Greywater

by speckledsplash

Summary:

The one where the protagonist accidentally becomes the plumber on speed dial for the elite shinobi of Konoha.

It's really not his fault. Really.

Chapter 1

Notes:

if you are an ardent plumbing enthusiast i apologize for any errors in this

as far as general warnings go, note child labor, gratuitous underage smoking, and generic konoha nonsense. watch out for specific tags that'll appear in chapter notes as needed as we go along

Yukiya only realized that it was an interrogation when he was halfway home from the Tower.

Perhaps this is being hyperbolic. It’s certainly not like anyone told him he was being formally questioned. In retrospect, that was probably the point. Which, when you think about it, is a good sign. Maybe.

He wasn’t disappeared from the streets or made an example of, which is—yes, good, probably. And they didn’t ask about his movies in specific, technically.

“The Tower?” Shizue says. She tends to stare for too long. Her eyes are a particularly acidic shade of yellow, so it’s always a little pointy. “What for?”

Yukiya realized he was being interrogated because he was halfway home from the Tower and remembered that he wasn’t going home since he was meeting with Shizue that afternoon. And he started thinking about how he was going to explain to Shizue the errand that Urata put on him that morning, and upon mulling over the details, was struck by that odd, finicky itch that made him stop and say huh. Wait. Weird?

He scratches his cheek and glances to the side. They go to this teahouse frequently enough, and the familiarity of its cherry wood tables and muted wall decor smooths out some edges.

“Urata sent me over.” He says, “I needed to run over some paperwork about zoning protocols for the upcoming project by the river district.”

It’s not unusual within itself. Urata sends him on plenty of odd jobs even if Yukiya’s no longer an apprentice, official, and especially no longer an “apprentice,” six years old, whose work solely consists of menial errands.

And besides, there’s always a lot of paperwork to be done these days with all the infrastructure still being rebuilt, even closer to two years later than not. Coordinating these things takes time. Paperwork takes time. Paperwork to apply for things and paperwork to reference those applications or supplement those applications and paperwork that has to get signed by them and then back to Urata for review and then back to them or her or him for approval and then a three-month waiting period and then back to the Tower because everything is shinobi business, really, even the inconsequential stuff—

None of his movies are on any official ban lists, even if the Ame ones might be skirting some lines. And besides, they eased up on enforcing some of those when the Lord Fourth came into power.

The Lord Fourth, who is no longer in power. As of closer to two years than not. Hmm.

Shizue says, “Okay. And you had to talk to someone?”

He nods.

“About zoning protocols?”

“Yes.” Well. “No. I don’t know about zoning protocols.” Well. “It’s not my jurisdiction,” he revises. “But they had questions.”

Shizue leans forward. She blinks. “About zoning protocols.”

“We talked,” he says, hands in his lap, “about many mundane things.”

“Ah,” says Shizue. She takes a sip from her cup.

The woman that he met with at one of the Tower’s offices was rather nice. Maybe that was the tip-off. Most shinobi are a little rickety in a way that’s noticeable—especially the younger ones, and especially in coming out of the war. But she just seemed to be a benign desk employee interested in some small talk while someone else took his paperwork to be stamped.

“It was a nice conversation, I think,” Yukiya says. “Quaint? It was quaint. I think it went fine, really. They actually stamped everything correctly. And without a long wait.” Actually, that might be the most damning part of it all. He adds, for himself more than for her, “It was a short, simple conversation.”

Small talk about the weather, about his work, about their work, about his family, about Urata, about his hobbies. Walking, maybe? I do enjoy the weather. I like to—well, you know, see what films are coming out recently, yes. They’re still quite expensive, you know!

Nothing incriminating on the surface, maybe. Just. Weird.

She asks, “Why?”

He says, “Maybe she’s just chatty. Or something in the air.”

Shizue leans back and stares at him. She gnaws on one of the manjuu that they ordered. Her eyes rove over his shoulder, then back to his face.

“Your clients?” she says, still chewing.

He shifts. “Yes…?”

“You’re sure it’s nothing about them?”

“About—what? Who?”

Her tone is flat. “One of them. I don’t know.”

“No. They didn’t even ask—she just asked about some of the work I do. No.” He glances away again. He glances back. “But why would you say that?”

She just looks at him. He remembers avoiding her because of those eyes back when they first met. Things didn’t always make too much sense back then. They don’t really now, either, he guesses—there are still always funny things to latch onto.

Yukiya blurts out, “I mean, I’m probably just imagining things, right?” It was probably just a nice conversation to pass the time. Probably.

Shizue considers him for another moment. “It’s probably fine,” is what she finally says. “It was either just a conversation or it wasn’t, and if it wasn’t, I’m sure you’ll find out about it eventually.”

It doesn’t help that she’s always had a rather macabre way of speaking. Even back when they were children in school. They’re still technically children, even if they’re recognized as adults in the eyes of Konoha after graduating from their apprenticeships.

To be fair, she probably does know better than him. She’ll ultimately always know more about actual shinobi stuff than he will. It’s what gives her that morbid edge, maybe. That’s the thing with shinobi or the shinobi-adjacent: they can go from talking about the weather to dropping a statistic about heart failure or how much force you need to use to take someone’s eye out with a fingernail in a second.

It’s a bit sad that all of that is still better than when they don’t say anything at all. Even if Shizue’s shinobi relatives are more distant blood than not, he wonders if the staring thing is genetic.

“Yes,” Yukiya says. He nods. He grabs his own neglected cup. “It’s probably fine.”

As far as he can tell, he hasn’t done anything to warrant such a conversation if it really was more than a conversation. Yukiya is a good worker, a good civilian, a good neighbor. He does his job, he doesn’t ask too many questions, he keeps to his circle.

“Yes,” Shizue says.

“Yes,” Yukiya says.

“Watch anything new, recently?” Shizue says.

Yukiya inhales tea directly into his lungs.

 

He chalks it up to thinking that maybe he’s just encountered a new breed of shinobi who are only able to converse in such a way that’s almost systematically polite, and it is likely due to this false conclusion that doom comes to him in the shape of a bird.

And his sister. This should always be expected, perhaps.

Yukiya is home in the afternoon later that week on a rare day off, minding his own business. The days following that odd conversation at the Tower had been as normal as they could be. The emergency with the pipe bursting at the print shop was kind of a mess and a half, but he got the job done and the owner seemed less likely to strangle him by the time he was finished. Small victories.

He doesn’t get much time to himself, so he likes to savor it when he can. And it’s upon that exact moment of savoring that the balcony door slams open with a ricocheting bang behind him.

Yukiya startles. The cigarette fumbles out from his grasp, and he watches it plop next to some trash in the alley below.

He’s pretty sure this whole block of housing is breaking a good handful of building codes—well, he knows that, actually—but there’s this whole issue with certain blocks getting grandfathered into new clauses and the village being generally apathetic about infrastructure when there are (allegedly) more pressing concerns on the docket.

“What the hell?” Yukiya says, whipping around.

Nao stares down at him. Then she points. “Does mother know about this?” she says.

“No,” Yukiya automatically says. And then he says, “I mean, what do you mean?”

“You—” (she’s still pointing) “—said you’d stop with the smoking.”

“I said something—vaguely like that.” And then he says, “I didn’t put it into writing.” Nor was it stamped with approval. “What is it?”

Nao is just a couple of years older than him. She doesn’t act like it. Well, maybe she does act like she’s seventeen. “I’m going to remember this. There’s a bird here for you.”

Yukiya says, “A bird?”

“A bird,” she says.

And in that moment, a bird lands on the balcony railing.

He knows this bird. No he doesn’t. He knows the shape and the color of the bird because he’s seen them flying around the village before. He’s even seen them deliver messages at the yard. To Urata, usually.

He’s not Urata. Yukiya has never received a message from one of the Tower’s birds directly himself and some part of him shrivels up then and there.

“Oh.” Nao squints. “I told it to wait. It wouldn’t let me take the message for you. Why is there a bird here for you?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, and that’s not a lie.

The bird seems to be annoyed.

Nao seems to be annoyed. She says, “Well?”

Yukiya takes the little message that the little annoyed bird is carrying on its ankle. It’s a rolled-up sheet of thin parchment. The message is curt and reveals very little, other than that an audience has been requested of him at the Tower tomorrow afternoon.

The bird waits. Its talons scrape against the railing.

“Oh. Thanks?” Yukiya says, and then it flies off.

Nao squats and cranes her neck over his shoulder to read the missive. Then she says, “Are you in trouble?”

I have no idea. I had an oddly personal conversation at the Tower this week and I wrote it off as nothing and I went and double-checked and none of my movies are actual contraband so all of this should be fine.

“No,” is what Yukiya says, because he’d never say that to Nao of all people.

He can see her index finger preparing to get into position. “This is because of your work, isn’t it. All of those favors.” She says it like it’s a dirty word.

“No,” he says.

“I knew it. I totally knew it. I knew you were still doing those.” She stands and points once more. “I’m telling Mom,” she says, and Yukiya looks down at his fallen cigarette and laments.

Maybe everything is still fine. Like he said, Urata gets missives. That’s mostly because he has to deal with wading through the messy, murky web of politics that makes all of their lives harder, but Yukiya is qualified enough on his own that maybe this makes sense in some way.

It’s totally fine, and he totally knows this, and that’s why he scrambles to put his shoes on and head over to the tailor where Shizue’s uncle works (after properly disposing of that cigarette from the alley), because Yukiya knows it’s all good, and he doesn’t need his friend to reaffirm that for him.

“Huh,” said friend says, looking uncharacteristically thrown. She’s just come from dying something; he knows because of the apron and the way that the fumes are wafting outside.

He’s holding the parchment by its edges out in front of him so that she can see how fine it is. “It’s probably just a normal work thing, yeah?”

“It came to your house?”

“Yes.”

They’re standing outside. Technically Yukiya’s standing outside, while Shizue’s kneeling on the engawa. Her hair’s pinned back, but a hand goes to brush invisible strands behind her ear out of habit.

Shizue says, “That’s… odd.”

He shoves the paper into his pocket. “You’re the one who said I’ll find out. Soon enough, you said.”

“Eventually, I said. You’re sure you didn’t do anything?”

“What? No! You know me,” he says, and he’s pointing, now, too. Maybe shinobi bloodlines stare and civilian bloodlines point. “What could I have done?”

She considers this. “I guess that makes it weirder.”

At that moment, someone calls her name from inside. Shizue casts a glance over her shoulder, expression pinched. She doesn’t get along well with some of the junior embroiders here. They spent most of the rest of their conversation at the teahouse talking about how grating her coworker Kaori’s been about her recent engagement.

“It’s probably fine?” Shizue tells him, “You should go before my uncle comes around. Talk to me afterward tomorrow, okay?”

She slides the door shut behind her.

The door reopens.

Shizue says, “If you can, I guess.”

She shuts it once more.

Yukiya presses his fingers against his cheeks and pulls.

 

Hello, distinguished member of our shinobi forces, he will say to whoever they inevitably lead him to. My name is Imai Yukiya, and I am a dedicated trade worker in this humble village. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.

The interior design of the main Tower is outdated. It’s probably a safety measure or something; any new upgrade or extension is running the risk of some nefarious contractor being brought in and sabotaging the whole building.

Besides, there’s probably loads of stuff that Yukiya can’t see that maybe fits the bill for being new and shiny. Hidden tunnels, weird shinobi seals, the like. He probably shouldn’t be thinking about state secrets right now.

I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that particular director from Ame associated with a political organization that’s blacklisted from the Land of Fire? And I would tell you, well—sort of. Ame directors usually go under stage names, so there’s really no telling. In fact, there’s a theory that this particular director is a bunch of different people under one name! Isn’t that neat?

The desk clerk (wearing a forehead protector) who’s guiding him through the hallways is not the same person whom he had that original conversation with. This one has an arm in a sling and is wearing chunky glasses. Yukiya’s business with the Tower is usually only limited to the first couple of floors; the clerk’s led him up at least three flights of stairs so far, however, and has only told him that he’ll be meeting with someone to talk about work.

(He went by the yard that morning to ask Urata about it, but he wasn’t in. His secretary, Nana, just shrugged when Yukiya asked if she knew where he was.)

I understand if my ownership of these movies is potentially considered dubious in the eyes of our beautiful Konohagakure, but I think there is a lot to be learned from film as a whole. Not to imply that I know better than you, or anything.

“Just about work?” Yukiya asks, eyes catching on painted scrolls on the wall. The ink forms nebulous shapes and blobs before his eyes.

The man he’s walking with grunts in response.

After several more flights of stairs that leave his calves burning, they’ve reached some sort of a waiting area. There’s another desk clerk, wearing another forehead protector. She looks a little older. She smiles at the man who’s walked him up here and nods.

Actually, I don’t even remember where I got this movie from! I didn’t even know it potentially was a problem until just now. Isn’t that crazy and incidental? Monumentally and fragrantly incidental.

“Alright.” The man nods to a chair. “You can wait there in the meantime. You’ll meet with Hokage-sama soon.”

Yukiya goes and sits down. It’s actually a somewhat comfortable chair. Stellar joinery, Nao would say, before scolding him for sitting on it.

And then he says, “Who?”

The man sends him an unimpressed look.

“I know who,” Yukiya says, shooting up in his comfortable chair. “Who that is. But—what?”

“Something for work. I don’t know,” is all the man says before he leaves.

The woman behind the desk smiles at him and says, “There’s lemon water if you’d like.”

In the corner of the room, a water cooler gurgles.

 

Yukiya’s seen the Hokage before, of course. He was there when they announced the treatise ending the Third War, and the day of the Lord Fourth’s inauguration, and the Third’s re-inauguration and the village services for everyone who died during the Kyuubi attack.

But seeing the Hokage meant just that: Yukiya lost in a crowd of other villagers, and the Hokage standing so far away that he was more of a figure to make out than a person. Not like now, sitting before him at his own desk.

Yukiya is standing. He imagines he’s supposed to keep standing. There are chairs in here too, but they’re pressed up against the wall, and he thinks it would be rude to drag one over to sit in. So he’s standing and his arms are neatly at his side and he’s replaying all of the manner rules his mother drilled into him as a child and is debating if those really count with the military leader of your village who is sitting in front of you.

“Imai, yes?”

“Yes. That is me,” Yukiya confirms. A pause. He adds, “Hokage-sama.”

The Lord Third looks even older up close. He’s got liver spots and wrinkles and reminds Yukiya of the old men who smoke outside of the yard and try to swindle him out of his change in a game of cards. This is probably a disrespectful comparison.

“I apologize,” the old man in front of him says, “for not being the most forthcoming about your being here. I promise it’s for good reason.”

“I completely understand,” Yukiya says. “No need to apologize. Hokage-sama.”

The Lord Third lets out a huff of air. “I wanted to talk to you about your work today. I understand you’ve been under Urata-san’s care since you were young?”

Yukiya nods. “Since I was six. Hokage-sama.”

“Yes, quite young,” the Lord Third says. His voice has just as much gravel as those smoking old men, too.

“Oh. Well.” Yukiya glances at the walls. More wall art. Similar to what was outside. Maybe it’s just how the Lord Third likes to decorate the place. “I was very lucky. Hokage-sama,” he says, feeling rather regretful the moment it leaves his mouth.

For families like Yukiya’s, claiming an apprenticeship under an official trade was one of the few ways to nebulously provide another ring of protection from potential conscription during the war. There’s a whole generation of them—teenagers? Kids? Half-adults?—running around the village with full, adult jobs that make that weird little part of his brain itch.

(He’s not sure if anything could really protect you from the village’s desires, to be frank—but the apprenticeship bumps you down on any potential list to pull from. Besides: the politics between some of the trade groups and the government are a big old tangled mess that no one likes to deal with if they can help it.

And they did end up needing actual, training apprentices as the war progressed—no matter how young—what with how many skilled civilians were getting pushed into manufacturing roles. There was this one unlucky kid his age from the neighborhood who got looped into welding at age five only to still be sent out to a shinobi outpost for some reason or another a few years later.

That’s what he heard, at least. It was all technically classified.)

Yukiya was lucky. But perhaps the implied I was lucky that I was not put under your care is majorly offensive. Maybe.

The Lord Third only hums. This is good. Maybe. He has a pipe that he takes a distinguished puff out of. It doesn’t help with the earlier comparison. “Do you enjoy your work, Imai?” he asks.

“I—do,” Yukiya says. Keeping the hands at the sides? Is that a good move? “I like to be of help.” He adds, “Hokage-sama.”

