Rising Blade, Falling Leaves (Fate x Naruto, EMIYA Centric)

[The Tangerine Cat]

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Chapter 1—The Girl in the Village


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The early spring air still bit in the mornings, but by late afternoon the sun had burned through enough to make the market street almost pleasant. Almost. The smell of grilled squid clung to the awnings, vendor stalls threw long shadows across the packed earth, and the Hokage monument loomed over the cliffside as it always did—four stone faces staring down at a village they no longer had to deal with.

Emiya wondered, not for the first time, whether retirement improved one's outlook or simply removed the need to have one.

He shifted the paper-wrapped miso paste to his other arm and continued down the street. He was five years old. The crowd parted around him without thinking—a quick glance, whose kid, gone.

He stopped at the counter of a dry-goods stall. The shopkeeper was mid-argument with the customer ahead of him, her voice carrying over the foot traffic.

"Eighty ryō. Same as last week, same as next week."

"Last week it was sixty, and you know it was sixty because I—"

"Eighty ryō, or you're welcome to walk to the south district and see what they charge."

The customer clicked his tongue and fumbled for his coin pouch. He dropped two ryō onto the counter and a third bounced off the edge onto the ground. The man swore under his breath, crouching to retrieve it while the shopkeeper watched from behind her counter, already smiling. He slapped the full amount down, snatched his purchase, and shouldered past Emiya on the way out without a grunt.

Manners in this village were a renewable disappointment.

Emiya stepped forward and set his coins down in a neat stack. "Kombu. The thicker cut, if you have it."

The shopkeeper looked at him, then at the coins, then at the miso paste under his arm. "Aren't you precious."

He was not, in fact, precious.

She retrieved the kombu. "Thank you for your purchase, Uchiha-kun!"

He raised a hand without turning.

The commercial district gave way to wider lanes as he moved south. The breeze picked up between the buildings, cool enough to prickle the back of his neck. The stalls thinned out as a woman swept her steps and hummed something off-key, and on the corner two men argued about a fence post.

"It's leaning."

"It's been leaning for six years."

"And one day it'll fall and kill someone's dog."

"Hah! Then the dog shouldn't sit there!"

They'd clearly been at this a while. Emiya sidestepped a delivery boy jogging past with a crate of bottles taller than he was, the kid weaving through pedestrians with his jaw clamped. He'd already dropped one today.

A brown tabby sat on a low wall ahead, cleaning its paw in a patch of afternoon sun, a red ribbon tied around its right ear. The cat looked up as Emiya passed, regarded him flatly, and resumed grooming.

A shout went up from the street behind him—two young, breathless voices.

"There—on the wall! Go left, go left!"

The tabby's ear rotated once and its paw stopped mid-lick.

Two genin in leaf headbands came barreling around the corner. The first one lunged. The cat twisted sideways, raked its claws across his outstretched forearms in a single fluid swipe, planted both back legs on the second genin's face, and launched itself off her nose into the gap between two buildings. The girl staggered backward, clutching her face, and the boy was already bleeding from both arms.

"I hate this cat," he hissed, and they scrambled after it down the alley.

Somewhere in a mission office, someone had filed that retrieval as D-rank. It was a generous assessment, given the apparent casualty rate.

He rounded the bend where the lane opened up, and his peripheral caught it—above and to the left, a blur on the crossbar of a utility pole that resolved like a heat mirage condensing into a solid shape. A porcelain mask sealed his face, canine in design, short muzzle painted with dark slashes across the eye slits. A shock of white hair stuck up above it at an angle that defied both gravity and grooming. The figure crouched with one knee drawn up, perfectly still, in the fitted gray armor vest and arm guards of an ANBU operative, oriented northeast toward something several blocks ahead, never once sparing his attention for the street below.

Emiya didn't slow. His sandals kept the same rhythm on the packed earth, and he filed the direction without turning his head.

When he glanced that up again—a half-second later, peripheral only—the crossbar was already empty.

The lane bent toward a small square. A dango vendor occupied one side, his charcoal grill trailing sweet smoke into the still air. An old man on the bench was losing a slow war with the breeze for control of his newspaper. The foot traffic was thinner here, and slower with it.

Emiya's stride shortened by a half-step as he spotted the figure across the space.

A girl was approaching the dango stall.

She was small—smaller than him, which at five was already not much. Her thin arms poked out of a white t-shirt with a faded red spiral on the front, the collar stretched out wide enough to show a sharp little collarbone. Orange shorts a size too large hung past her knees, cinched at the waist with a bit of cord. Her sandals were scuffed down to almost nothing on the heels. She looked like someone had dressed a sparrow in hand-me-downs and sent it out to forage.

But the hair was hard to ignore. A wild, bright mop of blonde caught the afternoon light and held it, wrestled into uneven pigtails with mismatched ties—one red, one blue—by someone working without a mirror. Three thin marks ran across each cheek, like whiskers, and beneath the mess of hair and the oversized clothes, the face was all round cheeks and wide, startling blue eyes and a small stubborn mouth.

She walked with her chin up and her shoulders set, small sandals scuffing the packed earth.

The vendor saw her coming.

Emiya watched his hands. The man had been arranging skewers on the display tray—spacing them, adjusting, the automatic rhythm of ten thousand identical afternoons. When the girl crossed into his line of sight, his hands just relocated. They shifted from the display tray to the counter's edge, palms settling flat against the wood. The body closed the distance between itself and the front of the stall the way a shopfront shutter rolled down at closing.

She hadn't even spoken yet.

The girl reached the counter and looked up at the skewers, her blue eyes tracking across the display. She'd done this before.

She opened her mouth.

"Not today." The vendor was looking past her, at the striped canvas of the produce stall, like she'd interrupted a thought he was already done with. "Come back later."

The girl closed her mouth. She stood there for a beat, then scratched the back of her head with one hand—a quick, rough gesture, fingers raking through the base of her ponytail. She hiked up the orange shorts that had slid down her hips during the walk and turned away from the stall like she'd just remembered she had somewhere else to be.

She didn't.

Three children were playing near the bench, chasing each other in loose formless circles. The blonde girl's path brought her within a few meters. The circles shifted. The two boys drifted toward the far side of the bench, the third child trailing after them, and the orbit recentered on the space furthest from where the blonde girl walked. No one looked at her.

She passed the bench and the produce cart. A woman carrying groceries walked past her—eyes landing on the girl for a full second before sliding forward without friction.

The girl sat down on the curb at the far edge of the square and pulled her knees up. The orange shorts bunched around thin thighs, the t-shirt hanging loose off one shoulder. She rested her chin on her knees and looked across the square at the dango stall. The smoke from the charcoal grill drifted between them.

The problem had been visible from across the square. Nobody was looking.

The dango vendor went back to arranging his skewers. The old man turned another page of his newspaper, or tried to. The children kept running.

Emiya turned and walked east. The kombu needed cold storage before dinner.

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The compound gate guards dipped their heads as he approached—a shade more deference than a five-year-old typically warranted. Emiya passed through without breaking stride.

The main path cut between low-walled residences, their tiled roofs catching the last of the evening light. The smell of cooking hit him as he passed the first row of houses—soy and garlic and steamed rice drifting from open windows. A pair of crows on a rooftop to his right scattered as his sandals crunched the gravel below, their racket carrying across the quiet lane. Voices floated from somewhere behind him now, a conversation about patrol rotations or a leaking roof falling away as he walked. The Uchiha discussed both with the same gravity.

The front door of the main house was open, light spilling warm across the engawa.

"Sasuke."

Emiya turned.

A woman stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame, an apron cinched at her waist over a dark blue house dress. Long black hair swept behind her shoulders, catching the kitchen light at the edges. She had the fine-boned structure that ran through the Uchiha women—sharp and composed—but her dark eyes were warm, and her mouth sat naturally closer to a smile than a frown.

"Mikoto." His dark eyes glanced up at her from beneath a fall of darker hair, set in a pale face that still had many years of growing to do, and small hands held up the paper-wrapped package. "Miso paste. And the kombu."

Her mouth twitched. The woman had given up on that particular battle a while ago. "Come in. Your father will be late tonight."

Emiya shrugged. Truly, no one could have foreseen this.

He removed his sandals and carried the packages to the kitchen. The miso paste went into cold storage and the kombu onto the preparation counter. He washed his hands, rolled up his sleeves, and started on dinner.

The kitchen smelled right within twenty minutes—the miso and dashi had caught, and the steam off the rice was clean, which meant the rinse had been thorough enough. He plated three servings for Mikoto, Itachi, and himself. Fugaku's portion was set aside in covered dishes for reheating. The man could learn to come home on time, but that was a separate issue.

Mikoto came through to set the table. She paused behind him, watching the knife work on the last of the vegetables for a half-second. Then her hand came up and brushed the hair off the back of his neck—quick, absent, the way she might straighten a frame in passing. She set a folded dish towel by his elbow and continued to the dining room.

He served, and they ate. Itachi was quiet tonight—quieter than usual, his chopsticks moving in the mechanical way they moved when his thoughts were somewhere else entirely. He'd come home later than expected and hadn't offered why. Mikoto didn't ask, and neither did Emiya.

"The Nakano planted a persimmon tree last week." She tilted her head. "I give it until the next frost."

Emiya didn't look up from his bowl. "Depends on the rootstock."

"Ara?" Mikoto's chopsticks paused. "You know about persimmon trees, Sasuke?"

"It was in a book."

It was not, strictly speaking, in a book. But similar excuses had been thrown about too often, and those around him had stopped trying to dig for more.

Itachi's eyes flicked sideways for a half-second, then returned to his rice.

Mikoto took a sip of her soup and set the bowl down. "Your father left his reading glasses on the counter again, by the way." She reached for Itachi's empty rice bowl. "I'm considering hiding them."

That got a sound from Itachi. Not quite a laugh, but close enough.

Mikoto stacked the bowl on hers, smiling to herself.

The dishes were cleared, washed, and dried.

Then Emiya took out a fresh container.

He packed it the same way he did the household's portions—rice leveled, vegetables arranged, miso soup sealed separately so it wouldn't bleed through. He wrapped the whole thing in a clean cloth and tied it.

He set the box on the far end of the counter, away from the evening's dishes and away from where anyone would reach for it or move it or ask about it.

One extra box.

He wiped down the counter, folded the cloth, and turned off the kitchen light.

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Next Chapter Preview

A boy stood on the river—

"Whoever it's for is eating better than most adults in this compound."

Something was sitting on the windowsill.

Still faintly warm.

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Author's Note

Hey—if you're coming over from my previous fic, welcome back (though I've never posted on QQ before, mostly been active on ffn, ao3, and spacebattles).

Yeah, I know. New series.

Before anyone panics: the Fate × PJO crossover is not abandoned. That one's still something I care about a lot—it's just… kind of a monster.

