Chapter Text
The rain was loudest when adults were trying not to scream.
Minai had learned that much.
She crouched in the dark gap under the wooden slats of the floor, knees pulled to her chest, thin arms wrapped around her shins. The boards above her were close enough that when she lifted her head, her hair brushed them. Mud pressed cold and wet against her bare feet. It smelled like rust and old water.
Outside, Amegakure shook.
Something boomed in the distance, a dull, deep sound that made droplets tremble and fall from the underside of the floor. Little beads of rainwater slid down her arms. The bowls in the cupboard above her rattled, then clinked back together like teeth chattering.
A plate shattered in the next room. Someone shouted. Her mother’s voice.
“Minai! Under, now!”
She had already done that. She always did that.
Another boom. Closer this time. Minai pressed her forehead to her knees and tried to make herself small enough that the dark would forget she was there.
The world narrowed to sounds.
The hiss of the rain outside, endless and impatient. Heavy footsteps splashing through water in the alley. The wet slap of shoes against the front step. Her mum’s rapid breathing. The soft thunk of a knife being pulled from the cupboard. The doorframe creaked.
Voices. Strange ones. Low, rough, chewed by anger.
“…said the intel was here…”
“…if they handed them over, we would not have to search…”
Her mother answered them. Minai could not see her, but she could picture her mother standing by the old table, thin shoulders squared, brown hair tied back with that faded strip of cloth.
“We are civilians,” she said. Her voice was not steady, but it was not begging either. “I told the patrol this morning. There are no shinobi here.”
A hand hit the table hard. Minai flinched even though the blow did not touch her.
“Everyone says that.”
Something heavy scraped across the floor. The table, maybe, being kicked aside. Her mother hissed in pain as something bumped her. A bottle toppled and rolled, thudding right above Minai’s head. Dust shook loose from between the boards and drifted down on her hair like grey snow.
She wanted to reach up and clutch her mother’s leg, to see her face, to know what expression she was making. But she had told her many times, in the quiet hours between raids: if shinobi come, if any ninja headbands appear at the door, you hide. You do not move. You do not speak. You do not come out until I say your name.
It was a rule. Rules kept you alive.
Minai dug her fingers into the mud instead.
A rough pair of sandals stopped just above her, on the other side of her hiding place. The wood dipped slightly. She saw the shadow of a man’s heel through a crack between the boards.
“If we search and find something,” the man said, “your explanation will not matter.”
Minai could not see her mother’s face, but she knew the set of her mouth when she was being stubborn.
“There is nothing here,” she repeated. “Look. Break everything if you like. I have nothing to hide.”
Something sharp moved through the air. A sharp rush of chakra followed, like the sudden cold that rode in with storms, prickling along Minai’s skin. She did not have a word for it, but she felt it. The air thinned.
A moment later, Minai heard the sound of a body hitting the floor.
Her heart jumped into her throat. Her mouth opened soundlessly.
She did not say her name.
“Search,” someone else ordered.
Feet scattered. Cupboards banged open and slammed shut. The single window shattered inward with a shriek of glass. Fragments tinkled down into the puddles.
Minai held her breath.
She heard her mother shifting on the floor, a low grunt of effort, like when she got up after kneeling too long. Relief slid through Minai, warm and weak.
The footsteps moved away. Through the wall, through the floor, into the next room, into the cramped space where Minai and her mum slept on their thin futon. Where her mum folded Minai’s clothes. Where she hummed a nameless tune while mending their blankets by the light of a sputtering candle.
A shinobi kicked over the water basin. It crashed, spilling, the water hitting the floor with a hollow slap. Someone swore.
“Nothing,” a voice called. “No scrolls. No seals. Just rags.”
“Check the ceiling.”
“Already did. Attic is empty.”
“It is always empty.”
“Then maybe the intel moved, and we are wasting time in a hovel.”
Laughter. Harsh and short.
The boots near Minai shifted again. The man crouched. Through the slats, she could see the darker shape of his legs bending.
For a heartbeat, Minai was sure he would rip up the floor and drag her out like a worm from the soil.
