain had never been there. Like she’d just imagined it.

But then her thoughts slammed into her. Quick as a whip, Kaya grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. “Will Arakawa-sensei find out?!”

The doctor stopped to stare at her. “Excuse me?” Then she frowned. “Well, I suppose she would, either way. Tsukauchi-san is her patient, after all.”

“Am I in trouble?” Was the doctor angry with her? Were they going to be angry with her? How badly was she about to be in trouble? What were they going to do?!

The doctor’s frown got worse. Kaya got the feeling she'd just asked a stupid question and wasn’t supposed to be acting like this. But that wasn’t important. She needed to know. Or else she wouldn’t know what to do next. She’d die of worry.

But then woman answered her. “Why would you be in trouble? These things happen to everyone. The problem is fixed anyhow.”

No it wasn’t. It couldn't just be fixed . That wasn't how this worked.

“But—but I wasn’t supposed to do that—I can't—”

The doctor tsked. “We all do things we’re not supposed to. If no one did, then the hospitals would be no use, and then where would we be? Don’t worry about it.”

She patted Kaya’s—newly healed, newly normal—shoulder, and sat back down. “Now, was there anything else?” Kaya dumbly shook her head. “Well, if you have any concerns about you or your baby, feel free to come to me. I’ll be here weekends and evenings. Nice meeting you!”

Kaya just sat there and stared. Was…was that it? Nothing else? That couldn't be it. It didn't make sense.

But with no other reason to stay, Kaya got up and left. She even found it in her to thank the doctor right before she went and nearly died in the lobby from her poor take out bag sitting forgotten in a chair. She rushed over and snatched it and didn’t raise her head until she’d made it out the doors.

Only then did she remember that most people pay for a doctor’s visit. At the front desk. Where she could’ve gone to check, or to see if there was anything else she needed to do. But it was too late and she didn’t have the spine to go back in after making them see her act like that.

That didn’t stop her from going into an alleyway to mope. After a while she decided not to go back and to just do the shopping she’d planned to do. Either way she’d probably hear about it at work anyways. So she wandered to the few other stores on the street, stocked up on staples, whatever was cheapest that would work for either breakfasts or dinners. She wasn’t in the mood to think up some new recipe she might want to try. All she really wanted to do was go home and lie down, even if the day wasn’t close to done.

As she carried her bags down the apartment corridor, a group of kids went chattering past. It was only when they'd turned the corner that Kaya stopped. She stared after them and wrinkled her nose. People wore the weirdest clothes in this place. But nevermind, she had things to put away. Naruto's door swung open easily and no one answered when she walked in. Either he'd forgotten to lock it or he'd just gone out. It was a good time as any to try to finish up the cleaning from the day before. The floors were really clean, to the point where her bare feet squeaked if she tried sliding them a little bit. Hell yeah, she'd done great on them.

After putting the restaurant food in the fridge, Kaya found the willpower to face the bathroom...which turned out to be cleaner than when she'd left it yesterday…had Naruto cleaned it? Oh. Okay. Not like she'd wanted to make up for abandoning it. Less work for her anyways. Fine then. Good for him. She walked (not stomped) back to her own, less clean apartment and sulked about how much less clean the floors were, and the counters were, and the windows and walls were still grimy, and so was the bathroom, and this was what she got for throwing all her efforts at an apartment that wasn't even hers. She didn't even have the energy to deal with them.

The most she could do was her smelly laundry downstairs to get them cleaned and dried, and then do a little bit of sweeping and mopping. She had to stop herself from crawling into bed and drag her body into taking a bath. That helped a little bit. Just enough to go back to Naruto's apartment and reheat the noodles.

Kaya’d almost forgotten just why she was there when the door banged open and scared her out of her skin.

“RAMEN RAMEN RAMEN RAMEN RAMEN!”

Naruto skidded into the kitchen. One look at the stove and he screamed. “RAMEN!! YAY!!!”

Kaya stared. Behind her, the noodles gently simmered in a pot. Her pot. She'd gone through so much trouble to wipe his counters and mop his floors and clean his home, and here this boy was in the clean kitchen, covered in so much dirt and sweat that even she could catch it from all the way over there, and yelling at her.

And for some reason, that’s what did it.

Kaya folded her arms. “When did you take a bath?”

Instead of seeing the danger, Naruto scratched the back of his head. “Umm, I don't know?”

“Aren't you going to do it now?”

“Ehh? But I wanna eat! Ramen! Ramen! Ra—”

“No. No ramen.”

Naruto finally stopped. His mouth hung open like she’d smacked him.

“…I will only give you dinner if you take a bath first.”

At once the shock flipped to anger. “But why? I don't wanna do it now! I'm hungry!”

How he could be that angry when he’s the one who’d done wrong. And why was she making such a big deal out of it? No one’d told her to clean his apartment. No one told her to care what he did with his apartment, or his time, or his life. She’s the one who’s using him for school books and homework. There was no point yanking his ear about it when the only reason she was acting like this was because of her shitty day.

The thought made her even angrier. Angry at herself, at him, at this entire mess.

What she didn’t know was that the real reason for her anger was that she was offended. She was offended that someone had told her that morning that she could get help for the pain she'd brought on herself and deserved to suffer. She was offended that they’d told her to go to the clinic—where she'd be in trouble, where she'd be trapped, where she'd be hated and shamed and punished—and she was even more offended that nothing like that had happened.

But the only thing she really knew was that maybe she was digging her heels in for no real reason and being stupid but was too caught up in the moment to stop.

So instead of stopping, Kaya pushed further.

She turned her nose up at him. “So what? You smell bad. You smell so bad I don't even want to look at you. You sit there being smelly and you'll make the food taste bad. What a waste of food! Why should I share with you? I don't want to share with you—”

“But that's not—!” Naruto tried to interrupt.

“If you don't take a bath,” she said, even louder, “then you can sit there and be smelly by yourself and I will take my food and leave!”

She snapped her mouth shut. The silence rang. They stared at each other. For a single, frozen moment, neither one moved.

It was Naruto who broke first.

“Fine! I'll clean up! I'll clean up real good!” he shouted, pointing at her. “Don't you dare eat my ramen! I'll come back super clean, just you wait! I'll even clean the back of my eyeballs, dattebayo!”

“I didn’t need to hear that what the fu—”

But he was already gone, running down the hall, into his room. A few seconds later, he dashed out and the door to the bathroom slammed shut.

Kaya stood in the kitchen. She waited. Somewhere, the faint sounds of the shower reached her. She sat at the table. Behind her, the pot still simmered.

…What. What…was that? Had that actually worked? Had she finally made him listen to her? What did she do??

Now what? What was a girl to do when she'd yelled at a boy into taking a bath? (Why’d she do it? Was it really because her day’d been bad? Was she going to start yelling every time she was mad now?)

By the time Naruto stomped out, the noodles were bowls and steaming at the table. Instead of going to them, he went straight to her and demanded she smell his hair—“I used shampoo, see!”—and even rub behind his ears to show how properly he'd cleaned himself. She quietly agreed that yes, he smelled much better, and yes, his skin was very clean and so were his hands, of course he could eat now.

Naruto started shoveling up the noodles like he’d never had them in his life. Kaya ate much slower, too busy turning over her thoughts.

Staring at him, at his happy slurping, it took only a few minutes to realize she wouldn't have actually taken his share of noodles she'd bought over. There would've been too much for her anyways. Chances were she might’ve just left it in the fridge for him to find whenever he did.

That sorted out, her mind went to other things. But the more she thought about those things, the more she didn't like them. It had been such a stressful day. The only good part of it had been her lunch. And the dinner she was eating right then.

…It always kept coming back to food. At work, she had to worry about her job. At home, she had to worry about Naruto. The only time her life was good was when she ate.

It was when she was eating that she came the closest to being happy. Food didn't yell at her. It didn't scare her, or punish her, or raise a fist at her. It was just there, steady warmth in her hands. A good weight in her stomach. There were less complicated thoughts and feelings about food than other parts of her life.

If she could, she'd stop time just to stay right there. No past, no future, only the bowl on the table. It’d be a peaceful moment to rest in.

…She would get her rest, soon enough. There probably wouldn't be food involved but at least there was that much to look forward to.

Chapter Text

After all the trouble she’d gone through just to go to the clinic, Kaya would’ve thought that it would be enough to fix the issue.

It was not supposed to make it worse.

Slumped over the toilet, belly seizing for food that wasn’t there, that hadn’t been there for ages, Kaya wondered if this is what finally did it. Her body had gone crazy. Not even a few hours earlier, she’d woken to stabbing hunger pains. They were more intense than the ones that had been slowly building up for days. She hadn’t felt that way since being back there (there wasn’t home, it had never been home, she had no right to call it that—) and it was so unpleasant that she had no choice but to get up. She’d stood in her kitchen and quietly wept, less from the memories that resurfaced and more from the fact that she had no choice but to eat the last slice of the precious bread.

At least none of it had gone to the toilet, if nothing else.

That wasn’t the only thing either. Kaya found that lately no matter how early she slept, she still awoke late, and even then it didn’t seem to matter. Which probably had to do with her stomach waking her at odd hours. This sudden change had put her in a steadily growing fog of exhaustion and greatly reduced her food intake, which gave her a headache. Even if she’d decided to go to Arakawa–sensei about it, now she couldn’t because for the past few days Sensei hadn’t been there. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask when she could barely keep herself from not keeling over at work, it smelled bad over there, it smelled so bad, and her body felt bad, and she was so tired.

She didn’t know if she could stand to visit Naruto that day. She might just cry.

She hadn’t been much help with his dinners. Kaya had explained to him that she was sick, and he took that to mean he should try feeding her his instant noodles. Instead she’d offered him fruit and ate a little of it herself just to make him leave her alone, keeping her head in her arms to not vomit it back up again. There were…a number of things she’d had to donate to his fridge, just because many of them she couldn’t make at the moment or no longer appealed to her and her suddenly sensitive nose.

The most she’d been able to keep was the occasional cold, hard boiled egg with a bit of salt on it, and rice to mix with a little milk.

After the shaking had worn down, Kaya forced herself to stand. She stumbled to the kitchen to rinse the taste of bile out and drink water, cried for a while, until she grew bored of it and wandered to the low table in her living room with another cup of water.

If there was one way to ignore her sickness, she’d found it with learning. She couldn’t get herself up to clean, couldn’t stand to cook, could barely force herself to bathe, but at least she could practice reading her letters. The books fascinated her. Some of them were about Naruto’s classes, but others were what he’d called “baby books”. One of them had a grid of characters in the first page, and in the next page a set of different characters. They were called “hiragana” and “katakana”. Kaya put her finger on the first letter and began to sing the alphabet song. She’d only gotten the song out of Naruto when he’d taken one look at the page and started singing, which mystified her, until he’d eventually paused long enough to explain, and then they’d been singing it ever since.

She didn’t just stay with singing, either. She’d purchased a notebook and pencils at a tiny, overcrowded, hole–in–the–wall general store and spent long hours copying down the characters, and then going through the rest of the “baby books” and copying down whatever useful words she could sound out loud. There was so much to learn. It was a struggle between her impatience to learn it all at once and the need to practice first that kept her occupied…more or less.

It worked enough for dawn to break. For the sun to rise high enough to stretch across the table and poke her in the eyes, until she deemed it time to go to work. Kaya did not want to go to work.

Her body agreed. Despite the studying, it nearly made her doze off regardless, and then she would’ve been late for work, and then she might not have shown up at all. But…well. Well. That wasn’t a choice.

Kaya didn’t eat before leaving the apartment. The smell of the rain blocked out much of the other smells on the slightly crowded street and it helped. She’d learnt that sick people wore masks, and that’s what she’d begun to wear to see if it would help with her newly sensitive nose . Mostly it just got damp. But it did have the unintended side effect of her coworkers catching on that she wasn’t feeling well. She’d reassured them as much as she could that she could still do her job. For the most part, they’d left her be.

She didn’t realize anything was different until the doors of the clinic opened and she was suddenly hit by a wall of noise.

A rice field's worth of children filled the lobby, all talking and playing and running around being loud, loud, loud. Pain sliced into Kaya’s forehead. She stood there, dripping by the doors, dazed, lost, and overwhelmingly confused.

And then someone in the room was waving at her. “Tsuki–chan! Over here, over here!”

That someone was Sayaka. A swarm of children surrounded her, clinging to her arm and her legs. Kaya spent several long seconds observing the scene before she roused herself enough to slowly wander over. Children bumped into her but paid her no attention. A few were nearly as tall as her, trying to herd the younger ones along with the nurses Kaya hadn’t noticed before. Somehow, she made it to Sayaka.

“There you are! It’s crazy in here, gods above. I think Arakawa–sensei needs you to help in her office today. You should go there.”

The children smelled like sweat. Their voices were loud. Kaya fought not to grimace under her mask. “…Sensei is here today?” She hadn’t been in the other days.

“Well, yeah, of course. She needed to finish up those rounds at the orphanages and now it’s check–ups day!” This earned her a blank stare. “You know, check–ups day? It happens once a month?—ow! Oi!”

A clipboard lifted from her head. “No she doesn’t. She wasn’t here last month,” Sayuri answered, inserting herself into the group to a chorus of hellos from the children.

“Wait, really? Huh. Time sure flies, don’t it?”

Sayuri huffed, a stray hair falling to the side of her face. Several more had escaped her slightly frazzled bun. “Well, anyways. I don’t think anyone’s explained it to you, have they? See, once every month or two the clinic hosts free check–ups for all the orphans in the area. And in the meanwhile, some of the doctors in this clinic and a few others pitch in and visit the local orphanages for house calls, either before or after the check–ups. This whole thing will probably take up the rest of this week, and then it’ll be back to normal.”

“Mostly normal. There’s about to be so much filing.” Sayaka laughed at the glare Sayuri sent her. “What? We’ve got Tsuki–chan now! Besides, it’s for a good cause, helping orphaned kids and all. And it’s all thanks to Lord Shimura–sama. And the council, of course.”

That name. Kaya had heard it before. She was sure she had. She just couldn't remember where exactly. But it sounded familiar enough for her to at least have heard it in passing. She'd just never asked.

“…Um…what do you mean by that?”

“By what? The council?” Sayuri asked. “Aren't there councilors or anything out there in the, you know?” She waved her hand vaguely, as if to refer to whatever lived outside of the village.

Kaya shrugged uncomfortably. A backwater settlement like hers had never made for much worldly knowledge.

“…Huh. Well. I'd thought someone would've explained it to you by now…but this isn't the time or place to get into how the government works around here. I'll tell you this, though—you know how there's a daimyō for Fire Country? How each place has its own ruler and the ruler has advisors?” That much…Kaya could understand. She nodded. “Okay, good. Well, over here it's a bit like that. There are elders who help make important decisions in this village, like advisors do. Lord Shimura Danzō–sama is one of the most important elders. He's the right hand of our Hokage.”

“And around these parts, we really like him, right kids?” Sayaka added, grinning down at the children who dutifully chimed their agreement to her. “That's right. Lord Shimura–sama is well known for the orphanages he's helped bring about and the funding he's given to helping out homeless kids. Why, he's the whole reason for these free check–up days! I think it's real noble of him, what he's doing. Not every day you see a shinobi elder—a clan shinobi, all old money and connections and all that—it's not every day you see one who cares so much about us common folk. And I hear whatever stuff we collect from these check–ups goes right back to the council, and that's what they use for making changes. Imagine that! No name civilians like us making a difference, isn't that amazing—?”

“Girls! What are you doing here?”

Sango rushed by in a flurry of disinfectant and folders. “We're too busy for chitchat! Back to work! Shoo!”

“Yeeees.” In seconds, Sayaka and Sayuri had vanished, leaving Kaya to get ushering pats on the back as the children scattered from them like grass in the wind. 

“And you go find Arakawa–sensei quick–like, you hear? She was just asking about you, dear.”

The words sent a startled jolt through her. How long had she been standing around, wasting time like that? Sensei had asked for her! She needed to go!

Kaya left as fast as she could. As soon as she entered the room, it was to find only two people there. There was, however, a good deal more clutter, kept mostly in stacks that sagged against each other on every available surface and around the floor. The middle of the room remained cleared for Arakawa–sensei and her patient.

Said patient happened to be a little girl hopping on her toes while Sensei scribbled down notes. At Kaya's entrance, she looked up and smiled at her. “Tsuki–chan, there you are. You're just in time to meet our newest patient. Akko–chan, this is Tsuki–nee. Her job is to help me.”

Akko's hair, tied into twin, dark brown braids, bounced along with her as she skipped over to Kaya. Her face was soft and dimpled. When she grinned, a gap showed in her teeth. “Hello, Tsuki–nee! It's nice to meet ya!”

Akko was…

…she was so cute!

So cute!

Kaya gaped under her mask. The bundle of cuteness didn't notice. She'd already grabbed Kaya's hand in both of her own and was trying to pull her into the room. “Ne, ne, guess what? I just got a shinobi check up! Doctor-sensei's hands glowed! Did you know her hands can glow? I didn't know that. It was really cool. And guess what? Sensei said that I'm super special so that means I get to come back every day!”

“Every week. Or twice a week, but we'll start with once a week, okay?” Sensei's pen tapped Akko's nose. Akko eagerly nodded. “That's right. Akko–chan here has incredibly high chakra reserves. The two of us will be working together to look after her for the next few weeks. Which means you'll have your own special file here, young lady.” The file snapped shut and was thrust in her direction. Kaya was just in time to catch it. “This file will now also be your responsibility. Do you understand?”

The file had a thick stripe of pink lining its edges, as well as a picture of Akko stuck to the front. “O–okay.”

“Very good. I'll be counting on you.”

While Kaya put the file away where directed and got out a few others, Sensei continued. “Aside from chakra monitoring, we'll also be seeing how these procedures affect your energy levels, body mass, immune system health, and overall growth in these upcoming weeks.”

“Does that mean more shinobi check ups?” asked Akko.

“Yes, and a few other things. Thank you,” Sensei accepted the files from Kaya. From the stack, she pulled out one that Kaya recognized as her own and went to put the rest aside.

“Speaking of which, I think it's high time we started a vaccination schedule for you, too, Tsuki–chan.”^[x]

On one of the nearby tables sat a tray that up until that point Kaya hadn't noticed. From it, Sensei withdrew a long, narrow tube. “Come sit. We can lead our newest patient here by example.”

Kaya, not entirely knowing what that meant, awkwardly did so. The narrow tube had an equally narrow cap, which came off to reveal a hair–thin needle stuck in it. Sensei sat in the stool in front of Kaya’s and flipped a small bottle of antiseptic over a cotton ball. “First thing we need to do is disinfect the area. We do that by rubbing this thing on the skin. Do you smell it? That’s how you know it’s used for disinfecting. Now, do you remember what’s in this injection?”

“Un!” Akko nodded, her eyes focused on Kaya’s arm.

“Very good. This is what will protect your body from serious illness. We’ll only do one for today, but depending on which diseases we’ll go on to, I might give you both two or even three of these. But we’ll see how your body handles this first. While I’m doing this, it’ll be very important for you to relax your muscles and not move. As soon as all of the vaccine is out of this, I’ll remove it and you’ll be done just like that, and then you can choose any color of bandage you want. Are we ready?”

The cotton ball and antiseptic were replaced by Sensei holding Kaya’s arm steady. Kaya could only watch as the needle came closer and closer.

And in no time at all, Kaya fainted dead away.

…

…

Coming out of a faint was like waking up but worse. A flood of half–remembered images rudely shunted her awake into cold, cold awareness. It was dizzying. Everything felt bad. Shapes floated above her, incomprehensible, until some part of her realized they were faces. They…were saying something. The sounds out of them were confusing. There was just so much. It felt like too much.

She—her name? What was…Kaya. Her name was Kaya. She had seen fifteen springs. She’d left for a shinobi village. She was in a shinobi village, this was her work, she … oh. Oh gods.

“…—t’s okay, it’s alright. Easy does it. Let’s just take our time.”

All of these thoughts occurred in the few seconds to realize that her doctor—ah, she had a doctor—her doctor had one sturdy arm wrapped around Kaya’s shoulders and had propped her up into a seated position. Kaya’s body sagged against her. She felt almost as drained as she had one time, many years ago…

A little girl squatted next to Kaya’s splayed legs. “Is she okay? Are you okay?” she tilted her head adorably. Her name was Akko, she finally remembered. “You were asleep for a whole minute. I counted. I didn’t know that could happen.”

Kaya’s mouth didn’t feel ready to make words, but Akko didn’t seem to need her to. She stuck her arm out. It had a bright orange plaster on it. “Look! I got mine done! It hurt a little bit, but I wasn’t scared at all.” Then she leaned forward and patted Kaya’s forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you, nee–chan!”