From the start, that story was planned with multiple timelines, overlapping events across different eras, and a lot of moving parts that all have to line up properly. It's the kind of thing that works on paper, but in practice, it means every chapter takes a ridiculous amount of planning to not break something three arcs later.

And because I was updating it every few months… that didn't exactly help. If anything, it made both the planning and the writing worse over time.

So instead of forcing it and burning out, I'm stepping back from it for now and planning to reboot it properly in a few months once I've smoothed things out.

This fic is… the opposite of that.

It's a lot more straightforward to write. The structure is tighter, the scope is more controlled (in terms of worldbuilding, but it'll still be very lengthy in terms of total word-count), and I actually have a much better sense now of what I can realistically maintain long-term.

More importantly, it lets me stay consistent.

Writing regularly matters more than I thought it would. Not just for updates, but for keeping the flow, the character voice, the pacing—everything. This is where I get to really refine that.

So this project is going to be:

long-running

consistently updated

and a lot more stable in terms of output

Current plan is twice a week (Wednesday & Saturday, Pacific Time).

There's already a solid buffer written, and the story is planned through pre-timeskip, with a clear path going forward from there.

Also—this is still very much an Emiya story, just in a different setting.

If you liked the character work, the tone, or just Emiya being dropped somewhere he absolutely doesn't belong… you'll probably feel at home here.

Anyway.

Thanks for sticking around, or for giving this one a shot.

Let's see where this goes.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

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Chapter 2—The Anomalies


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A small green frog leapt from a lily pad, sending rings of jewel-blue ripples across the shallow bed of pebbles. The current carried them outward until they thinned into nothing. Cicadas pulsed in the distance, their rhythm rising and falling with the breeze.

A boy stood on the river, the water lapping beneath his feet without ever disturbing his balance.

His eyes were closed.

The wind shifted, leaves trembling overhead, and a faint ripple crossed the surface as he exhaled.

"Sasuke."

His eyes opened, and he tilted his head back slightly. "Itachi." His gaze settled on him. "Back already?"

Itachi had come back early. The elders had needed a document delivered to the administrative office—nothing that required more than an hour, and it hadn't taken even that. He'd taken the tree line instead of the main gate, following the stream where the path was quieter.

He had not expected to find his brother standing on it.

Water-walking was not, by itself, remarkable. Itachi had learned the technique young. There were records of children mastering it younger—wartime prodigies, most of them, names preserved in scrolls alongside the ages at which they'd died. Children who never got to be children, because the village needed soldiers more than it needed sons.

But that had been during war. The village had been at peace for most of Sasuke's life. Children his age were learning to hold kunai the right way around. They were not standing on rivers with their eyes closed, holding the posture of someone who had been doing this long enough to find it unremarkable.

He hadn't seen Sasuke practice tree-walking either. There had been no progression—no failed attempts, no chakra burns on the soles of his sandals, no frustrated evenings. One day, Sasuke simply could. The skill had always been there. He had merely decided to stop concealing it.

They walked back toward the compound. The grass was still damp from the morning, and the late sun cut through the canopy in long shifting bands. A crow called from somewhere deep in the trees. Sasuke walked a pace ahead, his sandals barely making sound against the earth.

Itachi watched him walk. He moved the way he always did, his dark hair falling untouched, his small shoulders untightened, his stride neither hesitating nor hurrying.

He thought, briefly, of his father taking him to a battlefield at four years old, after it was over—of a sandal lying on its side in the mud, small enough to have belonged to someone his age. He had stared at it for a long time before his father's hand settled on his shoulder and guided him away.

There were moments his brother would be overcome by an odd stillness. He couldn't quite place it; it was similar to people Itachi had met who carried things they did not discuss. Yet, at the same time, Sasuke felt more at peace, like whatever burden had seemingly eased or simply dulled in the back of the boy's mind.

A leaf drifted from the canopy and landed on Sasuke's shoulder. His brother slowed half a step, and it slipped off his shirt. He never spared it a single glance. Itachi almost said something then. He wasn't sure what—a question, maybe, or something that might have passed for one.

In the end, he did not ask. The list of things he had not asked about was growing longer, and he was beginning to suspect that was deliberate—on both their parts.

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The kitchen was already warm when Emiya came through the door. Mikoto was at the stove, one hand stirring, the other adjusting the flame. A strand of dark hair had escaped from behind her ear and was hanging in front of her face. She blew it aside without breaking rhythm.

"Itachi. Sasuke. You're late."

"I was at the stream."

"Mm." She reached for a lid without turning. "Wash your hands."

He was already at the sink. The water ran cold over his fingers and he dried them on the cloth she'd hung from the oven handle—the same spot she always put it, within reach of whoever was shorter.

Fugaku was at the table with a book spread open beside his plate and a cup of tea he hadn't touched. He did not look up when Emiya entered. He did not look up when Itachi came in a minute later. He acknowledged both of them with a single low hum that apparently served as greeting, commentary, and dismissal all at once.

At least one member of this household had mastered the art of communicating the absolute minimum required by social convention. Emiya could respect that.

Mikoto handed him bowls and he set them on the tray. Itachi carried it to the table while Emiya brought the pickled sides. Mikoto lifted the pot with both hands, steam curling from under the lid, and set it on the wooden trivet between the place settings.

"Careful," she said, though it wasn't clear who she was addressing. Possibly everyone. Possibly the pot.

They ate, and Fugaku's eyes never left the page. His chopsticks found his bowl, his mouth, and the bowl again without once requiring his attention—a routine so practiced it had probably outlasted several books. Itachi chewed in silence, his gaze resting somewhere past his bowl. Mikoto watched both of them for a moment, then sighed through her nose and took a sip of soup.

"Mrs. Nakano stopped me on the path today," she offered. "Apparently their roof started leaking again. Third time since winter."

Fugaku did not respond.

"She also mentioned the cherry trees near the east wall are budding early."

"They do that," Fugaku said, not looking up.

"And that her husband has taken up painting."

Fugaku's chopsticks paused for the first time. He looked up from his book. "Painting."

"Landscapes, apparently."

The chopsticks resumed. "Hm."

"She seemed proud."

"Hm."

Mikoto caught Emiya's eye across the table, the corner of her mouth twitching, and he returned his attention to his rice.

Itachi excused himself after finishing, his footsteps receding down the hall. Fugaku closed his book and relocated to the living room with his cold tea, which he drank anyway. Uchiha stubbornness was apparently a trait that extended to beverage temperature.

Emiya washed, and Mikoto took each bowl from his hands and dried it, stacking them in the cabinet without a word. The kitchen settled into the rhythm of running water and clinking porcelain.

"Sasuke."

He glanced over his shoulder. Mikoto was leaning against the counter, the dish towel draped over one arm. She was looking at him the way she sometimes did—warm and unhurried and slightly too attentive, like she was waiting for a shape to resolve.

"The bento from yesterday," she said. "Still on the counter?"

He didn't answer immediately. The water ran over a bowl in his hands.

"I was going to take it out."

"Ara." She tilted her head. "You packed it well. Whoever it's for is eating better than most adults in this compound."

"That says more about the compound's standards than it does about my cooking."

She huffed a breath through her nose—not quite a laugh, but close. "Be back before the lanterns go out."

He dried his hands, took the wrapped container from the far end of the counter, and slipped on his sandals at the door. Mikoto was still standing at the counter when he glanced back. She had picked up the dish towel again, folding it slowly, her eyes on the spot where the bento had been.

The evening air was cool against his neck. Lanterns were already flickering to life along the main path, and the compound had gone quiet except for the distant sound of someone's radio drifting through an open window. A neighbor's cat watched him from a fence post, tracking his movement without enthusiasm.

He walked without hurrying.

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The bread lady's shutters were already down.

Naruko stood in front of them for a moment, her hand still raised like she'd been about to knock. She lowered it, wiped her nose with the back of her wrist, and turned around.

The other shop—the one with the canned goods—had let her in last week, but only once. The man behind the counter had looked at her for a long time before shaking his head and pointing at the door. She hadn't gone back since.

Her stomach had stopped growling a while ago. That was fine. It did that sometimes. It would start again later, usually around the time she was trying to fall asleep, and then she'd lie there and listen to it until it gave up again.

She took the back streets home. The main roads had too many people, and too many people meant more of the look—the one where someone's eyes landed on her and then slid sideways like she was a crack in the pavement.

A shutter banged somewhere above her. A woman leaned out a second-floor window and called a name—not hers—and a boy came running from around the corner, sandals slapping the stone, and disappeared inside. The door shut behind him. A pair of rats scurried along the gutter, the smaller one trailing close behind the larger, keeping pace. Even they had somewhere to go together.

Naruko kept walking.

Her apartment building stood at the end of the lane. It was tilting a little to one side, like always. She'd asked the old lady downstairs about it once, and the old lady had pretended not to hear her. Maybe the building was just tired. Buildings probably got tired too.

The stairs creaked under her sandals. She fished the key from the cord around her neck—it took her two tries because her fingers were cold—and let herself in.

The apartment was dim, and the wooden floor was cold under her bare feet. The kitchen counter still had an empty milk carton she'd forgotten to throw out sitting next to the sink. She kicked off her sandals—one landed by the door, the other skipped under the table—and padded toward the window to tug the curtain aside.

Something was sitting on the windowsill.

Naruko stopped.

A bundle had been left there, wrapped in cloth, tied neatly, and tucked against the glass on the outer ledge.

She leaned closer to the window and looked left down the alley, but it was empty. She looked right and saw only a stray cat picking through a toppled bin.

She slid the window open and reached for the bundle carefully, like it might disappear if she grabbed too fast. It was heavier than she expected. She brought it inside with both hands and set it on the table.

She didn't open it right away. She looked at it, leaned down and sniffed it, picked it up and turned it over, set it back down, and poked the cloth with one finger.

Nothing happened.

The knot came apart easily. Inside the cloth were two containers, one large and one small, both clean and plain.

She opened the large one first.

There was rice, packed neatly with not a grain out of place. Beside it lay slices of what looked like some kind of meat, thin and glazed and arranged in a neat fan. A rolled yellow thing she didn't have a name for had been cut into rounds, and vegetables in green and orange were tucked into the remaining space like someone had planned where each piece would go.

The smaller container had soup. She held it in both hands, and it was still faintly warm.

Naruko looked at the food, then at the door, which was locked, then at the window. The alley outside was empty.

Her stomach made its position known.

She set the soup on the stove and clicked the electric steamer on. The thing rattled on the burner—that same tinny vibration it always made, filling the kitchen with its low, persistent hum.

Naruko stood on her toes and peered down through the gap in the lid, and steam curled up. The smell hit her—miso and something deeper and richer underneath—and her nose scrunched, pulling the warm air in before she could think about it.

The soup was ready before her patience was.

She grabbed the container off the steamer with both hands.

"Ow—ow ow ow—"

It hit the table with a clatter. She shook her fingers out, hissing through her teeth, ran to the sink, shoved her hands under the cold tap, and let the water sting for a few seconds before wiping them dry on her shorts.