Instead, he spat in the dirt, right beside her, so close the saliva splattered across the mud on her toes.
“If you are lying,” he said lazily, “this village will pay for it anyway.”
Her mother did not answer. Minai thought maybe she could not.
A moment later, the weight lifted. The shoes took a few steps. The front door slammed against the wall as they left, then slammed again as it tried to settle back in place. Rain blew in, a louder roar, then softened when the door thudded mostly closed.
Silence seeped back into the little house. Not full silence. There was never full silence in Amegakure. But the sounds outside went back to the ones Minai knew. Distant shouting. Distant metal. The endless rain.
Her ears rang.
She stayed there, cramped and shaking, until she could not wait anymore.
“…Mama?” she whispered.
No answer.
Her heart pounded. It filled her chest, her throat, her ears. She slowly eased herself forward, crawling out from under the floor. Her dark hair caught on a board and she yanked it free with a soft grunt.
The small main room was a mess. The table had been shoved half sideways. One leg was cracked, the bowl they used for rice split in two on the ground. The cupboard doors were open, their few chipped dishes thrown across the floor, one broken into white, jagged pieces. The curtain that separated this room from their sleeping corner hung crooked.
Her mother was on her knees by the wall, one hand braced on the ground, the other pressed to her middle. Her hair had fallen free of its tie. Strands stuck to her damp face. There was a smear of something dark on her lips.
Minai’s feet slapped wetly as she ran over.
“Mama!”
Her mother looked up at her and smiled. It was small, but it was a smile.
“You came out without me calling,” she said, voice hoarse.
“You did not call,” Minai said. She hated how her voice shook. “You were supposed to call.”
“I am fine.” Her mum winced, but she carefully took her hand away from her side as if to prove it. Her fingers left streaks on the fabric of her shirt. “See? They were rough, but I am not broken.”
Minai stared at the red mark seeping slowly through the cloth.
“That is blood,” she said quietly.
Her mother laughed once. “You learn the worst words first in this village.”
She reached out, and Minai stepped into the circle of her arm at once. Her mother pulled her close, even though the movement clearly hurt.
“You did well,” she murmured into her hair. “You were quiet. You stayed hidden. My brave girl.”
“I do not like it,” Minai mumbled against her shoulder. Her mother’s clothes were damp and smelled of sweat and iron. “I do not like when they come.”
“Neither do I.” Her mjm straightened slowly, leaning back against the wall. “Help me up, little rain-drop.”
Minai planted her feet and pushed her small shoulder under her mother’s arm, bracing herself. She used the wall more than Minai, but she let her daughter believe she was helping. That was another thing Minai had learned without words.
When her mother finally stood, she took a moment, eyes closed, breathing shallow. Then she opened them and gave the room a calm look, as if it were nothing more than a spilled cup to clean.
“First, we pick up,” she said. “Then we eat.”
There was no food left out. Most of it had been used or spilled in the raid. But Minai did not ask about that. She nodded, because this was how things were. You picked up, then you ate, even if there was nothing to put in your mouth.
She bent down and began to gather the broken pieces of clay bowl into her hands.
Her mother watched her for a moment, expression tight, then bent to help, one arm wrapped protectively around her stomach.
The rain kept falling.
By afternoon, the smell of smoke had faded from the air, leaving only that heavy metallic scent that never truly went away. Minai sat cross-legged on the floor, a thin thread between her fingers. The cloth she was trying to mend sagged over her lap.
“Pull gently,” her mother said, watching from the mattress. She lay half-reclined against a rolled blanket, one arm draped over her eyes. Her skin looked pale beneath its usual sun-kissed tone, the way it did when she got sick.
“I am,” Minai said. Her tongue stuck out slightly in concentration as she tugged the thread through a hole in the shirt. “It does not like me.”
“Cloth does not like or dislike anyone.” Her mother moved her arm to look at her. “It simply is. Like rain.”
“Rain hates us,” Minai muttered.
