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The boy is pale skinned and dark-haired, and it shouldn't shock you in the slightest. But it does.
Because he has his mother's eyes and his father's nose, looking up at you as if he knows all of it, as if he's here to come get you instead of the other way around.
"Can I help you?" You ask, trying your best to sound nonchalant.
"I am looking for a book," the boy says. "I can't find it."
"Just a second," you climb down the ladder and force yourself to stay calm, to keep your hopes down. Don't assume what's not proven. You've been burnt before.
"What's your name?"
"Sai."
"Well, Sai, what kind of book do you need?"
-
You remember your sister well. She'd been ten by the time you came into the world, already a Chunin at that age, keeping you out of trouble when your parents were off on a mission. She'd married at eighteen, given birth at twenty.
She called the boy Satoru, because he had been born at Daybreak. Pale skin, dark hair, his father's nose and his mother's eyes. You held him that very day, watched him stretch his tiny legs and curl his tiny fists and felt a sense of protection well up inside of you, an emotion you hadn't felt like this before.
This is my nephew, you'd thought to yourself. Mine. I love him. I'm going to protect him.
And so you did.
"Peek-a-boo," Satoru's gurgling laugh became the soundtrack of your life, and all your artwork now came with the imprint of small hands, of sticky fingers that were too curious for their own good.
Your sister was a better fighter, but you were the better artist. And then there were your other siblings of course, your little brother, your little sister, your cousins and their friends, all of them family, all of them a little foreign to you, as if you'd been born the only Zebra in a herd of horses. Until Satoru came along.
-
"Hello Sai," you smile at him. His smile is wooden, like a doll's. "Another book today?"
"Yes, tough if you have recommendations?"
"I sure have. What kind of topic are we looking for?"
You walk with him through the aisles. He's come by almost every day in the last few weeks, has grown almost comfortable in the wide and echoing hallways. You wonder what he thinks about you.
-
Satoru is three when his father dies. Desite the death and the horrors around you, none of them had ever touched your family this deeply.
You can hear your sister crying each night, and it with Satoru who keeps asking for his Daddy, not quite understanding yet what loss really means.
Satoru has got his parents talent, and your eye for art. Soon he knows how to handle a Kunai, or a Senbon, but he enjoys the quiet afternoons too, sitting still for hours as you paint and paint and paint. Him and the sunset and the Hokage mountain. The clouds and the forest and him. Satoru is your favorite thing to paint, this growing boy, the quiet wisdom settling in his bones.
They take him away shortly after he turns six. His talent needs prospering, they say. He'll serve the village, they say.
Your sister dies of a broken heart. Your paintings turn abstract after that.
-
"Tea?" You ask one Saturday afternoon, as the sun draws patterns through the dusty windows.
Sai is your only guest today. Outside, the sun is warm and the breeze is lovely.
"I'd like that."
He follows you up the stairs to the small break room. You hadn't planned to ask him up, the easel you'd been painting on still upright.
Sai stops in front of it, motionless, his face as blank a canvas as yours had been last night.
You distract yourself by making tea, but your heart pounds in your ears.
You've met boys before, similar to him. With pale skin and dark hair, with eyes like your sister and a nose like your brother-in-law. But they all turned out to be strangers, just looking a little too much like someone you once knew.
"You prefer the color purple," he points out quietly, "right?"
Surprised, you turn. You had not used much purple in that picture, you know, finding that you're almost out of it.
"I do, why?"
He's standing still, pointer finger pressed against canvas, following lines only he can see. And you, because you drew them with your minds eye. You thought him that, you think, years ago.
"Do we know each other?" Sai asks then, his eyes cool and his face empty.
"I don't know," you admit. "Do we?"
"I don't know," he offers. "But it feels like it, sometimes."
"I used to have a nephew," you admit. "He'd be about your age now. His name was Satoru."
"Did he die?"
"Maybe," you pour hot water over the tea, your hands shaking. "Maybe not. They took him when he was about six, for special training. He'd serve the country, they said. We never saw him again."
"What was he like?"
"An artist. A child. He loved flowers and he was strangely good with knives."
"Do you think-" His voice breaks and then, you can feel it, he closes a door. Inside of him, where no one can reach.
Sai gets up, bows politely, and leaves without another word.
And you suppose, for all the heartbreak you've already endured, there's always more pain to be felt.
- x -
"Is there a way to check if we're related?" Sai asks instead of a greeting, on a cloudy Tuesday morning.
You climb down the ladder and put away the book you'd been sent to retrieve.
"I'm not sure," you admit. "I asked a few times and apparently they can compare our blood and hair and see if there are similarities, but, you know, that's expensive and takes time."
"Then how would you know?"
His eyes are dark, like the night sky or a hole in the ground, ready to swallow you up.
"I'd let you paint," you offer.
-
Satoru used to paint with his fingertips, at least until he learned to hold a brush. He liked the thinner paints, and ink so black it swallowed all light. He painted fluidly, all in motion, until you became dizzy just from watching him.
He painted the way he lived and you miss seeing it every day.
-
You have your answer way before he starts.
It's in the way he readies himself. In the paints he picks.
But you let him paint, one picture after the other, watch him move until you're dizzy.
And when he's done, in more ways than one, you say it quietly, only for him to hear.
"Welcome home."