Plumbing certainly wasn’t his ideal choice, but Urata’s father knew Yukiya’s father’s father, and apprenticeship spots were few and far between, and so he got stuck with pipes while his older sister continued in the family tradition of furniture building.

“It’s good to enjoy the things we do.” The Lord Third says, “I’ve heard of all of your good work.”

What a normal thing to say.

Yukiya says, “Ah. Yes?”

“It sounds as if you’ve been a great asset to our village.”

“Ah. Yes?”

Another huff. “I suppose I’m still not being forthright.” The Lord Third says, “We’re in need of someone to be on call to cover some of the utilities of our jounin housing.”

And Yukiya says Ah, Yes? except he doesn’t, because his mouth says, “Hokage-sama…?”

“The expectation is that you’d be on call for the buildings during working hours, though, as I’m told, there aren’t often issues that need to be tended to. You’d be contracted directly through the village itself, which would require more extensive onboarding, though I believe you’re generally familiar with what that entails.”

With slow, intentional movements, the Lord Third pulls out a scroll from somewhere in his desk. He holds it out in front of him. Yukiya stares at it. The Lord Third clears his throat. Yukiya walks close enough to see the freckles around his eyes and could probably touch his hand as he takes the scroll if he wants to. He doesn’t want to.

What, Yukiya should say.

The Lord Third says, “Do you have any questions?”

What? What? Yukiya backs up, his grip on the scroll an anchor to the world around him. “I don’t really have experience working with—jounin,” he finishes, cadence jerking. “Hokage-sama.”

“You’ve come highly recommended for the job.” Another puff. “You might even recognize some who’d you be servicing. You’ve been in the field for what—a decade or so?”

“Almost. Next year,” Yukiya says. The anniversary of his apprenticeship starting is just a couple of months after his sixteenth birthday. “Hokage-sama.”

“Well, you may think on it.” The Lord Third smiles. It looks like a nice enough smile. “You’re allowed to turn this offer down, Imai. Though I do think this would be a great opportunity for the two of us.”

The two us, says the leader of his village, in his office.

Yukiya says, “I will keep that in mind. Thank you for—presenting this opportunity. Yes. Thank you. Hokage-sama.”

There is a moment of silence.

“The lemon water your establishment provides is quite refreshing and quenching,” Yukiya says, at the exact time that he thinks, oh man, was that like, totally poisoned? Shizue will kill him for drinking that lemon water. “Hokage-sama.”

The Lord Third smiles behind his pipe. “So I’ve heard. You’re dismissed, Imai. You’ll be sent another missive by the end of the week with more details.”

Yukiya nods. Should he salute? No—abort, abort. He settles with a stiff bow and somehow makes it out the door. He’s probably imagining the eyes on his back as he leaves. Maybe they’re from the paintings. What a terrible thought.

The woman sitting at the desk outside of the Lord Third’s office gives him directions for his way out. And then she asks, “Are you alright, dear? You look a little peaky.” And, “There’s more water—”

“I am quite quenched. And refreshed, yes,” Yukiya says. “But thank you for your kind offer. I am going to leave now if that is—if that pleases the court.”

She gives a rather bemused smile, but she says. “It does. Just make sure you hang a right after two sets of stairs.”

He nods. He mostly remembers how he got up here, but Yukiya keeps to exactly the path she’s told him about, out of fear that anyone would think him to be wandering.

 

Notes:

the gorillaz’s “19-2000” is a very yukiya song to me

Chapter 2

Accompanied by a layer of sweat, grime, and a vengeful Konohagakure sun, the conversation goes something like this:

“Shit,” is what Urata says, running a hand over his bald, bald head. He’s not looking at Yukiya. “I didn’t mention that?”

Metallic chatter and clangs clamor around them. “No,” is what Yukiya says. “How long did you know?”

“Got told about it a few days ago, maybe? Nana read me this message that they sent over on how they were interested in recruiting you for service work or something. Said something about a meeting.”

“Yes,” Yukiya says. “I just had that. Today. Earlier today.”

He’s still not looking at Yukiya. “Oh, really? Yeah, totally thought I had mentioned it.”

“You didn’t,” Yukiya says.

Neither did his secretary, Nana. To be fair, he had only asked her where Uruata was, and not if she knew anything about—well, anything. He doesn’t think she hates him so much as she’s just shockingly literal about everything.

Urata says, “Well. My bad. What can you do.”

A lot. Quite literally. You are my boss.

To a band of workers, Urata bites out: “Hey—who the fuck taught you how to handle copper?”

It figures that Yukiya’s only able to track down Urata at one of his many work sites after the fact. He came here straight from the Tower. Well. He came here after going to two other work sites straight from the Tower. He really is sweaty.

Urata’s not a bad guy, but he’s not a great guy, either. He gets the job done. He has two ex-wives and a penchant for sake that leaves a permanent, droopy flush to his face. Yukiya owes a many great things to Urata for taking him under his wing, as everyone seems to owe someone something with how quickly the air changes around here.

“Well. It go well?” Urata asks, even if his attention is still on those workers.

I am alive. I haven’t mentioned my movies at work all that much, right? Is there something wrong with you?

“It went okay,” Yukiya says, shifting back and forth. “About their offer—”

Urata waves him off. “Nana has the details for it.”

Yukiya says, “But—”

Urata eyes him, finally. “If you’re off today, you got a minute to get off my site until you’re not anymore.” Then: “I’m serious, you limpdicks.”

He wavers for a second but thinks better of it. Urata has never been one that Yukiya can negotiate with. A large part of this is due to Urata himself—Urata, callous, and Urata, unflinching, and Urata, bald—but some restless, agitated part of his gut that paces back and forth and flushes on the back of the neck wonders if that’s really it.

Urata’s got broad shoulders that still dwarf his own, even now. Yukiya might be taller than when he was six, but it doesn’t keep him from wanting to duck his head under his attention.

He’s a good ten meters away when Urata calls out from behind him:

“I don’t think I need to remind you whose name you represent.”

And then:

“You fuckin’ idiots—”

 

He should probably backtrack a little.

See, Yukiya might’ve spent the first bit of his apprenticeship bouncing between school and odd jobs for the yard, but they did put him to actual work sooner rather than later.

The lines between public construction and domestic service work for most trade groups in the village have always been blurry, largely due to the economy constantly phasing in and out of wartime. In the heat of the war, with a good chunk of the senior plumbers being funneled into who knows what, someone had to pick up some of the less exciting jobs around the village.

It’s not like he’s complaining. Like he said—he was lucky. And being lucky meant clearing drains and unclogging toilets and repairing shitty broken lines for crabby restaurant owners. The benefit of starting out so young was that he could easily fit into cramped spaces. No problem at all.

It also meant that at around age nine, when someone needed to fill in for service work at some of the subsidized shinobi housing, Yukiya was the one to pull the luckiest unlucky straw.

He stands on a bridge over an offshoot of the Naka. It’s on a path shoved between a relatively docile park and some sort of training ground. It is additionally a fair distance away from Urata’s worksite upstream.

The railing feels sturdy enough beneath his hands. His father used to get rather anal about wood types. A good oak, he can hear him say. He still mostly remembers his voice, he thinks.

It was always mostly with genin. That was all he was technically qualified for. There’s this whole thing with working with shinobi in any official capacity that involves—as a surprise no one—loads upon loads of paperwork. Most of the time his clients weren’t all that much older than him, with civilian backgrounds to boot. Not that it appeased his parents much.

There were maybe a few chuunin thrown in there, maybe, but mostly because they were genin he had once helped who personally sought him out for some favors later on. And by sought him out, he means literally sought him out on the street while he was running errands. Or the occasional sticky note on his window. Or the one time when he found a slip of paper conspicuously placed inside one of his folders at the yard asking for his assistance with a leaky sink.

So just those. And maybe Shizue’s cousin’s friend’s teammate who she put him in touch with. And that teammate’s friend, and that friend’s cousin, but that’s really it.

(She always calls it the shinobi vouch economy. He can’t pretend like it doesn’t exist—the only way any of the trade groups catch a whiff of anything happening on clan grounds is through high recommendation—but he’s a little disgruntled in accepting it as truth when he’s at its behest.)

They’re just favors. And they usually compensate him, too, and he has to give a cut of that compensation to Urata because according to Urata the only reason he has the ability to take on those favors in the first place is because of the skills he imparted upon Yukiya when he was snot-nosed and sniveling.

Not that that’s changed much, is what Urata usually says after that, and Yukiya says Ha Ha.

Lots of people have side gigs around here. So it’s fine, really.

What Yukiya is saying is that despite what everyone thinks, he doesn’t really know any shinobi despite his work, let alone to warrant his meeting with the literal Hokage. They phased him out of officially doing service work for that block of genin housing after he graduated from his apprenticeship a couple of years ago, and he really only does the occasional favor every now and then. Like, maybe a few a month. Maybe. Once a week. Maybe.

Shizue is going to look at him very hard for this.

What, he thinks, hunching over the railing to watch a spindly little fish move downstream, am I going to do?

And the fish says: “My most YOUTHFUL and HANDY friend!”

Heart beating against his ribs and his knee smarting from where it jerked against the railing, Yukiya turns, holds up a hand to shield his eyes, and says, “Oh. Hey, Gai.”

Clad in his usual attire and arms thrown above his head in a pose, Gai says, “I was out doing 500 laps around the village when I happened upon a fellow diligent burning flame of Konoha enjoying the beautiful weather this day offered.” He transitions into another pose. “Tell me, my friend, what brings you out to this park today?”

He lowers his hand. The eyes get acclimated to Gai’s… everything after a few seconds. “Just enjoying the view,” he says.

“And a beautiful view it is!” A thumbs-up. Yukiya remembers Gai’s voice when it was squeaky and malformed. It still cracks occasionally. “And yet I can’t help but notice my friend to be lost in thought about something!”

Yukiya says, “Oh. Just work stuff.”

Gai doesn’t count, Yukiya thinks. Not really. He was never technically a client, so much as they kept running into each other around the genin blocks, even though the guy totally didn’t live there. A combination of visiting a teammate and severe working out around the village, from what Yukiya gathers.

Or: fate! Kismet! Destiny formed by our two, youthful hands! as a prepubescent version of Gai once said while Yukiya was hanging precariously from the side of an apartment building to check out some pipes. Gai stood sideways upon said building. Next to him. Cool, Yukiya had said. Yes. Very.

There’s maybe the one time that he inspected the lines at Gai's place, but that was only because Gai’s father had recently died and Yukiya felt bad. And the lines were fine, anyway. Most of their interactions are confined to encounters such as this one; besides, Gai, to his knowledge, does this to a fair amount of people. It’s not like they really know each other.

He’s in the midst of a tangent about how many sit-ups he needs to do before sunset. Gai, that is. He’s entered a third pose.

“—but I aspire to be as selfless and dutiful in my work as you, my friend!”

And Yukiya says, “It’s really nothing. It’s nothing at all.” He looks out at the river. That fish from before is gone. “I don’t really think it’s anything, really. Not anything special or that warrants like, attention. Egregious attention.” Pointed attention. “Attention.”

His cigarettes are heavy in his pocket—he’s able to push back temptation because of the one time Gai found him in the act and gave him a lengthy lecture about the importance of lung health. He was eleven then, maybe? Gai's a couple of years older than him, he's pretty sure. The haircut makes it kind of hard to tell. 

A calloused hand is placed on his shoulder. Yukiya nearly folds over with its force.

“NONSENSE,” Gai says. He looks like he’s crying a little. “What a bright flame you are within this village! What would bring you to say such a thing!?”

“Citrus, I guess,” Yukiya says.

Gai blinks. “Citrus?”

“I guess. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, lemons—but citrus.” He says, “It’s probably citrus in general.”

“I see.” Nodding severely, Gai asks, “Are you allergic?”

Yukiya says, “You know, I’ve never thought about it.”

What’s easy about Gai is that he mostly provides his own out during conversation if you just let him talk for long enough. The fact that he now seems to be giving Yukiya a pep-talk about dietary accommodations leaves much to be desired,but judging by how he’s looping back around to his sit-ups, he’ll probably sprint away soon enough.

You’re allowed to say no, Imai. Yes: it’s hard to imagine that the Lord Third is supposed to be the most powerful shinobi in the village. He almost thinks about asking—wondering—inquiring—you’d know about this, wouldn’t you?—but he stops himself. Genial as Gai may be, the light still catches on the metal band wrapped around his waist.

“—no, six hundred! With resistance! Yes! My core burns with brilliant intensity in honor of your dietary restriction!”

He rests his forehead against the railing.

 

The packet they hand over is rather hefty, weight betraying its benign, manila appearance. He has to fill most of it out in-house, due to sensitive information and confidential information and information that goes in through one ear and out the other. There’s a reason he likes films over books. In his defense, his schooling got cut rather short.

Yukiya has to imagine that in the grand scheme of things, his supposed clearance level is pretty abysmal. It’s not actually like he has the right to know things as much as he has the right to sign off his ability to know things. The documents for working in genin housing are nothing compared to jounin-level non-disclosure agreements.

There’s yet another unfamiliar desk worker waiting on him. He doesn’t think he’s ever encountered the same person twice here. She looks around his age, actually, with crutches and a broken leg and a forehand protector. He imagines she must have been pulled into the war unless she only recently just graduated, though she seems a little old for that.

He feels his theory confirmed when—after literal hours of reading and scribbling and rereading—he hands over all of his documents and she just stares at him.

“Don’t make it easy, huh,” he says, clenching and unclenching the strained muscles of his hand.

She stares.

“Ha ha,” Yukiya says. “Is that all?”

“Yeah,” she says. She pulls out another packet. “There’s a pamphlet and some training materials in here for you to go over. You can take them home.”

“I remember those from before. When I did this before at the other housing. Genin housing.” He always feels clumsy using shinobi jargon in front of a shinobi.

She ignores him, saying, “They’ll want proof that you’ve read this before the contract officially starts.”

The transition into doing service work for the jounin housing should be… fine, mostly. Urata’s nothing if not efficient. Osuke, an apprentice with a bad mustache and penchant for incorrect pipe orientation, has been itching to get started on his own work and will be shouldering a lot of what Yukiya’s leaving behind.

He’ll either get his jobs for the day at the yard, like usual, supposedly, or he’ll just get missives directly. Bird missives.

“I won’t always be home?” he says. “To receive them.”

“Don’t worry,” the office worker says. “They’ll find you.”

“Oh. Okay,” he says. He’s not worrying at all.

The housing is technically leased through the village itself, though there’s a couple of property managers out there somewhere who he’s yet to speak with. That’s probably his next step. That, and to scope out the building. He’s getting paid a flat sum no matter how much he ends up working in a day, and a somewhat decent one at that.

Perhaps on paper, it’s not a bad gig. Perhaps he’s been waterboarded by too much paper. Perhaps that’s another bad comparison.

His mother is home when he gets back. She’s furiously scrawling away in one of her many ledgers at the table. Her own older sister was the one who picked up the family trade while she stuck to bookkeeping. You would think it could be something they’d bond over.

“I’m back,” he says.

Scritch. She says, “You were gone for a while.”

“Lots of things to sign. A lot of it’s redundant, too.” Mouth moving on its own, he says, “You wouldn’t believe it.”

Confirmation of his residence, his name, his identity, those many NDAS, waivers upon waivers. In case of an accident, the village of Konohagakure has the right to contest any bodily, mental, financial, or spiritual damage, including damage to property, farmland, body, limbs, or pets. For a definition of pets, see document 5.4—

Those are a lot more intense at the jounin-level, too.

“And that?” she says.

He glances down at the packet. “Just training stuff.”

She sighs.

“It’ll pay well,” he says. “Just as much with way less hours.” Probably. How badly could elite shinobi bang up their plumbing? Don’t answer that.

She puts down her pen. His mother says, “I told you.”

He says, “It’s not—”

“I told you,” she says, “to be smart. I told you to do only what’s asked of you and nothing more.” Looking at him in the face, she says, “I told you to stay away from that girl.”

Yukiya likes to linger in the doorway during these conversations. It makes for an easy out. He swallows, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the packet’s smooth top page. “It’s not like—she doesn’t have anything to do about this. It’s just my job.”

His mother says, “No.” His mother says, “I told you it would lead to nothing but trouble. With everything that’s happened, I thought that you finally would know better.”

What fumbles out of his mouth is, “She lost people, too.”

Most people did in one way or another, whether in the immediate destruction or the rifts it left in its wake. A tailed beast can do untold damage in just a handful of minutes.

It is the wrong thing to focus on. His mother’s scowl tightens. “And who helped with those people, do you think?”

