Chapter Text
Naruto abruptly stopped scribbling down in her notebook, at the notes scribbled down the side of the book while the lanterns flickered in the background. She did not bother to look up when the barkeeper set down her drink, a pale tawny jug of ale. Ale, not sake. Never sake. Sake reminded her of her home. In the few years since she woke up, shoulders bleeding and the corpse of her best friend right beside her. She survived Kaguya’s attack. Her best friend’s ashes were now scattered through the wind, remembered by the oceans and her. Maybe by the world when she finally finished writing the book.
At 17, she searched for the remains of the home left behind by her. But she stumbled upon more water than land, felt the differences in the air and saw with a sinking horror of the land that she left behind. And she was certain that it had to be some distant future, she was in. For why her chakra was still working in this land. Why when she tried to summon the toads, she was greeted by faces like Gamakichi but not her old friend. They had demanded to know the truth, the only saving grace had been the summoning contract. The toads’ eyes had widened, and they brought her to Gamamaru. He hadn’t been surprised by her sight, didn’t tear up, and didn’t even flinch when she hugged the huge toad.
I’ve only 21 more years to live, Naruto was what the toad had told her. She had been silent, then howled like a sobbing fox. Because it felt like the world she knew…was gone, just a whisper of the past. The Monument. The very Hokage Monument was destroyed. Her father’s face gone. Like it had never been there. Tsunade’s face too. Even the damn technology felt almost prehistoric to her. She found the bones of the friends lost. Another reminder of how she didn’t break the jutsu. The lost of her home was on her. On her.
This was five years ago. Now. Now, she was 22 years old and with her lack of knowledge on time seals, she couldn’t just rewind time. Couldn’t prevent the destruction of the home, she had lost. In the three years, she decided to write novels. The world could forget her friends, her family, but she refused to let them be forgotten. Of the wills left behind. It was perhaps the only way she could ease the guilt inside of her. She was supposed to be a hero; she failed to be one.
“Writing another sequel, Naruto?” The barkeeper asked her with that curious glint in his eyes. He tried to sneak a peak at her book, only to huff when he saw her text. To these people, her language was far too foreign…too old. She hadn’t found another person, who could read the texts like she could. “What is it going to be about? Wait, don’t tell me—my wife might just kill me if I find out what you’re writing about.”
She closed the book, just laughed at the barkeeper’s demand. Of course, his wife would kill him. When she wrote her last book, his wife came bawling to her and demanding for her to change the ending. They’ve been through so much! They had a daughter, Naruto! They should live and see her grow up! That was her demands. She had smiled at her words, bitterly of course. Because it was a book about her parents. Their tragic love story. She…just wanted the world to know about their love.
Her parents hid their love. For privacy, she understood. But now? Now, she wanted the world to know about their love.
“You can tell her that it’s going to be a story about the daughter…will probably be my longest series yet,” she declared proudly. The barkeeper groaned but it lacked any real distress. Just a little hint of excitement. She picked up her drink, just breathed in the malty scent of her drink. The scent alone numbed her for a moment while she heard the doors of the bar slammed open. “You think she wants to know how their little girl would grow up? Y’know every tale I wrote…there is a little connection between them, a clue to the final series.”
The barkeeper chuckled and wiped the glass. “My wife has a couple of insane ideas of how your saga is going to end, she thought Kushina and Minato were going to live together and have a bunch of babies,” he paused and flickered his eyes to the crowd of men approaching them. “Excuse me for a moment, Naruto. Got to deal with a couple of customers before we talk more about what my wife thought. I’ve only one complaint: you made Minato…so damn good that my wife complains about how I’m not romantic enough! Damn woman thinks I should risk embarrassment for her just because your main character did everything to save her!”
She laughed, only shook her head as the barkeeper went to the men. Her fingers gripped around the pencil; her eyes were just about ready to focus on the book when she caught a glimpse of blood red hair. Of a man in a straw hat. He had the largest smile out of the bunch; his friends were already shouting orders for food. But his eyes, she thought, were almost as bad as hers. Just an empty pit of unspoken grief. A mirror to his real emotions. No one, she decided, could truly hide their emotions.
