Chapter Text
The food Tsunami-san served, while appreciated, was certainly less than appealing. This mission had already been a huge disaster and a half and the droopy-carrot soup they were eating was not helping. Sakura politely ate about three-quarters of her food and then dumped the rest. It was making her kind of nauseous. Plus, who even makes just soup for breakfast? Sakura prefers some variety in her meals, especially since she can’t eat all the much or she’ll risk getting fat.
This morning she’s supposed to go shopping with Tsunami-san, which sounds just as droll as watching Tazuna-san lift beams of wood and metal as he constructs the bridge. She supposes she could see if there are any kids to play with or something. Anything is better than watching people work.
Sakura leaves with Tsunami-san just before noon. Naruto and Sasuke are finally done learning how to tree walk so they get to guard the bridge today. That’s what Naruto gets for being so slow and weighing Sasuke-kun down with his idiocy.
(A piece of her hisses about how Sasuke was struggling just as much, how he took just as long. Sakura ignores that piece of her and pretends.)
The walk to the village is longer than Sakura would have thought and when they enter the greater village she almost throws up.
It smells like rot.
Everywhere she goes it smells like old food that had been left in the fridge too long. Except it’s worse and stronger, and there are sallow-faced adults and children with twig-like limbs. Tsunami-san keeps walking until she reaches a stall that carries the vegetables Konoha would have considered too scrappy to sell. Tsunami-san waves her off, saying it will be a minute and she could explore if she wanted.
Some part of her doesn’t want to but she powers forward and begins slowly walking through town.
It’s a small thing, probably only housing three hundred people at most. Almost all of the houses are falling apart and barely lived in. Those that look decent are avoided.
The smell of rot persists.
She walks for about fifteen minutes before she stumbles into a huddled mass of stick-thin children. The smell of rot is intense where they stand. It takes her a minute to understand what was happening.
Four children, younger than her, are straining to drag a child. A child who’s bones jut out of their skin and who’s chest stays still and unmoving. And yet the children’s thin bodies strain against the wait, and they only move a few measly inches. Sakura steps forward and one of the boy’s head snaps toward her.
His eyes are a shining silver.
The children have a pile.
It’s a giant pile of rotting bodies. Children who were bones or half eaten by bugs and vultures or missing limbs and heads. Sakura can’t make herself look away. It makes her sick to her stomach but she can’t turn her head.
“How-” Sakura gags and covers her nose and mouth with her dress. The boy next to her, the one with beautiful silver eyes who said his name was Kazumi, looks unaffected. “How many are there?”
"Dunno," Kazumi answers, almost like it was the most natural thing in the world, and that almost made her as sick as the smell. "Lost count.”
Sakura runs away.
(Like a coward.)
Sakura eats her whole bowl of soup.
It tastes like dirt in her mouth.
Sakura comes back the next day. Kakashi-sensei gives her the go-ahead when she says she want to train by herself. He doesn’t ask where, she doesn’t say.
The pile is just as full as before. Sakura doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a fact that doesn’t change no matter how long she stares. The shovel she has swiped out of Tazuna-san’s keeps her upright as she leans on it.
A hand touches her back. She shrieks and swivels her body around. Kazumi’s steel eyes meet her own for a moment before a small smile makes its way across his gaunt face. Sakura can feel heat rise to her cheeks.
“It’ll mean a lot if you do.” She hasn’t said a word to him, yet he already seems to know what she wanted to do. “Ain’t got ‘nuff muscle to do it ‘rselves.”
“I don’t know. I feel guilty, or, or angry.” Sakura fiddled with her clean, bright dress. “Sad. I don’t know, but I should, could be able to do something, anything. I just didn’t know how else I could help.”
Sakura faces towards the Pile again. Kazumi steps forward, facing the same way so they stand side by side. He puts a hand on her shoulder. “We don’ have no fancy stuff wit’ the bodies here. But we bury ‘em by ta sea and throw rocks out for ‘em.”
Sakura still feels vaguely sick, but the smell seems to lessen.
She gets to work.