He cannot hide a wince. Shizue might only be a member of a tangential, largely civilian branch under the umbrella of the Aburame—not even sharing the same family name—but they have a reputation for being rather insular despite their sprawling size for a reason. Her aunt was badly injured after being trapped beneath rubble; he knows from passing conversation that her access to continuous treatment is a guaranteed thing.

(She seems rather dubious about all of this too. Saying that would only piss his mother off further, he imagines.

Yes—massaging her own hands and carrying the remnants of the pointed, clinical scent of fabric dye, Shizue, sitting across the table from him, had simply said, “Your luck persists.”)

He tries to find his words and comes up short. That’s not fair. Or it’s not like I had a choice.

Or, worst of all, you wouldn’t get it.

“I told you,” is what his mother says. “I told you.”

It’s a familiar crossroads for the two of them to meet at. His mother is standing, now, and her expression has shuttered. His gaze flashes to the stairs.

Yukiya lingers, lips pressed together and eyes cast elsewhere. He can remember men at the yard clipping the back of his head and shaking their own, crowing and cajoling. We’ll make a man out of you yet. He always just stood there.

Eventually, she sighs and returns to her work. When Yukiya gets to the top of the stairs, Nao, sitting cross-legged on the floor and clearly eavesdropping, squints at him over a wooden block she’s whittling intricate filagree into.

He debates kicking her in the side but thinks better of it. She sniffs, and he rolls his eyes and keeps moving before she can use her block as an extension of her finger.

 

The television is chunky, squat, and has a trembling display that shudders with static.

Yukiya doesn’t have room to complain here, either. It’s not like this technology is particularly easy to come by. He was able to buy it when it was being pawned off as junk and corral an electrician buddy of his who tinkers in his spare time to fix it up. The vouch economy might not just be for shinobi. Everyone knows someone who knows someone.

The movies are hard to come by, too, even if the prices have eased out ever so slightly in the past few years. It’s easier to get foreign titles, at least, even if some of those lists still exist. Lists he is very aware of and follows diligently as a good civilian of the Land of Fire. Yes.

On-screen, an intoxicated ronin brandishes two swords toward a crowd of approaching men, limbs spread akimbo across a black-and-white display and words a slurry of inflamed melodrama.

Jealous, thinks Yukiya, leaning back against the balcony door—cracked open just barely so that he can hold his cigarette outside. The packet rests in his lap. Yukiya’s room is lit solely by the television screen, and there’s an ache in his neck from the horrific angle his body is resting in. His fan whirs.

Maybe this really wasn’t inevitable. He doesn’t know. Or maybe it was, and Yukiya getting shunted off into the genin block that handful of years ago ensured that yes, inevitably he’d drink lemon water in the waiting room for the Hokage’s office. From the day that Yukiya’s father stood in front of him, hands placed on his shoulders, and told him that a friend of a friend would be doing a favor for them. Taking him under his wing.

Some wing. Bald wing. Bald, bald wing. He’s pretty sure Urata waxes that cranium.

(There was a solemness to his father’s expression that rarely left. He was a serious man with serious hands and a serious brow and a serious work ethic. He was made of hard, unyielding lines, and he and Yukiya, who was especially fuzzy around the edges in his earlier childhood, never quite learned how to act around one another.)

He leans close to the door’s opening and tucks the cigarette back inside for a moment. It’s back outside in the next.

As a choreographed fight scene occurs in the background, fit with halting movements and grunts, Yukiya peers down at the packet, bringing it into focus with his other hand. Its contents are illuminated by splashes of fake bloodstains that ricochet off gray static.

SO, YOU WANT TO WORK WITH SHINOBI

There is a small graphic of a shinobi who looks like a generic cousin of Lord First right next to the title. He is flashing a thumb-up.

Yukiya reads:

Congratulations on your new and exciting career working alongside the shinobi of Konohagakure! We are so pleased with your decision to join our team and understand that you might have questions regarding your path ahead. This helpful guide will outline proactive steps you can take to not only ensure a cooperative and healthy work environment but to also uplift one another as citizens of the Land of Fire.

…..

….and see page 29 for LOUD NOISES, HIDDEN WEAPONS, AND ACTIVATION PHRASES

There is an itch in his brain. Maybe it’s just a sneeze. His hand is starting to ache.

Notes:

imagine u call for a plumber and a chainsmoking ten year old shows up and outclasses you in the art of clearing a drain. just straight up humiliated in front of your wife she gets the kids in ninja divorce court

he's a distinguished teenage chainsmoker now which makes things less weird, right. right

Chapter 3

Notes:

i think hiruzen totally uses yukiya as a diversity photo op to send to the daimyo to be like Wow Look How Well This Civilian Gets Along With This Shinobi So Cool Yeah

(also made some tweaks in earlier chapters to clarify the status of yukiya’s Cringe Teenagedom since there seemed to be some muddiness around his age—apologies for any confusion!)

“Copper pipes were the old norm. I mean, galvanized steel was the real front-runner back in the day, but it was pretty much decided that all the raw metal could be used for better things. Like—well. You could guess. Or you’d know, I guess. It rusted like crazy, too, so it might’ve been a solid move. Copper’s still rationed enough that a lot of people switched to polyethylene, especially for residential service. Some of the older guys will get real peeved about it. It’s a good material, though. Gets the job done.”

There is a pair of eyes on him. Yukiya’s mouth moves faster than his hands.

“It’s called a pinhole leak? It’s really the size of a pinhole. It’s probably a good idea to check the acidity of your water to see if that’s causing any issues, but it can be caused by improper installation, too. At the joints, especially. I’m thinking that’s what we’ve got here. All it takes is a little solder getting in there to cause problems. Erosion can be real nasty.”

A beat. Yukiya clears his throat. He turns.

“So. Oh. Yeah. I can fix it,” he says. “I’ll have to get some stuff from the shop, but I should be able to handle things by the end of the day. Unless, like, an emergency comes up. But cross our fingers.” Cough. “That probably won’t happen. I’ll prioritize this.”

The man watching him is dressed in casual wear. Yukiya wonders if shinobi all shop at the same place, even for their off-duty clothes. Or maybe they’re given to them as a part of the uniform or something.

Loose pants, a simple dark shirt: eyes watching him with a languid intensity. The man has patchy stubble along his jaw. Yukiya keeps his arms at his side.

“Okay,” the man says. “Today?”

Yukiya nods. “Yes. Today.” Well. “If you wanted a different day, I could probably do a different day too if we wanted to block something out.”

“Today’s fine.”

“Okay. Today. I will—get my things. Will you be in later…?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Okay.” Yukiya nods. “I am going to walk towards the door now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. Yes. Okay.”

Yukiya’s good at his job.

 

Shizue told him that a good chunk of the jounin housing’s inhabitants probably aren’t from the clans. She had also paused after saying this. They were walking next to each other while this was happening, and so he glanced up at her to see if she was going to say anything more, then she looked down at him, and it was a whole awkward thing.

“I think the real conservative ones don’t often have their jounin live off of clan grounds,” was how she phrased it. “So the ones who are there aren’t going to be… laxer, maybe. As much as they can be.”

Yukiya’s not particularly short, but Shizue’s real tall. It’s always made apparent when they go on walks.

He said, “Lax?”

She faced ahead. “As they can be. I think I have a few cousins who live there.”

A bird had flown overhead, then, and Yukiya was jumpy enough to almost drop his shaved ice.

He’s not given actual names when he’s handed over the jobs: just apartment numbers and addresses. That was the same for the genin block, too, even if sometimes they would eventually come up during small talk. The names. Among other things. A lot of his younger clients were pretty chatty. The jounin seem a little less willing to divulge such information.

Well. Some of them. Shiranui is coming up the stairs as Yukiya takes very meaningful and intentional steps through the hallway.

Shiranui nods in greeting, a smile catching around glinting metal. There’s a plastic grocery bag rustling in his grasp. “Busy day?”

Yukiya remembers to nod back. He also remembers all of those documents he signed about privacy. “Yes. Many nondescript things,” he says. “For many—people. Keeping me busy.”

He thinks he sees the corner of Shiranui’s mouth lift. He’s another one who doesn’t count. He never did any favors for Shiranui himself after he moved out of genin housing, but he’s contacted Yukiya in the past to have him help out a friend with a toilet that kept backing up. So it’s not really as if they know each other.

The proximity to Gai makes him not count, too, Yukiya thinks. He knows for a fact that Gai doesn’t live here, but the sight of Shiranui makes him nervous. He’s pretty sure their other teammate—former teammate? He’s not sure how that works—wouldn’t live here, given that he didn’t live in the blocks before. Who knows.

It’s like they’re all kids again and he’s waiting for Gai to pounce while he’s scurrying between jobs. They’re all kids still. Well. Shiranui is a handful of years older than him, so he might actually be an actual kind of adult. But still not twenty yet, maybe? He’s not sure. I saw a brilliant young flame helping the people of Konoha and wanted to make my presence known—

Shiranui says, “See ya.”

Yukiya nods again.

This whole building puts him on edge. It’s clinical in a way that feels like it should smell. Too sharp and too clean. Yukiya doesn’t think he’s imagining the way it feels like he’s always being watched—as if even his own shadow is suspicious.

He’s doing the same job that he always does, he reminds himself. A little less intensive, if anything. The property manager confirmed what the Lord Third (yes, the Lord Third) said about the likely frequency of maintenance reports, or lack thereof.

“They like to handle their own shit,” said the man when Yukiya managed to track him down. The property manager. Not the Lord Third. “Wait until the last minute to get someone on it. Probably fucks it up worse sometimes, honestly.”

The property manager was in his fifties, wore a thin tank top and pants that hung low on his hips, and tried to immediately get Yukiya to invest in some sort of pyramid scheme regarding at-home workout equipment. Same shit your clients use to keep in shape, he said, waggling a finger. He wore sunglasses even when indoors.

“No thank you,” Yukiya said. “What happened to the previous plumber who was doing service?”

Whoever it was hadn’t been a part of Urata’s group; he still asked Urata if he would know, but Urata gave him an incredibly dismissive answer, go figure.

The property manager pawed at his cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Oh, there was an incident,” he said.

“An incident,” Yukiya said.

“Yeah.” The property manager pointed, then. “So there’s the main buildings. There are more that my sister oversees a couple of blocks over. I see the pudge in those arms, kid. Come on. Can sell ‘em to your friends, too. Just 8000 ryo to start.”

“Incident?” was what Yukiya said. “No, really, that’s alright.”

It’s just a job. A series of jobs. Having reached outside and running through a list of supplies he’d need to pick up at the yard, Yukiya throws a glance over his shoulder.

It’s a building. He’s dealt with plenty of buildings before. A pinhole leak is small, trifling, and treatable, just like him.

 

He actually does have free time now with everything. It’s been a while since he actually had any, after all. He’s supposed to be appreciative, he thinks.

Yukiya doesn’t remember his early, early years of childhood very well. Fuzzy might still be the word. There was a lot that flew over his head, then, but in that fuzziness was a lackadaisical approach to the world around him that only an exceptionally young child could wield. Even if that part, too, felt a little skewed. Oblivious might be the other word. Unsure. What.

His mother made sure that he still attended some classes when he got pulled into Urata’s group (he wasn’t the only child to be looped into an apprenticeship—Shizue being another—and the schools, apparently, had protocols in place to deal with this sort of thing from previous wars) and that pretty much put an end to meandering, nothing days. Most actions became meant for tasks, and most tasks had a purpose. That purpose was often and is often doing Urata’s bidding.

He’s evidently not very good at not having a purpose for very long. No matter how hyper-independent shinobi might be, you’d think with the sheer number of apartments he’s currently tasked with overseeing he’d have a bit more to do.

Maybe it’s another thing to not complain about. He actually has recognized some of his clients from back when they were genin. He hasn’t seen an alleged cousin of Shizue’s yet, but he did run into that cousin’s friend’s teammate’s friend’s cousin while she was scaling the building outside to get to her window. They had a nice conversation, he thinks. She remained perched on her windowsill the whole time.

Maybe it’s nice to know that some of them have been promoted to better things. Promotions are supposed to be good, generally. The fact that they’re here signifies that they’re here and the alternative is that they’re—not here.

Free time. Free time is good.

Normally, he’d take the chance to delve into some new films in his collection. His mother is still rather cross with him, however, and Nao is Nao, so he’s trying to avoid unnecessarily being at home as much as he can. And it leaves the theater as an option, of course, but with all of the training materials that he’s been reading through, even Yukiya is starting to become wary of dark, open spaces with poor visibility.

That, and the fact that a theater certainly limits his options as compared to his home library.

The poster is large and imposing. He recognizes the lead actress. She’s done a few period pieces and has a very popular radio show. The film is supposed to be about an injured Leaf shinobi who’s taken in by a humble bar worker in Kusagakure. He ends up saving her and her whole village from being targeted by a local extremist terrorist cell.

“It’s real popular in the capital,” he hears, and he glances over to where the ticket clerk is watching him from her booth, chin resting on her hand.

“Oh. Yeah?” he says.

The clerk says, “Yeah. Apparently, the director’s last work got totally derailed because of funding issues? Back during the war. It upset a lot of fans.” She yawns. “There were petitions. People love their romance.”

Yukiya looks back at the poster. The actress stares back at him. She’s pretty talented and pretty in general. She’s looking right at him, expression awash with fear and uncertainty. The male lead has an arm looped around her shoulder. She’s curled up against his side, hand resting on his vest.

They look to be in their early twenties, he’d imagine, with stellar cheekbones illuminated by some stellar lighting.

“I think I remember that,” is what Yukiya says.

The clerk says, “Third act is a little messy. Action sequences are nice, though. They based it off of a real-life battle or something in Kusa.” She continues, “It’s alright.”

“It’s incredible,” says a third voice, and there’s a man and woman standing there now, holding hands.

It’s the woman who says it. They’re wearing matching T-shirts with the actress’s face on them.

“It’s a farce about that funding,” the man says.

“Trying to suppress art,” the woman says.

“He’s a real genius at his craft,” the man says.

They walk ahead of Yukiya, though they maintain eye contact. Wordlessly, the clerk begins to process their tickets as the man hands over his cash.

“He highlights such a raw and poignant depiction of anxiety,” the woman says.

“And the romance is so earnest, healthy, and refreshing,” the man says.

“Mental health is soooo important,” the woman says.

“The cinematography,” the man says.

They disappear into the theater.

Yukiya looks at the clerk.

She says, “So, you want a ticket or what?”

 

He perhaps underestimated how much that jounin like to handle their own shit, as the property manager put it. Yukiya dealt with genin trying to fix their own issues; a lot of that, however, had to do with their maintenance orders not always being processed with—urgency. Perhaps that’s how he’ll phrase it. There were technically other plumbers on duty for genin housing other than Yukiya, too, but there were a lot more genin and a lot more issues to deal with. For a word.

The jounin don’t really have the same excuse, even if it only seems to be Yukiya there to help.

He stares at an amalgamation of tape, putty, and spray foam. It is, in its own way, a work of art. He’s always been a little too squeamish for true horror, but he has a few acquaintances he talks to about films—mostly at the video stores themselves—and has been on the receiving end of a long, spirited conversation about the merits of shock value.

He gets it, now.

“When,” Yukiya says when he finds his words. “Ah. When did—this start?”

He is peering beneath the kitchen sink. The girl stands next to him, close enough that he should be a little freaked out. Sometimes they keep as much distance as possible in what he assumes to be an attempt to maintain a broad view of him at all times; alternatively, some, like this girl, stick slightly too close to be comfortable, like she’s unaware of personal space. Or maybe too aware? If it’s on purpose. Maybe.

“That’s a great question,” the girl says.

She’s either his age or a little younger. Her hair is wet, forming a long, tangled curtain of purple down her back that’s frizzed up with the humidity. He tries to be mindful about how long he looks at his clients—particularly with eye contact—but has to stop himself from glancing over at that hair. He doesn’t recognize her.

He looks back to under the sink. There are theoretically pipes there, beneath. Everything. “Was it… like this when you moved in?”

She says, “No.”

“Oh. Okay.”

There is a steady drip, drip, drip. The leak has persisted, despite… attempts to stop it. He can’t actually see where it’s coming from, just the puddle that’s forming at the bottom of the cabinet.

“I’m going to have to remove all of that. But. It was a good try,” he says. “You might—I would perhaps—it might be just a quick fix. Maybe even just a matter of fiddling with the connectors. So next time, you might—”

He pauses.

