Archive of Our Own

“You’re leaving for how long?”

Chōji knows the answer, but he’s asking again anyway on the off-chance that it’s changed between this morning and now. He doubts it has. Even as he watches, his dad thumbs an absurd amount of Hōrengan into an oversized capsule case. The Karēgan in the slot next to it looks sort of like the standard traveling amount, which is marginally relieving, but in the last little cubby lies not one but two Tongarashigan. Chōji stares at their tiny, vermillion bodies.

“Three months isn’t that long, ‘pillar,” Chōza says.

Chōji wants to argue. Three months is the time between seasons, between Konoha shaking off fresh-leaf spring for its hibiscus summer. Three months is the unraveling of all the chrysalides in the gardens and the inaugural unfurling of fresh butterfly wings. Three months is Chōji growing another inch and gaining another ten pounds. Three months is long. It’s way too much time for anybody to be gone, let alone that anybody being his father.

“And you’re going…where?”

Chōza sighs. Chōji already asked that question before, during, and after breakfast already, and had been right on his way asking for a fourth time until Chōza reminded him he had training in less than twenty minutes. It took fifteen to make it to Training Ground Ten from the Akimichi compound, and Chōji spent each of those nine hundred seconds thinking about how stupid S-Rank missions are, and how stupid Godaime-dono is for choosing his dad for one, and then he felt sort of guilty about thinking about the Hokage like that, and — and he’d been a right mess at practice because of all that thinking.

You know, breaking something isn’t going to make him stay, kid, Asuma said, hauling Chōji up from under his armpits after Chōji over-extended on the same kata yet again. Chōji made a noise as the Sarutobi brushed leaf litter off his back, squeezing Chōji’s shoulders before letting him go. It’ll just make you more miserable while he’s gone.

Chōji wonders how Asuma knew, and then figures he’s been tricked, maybe. Or kept out of some loop. He probably was. Month long S-Ranks don’t just arrive. Things have to be planned. Prepped. Things like who’s going to represent the Akimichi during the monthly clan summits or oversee the brewing conditions on the new rice lager variants — things that would be Chōji’s job if he were closer to sixteen rather than the thirteen that he is. Thinking back, Torifu had been around the house more lately, and the old Akimichi tended to be Chōjiji’s dad’s favorite choice to bestow temporary authorial duties onto.

Chōji frowns. He feels stupid.

“Caterpillar,” Chōza says. “Stop with that face.”

“How long did you know?” Chōji tries to make it not sound like an accusation, but it’s hard. His dad flicks down the lids to all the capsule cubbies, and then puts his palm to the plastic to activate the more complex locking seal.

“Less than a week. You were busy with that thing with Konohamaru.”

“That thing was a card game,” Chōji says. Kono had gotten into some trading card game with the other kids in his Academy class, and Chōji, Ino, and Shikamaru had been drafted, somehow, into helping him upgrade his deck. “It didn’t — I could’ve been helping, or —”

“Chōji.”

Chōji stops. He feels a little betrayed, which is probably why he opens his mouth again.

“Where are you going?”

Chōza glances up at the ceiling as if looking for divine intervention or patience or a combination of both, which doesn’t feel fair. Chōji crosses his arms.

“It’s an honest question.”

“It’s a question you’ve asked a thousand times, Chōji.”

“A thousand and one,” Chōji mutters stubbornly. There’s mud on the side of his pants from where he fell into a puddle, and he flakes some of it off with his hand. His parents’ bed creaks when his father sits on the side, and he reaches out to gently pull Chōji closer to him.

“I’ll be in Tsubu. Either touring their homesteads or in Mugigakure.”

“For three months? It’s just grain.”

“It’s politics,” Chōza corrects. “Food security. Trade routes. Esteemed alliances.”

“Tsubu is an esteemed alliance?”

One of Chōza’s fingers curls under Chōji’s chin and lifts it up, forcing Chōji to actually look at him. His dad’s hair is pulled back for travel, severe enough that Chōji can see the creeping strands of white-blond along his father’s temples, and the tiny, plum-colored bruises under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept well the night before. Chōji softens like butter.

“Hokage-dono’s trusting me with this.”

“I know,” Chōji says, his voice quiet.

“I don’t like it as much as you do.”

“I know.”

“Probably more.”

“Doubt it,” Chōji says, and Chōza smiles a little. He wraps one of his fingers around a stray curl that’s fallen into Chōji’s face, tugs it once, and then tucks it back behind Chōji’s ear.

“Your hair’s getting long.”

“It’s getting hot,” Chōji counters. “I’m beginning to think the Nara and Yamanaka have the right idea, putting it up.”

“Ah, but it’s hell on the hairline.”

His dad laughs at his own joke, the sound warm and infectious, and Chōji snorts despite himself, sort of helpless in the face of joy. Chōza pats him on the side, quieting down.

“Go shower. You reek, and I’ve got to finish a few more things.”

Chōji glances over at where his father’s armor has been dragged out of the closet. It’s all Akimichi metal, the same sturdy alloy they bake in their pit furnaces. Most of Konoha runs on Akimichi metal the same way most of their bars flow with Akimichi liquor — the two most important exports for any shinobi, his dad likes to joke. Chōji’s never found the joke particularly funny, but Shikaku always laughs, and he rarely laughs at anything. Chōji’s not sure if that means the joke’s actually funny, or if Shikaku’s humor is even stranger than Shikamaru’s. He has his money on the latter.

“Chōji.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Chōji says, dragging himself and his muddy pants to his washroom. The tile’s blissfully cool. Fire Country hadn’t been named Fire for nothing, and even this early in spring, Konoha is a cloudless expanse of sweltering humidity and searing sun. Chōji’s sun-ripe along his arms and the apples of his cheeks, nutty everywhere else. He roots around for that aloe vera stuff Ino gifted to him last summer, but can’t find any. The cooler air of the compound — trapped with an ingenious sort of system made up of half-opened windows, wafer paper shoji, and wind tunnels or whatever — makes his skin prickle. He dumps his clothes in his hamper with the finality of someone who can only deal with one problem at a time and then backtracks his way through the house. His dad’s in the genkan this time. Chōji catches him just as he steps down the agari kamachi. The sound of his sandals hitting the tile echoes.

“There’s food,” Chōza says, his hands working his flak jacket free from where it’s gotten hooked on his chestplate. Chōji nods. They’re Akimichi — there’s always food. It only seems like there’s less people to share it with nowadays.

Chōza’s hands cup Chōji’s shoulders, his thumbs pressing into Chōji’s chin.

“Your kaachan will be back soon,” he says. 

Chōji nods again. His mother’s away at the capital to meet some relative or another. He remembers little of the actual details except for, now in retrospect, its bad timing. He has two weeks, maybe, until she comes back. Any other time, two weeks would sound like a lifetime to him. Compared to three months, though — well, Chōji supposes two weeks is lucky, maybe. He tries to convince himself of that, at least, and figures he fails from the way his eyes start feeling hotter than his skin. He tells himself not to cry because shinobi don’t do that. Shinobis do what his father has: they mobilize, square away, settle.

“Oh, ‘pillar,” Chōza says, tugging, and Chōji lets himself be moved. His father’s armor is hard against his cheek, the flak jacket rough where it bunches between his fingers, but when Chōji closes his eyes, he pretends that he can feel the easy rock of his dad below it all, the thumping of his heart and the wake of his breathing. “It’ll go quicker than you think.”

Chōji doubts it. He decides not to say the obvious, though.

“Be safe?”

“Always.” His dad squeezes him tight. It’s the signal to let go, but Chōji lingers for a few seconds longer. His father lets him. “Be good, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Chōji mutters. 

He finally pulls away. Chōza gives him a strange sort of half-smile before sliding open the amado and starting down the walk to the compound gates. Chōji watches him go, his fingers curling around the doorframe. There’s a story — an old one — that when Chōji was younger he had chased his father all the way to the gates and then some, begging to go with him. Chōza had to carry him back the whole long way, depositing him into his mother’s arms just for Chōji to wiggle like a grub right back out of them.

You were so upset at being left behind that you refused to eat that night, his mother said, laughing. I thought you had caught something. Called Yoshino and everything.

He takes a deep breath. Then another.

He doesn’t run down the path. Instead, he carefully slides the amado closed and heads deeper into the house, weaving a path through the kitchen and chanoma toward the back engawa. The air outside is marginally less breathless than it had been that morning, which makes it only just more bearable than the silence of his house. Chōji makes his way through their personal gardens and down the switchback track toward the river. The season’s still young enough that the water makes him shiver when he steps into it, his toes curling against the weathered river stones along the bed’s bottom. He follows the sweetfish downstream until he gets to the torii.

He stares at it for a little while. Like always, he remembers it being bigger than it is — the top beam’s narrowly taller than his head, its legs the width of his shoulders. Past its mouth, the river continues down to the estuary and then, even further, to the ocean. Chōji tries to imagine it: the sea-glass, the sand, the rolling harmony of the tides. It's hard to grasp. The Akimichi are a hill and plain people, and Chōji’s world has always revolved around high-grass and red clay. So far, too, all of Team Ten’s external missions have had them going southwest toward Kaze instead of east. Still, Team Eight went that way a few weeks ago on some mission, and even Shino called it beautiful when they came back.

Did you see Uzushiogakure? Ino asked, her arm linking with Hinata’s as all six of them — both teams — converged toward the training grounds.

Sort of, Kiba said. There were, like, some ruins when the tide shrunk. It was marble, I think. Some sort of wall or gate. It looked a little like bone.

Ew, Ino said, her nose wrinkling, but she went ahead and asked Asuma about it during their warm-up stretches. The Sarutobi hummed, one of his hands pushing against Shikamaru’s back to get the Nara’s nose down to his knee. Shikamaru sighed but didn’t actually complain, the other boy waiting, maybe, for Asuma’s answer.

Sort of before my time. I’m not that old, you know, Asuma said. But I went there a few times, usually with the daimyō. It was pretty.

And…? Ino pushed. You can’t just say it was pretty, Sensei.

Sure I can.

Pretty how, Shikamaru mumbled.

Pretty as in I don’t know how to describe it, Asuma admitted, but he tried anyway because a decade and then some around them, from god-parent to sensei, had, apparently, taught him that I don’t know wasn’t a real answer. Not for them, and especially not for something they were all interested in. You could see the sky in the water, and yourself, too, if you caught the sun just right. The reefs bloomed. They came in about as many colors as you can name, settled in all that smooth sand — smoother than the kind in Kaze’s deserts. Paler, too. The fish are strange. They have one — Asuma paused, searching. His hands spread out — about yay big, flat as a plate, all pink-grey with a tail. The fishermen called it a stingray. 

Did it — could it hurt you? Like a jellyfish? Ino asked.

I suppose so, Asuma said, but I didn’t get close enough to touch it.

Shikamaru sighed again, this time as if disappointed, and then asked, Could you see Uzushio?

I saw the start of Uzushio. The actual village is much, much further out.

Kiba said it looked like bone, Ino said.

He did, huh? Asuma’s voice got soft then, soft in the way all the older shinobis’ did when the Uzumaki village, their once sister-city, got brought up, as if each of them, even the ones too young to remember the war that destroyed it, carried a piece of its hopeless grief. Chōji’s eyes flickered to the Uzumaki spiral stitched on the back of Asuma’s discarded flak jacket, and he figured — figured that yeah, maybe they did, and maybe, if everything went the way it was supposed to, he would, too.

“He's gone already, then?”

Chōji jolts a little. Fish dart between his feet and away, hurtling down the river’s run. He turns and there’s Shikamaru and a few curious doe on the other bank.

“You knew?”

“Sort of,” Shikamaru says. He’s got a basket in one hand full of feed, and one of the doe keeps trying to tip it over from the bottom. Shikamaru moves to hug it instead, gently nudging her head aside with his shoulder. “You weren’t you today — at training, I mean. And my tōsan had that look about him, so…”

Shikamaru trails off, which is fine. He doesn’t have to say much else, anyway. Chōji knows exactly what Shikamaru means when he says that look because every iteration of Ino-Shika-Chō since time immemorial has had their version of that look. Chōji’s not even sure if he can explain it to anyone else if they ask. It has something to do with the edges of eyes and the tiny series of muscles along the jaw, some instinctive tightening that seems to happen when the trio’s suddenly stripped down to two. Somebody more introspective would probably say Chōji knows the look because he’s felt it before. Never quite as strong, but strong enough and growing: Ino’s migraines, Shikamaru’s bouts of chakra exhaustion, and even, sometimes, Konohamaru’s growing accumulation of sprained or broken appendages puts Chōji on edge.

None of them talk about it. Nobody ever does, really, except for those half-lectures Asuma gives right before a mission that all start with if something starts feeling wrong and ends with, usually, a shrugging sort of motion and Asuma’s eyes glancing over at Chōji. Chōji doesn’t mind. He doubts Asuma even knows he does it. Besides, everybody and anybody knows that the Akimichi are the hardy ones. Chōji’s there to take hits and give them back, same as Asuma and, eventually, Kono. Sometimes Chōji thinks their trio should’ve been called Ino-Chō-Shika, since that’s the way it usually goes — the Yamanaka senses, the Akimichi either disarms or guards, and the Nara capture — but then he remembers the last agility course Asuma made them run and him coming in last starts making more sense.