^[x]“Why don’t you get Tsuki–nee a bit of candy, Akko–chan? Over there, the sweet ginger ones.” Kaya didn’t know just how weak she felt until Sensei began guiding her into a chair. Once she was settled, Sensei turned to her, “You didn’t eat this morning,” she said, in a low voice.

It wasn’t a question. Kaya didn’t know what that had to do with her sudden collapse, but felt too ashamed to deny it. She dropped her head.

Her sensei sighed. “…The next time you’re feeling sick, you come to me. I’m your doctor. You are my responsibility. No matter what it is, I will help you. Do you understand?” Even while she avoided looking at the disapproval that was surely there, Kaya still wanted to shrivel up and die under the scrutiny. “Answer me. Do you understand or not?”

“…yes ’m.” Her mask lay nestled in her lap. Someone had removed it, and she was too numb and cold to remember how she’d gotten it back. Kaya’s nerveless fingers balled it in her fists.

“…Am I really sick?”

Was she really going to die like this? Without even waiting for her child to be born into the world? How could her body do this to her? How could she be so selfish?

“What?” Sensei stared blankly at her. “What do you—Tsuki–chan, do you…do you know what the symptoms of a pregnancy are?”

Kaya stared, pleading, back at her. The hand wrapped around her shoulder squeezed once, then loosened. “You are not dying. You’re not. You—let me—just. Just wait here, please. I’ll be back.”

Arakawa–sensei stood and left. Akko skipped over to her with the requested sweets and bounced up and down so eagerly that Kaya slowly unwrapped one and put it in her mouth just to make her happy. While she took more time to suck on the next candy, her sensei called Akko over to give her a piece of paper and tell her something that made her go happily running out the door.

Sensei returned with several stiff, smooth cards that had pictures on them and sat down next to Kaya. She began to explain.

The sickness Kaya had been experiencing was her pregnancy. All her sudden symptoms—exhaustion, headache, a stronger sense of smell, extreme bouts of nausea and hunger, even heightened emotions—were because she was pregnant. Although it had begun somewhere in July and by then it was approaching mid–September, due to the recent changes in her life her body had finally begun to show the signs of a healthy pregnancy. It was a little like the symptoms of a very bad stomach illness.

There was more that she should expect going forward, but the one thing Sensei insisted upon her was that every pregnancy was different. Even if Kaya didn’t show one or more symptoms, or if they came at different times, then that didn’t always mean that something was wrong or that Kaya herself had done something wrong. But even then, she could always come to the clinic and her sensei would always be there to help.

Besides, all she really needed to do at that stage in her pregnancy was to remember to take more fluids and small, light meals as often as she could. The cards had different pictures of foods on them, each with small, printed labels underneath. Things like miso, tofu, and vegetables were for more fiber and gut health, and things like crackers, plain yogurt, or ginger tea she could take little bits of until her stomach settled down—and it would, soon. Sensei promised to do something to help her with that. They would spend the next few days going over all that Kaya needed to know.

Arakawa–sensei had just finished reassuring her when the next child arrived. Kaya was allowed as much time as she needed to rest. She shuffled through the cards—they were now hers, and she could use them to practice reading later—as she slowly made her way through the rest of the ginger candy.

Some time after that, Sayaka popped her head in. “Tsuki–chan? Are you free to go on an errand with me?”

Kaya, sat on the floor surrounded by files, gave a small jolt at seeing that it was approaching noon. When had that happened? Where had the time gone?

“No one is free during check–ups week,” Arakawa–sensei replied, but nevertheless waved her hand, her head bowed over her notes. “But this isn’t urgent, so you might as well go stretch your legs. Go on. I’ll see you after lunch.”

Kaya thanked her and carefully stood. She must have looked as weak as she felt, because as soon as she’d reached the door, Sayaka grabbed her hand and they left.

“Thanks for coming with me. We’ll be going to the konbini over at the other end of the street. You ever been there?”

“Yes…” She’d normally visited to buy things she recognized, like rice, noodles, eggs, and milk. The rest of the store intimidated her.

“Actually, yeah, that makes sense—of course you have, you live here. Anyways, we’re going out to buy a bunch of snacks for the kids since there’s this whole wad of donation money left over so what else are we going to do with it, right?”

“Oh…”

“I mean, I know we have Daisuke–kun and all, but he’s only responsible for making healthy, boring clinic food. There’s no way I can ask him to do stuff like chips and snacks and dango, y’know? I mean, maybe he can, but it’s not his job so of course I wouldn’t be—”

…Did Kaya know someone like that? She couldn’t remember meeting someone like that. But they worked in the kitchen, and aside from her the only other person who did was—

“Akimichi–san?”

“—and then—what? Oh, yeah. That’s right. I just call him Daisuke–kun because he’s like, nineteen, and I’m way older than that. Older than both of you, actually. So yeah, we’re on a mission to cheer up a bunch of orphan kids after that stressful morning.”

The kombini, like most of the shops and stalls on that street, was small, overcrowded with produce, and generally worn down at the edges. Despite putting a basket in Kaya’s free hand, Sayaka didn’t let go of her other one and dragged her to the front where she chatted up the old man at the counter until he listed out which snacks she could get the most of for the money she had, while still being relatively tasty. She thanked him and steered the two of them to a section of the store that Kaya usually avoided and started pulling out puffy, shiny packets seemingly at random while talking the entire time. One of said packages was a particularly large one. Kaya paid enough attention to the pictures on it to realize that it had biscuits in it. Lots and lots of them. She pointed it out to Sayaka.

“They’re all packed together like that because that’s a value savings variety pack. Buy four, get one free. See? These chocolate ones are the free ones. I think I’ll get another one.”

Kaya had an idea. She asked Sayaka about it, who was more than happy to look around with her until they found a large bag of rice crackers and several very plain, assuredly healthy biscuits that Sayaka said were called “digestives”. It was good that Kaya hadn’t emptied her pockets before going on the errand, because she was able to pay for her purchases while Sayaka paid for the other snacks. There were enough purchases that they could no longer hold hands, but Sayaka took the larger bags so that Kaya could hold the rest and have room for her own, separate bag of snacks.

By the time they returned, the clinic was slightly less chaotic than it had been that morning, likely due to the day of check–ups taking some of the energy out of the children. Their arrival did not go unnoticed, but luckily a nurse snagged them first and then gathered up the rest of the nurses. They’d set up a table at one side of the lobby and someone had brought out a metal pitcher to pour powdered juice into before they announced that there would be snacks and juice for the children before they were sent back to their orphanage for lunch.

By then Kaya had long since left for the kitchens.

It was remarkably empty for that time of day. Or maybe the clinic staff would be having a late lunch, what with how busy things were. Kaya didn’t know. She was too tired to do much more than lean back in a chair and wait for Akimichi–san to come in so she could ask him for porridge.

She hoped Sensei had meant it when she’d promised to help Kaya with her appetite. She didn’t know how long she could go on living like this, her life swinging unpredictably between intense hunger and nausea. At that moment she didn’t know which one she actually felt. It almost felt like both. God, she was tired. How would she be able to get up long enough to make anything for herself when she was so tired? At that rate she’d end up surviving on just rice crackers and biscuits.

The thought brought frustrated tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t be able to feed herself or her growing child properly. Her child will suffer and possibly die. She wouldn’t even be able to cook for Naruto anymore.

Cook? Cook what? What do you know how to cook? It wasn’t as if she’d been making many recipes to begin with. And the one thing the boy demanded regularly was something that took her ages and ages to do. She’d be starving them both. She was a terrible person.

“…Tsuki–chan? Are you okay?”

Kaya sat up with a jerk. There in the kitchen stood Akimichi–san, partway through putting on an apron. She quickly wiped her eyes. With her mask on, maybe it would look like she’d just been asleep?

“Why were you crying?” he asked, and there went her last hope of saving face. Kaya’s eyes welled up all over again.

At the sight of her sobbing, he found her a glass of water and made her drink it. Then and only then did he sit and listen to her sordid tale.

“…So, to summarize: because you’ve been sick, you’re finding it difficult to eat properly.” Kaya sniffled and nodded. “And the little boy you sometimes cook for likes ramen but it takes you a long time to make it,” she nodded again, “and you don’t know many dishes aside from that so it worries you, despite what you usually make for yourself being simple enough and satisfying to you. But because you’re sick right now they’re difficult to eat and you wish you had other options.”

Kaya buried her face in the handkerchief he’d lent her and loudly sniffled. He waited until she unburied herself to give her another glass of water and then stood up.

He moved around the kitchen doing something or another. Kaya spent the time sulking and wondering whether or not her headache had returned. Her mind wandered off long enough that it surprised her when Akimichi–san set down a bowl and several ingredients on the table in front of her.

One by one, he showed the ingredients. “Hondashi. Chicken broth.” He added a spoon of each powder to the bowl. “Soy sauce.” He added a spoon of that. “Grated ginger. Lard.” A small amount of each, then mixed together. Lifting a pot about as wide as the bowl, he removed the lid and steam billowed out. “Hot water, then strained noodles. Or you could remove the noodles directly, but be very careful to control how much water you add. I’d recommend straining it first.”

Even as he said this, he used a pair of chopsticks to fold the noodles into the bowl in a way that made it look careful yet effortless. He dropped in a handful of chopped green onion, stuck a sheet of seaweed to the side, and calmly sliced a hard boiled egg in his palm before adding that as well. “Done.”

Without warning, a sudden stab of hunger seized Kaya’s stomach and it growled. Loudly. Kaya could’ve died.

Akimichi–san’s only reaction was to nudge the bowl closer. “If you’re hungry, then eat. You don’t need to finish that, but—”

“Thank you very much!” She didn’t wait for chopsticks. She snatched the bowl and inhaled it, or as much as she could without spilling it. A few seconds in, she remembered to try to chew the noodles, which led to her being embarrassed at eating like an animal.

Another thought hit her that had her carefully lowering the bowl, filling with another wave of shame.

“Why do you look sad?”

“…What if I vomit this later?”

Akimichi–san shrugged. “It is what it is. It’ll all return to the earth either way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.” He held out a pair of chopsticks. She meekly took them. “Does it taste good?”

“Yes.” It was the most she’d eaten in days.

“Then that’s good. I’m glad. There’s better ramen out there, but that’s as close to simple as it gets while still being ramen.” Akimichi–san rubbed the back of his neck. “…If you like, I could help you with your other problem. With cooking more recipes, I mean.”

Kaya’s egg slipped out of her chopsticks, only partially from surprise. “Really? But aren’t you busy?”

“I’ve recently been able to hire someone to help out. And Sunday mornings are always slow, so whenever you feel better you can stop by.”

Kaya didn’t have the heart to tell him that her particular illness would last several more months. She also couldn’t help but frown.

“What is it?”

“…It’s just…I, um…I’m very slow, and, and you’ve seen how I do it. I might…it might take a while for me to…and I don’t know if I’ll remember…”

Akimichi–san smiled at her. Kaya’s mumbling petered out into bewildered silence.

“I’ve spent years teaching and being taught to cook by all sorts of people. Parents, siblings, cousins, friends—all sorts. And each one of them does it differently, because they’re all different people. But no matter who it is, if there’s one thing I know then it’s that cooking is something that only gets better when it’s shared and I’d be glad to share it with you. I want to share it with you, if you’d let me.”

Kaya’s head filled with warmth. Or perhaps that was the leftover warmth of the ramen she’d eaten. She really did hope her stomach didn’t throw it up later. She didn’t know what it was doing right then, didn’t know where to look either. This was the first time anyone had told her such a thing. It was weird and uncomfortable. She didn’t know how she would ever be able to thank him for doing it. There was no way anything she did would prove good enough.

She didn’t know why it was her, of all people. Or why there were people who wanted to help her or be nice to her. She didn’t think it would last very long. But if she kept thinking about it, then she might refuse, and that would probably upset him, and she didn’t want that.

So she summoned her nerve and opened her mouth. “…Could we make porridge first?”

Akimichi–san’s smile widened into a grin. “We could do it right now. Help me clear up this table and I’ll show you.”

Chapter Text

Kaya’s learning came from two directions. One from books, the other from people. Sometimes, the two arrived together.

But first, it came from books. Umino-san had really stepped up with how many old books he’d given. There were even writing practice books. But there was also a seven year old boy who wanted homework help ( almost seven years old, he’d said. Naruto’s birthday was in early October), so Kaya spent less time practicing how to write kanji than she did learning what was kanji.

Of the three writing systems—hiragana, katakana, and kanji—it was the kanji that wasn’t an alphabet. Kanji was…like a map. Maps were the big drawings in Naruto’s geography book that showed where things were. To her, kanji was just like that: drawings that were actually little maps. But instead of leading to a place, they led to a meaning.

There were some kanji that were simpler than others. 日— hi, day, 口— kuchi, mouth, 人— hito, person, 木— ki, tree. And then there were some that were made of two or more simple ones. For example, 氵—she didn’t know what sound that made, but it was always there in words that had something to do with water, and 母—which meant mother, and together they made 海— umi, or ocean. “Water mother”. Similarly, 森— mori, meant forest. Many trees. But some kanji just seemed to stay as themselves, and instead of being wrapped up in a bunch of other kanji parts to make even squigglier words, they were sat side by side like people on a bench. 今— ima, now , and 日 becoming 今日— kyo, or today. This was also used for names, like:  光— hikari , meaning light, and 花— hana, meaning flower, but when put together became 光花—Mika, which was the name of the author of one of the practice books.

The kanji dictionary had plenty to practice with, but there was…a lot of kanji. Hundreds and hundreds of them. If she read the number of pages right, then there was about five hundred something pages…yeah, no, fuck that. She wasn’t learning all that. She’d be old as balls by then. But there was one good news. For each new kanji that showed itself in the textbooks, there’d be hiragana letters squished teeny tiny right next to it, to show how to say it. It was much faster to just use the textbooks and learn the kanji that happened the most. Kaya only opened the dictionary if she had time.

One person who had no time at all was Naruto. Not because he was busy or had important things to do. He just really, really, really hated schoolwork so much. They weren’t even that bad. The only stuff kids in his class had to read was history, science, geography, and maths. But that’s why he hated them. They had nothing to do with his big dreams of “doing cool jutsus” or “being the strongest shinobi ever—the Hokage!” None of this useless slop for him, no sir. That’s super boring. The only reason he’d been held back in pre-academy for two years running was because his teachers were real mean on him. He didn’t need to know this stuff to be Hokage anyways, so he’s not gonna do it.

Kaya gave a long, hard mental squint at that. Her nose wasn’t the strongest in the land, but that smelled like a fresh load of horseshit.

She told him so. And also that his notes were never done, his handwriting sucked, and he skipped and tripped over words and sentences every time he had to read them. Did the kids who’re good at school do that, huh? Did they yammer out the page like they wanted to finish reading it as fast as the words can fly out their mouths? Naruto complained she was being mean on him, too. He could read them like a normal person if he wanted to, but he didn’t because it was boring. Kaya told him back that she was just pointing out the obvious. That’s not being mean, that’s just facts. Also if it’s really that easy then he might as well prove it.

“Yeah, see? You can’t do it, right? It’s ‘cause you’re not paying attention. This is exactly why you’re confused in class. You need to pay better attention.”

The number of times she had to say that, good god. Attention, attention, attention. Practice and paying attention, that’s what he needed. She kept saying it to the point he got sick of it. Well, if he wanted her to stop repeating herself then why wasn’t he doing it, ha?! Even she could do it and she could barely even read! If he didn't like that then he can get good or die mad about it!

For some reason that’s what did it. If there’s one thing that lit a fire under his whiny ass, it was Kaya being better at school than him. All that homework wasted on him when he couldn’t even try to pay attention even after she’d gone over them again and again and again, so what was the point? Might as well send Kaya to school and Naruto can stay at home and learn to be a housewife.

Naruto hated being bad at something over some girl way more than he hated her telling him to sit at home. They’d race to see who could finish the homework first and half the time it was a toss up whether or not Kaya lost. Every time she had to stomp off to be alone in the kitchen for a while—Naruto was just as bad about winning as he was about losing—and that usually meant eating fruits, and then Naruto would get over himself long enough to beg her for some too and that was the closest Kaya got to seeing him eat a plant.

…Okay, so that was kind of a lie. But if the food wasn’t a could-be-called-ramen-if-you-squinted-and-tilted-your-head-a-bit that happened to have whatever steamed veg she needed to use up, then Naruto just had to put on an attitude before he tried (and finished) whatever new recipe she’d made instead of just admitting that maybe he can like other things too.

For Kaya, those new recipes were the best. She’d only visited the restaurant a few times, but each visit taught her so much! Akimichi-san made a point of doing recipes that shared common ingredients, that way when she went to the general store she could just buy those things and use them in lots of different ways. And there weren’t just useful recipes, he also showed a few fun ones too! Like candy fruits! (Melt sugar and stir fruit chunks into it. They worked best with harder fruits, like apples, and…and she didn’t know many fruits.)

Kaya’s favorite fruits as of late were mandarins. Thanks to Sensei helping with the vomiting, her body decided to swing in the opposite direction and now she was hungry and thirsty all the time. Mandarins had a sour taste that seemed to really help with the weird thirst. They didn’t really help with the rest of the pregnant symptoms, though. Sensei said those symptoms were signs of a healthy pregnancy, but that didn’t stop them from sucking any less.

It didn’t help either that she had to spend so much time in the break room either snacking as much as she could get away with or trying not to conk out. But then, that’s also where the second part of her learning came in: people.

Things really were different inside the village. People walked in and out of the break room and talked about all sorts of things. Half the time it sounded like a whole new language, that’s how different it was. Kaya would’ve been lost at sea if it wasn’t for Sango.

That term, “lost at sea”—it was one of the things Kaya picked up from her. Sango was always in the break room, always working at her desk, so Kaya was sure to find her whenever she went in. Since she was Kaya’s actual boss, and it felt a little too scary to ask Sensei her stupid questions, Kaya eventually got the spine to ask her things…sometimes. If she didn’t look too busy.

“What’re you acting all shy about? If you’ve got questions, just say ‘em.”

Sango had a weird way of talking, which was way different from Kaya’s kind of talking. But she didn’t go around cussing left and right, and people at the clinic respected her. Getting to spend so much time around Sango and listening to her was what slowly started to “clean up” Kaya’s speaking too, though it did also mean she picked up some Sango-isms. (She didn’t yet know what most of the Sango-isms were. Just that people started making funny faces when she talked sometimes and told her not to worry about it if she asked.)

As embarrassing as it was to admit, there really wasn’t much Kaya knew about the village despite living there for nearly a month. Book shopping aside, she’d stuck to her one street because it was the only part of the village she even knew. When she told Sango this, Sango dug a map out of somewhere and explained some basics.

The village of Konohagakure was like a big, round leaf. At the bottom of the leaf was the main gate, and at the very top was the mountains. Since the gate faced south and the mountains faced north, being able to find one or the other meant knowing exactly what direction a person was facing.

In Konoha, there were shinobi and civilians. Since the southern half of the village had really good soil and a big river going through it, it was considered the place where civilians lived and farmed most of the food in the village. There were actually two big rivers: the Monobe river down south and the Nara river up north. Because of that, and because the Hokage monument and Hokage tower were also north, the northern half of the village was considered the shinobi side.

Of course, this was only mostly true. Even up north, the whole eastern side had a bunch of civilian neighborhoods, while a few big name clans lived in the south. And some in the north. And lots of little ones all over the village. They felt like this weird exception to the north and south rule. But clans…had their own system.

History. History, politickin’, and each clan’s speciality, Sango explained, was what decided it. Take the Akimichi, for example. They were an ancient, renowned clan. Back in the day they’d made their name with trade and connections, and had even been granted nobility status by the daimyo. That’s why their restaurants were set up right along the big main road where all the foreign dignitaries and rich folks would find them first, and how they were one of, if not the closest clans to the merchant civilian families. Meanwhile the Nara clan had their compound in the Nara forest, and the Yamanaka lived near both of them, because the Nara and the Yamanaka were once vassal clans of the Akimichi.

(“What does ‘vassal’ mean?”

“It means they’re all in each other’s pockets.”)

Compared to that, there was a Hatake clan that had a history of farming, so their compound was buried deep in the south. There was a bug clan that lived beside meadows, and a dog clan that kept close to hunting ground. For every clan, there was a speciality. And with each speciality, there was also history.

That mostly explained where those were. It didn’t explain the twisting and twining streets that curled in between them. But that was about as much Kaya could pick up that managed to stay between her ears.

And that wasn’t even getting to the civilian side of things. There seemed to be no proper explanation for that one—as in, for the history? Yeah, probably. Someone could probably explain that one in simple words. But there was so much more than just that. How the hell was Kaya supposed to start asking when she didn’t even know what questions to ask?

The one thing she could pick up for sure so far was that it seemed to involve a lot of paperwork. She would’ve felt worse about taking up Sango’s time if the lady hadn’t invited her first. And…she wasn’t the only one.

