Chapter Text
Stream or download the audio for Chapter One here
All ghost stories must start with a death. This one is no exception.
Iruka was the one who found the cat. It was huddled up under one of the trees at the back of the Hatake compound, so freshly dead that it hadn’t yet been feasted on by flies or worms. Iruka had spent the morning lacing chakra wire between the branches, paper seals hanging limply in the still air like garlands. He did most of his trap work in Kakashi’s back yard these days; there was at least as much space as a training ground but with none of the people, and Kakashi would sometimes bring him juice with ice tinkling in the glass or cool slices of watermelon. There was still a plate of rinds on the grass from earlier, and Iruka had decided to go hunt through the kitchen for more when he stumbled almost literally across the cat.
He shimmied down the tree, hands clumsy because the day was hot and his palms were clammy with sweat, and noticed the furry shape among the roots right before he almost put his foot on it. He flinched back just in time and stumbled, falling heavily on his ass.
“Ah, fuck!”
Rubbing his backside and muttering curses, he scowled over at the animal, expecting it to shoot away through the trees. Instead it lay still, a white cat with its eyes closed and its mouth open to bear a hint of sharp canines and pink tongue. For one uncertain moment, Iruka thought it might be sleeping, but then he took a step closer and it still didn’t move, and that’s when he knew it was dead.
He was fairly sure Kakashi didn’t own a cat. He’d never seen a cat in the Hatake compound before and Kakashi had never mentioned one. How it had found its way onto Kakashi’s property was a mystery, and how it had died wasn’t obvious either. Iruka crouched over the body, not sure what to do about it, and so he didn’t hear Kakashi approach until he was almost upon the grove of trees.
“What do you have there?” Kakashi asked. Naruto was balanced on one hip, and Iruka tried to angle his body so that Naruto wouldn’t see the small shape among the tree roots.
“There’s a cat,” he said. “It’s, uh. Not doing so well.”
“A kitty!” Naruto said at once, wriggling in Kakashi’s grip. “Where’s the kitty?”
“That way,” Kakashi said, swivelling around and pointing out across the lawn. “Why don’t you go look for it.” He put Naruto down and adjusted the boy’s sunhat before letting him toddle off, yelling happily for the kitty.
Iruka moved back so Kakashi could see past him to the cat, and Kakashi knelt down at his side to examine it.
It was a sweltering August day, the air thick and heavy with pollen, tempered only by the meagre shade of the trees. Kakashi’s answer to the heat was not shorts and a loose t-shirt like Iruka, but rather a pair of khakis and a form-fitting tank top, which for once did not have a mask attached. Kakashi was still wearing a mask, of course, but it hooked around the backs of his ears, leaving his pale throat naked. As Kakashi frowned at the cat, Iruka found his own gaze lingering on the jut of Kakashi’s Adam’s apple and a small mole in the hollow above his collar bone.
“Whose pet are you?” Kakashi murmured, and to Iruka’s horror he nudged the cat with his bare hand, checking for a collar.
“Don’t touch it!” Iruka said. “It’s probably a stray. It’ll have rabies or something.”
“I’ll wash my hands,” Kakashi promised. He was still frowning thoughtfully, and Iruka glanced back at Naruto, who had made his way over to the flowerbeds and was chasing butterflies through the begonias well out of earshot.
“What should we do with it?” he asked.
“Bury it, I guess,” Kakashi said. “It’s not the first time I’ve found small dead things out here. Or dying things. There was a bird once that flew into the window so hard I heard it from two rooms away. When I went outside to check, I found it twitching on the veranda. Its heartbeat was so fast, it was hard to believe something so small could work so hard to live. I broke its neck.”
Iruka stared at him, appalled.
“Why?”
“I didn’t think it was going to get better,” Kakashi said. “Maybe I was wrong. But I wouldn’t know how to care for it and it didn’t feel right to walk away and leave it to suffer.”
He hadn’t taken his eyes off the cat the whole time. A spider, spindle-legged and black, crawled up one of the cat’s legs and Iruka flicked it off, disgusted, and then wondered why he’d bothered. It wasn’t like the cat would care anymore.
In the trees above them, the cicadas were chirping, a droning buzz that had long burrowed its way into Iruka’s head until he was barely conscious of it. Beyond that, he could hear Naruto calling out happily, wanting to show them something. He half-expected Kakashi to get up and go to him and leave the cat for later, but Kakashi didn’t look up.