Either way, Chōji’s already bigger than Shikamaru and Ino with room to grow, and their parents aren’t much different. It’s fate, then, that Chōji might feel the start of that look creep over him more often than his teammates’, that he’s more sensitive to their disappearances or aches. That’s what he tells himself, at least. By now, he mostly believes it.

“Where’s he going?”

“Tsubu,” Chōji says. He sort of half-turns in the river, not quite putting his back to the torii, and points upstream to the north. “For three months.”

“Oh,” Shikamaru says after a while, and Chōji wants to laugh at how perfectly that about sums everything up. He doesn’t, though. He’s got a funny feeling in his chest right now, and he’s afraid that it’s not actually laughter trying to come up. He holds out his hand to Shikamaru instead, palm up.

“You got a ryō?”

Shikamaru shifts the basket to get a hand into one of his pockets. The doe takes the opportunity to sneak a mouthful of feed and looks ridiculously smug about it. Another one folds itself down to lap at the river, graciously allowing Chōji to run his fingers along the elegant curl of its neck. Akimichi fawn, her chakra whispers, the words sliding through his mind like corn husk whistles. One of the doe’s ears flick toward him, and her eye is steady. Dark. Glossy like beetle-shell. Chōji sees himself in its depths, and he looks — he looks away. Her nose is cool when it presses against his elbow, her breath fanning, warm and wonderful, across his skin.

“Here,” Shikamaru says, passing over a ryō.

“Sorry,” Chōji whispers to the doe, leaving her gentle orbit to take the coin. He runs it across his knuckles, catching it in his palm, before placing it into the water. It swims, koi-like, through the torii, carrying, hopefully, all his — and his father’s — bad luck with it. He crosses his arms. He sort of wonders if all that bad luck, if all the generations of dumb Ino-Shika-Chō kids sending coins down the river for good fortune, ever reached Uzushio. If the Uzumaki ever wandered along their beaches and reefs to find ryō nestled in their shallows like sand dollars.

“Having a party?”

Both Shikamaru and Chōji turn toward the other bank. Further down, Ino’s picking her way along the river, her hair down and glowing in the setting sun, fair like white-lily and dandelion seed. She glances between their faces.

“He’s gone already, then?”

Shikamaru turns his eyes up to the sky. Chōji snorts, then laughs, and everything inside of him eases a little; everything always does when he’s around his other halves’, really.

Ino looks a little sheepish, but she’s smiling, too.

“Did Shikamaru already ask that?”

“Maybe,” Chōji says, and Ino rolls her eyes. 

She carefully steps into the river, too, and her chakra, all sweet lotus-head rush, curls tenderly around Chōji’s. He clumsily nudges his back. It’s — it’s sad, maybe, the way everybody thinks of Ino. They see her and think spoiled. Condescending. Catty. She has her moments, sure, but she has them the same way Shikamaru and Chōji have theirs. Chōji thinks the real problem is that nobody really feels Ino like this, never feels or hears the delicate thissucks and areyouokay and I’msorry sort of thing her chakra does.

“I’m good,” Chōji says.

“Uh-huh,” Shikamaru says. Ino’s chakra, at the same time, says something like sureChōsure.

“I am,” he insists. “It’ll go by fast, you know?”

Neither Shikamaru or Ino dignifies that with an actual response. There’s no reason to — it sounds pitiful even to Chōji’s ears, and he’s the one saying it. Still, Ino pulls something out of her pocket. It’s one of the Yamanaka’s specialty paints, the expensive ones made from flower pigments and walnut oil. Chōji takes it carefully. The paint’s the color of Ōkabamadara wings, all crystalline red-orange, and Ino fishes a set of paint brushes from her other pocket. Three of them, specifically. She gestures at the torii gate bristles first.

“It’s starting to look sad.”

Chōji takes his brush. Shikamaru stares at his.

“You want to paint the gate?”

“What, you’ve got something better to do, genius?”

“I’ve got chores,” Shikamaru says, but he sets his basket down and takes a brush anyway. One of the deer snorts when he gets into the water, too, the whole tiny herd of them jostling for the feed. He bends down to wet the brush in the river, muttering, “Troublesome.”

“Extremely,” Ino says, then, “Come on, Chōji.”

Chōji knows better than to argue with her. He pops the lid. Paint-smell, strong and hot, almost, fills the air between them. Each of them takes a turn dipping their brushes into it, and then they regard the gate.

“Is this sacreligious?” Ino asks.

“Do we care?” Shikamaru counters, and the answer is yes-no-maybe; none of their families really practice, but there are traditions — their tradition, really, and part of it is believing in the mystic authority of this little cedar thing their ancestors erected nearly a century ago.

Chōji steps forward, considering.

“It does look sad,” he says, “and torii gates should be happy.”

“This is ridiculous,” Shikamaru says.

“Are you arguing with the torii expert?”

“I would never,” Shikamaru says, straight-serious in that Nara way of his, and Ino’s nose crinkles, fond, her chakra bursting like a star’s flare.

Chōji lays down the first brushstroke. The paint sinks, ever so slightly, into the wood, and all three of them hold their breath, waiting. Waiting for what, Chōji’s not sure. Spontaneous combustion? Electrocution? The ground opening up to send them straight down to the Shinigami? Even the deer still for a moment, but when nothing happens — no divine punishment — they give one last look at the three of them before picking their way back toward the Nara grazing grounds proper.

“Traitors,” Shikamaru says, but he’s stepping forward, too, laying down a brushstroke of his own. Ino’s right behind him, and Chōji balances the pot of paint on top of the torii, in reach of all three of them.

“Kono’s stupid card game,” Ino says, painting, “did either of you understand it?”

“Absolutely not,” Chōji admits.

“It’s a strategy game, I think. Resource management.”

“Like shogi?” Ino asks.

“Sort of. Harder, though, because of all the variables.”

“Harder than shogi? I didn’t know that was possible,” Ino says. She squats down to start working on the posts, leaning most of her weight against Chōji’s leg.

“Ha-ha,” Shikamaru says, but there’s something in his voice that means he’s working himself up to something. Chōji glances up at the sky. It’s gone peach-skin, deep orange and pink and violet around the furthest edges, which makes sense; the Nara are, fundamentally, a nocturnal clan. They rise and fall with the sun, their chakra drawing from the dark, unspooling like stag antlers’, those wide and clutching marrow fingers. Shikamaru was at his sharpest — his smartest, his quickest, his strongest — during starlit hours where shadows became soft and fathomless and lovely. “Shogi’s just two players. Two sides. Every piece has a specific purpose and everybody knows it. Kono’s game has a minimum of two people, and their pieces are dependent on their play style —”

“The colors,” Chōji says because Kono had been adamant about his cards having to be blue and red, though he had caved to a singular white card Ino kept circling around because of its’ art. Shikamaru makes an affirmative noise and keeps going.

“— which can fluctuate based on preference. The person you play on Monday can bring an entirely new deck, a new army, on Tuesday depending on how many cards they have. And it’s luck, too. Kono said the decks stay face down besides graveyards, so you’re basically drawing blind unless you have a card that lets you look at your deck.”

“Kono has a lot of those, though, doesn’t he?” Ino says.

“Yeah.”

“So…he’s building smart? Going to beat all the other Academy kids?”

“I guess. I haven’t actually played.”

“Do you want to play?” Ino pauses. Shifts a little, wobbles, and Chōji readjusts to keep her straight. She sounds actually curious about it, which basically means she’s trying to decide something based on Shikamaru’s answer. Or maybe even Chōji’s from the way her chakra knocks against his.

“Maybe,” Shikamaru says, drawing out the word. It’s surprisingly neutral for him. Shikamaru, like Ino, tends toward definitive answers — sure, yes, no, absolutely not — and for him not to use one means he wants Chōji’s opinion, too.

Chōji considers it.

“It sounds complicated,” he starts because it honestly did when Kono tried to explain it to them. Even Shikamaru needed to hear the rules twice, and Chōji’s seen him get advanced chakra theorems from just glancing at a research thesis. Shikamaru curls his fingers, and Chōji slides the paint closer to him. Ino stands. Shikamaru squats. Chōji keeps steady. “But also fun, maybe. Kono seems pretty happy with it. And, like, he needs practice, right? To get better at playing?”

“Right,” Shikamaru says, then, because he’s competitive despite everything — has to be, really, to keep up with Ino and her Yamanaka stubbornness — adds, “He can’t just lose. He has a reputation to maintain.”

“Our reputation,” Ino corrects. There’s a pause. “I call blue-black.”

“I thought you didn’t know the rules?” Chōji says.

“White-black,” Shikamaru says, sort of speaking over him. Chōji glances over at him, and he swears he catches Shikamaru smiling. Chōji sighs, long-suffering and exaggerated and wondering what he must’ve done in a past life, maybe, to get paired with these weirdos.

“Green,” he says, since if they’re doing this, they’re doing this.

“Just mono?” Shikamaru asks.

“For now,” Chōji says. He tries to sound mysterious or something, but fails miserably by the way Ino laughs so hard she starts snorting. Shikamaru’s definitely smiling. Chōji clucks his tongue and focuses on his piece of the torii. “Both of you guys stink.”

“Sorry,” Ino says, not sounding sorry at all.

“We should get decks tomorrow. Or at least look,” Shikamaru proposes, and Chōji shrugs, suddenly — suddenly ashamed, maybe, because both of them are still here for him, and Nara Shikamaru, the genin who’d rather be cloud-watching or catnapping than literally anything else, is trying to make plans for him, too, trying to find something that’ll make Chōji forget how dark and quiet his house is. It makes him feel warm, too. Shikamaru looks over at him, his mouth opening to push harder, and Chōji’s saved from more embarrassment when Shikaku’s chakra folds around them all, this heady nightshade-blooming dark.

“Uh-oh,” Shikamaru mutters.

“Scatter,” Ino hisses, only slightly joking.

They all freeze, though, when one of the big Nara stags — not Ame, the head buck, the prince, Chōji’s heard a few of the Nara elders call him, and the one time Chōji’s seen him, this Akimichi sized stag with ivy crawling around his antlers, he thought of every story he’s ever heard of Ame-no-Kaku and wondered, maybe, if all those stories were actually true, if deities really did walk among them, patient and steady as oaks — comes out from the Nara treeline. Chōji sort of recognizes him. Kind of. He at least looks familiar, and it clicks when Shikaku comes right after. The Nara deer are more approachable than the Yamanaka boars and more attached than the Akimichi butterflies. Specific herd members tend to latch onto specific Nara — though poor Shikamaru, the few times Chōji’s been invited to actually walk the Nara forest, just gets a little crowd of fawns trottering after him — and this has to be Shikaku’s.

Shikaku stops at the edge of the bank, the tip of his cigarette firefly like in the deepening dusk. He looks between them all, his eyebrows raising.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hi, Shikaku-san,” Chōji and Ino say simultaneously.

“We’re painting,” Shikamaru says, which explains both everything and nothing.

“You had chores,” Shikaku says, but he doesn’t sound mad about it. Truthfully, Chōji doesn’t think he’s ever heard Shikaku sound mad — exasperated, sure. Frustrated, maybe. But angry? No. Pushing a Nara to extremes took a certain kind of hell. Chōji’s had one taste of Shikaku on his way to mad before, and it had been more than enough for an entire lifetime. The three of them had been sneaking back to their homes in the dead pitch of a night so late it became early after running interference for Team Seven — Chōji can’t even remember why or what they did, but they’d done it — and they’d accidentally tripped the Nara boundary seals. The resulting shadows had been fast and thick and utterly terrifying, binding them so tight that Chōji’s breath caught in that strange place between chest and throat.

Shikamaru, Ino whisper-shouted, get us out!

I can’t, Shikamaru said, his voice high and hopeless. It hadn’t taken long to understand why. Deep in the distance, lights started turning on. Chōji watched them multiply with a growing sense of dread.

Can you make them tighter? Knock us out, maybe? Ino said.

It’s okay, Chōji said, trying to keep them all calm, but Ino made a nameless sort of noise, one of her feet kicking out. Chōji watched the shadows swallow it up.

They’re coming, she said, and it took a few long minutes before Chōji felt them, too — Shikaku first, his chakra the closest and most aggressive, but also his father’s and Inoichi’s, theirs no doubt alerted by their compound seals flaring in sympathy, that heart-stopping signal: someone is here, someone has come, someone is hunting us.

Fuck, Shikamaru said, which about summed everything up.

The rest of the night hadn’t been much better. The Nara herd had come, drawn by the shadows or the chakra or maybe, even, Shikaku’s sudden alertness, and Shikaku himself rose from the dark around them. To his credit, he didn’t yell. That would’ve been merciful. Quick. Konoha’s Jōhin Commander, Kage no Oshika, the Stag of Shadows, one-third of Konoha’s most infamous infiltration and interrogation squad, didn’t do mercy. Not for kids caught so far past curfew they were breaking Konoha’s adolescence law on top of their parents’. Worst about it, really, had been the disappointment on Shikaku’s face when he shook off all the adrenaline and realized what he was staring at.