See, Sango was always in the break room, always working at her desk. But the thing about Sango was that people were always talking to her even when she was busy. They’d pull up a chair, or pull her into conversation, or the phone would ring, and no matter who it was or what she was doing Sango would always, always deal with it. Oh, they didn’t know where the extra box of gloves went? Sango’d point them to it. They’d been struggling to file the tax returns all week? Sango rang up somebody and got that sorted within the hour. Had a question? Ask Sango.

“…Sango–oba–san, um, what was your job again?”

“Oh? Didn’t I tell you? I’m one of the senior nurses. I just head out for consultations or emergencies every now and then—not as exciting as you’d think, let me tell you. Probably ought to be retired by now…but what can you do, you know? Someone’s gotta handle the busy work. Speaking of—here. Count those up and tell me what’s what.”

…on second thought, maybe it wasn’t Kaya’s business to know. She took the box and started counting.

Who was she, thinking she’d be able to figure out civilians in a big city like Konoha? She couldn’t even figure out the civilians outside, and she was one. That one month on the road had had her seeing and hearing and smelling more of them than she’d ever done in all of the years of her life. Maybe not everyone could wash all the time, but they still had a cleaner air, or at least they looked more put together. Even their talking was cleaner—and that wasn’t just because of which country they’d happened to be going through. Every place had its own slang and cussing and stuff like that. But some people had a way of sounding fancy. A way that sounded like shiny clothes, and a horse drawn carriage, and getting welcomed into cities like the next coming of the daimyo.

It’s why Kaya had kept her mouth shut tight. Wasn’t none of their business knowing what her deal was, and soon as she cottoned on that most people thought her a boy with her nearly bald head, she’d just left them to it. The only time that didn’t work was the first time she met a shinobi. He’d taken one look at her and wanted to know where her husband was and why a pregnant woman like her was travelling alone.

Kaya’d been so close to losing her shit about the face-stealing, freak of nature staring her dead in the eyes that her mouth just blurted out the truth. “…He’s gone…he, he left me. I don’t…I didn’t have a choice…”

She didn’t know until later—as in, sat in that trading cart that got her into Konoha and someone told her later—that he might have assumed that someone like her was running away from a brothel house and the life debts they put on the women there that only rich men could buy them out for. Which would mean a bounty on her head for stealing from the red light district and the shinobi or whoever else found her would be honor bound to return her. Yeah, big honor for them, she’d be better off just killing herself.

She will, of course. The point of this was that she wanted to die. Someone like her getting pregnant? She was never going to make it.

But…that didn’t mean she wanted a baby to follow her.

Sure, death was the best option for her, but it didn’t have to be the only one for someone who wasn’t born yet. A baby still had a chance. Their life could be anything.

The thing in her…the baby, her baby. That's what they were. Her baby…would be an orphan. Just like her.

That's when she'd decided.

If she couldn't protect him, then maybe…a shinobi village could. Being born to her would give her kid nothing, not even looks. But if it was a rich place like Konoha, then that had to mean life would be different…right? It couldn't be worse than being born way out in the middle of nowhere.

It couldn't be worse than what she'd been through, right?

In the shinobi village, shinobi were very common. They were the people who protected the village. Their jobs were jobs worth doing. Because of this, they were also the ones who made the important decisions. All the laws, the decisions, the ruling places in government—it was all filled with them. They already did so much for the village and the village belonged to them, so that’s what they did. They lived in the best neighborhoods, shopped in the best shops, and ran the most important businesses.

Clan shinobi…they were royalty, basically. Lots of money, lots of history, and lots and lots of power. Had to call them –sama and bow and scrape to them like if they were nobles in the capitol. The one thing that stopped them going toe for toe with those nobles was not going about the village riding in fancy carriages.

Though that didn’t explain those “smaller” clans, that was really just some shinobi family that had enough people to call themselves a clan…maybe? Oh, well. It’s not like it mattered. Most people outside knew that nobles are crazy and it’s best to leave them alone.

Not that Kaya could just say that. People did a lot of looking up to shinobi in a shinobi village. Because of them, the village was safe. Because of them, the village could prosper. Kaya never heard different until one day, when, tucked in the back of a second–hand shop and minding her business, a woman’s voice started complaining to someone else. According to her, the ninja village was a military village. They raised their children to be killers, to be more bodies to throw into fighting and war. The only reason education was mandatory for all was to increase the chances of civilians also becoming ninja. Even though it was civilians who’d come up with almost all the inventions of the past century—plumbing, radios, vaccines, and more—they were second class citizens.

“Can’t waste time building and creating when their lot is out busy killing each other, now can they?”

“—Shh, don’t say that!”

“But it’s true. What else do they expect us to say when it’s true? When they’re the ones banning books, when our people only have three representatives on the council, and against all those clan heads? And we still have to bow to them while living in worse neighborhoods than they do. The only reason we’re kept around is to keep house while they’re out and come up with more things for them to enjoy. It’s unseemly—”

“Your mouth is what’s unseemly, will you shut up—”

They went on arguing while Kaya’s mind started spinning. Between that, and later what she read from Naruto’s history textbook, there was one thought that slowly grew stronger and stronger.

The shinobi weren’t like nobles. They were like samurai.

In the places outside the village where reading was rare, there was royalty in the cities and samurai in the country. The samurai were warlords. They ruled over armies and only sometimes loaned them out to rich nobles. Whatever code of honor they followed, they were power hungry rulers who always fought each other for land and wealth, no matter how much grief that brought to land and people. The thought that had begun to take root in Kaya’s head was that shinobi were like samurai.

Commoners like her only ever saw those samurai called ronin. Betrayers. Those who’d left their lords to become thieves and murderers. They followed no code and their coming always meant pain and grief.

In the world she came from, shinobi had only ever been one thing: yokai. Those spirits and demons with abilities that went against the laws of the living but these ones wore human skin. Above all things, they were dangerous. Dangerous and unnatural, and not…not like people. Not rich nobles or battle hungry warriors or the kinds of people from her world. The hell. The only place that should’ve kept them should’ve been hell.

But they didn’t. They ruled the village and now Kaya lived there. They were in charge and they were powerful, and no good came from the hands of such power to those who had none.

If Kaya could escape this life without finding herself at its mercy, that was all she could ask.

Chapter Text

Pregnancy was a mortifying hell meant to bring misery to Kaya and to Kaya specifically.

The exhaustion that came with doing no work now included being covered in sweat for no reason. Sweating led to pimples, which she had never experienced in her life and had no idea of until she woke up one night to find her back covered in a sudden, blistering red rash of them. She could not hide it away from Sensei and her check-ups any more than she could've prevented Sensei from one day seeing her run to the toilet so often that she finally handed over a set of disposable underwear just so Kaya would sit down for more than an hour. Kaya later learnt that they had a name, which were adult diapers, that diapers were in fact something that babies wore, and her soul promptly left her body.

Kaya often felt like her entire brain had left her body with how many times she kept failing to use it. Always forgetting things, staring off at nothing, not knowing what she'd been doing even a second before, all while constantly tripping over air and accidentally dropping whatever she held. It was getting incredibly stupid, the ways she kept failing to do her job. But there were only so many mistakes she could make before her job finally had enough and fired her, and she was quickly making all of them. No other job would've let her stay this long and do this badly. Even if she got fired, she didn't think she’d deserve to be hired again, with the way she was going.

It was too stressful to think about. But there was no other way for this child to be born safely and for her to die peacefully if she didn’t. She’d have to try to make up for it by working during the festival. She had to get better, she had to.

“So are we coordinating colors or coordinating flowers?”

“Well, it’s not like we all own the same kimonos, now do we?”

“No no, I think she means in the hairstyles, you know? Like if our hair all have the same colors in them—”

“Yeah! I was thinking that once we decided on something, some of us could go and get the flowers so we can all get ready together on Friday. We really should do it soon because there’s gonna be so much rush on Friday, can you imagine—”

“—but just so you know, I don’t know anything about the flower types and whatnot. All I know is that white camellias look great on me.”

“—hey Tsuki–chan, what do you think?”

Kaya, who’d kept her head down in her corner of the break room and done her best to not pay attention to anything whatsoever, paused in her sorting. “…I don’t know much either…” she mumbled.

“Aw, don't say that.” Sayaka hopped down to sit next to her. “Come on! We need a tie breaker here, and we're all going to the festival together anyways so you might as well tell us what you think, too. Which color flower do you like?”

Kaya shrugged, hoping that would be enough and Sayaka would go away. She did not. A few seconds of silence, then a shoulder bumped lightly into Kaya's. “Nee.”

Slowly, Kaya looked up. Sayaka's grin faltered. “…What's wrong?”

Kaya took a deep breath and let it out. “I'm not going to the festival. I need to work.”

Sayaka's jaw dropped. “ What? Why not? No one's going to work! What happened? Do you need help?” Kaya quickly shook her head. “Then what's the matter? Do you…don't you like flowers?”

Kaya pressed her lips together and tried her best not to cry. She didn't know how they could be so hurtful. They had eyes, didn't they? They could see, right? Were they really going to make her say it?

Not a single one of them stepped in or tried to defend her. Sayaka had the nerve to look at her all wide eyed and confused and how could she? How could they?

Kaya swallowed, the knot in her throat closing tighter. “I can't wear any flowers. It's…not…I can't do it. And I’m going to work. It’s fine.”

“That's not true! We could just—”

Sayaka's hand reached out. It froze when Kaya jerked back. Her mouth opened to say something when—

“Wait a minute.”

Sango walked over. A touch on Sayaka’s shoulder and a quiet look had Sayaka backing off and Sango easing herself onto the sofa that had served as Kaya’s backrest. “Alright, let’s have some space here. Off you go.”

To Kaya, she said, “Sorry I’m sitting up here but it’s my knees, you know. Speaking of that, I think I’ve spent enough time with you, too, to know what it might be.” She stared long and hard at Kaya, until Kaya had to look away. “…I’ll talk to you about that later. But I’ll tell you now that you don’t need to worry about it. I mean it. Don’t worry about it.”

What did she mean? Was it about her appearance? Was it about her work? Was it about her being dramatic for no reason and making the room uncomfortable?

“Now, here’s a question—if we could get your hair looking pretty, would you want to go to the festival?”

Kaya suddenly could not look away from her ankles. If she did, then she would cry. She didn’t want to do that. She really didn’t want to have some sort of breakdown in front of everyone, that would be so awkward.

A sigh gusted nearby. “Right. I have an idea.”

Sango called Sayaka and Sayuri over and said something to them that made them go. Kaya managed to blink the tears away by the time Sango held out a small bottle in her direction.

“This is hair oil.” She poured a few drops on her fingers. “See? It’s from the coast. It’s made with coconut. Do you want to smell it?”

Her hand was close enough that Kaya didn’t have to lean very far to get the scent. It reminded her of a shampoo that had been on sale a while ago.

“This is used to make hair smooth, healthy, and easier to comb. Isn’t that right, you two? There are lots of people in Konoha who use this thing.”

From where she sat, Sayuri nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty normal where I live. Plenty of different hair types and colors all around.”

“We actually borrowed this oil from Daisuke–kun’s cupboard,” Sayaka chimed in.

“It makes sense that he’d have it, since the Akimichi’s hair type is like that. Nara, too, come to think.”

“Yeah, yeah—and that reminds me of the Yamanaka—which, makes sense, too. I mean, you seen their long hair? They probably use really nice products on them.”

“Well, there we go, then,” said Sango. “Though I reckon that most nin probably use scentless or very faint–smelling oils, what with their line of work. But lucky for us, we don’t need to bother with that. So, do you understand now, Tsuki–chan?” When Kaya stared blankly at her, she continued. “Pretty hair, no matter how smooth or rough, doesn’t get pretty on its own. There are many different tools that people use to help, just as there are many different tools for doing a lot of things.”

“This oil,” she held out her hand, “is also good for the skin, and it's edible, so there’s no harm in putting it on. Would you allow me to put some into your hair?”

…Genuinely, Kaya did not know why she’d want to. Her hair was disgusting. Why would someone want to touch it? She didn’t want to touch it. The weeks and weeks of leaving it to grow had made it so tangled. It was rough, and brown, and ugly. Every time she’d tried to comb it, she’d ended up crying, so she’d finally given up and left it.

“…Will that really help?”

“Absolutely. Oil is slippery. If I put it in your hair, then I can easily untangle it, and then your hair will feel much better. It won’t hurt at all, I promise.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“Is that a no?”

Kaya shook her head. “I’m sorry that I’ve troubled you.”

“I’m not troubled at all.” Sango decisively clicked the bottle closed and rubbed the oil she’d poured between both hands. “Now, turn around and I’ll make this all better. If you feel any pain or discomfort, you tell me right away. Do you want to hold up a mirror? If you see what I’m doing it might help.”

Kaya shook her head again and turned around as told. She’d rather avoid seeing herself. Sango sounded so assured, and she’d only ever helped Kaya, and Kaya really wanted to avoid causing any more trouble. It would be too embarrassing if she told them no. She’d rather just lie down and take it instead of dealing with that.

Sango moved closer behind her, until her feet were planted on either side of Kaya’s body. Kaya tucked her knees under her chin and closed her eyes. She almost didn’t feel it, at first, when it started. It felt as if Sango’s fingers were brushing over the hair, rather than tugging at knots.

Sayuri said something, she didn’t know what, and conversation soon picked up. The fingers started making their presence known. As promised, it didn’t hurt, but it was still uncomfortable, namely because Kaya couldn’t stop feeling like a nuisance and a burden. She didn’t know how they could just stand to waste so much time on her. People had jobs. She did, too, even if she didn’t want to face her (incredibly simple, and forgiving, and not even that hard or complicated) work.

Kaya might have dozed off a little bit. It was with a dull jolt that she felt the fingers press into her scalp. They rubbed steady, steady circles, from the tip of her head all the way down to her hairline, and back again. They were touching the skin of her head. She didn’t know they’d be able to do that. It didn’t hurt at all.

“…That should do it. Quite a bit of hair you have here, Tsuki–chan. Must’ve been growing a lot these past few weeks, no wonder it was giving you trouble.” Kaya blinked fully awake as a handheld mirror tapped against her arm. “Go on, then. Give it a look. I took all the tangles out, just as promised.”

Inside the mirror, the face she saw…it was…

…was surrounded by hair a lot less matted. And at least two shades darker.

What had earlier been a bird’s nest had somehow become hair. No longer did she have a fuzzy, rough, uncombed blob attached to herself but instead hundreds of little curls that seemed…organized, almost. They were shiny. Even as she stared, Sango’s fingers brushed through them easy as water, no tangles, no pain. Never in her life had her hair looked like that, even if it only came just past her ears.

She touched one of them—it was soft. And then she pulled and it stretched halfway to her shoulder.

The curl bounced back from her fingers and neatly tucked itself behind her ear again. The mirror caught Sango’s grin. “Curls will trick you like that. Always longer than you think it is. You’ll probably want a few other products to maintain and protect it as it grows longer, but for now I’d say just a bit of oil and patience should be fine.”

Kaya couldn't stop staring. She couldn’t stop petting her hair. It smelled so nice now…

Oh, there came the tears. She had to put the mirror down to press them out of her eyes. A hand found her shoulder and lightly patted it.

“Feeling better?”

Kaya nodded.

“You think you might go to the festival now?”

Kaya sniffled, and nodded again.

From the background, Sayaka squealed. “YAY! Finally! Everyone’s on board! Okay, alright—we’re going to gather everyone here after work and plan for real, okay? I’m meeting you guys here later, right? Ooooh, I’m so excited!”

“Ah! The time!” Sayuri exclaimed. “We have to get to our shifts! By Sango–san! Bye Tsuki–chan!”

The two quickly left the room. It took a little while longer for Kaya to recover, by which point Sango had returned to her work. Kaya touched her hair one last time. Despite her hair being short, now it could at least have a clip inside of it, now…now maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

But she really did need to finish her task. After sorting the rest of her pile as fast as she could, Kaya wished goodbye to Sango and hurried off to Arakawa–sensei’s room.

“Tsuki–nee!”

Akko came bounding up to her, her thin coat still on. Right on time, then, thank goodness. Kaya accepted the hug coming at her and then slid into the role of assistant as Sensei got to work. One good thing about these check–ups was that after the first one, Kaya no longer needed to demonstrate as a patient. Her vaccinations would stay for her check–ups, and Akko’s would stay in Akko’s, and Sensei was nice enough to give Kaya things to put away while it happened.

Other than that, the check–up went well. Much of it usually involved chakra transfer, followed by stretches and/or meditation for Akko, and then recording any fluctuations. Someone even came by to drop off lunch for her and Sensei, so Kaya didn’t have to go fetch it herself. She didn’t need to help in the kitchens that day either, so after Akko’s visit ended, Kaya was free to find Sango and do more sitting down work. She spent a few peaceful hours helping out while Sango switched between telling her what to do and talking on the phone.

By the time the end of the day came around, Kaya was in a very good and helpful mood. Different people from around the clinic started showing up, until most of them were seated throughout the breakroom and were discussing plans for the festival. Kaya found herself next to Sayuri, and felt comfortable enough to answer, hesitant as it was, whenever Sayuri or someone else asked her a direct question. At least no one interrupted or dismissed her.

“—and it tastes kind of like umeboshi, you know?”

Kaya shook her head.

“Really? You don’t know? Haven’t you had umeboshi pickles?”

Kaya shrugged. “No?”

“That reminds me, I think we have some somewhere,” someone said.

“We do?” asked someone else.

“Yeah, from last year, remember? During summer, when we—”

“Ohhh, those! I remember, I remember. There should be a few pots above the cabinets, in room 2B.”

“Now I want to have some…”

“Hey, we could do that right now. Let’s do it!” Sayaka clapped her hands. “We still have that leftover rice in the fridge. If we can get the rest of the ingredients—”

“What, so we’re going to eat in here?”

“Sure! Why not? Let’s do it.”

“Then who’s going to get what—?”

Kaya raised her hand. “I’ll get the umeboshi.”

This had Sayaka pausing. “Are you sure?”

“Un. I want to help.”

Without waiting to see what the rest of them would do, Kaya stood and left. Her head gave a dull pang, as did her chest and hips. She grimaced. Growing pains, they were just growing pains. She’d be fine. The day was going so well. Work was done, people were happy, she just needed to do this one thing and then she could go home and rest and she’d be fine.

It wasn’t until Kaya walked into room 2B that her thoughts halted. Where had that person said…? It was 2B, she knew that much. Something about being above one of the cabinets? But which cabinet…?

Kaya sighed. She toed off her indoor shoes and, gritting her teeth against the pull of sore muscles, climbed onto the nearest counter. Wow, the tops of the cabinets were dusty, her poor hands accidentally discovered. Aya, what a pain. And what did an umeboshi jar look like? She’d gone to fetch them with so much confidence without even knowing what to look for—

“What are you doing?”

That was Akimichi’s voice. He could help her! Kaya tried to see over her shoulder, but it was hard to do when trying to balance. “I was looking for—”

“You shouldn’t be up there. You need to get down.”

Before Kaya could answer, a pair of arms circled around her and she was suddenly off her feet. One arm wrapped around her waist, while the other enfolded her legs. Kaya squeaked, flailing, but her hands were dirty. She couldn’t hold on, and her weight just…draped, over his shoulder. Which put her chest right next to his ear. Kaya’s face burned.

He—

That was—

Her stomach swooped as he neatly placed her in a chair. It took a second to think past her racing heartbeat and notice that Akimichi had knelt before her. It took another second to notice the look on his face. His brows were drawn low, mouth flattened into a frown.

“…Don’t do that again. That was very dangerous.”

Oh. Oh, he was upset. His voice was calm and level, but in a controlled, ‘I am not yelling at you’ kind of way. He’d never talked to her like that. In all the time she’d known him, even when she’d messed up during the cooking lessons, he’d never used that tone with her. Her heart stuttered for entirely different reasons.

“…Are you angry?”

His jaw flexed. Kaya’s shoulders twitched upwards.

“I am, but raising my voice would’ve scared you, and you would’ve fallen. Please don’t do that again. If you need something, you find me and I’ll get it for you. What were you looking for?”

“…I…I was…there’s a jar of umeboshi that I…I’m really…”

Her voice petered out. But Akimichi nodded. “I know where it is.”

He stood and left. Kaya’s throat constricted. She couldn’t think of anything to say, or how to fix this. Her vision fixed onto her clasped hands, carefully keeping them above her clothes. When a clay jar was pressed into her hands, there was nothing she could do but accept it and bow.