“I’m going to remove everything,” he says. “If that’s okay with you.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “Are you going to keep It?”

“Keep it?” he repeats.

“Keep It,” she says, nodding towards the—It, he guesses.

“I was planning on just tossing it.” Then he says, “Do you want—It?”

She seems to consider this for a moment. “No,” she eventually says.

It ends up just being a matter of replacing the gasket, tweaking with the basket strainer, and carefully applying some putty. The girl sticks close by the entire time, watching him work. He speaks aloud as his hands move, explaining what he’s doing and why he’s moving. She doesn’t really give any visual or verbal cues that she’s following along other than the occasional nod.

In the end, he places It in a bucket so that he can throw It out in the dumpster out back. It’s weirdly in one piece. Or maybe It just kind of reformed in the bucket itself. He’s not going to think about It too much.

The girl comes with him. She doesn’t really ask so much as she just kind of follows after him after he attempts to dismiss himself from her apartment.

Standing outside and being close enough to the dumpster to catch a whiff of whatever’s fermenting under the sun (you never really get used to bad smells), he asks her, after a moment of silence, if she wants to be the one to pitch It. She looks at him for a second and nods.

There is a pinpoint precision in the way that she uses the momentum of the bucket to perfectly toss It into the dumpster. It creates a perfect arc through the air, catching in the light at its zenith; a second later, a thump. It is gone.

Her hair has dried, but it’s still rather frizzy. She’s barefoot. “That was sad,” she says.

Yukiya says, “Oh. Yeah.”

“I’m going back to bed,” she says. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he says, taking the bucket when she hands it over.

He remains staring at the dumpster for a second even after she walks away.

Yukiya moves eventually. It really does feel like there’s someone watching him.

 

He doesn’t really like mackerel all that much, but Kenji offered to pay for lunch, and he figured that it’d be bad manners to complain.

Well. Kenji didn’t exactly say pay so much as provide, given that Yukiya’s just eating one of the many generic box lunches that are being handed out to the workers on site. It’s a monthly event, apparently. Special occasion. He tried to turn it down upon finding out, but Kenji waved him off and said that they ended up with extras anyway.

“Shit, dude,” the boy says through a mouthful of pickled radish. “It’s been too long!”

Kenji is a neighborhood friend. He hasn’t formally seen him in a while with work and everything. Their fathers knew each other, though they worked for different construction groups, with Kenji following in said father’s footsteps as far as professions go. (There were no apprenticeship openings for the group that Yukiya’s father worked for.). He is simultaneously gangly and built, with a scattered mustache that Yukiya doesn’t remember being there before.

Yukiya says, “Yeah.” He picks at his mackerel. Tiny bites hide the taste, maybe. “Are you sure it’s alright for me to be here?”

All of the workers on site might be on a clear lunch break around them, but it doesn’t keep Yukiya from feeling pervasively like a lazy outsider. They’re sitting on two stumps. He and Kenji. He keeps to his stump. He will not part from his stump. He has extra time, and so he thought he’d talk to Kenji, it’s been a while since he talked to Kenji, and Kenji said, oh, dude, swing by for lunch, I’ll provide!

“Don’t even worry about it.” A hand goes to smooth down the handful of hairs that form that mustache. “But holy fuck, man, I really haven’t seen you in forever. Heard about that new gig of yours.”

“Oh. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“From who?”

Kenji waves a hand. “Oh, just like, around.”

“Oh,” Yukiya says. He likes rice. And radishes, at least. This is fine. “Good. Okay.”

“Is it crazy or what? Come on, bet you have some freaky stories.”

“It’s really pretty—well, boring, I guess.” See pages 67-99 for further notes on PRIVACY AGREEMENTS… “Not a lot happens. Same old same old.”

“Psh, whatever.” Kenji leans back, stretching out his spine in a way that audibly creaks. “Shit’s been crazy busy around here.”

“Oh?” Yukiya says.

“Yeah, well, with everything that happened with the Morita group, our asses have been getting paid. Like—paid. Even more than right after all that shit with the Kyuubi.”

Yukiya racks his brain. “Morita?”

“Dude,” Kenji says.

“Was that—recent?”

Kenji’s always had this wide-eyed fervor to him that causes secondhand restlessness. His leg bounces as he talks. “Dude. Dude. It was a whole thing. A few months ago? All these guys getting exposed for being like, major Iwa sympathizers. Total conspiracy against the village. They found all this stuff in their office.”

The name finally dredges up thoughts in his mind. Yukiya says, “Didn’t they help with a lot of the rebuilding efforts?”

Yes, he remembers this. They were incredibly vocal about a lack of resources being diverted to some of the low-income housing blocks after the Kyuubi. He thinks he can recall Urata complaining about losing a few guys to them at one point or another. Something about killer benefits and bargaining powers, apparently.

Kenji glances around them and leans in a little closer. Yukiya suppresses the urge to lean back. Never mind, he should say. Wow, the angles of this building are just fabulous. Compelling work.

“Well,” Kenji says, voice quiet—well, as quiet as it can be, “this is where it gets really crazy. Rumor is that they were connected to that dude who got run out of the village last year? The Sannin dude who was doing all those insane fucking experiments on kids? That dude?” He leans closer. “Wait, do you know like—inside goss about that?”

“No,” Yukiya says. “How?”

“They helped with building a lot of orphanages, I think? I dunno. That’s just what I heard.” Kenji takes a large, large bite, eyebrows raised and waving his chopsticks around with conspiratorial intensity. “I mean, it’s crazy that they were right beneath our noses, too. Like, I knew some of those guys. I never totally bought into that shit during the war about keeping an eye on your neighbor, but like, damn. Shit’s crazy. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Yukiya says, lunch sitting on his lap. He shouldn’t, but he asks, “What happened to them?

“I think some got locked up? Or like, run out of town, you know. It’s crazy that you didn’t hear about it.” Another bite. “Anyways, a new guy came into leadership. At the Morita group—well, like, what was left of it. And he sold it to some company in the capital or something. More work for us, I guess. Kind of annoying, but you’ll never see me complain about a gig. Anyways, I bet all the new free time is sweet, right?”

“Right,” Yukiya says, hand going for his pocket.

“Oh,” Kenji says, watching him move. “Could I steal one? I have this sick-ass new lighter you can borrow.”

 

The jounin housing’s laundry room is suspiciously tame. The linoleum is beige. The fan that whirs overhead can’t beat out the stuffiness that’s clinging to the walls. There’s a vending machine in the corner that has a flickering light, and a small wooden shelf next to it that appears to be some sort of small, tenant-run library. Only a few books rest on the shelf. One of the titles has him flushing and looking away. Who would put such a thing in public?

“This is the guy. Biggest pain in my ass of the century,” says the property manager.

Well. The other property manager. The twin sister. She looks startlingly like her brother and is similarly dressed, too, though she’s exchanged the low pants for knee-length shorts. They’re twins, apparently. She’s also wearing the sunglasses.

Yukiya stands before a washing machine. He looks down at the washing machine. He says, “It’s leaking?”

“Like a weeping willow,” says the property manager. He thinks she looks at him. He can’t really tell with the sunglasses. “You can fix it?”

“I’m not an expert,” Yukiya says.

“Can you fix it?”

“It might be best to get an appliance engineer in here—”

“Do I look like I’m made of cash to you? Gotta pay extra if I’m sourcin’ guys not provided by the village.” She says, “Can you fix it or what?”

“I can try,” Yukiya says. “I mean. Probably. I can try.”

The models they have here are new enough that Yukiya’s never seen them before, but he once helped with the installation of a couple of appliances at a neighborhood laundromat a couple of years ago. So it shouldn’t be all that different. Probably. He has a guidebook with him, and the property manager even has a manual.

It sounds like there’s something lodged in the drum that’s caused it to misalign, so taking the machine apart piece by piece to get to it after he’s unable to dislodge it by taking off the drum paddle and removing the sump hose is totally fine and he totally knows what he’s doing. Completely and soundly.

The property manager lingers the entire time. It’s distinctly unlike how that girl and her purple hair remained perched at his side while he worked, her attention carrying a fervent gravity. The property manager mostly seems to just like an audience who can’t really leave.

She has a lot to say. In specific, she has a lot to say about her brother that he pretends he doesn’t hear. It all started when our whore mother decided to move away from the country—

“Do you help a lot? With the tenants,” Yukiya says around the flashlight he holds between his teeth. According to the manual, he just has to remove the pressure chamber and then he’s nearly done. “Like, um, now?” Perhaps. “Maybe.”

She says, “They know how to find me.” He watched her unlock the vending machine earlier to grab a fizzy drink that she chugged down in under a minute. She still holds the can. “Where was I?”

He’s expecting the hardest part to be putting everything back together after taking it apart. Yukiya doesn’t foresee it to be the moment when he’s finally able to detach the inner and outer drums from one another, and the incriminating foreign object that he’s looking for clatters to the floor.

A knife. A knife clatters to the floor. A small knife with a worn handle and dark stains on its blade.

“Oh, goddamn it,” the property manager says, the drink can creaking beneath her grasp. “I told them. I fuckin’ tell them every time to clean out their pockets before starting a load. There’s a sign,” she says, and she points at a sign on the wall.

The sign says, REMOVE ANY HARD OR DISRUPTIVE OBJECTS FROM CLOTHING BEFORE BEING WASHED (I.E. SPIKES, KUNAI, SENBON, SHURIKEN, SMOKE BOMBS, ARROWS, EXPLOSIVE TAGS, INK, SWORDS, COINS, KNIVES, MARBLES)

There is another sign next to it that says: Clean lint filter after every use!!!

“They’re getting a notice about this. Oh boy, they’re getting a notice about this. Every time. Every fucking time. Same thing.”

Yukiya, kneeling before the disassembled bowels of the washing machine and legs numb beneath him, looks away from the knife and asks, “What was the incident?”

“The what?” the property manager says, and he thinks she’s looking at him again.

“The incident. With the last person who did this work?”

It seems to further catalyze her wrath. She shakes her head. “God, don’t remind me,” she says, scowling. “I hate talking about that. Ugly thing.”

“Oh,” Yukiya says. “Okay.”

She rants on, and he picks up the manual again. The machine will not put itself back together on its own.

 

It figures that, in his efforts to avoid his family, he manages to be home at the exact moment that his aunt is visiting.

His aunt looks a whole lot like his mother. They have similar voices, too, especially when they’re rising in volume. Barbed and all-encompassing.

“Are you kidding me?”

“About what? What would I be kidding about?”

“You know exactly what.”

“It’s not like I can read minds—”

“You always do this—”

Yukiya was asleep. He’s trying out napping to pass the time. It’s not going too well. Yukiya’s always been a restless sleeper. It was especially bad when he was a kid, and it’s especially bad now when he’s awoken by an argument that seems to pierce through his bedroom door.

His bedroom door, which creaks open ever so slightly.

He’s staring at the ceiling. He tried to hang up a poster or two up there some time ago, but they wouldn’t stick. There are a couple of fragments of tape left over that he always tells himself he’ll get rid of and never does. The tape feels oddly triggering to him right now.

“What is it about?” he finds himself asking, squinting up at that tape.

“I don’t know,” Nao says. He can hear the door rattle as she must lean against it, and her clothing rustle when she slides to the floor. “Maybe it’s about you.”

“Maybe it’s about you,” he says, and she scoffs.

Their aunt is the one who technically trained Nao. This has, in many ways, directly shaped her personality in an unfortunate, irreparable manner that’s equally unfortunate to be on the receiving end of, but she’s paid the consequences for it, too. The consequences are having to spend broad swathes of her day under their aunt’s direction, and having done this since she was—eight?

He and Nao look a lot like each other, too. Same brown hair, same brown eyes, same tan skin, same broad noses and square jaws. She inherited their mother’s moles, and he got their father’s ears. Both of them have his hands.

Nao looks more annoying than him, he thinks. “Why aren’t you working?” she asks.

“Why aren’t you working?” Yukiya asks. He could stand on his bed and easily reach the tape. He just can’t quite will himself to move.

She says, “I left one of my chisels at home. So what, you just get paid to lay around all day now?” He can feel the energy of her pointing without seeing it.

“Kind of. No, not really.”

“Did I—what are you talking about?”

“—someone gave Daichi’s name to the Uchiha—”

“—when would I ever talk to the fucking Uchiha? Before or after I gave you money—

“—oh, fuck off—”

“—no, before or after I gave you money because your husband can’t keep a job? When did I talk to an Uchiha?”

“I have stuff to do,” Yukiya says. “Lots of stuff.”

He hears her say, “It’s because you defend it.”

He says, “What?” And then he says, “I don’t defend it.”

“Yeah, you do. It’s like you like pissing everyone off.”

“I don’t defend it,” he says. “It’s my job. I don’t—”

“You’re doing it now. It doesn’t make any sense.”

No, it doesn’t, he should say. Or What does? Or, You wouldn’t get it. Yes, that’d still be the worst of all.

Nao continues, “You do it about your weirdo girlfriend all the time, too.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.” And after a second, he says, “She’s not—weird. She’s like us.”

Nao scoffs.

“You still owe me.”

“Owe you? Dad never should have picked you in the first place—”

“See? You’re still so jealous, Emiko—”

“Now you piss off—”

“She is,” Yukiya says. Well. “It’s not like—” Well. “You just talk about her like they’re all extraterrestrials or something.”

“Why would you say that?”

She sounds rather offended.

All he’d have to do is grab the tape by the edge and pull. Just like that. He doesn’t move. He says, “What?”

“Extraterrestrials,” Nao repeats, sounding even more offended at having to say it herself.

“It’s—” Something flutters past his window, a shadow beyond through the curtains; he stiffens, but nothing comes of it. No bird. “It’s just a descriptor. A competent descriptor.”

Nao sniffs. “It would help if you didn’t watch all of those nerdy movies. Then you’d actually have more than one friend.”

“And where are your friends?”

“I have friends,” she bites out. “God, shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Shut up. I have friends. Shut up—”

“Well, you want to talk about your shit, then?”

“This isn’t about me—”

“Do you want to start with the idiot son who’s gonna get himself gutted on the job by a dog, or the idiot daughter who can’t make a cutting board without gaps no matter how hard I drill it into her thick, useless skull—"

Yukiya stares up at the ceiling. He hears Nao scrape her nails against the floor. He’ll get the tape later.

After a moment, he asks, “What’s wrong with Uncle Daichi?”

“I don’t know.” Nao says, “I think he got questioned by some Uchiha about an old job of his or something.” A pause. “You wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

“Why would I?” he says.

“You tell me.”

“Uchiha don’t live in the shinobi housing. They just got new clan grounds.”

“I knew that.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“You think you’re the only one who’s lost anything, Mimi?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You think you’re the only person that knows what loss is?”

“I knew that,” she repeats. “They were talking about it at the shop. Since it’s safer now that they’re not hogging up that land on the river.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, either.

Nao says, “She brought you up first.”

“God,” says a voice through the floorboards, and he can’t tell who it belongs to. “Nothing ever changes.”

Yukiya leans over, grabs a stress ball from his bedside table, and harpoons Nao’s head with it.

Notes:

shaking my head while listening to a true crime podcast episode about orochimaru so everyone knows i disagree w/ what he did

thank u for reading and responding :) makes me a happy camper!

Chapter 4

Notes:

see a content warning in the end note for this chapter

thank you for reading and responding :)

He can’t even will himself to point. His finger muscles must not even work anymore.

Yukiya says, “You—”

And then he doesn’t.

And he says, “How—”

And then he doesn’t.

He turns to face the boy leaning against the doorway. There is a shock of messy gray hair sprouting from his head, and he’s wearing the odd combination of a mask that peaks across the ridge of his nose and a headband over one of his eyes.

(He finds it best to not try and decipher shinobi clothing. Sometimes it’s those generic pants and shirts; other times it’s a pair of shorts made of chainmail or gloves that go from finger to neck.)

The boy shrugs.

Yukiya says, slowly, as if saying it slowly makes it any better, “Your dog ate your toilet.”

“Something like that,” the boy says.

The toilet has indeed been destroyed. For a word. The large, jagged edges of the porcelain do, in the most horrible of ways, somehow resemble large, overgrown teeth marks. Yukiya has not spotted a single dog within this apartment, and he is acutely, acutely aware of that knowledge. He wonders if they’re in the walls. Probably not. That’d be really inefficient. Probably not.

“Okay,” Yukiya says. “It’s really just a matter of—okay. I’ll just need to get another unit in here to replace this and it should be fine.”

“That’s great,” the boy says. He has a flat, impenetrable tone that walks the line between apathetic and genial.

