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The first time Kaede caught herself staring at Asuma, it was over something small — the way his hand curved around a cup of tea, thumb resting lazily against porcelain, the faint steam blurring his profile for a moment. He didn’t notice. He was talking about mission assignments, about the minor bickering between clans at the last jōnin meeting, about anything that filled the silence between them.
But she noticed. Her chest tightened, and she forced her gaze away, pretending to focus on the crack in the wooden table.
When had it started? She could not say. Somewhere between his gruff laugh and the quiet steadiness of his presence, between cigarettes he claimed he needed and the way he listened when she spoke of worries she dared not share with anyone else.
She remembered the manga panels — black ink on a white page, stiff lines of animation. She remembered how she used to watch him on a glowing laptop screen, a fictional man she mourned when his death was revealed. Back then she had cried in the dark of her room, earphones in, promising herself she would rewrite his story in fanfiction so he would live.
That was another life. A different girl.
Now he was here, flesh and warmth and voice. He was no longer a drawing she admired, no longer a tragic character she pitied. He was real, his scent of smoke and steel real, his chakra like a steady hum in the air whenever he was near.
And her heart — it betrayed her.
——
She thought of Kurenai more often these days.
Kaede had met her only briefly, in passing at missions or during the Academy days, polite bows and fleeting words. In the manga, she remembered, Kurenai’s role was quiet yet pivotal — the one who carried Asuma’s child, the one he entrusted with his last message, the one who bore Mirai.
Mirai.
The name echoed like a bell every time Kaede caught herself smiling too long at Asuma’s words. Mirai, a child who should exist, who should laugh and run through Konoha’s streets. But with each moment Kaede stole, each time Asuma turned to her instead of Kurenai, that child’s future grew fainter, like chalk washed away by rain.
Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night, pulse pounding, the ache of guilt pressing down so heavily she thought she might choke on it. She would sit at her desk, candle burning low, and scrawl half-formed sentences into her diary:
If I love him, Mirai disappears. If I step away, he will grieve alone. Which fate is kinder? Which sin is heavier?
No answer ever came.
——
When she returned home on the night of the Third Hokage’s funeral after bringing dinner to Asuma and listened to him, she cried for him. In the darkness of her bedroom, she let out stifled sobs into her blanket. She wept because he bore too much, because he deserved gentleness, because she knew she was already too close.
After that night, the pattern repeated. She would bring snacks that she prepared early in the morning to the training grounds to give to Asuma and also to Team 10, bring him dinner, and eventually breakfast. Days bled into weeks. What began as kindness became routine.
That was when the dizziness began — her thoughts circling him when she tried to read, her heart tightening at the smallest brush of his hand. She told herself it was nothing. She told herself she was imagining it. But her chest whispered otherwise.
And slowly, though neither of them said it aloud, the air between them began to change. She eventually dropped the -niisan honorifics and called him just by his first name, just like how he does all the time. Being beside him felt as natural as breathing.
Is this love?
——
Lately, he would tease her occasionally. Once, a half-smile tugged at his lips as he said in a mischievous tone while they ate in the dango shop.
“You’re staring again, Kaede.”
She nearly dropped the dango stick in her hand, a blush blooming in her cheeks.
“I was not, Asuma!”
He leaned back, amusement etched in his feature.
”You were. What is it this time? My beard?”
She muttered to cover her flustered state with a casual tone.
“I was thinking.”
His chuckle rumbled low in his throat.
“Thinking about what? My beard? That’s dangerous habit.”
Her cheeks warmed, and she looked away.
He thought it was harmless, light teasing. He didn’t know that every glance, every laugh, pressed deeper into her. He didn’t know how much her heart wanted to say aloud.
My heart keeps saying it loves you. It screams out for the whole world to hear.
But she never spoke it. She never dared.
—-
She sometimes returned to her old memories of the other world when she was still Tanaka Miyako. She could almost see the glow of her laptop screen, as she wrote the pages of stories about him in her AO3 account under her username miyachan1018 (the number combination was in honor of his birthday). She even created an original female character once who saved him from death, who fought beside him, who gave him a family.
She used to think those stories were indulgence, nothing more.
Now, she wondered if fate had laughed and pulled her inside her own words. She had become that woman. She was living the story she once only typed into empty text boxes at midnight.