Her voice didn’t work. She couldn’t bear to see his face. Someone who hadn’t yet gotten angry at her was angry at her and she couldn’t fix this.^[x]

Walking down the corridor, Kaya’s eyes welled with tears as the thoughts hit, one after another. She couldn’t fix this. She’d messed up too badly. There was nothing she could do. It was all her fault, and she’d always known it was going to happen, of course it would happen, there was no way a good thing would last, but it was all her fault and now he’d hate her forever—

Kaya ducked into a closet, set the clay jar down, and grabbed at her hair. She pulled —and oh gods it was slippery, so she let go and started pinching and slapping herself. Partly as punishment, but mostly to stop crying already—

When that didn’t work, she buried her face in her knees and screamed. All the air out in one, muffled scream. A gusty, shuddering breath in. Scream again. And again, and again, until the exhaustion won out, arms locked and numb under her thighs, her whole body sagging.

…At least she’d stopped crying. And at least she hadn’t hurt herself where people would see. But ew, her hands…oh. Oh, her hair. Her hair, that had been oiled and combed so nicely…

Kaya stared blankly at the dark, mind a long, long stretch of faint noise. Slowly unfolded herself, felt around until she found the clay jar, rubbed the tears from her face, and left the closet.

^[x]By the time she wandered back to the break room, her eyes stung a bit but were otherwise dry. They still exclaimed over the dirt on her face and hands, but that was blamed on the jar of umeboshi. While someone passed over wet wipes to her, the rest of them added the pickles to their communal onigiri preparations. The lighthearted atmosphere of the room felt so disconnected from her that Kaya floated, letting her surroundings carry her as she breathed through it. She tried for a smile and didn’t know what face she made. Sayuri ended up getting both of them ingredients, and Kaya eventually managed to pay attention to her trying to teach her.

Well, obviously, Kaya knew how to make an onigiri. Just wrap a ball of lightly salted rice in seaweed. But she hadn’t made one with things inside of it. It wasn’t until Kaya was tasked to make her own that she came back to herself. They’d been right—the umeboshi did taste good. It also gave her an idea for something to do later.

Kaya managed to make it home and got started.

After washing the rice, instead of covering it in plain water, what she did instead was mix chicken stock, hondashi, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar in as well and left it to cook. While it did, she stir fried the smallest portion of ground meat she’d been able to find (meat spoiled quickly, she’d been told, so she didn’t want to buy anything she wouldn’t use immediately) along with soy sauce, vinegar, and a stir fry seasoning she’d found on sale—she’d been practicing her reading on package labels and it was starting to pay off. Once the meat had mostly cooked, she pushed it to one side and stir fried tiny chunks of onion, carrot, and spinach. She would’ve added them before, but she hadn’t wanted them to overcook and she’d rather the vegetables fry in the meat fats instead of adding more and accidentally making it too oily (a hard earned lesson).

The rice finished cooking and it was nice and colorful, but she didn’t seem to have added enough ingredients for it to have more than a light hint of flavor. Kaya didn’t want a light hint of flavor, so she stirred a packet of ramen seasoning in a little water and poured it over the hot rice, carefully folding it to not mash the grains.

All that remained was letting the rice cool enough to scoop into her palm, spoon some meat mixture inside, and slowly shape it until it formed a small, slightly greasy triangle. The sheet of seaweed she wrapped them in kept peeling and they didn’t look very neat, but at least they were there?

Kaya had shaped her third onigiri when Naruto ran into the apartment. “Hi, Kaya–nee! What’s that?”

“Onigiri.”

“Why does it look like that?”

“Because I added things to it.”

Naruto wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I’ll like it.” Even as he said it, he sniffed the air. “It smells good in here, though.”

“Well, that’s because I made this. Maybe you could try one. Or don’t. Either one is fine.”

To his credit, Naruto didn’t immediately bolt. After experiencing a few of Kaya’s experiments he’d seemed to find them mostly okay, if weird. Putting his school things away and washing his hands (Kaya had scolded him enough times for him to remember), Naruto edged towards the plate. He sniffed the onigiri, gave it a hard glare, then screwed his eyes shut and bit it.

And paused. Then he blinked at the onigiri and scarfed down the rest.

“Why’s it taste like ramen?!”

“I mixed a little ramen seasoning in the rice, and added seasoned filling, too.”

Naruto considered the answer. “That’s weird. You could’ve just made ramen.” Which didn’t stop him from taking a second and then third onigiri.

Kaya fetched a mandarin and peeled it. When he was occupied eating it, she finished with her own meal. To her, there was something missing from the flavors, but she didn’t know what. Other than that, it tasted…fine. It was fine. At least she hadn’t ruined it.

Naruto had a very focused look on his face for gnawing on a mandarin slice. She could ask him what it was, but it was rare for Naruto to put thought into saying something instead of just blurting it out. Kaya took her time eating. She’d started on a second mandarin slice when he seemed to make a decision and squared his shoulders.

“Kaya–nee, I want to ask you something.”

Kaya made sure to finish chewing before answering. “…What is it?”

“On Friday, it’s the day of the festival,” he took a deep breath. “And…and it’s also my birthday. Will you spend my birthday with me?”

Chapter Text

In the end, it wasn't up to Kaya whether or not they spent the day together. Because Friday would be a working day and Naruto had school while she had work.

But Kaya didn't want to disappoint Naruto. She told him that she'll have to check with her coworkers, but promised she'd spend at least a little time with him. She…didn't know if he believed it or not.

Kaya also hadn’t talked to Akimichi–san about what had happened. Was he still angry with her? Were the cooking classes canceled? Would he no longer wish to talk to her? Would he ever forgive her? The thought of asking him any of this seized her chest in such a terrifying grip that she just couldn’t do it. It broke her heart that she had failed someone who had done so much for her so soon after meeting him and she hadn't even had the chance to repay him yet. That, and the planning for the festival had made the week hectic. Everyone was already so busy. It felt incredibly inappropriate to distract him or anyone else from their work just for her mistakes.

In truth she didn't know how exactly the planning for the festival was coming along, only that her coworkers were taking care of it. It wasn't as if she'd seen much of them to ask. On the other hand, she'd seen Akko every single day.

“…and I'd say that's the last check up we'll be having for a while.”

Akko gaped. “We're done?!”

“We're done.” Arakawa-sensei methodically peeled off her gloves. Amidst Akko's cheering, she said to Kaya. “You will be able to finish the rest?”

Kaya nodded, smiling a little. Spending time with Akko often put her in a better mood.

“Wonderful. Then I'll leave the rest to you. Enjoy the festival.”

“You too, Sensei!” Akko waved at her retreating back. Sensei briefly returned it, waving to them both.

As soon as the door closed, Akko quieted. She walked over to Kaya and flopped against her legs. “Bwah! I'm tired.”

“I know.” Kaya stroked her head, her other hand counting what she’d need to put away where.

Over the weeks, she'd been allowed to see that Akko changed her personality around adults. For authoritative figures like Arakawa–sensei, she became much more lively and cutesy, behaving like a little girl without a care in her head beyond being cute. It was only when they left the room that the act dropped. When it was just Kaya the energetic child became one that was far more calm, observant, and thoughtful. She was still quite friendly, but it held an air of maturity that she seemed reluctant to openly show.

Kaya knew something about putting up with more energy than one was used to. Whether it came from the outside or inside, both seemed to be equally tiring.

“Good work. I’m happy for you,” Kaya told her after a while.

Akko made a muffled sound against Kaya's stomach. She didn’t let go. Kaya didn’t push her. She was content to stand there and wait, considering that the sooner she moved the sooner she’d have to face the evening, where she’d have to make a decision, and she didn’t want to.

In the end, it was Akko who stepped away. She looked up at Kaya. “You too. You’ve done well,” she said, in a measured voice. Kaya smiled quietly again.

As she walked around the room, putting away what would be used later, straightening what needed straightening, Akko followed just behind, holding onto the edge of her faded blouse. She talked to Kaya about what her orphanage would be doing during the Kyuubi festival, while Kaya hummed every now and again. Even the speed of Akko’s words had slowed down, as if she took the time to really think through what she wanted to say.

In the brief moments that they had spent alone together, Kaya had asked her about it, and why she hid it. “…I don’t think it’s a good thing for me to be smart or mature. I think it’s important for me to make adults think I’m a kid.”

Kaya hadn’t understood completely, but she didn’t want to push. She didn’t point out the obvious fact that Akko was a kid, that she was around the same age as Naruto, who very much and quite loudly was a kid. She had a feeling that what Akko had really meant had been something different.

“What will you do for the festival?” Akko asked.

…That was a good question. Should Kaya try to find Akimichi–san to make up with him and spend the festival with her coworkers? Should she turn them down and spend the festival with Naruto? Whichever she chose, she’d end up disappointing someone.

Then again, it could very well depend on how long it’d take her feet to give out. The past few days had seen them aching more and more often and she didn’t know why.

Kaya said as much, briefly, then added, “But I think I’ll be going out in the morning. Would you like me to buy you something? I’ll already be buying snacks for the little boy I know. I could get some for you and give them next time…?”

Akko smiled one of her close-lipped, mysterious smiles. “You’re a good nee–chan,” was all she said.

Kaya didn’t know about that. But she shrugged and closed the filing cabinet she’d just removed a few files from. They’d need to be evaluated by Sayuri or Sango later, so she placed them on the desk for easier reach.

When she turned, Akko had a considering look on her face. “…I want to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

She opened her mouth to say it only for her twitch. Her head tilted to the door. A few seconds later the door flew open. Immediately, Akko put on a bright smile.

Sayaka beamed right back. “Hi, Akko–chan! Are you all done?”

“Un! All my appointments are finished!” she raised her hands into double fists.

“That’s great! And right on time for the festival, too, high-five!” Akko ran over and smacked her hand to Sayaka’s, then tackled her in a hug. “Tsuki–chan, are you done, too? We’ll be leaving soon.”

“Ye—yes, I’m. I’m ready, I think.” Kaya stuttered, but Sayaka just laughed.

“Don’t worry! It’ll be just like when we went shopping, remember? There’re lots of stalls set up out there. Lots of sales happening, too.”

“You’re going shopping?!” Akko bounced up and down, giggling when Sayaka ruffled her hair.

“We sure are! And I hope you get to enjoy the festival too, dear! I’m so, so, so, so, so happy for you!”

Her head ruffling turned into a squeezing hug that rocked the both of them back and forth, making Akko squeal even more. Kaya blinked bemusedly at the spectacle. It was always a shock watching the personality switch in action.

When the two parted and Kaya retrieved her umbrella, they walked together to the front doors. Other clinic staff were already packing up and leaving around them. They’d hardly reached the front entrance when Sayuri found them. All three of them bid goodbye to Akko, who insisted that she’d be fine making her way back to the orphanage on her own, and then they left the street to explore the shopping districts.

Kaya had never seen the village like this. Lanterns had already been set up, though they weren’t lit. Shops were decorated to match the colors of the festival, with hawkers advertising last minute sales. A few specialty stalls were already up and running, taking advantage of the morning crowd. By evening, there would likely be much more variety for the much bigger crowds of festive goers.

Sayaka chattered about the games and the booths that would be set up. Sayuri talked about the songs and dances that would be happening at the Tower Square. From what Kaya eventually understood, most of the morning was for the little bit of sight–seeing that was available despite it being late-morning. Later, they’d meet up with friends for lunch. Someone would be bringing flowers, while two or more other people had volunteered to fetch rental kimonos. Kaya had already handed over her share of money for flowers and kimono, so it wasn’t like she couldn’t go.

After they dressed at…she didn’t know who’s house, they were all supposed to head back to Akimichi–san’s restaurant for an early dinner and a bit of partying before they went to explore the festival proper and that’s what Kaya was most stressed about.

She hadn’t told her coworkers anything about the fight she’d had with Akimichi–san. What would she even say? That at the beginning of the week she’d done something so stupid that he’d finally lost his patience with her and ever since she’d been avoiding him instead of apologizing like she should have and now it was probably too late and the work environment was ruined all because she was an incompetent coward so they better just fire her? And after all the efforts they’d gone through in being nice to her? In preparing for the festival?

No matter how Kaya looked at it, there was no way she could think to fix this. There was no way to stop either her coworkers or Naruto from being angry with her, no way to prevent the disaster that was headed her way. None of the good things she had were ever meant to last and it was going to end so badly and it was all her fault, and she just wished she could escape being hurt for once in her life.

But that was later, and it was morning. With her clear umbrella over her head and the gentle rain that pattered down, bringing occasional shards of sunlight with it, it was hard to feel the immediate threat of what the evening would bring when it felt so far away.

It was even harder to feel it when buying and sampling festive snacks to bring back to Naruto. Sweets and savories, toasted and fried, one by one they landed in her arms wrapped in waxed paper and smelling hot and tasty. Kaya even bought a few apples, just to make it feel more balanced, even if they did weigh extra and her feet had begun to sting by then.

She struggled to hold onto her bulky cloth bag the rest of the way to the restaurant, where Sayaka and Sayuri greeted the other nurses and staff. She finally found a place to put it aside, in a big pile of other bags because apparently her group hadn’t been the only ones out exploring, so that she could squeeze in at the crowded table and eat.

The whole place was crowded. The people were loud. Kaya was too occupied eating little bits of whatever plates came her way to pay much attention to the chaos. If it were important then someone would tell her. Meanwhile the food just didn’t seem to end, and unfortunately for her Kaya overestimated herself. By the end of the meal she was too full to do more than let Sayaka drag her up by the elbow and guide her outside.

The women who surrounded her talked the entire way there. Kaya did her best to not trip over air or fall asleep standing up. She almost missed it when the street under her shoes abruptly became a short, stone–lined path surrounded by grass. A small set of steps led to a door sliding shut behind her and next thing Kaya knew she was stumbling out of her shoes in someone else’s genkan.

“…think she’s a little tired. Do you have anywhere she could rest a while?”

Voices talked around her. A hand guided towards a flight of wooden steps that went on for ages, until eventually it ended in a hallway, and then an open door to the right. A big, soft bed made of pale blue filled up the room inside. Kaya could do no more than fall upon it and drift away.

And away…

Away…and deep, into strange, cottony dreams…

In the sky, clouds rolled onwards, until patches of blue showed through. The light that filtered inside deepened from straw to gold. In the corners of the room, the shadows uncurled from the walls. They stretched languidly across the floor, until they just barely brushed their fingers against the edges of the comforter.

Kaya awoke slowly to buttery sunlight pressed warm against her side. She yawned and stretched, the aches and pains of her body pulled taught with her muscles. It was a very…very quiet awakening. No one else was in the room. She didn’t recognise whose it was, nor did she quite remember how she’d gotten there. The muted green walls seemed to deepen the shadows. Despite how long she’d laid there, the comforter beneath her still felt slightly cool to the touch.

Kaya sat up. At once, her bladder told her that she desperately needed to find a bathroom. The door out of the room stood ajar. With only half a thought in her head, Kaya stumbled out, found another door opposite that opened directly into a bathroom, and rushed inside.

She made it. Kaya rested her head against her knee. She took a few moments just to breathe. The floor tiles pressed cold and fresh against her sore feet, which made her face feel that much more wrinkly and dry. As soon as she was done, Kaya made a point to splash water on her face. She only hesitated a little bit before using the soap and small towel provided. They smelled really nice, all fresh and flowery. The whole room smelled nice, like lemons.

It was her first time being in someone else’s house. It was a very odd experience, to smell air that was unfamiliar, use soaps that were unfamiliar, to stand in a place unknown to her.

Kaya dried her hands and poked her head out. Somewhere down the hall, the sound of people drifted up. That’s probably where her coworkers would be.

She took exactly one step outside when something brushed against her leg and she squeaked. On the ground, a round, fluffy creature blinked up at her. Other than its pale, sharp blue eyes, the rest of it looked to be made entirely of night. A long, black tail waved back and forth behind it like a feathery broom and the small, triangular ears on its head twitched. It opened its mouth and made a strange, scratchy grrow sound. Then it bumped its side against her calf again before trotting away and disappearing around a corner.

It took a few moments to get over her shock. It took a few moments more to convince herself that she was being silly and start down the hall in the direction the creature had gone. No creature awaited her around the corner, but she did find a flight of stairs, at the end of which stood the front door. Coming around the stairs, the short corridor led away to a living room where everyone seemed to be getting ready. She wasn’t too late, then. She could relax and—

Her eyes landed on a pile of bags heaped in a corner and her memories jolted. Her bag! The purchases! She’d forgotten!

No, no, no, no, no—how could she—where were they—had she forgotten them at the restaurant—

“Oi, oi, it’s okay! Calm down!”

A hand landed on Kaya’s shoulder. Kaya startled away from her panicked searching through the bags. The woman was someone who felt vaguely familiar, like all of them did. In her other hand, she held none other than Kaya’s bag. Kaya let out a small cry and grabbed it. The weight of it finally settling in her arms made her balance teeter and she fell squarely on her butt. But that didn’t matter. Her bag was safe! She hugged it close to her chest—ow, sore chest, that stung.

“See? It’s alright now. There’s no need for tears. Are you okay?” The woman asked her. She held out a handkerchief. Kaya wondered if her face looked that bad and meekly accepted it with a nod. “Good, good. I’m going to go see when they’ll be ready for you. Here, try the snacks—but don’t give them to Micchan, okay? Bye!”

Don’t give what to who? But the woman had already left. And in her mad dash, Kaya hadn’t noticed, but she sat next to a low table. To her right, a soft whine emerged from its depths.

Then a large, furry creature emerged.

Kaya froze.

Another one?! More than one? How many were—

Oh—the creature shuffled to her. Shock rooted her to the ground. She could do nothing when the— big, it was so big —creature leaned in close and sniffed at her with its wet, black nose. It stared at her with black eyes, wide and round in a way that the first creature’s eyes had not been at all. It made a single “broof” sound and its legs collapsed beneath it as it fell to the floor and laid against her knee like it had no bones. A long, pink tongue fell out of its mouth and its brown fur fanned around it like hair.

The creature did nothing else. It seemed content to lay there and pant. They stayed that way for so long that Kaya’s tense muscles reluctantly relaxed. Keeping vigil took effort, and her arms and chest hurt from how tightly she clutched her bag.

Not a single person in the room paid attention to them. The longer Kaya waited, the more awkward and embarrassed she felt. Other people’s houses were so strange…

But at least the food wasn’t. The table held an assortment of fruits, candies wrapped in colorful paper, a bowl of fried senbei, and several dishes of snacks she knew and those she didn’t. The biggest of those snacks looked like a warm, golden brown bread roll. Kaya loved bread, so she took one. Most of them were already half emptied, so she felt less guilty than she would have for trying it.

The outside was soft and chewy like bread. But this one had a filling. A thick, reddish brown filling that was sweet but not too sweet. In fact, it felt rather comforting, not overwhelming at all. It was delicious.

It was so tasty that she was almost surprised to find no more of it and only the bread part. She didn’t know what it was about the filling, but she really, really liked it. Enough that she quickly chewed through what was left in her hands and immediately took another sweet roll.

The first bite melted over her tongue and warmed her cheeks. Tasty!

“Aaaand snap!”

Kaya looked up at the voice, mouth full. Sayaka squatted before her and held her fingers up to make a square in front of her face. “The perfect picture!”

With her face puffed full of food, Kaya could not reply to that. Sayaka continued on regardless. “The mood here feels so good that I want to paint pictures of everyone. Including you! You looked so happy just now. What’re you eating?”

Kaya finally swallowed. She held up her treat. “Ehh. Manju, huh? Do you like manju?”

“This is my first time eating it.”

“Is it good?”

“The filling is good.”

“That’s just red bean filling.” Sayaka considered her, head tilted. “…Is this your first time eating adzuki?”

Kaya nodded. “Un. I love it.”

Sayaka’s face went from wide eyed, to grinning, to for some reason very excited. “Oh…oh! Okay! That’s good—that’s great! Right, I just remembered, um, I’m going to. I’ll go over there. You finish that and come over when you’re done, okay? Okay. Okay, okay, okay.”

With a rocking bounce, Sayaka sprung up onto her feet and scurried away, muttering words under her breath that Kaya didn’t catch.

It could have been important. But Sayaka was one of those excitable people who took the smallest moment as important. It wasn’t worth the energy to think about what it could be, so Kaya went back to eating her manju.

Manju. Her new favorite snack was called manju. And the filling was made with red beans. She wondered how it had taken over a month for her to encounter either one. She hoped she could eat it again soon. She wanted to eat bread again soon, too. She should try asking about where to get them and go out to buy them herself sometime. There was enough money to spend and it’s not like she’d be using it later.

She…she wouldn’t be using it later…

She’d forgotten, for a minute. About her plans. In that moment, with the soft, sweet pastry wrapped in her hands, Kaya really looked at where she was.