“Did your dog—”

Yukiya stops.

He says, “Did your dog eat anything else? Of your plumbing.”

The boy tilts his head. He’s either drawing it out for no reason, or he’s actually having to think about it. Either option is bad, he thinks. Morally, ethically, spiritually. A cigarette would be nice.

“I don’t think so,” the boy finally says. “New puppy. Teething. You know.”

“Oh yeah, totally,” Yukiya says. “Yeah.”

A beat.

“I’m going to go acquire the toilet, now.”

The boy says, “Sounds good.”

He is keeping his eyes peeled for dogs—what else can they do? Live inside of the floors? The boy himself? He’s technically met one of Shizue’s shinobi cousins—and the recalibration of his radar for non-bird animal threats is likely what leaves him so startled.

That is, the boy opens the door to his apartment to let Yukiya out, and a series of things happen that Yukiya thinks are a series of things that happen that he can’t really be too sure about.

He’s pretty sure he catches the flash of a green blur whizzing past through the open door, and he knows that he hears something thud behind him, and he especially knows that one moment the boy is there holding the door, and the next Yukiya is catching it from slamming shut.

Blinking away the tears that have formed from the gust of wind that cut across his face, Yukiya hears:

“My wonderful eternal rival and my handy friend together in one place while I happen to be in the neighborhood! Surely, it is meant to be!”

Don’t look behind you. Don’t look behind you. Don’t look behind you. Why am I here?

Yukiya looks behind him. Somehow, in the past two seconds, the main window of the apartment has been ripped open. He knows this because Gai is standing partially in the window, as is the boy—well, not standing, really, given that Gai is holding him in the air—horizontally—around the waist with a single, vascular arm to keep him from—escaping? Or something.

“Oh. Hey Gai,” Yukiya says, blinking away more tears. Bright. So very bright.

“I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” the boy says in that bland voice of his. He makes no move to remove himself from Gai’s grasp.

Clenching his other hand in an inspired fist, Gai says, “Yukiya here is a brilliant young trade worker and representative of Konoha’s youth! And you see, Kakashi is my eternal rival, with whom I am forever engaged in a passionate and infinite strife with, the scales of comradery keeping us balanced, and—”

He does think he’s heard about a rival before. Gai talks about a lot, but he has really great projection and tone. When they were much younger, and Yukiya fumbled to make conversation after being cornered in the hallway of a genin building by a cartwheeling Gai, he told him that he had a great voice for the screen. Gai had proceeded to cry hard enough that Yukiya never brought it up again.

Something like my eternal rival. Something like my forever friend. Something like lights a fire in my emblazoned heart. Something like burning, burning loins.

Yukiya eyes the meeting of Gai’s arm and the boy’s waist.

He feels his face warm.

Rivals. He’d like to think that he knows enough shinobi slang, but something always catches him off guard.

Gai is still talking. The boy has tilted his head, and Yukiya wonders if he’s imagining how the look in that one eye of his has shifted, considering.

Yukiya juts his thumb out to point behind him. See. He can point. “Toilet,” he says. “I’ll be back.”

“—two paths—three paths—meeting together by their own determination—”

Why? Why? The boy waves. Yukiya nods to Shiranui when he sees him in the hallway.

 

He’s thinking that he should probably get a hobby.

Yukiya doesn’t go to this particular pawn shop often. It’s pretty skeevy, honestly, even if it’s rebranded into calling itself a second-hand store. They still do loans. He knows because he hears his mother and his aunt fighting about it. Uncle Daichi isn’t really a bad guy, just—not the best guy.

He stands before the window display. There’s an old yet robust-looking radio; an ambiguous gameboard; a bronze hand mirror with a mountain etched into its back; a lacquered shamisen.

The shamisen looks to be a good, weighty mahogany. He’s not really sure where he’d practice. Or how he’d learn. Maybe they sell books on these things. He could try getting into reading again, even if it makes his head hurt.

He should find a way to be productive, probably, is all that he’s saying. All that Yukiya’s ever known as Yukiya is doing things with his hands and seeing the direct fruits of his effort. Movies aren’t just cutting it on their own anymore.

So it’s this, or maybe it’s painting, or maybe he can get Shizue to teach him to embroider. He doesn’t really know what he’d embroider, and she’s always busy. She also has a belligerent case of carpal tunnel at age fifteen. He puts it on a maybe list. It’s a thought.

A bespectacled, sandy-haired boy sidles up next to him.

Yukiya doesn’t move.

Well, he jumps a little. He doesn’t realize the boy’s standing next to him until he leans a little closer to the window and catches a flash of his face in the reflection. Then he remains still. Mostly.

The boy says, “I was wondering if you could help me out.”

He’s also looking into the display. Yukiya briefly wonders what’s caught his attention, and then he sees the forehead protector, and then he thinks better of it.

Yukiya says, “Have we—met before?”

“In passing,” the boy says.

“Okay,” Yukiya says. He really hates it when they approach them like this. He doesn’t think they even mean to, which is kind of the worst part.

“I heard you do favors,” says the boy.

Really, why do they always say it like that? If Nao were here, she’d point at him until she was poking at him and burrowing a hole through his skull. See, I told you. I knew it. I told you. Maybe he really is spending too much time around shinobi.

“Kind of. Sort of. I have work. But.” Cough. “What’s wrong?”

The boy hasn’t looked at him once. “I have a friend who’s having trouble with her housing situation over some plumbing issues. She doesn’t really have the funds to deal with it right now.”

“I don’t really do much for free that much anymore,” Yukiya says slowly. A pause. “I mean, if it’s a little thing—”

“I can pay for most of it,” the boy says. “Up front, too.”

“Oh. Okay.” Another pause. “If you can pay, there are services—”

“I think you’d be best.”

He can see his own reflection in the window, too. Yukiya’s always kept his hair cropped tight to his scalp, but he’s past the point where he usually shaves it. He thinks that Shizue wants him to grow it out. It’s currently a little too fuzzy for his liking.

The boy in the reflection—not the boy with the glasses or sandy hair—looks rather resigned.

He looks a lot more than that, too. Yukiya can’t remember not feeling tired in some way or another. Maybe he really should try to nap again.

Yukiya says, “I’m really just okay at my job. I mean. I don’t say that to like, fish or anything. There’s plenty that I can’t do.”

The boy with the glasses and sandy hair says, “I haven’t heard about you because of your skill.”

Ouch. So. Okay. He’s pretty okay at his job. Not the best, but okay. “Okay,” Yukiya says. “I do have work. And just—other life stuff.”

Yet another pause.

Yukiya says, “Your friend?”

“My old teammate,” the boy says.

He doesn’t really know where he’d play the shamisen even if he learned anything. The idea of performing in front of other people sounds nauseating. He still finds his eyes tracking the delicate, inevitable lines of its wood grain as if they’ll tell him something grandiose and inspiring.

In a final, valiant attempt:

“I can’t make any promises,” Yukiya says.

The boy just says, “I was told you might say that.”

Another beat.

“Does she have a dog?” Yukiya asks.

A final pause—this time from the boy, who takes a moment before responding.

“No,” he eventually says, and that’s really affirming.

Yukiya doesn’t say anything more. On closer inspection, that hand mirror might be his aunt’s.

 

A hobby would be especially prudent if he could use it as a means of getting out of being Urata’s errand boy.

He’s mostly kidding himself. No hobby in the world could accomplish that. Less by nature of being hobbies, and more because nothing could probably accomplish that. Yukiya will likely stay in this line of work even after his current contract with Urata technically expires, but he’s at times debated mail carrying as a profession given his seeming talent in the field. Or given how much Urata seems to push him into said field.

He’s not at this particular worksite, at least. Urata. That makes it a little better. There are also a ton of senior plumbers there that are, in fact, here, and that makes it less better.

An arm is strung around Yukiya’s shoulders. His body jostles with the force.

“Barely see you anymore kid. Can’t even give me a fuckin’ hello?”

“Hello,” Yukiya says.

Koyama could afford to use an antiperspirant. Yukiya would never tell him this for a variety of reasons. The first is that he’d probably kick Yukiya’s teeth in. The second is that he’s in his fifties and is probably aware at this point in life that he could use antiperspirant, and so it’s not like saying anything will help. The amount that he sweats might be a show of dominance. Or something.

Yukiya says, “I really need to get going—”

He is jostled again.

“Oh, knock it off. Can you believe this kid? God, I practically raised this kid. Can you believe it?”

The other senior plumbers around them chuckle and nod. Haha. This is all very true, and Yukiya does, in fact, need to keep moving to drop more of Urata’s mail off because Urata told him to.

“Back in the day,” Koyama says, “I was the one in charge of this dipshit when he started workin’ at the blocks across the river and by the Rock. And look where he is now. Holy shit.”

Koyama was indeed one of the leads on the genin block back then. Technically speaking. In name. He’s another old friend of Urata’s, and he’s good enough at his job. Actually, he’s really good at his job. The issue with Koyama might not be how he does his job, just when he chooses to do it.

He’s not all that observant, either. Yukiya’s not sure if he ever picked up on all those favors that he started doing when he was under Koyama's watch. He’s never really said anything about them, either, which is good enough an indication as any. He remembers when Urata pulled him into his office when he must have been no older than eleven and wondering with sweaty palms if he’d been reported or something.

(He never gave much thought as to how Urata actually found out, and he doesn’t really now. There doesn’t seem to be a point to it. It’s Urata.)

Another jostle. “I should be askin’ for a piece of that pot they’re throwin’ at you.” Koyama says, “Come on, how much is it?”

“It’s alright,” Yukiya says.

“It’s alright, he says. “What, gonna pick up some shinobi wife now, too?”

“Oh. Probably not.”

“Yeah, gotta be careful. Don’t want to let ‘em get too close. Hear they got sharp things hiding in all types of different places.”

Over more laughter, Yukiya says, “I really need to get running—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Koyama pushes him forward. “Remember me when you’re famous, kid. Or when you get chopped up. Ha.”

Yukiya stumbles before eventually righting himself. The sun is an overbearing force in the center of the sky: heat lines warbling through the air still leave him feeling unsteady on his feet. The ground’s recently been doused with water, but it doesn’t keep his skin from itching beneath his clothes, dust and sweat that he’ll have to scrub off later.

They’re repairing part of a sewer line. In theory. Yukiya’s going to assume he just caught them on a break. He had to deliver a note about scheduling or something or other to Koyama—it’s not like he’s privy to its actual contents, nor is he to any of the envelopes he’s yet to deliver.

He says, “I think Urata wanted a response on that—”

Koyama waves around his note. “Thinks he can boss me around, now—”

“I only meant—”

“Big gig and he thinks he can boss me around. You got a real swing in your step now, huh?”

Yukiya says, “Oh. No, not really. I just—”

“I’m joking with you, kid. Lighten up, my god.” A large, calloused hand reaches out and roughs up his hair. “Off to find your new little friends, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t really call them that,” Yukiya says, even though it’s useless.

“I’ll tell you what—they’re good for something.” Koyama pulls off his cap and runs a hand through sweaty, sweaty hair. He whistles. “Excavation is a breeze.”

Indeed, when Yukiya’s finally able to wrangle himself out of Koyama’s (literal) grasp, he passes by a genin team that’s been put to work with trenching shovels and drain spades. It’s a recent development. Having them here. There are a lot more shinobi available around the village nowadays, and it cuts costs for Urata, apparently. He’s heard apprentices grumbling about losing out on work because of it.

There’s an older one with them. The genin team. He’s pretty sure it’s their teacher or something. He doesn’t recognize the woman, but when they make eye contact, she nods in his direction. He nods back because this is totally normal and polite.

One of the small children handling the shovels yells, “I said I got it, you freaking turd—”

His teammate, somehow shorter and squatter than him and carrying a sword on his hip, cries back, “I said I got it, you’re doing it all wrong—”

Yukiya thumbs through the envelopes. It’ll probably take him another hour before he’s done with them, assuming he doesn’t run into any more detours. Koyama will hopefully be the worst of them. Hopefully. Probably.

There is a small, unassuming piece of paper hidden within the envelopes. He nearly misses it. He doesn’t miss it. Life would be easier if he did, but he doesn’t.

There is an address and time for a meeting place on this paper. There is also a message that says to burn this paper once he’s memorized the address. That sandy-haired boy did tell him that he’d reach out with more details for another meeting later that week.

He puts the note in his pocket. When he glances behind him, there’s no one there. Just his shadow. Not even any of the men from the worksite seem to be looking in his direction. There is no need to think that someone would be watching him as that’s a ridiculous thought. Yes. Certainly.

 

“Left—no—right—yes, right—a little to the left—keep it moving—down—yeah, down, that’s what I’m saying, down—okay, now we’re to the right again—”

Tsuya uses a rolled-up newspaper as a makeshift megaphone. She stands on a couple of crates that are just as tall as her. Tsuya is seven years old and his neighbor’s granddaughter. He’s not sure how he ended up under her command, but he’s not sure how he ended up here altogether.

Releasing a breath, Yukiya sets the table down on the floor. The boy who’s doing the same on its other side releases it just a second before he does, and Yukiya pulls his fingers back to avoid having them crushed. He generally needs his hands, even if he didn’t end up buying that shamisen.

(It’s probably not pragmatic. He really doesn’t know where he’d practice it. He’s yet to see someone use that laundry room whenever he’s been on-site at the jounin housing, but that’s no guarantee that it’s not being used. Besides, the acoustics in there didn’t seem great.)

Arm shooting above her head, Tsuya cries, “Alright! Next one! Next!”

He thinks the boy that he’s been working with is named Haruki. Something like that. He’s a little younger than Yukiya and went to one of the civilian schools closer to the village’s center. He helps with a tea business, maybe? That sounds right.

“That’s the last one,” Haruki says, wiping a hand across his forehead.

Tsuya lowers her megaphone. She squints, her gaze appraising. Finally, she nods. “I guess you’re right,” she says, once again through the megaphone. “Someone get me down from here. You!”

She points. He will let one guess who she happens to point at. Yukiya holds her hand while she hops off of the crates.

They’re in the local community hall. Based on conversations he hears around the yard, he’s ninety percent sure it’s really just used as a gambling hall more often than not, but they slap the word community on it to keep prying eyes away.

It does occasionally host community events. Yukiya eyes the banner that he watched a bunch of bristling tweens hang up earlier. Also under Tsuya’s command. He thinks this is her first time coming down from the crates the entire day.

SECOND ANNUAL SHIBAI DISTRICT KYUBBI RELIEF FUND FAMILY FUNDRAISING COMPETITIVE KARUTA TOURNAMENT

He figures they must have gotten it done at the print shop a few blocks over. The lettering is solid, if only a little cramped. He remembers thinking last year that maybe they’d workshop the title a little bit. They evidently haven’t. Actually, this might be a little shorter than last year’s.

Yukiya is swatted with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Come on,” Tsuya says, on the other side of that newspaper. “Mush! There’s still more to do!”

He’s not really sure about that. People are going to be playing cards on the floor itself, and with the tables already set up for whatever food they’re providing and a couple of drink coolers that he refuses to look at, there’s not much more heavy lifting to do. Streamers have been pinned to the walls, decorative pom-poms hang from the ceiling, and string lights with rotund little bulbs accent the banner.

Haruki says, “I think we’re covered for now.”

Tsuya’s face scrunches. “Let me go see,” she announces, and then she marches over to where Yukiya can see her grandfather speaking with a few other adults from the neighborhood.

He kind of forgot that this was happening with everything going on recently. The fundraiser’s a big deal to most people in the neighborhood for rather obvious reasons; it just managed to slip through the cracks somehow. Yukiya got home earlier only for his mother to immediately shove him out the door with Nao and bark at them to go and help with setup.

His latest favor query still sits heavy on his mind. Against his better judgment, Yukiya did end up going to meet with that boy to be given his friend’s address. He accidentally singed his fingertips when burning the note with his lighter. He’d like to pretend that this is the first time he’s ever been given a note with such instructions.

He has the time, technically. He also isn’t sure if he likes the idea of going to service someone’s apartment when he doesn’t really know them or the person sending him there. Yukiya’s thought about asking who it was the boy heard about him from, but sometimes asking shinobi too many unprompted questions just pokes at them in all of the wrong ways and they get a little weird. Besides, he’s bad with names, anyway.

There’s probably no need to ruminate over it like this. Definitely not. He’ll either do it or he won’t, and he has plenty of valid reasons to not fit it into his schedule right now. Yukiya tries to table all thoughts of that favor in his mind and remain in the present. The lukewarm present that he kind of doesn’t want to be present at.