Her mum huffed a laugh. It turned into a cough halfway through. She sat up quickly, pressing the rag they used as a handkerchief to her mouth. The coughing shook her thin shoulders. Minai froze with the needle in mid-air.
When the fit finally passed, her mother’s eyes were glassy. She lowered the cloth slowly.
There was a small red stain on it.
Minai’s chest tightened.
“You are sick again,” she said.
“I am fine.” Her mother folded the cloth quickly, hiding the stain. “The smoke was bad yesterday. It irritates the throat. That is all.”
Minai did not argue. She had learned that arguing about sickness did nothing but make mother’s jaw go tight. Instead, she turned back to the shirt and jabbed the needle through with more force than necessary.
Their room was small. One wall, shared with another family’s home, shook whenever someone in the next unit slammed a door. A single square window let in a grey patch of light, broken by the streaks of rain sliding down the glass. The futon took up most of the floor. In the corner, their few possessions fit into two wooden crates: an extra blanket, a spare shirt each, three bowls, a tin cup, the little wooden comb her mother used on Minai’s hair.
Ever since the raids had started coming closer, her mum kept everything packed as if they might have to leave at any time.
“Is the war far away?” Minai asked suddenly, eyes still on the fabric.
“Sometimes it is.” Her mother settled more carefully, as if every movement had to be measured. “Sometimes it is right outside the door.”
“How will we know when it is over?”
Her mother was quiet for a long moment.
“When people stop dying for reasons they do not decide,” she said at last.
Minai frowned. “I do not decide things either.”
“You decide when to eat, when to sleep, when to steal an extra radish from the market when you think I am not looking.”
Minai’s head snapped up. “You saw that?”
Her mum smiled, tired and fond. “I am your mother, Minai. I see more than you think.”
Minai ducked her head, cheeks warm. “You did not say anything.”
“Because you are still growing. And it was just one radish.” Her mother let herself lay back again, eyes tracking the water on the window. “If the war ever ends, I would like to plant radishes. Proper ones, in soil. Not stolen from someone else’s stall.”
“Can we plant them on the roof?” Minai asked at once, seized by the image. “Then the rain will water them.”
Her mother’s lips curved. “Maybe.”
The cough took her again that evening. It was worse this time. Minai stood beside her with a cup of water that her mum barely drank from, her hands trembling on the rim.
“Lie down,” Minai said, trying to sound like her mum did when she used that tone on her. “I will get more water. And… and I will make soup.”
“We have no bones left for broth,” her mum wheezed, but let herself be lowered onto the futon. “And no coin for more.”
“We have rice,” Minai insisted. “Rice water is soup.”
The older woman laughed weakly. “You are impossible.”
Minai had heard that word aimed at her a few times. She thought it was better than “stupid” or “useless,” which some adults shouted at other children in the alley. Impossible sounded like something strong. Like something that refused to move, even when the world pushed.
She liked it.
She padded to the corner and dug into the sack of rice, fingers sifting through the grains. There was less than she expected. Her smile faltered. She scooped half of what remained into the pot anyway and added water until it sloshed near the top.
While it boiled, she sat beside her mother on the futon and watched her breathe.
“Will you go to work tomorrow?” Minai asked.
Her mother’s eyes were closed. “If they have work, I will.”
“You were coughing again last week,” Minai said. “The woman with the metal ring in her lip told you to stay home.”
“The woman with the metal ring in her lip will not feed you if I stay home.” Her mother’s voice was barely more than a sigh. “I will be fine.”
Minai picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “I can work.”
“You are three,” the older woman said.
“Almost four,” Minai argued.
“You are still my baby.” Her mum opened her eyes then and turned her head to look at her. In the dim light, her gaze was soft and sharp all at once. “Your work is to eat, listen, and grow. Let me handle everything else.”
“But I do not do anything,” Minai whispered. “I just… hide.”
Her mother’s hand reached for her, fingers brushing Minai’s hair away from her forehead.
“Hiding is not nothing,” she said. “Sometimes, it is the bravest thing a person can do.”