From the direction Sayaka had rushed off in, a small group of women stood next to a large screen that had been set up in a nearby corner as they helped someone Kaya didn’t know finish tying up a pretty kimono. Almost all of the women in the room were dressed in kimonos, though most of them weren’t completely ready. There were many of them who sat doing their makeup or styling their hair, either helping or being helped by their friends. Those who weren’t wandered in and out of the room into what Kaya now saw was a kitchen, where some of them had gathered at a table to chat. All of them were chatting and being friendly and happy with each other.

The air held a cheerful, relaxed feeling to it, as if they had nowhere else to be but by each other’s side. As if the company of their friends were all they needed—which they were. Friends, that is. Not Kaya. Kaya was the one who’d arrived the latest. She was the one who didn’t fit in, who hardly remembered their names or faces despite working with them for over a month.

In a room that held so much warmth and familiarity, Kaya sat apart like a lone tree upon a barren hill. A mouse staring out at a flock of birds who took to the skies and experienced a life she didn’t know. Who were born to a deep, innate knowledge of who they were and where they fit into the world that she would never know.

She didn’t belong here. She shouldn’t be here.

Two eyes glinted at her. They belonged to a creature that stood on the couch placed across the room, made entirely of white. Other than its white coloring, it was very similar to the first creature—pointed ears, small face, a long, feathery tail. It stared and stared at her. Cold and strange and unfamiliar.

Then it yawned wide, and leapt out of sight.

Kaya shuddered. Quickly finishing her manju, she got to her feet and strode away. (Micchan’s only response was to flop back against the place she’d left and let out a huff.)

The kimono chosen for Kaya was a dark pink color called ‘coral’ and which, according to Sayuri, suited Kaya’s skin tone perfectly. Its sleeves and hems had embroidery of fishes and flowers. It was the nicest and only kimono that Kaya had ever worn in her short life. She stood as still as she could as they fussed around her, pulling and folding and tightening. When they were done, they shooed her in the direction of someone else who sat her down and mostly just patted powder on her, because, “Honestly, I don’t think I have anything for your skin tone. And you’re, what? Fifteen, right? This much is fine.”

Her hair, similarly, received no more than some finger combing and a hair clip to hold a small bunch of bright orange flowers, perched right over her ear so that it tickled if she moved her head a certain way.

Before she knew it, it was time. Time to go. Time to make a decision.

But Kaya really wasn’t ready. As soon as she could, she insisted to her coworkers, the two she actually knew, that she really needed to drop her bag off. It was incredibly heavy for her, and she’d rather leave it safe in the apartment. And, most importantly, her home was right on the way. They could just drop her off and she’d find them in time for dinner.

That last point seemed to help. The two women at least didn’t argue with her. They informed the rest of them and then they were walking out of the door. The walk back to the apartment was one Kaya paid more attention to. The dusky sky hadn’t descended into full night, but it was still quite lovely how the decorations lit up the surroundings. The neighborhood was a slightly nicer one than the one she lived in. She would’ve liked to see more of it in the light of day.

Nevertheless, it was a relief when they arrived at their street. Kaya quickly excused herself and left.

An unlocked door greeted her when she arrived. The inside of Naruto’s apartment was dark. Kaya had been prepared to use her spare key (she finally had one) but the sight of the empty corridor made her wonder why Naruto hadn’t locked his door. Kaya switched on the nearest lights, left the bag of snacks on the counter, then sat down to have a think.

If she went to the restaurant, she’d have to then likely go along for the rest of the night. They’d be walking around for hours. More than that, she’d have to deal with Akimichi–san and her failure to apologize and—oh god, she didn’t want to think about it. But there wasn’t any time left. She had to make a decision.

If she waited for Naruto and spent the rest of his birthday with him, then she’d be putting her kimono and the flowers to waste. She’d be wasting the time and effort her coworkers had put into making her ready.

If she went out, she’d get dinner and her coworkers being happy with her. But then she’d break her promise to Naruto. If she stayed inside, she’d keep her promise, but that would make her coworkers unhappy.

She was caught between two impossible problems and no way to escape them.

Kaya stared down at her bare feet. They’d seemed to become puffier over the past week, the skin becoming slightly pinker. Small cuts and scrapes littered it from where her wooden shoes chafed against her feet. Despite that, they stung, sharp and biting. She genuinely didn’t want to walk around on them for hours. Even if she did go, she’d probably just end up sitting through most of it. That might even bring the mood down, especially if others were there to enjoy the festival and then there she’d be, tired, in pain, and miserable. Her presence would be making that their problem when they’d just wanted a night off.

If she could just stay for dinner, then that would be good. If she only stayed for dinner, she’d have less time to embarrass herself and less chance of being left alone with Akimichi–san. He wouldn’t call attention to her mistake in front of other people, would he? He was more responsible than she, so surely he wouldn’t.

And if she only stayed for dinner, then she could come back to the apartment and spend the rest of the evening with Naruto. And then she wouldn’t be breaking either promise.

It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was as much as she could manage. So Kaya picked herself up and left.

Her musings had taken enough time for the sky to grow even darker. It was no longer raining, but the wind whistled past her neck and raised the hairs on it. More people than usual filled the street, passing by on their way to the Tower Square where most of the festival would be. Despite that, several young people gathered in doorways and along the way. Across the street, a group of older boys in yukata called out to a pair of girls, who must’ve had some familiarity with them because instead of outright ignoring them they giggled and waved. The red of the lanterns reflected off of their retreating backs, and Kaya took their cue and rushed off before the group could notice her.

Up ahead, Akimichi-san’s restaurant shone brightly. The closer she drew, the louder the singing became. It had a steady beat to it like they were stomping on the ground or pounding the tables. Their voices rose up and up, the words ringing with emotion. With celebration, and victory, and strength from a past that she didn’t know.

Kaya stood outside the doors and didn’t know the words to the song.

The singing continued on. Strangers moved past her. She stood in-between, an island caught in two places.

The feeling from the house rushed back to her. She didn’t belong. She shouldn’t be here.

It was not her place to interrupt. To walk into a room where she didn’t know what kind of welcome she’d get and to partake in an experience that she could not and would not ever know the true depths of.

She had no right to be there. She couldn’t stay. She had to leave. She had to leave.

The room inside erupted in cheers. It washed over the footsteps that drew further and further away.

A minute later, the doors opened. Akimichi Daisuke looked outside and wondered why he’d felt the urge to.

The festival went on.

Hundreds of people celebrated in the face of memories of a night they would never forget, all of them unified in survival and the joy of being alive. Music and dance filled the square, treats and prizes filled the hands of children as they flitted between stalls and amongst their friends and families.

Some time later, a stove lit up. Onto the stove went a pan. The first step to the recipe was to heat a pan with a spoon of oil.

Ingredients lined the counter, cleaned and cut and ready for use. Diced onions hit the oil with a sizzle, followed by bell peppers and carrots that sputtered from the droplets of water still clinging to them. Normally, there should be diced chicken as well, but for that meal at least whatever ingredients were available would have to do.

In the time that they cooked, a mixture of four eggs, some milk, and salt to taste were added to a bowl and quickly stirred together. They were then set aside, as the next step involved seasoning the now cooked vegetables with salt, pepper, and four heaping dollaps of ketchup. Two eggs, two dollaps, one serving—that was the rule to follow. It was important that the ketchup reduced slightly before adding stale rice into the pan, using a cut and fold motion to carefully combine it—and it was important to do that and not mix. Mixing heavy-handedly or using fresh rice would result in a mashed, soggy mess, so stale rice that was just barely combined in was best.

This “ketchup rice”, as it was called, didn’t need more preparation than that. It finished quickly and was set aside to make way for the other half of the recipe, which was the tricky part. First, about half of the egg mixture from before needed to be cooked into a thin omelet. Next, half of the ketchup rice had to go in the middle before the omelet was completely cooked and then the edges needed to be carefully lifted to wrap around the rice.

Chopsticks slipped against the edges, a few parts tore. But sliding the whole mound to one edge of the pan helped to give that side of it a more even, rounded shape, as well as get the omelet to wrap roughly over it. Sliding to the other edge accomplished the same.

Kaya switched off the flame. She set the pan on the counter and slid an upside down plate over it. She took a deep breath. On the count of three, Kaya flipped the pan and plate combo over and prayed for good results and—there it was. On the plate. A single, untorn, perfectly yam-shaped omurice.

If she hadn’t been so sore, Kaya would’ve hopped with joy. Success! It looked good! She’d done it!

Kaya rushed over to do it again. And again, she did it! No tearing, no misshapen omelet, no breaking the pan, or hurting herself, or accidentally dropping her food to the floor. Whatever was watching over her, she didn’t want to test its patience, so she carefully took the plates to the low table in the living room where normally there were books. She went back to the kitchen and returned with the ketchup bottle. Between the two she’d made, the first was slightly lumpier than the second, so on the second one she wrote Naruto’s name in katakana and on the first she wrote her name in hiragana. They looked so nice by themselves that they really deserved some side dishes to complete the arrangement. Kaya rummaged through the bag she’d brought earlier and clattered around trying to get the treats in order.

The sound of a door opening came from down the hall. “…Kaya-nee?”

“It’s me,” Kaya carried two glasses of juice to the low table and set them in their places.

“What are you…” From around the corner, Naruto emerged. He paused at the sight that awaited him.

On the table, along with the omurice and juice, were smaller plates and bowls filled with a few select items, including a plate of apple slices to hopefully balance out the sweets.

The kitchen light shone behind him, so it was hard to see his face clearly in the dim room, but as he approached some things became clear. Like how his hair stuck up to one side as if he’d slept on it. The slight puffiness to his skin, and the way his eyes shone a little brighter, either from just waking up or because of crying.

Kaya waited until he’d sat down before she struck a match and lit a candle (found on sale) shaped like an octopus.

“Happy birthday.”

The tiny flame cast shadows across his features. Kaya couldn’t tell whether his expression was good or bad. He was silent for so long that her nerves resurfaced. “I learnt that birthday’s have cake, candles, and presents. I know this isn’t a cake, and my presents are just food, but I hope it’s still okay even if this is omurice and not ramen—”

A solid weight hit her torso. Thin arms wrapped tight around her, a nose digging painfully into her chest. The fuzz of his hair itched her neck as his small body began to shake. “…Thank you… thank you…! ”

Kaya’s throat closed up. Why was he crying over a simple meal? What had happened to him?

What must he have felt when she wasn’t there by the time he came back? Did he think she’d abandoned him? Had he waited a long time? She’d come back too late, and now he was crying, and it was her fault.

Kaya’s numb hands raised to his shoulders. She didn’t push him away, or tell him to stop crying. She didn’t complain that it hurt or that she was hungry. She no longer felt hungry.

From outside the window, a brilliant shower of lights burst in the sky. They illuminated the night and left muted sparks in the eyes. The sounds of them exploding were loud enough to drown her out as she began to cry.

She’d hurt him. She’d chosen wrong. He spent so long being lonely and it was all her fault.

He hugged her and Kaya felt split in two. Two worlds that she could not balance, two duties she’d utterly failed to do. She’d abandoned her coworkers and put their efforts to waste, and she’d abandoned Naruto and made him feel terrible. Where was the right choice in that? What else could she have done?

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know anything.

Chapter Text

If Kaya had it in her, she would run away again.

What stopped her was that after a full night of crying about it thinking about it, she realized in the small hours of the morning that nothing would change. She'd still be pregnant, still be bad at her job, and still making the same mistakes. She’d just have to go through the extra trouble of disappointing people all over again.

And her feet were too sore to walk very far.

And she needed to return her rented kimono. Obviously she’d taken it off before she’d begun cooking—if even a single speck of food fell on it she might have actually had to die to escape her shame. No, she’d taken it off and folded it up neat and there it lay on her bedroom chair to taunt her first thing in the morning.

The one mercy was that it was Saturday. The only reason to go to the clinic on Saturdays was for her weekly check up and that was it. If she could just hold onto the idea of simply giving the kimono to Arakawa–sensei to deal with or leaving it at the front desk or in the break room for someone else to find then she might just stop herself from hiding in bed for the rest of the weekend and never showing up to work again.

Except Kaya really did have to get up to scrub the crusted tears, snot, and sweat from her face and neck before they itched her skin off. Her blouse still had Naruto’s dried tears and snot stains on it. Kaya grimaced. As soon as she’d seen Naruto crying, she’d also started crying, which had led him to panicking and crying even more. He babbled every promise he could get out in between her sobs just so she’d calm down, promising to eat all his vegetables and do all his homework and never complain ever again because he didn’t know what he’d done to make her cry but he was very sorry. She didn’t know how to tell him that her tears were from worry that she’d done something wrong.

She only figured out later that he’d just started crying because he’d been so happy to see her. She’d made him apologize for being happy. She’d been so busy thinking about herself that it had led to so much drama over essentially nothing. How embarrassing. And how embarrassing that she’d have to go to work with her messy feelings and let other people be exposed to them.

(Was she making a big deal out of a small thing again? What if her coworkers weren’t upset with her? What if they weren’t disappointed—no, they had to be at least a little disappointed. After all the money and effort they’d wasted on her they’d surely been hurt by her actions oh god she’d hurt them she kept hurting people she always did this she always messed up it wasn’t fair—)

Kaya couldn’t help but cry even as she washed her face. She eventually just gave up and took off her disgusting clothes to bathe her miserable skin and that somehow seemed to help a little bit. But it took long enough that she couldn’t find it in her to eat breakfast afterwards. She was too sad. Putting the kimono in a bag, Kaya locked the door and left.

Despite it being midmorning, the street wasn’t busy. Marks of the night before still lay scattered about or hung up and wavering in the thin rain. It looked like a lot to clean up. Kaya tried not to look around too much and focused on getting it over with.

Go to her appointment, give the bag to Arakawa–sensei or else slip it onto the reception desk, and leave. That was the plan.

“Ah, Tsuki–chan! Good timing, I’m just about to go.”

Sensei, her hair slightly unkempt, bustled past in the swirl of a coat she had yet to unzip. Kaya timidly stepped aside to allow the hand to reach past and grab her medical bag. “…I’d…I’d come for my appointment?”

“Hm? Oh—you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll be back in a week anyhow. Even if a problem comes up, you should be fine.” Sensei paused, (finally) turning to look at her. “Has a problem come up?”

Kaya shook her head no.

“Then you’ll see me in a week.” Sensei spared just enough time to pat Kaya’s head on her way out the door. “Oh, and be sure to straighten up this place before I come back! Goodbye!”

…Kaya hadn’t even had the chance to ask about her kimono.

The room was a mess of files and strewn papers. That was not how she’d left it the day before. What had happened between then and the present for it to get so bad? And why did Kaya have to clean it up on her day off? It made her feel slightly abandoned.

Kaya spent a few minutes sulking and eating some candy from the candy drawer, since that was something she usually received for being good after a check up and now no one was there to give her any. Then she realized what she was doing and felt incredibly childish, and then eventually felt bored enough to get up and start shuffling some files away anyways.

Blues in one pile, greens in another, pinks in the last. That was how it went. It took ages to gather them where she could see them, and ages more to find the clipboard that had copies of the faces printed on.

Ever since Kaya had first arrived completely illiterate, they’d created a system where she could match the picture of the patient to make sure they were accounted for and the color of the folder with where it needed to be put away. Kaya had begun to figure out other things about the color designation. For example, the pink folders almost always contained young children, and more often than not orphans. She liked reading their names since half the time they were written in hiragana or katakana, or else even when they were in kanji there would often be one or the other alphabet written alongside in brackets. She was slowly getting better at identifying the sounds of different kanji. It felt good to test her skills and see where she’d improved.

This time around there were only a few names to get through and soon Kaya ended up with a small, neat stack. A quick glance through the pictures on the clipboard and—…

…There was one folder missing.

Where was Akko’s folder?

Kaya went down the list again. She took out the folder for each and laid them one by one on the floor until all fifteen of them faced her. But there should’ve been sixteen. One of them should’ve been Akko’s. But it wasn’t there.

…Alright. Maybe she’d just misplaced it. It wasn’t as if all the folders were organized yet. She still had about half the room to get through.

Or if it wasn’t there after that then there were other options. It could’ve been with Sayuri for financial analysis or Sango for recordkeeping. It could’ve been in one of the boxes beside Sango’s desk where most files usually went.

But that was just it—Akko’s file wasn’t supposed to be there. The pink folders only needed to be handed in on Wednesdays and she’d already received them Friday morning, the day of the festival. They weren’t due to be taken out until next week at the earliest.

She knew she’d had to have put it back into its cabinet…had she put it back? She’d been so stressed and worried the day before. The morning felt like so long ago—oh god, if her nerves were the reason she’d misplaced—

No, no no no, she needed to keep looking. There was still half a room to get through. And the room was already such a mess, maybe that folder wasn’t the only one? Surely there were others, right? But what did that say about her if there was? It was her job to keep the folders accounted for. And if she’d failed at that…

One long, exhausting search later, Kaya sat on the ground, hands shaking.

Akko’s hadn’t been the only one. Eleven more were missing.

How had she—she couldn’t believe she’d— what was wrong with her??

Of all of Kaya’s mistakes, from being clumsy to slow to forgetful, she had never misplaced so many files at once. This wouldn’t do. After all the trouble she’d gone through…after how hard she’d worked…

This couldn’t be happening. She’d been so careful, she’d really, really tried. What was she going to do now? How could she explain herself? They wouldn’t forgive this. No one would forgive this, they’d have to fire her, she’d run out of time she’d been so close to losing her job that entire month and now she finally would after everything they’d done for her how could she do this—

Oh god, she felt sick—

Kaya crashed into the nearest restroom and vomited into a toilet. Her insides squeezed, jolting upwards, but nothing came out except bile and spit. Shudders racked through her body, and she didn’t know how loud she’d been crying until other voices joined hers and hands grabbed her shoulders.

“—Leave—leave me alo- alone —’m sorry I’m sorry I—”

They were telling her something. Kaya shook her head and cried. She couldn’t see from the tears, or hear over her sobs. Her hands reached up for her hair, to pull , but someone’s arm got in the way. They wrapped around her and pressed her against a chest, rocking her back and forth and rubbing her shoulder in a way that did nothing for the state she was in.

Against her will, her crying slowed. She hid her face in her hands, too embarrassed to show herself and too miserable to speak. But her hiccups couldn’t stay forever, and eventually a voice talked.

“…alright…Kaya–chan? Can you hear me?”

Kaya sniffled into her hands and minutely nodded. The chest she’d been pressed to sagged, which was a different person from the one who’d spoken, since that came from directly in front of her.

“Okay, good. Now, do you want to tell me what happened? Or we can get Egawa-san if you want—”

Kaya shook her head no. She didn’t know who that was.

“…okay. Listen, we can see that you’re…tired, today, but since you’re not working weekends, why don’t you go home and get some rest? Are you sure you don’t want to talk? Does anything hurt? No? Very well, then. Come on, get up. Let’s get you some water.”

…It was a test of courage to not keep hiding in her hands like a child.

Kaya—reluctantly—let these women she didn’t know pull her to her feet. They shuffled her down the hall until they’d made it to the break room where she sat in a chair and someone gave her a napkin to blow her nose in. She still hadn’t looked at them. A mug of water landed in her hands and then a hand landed on her head.

“There’s your water. Drink that and feel better, okay?”

Kaya would never feel better again. She mechanically drank the water and felt worse.

Her life was over. She was going to be fired. Was that why the files had been scattered like that? Because sensei already knew those files were missing, knew that Kaya had misplaced them? Had she not said anything to give Kaya a chance to find them? But how could she find them when the other day she was sure she’d put them back? Soon, her doctor would return, find the files missing, and make her fired, and that would be that. She wouldn’t even have enough time to say sorry before the clinic threw her out and locked the doors and demanded she never darken their entrance again. And then where would she go? She had nowhere else to go. She’d already caused so much inconvenience for other people, and she will keep being an inconvenience. There was no escape. Her failures would never end.

And speaking of failures—Kaya stood up and left. She returned with the bag she’d brought from home, placed it on the table, and bowed ninety degrees. “Thank you for helping me and allowing me to borrow this kimono. I’m sorry for being a nuisance.”

She didn’t know what they said to that, or if they did. Kaya abruptly stood upright, turned on her heel, and marched to the beat of the pounding headache ringing in her ears. The pounding aligned with the stinging in her feet with each and every step she took out the doors to never return. There was no reason for her to stay. She needed to go before they did it for her.

Tears welled in her eyes again—no! Not again! She couldn’t just—just cry right there on the street! There were strangers! She needed to—

An alley. Kaya didn’t look beyond that. She ducked into it. To one side, it wrapped around the corner of the building. She followed it and pressed her back to the wall for support.

Her hands shook as she scrubbed at her eyes. Whether from the hunger of not having eaten a single meal that day or from the sheer frustration of it all she didn't know. She couldn’t believe this. What was wrong with her? She didn’t have time for another meltdown—that was already the second one that day, good grief, she needed to get home—but everything hurt god she hated this so much—

The sound of a door opening echoed. Her whole spine stiffened. Could she not get one moment to herself or—

Standing to her right was none other than Akimichi–san.