“It feels like a bad omen,” he said. “A death on today of all days.”
“What’s wrong with today?” Iruka asked.
“Tomorrow is the start of Obon. The one time of the year when the spirits of the dead are allowed to return to the land of the living. It just seems…” Kakashi shook his head and finally looked up at Iruka. “Ah, you’re right, I’m overthinking it. Guess I’m a little superstitious.”
“Do you want me to bury the cat?”
Kakashi shook his head. “No, it’s OK. I’ll do it. Go distract Naruto for me, will you? Then it’ll be time to take him back to the orphanage.”
Iruka nodded and stood up. He stepped out of the shade of the trees and into the sunlight, squinting against the glare. When he’d crossed half the lawn, he turned back, and saw Kakashi still kneeling at the base of the tree and digging a grave in the soft earth with his bare hands. The cicadas screamed and the sun beat down, and the dead were laid to rest.
On the first morning of Obon, the graveyard was full of the living. Families clustered around their dead, wearing traditional dress and carrying parasols to keep off the heat of the sun. A strange mixture of moods hung over the graves: young children ran about giggling, full of festival spirit, but the adults were solemn as they knelt in prayer. The contrast made Iruka uneasy.
He and Mizuki stood before the Mitarashi family graves. This responsibility made Iruka uneasy too. He had never met Anko’s parents and felt a fraud as he placed the wooden pail on the ground, the water sloshing almost over the brim, and then scooped out a wooden ladleful and tipped it over the first grave.
“I never saw the point of washing the gravestones,” Mizuki said blandly. “They’re just going to get dirty again.”
He was arranging some flowers haphazardly over the second grave. They’d picked a bundle of wildflowers between them yesterday in the woods, and Iruka felt mildly embarrassed by how shoddy the offering was next to the bright – and expensive – bouquets that decorated the other headstones nearby.
“It’s what you’re meant to do,” he said, ladling another scoop of water onto the grave and splashing the hem of his yukata. “And we promised Anko, so we’ve got to do it right.”
“I didn’t say we shouldn’t, I just think it’s stupid,” Mizuki muttered.
He’d been tired and irritable for most of the summer, and Iruka had got used to seeing the dark bags under his eyes. Since the weather had turned humid, they’d both been sleeping badly. It wasn’t like their apartment had air conditioning, and opening the windows didn’t do a damn thing. Iruka couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt a cool breeze. At night they lay on the floor with damp towels pressed against their necks and foreheads to try and cool down enough to sleep, and during the day they both had training with their genin teams and the kind of summer missions that felt beneath them: trimming the hedges in the clan compounds and scooping fallen blossoms out of their ornamental ponds. Iruka hated D class missions dearly.
A couple of weeks ago he’d been assigned to trim the lawn at the Yamanaka compound and had hoped he’d see Anko, but she hadn’t come outside. He’d asked after her but been told she was busy. With what, Iruka couldn’t imagine. On the few occasions in the past year when he and Mizuki had been allowed to see her, they had never been left alone. There had always been a chaperone, usually the same middle-aged woman, who would insert herself relentlessly into the conversation and head off any questions without letting Anko get a word in edgeways. The last time they’d visited, Mizuki’s patience had snapped and he’d called her a few choice words. They hadn’t been allowed back since.
Mizuki glanced at his watch, and Iruka resisted the urge to ask him the time.
“We’ve got ages yet,” he said. “We won’t be late.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mizuki looked out over the rows of graves, his irritation easing into a contemplative frown. “Do you think she’s looking forward to freedom?”
“How should I know?”
“I mean, if it were me…if I’d done something that terrible, I don’t know if I could ever step out of the house again.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Iruka said sharply.
“Yes it was,” Mizuki said. He didn’t look happy about it but his tone was flat. “She led those kids up into the mountains knowing full well what her sensei would do to them. You know why she couldn’t come here to wash her own parents’ graves.”
Iruka did know, but when Mizuki pointed, he still looked. A few rows away, his gaze caught on another couple of young mourners. The oldest girl was about ten years old, her sister seven or eight. They were both kneeling in front of a gravestone even newer than the kyuubi graves. It was less than a year old, in fact, and was a grave in name only. The bodies of Orochimaru’s victims had never been found.
“Anko killed their brother,” Mizuki said softly. “Not with her own hands, but she killed him and everyone knows it.”
It was a good thing Iruka wasn’t holding the bucket or he’d have tipped the whole thing over Mizuki’s head. As it was, he was holding the empty ladle, which he swung hard into Mizuki’s hip.
