Chapter Text
Fat snow drifted slowly down in the flickering light of an old, yellow lantern. The lazy, swirling flakes met white smoke from below, both illuminated against the darkness of the gravel street and pine trees, intermingling and floating around each other while the smoke slowly dispersed upwards and the snow continued on its downward descent before inevitably hitting the ground. Relinquishing their existence as individual, beautiful things, the snow instead was subsumed into giant collective snowdrifts on the ground, and, come tomorrow evening, transformed into grey-black halfway melted slush being stomped around by the villagers and their goats, pigs and various domestic animals.
Pretty good shinobi allegory, I thought as I took another drag of my ugly filterless cigarette. It tore at the inside of my throat on the inhale, but I suppressed the cough and ended up doing a kind of aborted halfway-cough instead, which the people sitting around me either didn’t catch or politely ignored. I was perched on an old, wooden bench, cigarette in one hand and bottle of rice wine in the other.
The bench had two ragged brown sheepskins draped over it, protecting our butts from the shivering cold and contributing to the atmosphere nicely by stinking of wet wool. The girl next to me – Shibata Atsuko – met my eyes, made a gesture, still laughing at a joke told by Kousuke on the other side of her, and I handed her the bottle and grinned back. She took a deep swig and hid her grimace with her hand. The cheap alcohol was horrible at first, burning the whole way down, but it kept us warm in the cold, and I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned into her.
«Haha, Atsuko-chan, your face! Was it that gross?» I laughed.
«No, no! It just tastes like… like…”
«Like gasoline, maybe? »
«Yeah, like gasoline, or nail polish -»
«Uagh, gross, here, take a drag of my cigarette, burn away the taste, » I put my hand up to her mouth and held it there for her while she took a deep drag.
Atsuko and I sat so close that our thighs would be touching if it wasn’t for the layers of cloth both our bodies were draped in to ward off the cold. She passed the bottle on to Kousuke, shoving it in his hand when he didn’t take it immediately as she held it up in his direction, swaying gently to the side as she passed it over.
She was getting drunk. I was too. It was apparent in the way my attention tunnel-focused on Atsuko, the buzzing in my ears as the chatter of the group became background noise, the easy warmth of the smile on my face and the slight slur in my speech that I had to concentrate to avoid.
Matsuda Kousuke was a big guy, handsome in a rugged countryside way. Older than both me and Atsuko. Atsuko had told me in confidence that she was seventeen, and I knew that her father was a low-level merchant, a local guy with connections in bigger cities. He owned a small specialties store in the main village street, selling spices, dyes, silks, small baubles, jewelry, teas, incense and more luxurious items from the capital. The economy was decent here. The villagers took care of each other, the farmers as well.
People were poor, but enough of them were not, enough so that the small specialty store turned around profits. Atsuko’s father would also cut deals with the locals to sell their wares in the big city – ceramics, animal pelts, goat cheese, wrapped silver jewellery, potatoes in the autumn, spirits.
Her mother stayed at home with Atsuko’s three younger brothers. Kousuke knew her father, because he worked for him, watching the store when her father was out travelling for merchandise or in meetings. Kousuke was the youngest son of a big-time farmer right outside the village. His father owned a lot of land, but all of it was going to the older son – Kousuke was looking at becoming more of a merchant type. Atsuko had told me all this, or, well – I had inferred some of it. I also knew that Kousuke wanted to marry Atsuko.
He had invited her out to hang with his friends this Friday night in early spring. She would have refused, had I not overheard the conversation, and told her I would join in. Atsuko-chan was cautious and had a good head on her shoulders, but she belonged to a new generation – a generation of cassette tapes, lipstick and nail polish, tv-screens and big-budget movies. And teenage rebellion. She only needed a trusted girl-friend to come with her.
And wasn’t I just the perfect candidate?
Loud laughs came from the guys next to us. Kousuke’s friends, all older village guys. I burrowed my hand into the sleeve of my coat and bumped my shoulder to hers, saying lowly: “Hey, I’m getting a bit cold, are you okay, Atsuko-chan?”
“I’m getting cold too, Micchan!”
We both looked at the guys, then at each other. I took the last drag of my cigarette and threw it into the closest snowdrift.
“Is there somewhere we can go that’s warmer?”
“I don’t wanna go home… My mom, you know,” she nodded towards the wine.
I nodded as well. “Yeah, yeah, me too, Acchan!”
She laughed at the nickname and then gestured with her head towards the guys. I nodded.
“Hey!” She put her right hand on Kousuke’s elbow gently, “Hey, me and Micchan are getting cold, you know!”
Kousuke hummed and hawed but we pouted and shivered and complained that the wine was running out until he offered to bring us to the house his older brother owned, inside the borders of the village. It was only a ten-minute walk from the benches we had been perched on the whole evening, drinking and smoking while the sun slowly went down.