Kaya didn’t know what to think.

She didn’t think.

She lost it.

“Why can’t you people just LEAVE ME ALONE?! What do you WANT from me?! BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW!” she screeched. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING. I’m so tired! All the time! And I know it’s because I’m pregnant, I KNOW ALREADY, I wish you’d all stop telling me to just calm down! I don’t know how to calm down! I’m so stressed all the time but I keep trying to do the right thing and I keep messing that up and I know I keep messing it up I know you hate me and I’m sorry but I don’t know how to fix this I don’t know what to do —”

Oh—he was closer—his hands were up, palms facing out.

“…ey, hey. It’s okay.” Kaya shook her head, backing away. “I don’t hate you.”

“ Why? ” she sobbed. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to help you.”

No he didn’t. No one did. “You can’t do that. I already lost them, and—and I thought I hadn’t but they’re gone now, and, and I’m going to be fired, she’s going to fire me, and it’s all my fault, I’ve just been doing worse and worse and worse for so long and I wish I could stop doing this but I keep doing this, I wish you didn’t have to deal with it…”

Her words blurred into one long, low wail. It heaved out despite the hiccups that rattled in her chest, so forceful they were akin to retching. They were the only things holding her to her body, and it wasn’t until they were abruptly stifled that she realized the hands bracing her shoulders.

Large, all encompassing hands that made her back straighten despite herself.

Through the tears and the sobs, Akimichi–san looked right in her eyes. “What do you need? ”

It took several long moments for the words to register. It took longer for Kaya’s thoughts to travel to her mouth.

“…My head hurts, and my feet hurt…I need to eat…I need to go home…”

His hands held her for a minute longer, as if waiting for her to say something more. Then they went from her shoulders to her hand. Wordlessly, he led her to the door and inside the back of his restaurant.

Chapter Text

It should say something about how familiar Kaya was with being in the back of Akimichi–san’s restaurant that it felt as if she’d been dropped into a past memory rather than trapped in the present.

She half expected to see one of the stoves in the kitchen set up for her, with an array of ingredients to mirror those on the opposite counter. She almost walked towards the center table where her chair—the only one with even-sized legs that didn’t wobble even if she leaned sideways—would be pulled out, as if she’d just gotten up a second ago.

Instead, two people she didn’t know sat at a table that was covered in thin, cardboard boxes half-packaged with containers of food.  A third and somewhat youngish boy wandered between the stoves and stirred or checked on the three different pots and one steamer cooking away. All three looked up at their arrival, but after Akimichi-san made some kind of hand signal one of them gestured back to him and they returned to their work.

“…What was that?” Kaya found it in her to ask. The front of the restaurant was empty despite it being late noon. Why was it that the place was never busy whenever she visited? “I mean, with the…when you used your hands, and they seemed to understand?” she clarified, because it wasn’t that she didn’t know who those people were. Obviously the two at the table were the cousins he’d talked about, in the weeks they’d spent cooking together, who sometimes came by to help. The third was likely the boy he’d taken on as part timer.

Akimichi-san led her to a small table huddled right near the counter. “That’s Konoha sign language. There are different kinds used in the village—civilian, shinobi, black ops. What I used is the civilian one.”

“Oh…” Kaya filed the information away for later. She’d need to remember to ask Sango about it. Despite the evidence telling her otherwise, Kaya still blurted out, “I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I’m sorry that I’m bothering you—”

“You’re not bothering me. It’s fine.” He went behind the counter and started to do something that she couldn’t quite see clearly.

As per usual, Kaya wanted to protest this. People always said that. Of course they wouldn’t mean it. And with how…upset he’d been, the last time they’d met, the feeling was suddenly all the stronger—oh god, she hadn’t even apologized for that and the first chance they met she’d screamed at him. Just one thing after another with her.

If Kaya asked about it, she’d start crying again. Two meltdowns in a row were exhausting. She didn’t want the burden of another. She didn’t want to burden him with it either, not when she felt so weak she might actually faint.

The stillness of the restaurant bothered her. It felt like her fault, somehow. “…It’s…um, very quiet here, for this time of day.”

“Well, that’s because this is a residential neighborhood. Most people are at work.”

…Oh. Right. Even with the clinic, corner store, and a few food stalls, the streets branching out from there were full of tall, teetering apartments and overgrown lots.

“The main rush usually comes in around dinner and on the weekends.” And before she could ask, he added. “It’s why I’ve set up a food delivery system. The genin team I’ve hired should be coming by later to take the orders out to the customers.”

That…made sense. Kaya had wondered earlier how Akimichi-san could afford to help at the clinic during the afternoon. But if the rush would come in the evening then of course that would be a good time to come by. Though she did wonder, once again, why he would set up shop in such a run–down neighborhood when there were commercial streets he’d get more business in, shinobi streets he’d easily get more customers in. Kaya didn’t know much but she did know by then that ‘Akimichi’ was a clan name. So him being in a civilian part of the village of all places…

A bowl clinked onto the table in front of her. It was filled with a nice smelling broth with vegetables and white blobs floating in it. “Dumpling soup. Enjoy.”

Dumplings and soup? She’d never thought of that. Snapping apart the customary wooden chopsticks on the table, she tried picking up one of the dumplings. It slipped under her grip and tore crookedly into the soup, spilling out a mound of minced, cooked meat. Meat. For her to eat. Only in the village had Kaya found such ready access to what for most peasants was a rare luxury. It was truly strange to see it so easily available in the food stalls, in the corner store, boiled into broth at the clinic, offered by Akimichi-san when she learned to cook from him. Kaya almost gave in to the temptation to scoop up the spilled meat and dumpling skin and all with her bare hand when a spoon tapped the edge of her bowl. The back of her neck heated and she accepted it.

The meat was tasty. And easy to swallow, too. It tasted slightly different from the broth, which held the comfort of the flavors she was gradually becoming familiar with: chicken stock, soy sauce, green onion, ginger, a dash of salt, little bits of spice…lots of umami …Kaya tried to pace herself and stayed with the soup to help the hunger nausea in her stomach from going so long without eating. The ginger helped a little bit. It warmed her insides as it slid down her chest. Where had Akimichi-san found this dish and why had he never taught it her? It seemed easy enough to make. So long as she knew how to do dumplings and broth then she was sure she could make this.

“…Now that we’re settled, I think you need to tell me what happened earlier. Properly, this time.”

Kaya grimaced around her spoon, swallowing. “I’m so sorry for yelling all that at you. That wasn’t kind and I know I didn’t mean to but—”

“Yes, yes, I know. I know it was an accident. But I would like you to tell me why, please.”

“I’ll…try, but, um…I don’t, I’m not sure I’ll be able to say it well…”

“Just say it however you can. I’ll listen.”

Kaya sighed. The weight of her actions fell heavily on her shoulders. She wished Akimichi-san could just see the events from her head rather than needing to explain them. She wished she could sink into the ground and not have to deal with problems forever.

Well, she would, eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later. But eventually wasn’t now and now she had to use her words. Ughhh.

Kaya still gathered herself and tried. She started with the facts, about Sensei leaving for a week, the missing files, how she’d searched but couldn’t find them. It ended in her going on a tangent of all her other failings, how she’d become more forgetful, more clumsy, more tired, how it made her worse and worse at doing her job.

“—and I don’t want to lose it, but if I were my boss, then I wouldn’t want to keep me hired. And I think this might be the reason why I’ll finally have to leave. I just don’t know how to explain what happened to those files, or who to tell it to. It’s going to be very stressful to think about moving after this.” Kaya’s eyes brimmed with tears. The dumplings she hadn’t touched yet swam in and out of focus, and she felt so sad that she’d be eating them in such an awful mood. That she couldn’t stop thinking about how worried she was, how exhausting this all was. No one should be thinking about that when holding something so nice. All she ever did was ruin her own life.

“…Well. From what I understand, I think some of those things you described earlier might be because you’re pregnant.”

Kaya’s face heated. Oh god. That. “…I didn’t know if I’d really said that…”

“You did.”

“I’m sorry you found out this way.”

“…I can understand why. Were you going to tell someone eventually?”

Kaya had mostly expected by that point that it would no longer be her problem to think about. Her arms had slowly come up to wrap loosely around her. She curled into them. “…Sensei knows.”

“She would, but still. Wouldn’t it be safer to have others support you?”

What the question should’ve been was: who would? And why would they? She’d done the bad thing. This was her fault. Maybe in hidden villages things were different but outside there were little to none who could help her without losing their reputations for it. For most, reputation was everything. Worth more than money, worth more than land, perhaps even more than a last name. The only kind of help that would not reflect badly on the ones who helped her were those whose reputation and riches were so great that they could afford to give away charity, or if they were particularly known for being charitable. Because what did she have to offer them in return? She, who was pregnant, unmarried, orphaned, poor, illiterate…well, not so illiterate anymore, technically. But what did that count for in the end?

“…I shouldn’t expect others to give up their good standing for me. It wouldn’t be right,” Kaya mumbled. If only things were different…

A large hand curled around her fingers. Kaya jerked back, only to realize that her nails had been digging into her arm.

His hand once again found hers, tugging it away from her arm. His fingers pressed gently into her skin. For a moment she wondered if he’d hold on.

Then he guided it back to her mostly full bowl.

“…I suppose things would be…more traditional outside. But as far as I know, over here you can rely on your friends, your workplace, and a few things here or there to help you.”

“What things?” Kaya asked. She spooned a dumpling for the sake of doing something with her hand, and to not have to pick up the chopsticks again. It was still warm from the soup, and filled her mouth.

“For example, you could request to become a ward of a clan if you wanted.”

Her mouth promptly dropped open. The dumpling fell out. It landed in the bowl with a splat.

At the look on her face, Akimichi-san had the nerve to raise his eyebrows at her. “What? It’s not unheard of. Just go up to one and ask. I’d even vouch for you, if you want.”

“I—I—I, what, I—” What was someone supposed to say to that? Her! Approach a clan?! “—I can’t just go up to—! I’m not—it’s not right!”

“Why not?”

“They are shinobi! ” Was he blind or did he not know or—??

“And?”

“I’m a civilian! ”

“So am I. So what?”

Kaya could do nothing but sputter even more. Her thoughts stuttered. She’d—well, it wasn’t that she hadn’t seen the obvious. He worked at a restaurant and helped out at a clinic. He had a clan name but neither his job or dress said so. It would make sense for him to be a civilian. But—that was a clan name.

“…I don’t…I don’t understand?”

“…Alright. Eat your meal and I’ll try to explain.”

Despite her words echoed back to her, that sounded like a terrible idea. Kaya did not want to choke on her food. But she didn’t want to just leave it there, after all she’d been through…and after all the trouble she put him through…

Kaya made a face. She picked up her spoon and started eating again. After a few chews, he began, “Something that most civilians don’t know is that a clan has some similarities to a large manor. You ever seen or heard of one of those? Big places that nobles live in, has lots of people going in and out?”

Kaya nodded. At some point she could have tried going to one for work and lodging. But she was terrified of lords and didn’t want her head chopped off. Or worse.

“A clan is something like that. For example, a large keep would hire staff for cleaning, cooking, general maintenance, and the like. You wouldn’t expect one of those main branch clan people to clean their own floors, right? Or have the time to clean an entire manor? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. That’s what other people would be for. And if there are people to take care of the manor's insides, then there should also be people to take care of the manor’s outsides—the gardens, livestock, lands around it. And if there are going to be that many people spending so much time there, then they might as well just live on those lands, and then it’d probably be best to have some people who can help with setting up those lodgings and later on fixing things that break, like roofs, doors, walls, and on and on.”

“And all those people, to avoid hassles and complications and other such things, they might as well just be welcomed as members of the clan and promised steady livelihoods, shelter, and safety for the rest of their days. And because there are that many people, it would only make sense that they would also have their own blacksmith, baker, seamster, cobbler, artisan, and the like. Imagine if they had to go from one end of the village to the other just to get pots or shoes? It’s more practical for them to have civilian members of their clan who do these jobs for everyone else within the clan compound.”

…The more he spoke, the more it sounded as if he were describing a hidden world in the hidden village. A village within a village. Several of them, if the number of clans that existed within Konoha added up. Was this what it was like in them? Did all the clan compounds have these things?

“…It’s like a little village…” she said.

Akimichi-san nodded. “Exactly. You could even find a medic or two and shopkeepers in there. A person could spend their entire life inside a clan compound and need never step out if they didn't wish to.” He stood with a groan, straightening out his back. “So yes, to answer your earlier question, you are well within your rights to walk into a clan compound and request to be taken in. They'll find something for you to do. I'll vouch for you, too.”

And despite all he’d said, Kaya was shaking her head before he'd even finished. “You really don't have to. I wouldn't want to trouble you…I’ve already troubled you enough, I don’t…”

Kaya couldn’t help but feel incredibly annoying for repeating herself. After he’d offered her help when he had no reason to, after saying it was fine and that he didn’t mind, there she went throwing his help back in his face. Wouldn’t that make a person angry, to hear her being that ungrateful? She needed to not make this about her somehow.

And then she remembered Naruto, who was all alone at home. Who had no parents to look after him and no one who seemed to help him but her. Where would he be if she vanished one day? “And—the boy I told you about. He doesn’t have a family. He’d be all alone if I left.”

“Maybe you could bring him with you? You said he’s living by himself, right?”

“…I…I’m not sure that’s how it works…”

Instead of arguing with that, he mercifully asked, “How would you want to deal with this, then?”

She didn’t. And if things went her way for once, she will never have to. But if it were up to her… “Well, I’d rather just get married to someone. Better it’s just one person than a whole big clan needing to look after me.”

“Okay, then marry someone.”

Once again, Kaya’s dumpling fell.  It nearly missed her bowl. “Ma—I can't just—! I'm already—how could I— married! ” she sputtered.

“I mean if you don’t like them, just divorce ‘em. Shinobi or not, they’ll listen to the law.”

Her sputtering became floundering. What did he mean? Divorce? Shinobi?? There was not one part of what he said that made sense.

“…I don’t…what does that mean??”

“Oh right, I didn’t tell you, did I? Shinobi can marry civilians. It happens now and then.”

She’d asked mostly because of ‘divorce’. Kaya did not know that word. But she was so thrown by this new information that she asked, “But…why?”

Akimichi-san sighed. One of his hands reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Well, you tell me. Why do most people from big families marry each other?”

Kaya had no family to speak of so she was the last person to ask. But there were things she’d heard on the road. And some of it was common sense as well. “If one of them needed a dowry. Or if they wanted to join their businesses.” At his encouraging nod, Kaya tried to think up more reasons, but the only ones that came to mind were, “To…have more business partners? To have good relations?”

“Good answers. And more true than you’d think.”

Akimichi-san went back behind the counter again. Rummaging sounds came out along with his voice. “In this case they’re just translated into clan business. You know one thing civilians have that shinobi might want?”

“What?”

“Trade. Especially those rich civilian merchants. And with how old some of them are they’d have the wealth, titles, and prestige to back that up. They’d have connections, too. Information. Allies. All things that a clan—and especially those interested in politics—would want.”

He came out carrying a first aid box. Kaya only had a few moments to wonder what that was for before he abruptly knelt at her feet.

She yelped. His hand paused midair. “May I?”

When she didn’t move or respond, he added, “You said your feet hurt. I won’t be able to fix it up like Arakawa-sensei, but I can at least take a look.”

…Kaya was wrong. She hadn’t felt embarrassed before. Now she did. But oh, her feet chose that moment to hurt. A memory of a few weeks back, when she’d cleaned an entire apartment and hadn’t known if she’d be able to go to work again, resurfaced.

Carefully, she eased her feet out from under the table. She stared at her knees in abject shame as his hands tugged her thin shoe from her swollen, blistering foot. The sound of him hissing out a breath and tutting over it made it worse.

“Has it been like this all week?” Kaya chanced a look and immediately regretted it. From her ankles down, the skin was so swollen it was no longer brown but ruddy pink. She’d thought the stinging had been because of blisters, but instead the places where her shoe had dug in had turned those cuts into shiny, painful circles that had no outer tissue to protect them from the cold, cold air.

Worst of all was that Akimichi-san’s fingers had come to wrap around her ankle to avoid the sores on her feet. They were large and careful and warm. They had her folding her head in her arms on the table.

“…I didn’t think so? I don’t know??”

He clicked his tongue again, but was kind enough not to make comments. It wasn’t that Kaya had been trying to hide how much it hurt. Most of the time she just didn’t know or simply forgot that there were things she could ask for help with. She really hadn’t thought it would be that bad.

The sound of clinking and rummaging, followed by a bottle opening. “This is going to hurt a bit.”

Kaya bit her lip and braced herself as a cotton swab started across her foot. While she kept as still as she could, Akimichi-san’s voice began talking again.

“…It isn’t just dowries that women from civilian families bring with them. They’re often trained in many skill sets, like diplomacy, etiquette, being a good hostess, whatever’s needed in running a large household, like accounting and bookkeeping. When they enter a shinobi clan, they bring those skills with them and use them for the clan’s benefit. But even then, there are still those shinobi who might marry a civilian for none of these things. Because see, not all of them are a part of the main line where such care is needed. There are many of them who are branch members, siblings and cousins who will not inherit. They don’t have as many pressures on them and chances are just as likely they might marry a civilian from within the clan, whether it’s one of the master craftsmen to the grocer. That’s actually the reason why I’m distantly related to the main Akimichi line. I’m something like a second cousin or thereabout…”

Through the steady stream of talking, he cleaned and wrapped first one foot then the other in gauze. Held in his hands as they were, they looked very small, especially so done up in those white bandages, but Kaya wasn’t fooled. She knew they were still swollen. She didn’t know how she’d be able to fit them back into her shoes.

“…If you want, I could go and ask about those files for you—”

“No.” Kaya said, immediately.

“…Are you sure? Because I will if you ask.”

Kaya nodded into her arms.

“…Is there a reason?”

Because she was tired. And she felt like a burden. And what he was asking made her feel even more like a burden, even more like something for him to worry about and cause him trouble.

And after he’d given her food for free and bandaged her feet and put up with her complaining about her problems? After she’d abandoned her responsibilities and unloaded the burden of it onto someone completely uninvolved? How could she treat someone this badly and demand even more help of him? That was not the kind of person she wanted to be.

If she could just get some rest, then she would deal with it. She'd pick herself up and deal with what came next, even if it scared her. Even if it left her alone.

Kaya sighed. She made herself sit up and face him properly. “I can’t accept that. I’m…I’m not ungrateful, but I can’t accept more than this. This is already too much, and I’m sorry, I wish I could repay you but I just…”

The problem with being someone who normally said these kinds of things and meant it was that Kaya had to 1) realize she was someone who normally said these kinds of things and meant it, as compared to most people who seemed to act this way without actually meaning it for reasons she did not understand, and that 2) the people she normally said these things to would not only expect it but would soon come up with ways to counter that had her backing away faster than a kid facing an injection.

Sayaka did this by looking like the saddest, most crestfallen creature to ever wear such a face. Sayuri would simply roll her eyes and explain why it was simply more practical for her to do what she proposed to do. And Sango would gently and patiently insist on Kaya telling her what she was feeling and why she felt that way until Kaya would feel so bad for making her concerned that she’d hastily agree to whatever it was.

It wasn’t that Kaya went out of her way to turn down help. All she really wanted was to find a solution that would prove the least uncomfortable for everyone involved. Except she never felt comfortable in any situation so she had no basis to judge whether or not what she was doing was the best way to do it or not.

In Akimichi-san’s case, it was a calm, thoughtful gaze that usually signified the start of him holding each one of her arguments up to the light to see where logic and good reason fit into them or if they were solely based on Kaya desperately wanting to bury her head in a hole and never pull it out.

And Kaya did not want to think about that. She did not want to think that she thought that. Everything she did, she did it to survive. She didn't even want to survive. For people to keep going against that, it made her very…angry.

“…I just want to go home .” She begged. “ Please. ”

She was so tired. If he could only see that…

He seemed to consider her. And then, slowly, his shoulders sagged. “Alright.” Kaya's foot turned in his hand. “It might be best to get this looked at. Do you want to stop by the clinic now or later—?”

“Later.”

He nodded. “Very well then.” Then he stood, took the first aid kit and her bowl, put them away somewhere, then came back and suddenly knelt at her feet again. “Aight, climb on.”

Kaya blinked at his back. “What.”

“Get on my back. I'll carry you home.” His head tilted a bit over his shoulder, just enough for her to see a raised eyebrow. “Or do you want me to carry you in my arms?”

If Kaya hadn't been sitting, she would've fallen over. Imagine, people on the street seeing her like that! No—no, thank you. That was not a thought she wanted to deal with.