“Ow! Hey, I’m just giving you a reality check! That’s what happened and you’re going to have to accept it, Iruka.”
“Screw you,” Iruka said tightly. “If you think she’s such a monster, why are you still her friend, huh? Why are you here at all?”
Mizuki had stepped out of striking range and he kept his gaze warily on Iruka’s ladle, but he shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If I was smart, I’d ditch her, but I don’t want to. Maybe I’m just an idiot.”
Iruka’s grip loosened on the ladle. He looked again at the two girls by the grave. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if either of them was crying. It seemed wrong that they were here alone, but who else did they have? They’d already lost their parents, and now their older brother too. Something should have changed after the second tragedy but nothing had. They were still alone, and if they cried at their brother’s graveside, who was left to care?
Iruka turned away.
“I guess I’m an idiot too,” he said, standing up and picking up the pail. “Come on, let’s go. We can’t leave Anko waiting.”
In the eleven months since Iruka had helped rescue the missing children, the stories about what had happened that night had shapeshifted through several forms. But just as a werewolf in each of his bodies still has two eyes, two ears and a hungry belly, the story retained at its core two unchangeable facts: Iruka was the hero, and Anko the monster. It didn’t matter how many times Iruka told his version of events: that Anko and Hound had been the ones to face Orochimaru at the end and that his trap would not have worked without her help. Somehow, in the retelling, her redemption was undone.
Iruka felt sometimes that only he could see the events with the clarity of daylight. The rest of the village was trapped in night, the only part of the truth that reached them was the reflected light of the moon. In the darkness, they couldn’t see Anko clearly. In the moonlight, she transformed from girl to beast.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that her house arrest in the Yamanaka compound was a fact well known by every child and teenager in the village – or at least the class of children Iruka associated with. Some of them had also been there that night, albeit unconscious, although a couple claimed they’d woken during the fight and seen things that definitely hadn’t happened. Iruka didn’t know if they were dreams or lies, though he suspected.
He certainly couldn’t refute their accounts of how they’d ended up there: how Anko had lured them up the mountain into Orochimaru’s lair. He hadn’t even heard Anko’s version of events because he hadn’t got the chance to ask her. It had been a forbidden subject on the few occasions they’d been allowed to visit, as though the Yamanakas thought that if no one spoke about it, everyone would forget.
The orphans of Konoha had not forgotten. And they knew that today the bogeyman’s apprentice was due to be released.
Iruka and Mizuki had been tasked with walking Anko home. Technically, it was a mission – D class, the two of them requested personally. Iruka wasn’t sure why Inoichi had bothered, though he’d decided it was probably to make the clan look good – giving Anko protection on her way home and being kind to the poor orphan hero boys – and to release the Yamanakas of the responsibility of taking her any further than their own front door. It had been Iruka and Mizuki who had moved all her things to her new apartment the day before, another D class mission with a suspiciously generous payment for a task they would have done for free. Iruka had been half-tempted to turn the money down, but the rent cost more than his pride, and so he’d taken the cash and told himself he’d use a little to buy Anko something nice. That would make it all right.
They walked straight from the cemetery to the eastern clan neighbourhood, still in their yukatas and geta. There was a notable absence of children in the streets. Some of them would be celebrating Obon with their families. Some of the ones without families would be celebrating too – if ‘celebrating’ was the right term when your whole family was dead – but Iruka worried about the others. He knew how to read the streets, and silence was never good.
They reached the Yamanaka compound just as the gate was opening – or perhaps someone had seen them coming up the street – and Inoichi stepped out onto the road. He caught sight of them and smiled, raising a hand, and then turned back and beckoned to someone still standing on the other side of the gate. Iruka forgot to try and play it cool, and he ran the last few yards, arriving just as Anko stepped out.
She’d changed a lot over the past year. Her hair was longer, and she’d taken to wearing it down around her shoulders, the better to duck her head and hide behind. She was also more – more girl, although Iruka tried his best not to notice that, but the main difference wasn’t how she looked, it was how she held herself. When they’d been at school together, she’d always had so much energy. She was the one who called out answers in class, the one who volunteered for everything, the one who bounced on the balls of her feet whenever they had to stand in line. But now that energy was gone. Instead there was a tension in her shoulders and a glassy look in her eyes as though she’d rather be inside her head than out in the world.