She marched back to the table.

The chair was too tall. She climbed up knees-first, swung herself around, and sat, her legs dangling off the edge. She pulled both containers close—the rice and the soup side by side.

She stared at the food and gulped.

She scooped up a heap of rice—too much for the spoon, a small mountain teetering on the edge—and opened her mouth as wide as it would go.

"Ahm."

Her lips closed around the spoon and her cheeks ballooned. For a second she sat very still, eyes squeezed shut, processing. Then the heat caught up.

Her mouth popped open into a tiny O, and she huffed short, frantic breaths as steam curled off her tongue. Her eyes watered as she fanned her mouth with one hand, chewing anyway, and swallowed hard.

She picked up one of the yellow rolled things with her fingers. It was warm and soft, and she wasn't sure if she was supposed to use the spoon for it. She bit into half, her cheeks puffing out. It tasted like eggs, but better than any egg she'd ever had, sweeter somehow.

She shoved the other half in before she'd finished chewing the first.

Her blue eyes caught the light from the window, wide and bright, almost sparkling.

The rice was good. The meat melted the second she bit down, and the soup tasted like what she imagined other people's kitchens smelled like.

She ate faster. The spoon scraped the container in quick little strokes, and she burned herself a second time on the soup—same huff, same fanning, same refusal to stop. She moved through it without order—rice, meat, the yellow rolled things, soup, rice again. Her spoon barely touched the table between bites.

Grains of rice stuck to the corners of her mouth, and her feet swung under the chair.

The warm yellow light of the apartment spilled softly through the window, out into the alley where no one was walking and no one was watching. Inside, the silhouette of a small blonde girl sat at a table too big for her, eating in quick, happy bites—never quite learning not to burn herself, but never once stopping either.

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The compound was dark when Emiya slipped through the front door, where he set his sandals by the step.

Fugaku was still in the living room, a lamp burning beside him, and a different book open on his lap. He looked up when Emiya entered. "You're back."

"I'm back."

His eyes held for a moment. "Good night, Sasuke."

"Good night, Fugaku."

Emiya walked down the hall. Behind him, the lamp clicked off, and the house went quiet.

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Next Chapter Preview

"Who is it for?"

Itachi had not intended to follow his brother.

The container was gone.

"You can't just say that."

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Advance chapters (up to 12 ahead) are available on P@ tre on:

/TheTangerineCat

Your support directly keeps the story going.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Kishhh]

Another Emiya-centric fanfic is always appreciated.

 

[materialalternative7]

Emiya-Sasuke, huh? I'll like to see where you take this.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

Another Emiya-centric fanfic is always appreciated.

Click to shrink...

I know lol, i'm always searching for more emiya fics. never enough

Emiya-Sasuke, huh? I'll like to see where you take this.

Click to shrink...

ay, thx for reading, and hope you'll enjoy the ride

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

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Chapter 3—Strays

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Naruko turned the tap on full. The water hit the bottom of the container and sprayed back up in a cold burst that caught her square in the face.

"Ack—!"

She slammed the tap back down and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist, blinking at the ceiling. Her shirt was wet, her chin was wet, and the counter was wet.

She turned the tap on again, slower this time, and held the container under the stream. The water ran cold over her pink fingers as she scrubbed the corners with her thumbnail, working out the last stubborn grains of rice. She dried it with the hem of her shirt, checked it twice, and carried it to the window.

She set it on the outer ledge, right where she'd found it last time, with the lid facing up.

The alley was quiet. A bird landed on the railing across the way, pecked at something, decided against it, and left. She climbed onto her bed and waited, kneeling there, watching the container through the window. Nothing happened. She put her hands together in front of it, squeezed her eyes shut, and wished very hard for the food to appear. She peeked with one eye.

It was still empty.

She counted to twenty in her head, lost track somewhere around fourteen, started over, and got bored before she reached ten.

Nobody came.

She pulled on her sandals and headed for the door. The morning air prickled her arms, and she shoved her hands into the pockets of her orange shorts. The left sandal strap was getting loose again, and she had to curl her toes to keep it from slipping.

The door swung shut behind her, then creaked back open, just a sliver. A tuft of blonde hair and a pair of blue eyes hovered past the gap, staring across the apartment at the container on the windowsill.

She looked at it for a long moment.

Then the door clicked shut.

The road was already busy when she skittered down the stairs. A woman with a basket on her arm adjusted her path without looking down. Two men outside a tea shop stopped talking as she passed and started again once she was a few steps beyond them. A shopkeeper sweeping his front step moved his broom to the other side of the doorway as she approached, like he'd suddenly found a very interesting spot that needed attention.

Naruko turned off the road before the market and cut through the alley toward the tree line. She squeezed between two trunks where the path narrowed, hopped over a root that stuck out of the ground like a bent knee, and kept going. The forest was better. The trees didn't care who walked under them.

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The bento was on the counter when Mikoto came into the kitchen.

Emiya had prepared it while the household was occupied elsewhere. The wrapping was the same as before, the knot tied the same way. He'd varied the contents from last time, swapping the glazed meat for grilled fish and adding an extra portion of tamagoyaki.

Mikoto spotted it immediately. She always did.

"Sasuke."

"Mikoto."

She picked up the container and turned it over in her hands, examining the wrapping. "Another one."

"So it would seem."

"Who is it for?"

Emiya turned back to the sink and rinsed the cutting knife he'd left soaking. "No one in particular."

"Ara." She set the bento back down and folded her arms. "You're making bentos for no one in particular. That's a lot of effort for no one."

"It's not effort. It's maintenance." He tapped the knife dry against the rack and reached for the dish towel. "Unattended problems have a tendency to get worse, and dealing with them later costs more than dealing with them now. Consider it pest management."

Mikoto's expression flattened. "That's not a very nice way to talk about a person."

"Who said anything about a person?" He draped the towel over the edge of the sink without looking at her.

"Sasuke."

He shrugged once. "It's a practical matter, Mikoto. Nothing more."

She studied him for a moment, then unfolded her arms and planted both hands on her hips.

"My five-year-old son is packing extra meals for someone he refuses to name and calling it pest management." She tilted her head. "Should I be concerned, or impressed?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You know, they say excessive nosiness is a sign of aging. Something about aunties who've run out of their own business to mind."

Mikoto blinked, her mouth opening and then closing. She stood perfectly still for a full second, her expression shifting through something Emiya couldn't quite track before settling on a look he hadn't seen before.

She stepped forward, reached out, and tapped him on the forehead with two fingers—light and warm, the pad of her index and middle finger pressing gently against the skin above his brow and holding for a beat before withdrawing.

Emiya blinked.

His forehead was still warm where she'd touched it.

Mikoto stared back at him with a smile growing on her face, slow and pleased, like she'd found exactly the reaction she was looking for.

"...I'll be back before dinner." He picked up the bento.

"Don't stay out too late," Mikoto called after him without turning from the stove.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Itachi had not intended to follow his brother.

He'd been returning from the training grounds when he spotted Sasuke leaving through the compound's east gate with something tucked under his arm. It was late afternoon, the light already turning amber through the trees, and Sasuke was walking at the same unhurried pace he used for everything.

Itachi kept his distance and told himself he was simply headed in the same direction, which was technically true for the first stretch and became less defensible with each turning.

What drew his attention first was the route. Sasuke took a side street that ran parallel to a patrol path, turned before the intersection where a chūnin checkpoint was typically positioned, and cut through a narrow alley without once looking back. He moved casually, hands in his pockets, but every turn happened to take him out of a sightline just before someone in uniform would have rounded a corner. Nobody noticed him.

The residential blocks gave way to older buildings near the eastern quarter, where the streets narrowed and paint peeled from shuttered storefronts.

Sasuke turned down a lane that ended at a tall, leaning apartment building and ducked into the alley beside it.

Itachi watched from the corner of the adjacent street.

For a moment, there was nothing. The alley was dark and narrow, cutting between the apartment building and the one beside it. Then a figure stepped out the other end.

He wore white robes and a red and white hat, the kanji painted clean on the triangular brim.

Itachi's eyebrow twitched.

His brother, henged into the Third Hokage of Konohagakure, walked to the base of the building and looked up. The apartment was near the top, several stories up, with a narrow balcony and a window where the curtain was drawn. Nobody was home.

The figure crouched once and leapt, the single push off the ground carrying the Third Hokage to the balcony railing, where he landed without a sound. He picked up the empty container from the windowsill, replaced it with the wrapped bento, and adjusted the knot so it faced outward. Then the figure straightened and stood on the railing for a moment, silhouetted against the evening sky in full Hokage regalia.

Itachi watched the Third Hokage leap down from the balcony, land softly, and walk back into the alley. He waited.

Sasuke emerged from the other end a few seconds later, the empty container tucked under his arm, hands back in his pockets, walking at the same unhurried pace as before.

Itachi pressed himself flat against the wall as his brother passed the intersection without a sideways glance.

He remained where he was, looking up at the building, at its tilting frame, at the balcony where the bento now sat on the ledge.

He knew whose building this was. Everyone in the village knew, even if most chose to act otherwise.

His eyebrow was still twitching.

His body flickered once, and the street was empty.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The forest had been all right. Naruko had found some mushrooms near the big root that looked like an elbow, but she wasn't sure if they were the eating kind or the other kind, so she'd left them alone. She'd also found a good stick, long and mostly straight with a pointed end that looked a little like one of those tantō the older kids carried during practice. She'd swung it around for a while, slicing at invisible enemies, before propping it against a tree where she could find it again next time.

The walk back was longer than the walk out. It always felt that way. Her legs got heavier going home than they did going anywhere else.

She climbed the stairs and fished out the key from the cord around her neck. It took two tries because the lock was always stiff. The door swung open and she kicked off her sandals.

The window.

The container was gone. In its place was a new bundle, wrapped in the same cloth, tied with the same knot, set on the same spot on the outer ledge.

Naruko stood very still.

She reached out and picked it up with both hands. It was heavier than last time. She held it against her chest and looked down the alley, left and then right. The same stray cat from before was sitting on a crate, watching her with half-closed eyes, but nobody else was around.

Someone had come while she was out. They had taken the empty box, left a full one, tied it the same way, and put it in the same place. They kept doing it.

She brought the bundle inside, climbed knees-first into the chair, swung around, and sat with her legs dangling. She set the bundle in front of her and rested both hands on the cloth. The warmth bled through the fabric into her palms.

She sat like that for a while, just holding it.

The knot came apart easily, and she opened the lid. Inside was rice, grilled fish this time instead of meat, the yellow rolled things, and vegetables—different from before, but packed the same way, every piece in its place.

She picked up the spoon, then set it back down, then picked it up again.