Do you know, Shikaku said, his voice so soft, so quiet, that Chōji barely heard him over the pounding of his heart, how much trouble the three of you are in?

It felt stupid to answer, but he just kept staring, waiting, that it seemed like he wanted one. It had been a trap, of course, but Chōji had to give it to Shikamaru for triggering it.

Yes.

No, Shikaku immediately said, you don’t. You will, but right now, you don’t.

Chōji tried to focus on the deer instead. They were easier to look at, though even they seemed dismayed. Ino made another noise when Inoichi picked his way through the woods. Chōza came from the other side, and Chōji met his eyes accidentally. His dad looked tired. Sort of scared. Later he’d tell Chōji that he felt the compound seals first, and then, when his chakra reached out to try and gauge the severity of the situation, felt the emptiness of Chōji’s room. The room Chōji was supposed to be sleeping in. The room that had been silent and dark and cold when Chōza threw open the door — really, truly threw it because when Chōji was finally escorted back, his father’s hands heavy on his shoulders, the fusuma had been off its track.

“I did them,” Shikamaru said, as brave as ever. 

Chōji blinks. Tries to settle himself in the here and now. The torii’s about done, the paint catching the last dying light of the day. He hands his brush over to Ino who runs it through the river. Shikamaru gives one last brushstroke to his side. Shikaku’s lip twitches. His eyes keep going to Chōji, too, as if making sure that this Akimichi, at least, is still here, still in Konoha.

“You half did them,” Shikaku says, “which means you’ve got a half left to finish before dinner.”

“Semantics.”

“Responsibilities,” Shikaku corrects.

“Drags,” Shikamaru says, and Shikaku actually smiles thinly, tapping his cigarette. The stag hoofs at the ground, his big head rocking from side to side as if shaking his head. Shikamaru sighs. He passes his brush over to Chōji who passes it over to Ino and then wades his way back up the bank. “Lay off, Masaru.”

“Hey,” Shikaku says, “be nice.”

“He started it,” Shikamaru mutters, but his hand reaches out to pat Masaru on the shoulder regardless. Masaru ducks his head to shuffle his nose against Shikamaru’s hair, his big eyes looking at Shikaku as if to say the things I put up with regarding your fawn. Shikaku hums.

“Ino —”

“I know. Dinnertime,” she says. She puts the lid back onto the paint, tucks it back into her pocket, and goes back to her bank with a singular goodnightidiotsseeyoutomorrow sent their way. She waves once, heading back to the Yamanaka compound.

“Chōji,” Shikaku says, as soft as a shinobi like him can get, “you want to eat dinner with us?”

“I’m good,” Chōji says, “but thanks, Shikaku-san.”

Shikamaru half-turns.

“You sure?”

“Positive. I still have to get through that reading assignment Asuma-sensei gave us,” Chōji says. It’s not quite a lie. Asuma likes to make the boring space between missions, at minimum, bearable. It somehow translates into him creating weird exercises for them that feel like missions. Like the time he handed them an invisible ink scavenger hunt riddle thing that both stumped them for weeks and also involved the other members of what they and all the other genin call the Sensei Core: Kurenai, Guy, and Kakashi.

Your next clue is envoi, Kakashi told them, his eyes crinkling in what Chōji figured to be amusement since it took them three days to realize that Kakashi said it with an i and not a y — poetry, not politics. When they returned to him with the answer, he actually tucked his book away, his head tipping in that Inuzuka sort of way he had — or, well, Hatake, Chōji amends, but Kiba does the same thing, and Chōji would ask about it if he didn’t figure it’s the sort of thing you shouldn’t ask about — and might’ve smiled underneath that mask of his. Ah, and how goes it, little cryptologists?

Peachy, Shikamaru said, sounding mutinous. Kakashi only hummed, pointing them in the direction of Guy who ended up having a surprisingly deep knowledge of balladic poetry techniques and a terribly pointed sonnet collection recommendation that they found already checked out under their names at the library.

So yeah, Asuma gamifies things. That’s the word Shikamaru used to describe it, anyway, and maybe they all should feel slighted by it, a part of their shinobi work being watered down to something childish like sugar in cough syrup, but mostly it just feels…it feels special. Unique. Something only Asuma does for them, this strange Team Ten thing that’s become fundamentally important. Important enough that when Asuma gave Chōji an independent assignment with that half-smile of his, Chōji took it with the same grace he usually reserves for broken-winged butterflies. He’d put it off between actual Academy coursework, training, and Kono’s card thing, but the week’s nearly up, and he’s got to do it — him, specifically, because Asuma entrusted it to him, not Ino or Shikamaru but Chōji. 

“Alright, then,” Shikamaru says, something knowing passing across his face. He shoves his hands into his pockets. Masaru steps forward. The stag lowers his head to catch the basket with an antler, carrying it over to Shikaku. Shikaku takes it, tapping his fingers along the edge.

“Don’t forget to eat, Chōji. And lock the door. And get some sleep. Actual sleep, if you can.”

“I will, Shikaku-san.”

Shikaku hums. He brings his cigarette up, holding it in the corner of his lip, breathing in. The smoke leaves through his nose, dragon-like, and he nods toward Chōji before nudging Shikamaru’s shoulder with his free hand, casual, a clear signal of let’s go. Chōji wades back to his bank with the knowledge that Shikaku will likely come out to this exact spot sometime later tonight to make sure Chōji’s house lights are off, or that Chōji, just as he’s drifting off, will feel that familiar nightshade-blooming dark chakra brush against his own, the weight of it moving him, insuperable, toward sleep.

Chōji walks home.

He stamps his feet on the engawa, knocking off as much of the river’s touch as he can before actually entering, heading toward the kitchen. It’s quiet, of course, but there’s day-old rice and bacon rind and daikon kimchi. Chōji cooks it all in a wok, breaks a sunny-side egg over it all then stirs, and while the rice mix soaks up the yolk, he unravels the scroll Asuma gave him. It looks like gibberish at first — honest, incoherent word mush.

“Yikes,” Chōji says, poking absent-mindedly at his rice mixture.

Chōji knows his talents. Code-breaking isn’t one of them, not usually, but he’s spent too much time around Shikamaru and Ino and in the basic Academy curriculum to not recognize code patterns. There’s a certain repetition across the page, not as a whole but inside it. The letters make chains, and by the time Chōji gets halfway through it, he can roughly guess which letter will follow another. He stops. Eats a few bites of his rice. Starts reading backwards, end to beginning, to see if the pattern precedes, too. It sort of does. Enough, at least, to realize that there’s no direction to the letters — no identifiable shifting along either axis or clear word rearrangement — which means that the code has to be attached to the letters themselves, not positioning. It means, ultimately, that Chōji’s going to have to make his own cipher using the digraphs. How fantastic for him.

“Asuma-sensei, you suck,” he mutters, taking both his bowl and the scroll to his room. This is going to take time. Probably more than Chōji has tonight, but it isn’t like he has anything to distract him from it. No mom humming as she bustles through the hallways, no bright umami scent lingering in the kitchen from his father’s barbeque. It’s just Chōji in his room, balancing a bowl of kimchi rice in his lap while he starts sketching out a cipher. There aren't any double-letter pairs, so he’s working, ultimately, with a playfair puzzle. It takes him longer to choose a keyword — there are a handful of letter pairings that repeat throughout — but once he decides, it’s refreshingly easy to build the cipher around it. Hours later, he’s rewarded for all his effort with what basically boils down to a detailed news article about Tsubu’s last annual bread baking competition, of which not one but ten people were arrested and two more were caught cheating with non-regulation flour mixtures, leading to first place and its subsequent prize money being given to the same elderly woman who’s won it for the past five years. Public outcry over that decision snowballed into larger conversations that included, but weren’t limited to: rigged competitions, political bipartisanship, misuse of government funds, nepotism, and bureaucratic corruption. The whole thing led to a full government turnover in the next election, which is, Chōji has to admit, the most bizarre reasoning for a democratic coup he’s heard of yet — the fact that it started because of a bread thing, not the corrupt government thing, to be clear.

He’s also fully aware that Asuma’s just tricked him into sort of caring about Tsubu, which is vaguely upsetting, more so because Chōji can’t even really be upset about it. It’s given him a good story to tell Shikamaru and Ino about, and a pretty interesting sociopolitical picture about where his dad’s actually spending his three months in. It doesn’t make Chōji feel any better about those three months, of course, but it settles some of that back of mind panic that always comes when Chōza leaves on a mission; if this is the worst Tsubu can conjure up, then his father will be fine. Safe. Not actively trying to be killed or captured. No reason for any pill heavier than aspirin. 

At the same time, though, Chōji wonders how long Asuma knew about his father’s mission in order to set this whole thing up. It’s sort of a futile thought. Sensei always know, period, because it’s sort of their job to know everything about their genin, and Asuma, specifically, takes his job seriously. Really, he takes taking care of them seriously, but that’s too heavy of a realization to hold by the time Chōji finishes the assignment. Instead, he shuffles out of his bedroom to wash his bowl, yawning. Then it’s the bathroom to brush his teeth and back to his room to change into his pajamas and reseal the scroll. When that’s all done, he sort of stares at his futon.

He’s grabbing his pillow and out the room before he even knows what he’s doing. His parent’s room is only two doors down, separated from his bedroom by his bathroom, and he clambers into their futon. His mom’s side smells faintly of her shampoo. His dad’s dips, indented with the groove of his body, the erosion of compressed padding. Chōji rolls into it, settling. The sheets are cool. Through the window, Chōji watches, one by one, as his clan tucks in for the night, the distant glow of other house lights’ giving way to the stars. He turns on his back. Links his hands together on his stomach. 

Gently, so softly he almost misses it, his chakra buzzes, goosebumping. He lowers his shields to expand his sensory net and, yeah, there’s Shikaku. Chōji closes his eyes, letting Shikaku in. Shikamaru’s dad feels different than Ino — sounds different, though Chōji’s not sure how any of it really works given that chakra’s intangible and doesn’t actually link to any sense or nerve mechanism in the body. Still, Ino’s chakra tends to go in and out, wavering like a faulty radio station, as if she’s still learning how to use it. Shikaku’s comes out — in? — clearly, the edges crumbly in the way his voice goes when he’s smoked too much. It’s also slower, less jumbled together.

Okay, Chōji? Shikaku asks.

Chōji should probably feel embarrassed about being caught where he is. He’s thirteen, a genin hurtling toward chūninhood, and the heir of one of Konoha’s — one of Fire Country’s, really — most influential clans. But it’s also Shikaku. Shikaku, who slips tiny pots of wintergreen counterirritant into his hands every time Chōji visits and helps Chōji cheat at shogi when he plays against Shikamaru and once spent an afternoon where he could’ve been sleeping helping Chōji repair a butterfly’s wing.

Chōji’s not exactly sure what his chakra responds with — isn’t sure if what he’s sending Shikaku just sounds like his breath in the dark or the tender ache of loneliness — but Shikaku’s signature opens further, deeper, and Chōji tastes, impossibly, chamomile. His body loosens.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, and maybe Shikaku hears him or maybe he doesn’t, but his chakra still whispers goodnight anyway as it retreats. Chōji, helped along from the Nara’s sedative suggestion — he still, to this day, doesn’t know if it’s just, like, a quality of their chakra signatures or an actual jutsu — falls asleep there. 

Falls into a real, actual sleep, deep and heavy and slightly disorienting when he finally wakes up to weak sunlight and a dry mouth from snoring. He blinks. Blinks again. He’s turned back on his side sometime during the night, the sheets tangled around him like a weird cocoon, and he tucks deeper into them instead of immediately burrowing his way out. It’s Kin’yōbi, which means no training for today, just rest. That’s another Team Ten tradition, and while there’s something satisfying about watching one’s classmates trudge their way to hours of brutal conditioning knowing that isn’t your fate, they’d eventually worked up the courage to question Asuma as to why.

Bodies are tools, he told them, sleep-rumpled himself in sweatpants and a worn shirt with a tiny, yellow banana stitched where a clan mon should be. Chōji unabashedly stared at it. Asuma hardly blinked, just caught a half-asleep Kono from running his hip into the edge of the kitchen island and continued, minds are tools, too, and you three run both of those harder than most.

Won’t we fall behind? Ino asked.

Asuma turned the question around. Do you feel behind?

They all looked at one another. Thought about the fact that they watched Kakashi fish Naruto out of the grounds’ lake just yesterday, the Uzumaki sputtering like a drowned cat. Hokage father or not, Naruto’s struggle with fine chakra control borders on concerning if not for the fact that he could already make about a dozen shadow clones that even Fugaku, the Uchiha Fugaku, once called impressive. Asuma must’ve seen the answer on all of their faces because he just nudged them all out of the door of the Sarutobi head house.

Go, he said. Do something inadvisable and stupid for once. Don’t get caught.