Kaya, very awkwardly, wrapped herself around his back, and half shrieked when he stood and oh the ground was far away oh no.

“I won't drop you, don't worry.” Akimichi-san's hand tugged at one of her arms squeezing his neck. She squeezed them even harder.

It meant her face pressed into his shoulder, because she didn't want to look down and she didn't want to let go. The fabric of his shirt smelled a little like sweat and old clothes. She didn't want to think of what she looked like, clinging like this. No one had ever carried her like this and it felt strange, strange, strange—

The time taken to reach her apartment seemed both long and short. Akimichi-san reached it with minimal instruction, only asking which floor to take her to.

Despite the bandages covering her feet, the way they'd dangled in the cool air had left them slightly numb. That didn't stop the instant pain that shot up the moment she slid off of his back. Kaya hissed as the door down the hall opened.

“Kaya-nee!”

A small body collided into her, making her stumble backwards. Hands steadied her shoulders, while Naruto squeezed her for all he was worth. “You’re here!”

“…I’m here.”

“Why’re you back so late? What happened?”

Well, she’d tried to work on her off-day, had a breakdown, went out and had another breakdown, yelled at someone, and this somehow convinced said someone to carry her through the streets.

Instead of figuring out how to say all that, Naruto solved the problem for her by smushing his face into her belly. “Hi, glowy baby! What’s up with you?” he said, his voice muffled.

Tiniest attention span in the village, this one. Good grief.

“…Huh,” said the voice behind her.

Naruto heard it, too. He pulled back enough to crane his head around her and stare up at Akimichi-san. “Who are you?”

Kaya also looked up. Akimichi-san had a strange, carefully blank look on his face.

Instead of answering him, he said to Kaya. “I see what you meant earlier.”

What she'd meant earlier? Before she could ask, he stepped back. “I'll be taking my leave, then. See you later. Oh, and here—”

He handed her a bag she hadn't noticed earlier and her shoes. While she watched him leave, Naruto peered into the bag. “What's this?”

“…I don't know…” Why had he looked like that? What had he been talking about?

Naruto's head had gone further into the bag. It jostled the containers. He took a deep, noisy sniff and then suddenly, “RAMEN!”

Kaya startled out of her thoughts. The bag left her grasp as Naruto bounced back to his apartment. “Ramen ramen ramen ramen ramen—!”

It wasn't even dinner time yet. She'd have to figure out how to make him wait until then. Not that Kaya wanted to eat it, or at least not so soon after her very late lunch…or breakfast? Meal? Honestly what she really needed was rest. To just lie down in bed until her feet and head and everything hurt a little less. Naruto could figure himself out. 

Kaya stuck her head in his doorway. “I'm going now! Bye!”

“Okay, bye!”

Apparently, the presence of ramen was enough to make up for her missed company. Or maybe Naruto had become used to knowing that she lived next door.

Either way, it didn't matter. Kaya couldn't get back into her apartment fast enough. She stayed upright for as long as it took to change out of her clothes before crawling into bed. The cool, soft pillow cradled her aching head. The cool, soft blankets wrapped around her, but soon they would be warm. Warm like the back that had carried her home.

Kaya's nose burrowed into the fabric. Why had she remembered that? She didn't know why her thoughts sometimes seemed to fixate on such things, only that it had happened on and off at odd moments. But it wasn't something she needed to worry about. Better to let her mind drift than bother with thinking at all.

And drift it did. Later in the night, it also created some very… very vivid dreams.

Chapter Text

The good thing about it being the weekend was that it gave Kaya a solid day and a half to lie around at home and mope.

With how tired she’d been after coming back, she ended up falling asleep soon after and slept right through dinner time, not waking again until one in the morning to her stomach screaming at her to feed it.

She had to get up to do that, which was terrible, but standing in the kitchen turned out to be surprisingly okay. The cooled kitchen tiles felt really good on her swollen feet. If she could walk outside with nice, cold tiles stuck to her feet all the time then that might actually fix them. Or maybe bigger shoes? Or ones that didn’t have straps that cut into her feet like her own had.

If she wanted new shoes, then she’d probably have to work for it. Which meant going to work, and…meeting the people there…and one particular person there…

Once again, the dream from earlier came back.^[x]

It was a familiar memory. The things that stood out was the smell in the air and the mouth on her neck.

But this was a different smell. Much nicer. Clean and warm, not at all like the horrible stink that should’ve been there.

Even the dirty, wooden slats of ceiling were the same. But the shoulders were bigger. Easier to hold onto through the weird, jolting movements. The hair that rubbed under her jaw felt different, though she didn’t really pay attention to that. She didn’t pay attention to much, really. A part of her felt like there should’ve been something else she was thinking, or feeling, but she…she felt safe.

The mouth left her neck. It trailed wet kisses down her shoulder, over her chest. A twinge of pain as it latched on and the moving sped up. But even then all she could think was how oddly at peace she was. She was safe. His big, solid shoulders were her world and nothing would get past them. He’d take care of her. He’d make things right.

If it was him, then she’d be fine.

^[x]That dream…

That memory…with him?

What had made her dream that? Why did she have to dream that? Did she eat something weird? Was she sick? Was this because she was pregnant? And why’d it have to be him?! She’d spent so much time around him, helping at the clinic, or him helping her in his kitchen, and nothing like this had happened before.

…What if that dream stayed stuck in her head? What if it was still there when she went to work—and she’d have to go to work, or else she’d starve to death, and that’s not how it was supposed to happen—and then she’d have to go there and talk to him—

No. No, no no no no no no no no—

Oh god oh god she was going to fuck this up so bad—

Kaya went back to bed.

Thirty minutes later she got up again to finish eating the onigiri she’d thought she’d wouldn’t be able to, except for the fact that her stomach didn’t care what she thought.

And despite herself, the second time she went back to bed, she fell asleep quick and stayed that way until the sky lightened up. The heavy rain outside made it hard to judge what time it was. It didn’t matter either way. Her stomach wanted food and her bladder wanted to pee and Kaya couldn’t hide in bed forever.

That didn’t mean she went along nicely, though. Her next time in the kitchen was spent sitting on the floor, and there was just enough leftovers that she could drink cold miso from the container and nibble on torn sheets of nori. Though she did get up to heat old rice in the microwave and crumbled the rest of the nori sheets into it.

She didn’t really do much besides, other than stay in bed. Which was fine for her feet, but she didn’t even want to practice reading. She felt like enough of a failure as it was, so she just laid in her problems and kept feeling awful.

It wasn’t until evening that it finally came to her that Naruto hadn’t knocked on the door that day. Not even for dinner. Huh. Well, whatever. Kaya didn’t have the energy to deal with him anyways. If something happened, she’d probably find out tomorrow whether she liked it or not.

Ah, tomorrow. Shit.

Monday morning dawned cold and blue. Kaya forced herself into the shower. She found clean clothes to wear. The leftovers were gone and she was hungry again. She’d really rather not die because her stomach decided to eat her. She’d eat breakfast and do work and she wouldn’t think and she’d be fine. She’d be fine. She’d just…not help out in the kitchen that day. She’d take a bowl to Arakawa-sensei’s office and hide in there for the day. No one could complain if she was doing work, right? Work was work. It didn’t matter what part of it she did as long as she was doing it. Probably.

It was a full half hour before she talked herself around to her plan. She got up and went to the door. And stopped.

She stepped back. Stared at what was there.

In the genkan were a pair of shoes. They were not made of wood or husk, but a thing she didn't know. They had big straps on top and big soles for the feet. They looked soft and pink.

Lined up facing the door like that, they were in just the right place for her to slip into them and walk out, as if she'd put them there herself and made plans to do that. The shoes she'd arrived in Konoha with were curled up in the far corner.

Slowly, without taking her eyes off of them, Kaya backed away. She waited a second behind the kitchen corner before peeking around it.

The shoes were still there. Still soft, still pink.

The doorbell never rang yesterday. She was sure of it. No one had visited her.

Kaya slowly edged closer. Crossing over the genkan, she turned the handle and poked her head out the door. There was no one in the corridor. It was fifteen minutes to nine. She really needed to get to work.

Kaya closed the door as quietly as she could and nearly jumped out of her skin when she turned and saw the shoes still there. Facing her. Looking strange in her hallway. Making her whole hallway feel strange.

No one had knocked on the door. No one had visited her. And yet…

There were ten minutes left. She needed to go.

Kaya found her spine and put her feet in the shoes.

They were soft. And the straps on top had some kind of fuzzy, prickly in between that stuck them together, so if she wanted to she could unstick and restick them. But Kaya didn't need to do that. Just wriggle her feet in the shoes a little bit, and she was ready to go.

They were much thicker and much squishier than her old shoes. They moved and twisted with her feet as she tried to avoid puddles in the ongoing rain.

Sayaka smiled and waved at her from the reception desk and Kaya was immediately hit with the thought that she couldn’t just hide in Sensei’s office and talk to no one. Because that’d get people to go out of their way to talk to her. So her first plan was clearly stupid. Better to just sign in and check up with Sango like usual, and then she could figure out what to do.

“Oh good, you're here. You're on kitchen duty this morning.”

Kaya opened and closed her mouth dumbly. Sango didn't seem to notice as she continued, “We've had an influx of patients after the festival. Not just the usual injuries from rough-housing, mind—there's a bit of an infection going around. I reckon it had something to do with the streets being so packed last week. Anyhow, you don't need to worry ‘bout it. They're in the sick bay so you just stay away from there, you hear? It's just a minor thing, but we've been keeping folks in over the weekend and called Daisuke-kun over for a little extra help.”

…Oh. Okay.

Good. Amazing. Kaya’s life really was cursed.

She didn't even get a few extra minutes to think of what to do in an empty kitchen. One step in and he was there and whoosh there went her head. Down the gutter.

And the rest of her? Warm, fuzzy, and tripping all over itself. No matter where she looked, some part of him appeared in the corner of her eye. Whether it was his arm as he worked, or his hand when she had to give things. Even turning her back meant his body was still there, moving behind her, and that somehow made it worse.

And his voice. He’d speak, and instead of getting in her ears like it was supposed to, his voice would brush against her skin and make her shiver. It was terrible. She kept nearly cutting open her fingers, or scalding her face, or dropping whatever she was holding just because he was there and why did she have to deal with this? She couldn’t even speak, her tongue thick and useless in her mouth.

Kaya nearly lost the stirring ladle into the pot for the third time when something hooked under her chin and tilted her head. She stared up, up, up into dark brown eyes, intense and searching. They were so close that if she took one more step she’d fall against him. Her breath stopped in her chest. Drums pounded in her ears.

“…You look overheated. Do you need to sit down?” Akimichi-san didn't wait for an answer, his hand moving from her chin to her shoulder and making her turn. “Go over there.”

Kaya did. Numbly, she sat down at the small table and stared at her hands. Her fingers twitched. Hadn’t they been holding a ladle? But no, she hadn't carried it with her. She’d dropped it or he'd taken it and she just didn’t know.

Oh wow, her hands were shaking. That bum-bum-bum in her head was actually her heart. Ah, that made sense—no! No it didn’t! What the hell?! Yes she’d promised herself to clean up her language but seriously what the hell? That was so embarrassing! That was so stupid! She’d acted so stupid! Weeks and weeks of doing this work and suddenly here she was acting like this? And there hadn't even been that dream in her head when her head was just—there'd just been nothing in there.

How was she supposed to make it stop? Was it just to him or was she going to be stupid around every man she’d ever meet? She couldn’t just—what, live like this? She’d die of shame. This was so weird and awful and embarrassing and—and awful, and she hated it, and she never wanted to do it again. And was that her hair sweating? Ewww.

Kaya’s forehead thunked against the table. Screw her grand plans of waiting for nature to take her out, she’ll just do it herself. Maybe an eternal afterlife as a wandering ghost wouldn’t be so bad. At least then she wouldn’t deal with a body that made her act like this.

A long while of staying like this later, a new voice interrupted her wallowing. “Tsuki-chan, there's someone here to see you.”

Kaya, still daydreaming ghosts, yelped and flailed upright. Sayaka blinked back at her. She patted Kaya’s shoulder. “Hurry up, okay? I think it's one of your kids.”

Kaya did not have a kid. (Yet.)

But whoever that was would keep her out of the kitchens so she got up to follow Sayaka as fast as she could without actually running.

At the front desk stood a small, skinny boy with a bush of orange hair tied into a low ponytail and a sour little face. The kid slouched into his baggy clothes, looking bored at being there. He tilted his head a bit when they came closer. “Are you going to take me to Arakawa’s office? That’s where they told me to go.”

“Yeah, kiddo, she is,” Sayaka waved Kaya over. “Sensei isn’t in right now but I’m sure Tsuki-chan can help you. Feel free to ask her whatever you want. Or you can come to one of us.”

This boy was not one of Sensei’s patients. He looked old enough to be, barely. Kaya was sure she would’ve remembered his bright hair, at least. Well, it didn’t matter. She held out her hand. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t take it. But that was fine. Kaya let her hand drop and started walking, and he followed. “…I’m sorry that Arakawa-sensei’s out. You’re going to have to put up with me for now. We, uh…we could take some measurements? And I could try finding a folder for you…? Would that be fine?”

The kid grunted. When she chanced a look, it was to see him staring at his shoes. Maybe his orphanage had forced him to come. Maybe he didn’t want to get a shot. Poor thing.

When she opened the door, she made a point to say, “I'm not going to give you injections, don't worry. I'm not the one who normally does that, that's Sensei. And anyways, we need to make a file for you. Um, sorry about the mess. I haven't really…”

The boy quietly observed the room, in a squinty, glaring kind of way. Then he looked right at Kaya and changed.

The body lengthened, growing taller and taller. Shoulders widened, and so did the chest and the hips, the clothes on them changing from the ragged hand-me-downs to darker, tighter clothes. The face still stayed the same, if not older. The orange hair, too, didn’t change. But other than that…

Kaya’s mouth was hanging open.

The woman smiled a thin, sharp smile. “Hello. I'm Daisuke-kun's friend.”

“…O-oh…”

“It's rather crowded in here. I take it that it's not normally like this?”

Absolutely not. Just the idea made her skin itch. “Of course not! I keep things much neater than this, I swear,” she snapped. No matter how much she thought it in her head, she didn’t need some stranger saying she was bad at her job. “It's just that it was like this when I got here Saturday. I haven't had the chance to clean yet.”

(Well, there was her trying to find those missing files. But that probably made it worse. So. Didn’t count.)

The woman hummed. She started walking around. Kaya stood there, like a useless stump. What should she do? Offer a chair? Get the lady a snack? Why was she here of all places? And why’d she make herself look like a kid first? Did shinobi—kunoichi?—normally do that? Did she expect Kaya to do some kind of examination anyways? Good luck if she wanted to dig out the measuring equipment, not when even Kaya didn't know what she'd find in all the mess, let alone clear a place to sit down and write. Or, well, maybe she could try clearing one of the wooden chairs? But then the stuff’d need to go somewhere. There was also the chair in the corner behind her, a comfortable, cushioned thing, but Kaya had always assumed that was Sensei's chair, and she’d rather not use it.

…Speaking of snacks, did she eat that morning? She couldn't remember. But if she went to the kitchens again, then…but there was this stranger over here…but she said she knew Akimichi-san, but that didn't—?

The woman was glaring at her. “Sit down.”

“…Sorry, what—?”

“You're going to faint like that. You're pregnant. You need to sit down.”

Her voice was so firm that Kaya actually did. It just so happened to be on the cushioned chair. (Oh no.)

And then the words lined up. “I'm Daisuke-kun's friend.” “You’re pregnant. You need to sit down.” As they sunk in as she understood what that meant, Kaya’s heart sped up. Her face heated for entirely different reasons, with something that felt an awful lot like betrayal rising up.

But before Kaya could do more than think it, the woman sighed. “It’s not like that. I figured out you’re pregnant just now, alright? It’s something I can do. Most people can’t. Dai-chan only told me he was worried about you, and he’s like a little brother to me so I decided to be nosey on my own. No one told me to come here. Relax.”

Kaya shrunk down. “…No one else is supposed to know…he promised…”

The woman’s eyes went down. She raised her eyebrows. “You think a sensor wouldn't find out? With you glowing like that?”

She said it like Kaya was the one acting out. As if she shouldn’t be scared or hurt that someone might break her trust like that. Sensor? What was that? And why did something of what she’d said sound familiar…?

Kaya tried to think about that, but the stranger woman snapped her attention back. “Alright, since I’m already here, how about you tell me what happened? I’m not some official authority and I didn’t come here to spill your secrets to everyone so you might as well. I’ll help you however I can.”

Uh oh. “I don’t know if—I’m not, I think it’ll be a bit long, and I don’t know how to say it well, I’m sorry,” Kaya mumbled.

Amazingly, she didn’t interrupt. Just waited until Kaya was done and waved her hand like she was waving Kaya’s worries away. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Just be as descriptive as you can, please.”

Kaya’s hands squeezed, knotted together on her lap. This was going to suck. She took a deep breath and started from the beginning. It was the second time she was telling it out loud…which made it a little easier to do. Being in the same room as the problem also made it easier.

The woman asked a few questions in between, but mostly listened. By the end of it she had a thoughtful frown on her face.

“…So basically, you found a lot of unknown files in this room on Saturday, and then you couldn’t find eleven files that you were familiar with and panicked.”

“Well, I mean…those files are important, and I’d been trying to organize…”

“Were the rest of the files thrown across the floor? Pages ripped out? Any of them burnt? Were the shelves emptied and hanging open?”

Kaya jerked backwards. “No. Why would they—no. It’s just—it was very messy, and, and, and I didn’t know what to do, and no one told me what they…or why all of these are suddenly…I just wanted to clean up a little, but now I can’t find those files—I did check. I know what they look like and they’re not here, and I couldn’t find them anywhere, I promise I’m not—”

The woman held up a hand. Kaya shut up.

“I believe you, Tsukauchi-san. Relax.”

Kaya sagged. Her hands had untangled to start worrying the edges of her top. “…I still don’t know your name.”

The woman paused in looking around the room to smirk at her. “Call me Mikan.”

Now, there were a lot of things Kaya didn’t know. She didn’t know the state of her job, she didn’t know much about the world, and she couldn’t say much about her future beyond its ending. But she did clock that lie.

Which was weird. Since when did she do that? But—really! Who’d name their child that? Oh sure, Mikan was a perfectly fine name, there were probably lots of women out there with that name. She’d struggled through enough books to guess that much. But naming an orange-haired woman after orange the fruit? And with that smirk? That had to be a lie.

‘Mikan’ didn’t seem to care if Kaya believed her or not. She made another round of the room before humming again. “I have an idea. I’m going to test it out.”

She brought her hands up front, moved them kind of like the sign language from the other day, and then a cloud of smoke poofed into the air around her, completely covering her.

The smoke had no smell. When it cleared, a second Kaya stood in its place.

She looked like Kaya. Same brown face, same short, curly brown hair. Narrow shoulders and body thin as a stick. She even looked about as tall as Kaya, too.

But even though they had the same height, she somehow felt taller. Standing like some samurai with a sword straightening his back, one hand on her waist, the other loose at her side. Her head was high and proud, her gaze sharp as a knife as she stared her right in the eyes.

The body was the same but there was nothing else of Kaya in this image. This Kaya looked like she walked into every room like she was the scariest thing in it.

And then that melted away. Before Kaya’s eyes, the image curled in on herself, her hands drawing up to her chest and wrapping around each other. Her face crumbled into one about to cry. That was the Kaya that quietly shuffled out the door.

And the Kaya in the chair sat there and gawped at it for she-knew-not-how-long.

She was still staring when the door opened again. Her image scooted in just as quiet as before, shut the door, and straightened up, waving a handful of folders at her. “I found your files.”

“What?” Kaya squeaked.

She poofed on the spot and became Mikan again—thank god; watching her own image move like that was unnatural—as she walked over. “According to your Sango-san, there has been an influx of patients lately, plus an increase in cases. That’s why there are all these piles of unfamiliar files. The files you couldn’t find were recollected since these patients have either been transferred out or have finished their treatment.” She laid the files on Kaya’s lap. “She says your job is to sort through the ones here when you have the time. She also says that you’re not in trouble and you have done nothing wrong.”

Kaya stared. Carefully, she picked up the files. Eleven of them, each with the kid she knew by face. All of them accounted for.

She wasn’t the one who’d lost them. The mess of files had only been new cases. And instead of simply asking for help or an explanation, Kaya had gone crying out the building and yelled at someone over nothing. If she hadn't felt so stupid for making Naruto cry on his birthday for no reason, she certainly did right then.

And now she wanted to cry about this too. Again. “…I didn't know. They didn't…she just told me to clean them up and I didn't…why didn't they tell me…?”

She blinked the tears out of her eyes. No way was she going to cry here. And she didn't like how they blurred her sight, how things seemed darker and wobbly, and…

Kaya looked up.