She ate slower this time, not because she wasn't hungry—she was—but because the food was warm, and the apartment was quiet, and nobody was going to take it away.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The residential lanes were mostly dark by the time Emiya came back through the village. The empty containers clinked softly under his arm. Lamplight spilled from windows where families were finishing dinner or hadn't drawn their curtains yet. A dog barked somewhere behind a fence, got bored, and stopped.

He heard them before he saw them.

"Billboard Brow. I said it before and I'll say it again. Bill. Board. Brow."

Three girls stood at the edge of the lane. The one doing the talking had purple hair cut in an uneven bob, arms crossed, chin up. Her two friends flanked her like backup singers waiting for their cue to laugh.

A pink-haired girl stood between them and the nearest lamp, shoulders drawn inward, a red ribbon tied across her forehead. And in front of her, a blonde in purple with her ponytail pulled tight had planted herself with her arms straight at her sides, looking up at the ringleader like the height difference was the ringleader's problem.

"Say it one more time." The blonde stepped forward. "I dare you."

"Ooh." The purple-haired girl glanced at her flanks. They laughed on schedule. "What are you going to do, Ino? Throw another flower at me?"

"Worked last time, didn't it?"

"You got lucky."

"And you got a daisy down your throat. Want to try for a rose? I hear the thorns add flavor."

The pink-haired girl flinched, her fingers tightening on the strap of her bag.

Emiya kept walking.

"Hey." The purple-haired girl's head snapped toward him. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing worth stopping for." He didn't slow down. "You're picking on someone for having a big forehead. She'll grow into it. You might not grow out of this."

He heard one of the flanking girls choke, and the ringleader tried to say something that didn't survive past the first syllable. Then sandals scuffed stone, retreating fast, as the three of them scattered down the lane.

The pink-haired girl's hand went to the ribbon on her forehead, her lower lip catching between her teeth. The blonde beside her had gone very still, watching him walk away.

He was a dozen paces past when he heard someone running after him, a single set of footsteps closing the gap fast. The blonde girl appeared in front of him, skidding to a stop and planting herself square in his path with her arms out.

"You can't just say that."

Emiya shifted the containers under his arm. "Say what."

"Big forehead. You said big forehead. Right in front of her."

"Nothing wrong with a big forehead."

Ino clenched her jaw. "You don't get to say something mean and act like nothing happened."

"Oh?" He stepped around her and kept walking. "Then tell her the forehead isn't the problem. The people who convinced her it was are."

Behind him, Ino stood in the lane, then turned, one hand raised, her mouth already working.

"You..."

It trailed off as she worked her jaw. She looked back over her shoulder at the pink-haired girl who was standing where they'd left her, head down, bangs fallen forward over her eyes.

Ino's hand dropped, and she turned and ran back.

The compound gate was visible at the end of the road, the lanterns on either side still lit. The empty containers clinked under his arm.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Next Chapter Preview

The written test was forty minutes. Emiya finished in eight.

"He's just—Akamaru, stop—he's holding it for me!"

"Hm... Not bad."

"Stop saying that!"

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

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Advance chapters (up to 12 ahead) are available here:

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[Starman25]

She retrieved the kombu. "Thank you for your purchase, Uchiha-kun!"

Click to shrink...

This reminds me of the fanfic where Shirou was a ghost who possessed baby!Sasuke and was also Sasuke's servant.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

This reminds me of the fanfic where Shirou was a ghost who possessed baby!Sasuke and was also Sasuke's servant.

Click to shrink...

wtf, lol, i didn't even know such a fic existed

 

[Starman25]

Shirou can finally meditate in peace (while reading this scene I imagined Shirou in a meditative pose in the water instead of standing in the water)

A small green frog leapt from a lily pad, sending rings of jewel-blue ripples across the shallow bed of pebbles. The current carried them outward until they thinned into nothing. Cicadas pulsed in the distance, their rhythm rising and falling with the breeze.

A boy stood on the river, the water lapping beneath his feet without ever disturbing his balance.

His eyes were closed.

Click to shrink...

Speaking of meditation: meditating in Naruto: you turn to stone.

meditating in the Nasuverse: you learn to transform your body into a magic circle.

And if Shirou retained some magic circuit, he can transform "natural energy" (or odd of planet in Nasuverse terms) into magic energy, since magic circuits are magical air purifiers.

Edit:

wtf, lol, i didn't even know such a fic existed

Click to shrink...

It only had about 3 chapters and then it stopped.

 

[Starman25]

A leaf drifted from the canopy and landed on Sasuke's shoulder. His brother slowed half a step, and it slipped off his shirt. He never spared it a single glance. Itachi almost said something then. He wasn't sure what—a question, maybe, or something that might have passed for one.

Click to shrink...

How many leaves can Sasuke hide in his clothes for chakra control training, and also to strengthen them with chakra for improvised shurikens?

"Hey." The purple-haired girl's head snapped toward him. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing worth stopping for." He didn't slow down. "You're picking on someone for having a big forehead. She'll grow into it. You might not grow out of this."

Click to shrink...

This reminded me of that girl's face, and she was really ugly.

 

[Starman25]

Sasuke could meet members of the Uchiha's rival clan: the Hyuga, and he might even have a fight with Hinata or Neji, which would have started due to the rivalry between the two clans.

And about Naruko: Shirou could make cotton candy for her (and he canonically has a cotton candy machine in his reality marble).

Edit:
Shirou probably already knows that he's expected to become a ninja because he's the clan leader's son, but does he have any plans for a non-combatant role?

Like becoming a medical ninja, a seal master (to produce seals instead of fighting), or some support position.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Chapter 4—Academy Begins

​

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The written test was forty minutes. Emiya finished in eight, set his pencil down, and leaned his cheek against his propped-up fist. The wood was cool and glossy under his elbow, polished smooth by years of fidgeting children.

A breeze rolled through the open windows, lifting the sheer curtains and curling the edges of his answer sheet. The April air carried the smell of cut grass and fresh paint from somewhere down the hall. The Academy had filled its tiered rows with thirty-odd five- and six-year-olds who had never been asked to sit still for this long, and it showed.

Emiya watched them struggle. He'd endured worse. Marginally.

The boy in the front row with the pineapple-shaped ponytail had put his head down after question six. Ino, beside him, was leaning sideways, squinting at his blank page, and finding nothing worth the effort. Two rows behind them, a boy with red triangles on his cheeks was wrestling something under his jacket while the something chewed audibly on paper.

"Inuzuka." Iruka didn't look up from his desk. "If that dog eats your test, you're getting a zero."

"He's not eating it! He's just—Akamaru, stop—he's holding it for me!"

"With his teeth."

"He's a very helpful dog!"

Iruka was the primary instructor, a chūnin with a scar across the bridge of his nose. He genuinely wanted to teach, and the village hadn't beaten that out of him yet.

At the window, the other instructor leaned against the sill with his arms folded and a smile that sat on his face like paint on a cracked wall. His name was Mizuki, and the name matched the smile. Neither inspired confidence.

"Sensei, can I go to the bathroom?"

"After the test, Inuzuka."

"But—"

"After."

The puppy whimpered.

Three rows to Emiya's left, Sakura was writing steadily, her pencil moving in careful, deliberate strokes. The red ribbon across her forehead was tied tighter than it had been the night he'd seen her on the lane. She hadn't looked up once. Whatever else that ribbon was hiding, it wasn't hurting her penmanship.

At the back of the room, Naruko was hunched over her paper with her pencil in a death grip. Every few seconds she erased something, blew the shavings off, and wrote the same thing in the same spot. She'd been at it since question twelve. The eraser was wearing thin.

He stood, walked his test to Iruka's desk, and headed back to his seat. Naruko's eyes followed him as he passed. She looked at his empty desk, then at his face, then back at her own paper. The pencil creaked in her fist.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The shuriken test was outside, and Naruko was ready. She was so ready.

The sunlight hit her face as the class filed through the back doors, warm and bright after the stuffy classroom. The yard was big and open, all packed dirt and wooden fences, with targets lined up at the far end. They looked like the stumps she threw rocks at in the forest, except flatter, and with circles painted on them.

This was going to be different. The written test had been bad. She knew it was bad. But throwing things—throwing things she could do. She'd spent half her afternoons in the forest chucking rocks at the pond near the elbow root, and she could skip one all the way to the far bank nine times out of ten. A shuriken was basically a rock. A pointy rock. How hard could it be?

The dark-haired boy went first, the Uchiha. He threw five and put all five in the center, one after another, like he was just placing them there. The class went quiet. The other teacher—the smiling one—pulled them out and announced full marks.

She watched the Uchiha walk back to the bench, hands in his pockets, face blank. He sat down like he'd just come back from getting a drink of water.

A girl with dark hair and strange pale eyes went next. She hit four. She was quiet about it, too—walked up, threw, walked back, like she'd done it before. On the way past, the girl slowed near Naruko and her hand twitched, like she wanted to wave or say something. She didn't. Weird.

The boy with the red triangles hit two and blamed his dog. The dog was asleep. A boy with a high collar hit three without blinking. A round boy hit one, shrugged, and pulled a bag of chips out of somewhere—Naruko had no idea where he'd been keeping it.

The only other blonde in the class hit three, flipped her ponytail, and turned to the pink-haired girl to say something about wrist flicks. The pink-haired girl hit two and walked back without talking to anyone.

"Uzumaki Naruko!"

Her heart thumped. She stepped up to the line.

Iruka-sensei handed her five shuriken from the rack. The metal was cold against her palm—colder than she'd expected, and heavier than a rock. She turned one over in her fingers. The edges were sharp enough that she could feel them even through the calluses on her thumb. The grip was all wrong—no flat side, no smooth surface, nothing like the stones she'd been throwing for months.

She'd never held one before. None of the weapon shops in the village had ever let her in.

She could do this. It was just a rock. A very pointy, very sharp, very metal rock.

She gripped the first one, pulled her arm back, and threw.

It went past the target and stuck in the fence.

Okay. Not a rock.

She threw the second. It clipped the edge and bounced into the grass. Better.

The third hit the target but way off to the side. The fourth went wide and she heard it ping off something metal behind the fence.

One left. Her hand was sweaty. She could feel the whole class behind her, all those eyes, and her ears were hot. She squeezed the last shuriken so hard the points dug into her fingers.

She threw it.

Thunk.

She'd hit center ring—not the middle of the middle, but close. It stuck there, the metal catching the sunlight, still humming from the impact. Her fingers were tingling. That thud of it going in was the best sound she'd heard all day.

She unclenched her jaw and walked back toward the line. Her fists were still tight, her sandals scuffing the dirt. She was looking down at her feet when she heard it—quiet, from somewhere to her left, so low she almost missed it.

"Hm... Not bad."

She glanced up. The Uchiha was walking past her, heading toward the supply rack. He wasn't looking at her. He might not have been talking to her. He might have been talking about the girl before her, or the boy with the chips, or nobody. She'd hit one out of five. Even she knew that wasn't good.