The benches were on the forest border, underneath beautiful pine trees, and the villagers had come together to hang lanterns between the trees. We’d lighted only one with a candle Atsuko brought. We extinguished it before we left and walked the rest of the way underneath the cold, white light of the moon reflecting on swathes of snow. In the summertime, the benches cradling the border of the trees next to the gravel path leading to the main village street would be beautiful and frequented by families, but in the dark cold of late winter, it was perfect for underage drinking.
The three other guys bumped shoulders and jostled each other on the way, playfighting and shouting. Acchan and I giggled to each other, accepting swigs from the rice wine and shushing the guys when walking past occupied houses.
The house served as a place to sleep whenever members of the Matsuda family stayed in the village proper, as well as a gathering and meeting place for parties and get-togethers for the richest people in the village. It wasn’t quite traditional, the setup, but they could afford it; Kousuke also stayed there whenever he worked late for Atsuko’s father.
He had been living there the past week, as Shibata-san was travelling.
We stumbled into the hallway and pulled our winter boots off, threw our thick coats in a pile on the floor. The house was beautifully built, with dark, rich wood, and humbly decorated, as befitted a family of rich farmers. Kousuke led us into the living room. It was modern, a couch near the wall and a long table in the middle of the room, surrounded by high-backed chairs. Carpeted with good-quality but not ostentatious carpets. He turned the lights on and pulled the curtains over the windows, thick, dark winter curtains.
Atsuko pulled me into the room and threw herself onto the couch. I sat next to her, and the guys pulled up chairs to sit around us. “Say, Kousuke-kun, do you have any music?” “Yeah, yeah, wait a second, I’ll get my cassette player,” he yelled across the room from the windows. “And some more of this!” One of the guys held the empty bottle above his head and waved it around. “You fucking drunkard, did you finish it already? There was tons left when I gave it to you!” “No there wasn’t, moron!” “Whatever, calm down, I’ll be back in a sec,” he disappeared out the door and down the hallway. The guys jeered.
“Atsuko-chan, I’m gonna go look for the toilet,” I whispered, and picked up my purse. “I have to.. You know… Change my tampon.” I mouthed the last part so no one could overheard. She nodded. “I think it’s down the hallway, to the right,” she whispered back.
I eyed the rambunctious bunch of guys that surrounded us. “Are you gonna be O-K here while I’m gone?”
“Yeah, yeah, no problem,” she smiled at me. “Anyway, Kousuke-kun will be back soon!”
“Okay!”
Kousuke had walked to the right, but not to the toilet, which was underneath the staircase; he was upstairs, rummaging through one of the bedrooms. I waved to Atsuko on the sofa, closed the door and walked to the left down the hallway.
The small, simple wooden box was located underneath a loose floorboard, underneath a small laquered chest of drawers. It had a seal on the inside of the lid. I could feel it, hovering my hand above it; a small, negligible shadow of floating chakra. Dormant. Would it explode if I tried to open it? Burn the contents? Probably not, they were too valuable. I wasn’t, though.
On one memorable occasion, when I was nine, I had seen what a mishandled protection seal could do to a shinobi.
It had peeled his clothes and armour off him, and then his skin, in concentric spirals up his whole arm, and then his muscles had followed, until only white bone was left holding the scroll he had tried to open. His blood hadn’t hit the floor like normal blood did; it also flew slowly through the air like small veins, backlighted by the evening sun so it looked like it glowed red and orange, floating upwards and away from the body. It had been a beautiful scene, until the unravelling hit his innards, and the stink of shit ruined it.
That had been an Uzumaki seal. This probably wasn’t Uzumaki work, though! The feeling was wrong. And it was super old, painted onto a degraded surface, probably in a rush, if my sources were correct.
I tapped the lid with one manicured nail. Nothing happened. Music floated down the hallway; bright pop tunes and laughter - Kousuke’s cassette player had been found and turned on. I stood up, pulled a piece of paper out of my small pink purse, placed it in front of the door, activated it with a pulse of chakra and then I couldn’t hear the music anymore. I walked over to the box, put my nails underneath the lid, pried until the woodwork broke. When the ear-ringing explosion decimated the furniture and paperwork flew in every direction, my water clone exploded as well, and started dripping down the walls and ceiling, wetting the paperwork and putting out the glowing embers.
I crawled out from the desk I had hid behind and walked over to the remains of the wooden box. Inside, a cloth-wrapped, cylindrical object lay; I had another water clone pick it up, and when nothing happened, slide the faded red cloth away. My clone gave it to me with both hands, smiling, and I received it from her, also grinning. We high-fived each other and she fell apart.
It was the scroll I had been looking for; I could sense it, a small shadow of chakra floating on the inside, a small, white buzz. It felt cold, like rules and laws and restrictions and promises, and blue-white, like dimensional seals and openings.
It only just fit into my fake snakeskin leather bright pink purse, and I shoved it in, after wrapping it up again. I used the tip of my inside slipper to destroy the silence seal in front of the door, a twist of my foot, and the tinny pop tunes down the hallway floated in under the open gap below of the door again.
I left the office of the Matsuda family in shambles and dripping wet, smelling of ash and ocean water, toed out and closed the door silently.
I’m coming to save you from the boys now, Atsuko-chan!
Wait for me!