They technically have a few hours until everything starts, but a good chunk of people are already loitering around, helping, chatting, gossiping. It’s like there’s this weird, unspoken norm to get there as early as possible. He’s not sure if it’s a competition or what, but it might be why his mother was so adamant that they show up to lend a hand.

Yukiya’s eyes stray to where his sister stands with a few other teenage girls. As if feeling his gaze, her head turns. A beat, she scowls, and then she turns back to laugh way too forcefully at something one of the other girls said. He winces.

“Are you playing?” he hears.

When he looks over, that boy, Haruki, is fiddling with his own ear lobe.

“Playing?” Yukiya parrots.

“The cards,” Haruki says.

“Oh. No. I’m not very good.”

“Yeah, me too. I guess I’ll watch.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

Yukiya shuffles a little. “Tea?” He says, “Tea going well?”

Haruki says, “Oh. Yeah. I help more with the numbers stuff than the actual tea stuff. Pipes good?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

Yukiya glances at his watch. His mother is supposed to be there eventually when some of the food starts getting brought in, and he’s wondering if it’s better to leave now and risk her not seeing him at all, or to make it seem like he was at least here for a little bit and then ducking out when the competition starts. He could probably get through a full-length film before anyone would come barging home.

“Hey,” comes a small child’s voice, and Tsuya is back before them, hands on her hips. “Pa says that the tablecloths are all set up, so I guess that means things are set up for now. I guess. Are you in trouble?”

Yukiya blinks. “What?” He looks over to Haruki to see if he is similarly blinking, but the boy is just sending a bland look around the hall. “What?” he says again.

“In trouble,” Tsuya says. “I’ve heard Pa talking about you before.”

“Oh. No.” Well. “I don’t think so.” Well—

“You don’t look all that special to get into big trouble.”

He says, “Thanks.” Before she can open her mouth, he says, “Your, uh, hairclip is very successful. At its job of keeping your hair back.” Wait. “The color is nice.”

It works well enough. “Oh!” Tsuya says. Her hand ghosts over the clip, a proud smile unfurling on her face. “My auntie got it for me. It’s from the store with the big mannequin in the window that wears the funny hats. I’m not allowed to go there on my own. It’s kind of far, and I’m only allowed to go past the market.”

Tsuya is seven and lives in his neighborhood with her grandfather. He doesn’t really know her at all beyond that, but he knows her in the way that all neighbors know their neighbors around here. Stories, passing whispers, shaking heads. Too much, maybe.

He knows that her mother died during the Kyuubi attack and that her father was a young chuunin who was killed back during the war in some way or another. He was declared missing for a while before his body ever turned up. The same thing eventually happened to his wife. The water treatment plant she worked at just caved right in on itself due to tremors. They were digging around for bodies for weeks.

He remembers it mostly because of neighborhood gossip between his aunt and mother that filtered upstairs. It was kind of a thing around the neighborhood, the husband. Well. The marriage more than the death. A real controversy. They had Tsuya when they were both teenagers. Her grandfather is around his mother’s age.

“—but I like orange a lot. Hey, Pa said that today is real important and everything, so you can’t get in trouble here, okay?”

He’ll probably stay, but mostly because it’ll be too much effort to try to slip out without his mother noticing. Besides, Nao would be sure to snitch if she got a whiff of him leaving. Free food is nice enough.

He hasn’t made any promises. That’s what he told the boy, and it’s true. It always has been. Really.

“Did you even listen?” Tsuya asks, indignant.

Yukiya looks down at the girl and says, “Okay.”

His fingertips still sting.

 

He stands before the door with no small amount of trepidation. Yukiya has already knocked once. He generally has a policy about knocking twice, just to be safe.

There is a sigh being held between his teeth.

He’s not familiar with this particular row of housing: he thinks it might be for chuunin, but he’s not positive. The boy didn’t disclose this fact. But yes—presumably, an unknown chuunin on the other side of this door who allegedly has been told that he, a stranger, will be showing up at her home, and he’s here.

Against his better judgment, he’s about to knock again when the door swings open.

It’s another girl with a purple tilt to her hair, though it’s dark and short and shaggy. A little limp, too. There is a sweaty pallor to her skin, her cheeks puffy and her eyes bloodshot. She looks around his age.

She peers out blearily at Yukiya with a terrible scowl. He notices, faintly, that the hand that is not clutching at the door is holding something loosely behind her back.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asks.

He says, “I’m a plumber. I was sent over because of your pipes? As I am a plumber.” Wait. “An old teammate of yours sent me.”

“I don’t need his help,” she bites out.

“Ah. Okay,” he says. It’s just a matter of backing away slowly. “I can leave.” He tried.

“I don’t need your help. I don’t need Ichiro's help. I don’t know why all of you just can’t—fuck off,” says the girl, even though she flings whatever it is she’s holding to the side and marches back into her apartment.

She leaves the door open behind her. He catches it instinctively, then waits for something bad to happen. Nothing bad happens. The girl’s back is to him as she begins to rummage through a pile of… something in the kitchenette. A glimpse into her small apartment reveals that everything—the floor, the counter, a bed shoved into the corner—is covered in various somethings. Most of it is laundry. And papers. And several hair dryers.

He takes wary steps inside. He’s only ever had traps sprung on him once—well, okay, twice, maybe, if you count that time with the spiderwebs—but you can never be too careful.

There are no traps in this girl’s apartment, it seems, but they don’t appear to be necessary. Not when there is a large glass tank on the floor housing a just as large, shifting, very alive snake.

It is technically not a dog.

Yes. Why? Why am I here? Why?

“So, how much is he paying you? Fucking loads, I bet. All the shit he’s making from all the shit that he’s doing. Where the hell is it?” she says, shoving a handful of plastic takeout containers off the counter and onto the floor.

“He said you’re having problems with some pipes,” Yukiya says, not looking away from the snake. Its muscles seem to writhe beneath its skin.

She says, “Of course he did. Listen—I can fucking pay you, and my landlady can get off of my ass and so can he because it’s not his business. Here. Finally.”

The girl pulls out a crumpled piece of paper. She straightens out its wrinkles and shoves it toward him. Her breath escapes her in short puffs.

“Here,” she says again, and he practically has to catch it when she releases it from her grasp and bustles by him.

It is some sort of notice from the presumed landlady punctuated with an URGENT and several exclamation points and POSSIBLE EVICTION. He catches sight of tenant has been knowingly pouring corrosive substances down the drain before he glances back over to where the girl is now messing with the blinds on the room’s sole window.

“In the bathroom?” Yukiya says, remaining still. The lid on the tank seems secure enough.

She’s reaching up towards the plastic bit at the very top of the blinds. The ceilings in here aren’t very tall, but she has to stand on her tiptoes, clawing uselessly at one of the cords. She has bony joints.

“Yeah, I guess,” she says.

“Well. I can take a look.” He says, “That is within my documented purview. For this documented visit of mine.” He technically told Shizue where he was going today. How big does a snake have to be to eat you?

The girl says, “Sure. Whatever. Just—” She’s still trying to mess with the blinds. She says, “Let me get some light—”

Watching her, he says, “I can—help?”

“No,” she snaps. And then: “Just—stand there, I can do it, I can—”

Yes, Yukiya watches the girl’s hand falter before her legs falter before her body falters and she stumbles backward, her weight crumpling beneath her.

What? Shit. “Shit,” he says, forgetting himself and scrambling to her side. She’s on her back, blinking rapidly. Her pupils appear to be blown. He is a plumber, not a nurse. “Do you—require assistance?” What the fuck. “Yes you do.”

He’s about to rise and go and find someone—maybe that boy to give him his money back—but she says, “Stop.”

And he stops.

She says, “It’ll pass. I know what I’m doing.” It’s all one massive exhale. “Tachycardia. Not a big deal.”

“You are. On the floor,” he says. He does not say and on top of some old magazines, an eyeshadow palette, and a metal contraption that looks violent and that I don’t want to know about.

“I know what I’m doing,” she says. “They still won’t put me back on the roster. I know what I’m doing.” Her words snap into the air, one after another. There’s an accent tinging her voice that reminds him of the genin blocks. From the orphanage—or the same neighborhood, at least. “It was a higher dose, but that’s how you have to do it. To get used to it. Your body has to get used to it—just a little at a time. Too much and you’re nothing.”

He should leave. He should one hundred percent leave. He takes a look at the apartment around him and its clutter and its threat and then he looks back at the girl on the floor. She’s rolled onto her side, fingers pressed against her eyes. It makes her look even scrawnier.

Yukiya says, “Are you sure—”

“I’m fine. I’m fucking fine. I know what I’m doing. Everyone should just get that. It’s annoying. So annoying.” She says, “No such thing as true immunity, but you can get close.” She says, “Too close.”

Yukiya says, “I am going to stand and walk that way.”

She makes a vague grunting noise. He takes it as a sign of approval.

Yukiya makes his way to the kitchen sink. The faucet works, and he finds a surprisingly organized cabinet of dishes, almost as if it’s been untouched by the disarray happening just beyond it. The mug he grabs is emblazoned with text that says WARNING—THIS BAD BOY LOVES REPTILES!!!

In his experience—which. Isn’t a lot of experience, he thinks, not really—shinobi are pretty dubious of food and drink from a stranger. This doesn’t seem to be an applicable concern to the girl, especially given that she takes the mug and dumps the water onto her head.

“Okay,” he says, watching her cough and shake her head in reaction to some getting into her nose. “I can—look at your pipes? Unless—”

“Fuck off,” she mumbles between another cough. “No. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Yukiya says, “I’m going to walk to the bathroom, then.”

She grunts again. Her breathing does seem to be evening out, at least.

The bathroom is just as cramped as the rest of the apartment. There is a vintage poster of Lady Tsunade from the second war taped onto the wall. Her smile curls at one edge; her eyes are striking, compelling, daring. It’s as magnetic as the symbol of Konohagakure that sits smack dab in the middle of her forehead.

Another few pieces of tape are laminated onto the tile next to the poster in the vague outline of a rectangle, though whatever they once held up has since been unceremoniously ripped off.

Yukiya keeps moving. A series of tiny glass vials are organized neatly on the sink in innocuous little clusters, and he very carefully does not touch any of them or their long, sprawling names that could likely kill him at any dose.

The corrosion is immediately evident. Oxidized chunks of blue-green copper have flaked off and onto the floor, floating in a pool of still water that’s leaked from the pipe’s gnarled opening. A series of wash clothes have been haphazardly thrown down in an attempt to soak it all up. Water collects on the half-open plastic packaging of several rolls of soggy, useless toilet paper. It is bad. For a word. It probably goes deeper than what he’s seeing.

He glances out into the main room. The girl is still on the ground, and her back is still to him, and she’s thumping the side of her hand against the floor. He looks beyond her, where the shadows still reflect slow, gradual movement in that tank.

Why is probably a good question to ask. It’s always been a good question to ask, even if he can never provide a good answer for it, and no matter how annoying it sounds in his sister’s voice or damning in his mother’s. Time and time again. One of the pieces of tape hangs haphazardly off the wall as if trying to command him to remove it.

He doesn’t. He clears his throat and tears his eyes away. “That snake is rather large. And— charming. Charmingly large. I’m sure.”

“She was a gift,” the girl mutters. “A gift. Ha ha.”

She keeps thumping her hand against the floor. If it’s to a specific rhythm, he doesn’t know it.

Yukiya sets his bag down on the toilet seat. “Oh. That’s nice,” he says, taking mental stock of all that he’s brought in and all that he’ll have to go out and get.

He hears her say, “Some gift. Ha.”

Tap, tap, tap.

And then: “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Notes:

cw for implied self-harm + (sort of?) substance abuse

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kid plumber is so funny

also yukiya thinks that kakashi and gai are Having relations. kakashi thinks that yukiya just wants to boink gai. they could both be right

and final fun fact: according to the wiki (in the anime, at least) anko’s teammate is kabuto’s spy team’s jounin sensei during the chuunin exam arc. what a neat fact! probably just a coincidence

Chapter 5

Notes:

please see the content warning in the end note

last chapter for yukiya :)

His mother had many things to say when Yukiya was assigned to that genin block.

His father did not. This was not out of character for his father. His father was not much of a speaker. He was a man of diligent action, even if it often left his body sore and unwieldy. In early, fuzzy memories, Yukiya remembers walking on the man’s back at the end of a long workday.

Yukiya’s father did not say much about the genin block, but that didn’t mean he said nothing.

It was early in the morning. He and his father both had to be at work around dawn. Yukiya wore hand-me-down pants that he had to roll up at the ankles and boots that were two sizes too big so that he could grow into them. His father taught him how to put bandages on his heels to try to mitigate blisters.

He taught him how to tie his shoes, too. He used to watch Yukiya do it every morning when they’d leave for work. If it felt they were too loose or too likely to come undone, he’d just grunt in the doorway, and Yukiya would try again. Sometimes that’s the only thing that they’d say to one another the whole day. Often that was the only time they might see each other.

He remembers that first morning at the genin block because he remembers a churning gut and shaky hands and leaving five minutes late because he just couldn’t tie those boots right. His mother’s voice still clamored around in his head. You keep your head down. You don’t step out of line. Don’t make conversation. This is exactly why I told you to stay away from that girl—

His father did not say much, but when they were about to split paths that morning, he paused. And Yukiya paused. And the sun was only a purple smudge clawing out of an overcast night sky.

“A job is a job, no matter where it’s at,” said his father, voice gruff from disuse. “You do what’s asked of you and nothing more. Then you go home.”

His father’s sore, unwieldy body was not one that took weeks to discover.

He was working more than he usually did after the Lord Fourth approved a slew of infrastructure development around the village. It kind of pissed his mother off. Yukiya remembers the tense anticipation that came with waiting for his father to come home, knowing his mother would come down on him for it before he could take his shoes off.

His father never came home. The work site was directly in the Kyuubi’s path. They had been in the process of evacuating to a safe zone, but it didn’t help too much. Crushed by a giant, clawed foot in a single second. Nothing more. Nothing less. A single second. A clawed foot.

But back before all of that would ever happen—really, just a few years, isn’t that weird to think about—fingers grasping the strap of the bag he carried that was nearly as big as he was, Yukiya just nodded. His father nodded. They went on their separate ways, no matter how little of this would ever make sense.

 

“The fact that they keep bringing it up is mostly the problem,” says Shizue. “I’d be more receptive if it weren’t for the frequency.”

There’s a crooked knot to Shizue’s posture. She’s the type to hunch. It’s less her fault and more to do with the infrastructure of Konoha. Maybe it’s partially her fault. She leans over the pinball machine, shoulders drawn.

Standing at her side and holding a plastic cup of tokens, he watches as she nails the metallic ball with one of the flippers. It goes torpedoing up the expanse of the playfield and ricochets off of a bumper through a set of gates. Pungent blue lights flash along the side of the cabinet. A shrill, tinny voice says, “Wow! Like, combo!”

This arcade always makes him thirsty. Something about the onslaught of noise and neon colors bursting among a dim background. They don’t stay here for long since Shizue’s prone to migraines. He can’t bring himself to buy something to drink.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s certainly not your fault.” She squints. The flipper sends the ball whirling again. “My cousin was at least sixteen before they started sending her to a matchmaker.”

“At least,” Yukiya says.

She glances at him.

“What?” he says.

Shizue doesn’t immediately respond. He listens to her score another combo. Triple! There’s an underwater theme to this one, fit with a kappa overseeing the playfield from the cabinet’s backglass. It’s wearing a fluorescent orange sweatsuit and holding a briefcase, pointing rather urgently at where the score is displayed.

“Total bummer!” that same voice says. Shizue’s final score blinks on the display and her final ball rattles into place in the trough.

“You were doing well.” He glances away. He glances back. “What?”

“You’ve just been.” She blinks. This is a stutter in Shizue’s book. She clears her throat. “Are you… alright?”

Huh? “What? Me? Yes. Why would you ask?”

She stares at him, eyes like the buzzing hum of the electricity that engulfs them.

They met when they were in school as young children. He only got a few months in before he started his apprenticeship, and Shizue was already shadowing her uncle at the tailor when she enrolled in classes. She was tall back then, too, and still had those eyes and that face, dark hair cut at her chin.

He honestly doesn’t remember exactly how they became friends. He remembers the haze that his thoughts were lost in back then and the sight of her fiddling with her sleeve when their instructors would peer around the room, looking for someone to answer a question, and that’s it. Perhaps her posture has never been the only crooked part about her. It’s likely why they’ve always gotten along.