The light in the room looked different. She didn't know how but it did. Mikan stood in front of her but didn't look at her. Instead she frowned at a nearby stack of papers, arms crossed, and there was…something about the shadows on her face was weird.

It gave a bad feeling. Without meaning to, Kaya shivered.

“What is it?” she asked, when she couldn’t wait anymore.

Mikan didn't seem to hear her. She just stood there. But then… “It’s not much, more of a feeling, really. But there were some odd things I noticed.”

“Like what?”

“…Well, I think the information in those files might be wrong.”

Kaya opened her mouth to say no—she knew how to put things where they needed to be, thank you very much. But then the uppermost file in her arms caught her eye.

Mouth pressed in a line, Kaya opened it. It was for a boy named…Yuu–shi? Yuuji, ten years old. He had a younger brother and no parents. A civilian boy, as far as she knew.

After a second of going down the page, Kaya frowned harder. “…I don't know enough kanji to read all of this. The front looks fine, but the rest…”

“You're learning to read?”

Kaya ducked. “…I didn't have the chance to learn before…I, um, I started learning a few months ago.”

Instead of doing what everyone else did—that thing they did when they treated her like a “poor little thing”—Mikan made a weird little “hng” sound.

“…What is it?”

If anything, Mikan wore a face like she'd just figured out something important. She shook her head at Kaya, but Kaya folded her hands together. “Please tell me. I don’t know what to do when people don't tell me things and I want to understand. Please.”

Mikan huffed out a breath. At the same time, the light in the room changed again to a more normal one. The hell?

“Fine, then, if you want my honest opinion. I'm only telling you this since you sounded really worried about being fired. I don't think you will be. I think the main reason this particular sensei of yours made you work with her is because you were illiterate. I think your best bet of keeping your job is if you keep your learning to yourself. Or mostly, if you can. You don't need to lie to them, but you don't have to advertise it either. Worst comes to worst, they might just shift you to a different position. But I wouldn't know.”

…Someone could want her because she couldn't read? Really? As far as Kaya knew, not being able to read just made her that much more useless.

She'd keep learning, of course. Reading was too useful a skill to give up on. The main reasons she hadn't talked about it again outside of getting those textbooks for Naruto were because it was embarrassing to tell grown adults about teaching herself things that were basic for them and just too weird and awkward to air out her fumbles and blunders. She did enough of that at work where people could see it.

“…Ne, I have a question.” Mikan flapped a hand to the rest of the room. “Is there any place in here that you’re not allowed to touch?”

That…was just dumb. How would Kaya do her job if she wasn't even allowed to touch parts of the room? She shook her head. “No, not really. No one told me that—well, they did, but that's for things like syringes and medicine, since it would be dangerous if I tried using them.”

“Alright. Let me correct myself, then. Is there any part of this room that she suggested you don't deal with? Other than the medical equipment, are there things here you don't look through or handle?”

Kaya almost shook her head again. It was her job to keep things organized and make sure they were easy to find. Sensei trusted her. She wouldn't tell her not to do what she'd given her to do.

Except… “There’s that drawer.”

Kaya pointed to a drawer in the far corner. It was low to the ground, slightly hidden behind Sensei's desk. “I wouldn’t say I’m not allowed to touch it. It’s just that Sensei said that I didn’t need to. She normally does those herself. I just never looked into it.”

Mikan went over and pulled the drawer open. She took out a couple of files and flipped one open.

“Shit.” She switched to a different file and opened it. “Shit.”

Kaya stayed quiet as Mikan cussed through a few more and started to pace. Finally, she turned to face her. The slant of the shadows made her face sharper. Scarier.

“I'm sorry. I know I said I wouldn't tell anyone, but I don't think I can do that now.”

Kaya pressed back into the chair. “Are you going to tell Sango-oba-san about this?” she asked, in a small voice.

Mikan smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.

“Now why would I do that? No, this is clan business now. I can't hold onto it.” Then she snorted. “Well, if they listen to me, that is. Not like us distant relations have much say in things. Or those who aren't “proper” shinobi. Or women.”

She sighed, before (thankfully) putting the files on the table. “Right. Ignore what I said just now. I've got some things I need to do. Depending how that goes, you might have guests later. Goodbye, Tsukauchi-san.”

Before Kaya could blink, Mikan stepped backwards into a shadow.

And then she was gone.

Kaya sat there. She waited for something to happen, or for someone to arrive. The clock on the wall kept ticking. For a long while, it was the only sound in the room.

It wasn't until lunchtime that the door opened and Sayaka popped in. She brought food with her, saying that Daisuke-kun had told them Kaya wasn't feeling well. She didn't mention the state of the room and sat on the floor with her lunch while Kaya stayed in the chair, staring long and hard at her own bowl. (If some shinobi climbed out of the shadows in her food—)

Her stomach didn't let her do that for too long, though. Kaya started eating quickly, and nearly choked when Sayaka mentioned in between her nattering that the orange haired kid had left ages ago and hey why’d he been so quiet, did she know about that? Sayaka scolded her for eating too fast, but later collected the empty bowls and left.

Kaya spent the next few hours trying and failing to do work. Thanks to Mikan it was just about impossible to focus. There was no telling what to expect next or how to prepare for it, or if Kaya even could. Just what the hell was happening, honestly?

At a quarter to four, Kaya finally had enough. Screw work. She’d probably get more done talking to Sango. She opened the door to go do just that.

Over by the front desk were two brown-haired men. The nurse pointed them in the direction of the corridor that led to where Kaya stood. They nodded to the nurse, then began to walk, looking for all the world like plain ol’ civilians in plain civilian clothes and having nothing on their faces that stood out. Maybe they were headed for the upper floors? Kaya stepped to the side so they could pass.

Except one of the men stopped in front of Sensei's office. He looked up at the room number, frowning, then opened the door.

“Um, excuse me—?”

Without turning to her, the man walked inside. When Kaya went in after him, it was to find a sight that made her gasp. Where the civilian man had been, there stood a black haired shinobi. He turned to her with a face as pale as bone, and eyes that glowed bright red.

Those eyes landed on her. Kaya’s breath stopped.

“Good afternoon, Tsukauchi-san. My name is Uchiha Itachi. Please excuse my rudeness, but there are some questions I need to ask you.”

Chapter Text

The Uchiha were a clan of the village, recognized as nobility by the daimyo. They were best known for two things: the police force and being one of the founding clans of Konohagakure.

For that alone, Kaya ought to fall to her knees in dogeza and apologize for being born.

What stopped her was the fact that no one important would ever come to see her at the clinic or bother to ask her opinion. There was no reason for her to embarrass this stranger by acting like that or using -sama for just a normal person.

“…Understood, Uchiha-san. Please ask your questions.”

Before he could answer, someone else did instead. “You don’t need to be nervous. We can sit down first.”

Kaya turned. Just like Uchiha-san, the other stranger had changed as well. He too had pale skin and black hair. What made him different was how oddly curly his hair was and the friendly way he smiled at her.

His height made it so that she needed to tilt her head up. Her shoulders stiffened. “I’m—I’m sorry, I should’ve offered first, Uchiha-san—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine, Tsukauchi-san! No harm done. And you can just call me Shisui,” he said, if possible smiling even brighter.

It was a very nice smile. It made dimples in his cheeks. He looked…he looked very nice, actually. All tall and smiley and friendly-looking and warm and—and he was standing too close—

Kaya jerked backwards, the hair on the back of her neck prickling. The warmth in there crawled up her face. Even as she stared down at her clasped hands, at the heartbeat that pulsed against her wrist, she couldn’t help but be… so confused.

What was happening? Why was her body acting like this? It was the second time that day. First that morning, now suddenly—and all it seemed to do was scatter her thoughts, make her act stupid, and give her weird heat flashes. Her hands were sweating. This had never happened before in her entire life.

What was wrong with her? There seemed to be no greater purpose to whatever it was other than to make her embarrassed and uncomfortable. She didn’t like it at all.

And why had he looked so happy to see her? He didn’t know her. There was no reason for a stranger to act nicely like that around her. What had she done to deserve it? What did he want from her? It was his fault she was feeling these things when she hadn't just a minute ago. She didn’t like that either.

In the moment those thoughts spun through her head, the stranger—and now she’d forgotten his name, god what a mess—had bounded past and eagerly looked around the room. “Wow, she hadn’t been kidding about all the files! It’s not normally like this, right?”

This he said over his shoulder at her. But instead of waiting for her answer, he kept going. “But still, this looks like it’ll be a lot to get through later. You must be working really hard over here. Don’t worry, we’ll do our best to figure this out quick and leave you to it. Right, Itachi?”

He put his arm around Uchiha-san in a half hug, flashing that same bright-dimply-warm smile at him too. And for some reason it reminded her of how Sayaka acted around most people she met. Easily friendly and happy to help, warm and chatty and nice in ways that Kaya never will be.

But that wasn’t Sayaka trying to make her think that. It was just in their natures to be that way. Sayaka just wanted to treat others well, and it made her happy, and that was that.

Was this what it was, then? Was this person someone like Sayaka? If that were true, then…it wasn't fair to act like he had bad intentions. Maybe he didn't mean harm. Maybe he was just like that with everyone and it wasn't just her and it was fine and she didn't need to worry.

The tightness in her chest loosened with her sigh. Slowly, Kaya summoned the nerve to unstick from the doorway and hover a little further inside the room.

Despite the state of the place, the two strangers found the files without her needing to tell them. She made some mumbled noises about clearing away a few chairs, except the two sat themselves on the ground and spread their findings out around them.

Kaya half-wondered if she ought to show them those missing files Mikan had fetched for her—but then, she'd also said whatever was written in them was likely wrong. These two wouldn't get much use out of them.

…She might as well make herself useful. No one was paying her to stand in a corner. Kaya found a conveniently simple wooden chair to remove the stack of papers from—she didn't think she had it in her to sit in that fancy, padded chair again while her guests made do with the floor —and then changed her mind about finally starting in on the sorting and clearing she should've been doing all day. There was no way she wouldn't stick her foot in it and make their jobs harder somehow. Kaya fussed with the storage boxes before she opened one with thin cloth folded in it. They were supposed to be made into bandages. She could do that.

Cloth, no matter how thin, ended up having some weight when packed in tight. Getting it to her chosen seat took enough out of her to make her sit and try to get her heart to calm down. Always hopping up so easily, it was ridiculous.

While she got it under control, the two men kept silent—not from lack of talking, or because they were paying attention to her, but because they used those hand gestures at each other. The ones that Akimichi-san had told her the other day was also a kind of talking. It made sense. If what they were looking for was as secret as Mikan made it seem, then it wouldn't be right for someone like her to hear it. Despite herself, Kaya sunk in her chair. Maybe they should've just asked her to leave. She should just focus on her work instead of acting weird and staring at them.

At least making bandages was easy enough. Just put a bunch of cloth on her lap, cut each one with scissors, roll the strips into a ball, then tie it off and drop it back into the box at her feet. Do the same with the rest. They had to be even width, or else it’d be a waste of cloth. It was such a shame she’d gotten so little done that day. If she’d had the idea to do it before, she might have been finished with this chore already. She shouldn’t have wasted her energy panicking so much when most of the situation seemed out of her hands. Or cried so much. What a waste of time her feelings were.

There were better things to do, productive things. Like her job, or practicing reading, or cooking. Speaking of food, Sayaka had been talking during their lunch about the snacks she’d brought in. Something about a relative visiting, something about sharing them in the break room. Would there be things she liked there? Or recognized? Kaya had shared half of the snacks she’d bought with Naruto. Whatever she’d kept for herself hadn’t lasted long, but she’d carefully folded and kept their wrappers. No, she couldn’t quite read them beyond the splashes of hiragana and katakana, but they’d still be good practice. And maybe she’d find them again.

Which, according to her stomach, she ought to try doing soon. Some fruit would also be good. Especially sour fruits, like grapes.

As she’d worked, the two on the floor had slowly shifted positions, reaching over to give files, or scooting to the side to grab those that were too far away. It had brought Shisui closer to where she sat. Close enough for his head to bob right next to her knee.

…Why was his hair so curly? It was black, which was a good color, but it was also curly, which was new. Her own hair didn’t count. The introduction of coconut oil in her life notwithstanding, it was mostly just a fuzzy blob that looked like dirt.

She wouldn’t call Shisui’s hair beautiful, but it was soft and shiny. He didn’t smell like coconut either. But hadn’t Sango said that there were scentless or natural-smelling oils? It made sense for a shinobi. Except the curly strands didn’t have the feeling of oil. It was just smooth, like the slippery feeling of the fake silk blouse that was there one time in the second hand store. (And which she hadn’t gotten because it felt too nice for the likes of her. And it was bright red. Red was a lucky color but it’s not one she deserved.)

No hidden oil in the rest of the hair either. It was really just that smooth throughout. Even the few tangles were very loose, slipping out at the slightest tug…was this what hair was supposed to feel like? Her own hair just made her cry, but even with this one being curly like hers—though maybe a little bit looser, come to think—and about as long, even just finger combing it was easy. It felt very soothing, actually. Would a hair clip stay in it? It’d be nice if one would. If her hair were like this, she might’ve worn flowers—

A large hand closed around hers, the pale, pale skin all but glowing against her brown tan. It turned her hand over and the head tilted up.

Kaya froze.

Oh.

Oh, she’d done that. She’d just—she—that was—

“Could you look at this for me, Tsukauchi-san?”

The folder opened on her lap. Words blurred on the page as Kaya, too caught up in the sensation of her blood trying to cook her face, nearly missed him saying, “This line over here. Read it out loud, please?”

“…Uh…” The identity picture showed a girl. The line that Shisui pointed to happened to be below that, which along with her name (written with kanji that Kaya didn’t know, but which had a part that meant heart) had another small string of kanji. The second kanji was kuma, bear, while the first…

“ …Oni? ” Did that really say ‘demon’? Kaya mouthed the word, as in the corner of her eye Shisui’s head nodded. “Oni…kumo. Ichi…?”

“Zoku,” he finished reading for her.

“Ichizoku…Demon Bear Clan?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh…that’s…that’s not good.” Less for there being a clan called ‘demon bear’ than for a clan being in one of the folders at all. That kanji did not belong in the patient files of a small civilian clinic.

“No, it isn’t. Have you ever seen this girl?”

Kaya shook her head. Green hair and yellow eyes would’ve been hard to forget. “Never. Where could she be…?”

“That’s what we’ll find out.” He closed the folder. Then his hand plucked up one of hers and gave it a light squeeze. “Don’t worry about it, alright? Me and Itachi’ll solve this.”

Unfortunately for Kaya, it was the exact same hand that had been caught doing the She Did Not Want To Think About It thing from a minute ago but now she was and he was staring at her and that hand was touching her and what was she supposed to do?

Kaya suddenly stood. “I’m—I’ll get some tea!”

The door slammed too loudly behind her. Kaya forced herself not to go back and apologize, to walk without running. She almost made it to the kitchens before she came to her senses and turned right back around and found a closet (a very convenient closet) to hide in and press her face into her hands into the back of one knee and scream.

WHY?!

How could she do that?! She’d just—and she hadn’t even thought —no, she had, actually. She had thought, but it was about hair! Hair! That wasn’t important! She’d just embarrassed herself!

But she’d never seen curly hair before! Not like that! Not on someone else! She didn’t even know that could happen! And maybe—maybe it wasn’t as curly as hers, but it was close, and it hadn’t been frizzy, and it’d been a nice color too and then she’d gone and stuck her hand in it and why why why did she keep doing this kind of thing? She could never show her face again. She was just going to sit there and cry herself to death, god this was so stupid, she was so stupid, being alive was the worst—

Her stomach growled. Kaya whined over the sound. Goddamn it she shouldn’t have said tea. It gave the endless pit in her ideas. She deserved to suffer and she didn’t want to get up and she didn’t want to keep going and she wished some natural accident would just kill her off already instead of letting her roam free to act like this. Freedom was a mistake. She wanted to be a rock.

The gods did not answer her prayers. Kaya sulked for as long as she could stand it and then left the closet. The longer she stayed, the higher the chances of someone finding her there and she didn’t want to explain herself to people.

The clock in the break room said it was getting close to 5pm. Her shift would end soon. Even Sango had a cup of tea and a plate next to her. When she glanced up, she smiled. “There you are, Tsuki-chan. Sayaka-chan brought snacks today, did she tell you?” Kaya nodded. “They’re over there on the table. Help yourself.”

“…How much…?”

“As many as you like. Everyone else’s already snagged their share, so you might as well.”

There were some packaged mochi and a bowl half full of senbei. There were also several mandarins. Her stomach chose to stab her, so she took one of the mochis and bit into it.

The same sweetness from the night of the festival met her tongue. It was red bean. Her new favorite. Kaya stood there and chewed through the mochi she’d decided to stuff in her face. A stray plate just so happened to be big enough to put a little bit of everything onto it. She left enough room to cram three cups of tea as well—was she allowed to share them with guests? Patients didn’t get snacks, but they weren’t patients and wouldn’t it be wrong to leave them hungry?

Kaya opened her mouth to ask. One look over at Sango, back to her work, made her snap it shut. She’d made enough of an idiot of herself for one day. No need to bother Sango with pointless questions.

For all the care she took to make sure nothing spilled on the way back to the room, neither of the men bothered with the snacks. Just the tea, but that seemed more out of politeness than not. She couldn’t bring herself to ask if they were sure they didn’t want to eat more than once, or look them in the face. She ended up accidentally finishing all of the mochi she’d brought over, and half of the mandarins, and didn’t really know whether or not to be embarrassed about it. Neither of them seemed to notice. Or care—which, obviously they wouldn’t, not when they had more important things to do.

They didn’t take longer than a few more minutes. Nor did they take a folder or two with them, which was odd. Wouldn’t there be a lot to remember? At the very least they could’ve asked her to photocopy some of it, or she could’ve pointed them to it if they wanted to do it themselves. But they left with empty hands. They even cleaned up what they’d spread out on the floor for her and put them back where they’d been before.

It was only after they’d left and Kaya had locked up that it dawned on her that neither had asked her where the folders were meant to go.

…But then, Mikan could’ve just told them. Anyways, what would Kaya know?

More than Naruto apparently.

“Naruto-kun, the answer’s right there in your textbook. Just read your textbook.”

“I don’t wanna!” Naruto threw himself to the ground.

Kaya sighed. “You said there’s a geography test. It’s just two pages. You just have to learn one paragraph for each hidden village.”

“But we already did that! Let’s do something else!”

“No, I did it. I read it to you twice. Now you do it.”

“It’s too hard!” No it wasn’t. It was just boring. But he didn’t want to say that because then she’d tell him that boring never stopped a person from doing. And for Naruto there was almost nothing about schoolwork that wasn’t boring, except for— “I wanna be a strong ninja! I wanna learn cool jutsus! When I’m Hokage, I’ll get rid of geography tests forever!”

Naruto’s feet stuck straight up as he declared this, making him look more like an upside down chicken. Kaya’s eyebrows twitched.

“I,” said she, “have never heard of a Hokage who doesn’t know about the other hidden villages.”

She’d never heard of any Hokage at all. But that didn’t matter much in the face of the glare Naruto sent her.

She glared right back. She refused to believe he was that stupid. He just wanted to be stubborn and argue instead of listening to a girl. She couldn’t stop herself from being a girl but he could stop himself from acting stupid.

Kaya’s finger tapped on her crossed arms as she slowly leaned forward. “You learn. Or you don’t. Pick. One.”

They stayed that way for a solid ten seconds. Until Naruto covered his face and groaned, then threw himself upright and crawled back to his textbook.

“If I get stuck on kanji, I’m gonna stop!”

“You know more kanji than me and I could still read it. If I can do it, so can you.”

“Fine! I’ll learn it better than you, dattebayo!”

“You do that.”

Kaya went back to practicing kanji. Unlike Naruto, her concentration didn’t crack under the weight of such tiny annoyances as his loud voice. She already knew exactly what was there, and didn’t bother looking up when Naruto declared himself done and she quizzed him.

In her flat, Kaya’s mind kept going back to the events of the day. But especially the shape changing woman.

Kaya as she knew herself was not a person she liked. Her looks were ugly, she kept acting stupid, and she always felt scared. She always felt like she’d done something wrong.

That woman had worn her face, her body. But she could not have been more different. She hadn’t made Kaya taller, or stronger, or anything. But that was a person who was not scared or stupid or wrong.

Kaya could not stop herself from being herself. But…could she still be different? Just like that? Could she learn to be a little less like what she hated and a little more like something else?

In the mirror, Kaya tried to think of what that woman had done. It was like trying to learn a recipe by staring at the food. She frowned. Her reflection frowned back.

Would her reflection ever change? Was that possible? If she tried, then what would she do?

If she changed, then who would she be?