She kept walking. He probably wasn't talking to her.

The sun had climbed higher while they'd been throwing. The dirt was warm under her sandals now, and someone had set out a bucket of water near the fence.

Sparring came after. Iruka-sensei drew a circle in the dirt and called out pairs. The Uchiha went first, matched against a boy who looked like he was going to be sick. The boy swung at him. The Uchiha moved to the side—barely moved, really, just sort of shifted—and tapped him in the chest. The boy sat down. Iruka-sensei blew the whistle.

It had taken three seconds. Maybe less.

Naruko's match was a few rounds later, against the other blonde girl. It went longer. Naruko threw punches with everything she had, swinging wide, planting her feet so hard her sandals slid in the dirt. When the blonde clipped her shoulder, she came back harder. She won. Barely.

She was panting, her knees were grass-stained, and the heel of her palm was split where a punch had landed wrong.

She was catching her breath, bent over with her hands on her knees, when she heard it again.

"Hm... Not bad."

Her head snapped up. The Uchiha was walking past, hands in his pockets. He glanced at her. The corner of his mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile, something smaller and worse.

This time he was definitely talking to her.

Her ears burned.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

She caught up to the dark-haired Uchiha teme on the path outside the yard, where the dirt turned to stone and pink flowers were opening on the trees along the fence.

She hadn't meant to follow him. She'd meant to go home, eat whatever was in the bento if there was one today, and forget about his stupid face and his stupid voice and the stupid way he said those stupid two words. He'd walked past her twice and said the same thing, like she was a bug he'd noticed and decided it wasn't worth stepping on. Not good. Not great. Just not bad.

"Hey! Uchiha!"

He didn't stop. She ran until she was in front of him and planted herself in his way, fists at her sides, breathing hard.

"Stop saying that!"

He tilted his head. "Saying what?"

"Not bad! You keep saying not bad!" She jabbed a finger at him. "After the shuriken, after the spar, you just walk past and go 'not bad' like you're some kind of teacher!"

"Well, you weren't bad. Would you prefer I lied?"

"I'd prefer you shut up, dattebayo!"

The pale-eyed girl had followed a few steps behind, flinching at the volume and pressing her fingertips together, her eyes going back and forth between them.

Naruko jabbed her finger closer. "I'm gonna beat you. At every single thing. Every test, every spar, every shuriken. Everything. And then we'll see who says 'not bad,' dattebayo!"

The Uchiha raised a single brow. "Oh?" The corner of his mouth twitched. "I look forward to it."

Something about the way he said it stopped her dead. It wasn't mocking, and it wasn't dismissive. It sounded like he meant it.

He stepped around her and kept walking. Halfway to the gate, without turning, he added, "Although, that's about a hundred years too early for you."

Naruko's mouth fell open. By the time she found her voice again, he was already at the gate, hands in his pockets, not looking back.

She stood on the path with her finger still out, pointing at nothing, her ears burning. Her chest felt tight and strange and she didn't know why, because she was angry—she was definitely, completely, absolutely angry—but her stomach also felt weird, like she'd swallowed something hot too fast.

Behind her, the pale-eyed girl took a small step forward, one hand half-raised.

"U-um... Naruko-san... are you...?"

But Naruko was already stomping toward the gate, fists clenched, muttering. The pale-eyed girl caught pieces of it—"stupid," "teme," and "dattebayo"—before the blonde disappeared around the corner.

She lowered her hand and watched her go, then quietly followed at a distance.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Mikoto arrived at the Academy gates as the last of the afternoon light caught the tops of the trees. A few parents had gathered by the low wall, chatting while their children ran circles in the yard near the old tree with the single swing.

Her mind was somewhere else. It had been since that morning, when Fugaku set his teacup down at breakfast and told her Itachi's paperwork had been finalized. ANBU, at eleven years old. His voice hadn't changed when he said it, and his posture hadn't shifted. He'd picked up his cup again and taken a sip. The only thing that gave him away was the way his eyes stayed on her face a beat too long.

He wanted her to be proud. She was. She was also aware that ANBU had the shortest life expectancy of any rank in the village.

She had smiled and said nothing.

The Academy doors opened and children poured out in a noisy stream. Mikoto straightened and scanned the crowd for Sasuke.

She found him near the back, walking at his usual pace. And behind him, closing the distance with every step, a girl was following.

She had blonde hair, wild and bright, wrestled into pigtails with mismatched ties. Her orange clothes were too big for her. She was talking at Sasuke's back with her entire body, arms waving, voice cutting across the yard.

"—and another thing! You didn't even try! You just stood there and poked him! That's not fighting, that's cheating!"

"It's called efficiency."

"It's called being a jerk!"

"Well, those aren't mutually exclusive."

The girl's face scrunched. Her ears went pink. "I don't even know what that means, but I know you're making fun of me, dattebayo!"

Mikoto stopped breathing.

Dattebayo.

A woman with long red hair and violet eyes was standing among the children, grinning at her, one hand on her hip, the other waving with the boundless energy of someone who had never once in her life considered being quiet.

"You worry too much, Mikoto! That's why you need me around. Someone's gotta drag you out of that stuffy compound once in a while, dattebane!"

"Mikoto?"

She blinked to find Sasuke watching her, his dark eyes steady and reading.

The two children were in front of her now. The blonde girl had gone quiet, her arms at her sides, her blue eyes fixed on Mikoto with an expression that was half-wary, half-confused.

The bright hair, the blue eyes catching the afternoon light—those were Minato's. But underneath, the shape of the eyes, the shape of the face, the set of the jaw were Kushina's. All of it was Kushina's.

The girl had been in the village for five and a half years, growing up alone. Mikoto was one of the few who knew who her mother had been, and she'd done nothing with that knowledge.

"You're staring." Sasuke's voice cut through whatever had taken hold of her.

She was. Her hands were white-knuckled around the strap of her bag. She forced them to relax. "I'm not staring."

"Well, you stopped moving and your eyes went somewhere else. That's staring."

The blonde girl took a small step back, her shoulders drawing inward. A few more seconds and she would bolt.

"Take care of yourself," Mikoto told her quietly. She hesitated, then added, "And if you ever need anything at the Academy, you can ask Sasuke."

The blonde girl blinked, then gave a small, uncertain nod, like she wasn't sure what to do with the words but didn't want to let them fall.

"Let's go, Sasuke," Mikoto managed.

They walked. The blonde girl stayed behind, watching them leave. Mikoto could feel those blue eyes on her back all the way to the end of the road. She did not turn around.

...but Kushina would have.

The residential lanes were quieter than the Academy grounds. A woman was hanging laundry on a line between two houses, the fabric snapping in the breeze. Somewhere behind a fence, a radio was playing.

"Mikoto, you should go talk to her if you wanted to so terribly," Sasuke offered, after a stretch of silence. "Keeping things pent up at your age isn't particularly healthy."

Mikoto's sandal caught on a stone. She steadied herself without breaking stride and exhaled through her nose. "It's not that simple."

"Well, it seemed simple enough to me. She was standing right there."

"You don't understand... An Uchiha shouldn't be seen with her. Especially not the matriarch."

"Is it because she's the jinchūriki?"

Mikoto's head snapped toward him. Her eyes were wide. "Who told you that?"

"No one told me."

"Sasuke. Did a teacher say something? Did the students—"

"Anyone with eyes and half a brain could tell, Mikoto." He gave her a look—flat, unimpressed—like she was the child in this conversation and not him. "It's probably the worst-kept secret in this village. Although, most of them seem to be confusing the bijū for the container. Civilians and shinobi alike."

They walked in silence. A crow called from the compound wall. Mikoto's jaw worked once before she found her voice.

"That information is an S-rank secret. You cannot speak of it to anyone."

"It may as well be the most openly disclosed S-rank secret in the history of this village." He shrugged. "I wasn't planning to announce it regardless."

The last of the evening light caught the tiled rooftops of the houses, turning them amber.

The compound gate rose ahead of them, warm stone against the fading sky. The guards inclined their heads as they approached.

"Sasuke."

He glanced up.

"If she ever needs help at the Academy," Mikoto's voice had gone quiet, "look out for her, will you? Please."

"She declared war on me within the first day, Mikoto. I don't think she's the type to accept a helping hand." He shrugged once. "But if you insist. Don't expect much to come of it."

Mikoto looked at him, then ahead at the empty road. And for a single beat, the girl was there, staring back at her, small and still in her too-big clothes.

She breathed, eyes cutting away. "You seemed to be getting along well enough already, from what I saw."

"You call that getting along?" Sasuke arched an eyebrow. "Your standards are remarkably low. Perhaps the clan is rubbing off on you."

"You're a part of it too, you know?" Mikoto tapped him lightly on the side of the head. His head tilted under the pressure. He straightened it and kept walking.

"Troublesome woman..." he muttered.

They passed through the gate, the lanterns already lit along the main path.

"Mikoto, Mikoto!" The young woman pulled her along, red mane flaring out wildly under the orange-clad skies. "Our kids are going to be the best of friends. I'll take them out for ramen. Teach them about the food of the gods!"

"Kushina—!" She stumbled after her. The smile that tugged on her lips was unmistakable. "We don't even know if they'll get along...!"

"Of course they will!"

The dipping sun set the river aflame.

"They're our kids, dattebane!"

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Next Chapter Preview

27—Uzumaki Naruko

She was going to destroy herself over a lunch box.

She'd rigged a tripwire out of kitchen supplies.

"I didn't ask for this," she whispered.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Want to keep reading?

Advance chapters (up to 12 ahead) are available here:

pa tre on .com (slash) TheTangerineCat

Your support directly keeps the story going.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Starman25]

What if Ino and Sakura, instead of forming a Sasuke fan club, formed a book club where they wrote fanfiction about a relationship between Naruko and Sasuke?

(Normally, in fanfics: about a Sasuke fan club forms after the massacre, or it already exists before the massacre).

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

What if Ino and Sakura, instead of forming a Sasuke fan club, formed a book club where they wrote fanfiction about a relationship between Naruko and Sasuke?

(Normally, in fanfics: about a Sasuke fan club forms after the massacre, or it already exists before the massacre).

Click to shrink...

dw emiya's mouth is doing its best work to keep ppl from liking him

 

[Starman25]

That's not possible, it really means that Emiya's high luck rating prevented him from having a fan club that does him more harm than good.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

That's not possible, it really means that Emiya's high luck rating prevented him from having a fan club that does him more harm than good.

Click to shrink...

ah yes, the incredible E rank luck

 

[Starman25]

ah yes, the incredible E rank luck

Click to shrink...

Interestingly, due to how luck works in Fate, Archer must have higher luck than E-luck. Currently, due to no longer being imprisoned as a counter-guardian.

 

[Godfire]

Okay. This is awesome. Watched.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

Okay. This is awesome. Watched.

Click to shrink...

