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“Come on, Kakuzu, it’s only fifty ryo.”
Kakuzu sighed and read the little hand painted sign that Hidan was pointing at. Gain Mindfulness. Daily Tarot Readings: Fifty Ryo. “Mindfulness” — more like a mindless way of throwing your money away if you asked him.
“We saved five hundred ryo on our room,” Hidan bargained, “because you took the one with the broken lights.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to spend it on something else. Besides, I didn’t think your god approved of divination.”
“Jashin doesn’t care about that shit, and it’s only for fun anyway. Come on, please, Kakuzu?” Hidan wasn’t above begging. “Aren’t you at least a little curious?”
Back in Takigakure, there was an old woman who offered all different kinds of tarot readings. Back then, daily ones were only fifteen ryo. They were cheap enough that Kakuzu could get a daily reading once a week with the extra change he saved up from his snack allowance. Every Friday, on his way home from the academy, he would stop by the old woman’s house with the wooden sign out front and knock on her door. She would invite him in and offer him some tea and cookies, and he’d drink and eat as he watched her move her clawed fingers over the cards laid out on the table, muttering incantations long forgotten by everyone but her generation. As he got older and graduated and was sent on his own missions, he’d still visit her every Friday that he could, and she’d bake him the same cookies and make him the same tea that she did back when he was just a small child. The ingredients had to have cost more than the reading, but he supposed that wasn’t the point. Kakuzu wasn’t sure if he ever believed any of the readings she had given him, but he supposed that wasn’t the point either.
He wondered what the point was.
“You better not complain when we get a cheap dinner tonight,” he said, and he didn’t miss the way Hidan’s face lit up at his words. He had recently begun to think that Hidan should smile more, that it suited him, and he didn’t know what to make of those thoughts. He certainly didn’t want to think about how he had given in to his pestering just so he could see it.
The house they entered was old and small, a copper bell ringing as they pushed open the door. The walls were decorated with floral paper and dozens of photos, some old and some new, all hung in a zigzag pattern. The air smelled of linen and burned incense. Kakuzu wasn’t sure whether or not he liked the scent. The wooden floorboards creaked as Hidan shifted his weight from foot to foot, both of them waiting patiently in the entryway.
Soon enough, a woman who was similarly old and small appeared at the top of the stairs. She smiled and waved them in. They must have looked a sight — both of them dressed in their dark cloaks, Hidan’s scythe fixed menacingly on his back — but the woman still took hold of both of their hands when she reached the bottom of the stairs and gave them each a welcome blessing.
“The sign outside says you do tarot readings,” Kakuzu said flatly.
“I do,” she replied, and then she turned her attention to Hidan. “Come, follow me to the parlor,” she said, her croaky voice warm, “and do have some tea as I prepare.” Her eyes then flickered back to Kakuzu, full of mirth, “free of charge, of course.”
They followed the woman down a short hallway that led into the parlor room. In the middle of the room sat a hazelnut table decorated with tealight candles and crystal towers. There were three decks of cards on the table, which the woman shuffled and placed under different kinds of stone. There were two matching chairs on either side of the table. The woman chose one for herself, and then Hidan rested his scythe on the wall by the tea cart and sat in the other. Kakuzu stood behind him, only half uninterested as the woman began to recite her prayers over the cards, her hands hovering above them as she moved them in figure eights, her chunky rings catching in the candlelight.
“Do you have a question that you wish to be answered?” she asked Hidan.
Hidan thought for a moment. “Nah, not really,” he said. “Didn’t think I needed one of those. Maybe how my day will go tomorrow, I guess.” Kakuzu rolled his eyes, but the woman only smiled.
“Choose the deck whose crystal speaks to you most clearly. Use your intuition.”
Hidan glanced back and forth between the three decks, eventually pointing to the middle one.
“That one.”
“Citrine,” she said as she removed the stone and picked up the top card. “Have you been feeling positive energy around you lately?”
Hidan stole a glance at Kakuzu, who was looking away at the tea cart. Despite his grumbling earlier, he looked almost happy, peaceful even.
“Maybe,” he answered.
The woman gave a knowing, raspy hum. “Ah,” she flipped the card so that it was face up and pushed it closer to Hidan, “you drew the fool.”
“Figures,” Kakuzu said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Hidan whipped his head around to stare at Kakuzu, who gave him the dullest of expressions, his eyes flat and bored. He turned back to the woman, biting his cheek. “Well, what does it mean?” he asked her, much quieter and less petulant.