Minai did not believe that. Brave was the shinobi who leapt across rooftops. Brave was the people who shouted in the street when bandits marched through, even if they were hit for it. Brave was not curling into a ball under the floor and waiting for the footsteps to pass.
But if saying that would make her mum’s eyes go tight again, she would keep it to herself.
Instead, she leaned into the touch, closing her own eyes.
For a little while, the rhythm of her mother’s breathing and the drum of the rain on the ceiling merged into one sound.
The next morning, the rain fell harder.
Minai woke to the smell of the neighbour’s cooking drifting through the wall: thin soup and something burnt clinging to the metal pot. Her mother was already dressed, wrapping a cloth around her head to keep the water from soaking her hair completely on the walk to work.
Her shirt was the same one from yesterday. The stain had spread.
“Stay inside today,” the older woman said, fastening her obi with slow fingers. “The patrols were restless last night. I heard shouting near the square.”
“I can go to the market and see if Tei-san has any old vegetables,” Minai offered. Sometimes the old woman at the end of the lane let Minai pick through the wilted greens she could not sell. “Or maybe the fish man will give me a bone.”
Her mother hesitated, eyeing the window where grey light seeped in.
“Stay close,” she said finally. “Do not go near the bridge. If you see anyone with a foreign headband, you turn around and come back.”
“I know.”
“And if they come here…”
“I hide until you call my name.” Minai repeated the rule dutifully. She had heard it so many times she could say it even half-asleep. “I know, Mama.”
Her mum cupped Minai’s cheeks in her hands and pressed their foreheads together.
“Good,” she whispered. “Good girl.”
Minai breathed in the familiar smell of her mother: rice, soap that barely foamed. Underneath it, faintly, that coppery tang again.
“Bring back good work,” Minai said, the way she always did.
“I will try.” Her mum’s smile flickered. “Bring back a whole basket of radishes, if you can.”
“I will steal two,” Minai promised solemnly.
“Only two?”
“Three, if you do not look.”
The older woman laughed softly and kissed her hair.
Then she left, swallowing her cough as she stepped out into the rain.
Minai watched her disappear down the narrow alley from the window, the faded back of her shirt growing smaller and smaller until the grey swallowed her.
When she was gone, the room felt bigger. Emptier.
The rain filled it up.
Minai did her chores first, because her mother always said: “Work, then wandering.” She swept the floor, pushing dirt and splinters toward the door with a straw broom. She tidied the remaining bowls and stacked them carefully. She folded the two blankets even though they were still in use.
Then she slipped on her sandals and stepped out into the wet world.
Amegakure was made of sharp angles and puddles. Rusted pipes crawled up the sides of buildings, some broken and spilling extra water into already flooded streets. Bridges arched overhead, connecting narrow towers, their undersides lined with dripping icicle-like chains. Grey stone. Grey sky. Grey faces.
This was all Minai had ever known.
She padded along the alley, trying to avoid the deeper puddles. Water still seeped in through the cracks in her sandals and chilled her toes.
The people she passed did not look at her for long. Children were as common as stray cats here: small, hungry, in the way. One woman with hollow cheeks nodded faintly at Minai. A man in a stained apron shouted at someone out of view.
Farther down, near the market stalls, sound gathered. Vendors called half-heartedly about their wares. The war had thinned everything. Thin vegetables. Thin fish. Thin patience.
Minai slipped between adults, hands clasped behind her back to make herself smaller. She scanned faces and stands with a practiced eye.
Tei-san’s vegetable stall was almost empty, just a few limp greens and a basket of shrivelled root vegetables. The old woman sat behind it, her eyes narrowed to slits, the lines in her face deepened.
“Morning, Tei-san,” Minai said.
The woman glanced at her, expression unreadable. “You again.”
“Do you have any…” Minai searched for the word her mother had used. “Refuse.”
“Refuse, she says.” Tei-san snorted. “Fancy for a street rat.”
Minai did not know if that was a compliment. She shrugged.
“My mother is sick,” she said instead. “If you give me the vegetables you cannot sell, I will pray for your knees.”