(All things considered, he didn’t mind having to still go to school, as stressful as it was at times to balance everything. Their aunt made Nao stop altogether.)

“Your work,” is all Shizue says.

“Yes,” he says.

She presses her lips together into a thin, pursed line. She fiddles with her sleeve. Shizue’s always dressed rather plainly, despite her work.

“I’m concerned, perhaps,” is all she says.

“Oh,” says Yukiya. “It’s really not that bad. Really,” he continues when she looks at him. “They usually just watch me work. Sometimes they talk. I’m thinking of taking up gateball in my free time. There’s a group that plays in that park next to that one weird medical clinic. What is it?”

“I feel as if I was callous,” she says.

“You were fine,” he says.

“I was thinking, recently,” Shizue continues, “about that time I asked you to help out my cousin—”

“I agreed to it,” he says.

She turns back to face the kappa.

Yukiya says, “I’d have a lot of shirts with a lot of holes without you.”

“That’s not quite what I mean.” Shizue says, the profile of her face lit by LED pinks and blues and oranges that melt across the skin of her cheeks. “And I imagine you know that.”

He’s not sure how his mother found out about Shizue’s family, either. Just the tense furrow between her eyebrows as she told him to stick close to the neighborhood kids in his class. The fact that Shizue lived closer to them than the school didn’t appease her when he brought it up.

Yukiya doesn’t talk much about his family because he doesn’t like to talk about his family. There are many other interesting things to talk about, maybe. Like his movies. Or gossip from the yard. Or the density of carbon steel.

All very interesting. Not talking about his family can also help prevent that odd, abashed tinge from leaking into Shizue’s expression, so very clunky and obtrusive.

It used to, at least. Now its absence in conversation seems to accomplish the same thing. He has this vague memory of girls in their class finding her, for some inexplicable reason, to be too cold.

Shizue murmurs, “You keep glancing over your shoulder like you’re expecting something to be there.”

He remembers being scared of the way that her eyes looked like his next-door neighbor’s chrysanthemums. Now, he brushes his arm against hers and jangles the plastic cup he holds, tokens rattling against each other.

“You should appreciate that I’m able to support your gambling addiction, maybe. You haven’t considered that.”

“I’ve considered that too much.”

“Not nearly enough.”

“You’d tell me, right?” she says.

“What?”

“If something was—I don’t know. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

After a moment, he just holds out the cup.

After a moment, she relents and wordlessly takes a token.

The pinball machine shrieks back to life before them.

 

The wall behind Urata’s desk is covered from head to toe in award plaques. Neighborhood’s best, district’s best, village’s best, prefecture’s best, land’s best—

They are just as shiny as his head. Urata lounges in his chair, squinting at the pages of some sort of romance novella. Yukiya’s been standing there for five minutes. The longest it’s ever gotten to be is twenty.

He clears his throat. This is a sign of growth, he thinks. When he was a child—a younger child—he was too petrified to do anything but wait for Urata to pay attention to him.

“Oh,” Urata says. “Shit. Sorry.” He throws the novella onto his desk. “The plot of those things can really just suck you in. Sheesh.”

“Right,” Yukiya says.

“Anyways.” Urata says, “Heard from upstairs that you’re doing pretty well.”

The plaques aren’t just for show. Urata has deep ties with the civilian council and speaks directly with the Hokage regarding shinobi matters. He inherited the business from that father who knew Yukiya’s grandfather.

Yukiya nods.

“Just wanted to pass along the performance review.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Urata stares at him for a long moment. Then he sighs.

“You know,” he says, “I really don’t think it has to be this way, Imai.”

Yukiya says, “I don’t know what you mean?”

“Right.”

“No, I mean—” He looks around the room. A potted plant, a stocked bookshelf. “Not really?”

“I like you, Imai. I feel like I’ve always made that clear. I liked your father, too.” Urata says, “He was a good man. I promised him that you’d be safe under my care.”

Yes, they’ve had conversations like this before. And maybe his work does warrant concern from Shizue, because something genuine and flagrant rumbles low in his gut. Louder than it usually is.

What a bald, bald head.

And maybe something starts to rise like foam in the back of his throat, but Yukiya doesn’t say anything. Loud as that rumbling might be, it’s not long before it’s snuffed out the same as it always is under Urata’s gaze.

Urata is just a man and nothing more. It’s the worst part about him. He leans back in his chair, and Yukiya wonders if he’s somehow able to see the writhing, oil-slick shame that Yukiya feels in his insides. Certainly, he must.

“I think this job’s been good for you, yeah?” Urata says. “Good money, good free time?”

“It’s alright.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s good. Yes. I’m thankful,” he says. “Very thankful.”

“I had a feeling that you’d be special, Imai. It’s why I’m in your corner. I mean,” he says, “without me, you’d be doing all those funny little favors for free still. Half the job is good business. I knew putting you on those blocks would lead to something great.”

“I’m thankful,” he says again.

“I mean it. I do. I think you got a lot smarter head on those shoulders than plenty of guys outside that door,” he says, waving a hand. “You just gotta use it. What did I tell you? If I went around to just anybody who was askin’ for some help and agreed, no questions asked, you think I’d be able to feed my family? Do you think I’d be able to make sure you got paid? Didn’t exactly have a lot of resources to spare during the war.”

Yukiya’s father was a good man. A good man who had his son sign a contract with a man like Urata in a last-ditch effort to stave off the shinobi that kept knocking on their door. Yukiya remembers his mother’s hissing voice telling them to go upstairs when that knocking would start, and he remembers how he and Nao would sit shoulder to shoulder on the stairs to listen.

A great opportunity to serve the Land of Fire exists for your children at the Academy—

“Ten years is coming up,” Urata says.

“I know,” Yukiya says.

“Decade done, a decade left to go,” Urata says.

“I know,” Yukiya says. He knows the stipulations of his contract well. Too well. Even if he’s still not very good at reading.

And Urata actually looks at him for a moment, really looks, before something in the air fizzles and breaks, and he scratches the rim of his ear and says, “Alright, well. Like I said. just wanted to give you the good word from up top.”

And Urata waits.

Yukiya says, “Thank you.”

Urata, still scratching, says, “Nana has some permit stuff for you to take up to the Tower.”

No, Yukiya says, except it comes out as, “Okay.”

Nana has large, round glasses that make her eyes appear like overblown marbles that you shouldn’t leave in your pockets before washing. She greets Yukiya wordlessly at her desk outside of Urata’s office, handing him a thick packet of jargon-laden papers.

“These’ll need to be returned with signatures,” she says, flipping through the shelf of a filing cabinet with deft fingers. She’s wearing orange polish that matches those glasses.

“Today?” Yukiya says.

“Yes,” she says.

“I guess I can do that.”

“Do you know that you can?” she says.

“What?” he says.

She adjusts her glasses. “Do you guess, or do you know?”

It’s not said in a particularly hostile or derogatory manner. Nana’s expression is expectant. She’s paused her work.

“I guess that I know I can,” Yukiya says. “Or I know that I guess?”

“Good,” she says, and she goes back to the filing cabinet.

 

The genin housing of Konoha was originally constructed under the direction of the Lord Second. It’s been expanded since then due to an increase in population size, of course, though that’s mostly involved buying out the properties in the surrounding area. The buildings themselves might lack a sense of uniformity, but they’ve always been similar in their inadequacy.

It’s hard not to think about the genin housing these days. Not when it exists in such sharp contrast to the neat lines and stale air of the jounin buildings.

All of the jounin apartments have the same generic layout. Part of him can’t help but find it to be a dubious choice. Having to know that all of your neighbors who are just as good at their jobs as you are also aware of how your home is organized seems like a recipe for acute paranoia. It might explain the frankly odd ways he’s seen people arrange their furniture.

The other part of him is choosing to ignore that he knows enough to come to this conclusion in the first place.

“Should pretty cut and the dry,” says the property manager. The male one.

They are standing in an apartment. Yukiya’s supposed to install an updated bath unit in preparation for turning it over to a new tenant. He’d be lying if he said the lack of clients to deal with wasn’t rather appealing, even if it’s all kind of evened out by the property manager.

He glances around. The apartment is uninhabited in the sense that there is no one else in here but he and the property manager. But there are shoes neatly lined up by the door; a fraying futon couch with matching throw pillows; some sort of grocery list pinned up on the fridge.

“Has the previous tenant not moved out yet?” Yukiya asks.

The property manager shimmies over to where he knows the bathroom to be. He snorts and says, “Moving out isn’t exactly the word I’d use for it.”

And Yukiya says, “What?”

“Happened—what, last week? I remember because it was the same day I had to do some shit with my taxes. Bad day altogether.” The property manager flicks on the bathroom light. “Gotta file a shit ton of paperwork whenever one of them croaks. It’s still honestly easier than when they try to move units.”

“Oh,” Yukiya says. “That’s—”

This is just how things happen sometimes.

“That’s sad,” Yukiya says, following after the property manager and imagining a ball of tape and foam and putty soaring into a dumpster.

The bathroom is no different than others he’s seen before. There are fewer personal belongings in here. Almost none at all. A small note is tucked into the corner of the mirror over the sink. There is a doodle on the note of a tiny ladybug. Keep moving is scrawled in a poorly drawn speech bubble.

“I’ve been meaning to get through these things in the whole building, but trying to get one of those nuts to agree to an upgrade sets them right off or something.” The property manager says, “Like, I’m tryin’ to get them nicer shit, and they get all twitchy. Like that makes sense. Can only get it handled between tenants.”

“I see,” Yukiya says.

“Yeah, well, the worst of it is over. Cleaners have already been in, so it should be all ready to go.”

“Cleaners?” Yukiya says.

The property manager grunts. “Yeah. It’s always annoying when they do it here, but especially when they make a fuckin’ mess of the place. They have to do an official investigation and everything, which doesn’t help.”

Yukiya stops. The property manager does not stop.

“Government covers the fees for it, at least. There was this whole bitchfest about it years ago—there’s a stipulation in the contract, now. Old, old friend of mine used to run a block and had to eat the costs every time it happened.”

“It,” Yukiya says.

“Yeah. But let me know if you catch anything, alright? Cleaners usually do a decent enough job, but the last thing I need is a tenant makin’ a big fuss to the big guy or anything.” He waves a hand. “Blood under the sink or on the shower curtain, you know.”

Yukiya doesn’t say anything.

The property manager says, “It could be worse. That’s what I try to tell myself. Their friends usually come for their shit eventually.” He adjusts his sunglasses. “You did genin blocks, right? I mean, shit, they must have dropped like flies. Especially during wartime. The general turnover would drive me off my nut.”

Yukiya doesn’t say anything.

“But yeah, let me know if you need something. Some genin should be showing up to help move things around at the top of the hour.”

Yukiya doesn’t say anything.

It’s only after the property manager has shuffled back into the main part of the apartment that he calls out, “What was the incident?”

He hears, “The incident?”

“The incident,” he repeats, and he can’t look away from the bath. “Your sister wouldn’t tell me. About the guy that worked before me?”

“Oh. That. Gets her really pissed off, yeah.” He hears footsteps in his direction. “Everything does. Takes after Ma in that way. When we were thirty and I was recently remarried, she—”

“What was it?” Yukiya asks.

He can feel the property manager's pointing finger. “You fuckin’ kids don’t have any manners. Why do I even bother? My god.”

“Sorry,” Yukiya says. He has seen many baths just like this bath. “But what was it?”

“My god. It’s just terrible what this new generation’s turning into it.” The property manager huffs out a wad of air. “He retired. Pension and everything. Heard he’s got money tied up in the vacation spots they’re building in Whirlpool. Nice enough guy, you know. Lost a couple fingers on the job at one point or another but was always pretty chipper. Some people could fuckin’ learn, huh.”

Yukiya says, “That was it?”

“He owed Jun some money and fucked off before ever giving it to her. Told you, nice enough guy. When someone pisses off my sister and then bolts, who the hell do you think has to deal with it? Shit. Some people. What an incident. You good in here?”

“Yes,” Yukiya says.

Yukiya does his job. He doesn’t check to see the size of those shoes by the door or categorize the futon’s exact shade of blue or count how many bitter melons that were going to be bought at the store. The bathroom is clean, sterile, and familiar. A couple of squabbling genin turn up and carry the new bath inside with Yukiya’s assistance. They leave eventually. Yukiya is alone in the bathroom with that ladybug. Keep moving.

When he’s finished, he nods to Shiranui in the hallway.

 

The video store that Yukiya likes to go to is just a few blocks away from the base of Hokage Rock. When he has the time, he likes to take a scenic route home. There is a damp, shrouded quality to the air in the video store, the rooms poorly lit and the smell musty. The man who works at the counter often speaks too quietly to really hear, and so Yukiya just nods and hopes for the best. It’s good to clear his head afterward.

He sits on a bench that oversees the village, a plastic bag of his recent purchases resting beside him. There is a drama from Suna that he’s been waiting for. It was made before the war, but it has been available for international release until now.

He’s been thinking a lot about his childhood in general, recently. Maybe.

All of those fuzzy bits. All of those parts that just didn’t make sense and still don’t make sense. Yukiya used to be kept awake at night by vague, flashing dreams that appeared as fleeting sights and sounds and touches beneath his eyelids.

Yes, when Yukiya was nine years old, he was asked to service a sink in a building that was taller than it was wide, with rickety wooden stairs that creaked beneath his tiny shoes. He had to lug his bag up each step individually. He had met with Koyama earlier in the day, but he entered that building alone, and he came out of that building alone.

They occasionally come to him now, even if they’ve lost most of their shape or meaning. Those dreams. Less than they originally had in the first place. Napping really isn’t going too well.

A brolic green shape does a double back handspring in front of him.

Without looking away from the view, Yukiya says, “Hi, Gai.”

“YUKIYA. My handy friend! I have to wonder how we keep encountering each other! I was just doing my eightieth lap around the Rock on my hands when I happened upon your youthful visage overlooking our youthful village—”

The ramshackle, hodge-podge nature of Konoha’s architecture becomes even more apparent from this high up. Power lines stretch between buildings and congregate at wooden poles as shifting black masses; bodies flicker across rooftops and appear like silhouettes against red shingles. The walls that surround this village that he’s never been outside of remain always in view.

“—and what brings such an expression to your face?” Gai asks.

“Work,” Yukiya says. “Just work.”

He ran back that same permit to the Tower yesterday because of a missed signature. He fixed yet another washing machine at the jounin blocks. It was just a sewing needle this time. A chuunin who he knew as a genin paid him to clear a line after finding him at the grocery store. A ten-year-old who lives alone asked him to take a look at her kitchen sink after he was recommended to her by her teacher. A bird flew into his window. His mother accosted him for the bird that flew into their window. Nao watched from the stairs.

“How diligent!” Gai says. “I’ve heard of your stellar efforts! It’s quite impressive. Especially with your allergies.”

“My what?” Yukiya says.

“Citrus.” Gai makes a pose that is supposed to be related to citrus. Or something. “Lemons! Citrus.”

“Oh. That. Right.” Those allergies. “I guess it’s been alright. Actually,” he says. “Actually, I think,” he says, “that I’d rather just not know.” He says, “I think it’d be easier to just not even realize. I don’t think it could be worse.”

Gai’s arms drop to his sides.

“About your allergies,” he eventually asks.

And Yukiya eventually says, “Yes, those.”

Gai is quiet for a long, long moment. He turns so that he’s looking at the same thing that Yukiya is.

Well. Maybe it’s not the same thing. He can’t really be too sure.

“I think your work is noble,” Gai says. “My determination is born not out of luck or coincidence, though I am very lucky every day. I am lucky to have such passionate friends.”

“Are you happy?” Yukiya corrects, “Being lucky.”

Gai blinks. Then he smiles. Then he gives a thumbs up. “Standing here with my friend, of course I am! You know, Yukiya, my rival spoke very highly of your work!”

“Oh. Did he?”

“Well! He didn’t speak disparagingly of your work, which means he spoke highly of it! I think, in some ways, you remind me of him. Or he reminds me of you!”

Should that come off as demeaning? Yukiya says, “Oh. Does he?”

“I think you are determined! Or stubborn. Even when you think otherwise. And I don’t think these are traits to think light of. Our village needs people like you and my rival in order to thrive.”

That makes me feel horrible, Yukiya says, only he doesn’t. He doesn’t really say anything. Gai eventually bounds off to who knows where, but for a moment the two of them just sit there and stand there, looking at what, yes, must surely be different things.

 

The scenic route takes him farther than it usually does.