The Yamanakas were supposed to have undone the damage Orochimaru had caused. In Iruka’s opinion, she looked worse now than she’d done under his care, and that was fucking saying something.
“Well, I won’t keep you with lengthy goodbyes,” Inoichi said brightly. “Thank you for walking her home, boys. I’m sure you’ve got a lot to catch up on so I’ll let you get going.” He rested a hand on Anko’s shoulder. “It’s been lovely to have you, Anko, and remember that if you need anything, you only have to ask.”
Anko nodded. Inoichi patted her shoulder and then smiled again at Iruka.
“I’ll leave her to you then.”
And that was it. He’d washed his hands of her. He stepped back through the gate and shut it behind him, and without any ceremony at all, Anko was free.
“Well, that’s over,” Mizuki said. “About fucking time they let you out, though you’d think they’d have a bit more class than to dump you out on the street like that.”
Anko shrugged. “They couldn’t wait to be rid of me,” she said. “The feeling’s mutual. Come on, let’s go. I don’t want to stay here another minute.”
She set off down the road, hands jammed into the pockets of her shorts. Iruka and Mizuki fell into step beside her.
“You want to go straight to your new place?” Iruka asked.
“I guess. What’s it like?”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“You kidding? This is the first time I’ve set foot outside that fucking compound since they brought me here.” Anko was gazing around at the street as she spoke. “God, I’d almost forgotten what the outside world looked like.”
“You don’t look very happy to see it,” Mizuki said.
“Happy,” Anko said, as though tasting a word she’d never heard before. “What do I have to be happy about?”
“I don’t know, maybe seeing your two best friends in the world, who went out of their way to visit your parents’ graves this morning and then came to escort your ladyship home.”
Anko’s frown relaxed at that. “Thanks, guys,” she said. “Honestly…” She looked down. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
Mizuki flung an arm around her shoulders just as Iruka patted her on the back, making her stumble under their joint assault.
“Give us some credit,” Iruka said. “You think we’d have hung around all this time waiting just to ditch you the moment you stepped out the door?”
“Plus you know they’re paying us for this, right?” Mizuki said. “Ow!” Iruka had hit him. “What, I’m just saying! We could buy a cake on the way home – make it a real celebration.”
“Ramen,” Anko sighed. “I haven’t had ramen in almost a whole year. Let’s swing by Ichiraku’s – Mizuki, you’re buying.”
“Iruka’s got money too!”
“Yeah, but I like him better than you.”
And just like that, on this sweltering summer’s day, everything felt normal. Anko was back, and though she looked like she hadn’t slept in a month she was more alive than Iruka could remember seeing her for a long, long time. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge Inoichi and his clan.
Of course, it was too good to last.
Anko’s new neighbourhood was in a quiet part of town – a much better part than the district where Iruka and Mizuki lived. Today it was especially quiet, most of the residents down at the cemetery or visiting family for Obon. And so, when a group of kids stepped out of a side street, there was no one to intervene.
There were only four of them, and they were all a year or two younger than Iruka, three boys and a girl. One of the boys was clearly the leader of the group and the bravest. He took a couple of steps closer than the others dared, one eye beetle black and narrowed, the other a glass eye of startling blue that stared blankly past them, accusing in its blindness. Beside him, Iruka felt Anko go taut.
“You’re in our way, Takeo,” Mizuki said.
Takeo ignored him. He was staring at Anko, face pale and lips thin with either fear or rage.
“So it’s true then,” he said. “They’re really letting the monster go.”
Iruka took a step forwards, raising his hands. “She’s not going to bother you,” he said. “Just leave her alone and she’ll leave you alone, OK?”
Takeo’s gaze slid to Iruka, whose stomach squirmed.
“Why are you on her side?” Takeo asked. “How has she got you so fooled? You were there. You were one of us. Both of you,” he added, gesturing to Mizuki. “She was going to let her freaky sensei cut you up like he cut me up but you’re on her side?” The glass eye didn’t follow his gaze, and it seemed to stare relentlessly past Anko, as though there were an extra presence standing behind her.
“Orochimaru brainwashed her,” Mizuki said. “Which you already know because we’ve told you a thousand times. Now she’s been un-brainwashed. You really think they’d let her go if she was some evil mastermind?”
“Oh please, like the hokage and his cronies know shit. They let the kyuubi walk around, and Friend-Killer Kakashi,” Takeo said, but that was all he managed to say because Iruka shoved him so hard that he stumbled and fell on his ass in the gutter. The other kids scuttled back, one glancing down the alleyway as though considering making a break for it.