Like we would ever, Ino said, already taking their hands in hers’ and heading toward that new boba place that opened on the edge of the commercial district.

That’s my girl, Asuma said, yawning wide enough to show those Sarutobi fangs of his — those compact, too-long canines that made Chōji think, always, of silverbacks and then of Asuma’s seal markings and then, once again, that banana shirt.

He snorts. Stretches. Gets rolled over onto his belly when the sheets don’t give and just twist tighter. He buries his face into his pillow. Takes a deep breath. One night down and eighty-nine more to go, he thinks, and he tries to ignore the way the pit of his stomach clenches, helpless. Instead, he lies there for a little while longer before detangling himself, remaking the futon to give his hands something to do. Then it’s bathing, dressing, and eating. Simple. Easy. Enough to carry him out his front door to the compound gates and then to the actual street to wait for Shikamaru and Ino. Shikamaru comes shuffling toward him about five minutes later, yawning.

“Learn anything interesting?” He asks, which means he’s spent most of the night thinking about Chōji’s assignment.

“Just that Asuma-sensei’s sort of weird.”

“That’s not new,” Shikamaru says, tucking his hands into his armpits, squinting toward the sun. “All the sensei are weird. That’s why they’re sensei.”

“Kurenai-sensei’s pretty normal.”

“Kurenai-sensei’s dating Asuma-sensei. That’s practically an insanity plea.”

Chōji considers this. Ino appears shortly afterward, dressed in cargo shorts and a shirt so short Chōji knows it must’ve given Inoichi a heart attack. Her hair’s in braids, and her earrings match this delicate beaded chain hanging around her hips. Ino sees them both looking at it and brightens, running her fingers over it.

“Cool, isn’t it? It’s from Kaze. The beads are made from their sand-glass.”

“It’s pretty,” Chōji says.

“I know,” Ino responds, which — fair. Ino might have expensive tastes, but they’re rare tastes, like someone who usually skips desserts but, every once in a while, decides to indulge. Besides, between the three of them, Ino’s the best with her money, given the work she does in her clan’s flower and paint shop; when she does want something, she’s got the money to get it, and she only gets things that are, objectively, beautiful.

“How do you take it off?” Shikamaru asks.

“I think, traditionally, you don’t,” Ino says, all three of them making their way into Konoha proper, “and just wait for them to break, but I got mine a little bigger to slip back over my head.”

“Smart,” Shikamaru mutters, and Ino smirks.

“I’ve got my moments.”

“You have many moments,” Shikamaru says, not unkindly. Ino tries to smack him for it anyway, but the Nara executes a pretty impressive pivot to put Chōji between them, and Ino won’t risk hitting Chōji in her pursuit of Shikamaru. She sticks her tongue out at him.

“Coward.”

“Strategic,” he says, shamelessly leaning against Chōji when they have to wait for a crossing light to turn. It clicks over finally, and the three of them make it to the bookstore after five more blocks. It’s pretty dead when they go inside — it’s closer to noon than not, which means most of the village is either at school or work or out of Konoha entirely. The shopkeeper looks up from where they’re reading a book by the till, just to see who it is, and then immediately goes back to their story when they see who it is. Shinobi kids are shinobi kids, even in casual clothing, and even civilians know an Ino-Shika-Chō when they see one.

They head to the back of the store where shelves of books give way to boardgames and posters and the small section of trading card packs. There’s less than when they came here with Kono just a week ago — the scene’s passionate at the Academy even if small, apparently — but Chōji spots a green/red deck pack called Draconic Rage pretty easily. It’s got a shiny card with a half-man, half-dragon guy with an axe prominently displayed on the front, and that’s cool enough, he supposes. He tucks it carefully under one arm, then glances back at the books.

“Do you guys need anything from the top shelf?” He asks.

Both Ino and Shikamaru say no, though he doesn’t put it past Ino to just climb the shelves to get what she needs or Shikamaru to use a shadow jutsu to pluck something free. He shrugs either way and starts going through the rest of the store. Chōji’s not a big reader, but he’s also not not a reader. He just prefers to do something that involves movement, like woodworking or origami. He’s gotten pretty decent at the two. The fleet of jumping frogs he made for Naruto for his birthday are still proudly displayed on the blond’s dresser the last time Chōji visited, and he still flushes shyly when he remembers Naruto’s delighted laughter.

These are awesome, Chōji!

It’s just paper, Chōji started, but Nartuo was already calling for his father.

Hey, tousan! Check out how cool these are, Naruto said, dropping one gently into Minato’s cupped hands. The Hokage laughed, too, inspecting it.

It’s very cool. Gamabunta would be impressed, Minato said, and even though Chōji didn’t know who or what a Gamabunta was, he blushed so hard his ears burned. Burned in a good way, though, because after that nearly everyone else asked him for their own origami trinket for their birthdays. Even Sasuke had tentatively asked Chōji if he could make birds.

Like — Chōji blinked, but no, there was Sasuke still in front of him — what kind of birds?

Hawks, Sasuke said.

Chōji thought about it, and then said he could try. Somehow it ended up with him going home with Sasuke one day to spend time at the Uchiha mews, carefully petting the wings of legendary messenger hawks — the descendants of the great birds that carried the declaration of peace between the Senju and Uchiha during the Warring States, and then, eventually, Konoha’s founding treaty to the daimyō. Chōji went home for dinner and didn’t go to bed until he had a little hawk with moving wings. He gave it to Sasuke the next day, and it was, legitimately, the first and only time he’s ever seen the other boy smile.

Anyways, that’s all to sort of say that Chōji sort of meanders through the book section before looping back to grab a box of origami paper in what’s clearly the hobby section. He almost leaves to go back to Shikamaru and Ino, but then a book catches his eye. Why, he doesn’t really know. In hindsight, it might have something to do with the fact that his mind’s sort of trying not to think of Tsubu, which means he totally is thinking of Tsubu, and thinking of Tsubu means thinking of grain and then Asuma’s assignment and bread competitions, and the book’s clearly about bread. Specifically, baking bread. Chōji juggles his two boxes, and pulls the book off the shelf, surprised by how heavy it is. The table of contents are labelled by bread types — wheat and enriched and gluten free, whatever that means, and Chōji, to be honest, didn’t know bread has this much variety. Then again, Chōji’s relationship with bread is pretty simple: it arrives, and he eats it. Still, he’s sort of reading something about sourdough and optimal active yeast environments when Ino and Shikamaru find him.

“The Art of Bread,” Ino reads, tilting her head to read the title. She straightens up. “Getting into baking, Chōji?”

“Just curious, I guess.”

“Because of Tsubu?” Shikamaru asks.

Chōji puts the book back.

“Kind of,” he admits, “I guess the stuff’s more important than I thought if it leads to political uprisings or whatever.”

Ino and Shikamaru both stare at him.

“Come again?” Ino says, blinking.

Chōji tells them about Asuma’s assignment — the code, the cipher, the article, everything — as they each go through the checkout. They’re wandering through the rest of Konoha’s commercial district by the time he finishes. Shikamaru has somehow acquired a box of pocky, holding one of the biscuit sticks in his mouth the same way Shikaku and Asuma hold their cigarettes, and Ino’s got a little plastic cup of some shop’s free tasting of mango tea. Chōji gestures for it.

“So you’re saying that Tsubu villagers are crazy enough about bread to upheave their entire ruling class?” She says, passing the cup over.

“That’s not exactly true,” Shikamaru says. The pocky moves to the other side of his mouth. “The bread might’ve started it, sure, but everything else was already there. It’s more of a butterfly effect.”

Chōji sips the tea. “It’s still sort of funny.”

“It’s — oh!”

Ino shifts directions suddenly, crossing in front of them, and both he and Shikamaru have to go up on their tiptoes to keep from running into her.

“Ino,” Shikamaru groans, but she waves him off.

“Chōji, c’mere,” she says. 

Chōji goes because — well, arguing with Ino is like arguing with the wind. Everything you say has a way of coming right back at your face. Shikamaru trails after the two of them, sighing. Ino points at some shop’s window. Chōji squints, raising his hand to try and reduce the sun’s glare on the show glass. The shop’s some sort of jewelry store, and there, on the other side of Ino’s finger and the glass is a displayed set of earrings.

“Oh, hey,” Shikamaru says, his voice quiet. “Those are —”

“Nice, right? I saw them the other day. Aren’t they pretty, Chōji?”

“Yeah,” he says.

The earrings are small and silver, close to the hoops he’s got on now. He supposes the ones on the display are also hoops, but the metal’s been worked into the outline of a butterfly in flight, one edge of the wings working as the lock and backing mechanism.

He feels Ino’s arm slip around his.

“Do you want them?”

“Do I —,” he sort of sputters, leaning back from the glass. One of his hands comes up to the earrings he’s got on now, the simple ones the three of them sort of share, the ones that their parents shared before them and their parents before them and on and on for sixteen generations. The same earrings Asuma gently slid into the fresh, raw holes he punched in their ears after their genin graduation. Chōji remembered making a soft noise when Asuma did it, everything hot and prickly and not terrible, not really, but uncomfortable.

I know, Asuma murmured, pressing an ice cube to the back of Chōji’s ear, Ino and Shikamaru and Kono surrounding them, one of Kono’s clever little hands holding Chōji’s. I know, kid. Stings, huh?

Is it bad? Shikamaru asked, looking pale. He was next, given their birthdays.

No, Chōji said, his eyes watering. Asuma smiled even as he discarded the old senbon and fished another out of the package, dipping it in disinfectant and turning Chōji’s head to the side with the side of his knuckle to finish the job.

Deep breath, he said, I’ve got you, kid.

“It looks like a lot of money,” he eventually says.

“Not if it’s split two ways,” Ino says.

“Split two —?”

Shikamaru’s already opening the store’s door and going inside. Ino laughs and rushes in right after him, leaving Chōji just sort of standing there. His mouth works, but his head’s all empty, like all the synapses his biology textbook says he’s got up there have been shocked right out of commission. He still doesn’t really have any sort of sentence strung together by the time Ino and Shikamaru exit the store, a tiny bag swinging from Shikamaru’s free hand.

“What did you guys do?” He manages.

“Charity work,” Ino answers, beaming, and Shikamaru hands the bag over before Chōji can tell the two of them to return it.

“This is — you guys, you can’t just —”

“We can, we did, and you need to shut up,” Shikamaru says. “Think of it like an early birthday present.”

“My birthday’s in May.”

“And?”

“And it’s March.”

“A really early birthday present,” Ino says.

Chōji looks between them, then at the bag. His ears feel hot.

“You guys are ridiculous.”

“I think you mean to say: thank you, Ino and Shikamaru, you’re wonderful friends and I’m glad to have you in my life and these earrings are great,” Ino says. She punches his arm. “Put them on.”

“Ino —”

“Put them on,” Shikamaru repeats, his voice half-muffled from the pocky.

Chōji reaches into the bag. The earrings are in a little felt case, and when he opens it, they look even better up close. His thumb traces over one of the butterflies’ wings. It feels solid despite how fragile they look. Sturdy. The kind of jewelry he can wear, maybe, even during combat training. He fumbles for the clasps on his current hoops, dropping them into Ino’s waiting hand, and slips the butterflies in. He looks at his friends.

“Well? Do they look stupid or something?”

Ino’s face has gone soft, and her chakra does a complicated flip that even Chōji can’t decipher. “They look perfect.”

“Very Akimichi,” Shikamaru says, but the corners of his lips keep twitching in the way that means he’s trying hard not to smile. Chōji’s throat bobs.

“Thanks,” he manages to get out. Ino helps him put his old hoops into the velvet box, safe and secure, and he folds his hand on top of it. “Do you think Asuma-sensei’ll be mad?”

Shikamaru snorts.

“Over earrings? Doubt it.”

“Besides, even if he did — which is a pretty big if — you’re the favorite,” Ino adds.

“I’m the favorite?”

“Asuma-sensei doesn’t have a favorite. It’s written in Sarutobi law, practically,” Shikamaru says. He pauses. “But I’d say Kono.”

“He does tend to get away with murder,” Ino says.

“Does he, though?” Chōji asks. “I feel like he’s grounded all the time.”

“Yeah, but Sensei always makes exceptions.”

“Exceptions that exist only when we want to do something with him, nobody else.”

“He probably figures we’re punishment enough,” Shikamaru says. He looks up at the sky and then pulls a face, groaning. “I’ve got to go. My kaachan wants me to help clean the house, and if I wait any longer, I’ll really get it.”

Chōji winces in sympathy. Shikamaru’s mother is a formidable medic and one of the strongest people Chōji knows, but she’s also — well, Chōji’s been on the receiving end of some of her lectures before, and there’s scathing and then there’s Nara Yoshino scathing.

“I should be going, too,” Ino says. “Kurenai-sensei promised to do Hinata, Sakura, Tenten, and I’s nails.”

“I’ll walk you over,” Chōji offers, then, to Shikamaru, “Good luck.”