Ayy, thx for reading

glad u like it so far

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Chapter 5—The Days Between

​

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The monthly exam results were posted on the chalkboard by the time Emiya walked in.

The June heat had settled into the classroom overnight and hadn't left. The windows were open but the air barely moved, and the rhythmic pulse of cicadas outside filled the gaps between the chatter of kids who hadn't sat down yet.

A cluster of students had gathered in front of the board, jostling for position.

Kiba was on his toes with a piece of chalk in his hand, tongue poking out the side of his mouth, adding something next to his name on the ranking list. Akamaru was tucked inside his jacket, nose sticking out near the zipper.

"Kiba, you can't draw on the exam results." Shino stood behind him, hands in his pockets, collar up to his nose as always. "Why? Because Iruka-sensei will make you clean the entire board again."

"I'm not drawing on the results. I'm drawing next to the results. There's a difference."

"There is no difference. Why? Because it's the same board."

"Akamaru thinks there's a difference." The puppy yipped. "See?"

Choji wandered over with a bag of chips and peered at Kiba's handiwork. The chalk drawing beside Kiba's name was either a very small dog or a very large potato. "That doesn't look like Akamaru."

"It looks exactly like Akamaru!"

Choji tilted his head. "Akamaru has four legs."

Kiba squinted at his drawing. The tail had come out thick enough to look like a fifth leg. He added another one. "Better?"

"That's six."

Near the board, Ino was talking to Sakura, her voice low, her hand on Sakura's shoulder.

"Second place, Sakura. That's amazing."

Sakura's eyes were on the floor. The red ribbon sat flat across her forehead. "He got first again."

"So what?" Ino squeezed her shoulder once, then dropped her hand. She was quiet for a beat, her jaw working, then pumped her fist. "You'll get first place next time. I know it."

Sakura looked up at her, the tension in her shoulders loosening, just slightly. "...Thank you, Ino."

Emiya passed between them and the front row, the warmth from the open windows pressing against his back. Ino's eyes caught him, her tongue clicking against her teeth, a short sharp sound, and she shifted her body half a step to the side, putting herself between him and Sakura.

He glanced at the board on his way past.

Written Exam—June Monthly Assessment

1—Uchiha Sasuke 2—Haruno Sakura 3—Nara Shikamaru 4—Aburame Shino 5—Hyūga Hinata 6—Yamanaka Ino

The list continued. Kiba sat twenty-sixth, his name now accompanied by a six-legged chalk dog. At the very bottom:

27—Uzumaki Naruko

Emiya walked toward the seat he'd claimed over the past two months, the one by the window in the second-to-last row. He passed the pineapple-headed boy on the way. Shikamaru was face-down on his desk, one arm dangling off the side, dead to the world.

Third place for the boy who slept through every lecture was either impressive or an indictment of the curriculum. Possibly both.

The classroom door slid open and Iruka came in carrying a stack of papers and a cup of tea he was already regretting not finishing in the office. He set both on his desk, glanced at the board, noticed the chalk dog, and chose not to address it. He opened his attendance sheet.

The door slammed open hard enough to rattle in its track.

Naruko came through it sideways, her bag slung over one shoulder and dragging on the floor. Her hair was wilder than usual, one pigtail half-undone, the tie hanging near her ear. The orange shorts were wrinkled and the white shirt was untucked, the same red spiral in the same creases as the day before.

The dark circles under her eyes were new. They sat deep beneath her lower lashes, pulling the skin taut, and her blue eyes were glassy and slow as she shuffled toward the rows.

"Naruko." Iruka's pen paused over his attendance sheet. "You're late."

"'M not late. The bell hasn't—"

The bell rang.

Iruka looked at her, she looked at the ceiling, and he returned to his sheet.

The only empty seat in the classroom was beside Emiya. Naruko stared at it. She glanced around the room, then back at the seat. Her mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line, and she dropped into it without a word.

Her head hit the desk within fifteen seconds. Her cheek pressed flat against the wood, one arm folded beneath her chin, and her breathing went slow and even.

Emiya watched her without turning his head. He took in the dark circles, the same unwashed shirt, and the heavy-footed walk of someone who hadn't slept in days.

She hadn't been sleeping. The bento containers came back clean every morning, same spot, same direction. And now the girl who couldn't stay awake through a lecture was fighting off sleep every night to stake out a windowsill.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The last of the daylight had bled out of the rooftops by the time Emiya settled on the water tower three blocks east of Naruko's building. The wrapped bento sat beside him on the rusted metal. From here, the sliver of lamplight leaking through her curtain gap was sharp enough to read by.

Naruko was sitting in her chair at the kitchen table, her chin propped on both fists, her eyes fixed on the ledge where the empty container sat.

The chair was pulled close enough to the window that she could see the ledge without standing. A blanket was bunched around her shoulders, trailing off one side. She'd wedged a cushion from her bed between her back and the chair.

Her eyes were open. Barely. The lids drooped, pulled themselves back, drooped again. Her head nodded forward and she jerked it up. She rubbed her eyes with both fists, hard enough to wince, and reset herself.

In four minutes she fell asleep twice, once for six seconds, once for nearly twenty. Both times she snapped awake with a gasp, checked the window, found the ledge unchanged, and forced her eyes wide.

She was going to destroy herself over a lunch box.

She was five. Her body would surrender within the hour. He drew one knee up, rested his forearm over it, and waited. Below, the last of the street vendors packed up for the night, their voices faint across the rooftops.

Twenty minutes later her head dropped, her fists unclenched, and her breathing slowed, deep and even. Her forehead came to rest on the table, one arm folded beneath it, the other hanging off the side of the chair.

He waited two more minutes, then picked up the bento and crossed the rooftops.

He landed on the balcony railing without a sound. A length of wire was strung across it at ankle height, tied to an empty can on one end and a wooden spoon on the other. She'd rigged a tripwire out of kitchen supplies.

He stepped over it.

The delivery was the same as always—window eased open, empty container swapped for the full one, knot adjusted outward.

She was still asleep, and the blanket had slipped off. He pulled it back over her shoulders through the gap in the window, dropped from the railing, and landed in the alley below.

This was going to require a different approach.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Naruko woke up with her face stuck to the table.

She peeled herself off. One cheek had a crease running down it from the wood grain, and her neck hurt from the angle. The blanket was on her shoulders, and she didn't remember pulling it up.

The window.

She lunged for it. Her knee caught the chair, the chair scraped across the floor, and she pressed her face against the glass.

The bento was there—same cloth, same knot, same spot.

"No!" She slammed both palms on the windowsill. "No, no, no! I was right here! I was watching, dattebayo!"

The alley was empty. A pigeon on the neighboring roof turned its head, looked at her, and went back to pecking at the gutter.

She'd fallen asleep. Again.

She grabbed the bento off the ledge and sat down at the table with it in front of her. She glared at the cloth wrapping like it owed her money, arms folded, jaw set.

"I'm not eating you," she told it.

Her stomach growled.

"I'm not."

The smell was already coming through the cloth, different from the usual stuff and stronger, and her nose twitched. She unfolded her arms, then folded them again. The knot came apart in her hands before she'd decided to touch it.

Inside was rice, and where the fish or meat usually sat were thick slices of something golden-brown and crispy, covered in crunchy stuff that came off when she poked it. It was like the deep-fried things from the stalls she wasn't allowed into, except better.

She didn't know the word for it. But the smell alone was enough.

She picked up a strip with her fingers and bit down. The crunch was so loud in the quiet apartment that she froze, cheeks full, and glanced at the door like someone might come knocking. Nobody did. The outside was crispy and the inside was hot and soft and better than anything she'd ever snagged off a festival cart. She shoved the rest of the strip in before she'd finished chewing the first half.

The yellow rolled things were fatter than usual. And in the corner, tucked into the last bit of space, were two triangular rice balls, each wrapped at the base with a strip of dried seaweed.

She picked one up, still warm. The rice was firm but not hard, and when she bit into it there was something in the center—a sour plum that made her whole face scrunch before the rice caught up, her cheeks puffing out.

She ate both rice balls before she touched anything else, then worked through the fried thing piece by piece, the yellow rolled things, and the rice. She ate quickly, the way she always did, but she wasn't hunching over the containers anymore. She didn't need to.

When she finished, she sat back and looked at the empty containers, her feet dangling, the crease on her cheek starting to fade.

Whoever they were, they'd changed the menu. Her chest felt tight, but not the bad kind. She didn't have a word for the other kind.

She washed the containers, dried them, and set them on the ledge. Her jaw was still set when she turned away from the window.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

"...Uzumaki Naruko."

She shifted her head on the desk. Something about the wood was warm on this side. She turned the other way.

"...Uzumaki Naruko!"

The voice was louder now, far away and annoying, like a mosquito that wouldn't land. She mumbled something into her arm and curled tighter.

Something hit her in the head.

Her eyes flew open. A piece of chalk bounced off the desk and clattered onto the floor. She sat bolt upright, blinking, her hair stuck to one side of her face, a crease running down her cheek.

"Uzumaki Naruko!" Iruka-sensei was standing at the front of the classroom with his arm still extended, a second piece of chalk in his other hand. The vein on his forehead was doing the thing. "Do not sleep in my class!"

"I wasn't sleeping!" She wiped the drool off her chin with the back of her wrist. "I was... resting my eyes."

"Your eyes were closed for twenty minutes."

"That's how long they needed to rest!"

The class laughed, and Iruka-sensei's eye twitched. He put the chalk down very slowly, like he was trying not to break it. "Page forty-seven. The founding of the Five Great Shinobi Villages. You have ten minutes to copy the timeline before we move on."

Naruko looked at the board. It was covered in dates and names and arrows connecting boxes that might as well have been in a different language. Her notebook was open to a blank page with a small stain in the corner from where she'd drooled on it.

She picked up her pencil and started copying what she thought was a timeline. It looked more like a map of the forest paths near the elbow root.

A paper slid onto her desk from the left.

She glanced sideways to find the Uchiha facing forward, his own notebook open, his pencil moving in short, precise strokes. He hadn't looked at her.

She unfolded the paper. It was a copy of the timeline, every date in place, every arrow pointing the right way. It looked like it had been traced out of a textbook. At the bottom, in the same neat handwriting:

Konoha was founded first. Not Suna.

She stared at the timeline, then at her own drawing, then at his paper again.

"I didn't ask for this," she whispered.

He turned a page in his notebook.

"Hey. I said I didn't ask."

"You also didn't ask for the dark circles." He still wasn't looking at her. "And yet here they are."

Her face burned. "I don't need your pity, dattebayo."

A short breath left his nose, not quite a scoff but something worse.

"Getting called out by Iruka is entertaining the first few times a day. Every other minute, it becomes a nuisance."

Her hands gripped the edge of the desk. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out that was worth getting chalk thrown at her over.

She shoved the paper into her notebook and started copying it. Her pencil pressed so hard the lines came out thick and angry.