“Leave Kakashi out of this,” Iruka snarled. “And Anko saved your ass in the end. She almost died to help us free you from Orochimaru.”
Takeo got to his feet. He was shorter than Iruka but he didn’t back down.
“You know what the other kids say about you?” he asked. “They think you’re some great hero. They spread all these stupid rumours about you, like you got accepted into ANBU, or the hokage is going to adopt you, all sorts of bullshit. I might only have one eye left, but I see you, Iruka. You think you’re better than us, but I remember you from school. You were thick as shit then and you’re just as stupid now. She’s playing you and you don’t even see it. She’ll get you next, you wait and see.”
Mizuki started towards them, but Anko got there first. She gently pushed Iruka aside and stared down Takeo, who flinched back but managed to hold his nerve.
“You might have fooled them,” he said, “but the rest of us know what you are.”
Anko held herself rigid. Her cheeks were flushed and her chakra was crackling in the air, that same diseased chakra Orochimaru had filled her with. They hadn’t managed to purge it from her system no matter what they’d tried.
“Leave me alone,” she hissed, “or I’ll rip out your other eye myself.”
Takeo stumbled back, nerve finally shot. “She threatened me!” he said wildly. “You all heard that. You still want to tell me she isn’t a monster?”
Anko glanced past him at the other kids, who all fled as though her gaze alone might be fatal. Takeo yelled after them, but they weren’t coming back, and then Anko advanced on him another step and he turned and ran like a demon was on his heels.
Iruka had frozen when he’d felt Anko’s chakra, but now she reined it back in and he unstuck himself enough to exchange a wide-eyed look with Mizuki. Neither of them spoke. Iruka’s mouth was too dry, even if he’d known what to say, and mentally he was still stuck at what the fuck, which probably wasn’t a bad starting place if he could only force his lips to move.
“That was quite a display,” a smooth male voice said from somewhere above them.
Iruka whirled around to see an ANBU crouched on the edge of a rooftop. He was watching Anko, head tilted to one side, and he didn’t seem overly concerned that she’d just threatened a kid – and not just any kid, but one of Orochimaru’s victims – but you could never truly tell with ANBU.
“You were following us?” Mizuki asked, and the accusation was clear in his voice: and you didn’t stop her?
The ANBU dropped down to street level with catlike grace. Iruka was familiar with most of ANBU, but this one was fairly new and they’d only crossed paths once or twice. He had a distinctive spiral design on his mask and messy blond hair, and it was always difficult to tell but Iruka thought he was one of the younger ANBU, perhaps Kakashi’s age. His code name, bizarrely enough, was Snail.
“Did you think we wouldn’t be keeping tabs on the bogeyman’s apprentice?” Snail asked. On seeing their expressions, he added, “Yeah, we know what the kids call you, Anko. We’ve learnt our lessons about turning a blind eye to what you guys get up to.” He paused. “Insensitive ‘blind eye’ joke unintentional, by the way.”
Anko was watching him uneasily, and Iruka wasn’t sure if she felt bad about what she’d said to Takeo or if she felt bad about being caught.
“I was just messing with him,” she said. “He started it.”
“Did he?” Snail asked. “Or did you when you took him to your sensei?”
This time, neither Iruka nor Mizuki spoke up in Anko’s defence, though she looked to them both as if she expected them to. Or hoped they would.
“What was I supposed to do?” she asked. “Just stand there and take it?”
“You could have done literally anything else and it would have been better.”
Anko frowned. “No,” she said thoughtfully. “I could have hurt him. That would have been much worse.”
There was a silence as she and Snail watched each other. It wasn’t quite confrontational, but there was an edge to it that made Iruka jittery.
“You should go home,” Snail said evenly. “I’ll be sure to keep a look out in case those kids come back.”
“They won’t,” Anko said flatly. “I don’t need your help. Though it would have been useful a year ago – thanks for that.”
She turned and walked away. Iruka was still glued to the spot, unsure if he should follow. He looked to Mizuki, only to see Mizuki similarly waiting to see what he would do.
“You don’t have to go with her if you don’t want to,” Snail said softly.
That seemed to decide things for Mizuki. He fixed a determined look on his face and started after Anko.
“We don’t need your advice,” he shot back over his shoulder. “Come on, Iruka.”
Iruka peeled one foot off the street and took a step. He turned back to Snail, a question poised on his lips.