He doesn’t really want to be at home right now. The fundraiser has left divisions in its wake. His mother felt slighted by a few comments made about the bitter melon she brought for the potluck, and the whole house has faced its consequences, and he really doesn’t want to think about bitter melons. Alternatively, Nao’s been perched by the front window, waiting for another girl from the neighbor to visit after she said she would. Allegedly. To look at an engraved drawer that Nao talked about while they watched people play cards.

What if she saw you, she hissed out at Yukiya one evening, after ripping open the door and yanking him inside. Weirdo. Don’t muck it up. And she returned to her spot by the window, scowling all the while.

(Their aunt used to keep Nao in the workshop from sunrise to sunset. The fact that her apprenticeship happened at all was a miracle—his family might’ve been in the business for four generations, but it’s not like they’ve ever owned anything. Money was tight. Business was tight.

He remembers when she’d toddle inside, barely taller than him, and rub at red, red eyes and wipe at her nose while their mother brushed out her hair in the kitchen.)

So he doesn’t want to be at home, and he doesn’t want to get caught by one of Urata’s men, and he doesn’t want a shinobi to conspicuously approach him about a deal, and none of these things are in his control or have ever been in his control, not really, but he can pretend. So Yukiya walks. It’s evening now, and Shizue’s probably home, but he doesn’t want to risk running into her uncle.

Yes. So he walks.

The village is large. It sometimes feels too consuming and too cramped at the same time. He doesn’t really have a desire to leave Konoha, and he could, sort of, if he really wanted to, but sometimes he just thinks about it. Sometimes he thinks about those walls.

Yukiya walks past boutiques and blacksmiths and street food vendors and bookshops and apothecaries. There is a woman playing a shamisen on the corner. Perhaps he should’ve asked her to teach him. There are men walking up the side of buildings. There is a cluster of flashy gacha games selling mystery boxes of figurines of prominent individuals from the Founding Era and an itch on the back of his neck.

He stops. The plastic bag he holds stops with him, rustling.

That same itch. Those same eyes. He wonders if he really is losing it. Ever since starting at the jounin blocks, it’s like that itch has never gone away.

He knows that he shouldn’t, knows that there’s no reason to, knows that Shizue’s words are rattling around in his head, but just to be sure, Yukiya glances over his shoulder.

There is a child standing in his shadow.

 

An actual child. He blinks for a couple of seconds to make sure he’s not seeing things.

No, it’s a child. Like. A real, actual child. A child with dark, mid-length hair and matching eyes. What the hell.

“What are you—hello,” Yukiya says. “Hello, child.” Wait. No. “Hello. Can I help you with something?”

Sometimes young children with old eyes appear to him and ask him about their toilets, so this shouldn’t freak him out as much as it does. Maybe it’s almost gratifying, the way that it still catches him off guard.

The child says, “Not particularly.”

“Oh. Okay. Well.”

He doesn’t really know what to say to that.

“You work with the jounin housing,” the child says. Like a question, but not. There is a quiet assertiveness to his tone that feels vaguely off-putting.

He isn’t wearing a forehead protector, but there’s something—maybe there’s something about him. Maybe.

Yukiya says, “Well, sort of. I work in it. Not for it.” A pause. “It’s kind of boring stuff—”

The child says, “I know you’re not allowed to talk about it.”

“Have we met?” Yukiya chooses to say.

“No.”

“Okay.” A beat. “Is there something I could—do you want help with something?”

Perhaps it is just a child. It’s a child no matter what—well, maybe he’s a child no matter what—but perhaps it’s a child looking for his mother or for directions to the stall that sells peaches or, or, or. It’s not any of those things, probably, but he can dream.

“I’m not sure,” the child says, and it seems like there’s something more, but he stops. Pauses, maybe.

Yukiya waits.

“You knew Tenma,” the child eventually says.

“I knew Tenma,” he repeats.

“My teammate,” the child says. “You helped him with a leaking ceiling pipe. A neighbor recommended your services to him. I heard him talk about it once. He didn’t say your name, but it was rather easy to figure out.”

He really is bad with names. Tenma. Tenma? Maybe he can think of something that fits that description, but any face appears to him in his mind as a blurry mass.

“Oh. Gotcha,” he says.

“I’ve been waiting,” the child says, “for a moment to speak with you.”

“Gotcha.” And then Yukiya thinks. And then he asks, “For how long?”

Nothing changes in the child’s expression, but his eyes bounce away from Yukiya’s face for a moment before they return. “I’ve been trying to talk to my jounin-sensei, but he’s been rather… busy. I was at the building where he lives and saw you.”

“For how long?” Yukiya asks again. Completely normally. This is fine.

Blinking very, very slowly, the child says, “Nothing unreasonable.”

Yes. This is very cool, and he cannot wait to tell Shizue that he was right for being so cautious, because a young child has been watching him from the shadows all this time. Has it been all this time? What does unreasonable mean to a child like this one? What?

“Alright. Well. Did your friend—or teammate, sorry, did your teammate recommend me or something?” Why? Why? Child, why?

“No,” the child says. “He only mentioned you once.”

It’s probably majorly humiliating to plan an escape path away from a child that’s half the size of him. It does not stop him. “I am,” he says, “at a bit of a loss.” Honesty. They like honesty.

There is another moment—barely one at all—when Yukiya can practically see the debate happening behind his eyes. Even the young ones can be startlingly proficient in masking their expressions, but if there’s one thing they can’t hide, it’s the way that they think. Path A to path B—weighing consequences—making a choice.

A couple of older kids are gathered around one of the gacha games just to their right. Their voices clatter against one another, indistinguishable. A mother carrying a young child breezes by and someone wearing a green vest hops across the street from rooftop to rooftop as if it’s nothing.

The child makes a choice.

“Tenma died,” he says, watching Yukiya’s face.

And.

His grip on the plastic sack loosens. “Oh,” Yukiya says. “I’m sorry.”

“He mentioned you once. And then I saw you at the housing.”

And then, the child says, but he doesn’t. I’m here because, the child says, but he doesn’t. And he doesn’t seem to know how to, mouth opening and closing.

“Oh,” Yukiya says.

“I’ve seen you working,” the child says. “I know people ask you to help. And that you do.”

That’s not weird at all. “Oh,” Yukiya says.

The gaggle of kids by the gacha machine erupts into a series of cheers—Hashirama! Hashirama! Finally!—and there is still that expression on the child’s face as if he doesn’t quite know how to continue. How to clarify. Yukiya is confident that he’s never met this child before, and yet it manages to come across as uncharacteristic.

Yukiya makes a choice, too.

“Let’s get out of the street,” he says.

 

The first favor had been accidental. Agreed to without even realizing its repercussions.

Yukiya had those dreams. Yukiya was plagued by intrusive, wriggling thoughts that his body was too small or that his name wasn’t his own or that the sky he looked up at was wrong. Those dreams never helped him make sense of anything as much as they muddled his senses. Everything felt wrong. An alarm bell that never stopped trilling right between his ears.

It was not his first official appointment at the genin blocks, but it was his first time at that building, and it was at the beginning. The sink he looked at was corroded and stained and half-functional. That wasn’t what he was there for. He had been instructed to simply fix a leaky connection with some tape and putty.

He remembers that bathroom, and he remembers glow-in-the-dark star decals that were stuck onto the wall, and he remembers his client, a kid who was no older than him and living in a shoebox. It’s not like I’m afraid or anything, she said rather defensively, in reference to those star decals. It’s just annoying to bump into stuff in the middle of the night if it’s dark. She watched him work the whole time.

Yukiya was still green and clumsy back then, but it was a simple job. He turned on the faucet and it sputtered to life. No leaks.

No hot water, either.

“It’s, well, good,” he said, jerking cadence no better than the faucet. Yukiya didn’t speak so much when he was younger, less because of a similarity to his father, and more because sometimes words still felt clumsy on his tongue. “Um. Cold, but good.”

The girl’s nose scrunched. She had a red, sunburned face. He could see it starting to peel. “Yeah,” she said, swiping at her cheek. “I know it’s cold. I keep saying that it’s cold and they keep saying it won’t be cold anymore but obviously it is.”

“Oh.” Yukiya said, “I haven’t heard about that. But maybe—Koyama is really good at his job. So. Maybe he’s just preparing for it.”

The girl looked skeptical. It left the back of his neck warming. But before he or she could say anything, a voice through the wall said, “Yeah, I fuckin’ bet.”

Yukiya eeped.

The girl rolled her eyes and banged on the wall. She said, “Saku, stop listening like a creep!”

“I’m tryna nap before I get sent to the border tomorrow morning, so you could quit yappin’ so loud.”

“We’re talking totally normally!”

“Oh, whatever you say.”

Yukiya said, “Has it been like this for—um, awhile?”

The person on the other side of the wall guffawed.

“Literally forever,” the girl said. “Literally.”

“Oh,” said a third voice—through the ceiling, maybe? The walls here were all so thin, “are we talking about the cold water?”

The girl craned her neck. “Mina? I didn’t realize you were back!”

“No, it’s Maki. But Mina should be coming home soon—she got torn up by some rogue Kusa nin, apparently. Messed up the tendon in her foot and everything.”

“Oh. That’s stupid,” the girl said. And then, looking at Yukiya and pointing at the ceiling, she said, “They’re twins.” Like that was the missing piece needed to fully clarify this situation.

“But is someone looking at the water?” said the twin.

“No, some kid’s just fixing Kuroo’s broken ass sink,” said Saku.

“I told you,” said the girl, “just call me Aoi!”

“Oh, dang,” said the twin.

“I could talk to—um, Koyama.” Yukiya said, “I could talk to him. About it. Maybe he just doesn’t know. If it’s the whole building.”

On the other side of the wall, Saku snorted. The girl sent him a dubious look. “Okay,” she said.

“It’s really been that long?” Yukiya said.

“For-ev-er,” the girl said.

A job is a job, his father said. You keep your head down, his mother said. Little ones don’t bite, Koyama said, laughing. You’ll fit right in.

Yukiya was nine but he did not always feel nine. The building around him was one of warped wood paneling and flickering lights and cold water. There was a bit of a smell. There were little windows to be found, rooms dark and cramped.

He stood there as a child who wasn’t quite a child among children who weren’t quite children—made to be unchildlike, trained and educated and employed. It probably was best to keep moving. It was probably best to apologize and keep moving. He wasn’t qualified to look at a water heater. Not really or fully.

He would not necessarily remember these specific children by face or name. He’s not sure if they’d really remember him. Some he’d see again. Others he wouldn’t. Bet they dropped like flies, said the property manager, and they did.

He already knew that at this point. Yukiya knew so little here, but he knew that, and he knew enough for that alarm bell to ring, ring, ring.

The twin was regaling the story of a mission she had just returned from. So we went—well, that’s redacted. And I was with—well, that’s redacted. The weather was—um, redacted. How are you, Aoi?

“Forever?” Yukiya asked.

The girl glanced over at him. “Forever,” she repeated.

Staring at one of those star decals, for the first time of many times, Yukiya said, “I can take a look.”

 

It’s only upon climbing up onto the roof of a nearby laundromat that Yukiya notices the uchiwa fan stitched into the back of the child’s shirt. His mother would really, truly kill him for this.

Yukiya stands on one side of the roof. The child stands on the other. He asked him to since Yukiya felt bad enough to not want to be directly next to him while he pulled out a cigarette. Most people aren’t too concerned with secondhand smoke these days. He guesses they have a lot of other things to worry about.

Breaking the silence, Yukiya says, “Your teammate?”

The child nods. “We were protecting the Daimyo.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Okay.” That is literally the leader of our country. Normal. Okay. “I’m sorry,” Yukiya says again.

“It was… a noble death,” the child says slowly.

"Was it," Yukiya says. 

"Yes," the child says. "I—he—" The child is looking down at his sandals. "Yes," he says. "I have been meaning to track down my jounin-sensei," he says. Again. 

Yukiya doesn’t know what a noble death looks like. He still can’t place exactly how old the child is—seven, eight?—and he has no authority to be standing on this rooftop. He could say, my father died in the Kyuubi attack or I’m sorry or is it eight? or do you play games, still? or seven? Not six, surely or I’m sorry.

He takes a drag on his cigarette and exhales. “I like movies,” Yukiya says, gesturing with the plastic bag he still carries.

“I know,” the child says. Okay. That's fine. At least he's unperturbed by the change in direction.

“Oh. Cool. Well. I like movies. There are a lot of cool movies out there. There’s this director from Ame? She’s really cool. There’s like, probably eight people that are her, but she’s just really good at what she does. A lot of her work is influenced by Suna theater, which is kind of cool since the film scene in Suna is still relatively underdeveloped. She has this movie that I really like.”

He continues:

“It’s honestly one of her more underrated works. It’s one of her firsts. So it’s a little sloppy. Well. I’m not going to pretend like I could do any better, but if you compare it to her other stuff, then yeah, I guess. A lot of people overlook it? It didn’t even get picked up by the ban lists, and honestly, I don’t know why. There’s a lot of stuff that was put on there and I still don’t get why.” Remembering himself, he says, “I guess it’s not my place to ask why.”

The boy listens. His expression has not changed.

“So,” Yukiya says, “a lot of films in Ame are shaped by the technology there, too. Like, industrialization. A lot of it is—well, you know, it’s political, like there’s this whole genre that you can’t even find anymore because it got—well, you know—but they have a lot of weird stuff, too.

“So this movie that this director made is all about this person who’s part machine. But it’s not a surprise or anything. That’s kind of a trend in a lot of films like that, where it’s like a plot twist or something. Like, oh, man, an android. But you know from the beginning what’s happening. And they never really explain it, either, which is why a lot of people don’t like it. A ton of unanswered stuff. There’s all these odd little parts about this guy who isn’t quite human but isn’t like fully a machine, either, but that’s barely even a part of it.

“It’s technically a murder mystery of this young girl who was killed, but there’s a lot of weird filler, too. The android can’t eat, but he still likes to go and buy different meals from different people and it’s this whole thing. The sound’s really good, too. And it’s in black and white. I’m not describing it very well. It’s kind of messy, but it’s just kind of about what counts as a person. Or—who, I guess.”

And Yukiya says, “Like I said, I don’t really know why it wasn’t banned.”

The child takes a second to respond. “I don’t think I’ve seen a movie,” he says. The wind causes some of his hair to blow across his face, and he puts it back into place with a hand.

“You should. They’re good. There’s a lot to—learn, maybe.”

The child asks, “What happens to the android?”

The ending is pretty anticlimactic. It’s another reason why a lot of people don’t like it. The case is solved, but the murderer is implicated to be related to the cousin of a regional Lord in the daimyo's court, so nothing comes of it. The girl is just a farm girl. The android is just an android. He goes home and he doesn’t eat.

“He just keeps on going, I guess,” Yukiya says, at the exact minute a bird lands on the rooftop.

He and the child both stare at it. It’s landed next to Yukiya. He leans over and grabs the little, annoying missive it carries.

“Thanks,” he says, and it flies away.

A ruptured pipe at the jounin block. Urgent. He doesn’t want to think about what possibly could have ruptured said pipe. The address scrawled onto the missive is not the same address as that boy with the dogs, but it’s close enough to make him feel wary.

“Your work,” he hears, and it’s the child’s soft voice carrying over from the other side of the roof. “Do you like it?”

He looks up. He thinks. The child is watching him, hands behind his back and question glinting in the sun.

Yukiya inhales. He exhales a cloud of smoke.

“I’m very lucky,” he says.

The child nods, something like comprehension in those dark eyes.

Notes:

cw for incredibly callous discussion of/reference to suicide

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hope that kid doesn’t grow up to do anything too wild

anywayssss i know much didn't really happen per se as an ending but i don’t see yukiya’s story as being anything particularly grandiose in the end. he’s a guy and that’s really it and he won’t change anything in some monumental way bc 1) he’s a bit of a coward 2) he’s just one dude 3) he’s not living in a society (we live in a society) that rewards dissent—or kindness in general, really. i have this perverse love of oc and/or self-insert fics of ppl who are just There. nao contiunes to be a girlfailure and yukiya will go to work and his mother will get mad at him. maybe he dies in the konoha crush or something. if he does try anything, he'll die sooner than that, probably. and that’s it! he's a cog! maybe he makes itachi a pretentious film bro and that's it. oops.

anyways, thanks for reading :)

(for shameless self-promo, i have a weird dimension traveling sasuke-centric and uchiha massacre-centric fic idea loaded in chamber [think canon post-war sasuke in a contemporary high school setting among other stupid stuff lol] for those interested 😳😳)