Shikamaru grunts before slipping into an alleyway, the whole of his body disappearing into its shadows. Chōji shakes his head a little — it’s always a bit disorienting when Shikamaru shadow-travels, no matter the fact that Chōji’s seen him do it a million times. A part of his chest always clenches when he sees the other boy suddenly disappear, swallowed by the dark.

“Chōji, come on. I’m going to be late.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he says, turning around. Kurenai’s apartment is on the other side of the commercial district, sort of nestled between the start of the administrative center and the newer civilian housing development. They took a D-Rank a few months back to help her move, though it had been sort of a surprise that it had been her. The job description had been vague, little more than help moving and her old address.

Ah-ha! Team Asuma to the rescue, huh? She said when she opened her door to find the four of them on the other side. To this day, Chōji has a sneaking suspicion it was all a plot for her to spend more time with Asuma — he’d been away for a lot of high-profile solo missions around that time, something to do with the remaining dregs of the Shugonin Jūnishi — which made the whole thing sort of worth their trouble. They’re likely all way too invested in Asuma’s love life, but whatever. Chōji’s just hoping it’ll be a summer wedding so he’ll win some of their betting pool pot. Besides, when it was all over, she fed them red bean mochi cold from her freezer and the kind of over-sugared soda that even Chōji’s mom clicked her tongue at.

You’re dosing my genin, Asuma said. They’re going to be little monsters in about thirty minutes.

We’re already monsters, Sensei, Ino said. Asuma rolled his eyes.

Eat your mochi, Ino.

The memory keeps playing over in Chōji’s head even after he drops Ino off at the complex’s stairs, the rest of the girls already waiting. It’s more overcast than the day before, warm but not blistering, and walking back to his compound feels nice. Refreshing, almost. Every so often he’ll find one of his hands drifting up to his ear, touching the new earrings. It’s stupid, he knows, but — well, it’s a really nice early birthday present, is all. Probably the best one he’s ever gotten.

He’s still in a good mood when he comes back to his house, depositing his shopping haul on the kitchen island. He opens the card deck and sorts through them, only understanding about a fourth of what each of them say, and then just sort of buzzes, all wound up. Wound up in a good way, though. Chōji carries the earring box into his room and places it on his dresser just to move, and he briefly considers going back out to the training grounds to work on some of the more advanced taijutsu katas Asuma’s been nudging his way. Thinking about the katas makes him think about Asuma again, which makes him think of the assignment and Tsubu and then, weirdly, bread, and thinking about bread makes him think about the bread book back in the bookstore, and — and Chōji’s thinking about a lot of things that aren’t silence or loneliness, things like enriched doughs and butter lamination and flour composition. Or, he tries to, at least. He honestly doesn’t remember much from his little flip through at the bookstore, but he does cobble something together about sourdough. Specifically sourdough starters, which are something to do with yeast, maybe? The book definitely mentioned bacteria and feedings, and the two of those words together make it sound like some sort of edible pet, which means that it sounds sort of interesting in his weird, post-hangout state. Interesting enough that before he knows what he’s doing, he’s rifling through the kitchen cabinets for an empty canning jar and staring at the pantry, trying to remember what actually went into a starter.

He hesitantly picks up a bag of flour. Yeast, he knows, exists in flour, but is yeast the bacteria? Or is that a separate ingredient? Chōji glances suspiciously at the flour bag before deciding to just go with it. He puts it on the counter next to the jar. If yeast is bacteria, then it stands to reason that it’s the thing he would hopefully be feeding. As to what it feeds on, he’s assuming more flour. Adding that would add more yeast — more bacteria — to the starter, which makes sense and all, but did bacteria even eat other bacteria?

He sighs.

Every living thing needs water, and he at least knows that bacteria’s alive, so after he dumps some flour into the jar, he holds it under the kitchen faucet. He’s not entirely sure how much water the yeast needs, but bacteria is tiny, right? Microscopic. So not that much water. That’s Chōji’s thought process, and he’s sticking to it. He adds a little water from the tap, just enough to make the flour start to get clumpy. Living things also need a pretty consistent airflow, so the canning lid’s out — too tight, too constrictive. Chōji wonders if he can just leave it open, but something inside of him says that’s a bad idea. His gut has never led him astray before, so he listens to it, heading back to the pantry for the cling-wrap. He tears a square off, and settles it over the top of the jar. He stares at the jar. The jar seems to stare back, pale and lumpy. It looks just as confused as him about the events of the past twenty or so minutes. If yeast can look confused, that is.

“This is stupid,” he says, but it’s already done. All that’s left is to wait for it to grow and keep feeding it, and that takes time. Chōji decides to give it some, just to see, because, honestly, what else does he have going on? Nothing, is the answer. 

Over the course of the next few days he spoons in more flour and water in between training and the odd errand for the clan. He doesn’t tell anybody about the weird bread experiment in his kitchen. Not because he’s ashamed of it or anything — his ego isn’t that fragile — but because it’s meant to be simple. Easy. And, to be fair, it doesn’t stop being that when the first starter fails. 

By day three the smell coming off of it is like death, and the top has these fuzzy pink spots on top of it. Chōji figures that’s not a good sign and dumps the whole thing down the sink. He scrubs the jar out twice, then starts again. He tells himself it’s fine, that first attempts usually never work, but four days after that, when the second starter starts to get the same rotten smell, a part of him is…disappointed. Frustrated, maybe. He dumps the second one with more viciousness than it probably deserves. The jar might be the issue. Or the flour. Or just him — what he’s doing or not doing or overdoing might be killing all the poor yeast who’re just trying to live, and suddenly he starts feeling bad for the hundreds of bacteria he’s slaughtered out of sheer naivety and negligence.

It’s why he skips failing for a third time and just goes straight for Shikamaru the next day. He waits until the end of training to bring it up, that little period of time where they’re all sweaty and post-adrenaline drowsy, cooling down in a semi-circle while they go over what worked and what didn’t and what they could do better next time. Asuma’s busy talking with Genma, the other jōnin having appeared halfway through their lesson and tentatively, as if not sure he was allowed to be doing it, readjusting Chōji’s body.

Like this, he said. Throw from your shoulder, not your wrist. It’ll wobble less.

Chōji listened, obviously, because he once saw Genma, off-duty, stop a shoplifter by threading a senbon into the nape of his neck and triggering a full-body paralysis from halfway across the street. But, yes — anyway. The sourdough starter. The yeast.

“How much do you know about bacteria?” He says, knocking his foot against Shikamaru’s side. The Nara’s flat on his back, one arm flung over his eyes to try and block out the sun. At Chōji’s question, though, he slowly lifts his arm up to stare at him.

“Bacteria what now?”

“How much do you know,” Chōji repeats, slower this time. “I’m trying to grow it.”

“You’re trying to grow bacteria?” Ino says, bent perfectly in half at the waist, her cheek pressing against her knees.

“Or cultivate it. Nurture it. I don’t actually know the right term for what I’m doing, but I know I’m doing it wrong. They all keep smelling like death.”

Ino and Shikamaru share a look.

“Should we be concerned?" Ino asks, but Shikamaru shrugs her off.

“I’m more interested in how many is they.”

“Just two,” Chōji says. “Two little jars of…of yeast. Or what was supposed to be yeast. Yeast that was supposed to be used for sourdough but instead —”

“Smelled like death,” both Ino and Shikamaru finish. Chōji nods.

“So you are getting into baking,” Ino says.

“I’m just — just messing around, is all,” he says, because all he wants at this point is a living starter, and that seems like pretty low expectations for a hobby. Shikamaru sighs and sits up, pulling his knees up to his chest. His brow has that little furrow in it that means he’s thinking about something — actually thinking — and Chōji waits for the answer he knows is coming. Ino does, too.

“Bacteria’s not that hard to — to nurture,” Shikamaru says. “It’s why people get infections all the time. The thing is that you’re trying to get a specific type of bacteria to grow, I guess, which means you need the requirements for that sort of strain, whatever that strain is, instead of the millions of other kinds. That means specific heat, specific diet, specific everything, really.”

“It needs heat?”

“More like incubation,” Shikamaru says, and Chōji thinks, reflexively, of the deer pens attached to Shikamaru’s house, the ones where sick or injured fawn stay. “Somewhere up in the seventies, maybe.”

“I don’t think my kitchen gets that hot.”

“Maybe not naturally, but you could mess around with it.”

Chōji ingests this. Then, speaking slowly, “You think I should build a thing to keep my yeast warm enough to grow?”

“It depends on how serious you are about it,” Shikamaru says, giving Chōji a look. It’s the one he uses when he’s already figured something out and is waiting for Chōji to catch up. Ino looks between them. Chōji thinks about how he felt when the second starter failed, the extra bag of flour he just bought yesterday. He sighs.

“I guess I’m serious.”

“Then, yeah. I think you should build something. Redirect sunlight or — how often do you use your oven?” Shikamaru says.

“Right now? Not much.”

“Residual heat might be good.”

“Probably,” Chōji says, starting to think it over. In retrospect, it makes sense that the yeast needs specific temperatures. Their beer — before it became beer, specifically — needs the same sort of thing. Chōji hadn’t put it together before because their brewing buildings are always kept cool, even in summer. Which, he thinks, might be because that bacteria strain needed cold as opposed to yeast which needs warmth. Chōji sighs again because it makes him feel marginally better.

“It needs more water,” he says, his voice that of somebody who’s suddenly realized that his whole life, sort of, has revolved around bacteria and will continue to do so until his death. Chōji doesn’t know much about the Akimichi brewing process — he’s still a little too young for that — but he’d been at the sills and everything when a batch was being made, and the water they used had to be up in the gallons. Chōji’s only been using a few tablespoons at a time, if that.

“Baking’s all about ratios. That’s at least what I’ve heard,” Ino says.

“You should run multiple starters at once. Each one with a different feeding ratio or whatever, that way you can use the one that works.”

“Bold of you to assume that any of them’ll work.”

“You’ll figure it out, Chōji,” Shikamaru says, lying back down. “Just, you know, don’t burn down your house or anything.”

“Or make a weird bacteria monster.”

“Or —”

“Okay, okay,” he says. “I get it.”

Ino smiles. Shikamaru puts his arm back over his eyes. In the distance, Asuma finishes whatever he’s talking to Genma about and starts heading toward them. They’ve got about a minute to actually put together something approaching a training report to talk to their sensei about. Chōji wonders what it says about him that he’s instead debating the merits of picking up a notebook on his way home for research purposes. Probably that he spends too much time with Shikamaru, especially because he does stop at one of the shinobi shops and buys a pocket notebook, the kind you’re supposed to smuggle into a flak jacket, and unironically uses it to sketch out flour-water ratios and feeding schedules.

Chōji’s busy writing names on all the five or so starters he made when he hears his front door open. The house’s seals don’t flare, which means friend, so he just goes back to debating if Kiko’s too weird of a name for what basically amounts to bread dough. Hopefully amounts to bread dough, he thinks, and that thought settles it. The fifth one becomes Kiko.

“Chōji? You in here?”

“Kitchen,” Chōji calls, testing the cling-wrap coverings again.

“I need some of your otōsan’s financial records. Some idiot messed up the pricing for our blossom sake, and I’m praying that old tax records might have the right price on them, or at least —,” the footsteps stop. Chōji looks up and sees Torifu standing in the kitchen doorway. The older Akimichi’s eyebrows slowly raise. “What’re you doing?”

“Fermenting.” A pause. “I think.”

“Fermenting…what?”

“Bread.” Chōji carefully collects all five jars and deposits them around the room. He’d gone through the length of the kitchen with a thermometer to test for hot spots, and in one corner he even made a strange tent-thing out of baking pans to try and focus the nearby window’s sunlight. “I’ve already killed two starters, so if I don’t make at least one work, they died for nothing. Besides, I think Ino expects a loaf now, and she gets petty when she’s disappointed.”

“Right,” Torifu says after a while.

Chōji pauses. His hands are tacky with flour-water goo. He looks at Torifu — at Akimichi Torifu, legendary shinobi, one of the original Sevens trained by the Nidaime, a man who has survived two wars and also the whole Root mess that happened before Chōji was born but makes Asuma’s eye twitch at the surname Shimura — and up — and up and up, Kami — and flushes.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?”

“No,” Torifu says. “No, no, just — just very Akimichi, is all.”

“I know nothing about bread.”

“That’s not true. You’ve eaten bread, haven’t you?”

“Eating’s different from making, Torifu-san.”

“Sort of. But you know what bread should look like, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

Torifu hums. He bends down to peer at one of Chōji’s starters.

“Do you know about proofing?”

“Like…like in geometry?”

Torifu laughs. For one brief, bright moment, Chōji’s house feels smaller. Not constrictive or suffocating, but — but right-sized, almost, as if the noise shaves away some of all the empty space Chōji’s been wading through. He finds himself smiling in return. Torifu puts an arm around Chōji’s shoulder and steers him into the chanoma with a, “Oh, kid. Do I have some things to tell you.”