Tei-san barked a laugh that turned into a cough.
“Cheek like that will get you killed one day,” she said. But she jerked her chin toward a crate under the stall. “There. Carrot tops. One soft onion. Radish leaves. No roots.”
Minai brightened. “Thank you, Tei-san.”
She knelt and gathered the wilted greens into her arms as if they were treasure. They were, in a way.
“You owe me,” Tei-san called as Minai turned to leave. “Next time I slip, my knees better not crack.”
“I will pray extra,” Minai promised.
She moved on, clutching the vegetables to her chest. The fish seller shouted angrily at a man haggling over a price. Minai decided not to risk that stall today. The man’s face was too flushed, his eyes too bright. He looked like someone who might throw things.
On her way back, she hesitated at the mouth of a side alley. This one led to the bridge her mother had told her not to approach.
Curiosity tugged at her like a child pulling a sleeve.
She edged forward just enough to see the base of the structure. A group of shinobi in long cloaks stood there, their headbands glinting through the rain. The symbol carved into the metal was not the one she saw on Ame patrols. She did not know any other village signs, but she recognised “different.”
Foreigners.
Her heart thudded faster. She took a step back, remembering her mother’s warning.
Before she could turn away completely, one of the shinobi lifted his head. Even from this distance, Minai felt his gaze slide in her direction, sharp and assessing.
She jerked back into the main street and walked quickly away, trying not to look like she was running.
Her hands were cold by the time she reached their door again. She knocked twice, out of habit, even though her mother was not home to answer.
Inside, the room welcomed her with familiar emptiness.
She set the vegetables down, brushed water from her hair, and shivered.
The cough started outside sometime in the afternoon.
Not her mum’s. This one came from the street below, ragged and loud. Men shouting. The clatter of metal on stone. People running. The noise swelled like a wave, cresting closer.
Minai crossed to the window and peered out.
Down in the alley, some of the same foreign shinobi she had glimpsed at the bridge were moving through the street. Their cloaks were darker now, splashed with something that was not rain. One of them dragged a man by the collar. The man’s shirt was torn. His headband was Ame’s.
Minai’s stomach twisted.
They were arguing in words she did not quite catch over the rain, but their tone she understood. Angry. Threatening.
She thought of her mum at work. The way she had held her side. The way the woman with the metal ring had looked at her with thinly hidden pity.
The wave of noise rolled on down the alley.
Then another sound cut across it.
Not shouting. Not metal.
An explosion.
The building shook. Dust fell from the ceiling. Something crashed loudly somewhere behind their row of houses. Smoke began to curl up in the distance, darker than the rain clouds.
Minai’s hands went clammy.
She took a step back from the window.
Then another.
The rules her mother had drilled into her rose up through the panic, one by one.
If there is fighting, you go inside.
If they are near, you hide.
If you see the wrong headbands, you hide.
You do not come out until I say your name.
Minai backed away from the window and dropped to her knees. Her fingers found the edge of the board her mum had loosened months ago, “just in case.” She dug her small nails under it and pried it up. The damp cool of the hollow space beneath greeted her with the smell of old mud.
She slid inside, pulling the board back into place above her.
The room dimmed to a thin line of light and dust.
Her heart pounded.
She listened.
Outside, the village screamed.
She waited for her mother’s voice to cut through it all.
She waited for her mother to say her name.
——————————————————————————
The silence happened wrong.
Minai had expected the noise to fade the way rain did sometimes, slowly thinning until it became a soft patter. Instead, it stopped all at once, like someone had cut the sky in half.
She lay curled beneath the floorboards for a long time after the shouting died. Her legs were stiff and her cheek was pressed against damp earth, the smell of it filling her nose. She waited for the heavy steps to return. She waited for her mother’s voice.
Nothing came.
Only the rain. It sounded thicker now, as if even the clouds were tired.
Minai did not know how long she stayed there. Time was not something she could feel properly. It only existed in the spaces between her mother saying her name.
Eventually, her hands began to shake too much to stay still. She pushed herself forward and lifted the loose plank. It scraped softly, like a sigh.