And yet, this was no fantasy. This was no fanfiction. This was a life with consequences. A life where every choice rippled across countless futures.
When she thought of Mirai again, her throat ached.
—-
Two and a half years stretched, the period that was not shown in anime nor in manga. It was the time gap between Naruto and Naruto Shipūden, but time never stopped nor skipped for them as she continued living in this world. At this time, it should have been Kurenai waiting at his side. It should have been her walking with him through familiar streets.
But Miyako as Kaede took that place. It makes her feel like she stole Kurenai’s role and place. Now, it was Kaede who brewed tea in his apartment and fussed over his injuries despite how minor they could be when he came back from missions, the one who listened to his frustrations with Council politics, who offered quiet company when silence threatened to crush him, the one who walked with him around Konoha, the one who frequented the dango shop with him.
She didn’t mean to take Kurenai’s place. She didn’t mean to shift the story. But it had already happened, quietly, inevitably.
They had found each other.
And still she wrestled with the guilt.
——
One evening, when the cicadas were loud and the air heavy with the scent of summer, Asuma sat across from her on the veranda, sleeves rolled up, cigarette unlit between his fingers. He looked contemplative before suddenly asking her.
“You ever think about fate?”
Kaede froze but kept a calm demeanor.
“Fate?”
“Yeah. I remember when we first bumped into each other years ago. Then seeing you at the gate on the night that I left the village and telling me that you hoped to see me again. And now, here we are.”
Her throat tightened as guilt washed over her. I know some parts of your life story , at least the ones showed in manga panels and anime. Maybe our first time bumping into each other even if I avoided you like the plague was fate. But now, it feels being pretentious and premade despite my sincere emotions behind my actions.
Her thoughts were interrupted as he broke his reflective silence, his gaze becoming distant.
“But if everything is truly fate, I think it’s not that bad.”
Kaede swallowed hard. Her chest hurt. Her heart screamed. She wanted to tell him that she knew about him before she transmigrated, that she feels like they were walking on a road never meant for them. But she went quiet, covering the heartache deep inside her with a smile as she responded with an even tone despite her heart throbbing in pain.
“I feel the same way. Though I think that fate writes the beginning, and thenwe decide the rest.”
He looked at her then with a steady gaze. For a moment she thought he saw everything — her love, her fear, her guilt.
But he only nodded, a small smile curving his lips.
——
Later that night, Kaede lay awake, staring at the ceiling.
She thought of the song she once listened to on repeat in her old world, a Korean ballad about love discovered too late, about trembling hearts and longing confessions. She doesn’t exactly remember the original lyrics in Korean, but she remembers the translation that she found in the Internet. She subconsciously hummed the melody despite giving her the ache of longing. She never experienced romantic love before. She died in her first life before she got to experience it. As much as it feels exhilarating, the fear layered with it.
When I think about it, I realize how many moments there were when my heart trembled. I’ll try harder, as I was late in realizing my feelings.
Her chest rose and fell with a shaky breath. She knew she couldn’t run from this anymore. She loves him. She loves him beyond reason, beyond canon, beyond the guilt of erasing what should have been.
She whispered into the dark, words meant for no one but herself.
I already love you so much… too much.
——
Before she went to sleep, she wrote in her diary once more.
I am in deep trouble.
If what I am feeling is truly love, then I have stolen it from someone else. It should not be mine. I have taken Kurenai’s chance, and with it, Mirai’s existence. I know this, and still my heart keeps on beating for him. My breath hitches instinctively and my hands shake when he smiles at me. Regardless of my guilt, my chest aches when he looks tired as I wish I could take the weight from his shoulders.
I used to write about him. In my rants on my blog, I used to passionately type how stingy they are with screen time and panel spaces when it comes to Asuma. In my fanfics, I used to imagine myself as the girl who could keep him alive. Now I am here, and every choice I make shapes more than his survival. It shapes who he belongs to.
And yet—when he looks at me, when his voice softens in those rare moments, when he listens, truly listens—I cannot lie to myself.
I love him. As Miyako. As Kaede.
It feels like betrayal to even write the words. But they are true. And even if I burn this page, even if I never say it aloud, I cannot undo it.
-Miyako
——
The next morning, she greeted him with a smile as she handed him his breakfast, as if nothing had changed.
Because nothing could.
Because everything already had.