“I’ll be right outside,” Snail said, and Iruka felt ashamed that he was comforted by that. He nodded, turned, and then jogged to catch up with Mizuki and Anko, heart still beating hard.
As dusk fell, the village lit up with the soft glow of candle flame. Paper lanterns hung from the eaves and framed windowsills and doorsteps; rows of coloured lanterns hung on washing lines strewn across yards, the light taking on the hues of the paper: red, green, pink and gold. The breeze was still little more than the faintest caress, but some of the heat had slipped away when the sun had sunk below the tops of the mountains an hour ago.
By contrast, the Hatake compound was woefully unadorned. The lights from the street didn’t reach the grounds, which were illuminated only by the last memories of daylight and the rising globe of the moon. Iruka sat on the veranda, his legs swinging over the side, and watched the reflection of the stars in the pond halfway down the lawn, and the black scarecrow figures of the trees.
A light switched on in the house behind him, and he half-turned as the back door slid open and Kakashi emerged. When he’d first come to the gate, he’d been wearing his ANBU uniform, fresh off a shift, but now his hair was damp from the shower and there was nothing covering his sharingan eye, although it was closed. He was wearing hakama trousers over a short-sleeved kimono, both made from dark silk that sat stark against Kakashi’s pale skin like ink on snow.
“Found them,” Kakashi said. “Sorry, I should have done this earlier but I’ve been working so much recently I didn’t have time.”
He was carrying a box, which he laid on the veranda next to Iruka, opening it to reveal a pile of red paper lanterns inside, each folded neatly flat, and a pack of tealight candles.
“I’ve never seen you dress formal before,” Iruka said as he scooped up the lanterns and laid them out next to him.
Kakashi tipped the candles onto the veranda and then pushed the box out of the way so he could sit beside Iruka, the lanterns between them.
“Don’t call me out on being overdressed,” Kakashi said. “I don’t know what I’ve done with my yukata. I couldn’t find it and I didn’t want to keep you waiting so I figured this was better than nothing.”
“I’d have been shocked if you came out wearing nothing,” Iruka said automatically, and then fumbled the lantern he was unfolding as his mind attempted to pin a mental image to the joke.
Kakashi snorted. “I’m sure my ancestors would have been shocked too.”
Iruka handed him the first lantern and Kakashi lit a candle with a tiny fire jutsu, a perfect display of chakra control.
“Do you believe they really come back to visit?” Iruka asked. “The dead, I mean.”
“Yes,” Kakashi said simply. “Don’t you?”
Iruka watched the flame as Kakashi carefully fixed the candle into the lantern. It cast a warm red glow over his hands.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I believed in a lot of things last year that turned out not to be true.”
“And you believed in a lot of things that were true,” Kakashi countered. “You believed that there were children in danger and that you could save them. And you did.”
“Yeah but I was totally wrong about the why and the how and basically everything else.”
“Does it matter? You were right about the most important thing.” Kakashi lit another candle, the wax shining in the centre as it started to melt. “We could be wrong about the whys and hows of Obon too. Maybe it isn’t the lanterns that light their way, maybe they’d find us regardless. The end result is the same either way.”
He reached for the next lantern and Iruka handed it over slowly as he thought.
“Do you think my parents will find me?” he blurted out. “I mean, our house got sold after they died, and last year I didn’t even – I mean, I was too…”
“Too sad to take part in the festival?” Kakashi asked softly. “Yeah. I get that. Do you want to light two of the candles just to make sure?”
“Do you think that’ll be enough?”
“It’ll have to be.”
It wasn’t quite the reassurance Iruka had been hoping for, but then why had he expected Kakashi to know about the travels of the dead? Perhaps because of a story he had once heard about Kakashi’s father and his bargain with Death. He had never asked Kakashi whether there was truth in it.
First he concentrated on lighting the candles Kakashi had placed down before him. Fire jutsus were not Iruka’s speciality. Ninjutsu in general wasn’t his strong point; he wasn’t bad but he was firmly middle of the road. His chakra control was pretty good though, so maybe if he was careful…
To his embarrassment, the flame he conjured at the end of his finger was weak and sputtering. He’d been too wary, although better that than careless. If he’d burnt Kakashi’s house to the ground he’d have had to run off and become a missing nin to avoid having to look Kakashi in the eye ever again. Quickly, cupping the tiny flame with his other hand, he lowered it to the candle wick and, to his relief, managed to light first one and then the other. If his parents really were watching, they wouldn’t be impressed.