And she would know. She spent a lifetime hiding her emotions, was now pouring her own grief into novels that civilians thought were nothing but tragic tales.
Breathing in the malty-scented air, she began to write the tale of her childhood. At her imagined beginning of how the Third Hokage reacted to being given the child of his successor, the one that carried Kurama. She was going to do her best, she decided. Do her best to paint him as a man, not some villain to her childhood. He did his best, she knew. The best a grieving widower could do, he could’ve hated her. But he chose indifference. Could have made her a soldier of Root but chose a childhood for her.
As children, adults could be seen as black or white. As a grown woman of 22, she was being forced to acknowledge the world was now shades of grey. Though she didn’t understand this strange future that she was in. Shinobis were gone. Nothing but a forgotten tale, one that only she could remember. She was the last shinobi. But this story could not end with her saying that she was the last shinobi. But…she was the last damn shinobi known. A proper one. Not like those jokes she had seen when she saw the lost books of her mother’s clan.
There was a tyrant in that land, a Daimyo that she saw as nothing but a sorry excuse. Unfit to rule. If it wasn’t for her grieving heart and her own damn knowledge that unless there was a suitable ruler to take his place, she had no choice but to let that land fall into ruin. Jiraiya would be disappointed in her. You don’t sit around and let ‘em suffer was what he would tell her. But what could she do? She was not Daimyo material, and hell was she going to be good at leading a land.
She failed with her home.
The jump through memory lane ended when that red-haired man stumbled to the seat right beside her. The scent of ale was just a bit strong on him, not overwhelming but enough to remind her of Ero-Sennin. He drank too. Sometimes, he would stumble on his way to his room. Would cry about her being too pretty for her own good and then passed out. She always sighed when it happened. Would cover him with blankets and never mentioned about his behaviour again.
“Of all the places you can be writing, you decide to do it in a bar…why?” The man asked her with lips curved into a cheeky smile. His eyes carried hints of his curiosity, drifting to her notes on the side and the beginning of her newest novel. He gulped down his sake in one shot. “Noisiest place to write if you ask me.”
The scent of sake lingered on his breath. Home. Jiraiya. This was not a scent she wanted to smell.
“My mentor used to write books in bars like these,” she answered quietly. Her fingers loosened around the grip on the pencil while those eyes studied her with veiled interest. Confusion too. It brought a tiny twitch to her lips. “Sounds weird, right? Why would a man come and write in a bar instead of just drinking his life away?” Her eyes focused on his friends. “He says the best way to study the hearts of men and women were in places like these, for me…I’m just remembering him.”
By now, his body would just be bones in the deepest ocean. And it hurt. Because she would never be able to recognise him. Maybe, she would find the Hitai-ate once more. That would replace the one on her waist. With no Konoha, she should keep her old one hidden and carry the piece of the man that shaped her. She blinked when the man chuckled, a quiet, thoughtful one. It was a nice laugh. A sincere one that against her own will brought a flutter to her heart.
“You think I would’ve read any of his books?” He leaned his body towards her, the linger of sake grew just a bit stronger. “Bet he wrote quite a bit of interesting characters.”
She found her smile slipping a bit at his words. The Icha-Icha Series were no longer in circulation, why would it be? The editors were dead. Though the books were still fresh in her mind. Every twisted plot turn was still remembered like it was just yesterday. Cheesy lines too. Sometimes, she thought of reintroducing his characters. His words. Of bringing back the Tale of the Gutsy Ninja but…it hurt. It brought a wound to her heart because her home was gone.
The world she knew was now but a history that only she knew.
“No. It went out of circulation…ages ago,” she answered with a quiet smile. Her eyes focused on the exposed flesh of his chest, to the lingering sake droplets trailing down without a care in the world. Same mannerism as Jiraiya. Maybe, he lost people like he did and found his way of dealing with grief by drinking and sleeping around like a cycle. “You probably would enjoy his books if they were around. If you like…reading cheesy lines.”