The rest of the night is spent learning that there’s a ridiculous amount of effort that goes into bread. Not just the upkeep of the starter, but also the upkeep of the dough once it’s made. It needs to be worked, but not overworked, proofed but not overproofed, chilled but not frozen, warmed but not melting. It needs air. Space. Time, which Chōji knew, but a certain abundance of it that he didn’t. It’s a lot. It’s something that Shikamaru would call troublesome, but Chōji knows from experience that most of those things ended up being exciting so — so Chōji waits and feeds and makes notes, occasionally culling a starter when needed, washing out its jar with a reverence usually reserved for fallen shinobi. A full week and a half later, only Kiko’s left, which is both arguably hilarious and deeply idiotic. Still, not only is Kiko still alive, it’s actively thriving. The starter’s nearly doubled in size, and every time Chōji removes the cling-wrap cover, a pleasant, tangy smell fills his kitchen.

It’s that weekend that Chōji decides it’s time to bake.

Well, time to try baking, really. He can’t really sleep anyways and it’s Kin’yōbi — or going to be Kin’yōbi once the sun rises, anyway — so he just sort of rolls out of his parents’ futon and down the hall and ends up staring at Kiko, and Kiko seems ready to do it, so Chōji figures he’s ready to do it, too. He carefully peels back Kiko’s cover and stares at his gooey, beige bacteria child.

“I’m going to apologize preemptively for what I’m about to do to you, so, I’m sorry.”

Kiko wobbles a little. Chōji pats the side of its jar comfortingly, and then scoops some out, adding it to one of his mom’s mixing bowls. The rest is easy enough to follow from the recipe Torifu told him: starter — check — then flour, salt, warm water, and a dash of olive oil. Chōji mixes with his hands until he’s got sourdough gloop up to his wrists and all of it starts looking like actual bread dough. He covers the bowl with more cling-wrap to let it autolyse, which Chōji’s still not sure about what it really means but dutifully does anyway because Torifu made it sound important, and this whole thing has somehow become important, and his fingers are leaving little sourdough smears on the cup of tea he makes as he watches the sun come up and his dough-mixture soften or whatever as he thinks about bread and Tsubu and his father in Tsubu probably eating bread right now and — Chōji shapes the dough after an hour. Lets it rest again in the steadying sunlight until it doubles, turning as pale and puffy as a cloud. He gently turns it over out onto the island counter and stretches, folds, repeating the process an hour later, a faint burn working up his arms as he works the dough. He takes a shower during its second rise, returning to it clean and smelling of soap, and figures he should’ve sent another ryō down the river. Just in case.

Chōji finds a cooking pot and moves the bread into it. He stares at it. Something’s missing, he thinks, and it takes him a while to remember that he has to score it. He takes a knife, slashes the top, and then covers the whole thing with the pot’s lid. He fumbles for the handle of his oven, opens it, and slides the pot, bread and all, inside. The heat makes him sweat — or maybe he’s been sweaty this whole time and is only now noticing. Either way, he rubs his hands on his pants.

“Well, good luck,” he says, not sure if he’s talking to himself or the bread or Kami. The oven door thuds when he closes it, and the noise sounds pointed. Final. He’s making bread. Sourdough, specifically. And, like, sure, it could be terrible and inedible when it finally finishes baking, but he still would’ve done it. That means something. What that something is, Chōji’s not sure, but it certainly feels important. It also feels like a warm kitchen and fresh sunlight and the scent of baking bread. Chōji waits the whole hour sitting on the countertop, watching the oven door, sipping his second cup of tea. Then he fishes the pot out and lets it sit on the stove to cool, not quite brave enough to open the lid just yet.

He’s still sort of sitting and staring at it when he feels Ino and Shikamaru’s chakra coming up the front walk. He gives one more look at the pot before heading to the door, opening it up just as they reach the engawa. Shikamaru pauses.

“You look weird,” the Nara says.

Ino considers Chōji. “You’re chakra’s weird, too. Very…spiky.”

“Spiky,” Shikamaru echoes.

“What? It is. Do you have a better word for it?”

Shikamaru rolls his eyes. “I’ve got one that’s certainly —”

“I made bread.”

They both look at him.

“Shut up,” Ino says, “Really?”

“Really,” Chōji says, stepping back. They shuffle inside, kicking off their sandals. “It’s in the kitchen cooling. I didn’t — I’m a little nervous to actually see what it looks like.”

All three of them make for the kitchen.

“It smells good,” Ino says, trying for supportive. “How long did it take?”

“Hours. I’ve been up since before dawn. I think I started at four.”

She stares at him. 

“You got up at four in the morning to bake bread?”

“It’s not like I was sleeping anyway.”

“Insomniacs,” she says. “I’m surrounded by insomniacs.”

“High-functioning insomniacs.”

“That doesn’t make it any better, Chōji!”

“So you haven’t seen it, yet?” Shikamaru asks, glancing over at the pot from where he’s gone eye-to-eye with Kiko. Chōji shakes his head. They all look at one another. Eventually, Shikamaru shuffles closer. “Do you want me and Ino to look?”

“Sure. Just — just if it’s bad or anything, just go ahead and trash it, okay?”

Chōji’s stomach clenches as Ino joins Shikamaru. He leans against a cabinet, then walks over to another, then realizes that the second position gives him a better look at his friends’ faces. He moves back to the first cabinet. Looks at the ceiling. His feet. Ultimately puts a hand over his eyes. He hears the pot lift. The quiet stretches.

“Well?” He asks.

“Well —,” some shuffling around. The sound of something soft thumping on the counter, “— you made bread, Chōji.”

Chōji drops his hand, and, sure enough, there’s a loaf of sourdough on the island. It’s misshapen and lopsided and one side is way darker than the other, but it’s there. Cooked. Bread.

“Holy shit,” he whispers, stepping closer. Ino and Shikamaru join him.

“It looks good,” Ino says.

“Very…edible,” Shikamaru adds.

Chōji pokes it with his finger. It feels hard. Not in a bad way — he didn’t burn it to a crisp or anything — but in a solid way. The crust crackles, flaking against his thumb when he runs it along the edge. Ino turns away to rummage through the fridge, pulling out the butter. Shikamaru fetches a knife from the knife block.

“I guess we should…try it?” Chōji says. He takes a deep breath, rolling his shoulders back, and holds out one of his hands. If they’re doing this, it should be him to cut it. “Knife me.”

Shikamaru passes the knife over. Chōji cuts the bread.

It’s not the right kind of knife — Chōji’s not sure if his parents even own a bread knife — and sawing through the crust compresses the whole thing, but he manages to not mangle it terribly while cutting. He makes three slices, one for each of them. The inside of it is the color of peanut shells, this gentle, warm brown, and dotted with tiny holes, the same kind Chōji remembers the bookstore’s bread book showing.

“On three?” Ino offers.

Shikamaru counts. They all take a bite on three, and Chōji’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s certainly not the chewy, slightly milky-tang thing he gets. Ino makes a small, surprised noise. Shikamaru chews, stops, starts chewing again. Chōji swallows. Waits for his body to violently reject it or something, and when it doesn’t, he takes another bite just to make sure.

“You made bread,” Ino says, staring down at her piece with something like awe. “Like actual, edible bread.”

“Gee, Ino. Sound more surprised, why don’t you.”

“You’re one to talk, genius,” she says. She points at Kiko with the rest of her bread slice. “This came from that?”

“Yes,” Chōji says, and there’s something in his voice that reminds him of Asuma when they manage a particularly complex jutsu or kata, or his dad that one time Chōji carefully transferred a handful of caterpillars into a makeshift greenhouse right before a big cold front. Konohagakure actually got snow that year. Thin, slushy snow, yeah, but snow.

They would’ve died, Chōji said, the caterpillars plump and furiously green in their container on his dresser. His dad smiled.

And they’re in your room because…?

I don’t think kaachan would appreciate them being in the kitchen.

Chōza laughed outright, but he also helped Chōji resettle them all in the garden after the freeze passed, taking special care with the few that had stiffened into the pre-chrysalis crook shape.

Absently, Chōji’s hand — the one not holding bread — reaches up to touch his earrings. He hasn’t taken the butterflies out since originally putting them in. Asuma had done a double take when he saw them for the first time. He even leaned down to get a better look, smiling when he saw what they were.

Very nice, Chōji.

Chōji touched one. You aren’t upset? Because I’m not wearing…?

Of course not. Asuma reached out to tug one, the gesture gentle. It would be weirder if you never changed the hoops. They aren’t meant to be for forever, you know. You don’t see me still wearing my hoops, yeah? Or even my studs. Asuma paused. The piercing’s more than just clan tradition, Chōji. It’s meant for you, ultimately. And these are pretty you, kid.

“It’s good,” Shikamaru says, reaching for the butter. “Are you going to keep doing it?”

Chōji considers the question. On one hand, it was a lot of work. On the other, it was a lot of work. Chōji’s not sure how many hours he’s spent feeding and watching Kiko, but the thought of just subjecting the start to, like, death sounds awful, and if Kiko doesn’t die, it’ll just keep growing which means a lot of excess yeast unless Chōji does something with it and there’s a pretty limited amount of uses for yeast that isn’t baking and —

“Yeah,” he says. “At least, I think I’ll try again. Maybe try to not make the outside so burnt.”

“You should experiment,” Ino says.

“I’ve already experimented.” He gestures at the loaf, at Kiko, at the notebook he keeps in the kitchen all the time now. “It sort of led to this.”

“I mean with taste. Additions. Flavor profiles. That kind of thing.”

“Can you add things to sourdough?”

“Why not?” Shikamaru says, shrugging. “Bread has stuff in it all the time.”

“You should bring this tonight,” Ino says, gesturing at the rest of the loaf.

“Bring it where?”

“Asuma-sensei’s,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“Why would I go to Asuma-sensei’s?”

“Because — oh,” Ino says, looking at Shikamaru. Chōji looks at him, too. Shikamaru very pointedly doesn’t look at either of them.

“We may have promised Kono to play that card game with him tonight,” Shikamaru admits.

“We did?” Chōji says. “You mean you guys volunteered me.”

“We thought it might be nice for you to —,” Ino makes a get out motion with her hand even as her chakra sends out a tendril of sorryChōdon’tbemad. “You know? Go out. Be with people.”

“I’ve been with people.”

“Who?”

“Kiko.”

“Who’s —?” Ino stops. Starts again. “Oh, you named it. You named the yeast-thing.”

“Kiko,” he repeats.

“Kiko’s not living, Chōji.”

“It totally is. That’s how it grows. The bacteria eat and multiple and then —”

“Chōji.”

“But I don’t want to —”

“Go put on some real clothes,” Ino says. He looks at Shikamaru for some support, but the other boy just puts the rest of his slice of bread in his mouth, staring back at Chōji with eyes that look suspiciously big and wide and conniving.

“You guys suck,” he says, turning toward his room.

“You’re welcome,” Ino says. “Help me find something to carry this bread in, Shikamaru.”

Shikamaru clicks his tongue, muttering,“So bossy.”

“I heard that!”

Chōji goes to his room and changes out of his pajamas. By the time he finishes, grabbing his card deck on the way out, Shikamaru and Ino are waiting in the genkan, the sourdough loaf wrapped in a kitchen towel and cradled in the crook of Shikamaru’s arm like a baby.

“We shouldn’t bring it,” Chōji says.

“We’re bringing it — look, it’s already out of the house,” Ino says, and, sure enough, Shikamaru has walked out the door.

“Asuma-sensei’s going to think we’re crazy.”

“Asuma-sensei knows we’re crazy,” Shikamaru says. “Now we’re just crazy with bread. He’ll think it’s an improvement.”

Ino links arms with both of them.

“It is an improvement,” she says. She squeezes Chōji’s arm. “You made bread. It’s impressive. Be proud of it.”

“It’s just bread,” he mutters, his face going hot. “People have businesses built around bread. Tsubu’s government literally revolves around bread. It’s not impressive.”

“It’s bread you made. That makes it a specialty item,” Shikamaru says, and Chōji doesn’t really have a response to that. Ino and Shikamaru seem to know because they both look ridiculously pleased with themselves, and Chōji wonders in that sudden, fierce way he sometimes has if in any of the other fifteen generations that Akimichi’s Nara crinkled their nose exactly like that, or if their Yamanaka’s chakra used to sing, or if — he blinks a few times. Smiles. There’s a saying that Akimichi love easily, and maybe it’s true. Lately, though, Chōji’s been thinking that the Nara and Yamanaka are the reason for the easy part — and the Sarutobi, he amends, letting the clan’s seals wash over him.

Asuma’s house is deep in the compound, further back than most clan heads’. It’s nestled close to the treeline — the mokuton treeline, all the oaks and pines and cedars far larger than their non-chakra fed counterparts — as if, when fleeing their rainforests for Konoha, they still couldn’t part from their trees. Not that Chōji blames them. If he could move like a Sarutobi could, nimble and frighteningly fast, he’d never touch the ground. Then again, even with his enhanced balance and reflexes and sheer grip strength Kono tended to fall a lot, so maybe there’s something to be said for walking after all.