The room above her was dim. Smoke drifted through the cracks in the window frame, mixing with the steam of rain leaking in. The air tasted like wet metal.
Her mother was not in the main room.
Minai climbed out, her knees unsteady. The house looked smaller than it had that morning, as if the walls had shifted inward while she was gone. The table was still crooked. One of the bowls lay upside down in a shallow puddle.
She stepped carefully into the sleeping space.
Her mother was there.
She was sitting rather than lying, her back leaning against the wall as if she had tried to stay upright for as long as she could. Her hair was loose around her face, dark strands stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were half-closed but not fully shut.
For a moment, Minai thought she was just resting.
She walked closer, clutching the hem of her shirt with both hands.
“Mama?”
Her mum’s eyes fluttered as if the word tugged on a thread. She looked up, and for a second she was herself again.
“There you are,” she whispered.
Minai knelt beside her at once. “I waited. You did not call.”
The older woman’s breath caught in her chest. She tried to lift a hand, but it trembled and dropped back to her lap.
“I was going to,” she said. Her voice sounded thin, stretched like fabric worn too many times. “You were good. You stayed hidden.”
“I heard fighting,” Minai said. Her throat felt tight. “Is it gone now?”
“For now.”
Her mother’s gaze drifted towards the doorway, then returned to Minai’s face. There was something strange about her eyes. They looked far away, as if she were trying to see something behind Minai rather than in front of her.
“Listen,” she murmured.
Minai leaned in without thinking. “I am listening.”
“You need to leave.”
Minai blinked. The word did not make sense here, inside their small room, inside their small life.
“We cannot leave,” she said. “We live here.”
“Not anymore.”
The older woman shifted slightly, and the motion made her wince. Her hand pressed against her side, fingers curling into the fabric. Minai saw a darker patch there, but the light was too dim to understand its shape.
“Mama?”
“It is not safe,” her muum said. She spoke slowly, choosing each word with care, as if they were heavy. “You cannot stay in this village on your own.”
“We are together,” Minai said quickly. “I will stay with you.”
Her mother closed her eyes for a moment, her breath uneven. When she opened them again, she looked at Minai with that familiar, steady focus she used when teaching her something important. Despite being visibly unwell, her mother remained a beautiful woman.
“You must find Konoha shinobi,” she said.
Minai frowned. She had heard that name before, whispered by adults in the alleys, usually in anger or fear. Konoha was somewhere far away, somewhere green, according to rumours. Somewhere where rain did not fall every day.
“Why?”
“Because they will protect you.”
Minai swallowed. “How will they know?”
Her mother’s lips parted, but no sound came for a moment. She tried again, voice barely above a breath.
“Tell them… Uchiha Fugaku is your father.”
Minai repeated the sentence in her head. It sounded heavy, like a stone dropped into deep water. She recognised the words, but not their meaning.
“Who is that?” she asked.
The older woman smiled faintly. It was a tired smile, but there was pride in it too, the same pride she had when Minai pronounced a new word correctly.
“A man from Konoha,” she said. “He never knew about you. It is not his fault.”
Minai did not understand why that mattered. She reached for her mother’s hand. It felt colder than usual.
“We can go together,” Minai said. “We will leave tomorrow. We will find him then.”
“No.” Her mum’s fingers tightened weakly around hers. “You must go now.”
“I cannot,” Minai whispered. Her vision blurred at the edges. “I cannot leave you.”
“You must.”
The rain hammered harder against the window, as if trying to drown the sound of their breathing. Her mother drew in a slow breath that trembled all the way through her.
“Minai.”
Her voice was softer now. Softer than Minai had ever heard it.
“You are my brave girl.”
Minai shook her head, tears beginning to slip down her cheeks without her permission. “I am not brave. I hide. You said so.”
Her mum touched her face, fingers brushing away the tears even as more appeared.
“Hiding kept you alive,” she said. “But now you have to run.”
Minai did not answer. Words crowded her throat but none came out.