“Single card readings are difficult to contextualize when there is no specific question,” she said, “but you asked of tomorrow, correct?”
Hidan nodded.
“The fool tells us to appreciate openness and uncertainty,” she said. “I can tell that you are a spontaneous young man, full of life. Embrace that part of yourself. Use it to propel you forward and motivate you on your journey.” She laid her hands over his, which had been resting on the table. “You have potential,” she said, “I can see it. There’s a special fire in your eyes. Approach tomorrow as a new opportunity, and seize what life has in store.”
Hidan preened. “You should go next, Kakuzu. I bet your card won’t be as nice as mine.”
“That’s not how readings work, idiot.”
“You’ve had readings done before?” the woman asked him as she reshuffled the cards for his turn. Kakuzu would have been offended at her certainty that he would shell out another fifty ryo for a bunch of meaningless spiritual buzzwords if he hadn’t already been counting the bills in his pocket. There was a tiny bit of childish curiosity that hadn’t yet been killed in him.
“A long time ago,” he simply replied.
The woman looked up at him, but not with the elderly disdain that he had been expecting. She looked at him with kindness, sympathy. He appeared young to her, of course, but it was as if she could sense the weariness behind his words, something you gain only after you stay on this earth for longer than you are welcome.
Hidan sprung out of his chair so that Kakuzu could sit down and headed over to the tea cart. He snatched a cookie and poured some tea into a small cup, and before Kakuzu could comment on the fact that Hidan didn’t even like tea, he handed the cup wordlessly to him. Hidan never thanked Kakuzu for anything, but he said more with this gesture than Kakuzu was capable of acknowledging. The tea was some sort of local blend by the smell of it, and Kakuzu placed it on the table, the steam from the cup seemingly warming the air around him.
“Do you have a question that you wish to be answered?” she asked Kakuzu after she had placed the decks of cards underneath their respective stones.
“I don’t see the point in asking imaginative figments for advice.”
“Hm. Choose a deck then, and do not close your ears when the crystals speak to you.”
“The malachite deck,” he replied after a moment.
“You know the crystal names. You remember much from a long time ago.”
“Too much.”
She flipped over the top card. “The tower,” she said as she pushed it closer to him.
Kakuzu gave a knowing hum.
“You have gone through events that have changed you,” she stated not as a question but as a fact. “With a single card I cannot see when in your life your path was altered, but I can see that it still affects you now, and you are afraid.”
“Afraid,” he repeated, incredulous. He could feel Hidan standing over his shoulder, peering at the card, then up at him, the cookie in his hand forgotten.
“Afraid of uncertainty. Afraid of opening yourself up to new experiences, to new people, lest you get hurt again. Afraid of many things. You appear strong, but it is a mask. Your strength stifles your softer self. You have not yet accepted that destruction is what allows for growth. It is forest fires that give new trees the chance to sprout.”
The woman offered her hand to Kakuzu, and after some hesitation, he took it. She held his hand in her cold, bony ones and gave him a blessing before they both stood up from their chairs. She led them to the door, and Kakuzu handed her the one hundred ryo. She took the bills, ran a finger through them to count them to Kakuzu’s amusement, and waved goodbye.
Before Kakuzu could follow Hidan out the door, the woman beckoned him to lean down. In a froggy whisper, she said, “sometimes what you are scared of most is what will set you free.” He followed her gaze to where Hidan was standing, back to them, at the foot of the steps. He was watching the sunset, the pinkish orange colors spilling over him, lighting his hair like a halo. Kakuzu didn’t reply.
Their walk through town was uncharacteristically quiet. Kakuzu was always quiet, but Hidan was oddly introspective. Kakuzu led them to a small ramen shop that was close to their boarding house.
“Do you think what that old lady said was true, Kakuzu?” Hidan asked when they neared the shop.
“I thought you said card readings were only for fun.”
“I did, but…she gave some pretty solid advice. For a greedy heathen.”
Kakuzu barked out a laugh and then immediately regretted it when he saw a look of genuine awe cross Hidan’s features. He cleared his throat.
“If you think her advice was salient, then take it. At least then it wasn’t a complete waste of money.”
“What about you, Kakuzu? You gonna take her advice?”
As he looked at Hidan right now, with his bright eyes and soft lips, he realized that he wanted to. He wanted to more than he had wanted anything else in the world. It would be so easy to simply take Hidan’s hand, to feel the warmth of his palm pressed tightly against his own, to be happy. But he couldn’t, not yet anyway.
“Like I said. I don’t see the point in following the advice of fake spirits.”