The head Sarutobi house is the same as ever: sprawling and sunny with a well-worn engawa and windchimes in its trees. Ino unlinks herself to press her hand to the door, her chakra jumping — hihelloyesit’sus — to activate the door’s seals. The lock clicks, sliding, and then all three of them are shuffling inside. The house smells like hand chalk, the ginger tea Asuma likes, and, faintly, of cigarette smoke. Chōji has never gathered enough courage to ask why Asuma smokes. He figures it has something to do with Shikaku smoking — Shikaku had been Asuma’s sensei way back when, just like Chōji’s dad had been Genma and Guy’s — but did Shikaku smoke because his sensei, the Sandaime, smoked? And did the Sandaime smoke because his sensei smoked? Chōji doubts the last one. The Nidaime doesn’t strike him as much of a smoker.

“We’re here!” Ino sing-songs.

There’s a scrambling noise from the living room, and Kono’s head appears around the corner. He’s just as suntanned as Chōji, maybe more, and there’s even some blond sneaking into his hair. How Kono has the energy to spend enough time outside in the heat to bleach his hair, Chōji honestly doesn’t know. More than that, how Asuma has the energy to train them for most of the day and then come home to Kono remains a mystery.

“You’re late,” Konohamaru says.

“In my defense, I didn’t know this was happening,” Chōji says. “So technically, I’m kidnapped.”

Kono focuses on him. It’s a little intimidating despite the fact that he’s about a fourth of Chōji’s size and not even a genin yet, but Kono’s always had sharp eyes and a sharper mind — maybe not a genius, but close. Close enough that the Academy tested him, and even Kakashi had been interested in the results. He’d missed the genius threshold by a handful of points.

Are you upset? Ino asked him.

Why would I be upset? Kono said, completely honest in that way of his. Besides, why would I want to be in advanced classes? The homework they give out is insane.

Won’t you be bored, though?

I’ll figure something out, Kono said, grinning, and something in his smile made Chōji think that Kono hadn’t actually failed. Not by accident, at least. He thinks that Asuma knows it, too, which is probably why he didn’t overturn the test results to put Kono in the advanced classes by recommendation.

“You don’t look very kidnapped.”

“Ah, but I feel kidnapped.”

Ino smacks his shoulder.

“Rude,” she says. “Anyway, Kono, what’ve you been up to?”

“Just summoning practice.”

Sure enough, when they step into the living room, there’s a particularly rotund golden macaque perched on the armrest next to Asuma’s head. Their sensei’s lying on his back, his knees hooked over the other side of the couch, reading some scroll — something fūinjutsu related, knowing him — with a pen in his mouth. He grunts in greeting. The macaque tips its head at an almost ninety degree angle.

“Unsettling, right?” Kono murmurs, catching Ino’s face. “You should’ve seen the tarsier. Huge eyes. Moved its head like an owl.”

Asuma takes the pen out of his mouth.

“Are you insulting my monkeys?”

“I’m stating facts, Oji. The tarsiers would scare an ANBU agent.”

“I’ll have you know that they’re excellent for infiltration and surveillance. An ANBU agent would be thrilled to have their observational skills.”

“They have their observation skills because they don’t blink.”

The macaque chitters, its tail coming around to cover Asuma’s mouth. Kono waves his hand at it.

“See? Manpuku agrees.” Kono opens his mouth to say something else, but pauses when he sees Shikamaru’s holding something. Chōji can practically see the younger boy switch mental tracks. “What’s that?”

“Sourdough,” Shikamaru says, unwrapping it from the towel. Kono considers it.

“It looks like bread.”

“Sourdough is bread, dummy,” Ino says.

“Why,” Asuma says, picking up the macaque’s tail with two fingers, “have you brought sourdough to my house?”

“Chōji made it, Sensei,” Ino says.

Asuma’s face goes through a set of complicated expressions before settling on something that can only be categorized as amusedly resigned. “Is this about the Tsubu assignment?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“Maybe a little,” Chōji admits. “You had me decipher a story about bread politics, Sensei, and I'm Akimichi. Food’s sort of my thing.”

Asuma laughs, low and smoky, and rolls onto his feet with the easy grace of a world-renowned taijutsuist. The monkey follows, hopping onto his back and then curling itself onto his shoulder with more finesse than Chōji honestly expected from it. Asuma rolls the scroll back up, lightly whacks Kono on the head with it, and holds out his other hand for the loaf. Shikamaru passes it over, and they all follow him into the kitchen.

“We don’t have to — I mean — it’s okay if we don’t eat it or anything —”

“Are you having a stroke?” Kono asks, and the only reason Chōji doesn’t pinch him is because Shikamaru laughs. Konohamaru smiles, his Sarutobi fangs big in his small face. “Besides, it’s bread. What are we going to do, stare at it?”

“Kono, stop being a smartass,” Asuma says, not unkindly. He rifles in a drawer for a minute and pulls out a bread knife, placing the loaf on the counter. He cuts the rest of the loaf into even slices, offering one to Kono and then to the monkey, and Chōji watches as an interdimensional chakra creature picks delicately at his bread, considering it, before putting half in its mouth.

“Huh,” Kono says, which isn’t helpful in the slightest.

“Huh as in you like it, or huh as in not your thing, bǎobèi?” Asuma asks, taking his own slice.

“It’s sour.”

“It’s sourdough,” Shikamaru says. Kono ignores him as Kono’s wont to do.

“It’s weird, but, like, good weird, maybe.”

“A stunning recommendation,” Ino says.

Asuma bites into his slice. Chōji watches him chew, then swallow. Asuma turns the bread around in his hand, considering it.

“Not bad, kid,” he says. The monkey nods, too, raising one hand in a thumbs up. “Seriously. A little toasted, maybe, but good.”

Chōji’s throat clicks.

“Thanks, Sensei.”

Asuma hums. He puts the bread knife away, and grabs another slice, making his way out of the kitchen. His voice echoes down the hall as he goes, monkey and all, “Play nice, you guys. Kono, no biting.”

“Oji,” Kono groans, “that was one time!”

“It was yesterday, you gremlin.”

“You bit someone?” Chōji asks. Kono has the decency to look slightly embarrassed, but there’s a certain set to his jaw that reminds Chōji of the few times way, way back, before he was even in the Academy, when Asuma would visit from the capital and always, without fail, get some kind of lecture from Inoichi.

“They deserved it. Besides, I didn’t bite hard.”

“You have fangs,” Shikamaru says. “Any bite is hard.”

Kono flashes a smile, wide and charming and completely unrepentant. It’s the same smile he gives to them nearly an hour later when he beats them handily, even Shikamaru, in the card game. Chōji’s still staring at his battlefield in disbelief when Ino, reshuffling her deck, orders a rematch. Kono calls her a sore loser, and Shikamaru reaches out a leg to kick Kono’s chair. Chōji catches the whole thing, chair and Sarutobi, with his foot before it topples over, and then scratches out all of their life balance to start over because yeah, they are sore losers. One game leads to another, then another, and suddenly they’re staying for dinner and Chōji’s petting Asuma’s monkey summon, scratching under its chin and cupping its tiny head in his palm, and helping Shikamaru take the extra futons out of storage to put in the guest room already filled with their stuff — extra sets of clothes, a half-filled bottle of Ino’s preferred aspirin, the sandals Shikamaru broke two weeks ago and was too lazy to throw out.

“Chōji?” Shikamaru says, his voice quiet in the dark. Ino’s already asleep, the crown of her head gone silver from the starlight coming in from the window. Konohamaru’s pretty close to sleeping too, his body impossibly tucked into the crooks of Chōji’s knees, his cheek pressing into one of Chōji’s calves. From deeper in the house comes the sound of Asuma’s voice, the sound muffled through the walls. “Are you still awake?”

Chōji grunts.

“The bread thing,” Shikamaru says, and Chōji rouses slightly, blinking. “You should keep doing it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Shikamaru says, and Chōji’s chest tightens and warms in equal measure, its heat ballooning through his body. He blinks his eyes and his lashes clump, catching, for a brief moment. Next to him, Shikamaru folds his pillow in half, settling down. “Also, Kono cheated.”

“Totally.”

“Did not,” Kono grumbles, his voice sleep-thick. Ino twitches at the sound, waking, and they all freeze. She props herself up on her elbow, glaring at each of them in turn.

“Can all of you shut up?”

“Sorry, Ino,” they say, and it’s so ridiculous that Chōji bites his cheek to keep from laughing. Ino narrows her eyes at him — you’resuchaboy — before lying down again.

“Troublesome.”

“Terrifying,” Kono corrects, and Chōji actually does laugh at that only to be rewarded by Ino’s pillow hitting him in the face.

He’s thinking about that night a week later, carefully sprinkling flour into Kiko for the starter’s morning feeding. He’s made three more loaves since then, two regular and one with rosemary per Kurenai’s suggestion, of all people, because she apparently tried some the last time she visited Asuma. They all turned out fine. Better than fine, really, though his scoring still needs some work. All of his boule’s look marginally maimed, the poor things.

“Chōji?”

He jerks, flour flinging across the island. There in the doorway is his mother, her face tired and drawn even as the edges of her eyes crinkle when she smiles, holding out her arms. Chōji’s in them before he even realizes he’s moving. She smells like hibiscus and sweet pea, and Chōji’s body eases at the familiar touch of her hand raking through his hair.

“Hi, honey,” she says. “Oh, don’t you feel good to hold again.”

Chōji makes a nameless noise, burying his face into her shoulder. She laughs, her body rocking against his.

“I’m going to take that as ‘I missed you, Mom’ and ‘I’m so happy you’re back’.”

“I did, and I am.”

“Yeah, me too, sweetheart, though I’m surprised you’re up already. Usually you’re still dead to the world.”

“I had to feed Kiko,” Chōji says, finally pulling away. He does a sort of spin in his kitchen, trying to figure out what to do or say or whatever next, thinking about all the things he wants to ask her — how were his cousins, is his aunt still a drunk, was the trip back okay or did she get caught up in whatever weird stormfront was making its way across the coastline, but his mom beats him to it.

“Do I want to ask who Kiko is?”

Chōji points at Kiko. His mother looks, blinks, looks closer.

“Is that —?”

“Sourdough starter,” he says. “I — uh — I’ve been baking. Just a few loaves so far, but everybody’s liked them, and if I don’t bake bread now then Kiko gets too big and I spent a lot of time actually making a starter, so I can’t get rid of Kiko so I’ll probably be making even more bread for, like, the rest of my life since —”

“Chōji, honey, breathe.”

He breathes. “I used a lot of your bowls. Don’t be mad?”

“Why would I be mad?” His mom creeps closer to the counter, peering at Kiko before gently, carefully, picking the starter up. She turns it this way and that, before nodding once and smiling. “She’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t she?”

She puts Kiko back down. “Tell me about her while I make tea — I haven’t had a proper cup since I left.”

Chōji tells her about Kiko. He tells her about the sourdough, of bread dough rising with the sun, the whole house alive with the sweet, malty scent of freshly baked bread, and Asuma’s puzzle and Tsubu, tells her about Shikamaru and Ino and the card game that Kono keeps beating them at, the fact that he’s seen monkeys with eyes the size of their bodies and heads that spin around like an owl’s because Kono’s working his way through the Sarutobi summoning contract and yes, tarsiers are creepy, and his pillow might be in her futon and Torifu might murder whoever was on this year’s floral wine division. By the time he finishes, he’s gone through two cups of tea and his voice aches from talking so much, the house warm with sunlight and the smell of his mother’s perfume and her laughter when Chōji mentions that Asuma was yet again wearing the banana shirt.

“He’s silly,” she says, stirring her tea. “I blame the hooligans he used to run around with when he was your age.”

“What hooligans?”

“The other sensei, of course. They used to be menaces. It’s a miracle Hokage-dono still looks so young, what with all Kakashi-san put the poor man through. Jiraiya-sama and Hatake-sama, too, I suppose.”

“Really? But Asuma and Kakashi-sensei are so…”

“Grown-up? I hate to break it to you, Chōji, but it happens to everyone.”

“I was going to say responsible, actually.”

His mom laughs. “Asuma and responsible in the same sentence — oh, I never thought I’d live to see the day. Your tōsan used to make himself sick, practically, stressing over him.”

Chōji snorts, but it’s quiet. Subdued in the face of remembering, once again, that his dad isn’t here and won’t be here for another month and a half. His mother’s smile softens, dimming. She puts her hand over his, squeezing.

“It’s the longest he’s ever been gone.”

“I know, honey — and I’m sorry I wasn’t here. If I’d known he’d be getting a mission like that, I would’ve stayed here.”

“It’s not your fault. Missions come and go,” he says, that old shinobi mantra sounding less cliched now than it ever has. “It’s just — do you think —?”

“Mm?”

“It’s stupid.”

“How about you let me be the judge of that?”

Chōji sighs. He fidgets with his teacup.

“My birthday,” he eventually says, and his mom squeezes his hand again. “It’s not — if he’s not there it’ll be fine, you know? And his mission is three months, so he probably couldn’t even get here by May, but I — I’ve just never not had him here.”

“Missions can finish early, honey. There’s still hope.”

He looks at her, searching her face.

“You think so?”

