Numb
one
Three Years Ago
Hot miso soup.
Shinobu and I sat on the other side of the street, our shoulders touching and our feet barely brushing the ground. It had been weeks since we had had a proper meal—weeks since we had bedded down anywhere other than in the forest, beneath a safe canopy of trees—and, even then, we had only stopped in the village because we were passing through on our way toward Konohakagure. We knew better than to pity ourselves, but exhaustion and hunger had gotten the better of us; everything about the shop smelt good, felt good, wrapping us in a warmth that warded off the chill, even if it was only temporary. Everything ached, but the familiar smell took my mind of off the distance that stretched out before us and the distance that we had gone. Mama had made that soup for us when we were little.
Beside me, my brother leaned his weight against mine, pulling his pack over his shoulders. “Mei, we should go,” his voice was quiet, tired, and he stared at the shop. “We have a long way to go, you know that.”
I knew. There was a month and a half of walking stretched out before us, full of long days dodging through the trees and longer, colder nights spent keeping watch, looking over our shoulders and carefully covering tracks. In our time away from home, we had learned to move with the forest, to leave things the way that we had found them. We couldn’t afford to have anyone on our trail, especially not with winter coming up on us as it was. During the cold months, we usually bedded down in one of the villages by the sea, where we were only known as passerby, not as the two rogues that wandered through the forests. There were many that disliked us, our family, our homeland.
Then again, there were men that hated us in our own village. How often had we been sent away by angry parents who didn’t want us to play with their children? That was why Baba had sent us off just after we became Genin, following us only far enough into the woods so that we could not see the village; the darkness of the leaves and the trees nearly swallowing us whole as we walked, our shoulders hunched against the heat. We had been silent, until Baba had told us to stop, holding up one hand. He had frowned, ran his fingers through his hair. “You know I’m not pleased that I have to do this, children. We will meet again.”
We had questioned his words from the very start; we did even then, two years after we initially left the Village Hidden in the Mist behind us. We hadn’t seen him since that day beneath the trees, though we thought of him often—Shinobu denied it, telling me that it wasn’t healthy to daydream—but I knew that he, too, dreamt of the day that we would see our family and our village once again.
Our decision to visit the Hokage correlated with the times of the Chunin exams. We needed his permission to take the exam, as we had no team leader and there were only the two of us interested in taking the exam. In our travels, we had heard of rookies that had taken the exam the year before and passed, though they had had sensei’s that had nominated them. We had nothing. We had no money to offer them, no food or gifts from our village, as would be custom, no sensei and no formal training. Our lessons had been taught by villagers that saw we were nin, small and simple, quick enough to be taught in half an hour or less: how to focus our chakra, how to master a jutsu, where to hit and how to hurt effectively.
All we had to do was get there in time.
Hot miso soup.
Shinobu and I sat on the other side of the street, our shoulders touching and our feet barely brushing the ground. It had been weeks since we had had a proper meal—weeks since we had bedded down anywhere other than in the forest, beneath a safe canopy of trees—and, even then, we had only stopped in the village because we were passing through on our way toward Konohakagure. We knew better than to pity ourselves, but exhaustion and hunger had gotten the better of us; everything about the shop smelt good, felt good, wrapping us in a warmth that warded off the chill, even if it was only temporary. Everything ached, but the familiar smell took my mind of off the distance that stretched out before us and the distance that we had gone. Mama had made that soup for us when we were little.
Beside me, my brother leaned his weight against mine, pulling his pack over his shoulders. “Mei, we should go,” his voice was quiet, tired, and he stared at the shop. “We have a long way to go, you know that.”
I knew. There was a month and a half of walking stretched out before us, full of long days dodging through the trees and longer, colder nights spent keeping watch, looking over our shoulders and carefully covering tracks. In our time away from home, we had learned to move with the forest, to leave things the way that we had found them. We couldn’t afford to have anyone on our trail, especially not with winter coming up on us as it was. During the cold months, we usually bedded down in one of the villages by the sea, where we were only known as passerby, not as the two rogues that wandered through the forests. There were many that disliked us, our family, our homeland.
Then again, there were men that hated us in our own village. How often had we been sent away by angry parents who didn’t want us to play with their children? That was why Baba had sent us off just after we became Genin, following us only far enough into the woods so that we could not see the village; the darkness of the leaves and the trees nearly swallowing us whole as we walked, our shoulders hunched against the heat. We had been silent, until Baba had told us to stop, holding up one hand. He had frowned, ran his fingers through his hair. “You know I’m not pleased that I have to do this, children. We will meet again.”
We had questioned his words from the very start; we did even then, two years after we initially left the Village Hidden in the Mist behind us. We hadn’t seen him since that day beneath the trees, though we thought of him often—Shinobu denied it, telling me that it wasn’t healthy to daydream—but I knew that he, too, dreamt of the day that we would see our family and our village once again.
Our decision to visit the Hokage correlated with the times of the Chunin exams. We needed his permission to take the exam, as we had no team leader and there were only the two of us interested in taking the exam. In our travels, we had heard of rookies that had taken the exam the year before and passed, though they had had sensei’s that had nominated them. We had nothing. We had no money to offer them, no food or gifts from our village, as would be custom, no sensei and no formal training. Our lessons had been taught by villagers that saw we were nin, small and simple, quick enough to be taught in half an hour or less: how to focus our chakra, how to master a jutsu, where to hit and how to hurt effectively.
All we had to do was get there in time.
♠ ♠ ♠
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