“Can we hang them up?” he asked, to cover his mortification. At least if he was blushing he could blame it on the red light from the lanterns. Maybe Kakashi hadn’t even noticed.
“I don’t have anything to hang them on,” Kakashi said apologetically. “I thought we could just sit them along the veranda.”
“They’d look better hanging,” Iruka said. This was his chance to redeem himself. He flipped up the hem of his yukata and found the handful of seals he’d sewn into the lining. “I’ve got an idea.”
Kakashi watched in curious bemusement as Iruka also pulled a fountain pen out from his yukata and uncapped it with a click.
“You’re always prepared, huh?”
“Obviously.”
Iruka already had a handful of barrier seals, and he modified them now with a few strokes to fit the purpose he had in mind. Then he gestured for Kakashi to hold up one of the lanterns. Iruka flicked the seal towards it and a spherical barrier materialised around the lantern, the chakra paper stuck to the outside.
“How is this going to help?” Kakashi asked, examining the glowing orb he was now holding.
Iruka grinned. “Give it here and I’ll show you.”
Kakashi passed the barrier across, careful not to jostle the lantern sitting neatly on the bottom.
“I hope these are fire-proof.”
“You think I’m crappy enough to make barriers that burn?” Iruka scoffed. “Please.” He held the barrier up over his own head and then – let go.
Kakashi flinched towards him before his body caught up with his brain. The barrier stayed exactly where Iruka had placed it, floating in the still air.
“Ta da,” Iruka said, taking a bow. “Now we can put them anywhere we want, and as long as there isn’t a breeze they’ll stay put.”
Kakashi stepped around the other lanterns and reached up to prod the floating barrier. It moved a couple of inches under his touch.
“How on earth did you come up with that?” he asked.
“I don’t remember,” Iruka said. “I’ve been using this one for years. It’s great if you fill it with water or paint and then leave it just above a doorway, and if you can rig up the release to a trip wire or a…” He cut himself off, aware that Kakashi was staring at him. “I mean. Not that I do that kind of thing anymore.”
“Sure you don’t,” Kakashi said, but he sounded amused rather than judgemental. “They still tell stories about you in ANBU, you know.”
“Oh my God, still?” Iruka muttered, embarrassed all over again.
“Of course,” Kakashi said, oblivious to the suffering he was causing. “You’re a legend, Iruka. You trapped an ANBU and a sannin in the same night. No one’s ever going to forget your name.”
That brought Iruka up short. After he’d trapped Orochimaru and escaped back to the village, everything had slipped out of his control. He’d expected some kind of recognition, maybe even a reward, especially when he and Mizuki had been summoned to give a mission briefing to the hokage himself, but it became clear very quickly that the adults of Konoha had their own stories they liked to tell. Only the children painted Iruka as the hero; the adults considered him a victim who Kakashi had saved. Iruka would never know exactly how Kakashi had framed the events of that night in his own briefing, although Kakashi had claimed he’d told only the truth.
The truth, Iruka had learnt, was a slippery, mythical thing. He doubted Kakashi’s truth was the same as his. Maybe Kakashi truly considered himself the hero of the tale. Everyone else did, and Iruka couldn’t blame them. After all, Sharingan Kakashi was a legend in the making, and Iruka was merely a boy who built traps. There was nothing to compare.
But his traps had saved Anko’s life and snared Kakashi’s friendship, and that was reward enough.
“Let’s put the lanterns up,” he muttered, ducking around Kakashi to grab the next one.
They floated a row of lanterns along the back of Kakashi’s house, facing out over the lawn. Iruka had to cheat and cling to the wall with chakra to nudge his high enough to be on level with Kakashi’s, but in the end they managed a neat enough line of lanterns suspended below the eaves, flickering quietly as beacons to the dead.
Between them, they built a little makeshift shrine on the veranda beneath the soft red light. Iruka had brought a photograph of his parents, and Kakashi brought out an assortment of items in memory of the dead. There were a lot more than Iruka had expected.
He restrained himself from asking questions as Kakashi lit the incense and put down a small bowl of rice as an offering, and only spoke once Kakashi had prayed, which he did with full seriousness, head bowed and hands clasped together. A pale haze of jasmine-scented smoke hung over the shrine like a perfumed shroud.
“Who are they for?” Iruka asked, gesturing to the mementos.