“Between you and me,” she says, “he would move mountains for you, Chōji, and I haven’t met anything that can go toe-to-toe with your tōsan yet when he sets his mind to something.” She sighs, her spoon stilling. “I don’t know if he’ll make it, sweetheart, but I sure know he’s going to try his hardest.”

“Yeah,” Chōji says, staring at their hands. He turns his over to link his fingers through hers, her wedding band — the same one his dad melted and worked metal for — rubbing against his palm. His hand was bigger than hers’ now. Less calloused still, but — but close, he thinks, and for some reason the realization makes him feel achingly young. He wonders if he’s grown again. Most likely, though he doesn’t notice much difference until he looks at their hands again. Akimichi tend to grow in fits, their bodies stubbornly storing away fat before shaving them back down with an unwieldy growth spurt or two. His mother clutches his hand for a moment before releasing.

“Now, I’ve got to shower — my clothes could probably stand up all on their own if I let them — but after that, I wouldn’t say no to some sourdough.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Chōji says.

His mother’s easy laugh bounces around the hallway as she leaves, and Chōji starts the whole boule making process: flour, water, starter; autolyse, rest, shape. It’s become meditative, in a way. Chōji’s mind focuses on the feeling of the dough rolling between his hands, the way it clings to his touch, the gentle burn in his arms as he stretches it. He bakes. Not just that morning, but many mornings after it. Evenings, sometimes, too, with Ino and Shikamaru and occasionally Kono lounging in his kitchen, all of them some degree of sunburnt and exhausted in the way only shinobi-in-training can be. They play the card game as the bread rises, swap decks as it bakes, plot and plan and make themselves sick with laughter and sourdough. Chōji bakes and bakes and bakes, growing more confident, pilfering the Yamanaka gardens for olives and thyme and sweet chilies, scooping some of Kiko into another jar based on Shikamaru’s suggestion to start another starter, naming it Hachi based on Ino’s suggestion, and adding honey to that one’s feeding schedule to try and get sweeter dough. It works, sort of, and the more loaves he makes, the more people start noticing.

It starts with Kurenai first, technically, but then her team, too, because Chōji once brings a boule to Team Ten training, and Team Eight lingers behind their sensei as she talks to Asuma. Kiba’s nose twitches, and he squints at where the three of them — Ino, Shikamaru, and Chōji — are huddled together.

“Is that…bread?”

Shino and Hinata look, too. Chōji holds the loaf out to them.

“You want a slice?”

Team Eight glances at each other. It’s Hinata, surprisingly, that steps forward first. She hesitantly takes the slice Ino offers her, and it’s like the domino effect in real time. Kiba tries it next, then Shino, and then Kurenai tries it for the second time, and six genin plus two sensei is strange enough that Guy’s team veers toward them when they re-enter the training grounds after their morning run around the village, and suddenly Chōji’s getting his back patted enthusiastically by Guy and told all about his youthfulness and how refreshing it is to see another Konoha genin embracing the burning fervor that lives inside them or whatever. By the time Team Seven makes it to the training grounds, the loaf’s been finished off, leaving behind only crumbs and the twelve of them.

“What’s going on?” Naruto asks, “What’d we miss?”

“Bread,” Shikamaru says, refolding the towel, “Chōji’s specialty.”

“I wouldn’t call it a specialty, just —”

Kakashi’s eyebrows raise. “Chōji bakes?”

“He’s gotten good at it,” Asuma murmurs, the words slipping out of his mouth like cigarette smoke, and Kakashi’s face softens. Or Chōji figures it does, at least, given that half the Hatake’s face is covered by a mask.

“Well, maybe we’ll catch some next time,” Kakashi says, herding his team away, all three of them still staring curiously at where the bread used to be.

“Next time?” Chōji echoes.

“Congratulations,” Asuma says, putting out his cigarette, “you’ve officially started something, Chōji.”

“But I didn’t mean to —”

“Nobody ever means to. Things just happen anyway,” Asuma says. Ino shrugs.

“Face it, Chōji. You’re the bread guy.”

“I don’t want to be the bread guy.”

“You’re smiling,” Shikamaru points out, the traitor. Chōji makes sure to put walnuts into the next loaf, folding them in with a casual sort of mutiny.

“Who’s this for, honey?” His mom asks.

“Shikamaru.”

“But Shikamaru hates walnuts.”

“Uh-huh,” Chōji says, scooping another handful into the dough.

Team Ten gets an extended mission outside of Konoha in mid-April, and Chōji relinquishes Kiko and Hachi’s feeding over to his mother with the quiet fretting of a parent himself. Still, he trusts his mom — has no choice to, really — and tries to focus on not, you know, dying during said mission.

“Are you thinking about bread?” Ino asks him once, all three of them walking in front of Asuma on the major road out of Konoha, the one that splits like tree branches halfway toward the capital, spreading throughout all of Fire Country.

“No.”

Ino hums. “Because you’ve got your bread face on.”

“I don’t have a bread face.”

“You totally do.” Ino points a finger at his face. “See. That’s the one.”

“This is my normal face.”

“Your normal bread face.”

Shikamaru coughs, trying to smother a laugh.

“I hate you both.”

It’s the biggest lie Chōji’s ever told, obviously, and by the time his birthday actually rolls around, he’s gotten good enough to score the Akimichi clan mon onto his bread in what Ino says is actually, like, aesthetically pleasing. His birthday gifts all have a theme — a set of nice ceramic bread pans from Ino, an actual bread knife from Shikamaru, and even a set of specialized bread whisks from Tenten — and Chōji finds he doesn’t mind. Is even excited, actually, at a few of them. He’s turning the bread knife over in his hands when Asuma drops an arm around his shoulder.

“You got everything you wanted, kid?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of, huh?” Chōji leans into Asuma, putting his head in the crook of Asuma’s shoulder. Asuma’s one of the tallest jōnin in the village — not Akimichi big, but close — and Chōji still fits under him rather than next to him. Asuma puts his chin on Chōji’s head, sort of swaying. “How does fourteen feel?”

Chōji considers it — considers himself, really.

“Same as thirteen.”

“Yeah?” Asuma moves back to look at him, squeezing Chōji’s shoulders. “Give it some time, then. Answer me again in a week.”

“That’s ominous, Sensei.”

“I’m a sensei. It’s my job to tell you ominous things.”

“Sure, but what does it even mean?”

Asuma shrugs. “Hell if I know. It’s your job to figure it out.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Asuma lets him go after that, because Ino and Kono are both waving Chōji over to a table where Sasuke’s curiously shuffling through Shikamaru’s card deck, Shikamaru gesturing about something with his hands. Chōji’s mother had bought him some new packs, and he cracks one open that has some type of merperson on it. They play until the sunsets and the back engawa gets flooded with fireflies, the cicadas working on their summer song. Chōji’s mom starts calling them back inside, sending some — Hinata and Neji — back to their parents, while the rest set up guest rooms.

“Got a ryō?” Chōji asks Shikamaru, lingering outside. Shikamaru doesn’t say anything, just roots around in his pockets and pulls a coin out, his eyes knowing. Further into the house, Ino turns around, her mouth open as if to say something, but she stops. Assess. Smiles softly at Chōji before turning back around.

Chōji rolls the ryō over his knuckles as he heads to the river. The torii shines in the dark, the new paint, now nearly three months old, glows in the strengthening moonlight, bright and brilliant like poppy petals. The river’s warmer now. Less likely to turn Chōji’s feet numb, though he knows from experience that it won’t be ready to swim in until July at least. The gate itself looks smaller than it ever has, and Chōji reaches his hand out, carefully putting his hand against it. He doesn’t know why he does it — it's only cedar, but cedar he shouldn’t touch, maybe, based on all the lectures from the clan kannushi he only partially remembers, but he does it anyway. The wood’s smooth against his hand, the kind that’s been shaped and softened by decades spent in the heat and the rain and everything between.

Chōji doesn’t say anything to it, though there’s plenty of things he thinks about saying, things like please and let him be okay. The night’s quiet. Peaceful. The kind of night that makes it both so easy and so difficult to think of Tsubu — of who’s still in Tsubu, watching their grain grow and negotiating taxation rates and the million other boring things that the Hokage might one day ask Chōji to do. He knocks his fist gently against the gate. Water sweeps across his feet, rushing, and he wonders if it knows where it’s going, what it’s carrying. Someone, he can’t remember who, once told him that no one can step in the same river twice, that the whole of it is always changing, always moving. It sounds scary to him. Sounds like a whole lot of motion toward something fathomless — to Uzushio or the ocean or even, maybe, to the sky.

Chōji tips the ryō into the water. Asks for nothing and everything while doing it.

His hand drops from the torii. He turns to leave, catching the scent of smoke as he does. Shikaku and Asuma, no doubt, two generations of smokers, sensei and student, and then he thinks of him and Ino and Shikamaru. Thinks of the things that people keep with them: how Shikamaru hums whatever new song Ino’s listening to under his breath when they walk to the training grounds; Konohamaru’s uncertainty, still, on if likes sourdough but still eats the ones’ Chōji brings anyway; the way Ino braids her hair the way Kurenai taught her; Naruto slipping a slightly crumpled origami butterfly into Chōji’s hand this morning, beaming; Chōji —

“Chōji?”

Chōji pauses, nearly tipping backward on the bank. There’s somebody coming toward him, back-lit by his house’s lights. He can’t make out their face, but he knows, instinctively, their shape, the angular cut of their body in the dark. He scrambles. Uses his too-long legs to propel himself into them in as little strides as possible, his face meeting hard armor and travel-smell. Arms wrap around him, and a big hand cups the back of his head, holding him. Cradling him, almost, the same way, no doubt, he was cradled as a baby. They’re both silent for a brief moment. Chōji’s still trying to process what he’s seeing — what he’s feeling — and he figures it’s the same way for who he’s holding onto, too.

“You’ve grown, ‘pillar.”

Chōji squeezes his eyes.

“You always say that,” he says, a little breathless. He gets crushed tighter for it, and his hands rise, clutching, his fingers hitting Konoha flak jacket weave. They catch on the cinch loops and curl around them the same way he used to do two, four, ten years ago. 

“I mean it this time.”

His dad’s voice wavers. There’s something wet along the edges of it, and Chōji tilts his head up. Sure enough, Chōza’s eyes are dewy in the starlight, and Chōji almost teases him for it before he realizes his are, too. He goes to pull away to wipe at them, but the hand on his head slips around to his cheek, his dad’s thumb catching the corner of Chōji’s eye and wiping.

“I thought —”

Chōji stops. Chōza smiles, crooked.

“Let me look at you,” he says, tipping Chōji’s head up further. He turns it this way and that, pausing when he sees the earrings.

“Ino and Shikamaru got them for me. A few months ago. I know they aren’t traditional —”

“They’re you,” Chōza says. His fingers trace along the butterfly’s wings the same way Chōji’s do. “They did well.”

“Don’t tell them that. They’ll be insufferable.”

“They already are. Runs in their families,” Chōza says, and they both laugh. Chōji turns his face further into his father’s hands.

“I think they’d disagree.”

“Mm, but we know the truth, don’t we?”

Chōji nods. Chōza gently draws him in less desperately than before, and Chōji listens to the familiar lullaby of his father’s heartbeat. Chōza puts his lips to the top of Chōji’s head. He doesn’t kiss Chōji or anything, just holds there as if memorizing the way Chōji’s hair curls from the roots down.

“How was it?”

“It was —,” Chōji thinks about the months. About the weeks and days and hours he spent alone before realizing, all of sudden, that he hadn’t been alone, not really. Shikamaru and Ino had been with him. Asuma and Kono, too. Torifu. The other genin. The bread. He makes a soft noise. “— fine.”

“Fine, huh?”

“A lot of sourdough, honestly.”

“Sourdough?”

“I might’ve gotten into baking,” Chōji admits, then, because his father’s just returned from Tsubu, “You must be sick of bread.”

“An Akimichi is never sick of bread,” Chōza says, and Chōji’s not sure if he’s joking or not. Probably not given that Chōza finally pulls away slightly, just enough to turn so they’re standing side-by-side. Chōji can see the outline of his mom waiting in the doorway of the back engawa. He can’t see for sure if she’s smiling, but he can feel it the same way he can feel the heat of his dad’s body slipping into his, the easy rise and fall of Chōza’s side against his own.

“You sure?”

Chōza tugs him closer, half-lifting. One of Chōji’s feet lifts off the ground.

“Positive, ‘pillar,” Chōza says. They start making their way to the house. “Now, tell me all about this sourdough business. From the beginning.”

Well, Chōji’s not about to argue. Instead, he takes a deep breath, thinking about where the beginning really is. He could start with that book in the bookstore. He could also start with Asuma’s coded assignment. But, he thinks, it really might just start with one Akimichi and a house too big and empty for him. He thinks back, suddenly, to something Shikamaru said months ago. Something about Tsubu. His hand reaches up to touch one of his earrings, and behind his father’s shoulder, the torii sits, content.

“I think it’s got something to do with butterfly wings,” Chōji says, and then, more sheepishly, “and a whole lot of yeast.”