She was never going to say thank you to that teme. Not ever.

The pale-eyed girl across the room was watching again. Naruko didn't notice.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The compound kitchen was quiet. Mikoto and Fugaku had retired early, and the hallway light had been off for an hour.

Emiya stood at the counter and steeped a handful of dried chamomile into warm milk with a spoonful of honey. He added a few leaves from a sedative herb he'd found growing near the Naka river weeks ago and dried on the compound's back porch. It was nothing that would linger past morning.

He sealed it in a small container and added it to the bento.

He slipped out the east gate. The evening air had cooled, and the first stars were showing above the tree line.

The delivery he timed differently. He formed the seals and henged—not into the Third Hokage. He'd been easing off that one since Itachi had pulled him aside in the hallway one evening, cleared his throat twice, and mentioned that people who made a habit of appearing as prominent village figures in public spaces might find it worth reconsidering.

He'd delivered the entire thing a full two heads to the left of where Emiya was standing.

Emiya had almost been impressed.

Tonight he wore the face of the Inu-masked operative instead—the one with the gravity-defying silver hair who'd been trailing the girl across the village for months, Itachi's ANBU captain, from what he'd gathered.

He reached the apartment in the early evening while Naruko was still out. She'd taken to wandering after the Academy, circling through the stalls that would tolerate her and the forest paths she'd claimed as her own. The pattern gave him a comfortable window.

He placed the bento on the ledge, adjusted the knot, and left.

From the water tower three blocks east, still wearing the dog mask, he watched her come home. She climbed the stairs, opened the door, kicked off her sandals, and stopped at the window.

The bento was already there.

Her shoulders dropped. She held the bundle against her chest and looked down the alley both ways. She shifted her weight and checked again. No one was there. She brought it inside.

She opened it and found the second container. She held it up to her nose, frowned, tilted it, and sniffed. She took a careful sip, her nose scrunching at the taste.

She drank the rest anyway. Whoever had been feeding her for weeks hadn't poisoned her yet, and she wasn't about to waste it.

The main dish was different tonight, glazed chicken over rice. She went through it quickly, feet swinging under the chair. Her eyelids started drooping before she'd finished. She slapped both cheeks with her palms, hard, and her eyes went wide for about three seconds before they started sinking again.

The spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered against the container. Her head came down onto her folded arms.

The streetlamps below had come on one by one, casting orange pools onto the empty lane. Emiya dropped to the balcony and entered the apartment.

The girl was asleep at the table, her face pressed into her arms, one pigtail trailing across the wood. The containers were still in front of her. He moved them to the sink.

He picked her up. She smelled of cheap soap and something warm underneath, like small animal fur. The girl weighed almost nothing, and when he moved, her head lolled against his shoulder. She made a small, formless sound, her fingers curling into the fabric of his vest without waking.

He placed her in bed and pulled the blanket up to her chin. She turned onto her side and curled into it, drawing her knees up.

Emiya left through the window.

The henge dissolved halfway down the drop into the alley. He joined the flow of the main street in his own clothes, the silhouettes of evening pedestrians filtering past him under lampposts that flickered every few paces. Ahead, a woman was carrying a child on her back, the boy's arms loose around her neck, his face slack with sleep. She adjusted her grip without breaking stride and kept walking.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Next Chapter Preview

The festival lanterns turned the main street the color of a wound.

"Hey, look who's here. The fox brat decided to show up."

Something was on the ledge.

"I wasn't aware the Hokage made house calls."

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Want to keep reading?

Advance chapters (up to 12 ahead) are available here:

pa tre on .com (slash) TheTangerineCat

Your support directly keeps the story going.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Starman25]

Tonight he wore the face of the Inu-masked operative instead—the one with the gravity-defying silver hair who'd been trailing the girl across the village for months, Itachi's ANBU captain, from what he'd gathered.

Click to shrink...

Rumor among ninjas: Can you believe it? The ANBU captain paid a visit to the Jinchuuriki! Why did this happen?

Hiruzen and others who know Kakashi's relationship with Minato: So he's maturing and has started taking care of his sensei's daughter.

 

[Kishhh]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[Starman25]

Emiya could send something along with the bento, such as an enigmatic message or something that shows that the mysterious provider of the bento knows what's happening with Naruko.

Example: You should eat properly and sleep well, Iruka warned me that you're sleeping in class.

 

[Starman25]

"Hey, look who's here. The fox brat decided to show up."

Something was on the ledge.

"I wasn't aware the Hokage made house calls."

Click to shrink...

Shirou helped Naruko so many times disguised as the Hokage that when the real Hokage finally appeared to Naruko, they thought it was someone else in disguise.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

Rumor among ninjas: Can you believe it? The ANBU captain paid a visit to the Jinchuuriki! Why did this happen?

Hiruzen and others who know Kakashi's relationship with Minato: So he's maturing and has started taking care of his sensei's daughter.

Click to shrink...

Rumor has it the anbu captain is no longer a closet pervert. he is an open pervert—who stalks little girls

Thanks for the chapter

Click to shrink...

Ayy, thx for reading : )

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Chapter 6—October Tenth

​

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The festival lanterns turned the main street the color of a wound.

Red paper, red banners, and red streamers were strung between the rooftops. The fox effigies hung from wire frames above the food stalls, their painted mouths open and snarling, their nine tails fanning out behind them in paper and cloth. The smell of grilled meat and sugar and the char of something left too long on a skewer drifted through the crowd, and the noise was everywhere—laughter, drums, the high sharp crack of firecrackers that made Naruko flinch every time.

She shouldn't have come. She knew that. She'd known it last year too, and the year before that, but the festival was the one night the whole village was outside at once, and from a distance the lights looked like something worth walking toward.

She kept to the edges, hands in the pockets of her orange shorts, head down, sandals scuffing the packed earth. She passed a stall selling candied apples and her stomach pulled, but the vendor was already watching her, and his hand had moved to the edge of the counter the way hands always moved when she got too close.

She kept walking.

A group of kids ran past her, sparklers trailing bright lines in the dark. One of them bumped her shoulder without looking and she stumbled sideways into a man carrying a drink, knocking the cup from his hand. It hit the ground in a splash that caught his sandals.

"Watch where you're—" He looked down, and whatever he was about to say died in his throat. "Oh. It's you."

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out fast enough.

"Hey." His voice went louder. "Hey, look who's here. The fox brat decided to show up."

Enough heads turned in their direction to make the silence start to spread.

"Sorry," Naruko managed. She stepped back. "I didn't mean to—"

"You never mean to, do you?" A woman had stopped beside the man, her arms folded. "Every year it's the same. You show up and something goes wrong."

"I just wanted to—"

"Nobody asked what you wanted." The man took a step forward, and she retreated until her heel caught the edge of a crate and she stumbled. Someone laughed, and the sound came out short and sharp, like a bark.

A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her upright. Not gently. The grip twisted the fabric against her neck and she choked, her feet scrambling for the ground.

"Let go of me—"

"You shouldn't be here." The voice was behind her, close to her ear, low and tight with something worse than anger. "Not tonight. Not ever."

Something hit the side of her head, not a fist but something thrown, a bottle or part of one. It struck above her ear hard enough that she saw white for a second, the festival lights blurring into a single smear of red. The hand released her and she hit the ground on her knees, her palms skidding across the packed earth.

"Oi! Break it up!" A sharp voice cut through the noise. "Break it up, I said!"

An officer pushed through the crowd, boots loud on the stone, the Uchiha military police insignia on his arm. He was young, with a tight jaw and one hand resting on the baton at his hip, and his gaze swept across the crowd without ever landing on Naruko.

"Disperse. Now."

"Oh, great," the man with the spilled drink muttered. "The Uchiha. Just what we needed."

"You want to repeat that?" The officer's voice dropped.

"I said what I said. Why don't you go back to your compound and leave the real village alone?"

The officer's hand tightened around his baton. An older Uchiha officer arrived beside him with one hand raised in a calming gesture nobody was looking at. From somewhere deeper in the crowd, a third voice rose, louder than the rest: "Who put the Uchiha in charge of anything? You're not even real police!"

An off-duty chūnin with a drink in his hand stepped forward. He was grinning, but the grin had no warmth in it. "Easy there, kid. Nobody likes a uniform that didn't earn its rank."

The young officer's eyes went wide and he lunged forward. The older officer caught his arm, but it was too late—someone in the crowd had already shoved someone else, and the sound that followed was the crack of knuckles meeting jaw.

Naruko ran.

She didn't look back as she ran down the side street, past the shuttered shops, past the alley where the stray cats gathered, her sandals slapping the stone in a rhythm that couldn't keep up with her heartbeat. One strap gave out halfway down the lane and she left it where it fell. The festival sounds collapsed behind her—drums, shouting, the crack of something that might have been a firecracker or might not have been.

Her head throbbed where the bottle had hit, and something warm was running down the side of her face. She wiped it with the back of her hand and didn't look at what came away.

She ran until the streets were dark and the lanterns were behind her and the only sound was her own breathing, ragged and wet and too loud in the empty lane.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The apartment door banged shut behind her. She locked it, slid the chain across, and stood with her back against the wood, chest heaving, her fingers shaking too hard to let go of the lock.

The apartment was dark, and the floor felt cold against her bare foot. The other foot was still in its sandal. The curtain was half-drawn, and the moonlight cut a pale line across the kitchen table.

She didn't move for a long time.

When her breathing slowed enough to hear past it, she pushed off the door and walked to the window. The alley outside was empty, and she pressed her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes.

Something was on the ledge.

She opened her eyes to the bento on the ledge, same cloth, same knot, same spot.

Beside the bento were other things, more than usual, more than ever.

She found a small green wallet shaped like a frog, its mouth the clasp and its stitched eyes round and cheerful, and beside it a folded jacket—bright orange, new, still creased along the seams. There was a pair of what looked like fresh clothes bundled neatly in brown paper, and a thick stack of slips held together with a rubber band. She turned the slips over and her breath caught. They were Ichiraku ramen coupons. Thirty of them.

Last of all was a red scarf, thick and hand-knitted, the yarn slightly uneven in the way handmade things always were.

Gifts showed up every year around this time, and they always looked different. When she was three there had been a pair of green goggles she'd worn on her forehead for months, until the strap frayed. When she was four it had been frog-themed hair bands, stretchy and soft with little frogs stitched along the fabric—she'd caught them on a branch in the forest and they'd torn apart, but the remains were still in her drawer, folded carefully inside a sock.

It was the second red scarf she'd been given. The first had been smaller and thinner, and she'd outgrown it.

She didn't know who left any of it, or how many people had been here, or when, or why tonight of all nights.

She brought them inside one at a time. The bento came first, held carefully in both hands. The frog wallet she turned over in her fingers, pressing the frog's mouth open and shut. The jacket she held up against her chest, then folded it back over her arm. She carried the clothes in next, then the coupons, which she counted twice on the way to the table. The scarf she saved for last, pressing it against her face before she carried it inside.