The older woman’s hand fell back to her lap. Her breaths were coming farther apart, as if each one took more effort to lift.
“I love you,” she murmured.
Minai leaned forward, pressing her forehead to her mother’s shoulder, as she had done every night before sleep.
“I love you too,” she whispered.
Her mum exhaled.
And did not inhale again.
Minai stayed pressed against her, waiting for the familiar rise of the older woman’s chest. Waiting for the next breath. Waiting for her mother to say her name, even quietly, even half-asleep.
The room remained still.
The rain did not stop. It never stopped.
Minai finally lifted her head. Her hands were shaking.
She touched her mother’s face. It was still warm, but not warm enough.
“Wake up,” she said softly.
Nothing happened.
She tried again, louder.
“Mama. Wake up.”
The silence that followed was worse than the shouting had ever been. At least shouting meant someone was alive.
Minai’s body began to tremble, not from cold this time but from something deeper, something she did not know how to name. She pressed her lips together to keep from making a sound.
If she cried too loudly, someone might hear.
If someone heard, they might come back.
Her mother had told her to leave.
Leaving was suddenly the only thing more frightening than staying.
But staying meant sitting here, waiting for footsteps that would not be her mother’s.
Minai stood slowly. Her legs felt thin and unsteady, like reeds bending under water.
She walked to the crates and opened them. There was not much to take. One blanket. One shirt. The wooden comb. The small pouch of coins her mum had been saving, though Minai had never known what for.
She tied the pouch at her waist and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. The fabric smelled like her mother’s soap.
On the floor beside the futon, the thread Minai had been using the night before was still looped through the needle. The half-mended shirt sat waiting.
She folded it carefully and placed it beside her mother’s hand.
Then she knelt once more.
“I will find them,” she whispered. “I promise.”
Her voice wavered, but she did not cry again.
There were no more tears left.
Minai stood, walked to the door, and slid it open. The rain rushed in, cold and relentless. It soaked her long, dark hair in seconds and plastered the blanket to her back.
She stepped outside.
Behind her, the village kept its silence.
Ahead of her, the streets were empty.
Minai started walking. She did not look back.
——————————————————————————
The rain felt different once she was outside alone.
Before, it had been background noise, something that lived with them the way dust lived in corners. Now it landed on her skin like a thousand small taps, as if the sky was trying to get her attention.
Minai kept walking.
The blanket around her shoulders dragged with the weight of the water. It clung to her back and made her colder, not warmer, but she did not take it off. It was the only thing left that smelled like her mum.
The buildings rose around her in tall, narrow cliffs. Rusted pipes ran up their sides like veins. Water dripped from the metal walkways overhead, falling in thin streams that splashed against the puddles below. Everything echoed.
Amegakure was loud even when no one spoke.
Minai walked along the centre of the alley, where the puddles were shallowest. Her sandals slapped softly with each step. She did not know where she was going. She only knew she could not stay.
The streets were emptier than usual. People must have stayed inside after the fighting. The few she saw moved quickly, heads down, faces tight. No one looked at her for longer than a heartbeat.
She passed the small shop where her mum used to work. The metal shutters were pulled down. A dark smear stained the ground near the entrance. Minai did not stop.
Further on, she heard voices around a corner. She pressed herself against the wall and peered out.
Two Ame shinobi stood under an awning, speaking in low tones. Rain ran off the edge of the roof behind them in a curtain. Their cloaks were streaked with mud. One had his arm bound with a bloodied bandage.
“…searching every block,” the taller one said.
“If they find anyone hiding them, they will burn the whole row.”
Minai’s breath caught. She took a slow step backwards, keeping her body close to the wall. She held her breath until she was far enough away that their voices turned back into indistinct noise.
When she reached the next street, her legs began to ache. Her stomach cramped, sharp and hollow. She had not eaten since the night before.
She touched the little pouch tied at her waist. It felt light.
Minai kept going.
The world blurred at the edges once the hunger settled in properly. The rain seemed to fall in long silver threads rather than droplets. The sound of her own breathing grew loud, like waves hitting stone.