For a moment, no words were spoken between them before the young man laughed, a loud one filled with dancing mirth. It brought the attention of his friends, most of whom laughed along like a chorus, with one exception of a grim-faced man smoking a pipe. That, she decided, explained the ashy scent in the bar. It hadn’t been there before. The red-haired man drank another round. “Cheesy lines, eh? I thought the characters will have some heart,” his eyes drifted to her notebook. “Tell me, do your characters have heart?”
She thought of the characters that she wrote, the ones based on her parents and mentor. Fame had come around when people read about the story of Jiraiya. Letters had flooded her house, the editors asked her if she could just change the ending of the story or to give the hint of why the man had been in the ocean. You killed off the main character after the woman he loves tells him if he won the bet, he would get a date! The readers want a happy ending, Naruto! She had smiled and just told him that Jiraiya did have his ending.
That not all endings were happy.
“Do her characters have heart? They are the most human people I ever read!” The barkeeper called out. She jerked her head while the man came about, handed another bottle to the red-haired man. His kind eyes were focused on her notebook, the same quiet pride in his eyes. “Most writers make their characters feel boring, hers? You can’t help but falling in love with ‘em. I swear my own wife fell in love with her romantic hero in her second series,” he complained. The man in the straw hat grinned. “And if you read the Tale of Jiraiya? About how he wandered through lands with the desperate need to understand peace, hating war…you can’t help but root for him. He was a lonely man but did he know how to love!” He swirled his head at her. “Least you could do was make him end up with Tsunade and let ‘em have a kid!”
She found her smile faltering at the reminder, before she shrugged. “I told you, the final saga ties the whole thing together!” The barkeeper huffed and her eyes focused on the scowling man. “Don’t you want to know what happened to the daughter of Minato and Kushina? I’m sure you wanna know how that brat is going to be raised without a Mum and Dad.”
The man groaned. “God, you’re going to make it tragic, aren’t ya? For once write a happy tale! Make me and my wife so invested, only for us to brawl at the ending!” His tone was cheeky as he picked up her half-drunken drink. “Tell me at least: will there be a happy ending for the series with the daughter? Knowing how you write, you’re going to make my wife wish she would just want to adopt the little child with the fox in her belly.”
“So tell me…why don’t you write happy endings?” The red-haired man asked her. He didn’t drown the sake, just took a sip of his drink like he wanted to be buzzed but not flat out drunk for this conversation. There was even a quietness in the air around him, a neediness that made her want to furrow her eyebrows at him. “You get the barkeeper complaining about your endings, wouldn’t you want people to see happy endings all around?”
The chatter were muffled against her ears, almost like someone shoved cotton balls into her ears. “Happy endings are great but not everyone gets their happy endings,” she mused as the barkeeper let out another mocking frustrated sigh. “There’s a reason behind every tale. A lesson to be learnt through it, can’t really learn anything if you get happy endings.” Naruto exhaled. “Besides, each story I put is a lead up to the Saga that I’m writing. Little clues for you to figure out what the story will be about.”
“You sound like a tease,” the man curved his lips into a smile. “But if you got all these lessons and tales inside of you, don’t you want to see how they play out in the real world?”
She closed her book and allowed her eyes to drift to the darken skies outside the bar. At the beginning of the stars creeping out from the blanket of the sky. “How do you know this wasn’t based on real life?” His eyes burned with more curiosity while she twirled her pen. “The characters I wrote are based on real people; the events are a…lie.” It was the truth but he didn’t need to know that. “But I don’t write to teach, I write to preserve the memories of the people who died, only to spin it into a tale that make people feel moved.” Her eyes wandered. “Besides, if I see how the real world work…you can imagine I’ll just turn the whole world upside down with my tales. Governments don’t like people who spin tales to move people.”
The man hummed and rattled his bottle of sake.
“You think you ever want to go out into sea?”
She stared at those dark eyes and then chuckled.
“Of course, I’m going to go out into sea again…I’m now a wanderer,” she found her smile slipping as her eyes drifted to the barkeeper and to the laughing men surrounding them. “Got no home to go back to, and I’m only living here just because this is the island that’s the closest thing of reminding me of home.”
The barkeeper chuckled.
“Don’t let Kuina know that you’re going to leave. The brat looks up to you as a role model.”