Kakashi was still kneeling before the shrine in perfect seiza. He hesitated before replying, and Iruka was about to take the question back and accept it as none of his business when Kakashi gestured to a white obi, folded neatly at the front of the shrine.
“This was my mother’s,” he said. “It’s from the kimono she wore to her wedding. My father kept all her things after she died, and they’re still shut away in one of the bedrooms.”
“What was she like?”
“I don’t know. She died when I was still very young. Illness.” He frowned, stroked his finger very lightly over the obi. “I don’t even know what made her sick. If my father told me then I was too young to understand, and I haven’t asked anyone since.”
His fingers moved to a greetings card lying flat beside the incense burner. It was blue and said Congratulations in white swooping letters. Kakashi picked it up and opened it, and Iruka glimpsed a handwritten message inside, scrawled in black ink.
“My sensei gave me this when I became a jounin,” Kakashi said. He traced a thumb over the signature and then closed it and laid it back down. “He was a good man. He was always proud of me, even when he shouldn’t have been.”
There was a framed photograph of Kakashi’s genin team on the shrine as well. Iruka stared at the smiling face of the fourth hokage. He’d seen Minato in person on a handful of occasions, but always from a distance. Yet he had still felt like a large figure in Iruka’s life, his name mentioned constantly and his face staring down at the village from its place on the Hokage Mountain. It should have been a shock when Iruka had first heard of his death, but by the time the news had reached him, he had already been too numb to care.
“Who were your teammates?” Iruka asked, shifting his gaze to the boy and girl in the picture.
Kakashi closed his eye briefly, a furrow between his brows. Then he gestured to a wooden box on the shrine. It was small, about the size of a jewellery box, and carved with intricate seals. When Iruka concentrated, he could feel the chakra powering them, but although he squinted at the markings, between the dim light and the dark wood, he couldn’t read them.
“That’s for Rin,” Kakashi said.
Iruka waited a beat, but Kakashi didn’t expand.
“What’s inside?” he asked.
Kakashi was silent for a long moment.
“Something important,” he said.
Iruka was still staring at the seals, searching for meaning in those carved symbols, each dark with shadow. There was no lock on the box but he thought he could make out some powerful warding symbols around the crease where the lid met the sides. His fingers twitched but he didn’t dare try and touch.
“My other teammate died too,” Kakashi said. “Obito. I don’t have anything of his to put on the shrine but there’s always a part of him with me wherever I go.” Iruka thought he was speaking metaphorically until he pointed to his closed sharingan eye. “He doesn’t need lanterns or sacred objects to guide him to me. I could be lost in the wildest forest or buried in the deepest cave and he would still find his way to my side. He haunts every footprint I leave behind me.”
A puff of warm air breathed over them from the darkness of the grounds, curling the incense smoke up towards the walls of the house like a questing creature seeking a chink it might squirm through. From above came a quiet knock as one of the barriers bumped gently against the wooden beams of the eaves. There was a subtle change in the nature of the darkness, as the air in a room changes when a person enters, and Iruka was certain suddenly that they were no longer alone.
He pointed to the last object on the shrine, a short tanto sword, its blade unsheathed and glittering red under the candle flame.
“Was that your dad’s?”
Kakashi was still sitting in seiza, face so smooth it could have been carved from stone. Perhaps there was some expression beneath the mask, but if so then it didn’t reach his eyes, or perhaps in the dim light Iruka missed whatever might have been revealed through that dark gaze in daylight.
“Yes,” Kakashi said. “It was my father’s sword. The same one he stuck through his stomach.”
Iruka’s breath caught. The incense kept trailing languid plumes of smoke through the air, and the shadows kept flickering in the light of the lanterns, but nothing else moved. Not Kakashi, not him, not the silent dead who watched them from just out of sight.
Then Kakashi turned to him, flexing his feet, which must be full of pins and needles after all that kneeling.
“I’m sorry, that was morbid,” he said. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“It’s OK,” Iruka said. It was all he could think to say. There was probably something else he should offer – an apology, a reassurance – but the right words were out of reach. He ought to know what people needed to hear when everyone they cared for was dead, but he didn’t. As far as he could remember, no one had ever said anything that had made him miss his parents any less.
So instead he said something else. It was the truest thing he knew in that moment, and if he couldn’t give comfort then perhaps the truth was the second best thing.
“They’re here,” he whispered. “I can feel them watching.”
Kakashi didn’t turn to stare into the darkness. He kept it at his back, kept his gaze on the objects that had outlived their owners.
“I feel them too,” he said.