It smelled like someone's house. Not hers.

She sat at the table with everything in front of her, lined up in a row on the wood.

Her hands were in her lap, and the side of her head was still bleeding, a thin line that had dried down her neck and into her collar.

She looked at the bento.

The knot came apart in her hands.

Inside, she found rice, the yellow rolled things, and vegetables in green and orange. Where the meat usually sat were three different things she'd never seen in the same box—fat golden shrimp curled and crispy with their tails poking out, a thick slab of fried meat that wasn't pork, breaded and cut into neat slices, and thin pieces of beef, glazed and glistening, with streaks of mayo on top. It was more food than she'd ever seen in one container.

And beside the main box was a smaller one she hadn't noticed.

She opened it.

Inside lay a round cake about the size of a plate, its white icing slightly smudged against the lid. Six candles had been pressed into the top in a neat circle, each one a different color.

Her eyes went wide.

She closed the lid and set it aside, carefully, like it might break.

She picked up one of the shrimp by the tail and brought it toward her mouth.

Her vision blurred.

It was halfway to her lips when her hand started shaking. She set it back down, then picked it up again, but her fingers wouldn't hold still. The rice was warm and the apartment was quiet and she was six years old today and someone had left her gifts on the windowsill and she didn't even know who they were.

The first sob came without warning. It folded her in half, her forehead hitting the table, her arms wrapping around the containers. She cried the way children cry when they have held it in for too long—loud, gasping, graceless, her whole body shaking with it, snot and tears running into the rice she was still holding against her chest.

She cried until her ribs hurt. She cried until the sobs turned into hiccups and the hiccups turned into silence and the silence turned into the sound of her own breathing, slow and shuddering, in the dark apartment where no one could hear her.

When she picked herself up again, the food was still warm, and she couldn't tell whether the salt on her tongue came from the meal or her tears.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

From the rooftop, the village below was a patchwork of shadow and light—the blocky silhouettes of buildings and apartment rows cut through by glowing seams where the festival streets ran, warm and amber, threading between the darkness like veins of fire. Drums and laughter and the occasional pop of firecrackers drifted up from the lit roads, faint and distant, blurring together into something almost gentle.

The boy had been there when Hiruzen arrived.

He'd come up the stairwell and found a small figure already seated on the railing—one knee drawn up, forearm resting over it, watching the eastern quarter with the patience of someone who had been doing this for a very long time. Hiruzen had settled into the shadow near the stairwell entrance, but the boy never so much as turned his head, his attention fixed on the apartment three blocks east where the faint glow of a curtain gap showed a small silhouette at a kitchen table.

Her head was bowed and her shoulders were shaking.

They both watched her cry.

After a while, Hiruzen stepped forward.

The boy continued to stare at the apartment in the distance. His voice was flat and unhurried when he spoke. "I wasn't aware the Hokage made house calls."

"Occasionally. It certainly doesn't happen every day. For a week, no less." Hiruzen stopped beside the railing. "So, imagine my surprise when I discovered the Hokage had been sneaking into a young girl's living quarters on random afternoons and evenings."

"What can I say, it seemed practical at the time."

Hiruzen struck a match against the railing and held it to the bowl of his pipe. The tobacco caught. He drew once, slow, and let the smoke curl into the October air. "Particularly bold, too, I might add."

"The Inu operative was an improvement. Certainly paints a better image than an old man sneaking into homes of unsuspecting children."

Hiruzen eyed the boy, a single brow lifted. "The actual operative was on a mission in Grass Country during two of those visits. It created some confusion in the duty logs."

Below, a child on someone's shoulders was waving a paper fox on a stick, and the sound of laughter carried up to them and dissolved.

The gifts on the girl's ledge had been placed over the course of the evening.

"The frog wallet is Jiraiya's. He sends her something toad-related every year—never comes himself. The jacket was Kakashi's. The clothes were mine. The ramen coupons were from Ichiraku's. And the red scarf would be Mikoto's. Itachi delivered it to me several days ago." Hiruzen drew on the pipe, the ember in the bowl pulsing faintly, a small orange point in the dark. "She used to deliver her gifts herself, the first two years. Before she stopped."

The boy shrugged. "She seemed pretty pent up about it to me."

Hiruzen released half a chuckle. "The village's position on Uchiha proximity to the girl isn't written in any document, but it hardly needs to be. And the more enthusiastic members of the Uchihas would have read her involvement as a signal she couldn't afford to send."

A firework burst, a bright orange streak climbing above the rooftops before splitting into petals of light, and the crowd's cheer washed over the rooftop and faded.

Below, the flow of people moved through the lit streets like a slow current. Children chased each other between the stalls, lanterns bobbing in their fists. A small procession was winding through the main road, drums pulsing, torches held high.

"Sasuke-kun." Hiruzen watched the procession for a while before he spoke again. "When does the welfare of the many justify what's done to the few?"

"Is this some tired philosophical exercise?" The boy glanced at him for the first time, a sidelong look laced with the faint edge of amusement. "Or are you asking for yourself?"

Hiruzen was quiet.

The question had been sitting inside him for longer than this boy had been alive. He'd carried it since the day Tobirama-sensei had turned to face the pursuing squad and told the rest of them to keep running, and in every decision after that, in every room where the calculus was the same: how many preserved against how many lost, and whether the numbers ever balanced.

The boy's eyes lingered on him for another beat, and the corner of his lips twitched once. "Greedy old man." He scoffed and turned his gaze back into the distance. "That's just how the world works. You've already taken up the hat. It's a bit too late for sentimentalities now, isn't it? Even if you hadn't been Hokage, these choices would have been in motion regardless. There's no version where you get both—the village intact and every person in it whole."

Hiruzen's pipe hand stilled. He chuckled, a real one this time, quiet and brief, and shook his head once.

Three blocks east, the apartment lights were still on.

"If the village changed," Hiruzen said. "If the shops let her in, the children played with her, the adults saw a girl instead of what she carries. Would you stop?"

"Naturally." The boy responded without a note of hesitation. "If she has what she needs, what's the point of my involvement? There wouldn't be anything left to solve. Nothing entertaining about the case anymore."

The wind carried the last of the woodsmoke across the rooftops. Neither of them spoke. Neither moved to leave. Three blocks east, the overhead light in the apartment had gone out. In its place, a faint warm glow pulsed from the table—six tiny points of candlelight, a few of them tilting where she'd nudged them while lighting the matches. The small silhouette sat in front of them, still eating, still sniffling.

Below, the festival continued—lanterns swaying, drums pulsing, the village celebrating the night it had survived while one of its own sat bleeding in the dark.

Hiruzen let the moment stretch.

He thought of Danzo. Shimura Danzo had spent a career constructing networks of dependency and obligation, ensuring that every act of generosity came attached to a debt and every favor to a ledger. He would have announced every sliver of his generosity, and he would have made certain the girl knew exactly who fed her, exactly where her gratitude should be directed, exactly how much she owed.

The boy had spent seven months making sure the girl never learned it was him.

Hiruzen smiled.

In half a century of service, he had sat across from prodigies, legends, and men and women who bent the course of nations. He was not certain he had met one quite like this.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

The door slammed open hard enough to rattle in its track.

Every head in the classroom turned. Iruka's pen stopped mid-stroke, and Mizuki, leaning against the window, raised both eyebrows.

Naruko stood in the doorway. Her hair was wild, her bag dragging on the floor behind her. The dark circles under her eyes were the worst they'd been. There was a bruise above her left ear, half-hidden by her hair, yellowing at the edges.

She was wearing the orange jacket, which was too big for her. The sleeves hung past her knuckles and the hem reached her thighs. The red scarf was wrapped twice around her neck, the ends trailing down her back.

She walked to the front of the classroom, not to her seat but to the very front. She planted her feet, balled her fists at her sides, and looked out at the rows of faces.

The whispering started immediately.

She breathed in.

"I'm going to be Hokage."

The whispers stopped.

"I'm going to be the greatest Hokage this village has ever seen, and every single one of you is going to have to look up at my face on that mountain, dattebayo!"

The silence held for three seconds. Then someone in the middle rows let out a short, disbelieving laugh that caught and pulled a few more along with it. Then came the murmuring, the shifting, the looks.

Naruko didn't flinch. Her fists stayed at her sides, her chin up.

Across the room, the Hyūga girl was watching her with both hands pressed together under the desk, her pale eyes wide with admiration.

Iruka's pen was still frozen over the attendance sheet, the vein on his forehead twitching.

"Uzumaki Naruko!" He took a deep breath. "Get back to your seat! Right now!"

She held her ground for one more second before she turned and walked back. The only empty seat was beside the raven-haired Uchiha boy, and she dropped into it the same way she had every morning for the past six months, with the same unhappy line pressed into her mouth and the same refusal to acknowledge his existence.

The bruise above her ear caught the morning light. The red scarf trailed off one shoulder.

"Hm." The sound was barely audible. "Not bad."

Naruko's fist connected with the boy's arm before the second syllable had left his mouth.

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

Next Chapter Preview

The October air had turned overnight.

"He's six."

Itachi's chair was empty and no one mentioned it.

"Out late, Sasuke-kun."

---———---<<O>>---———---

​

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Thanks for reading.

 

[Starman25]

Itachi's chair was empty and no one mentioned it.

Click to shrink...

Itachi's empty position makes me wonder if the Uchiha are preparing for that thing that makes Dazno deceive Itachi about the Hokage's orders to kill the Uchiha clan.
I hope that Emiya's luck makes Dando interested in Sasuke, which leads Itachi (or Shisui) to kill him.

 

[The Tangerine Cat]

Itachi's empty position makes me wonder if the Uchiha are preparing for that thing that makes Dazno deceive Itachi about the Hokage's orders to kill the Uchiha clan.
I hope that Emiya's luck makes Dando interested in Sasuke, which leads Itachi (or Shisui) to kill him.

Click to shrink...

ah yes, Emiya's legendary E-rank luck

paralleled only by the two Lancers that both commited die in their grail wars

 

[Z3RO0015]

Mmm, no está mal, jaja, ¡eso es genial!

 

[Residenthobo]

Kinda pissed at Hiruzen right now.
Here he is, moaning and whining about the state the village is in to a five year old child, where a six year old child can get assaulted with law enforcement being present on the scene, who then proceed to put in a grand total of zero fucking effort to catch the perpetrators, and like – my guy, you're the one in fucking charge you dipshit.

He's the leader of what is essentially a military dictatorship city-state (if one technically subservient to the nation they reside in, but how relevant is the daimyō in canon anyway) and he doesn't like how it's being run??? Then do it differently you geriatric fuck oh my god what an asshat. Fuck, man.

Beyond that, thanks for the chapter!

Just to make it clear, I don't have an issue with how Hiruzen is written or anything, I'm pissed at the character not the writing, yeah?

edit:typo