She stumbled once on a loose cobble and caught herself on a drainpipe. The metal was slick and cold under her fingers.
“Keep walking,” she whispered, because her mother would have told her that.
Her voice came out small.
She passed a bakery, its window cracked and dark. The smell of old bread clung to the soaked air like a memory. Her stomach twisted again.
She kept moving.
Somewhere above her, a door slammed. A woman shouted at someone unseen. A baby wailed briefly, then went quiet.
Minai rounded another corner, and the street opened into a small square. There was a fountain in the middle, though it no longer worked. Rainwater had collected in the basin, turning it into a shallow pool filled with floating debris.
A single coin lay at the bottom.
Minai stopped.
It was small, dulled by water and time, but the shape was unmistakable. She had seen people hand coins to vendors, seen vendors hand back food. The idea had always seemed simple, but distant, like something that belonged to other people.
She waded into the puddle. The water reached her ankles and soaked through her blanket even more. She crouched and reached into the cold pool, fingers brushing the bottom until she felt the coin.
Her hand closed around it slowly.
When she stood, the coin sat heavy in her damp palm. She stared at it for a long moment.
“This is worth something,” she whispered.
Saying it aloud made it feel real.
She wiped the coin on her sleeve, though it did not help much. She slid it into the pouch with the others.
The weight changed almost imperceptibly, but she felt it. A small shift. A tiny piece of the world that now belonged to her.
A gust of wind blew rain sideways across the square, stinging her cheeks. Minai wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and left the fountain behind.
By the time she reached the outskirts of the village, her feet were numb and her fingers stiff. The buildings thinned, replaced by stretches of wet ground and narrow paths that cut between them. The rain seemed louder here without walls to catch it.
She paused under the shelter of an overhang to rest. Her head felt light, as if her thoughts were drifting above her instead of inside her.
Shapes shifted at the edge of her vision. For a moment, she thought she saw her mother walking toward her, carrying a basket of radishes.
Minai blinked.
The shape melted back into the rain.
She pressed her hands to her eyes, breathing slowly until the world steadied again.
Hunger made shadows play tricks. She knew that now.
The path ahead sloped downward, leading toward the lowlands beyond the village. Minai did not know what lay there. Only that it was away.
She took one step.
Then another.
Her sandals slipped on the mud, but she did not fall.
The rain pressed against her, cold and relentless. It filled her ears and soaked her hair and clung to her skin like a second layer.
Still, Minai walked.
Not because she was brave.
Not because she understood what would happen next.
But because stopping meant being swallowed by the silence behind her, and somehow the rain was kinder than that.
——————————————————————————
The rain blurred the world into shifting grey shapes, but Orochimaru saw everything.
He always had.
He walked ahead of his teammates through the empty outskirts of Amegakure, boots splashing through shallow water. The war had worn the village thin. Buildings sagged under the weight of rain and smoke. Windows stared back like hollow eyes.
Jiraiya was muttering behind him, something about the mission being pointless, about Hanzo’s paranoia, about how Ame civilians were suffering more than anyone else.
Orochimaru did not listen.
He was thinking of the cold.
Of how it seeped into bone and stayed there.
Of how quiet the village was when the screaming paused.
That kind of silence did not mean safety.
It meant aftermath.
He scanned the street out of habit, eyes sharp beneath his fringe.
Nothing moved.
Then something did.
A small shape at the very edge of his sight, half-hidden beneath a rusted pipe. It did not move like an animal. It was too still, too deliberate, like something waiting to decide whether it still belonged in the world.
Orochimaru almost kept walking.
This village was full of dying things.
Another one did not matter.
Except his feet slowed.
He frowned, annoyed at himself.
Curiosity was a weakness.
Sentiment was worse.
Still, he turned his head.
The shape resolved into a child.
She sat with her back against the wall, knees drawn up beneath a soaked blanket that clung to her like a second skin. Dark, long hair plastered to her cheeks, pale pink skin showing. Pretty face shadowed with hunger rather than fear. She was watching him, not wide-eyed, not pleading.
Just watching with her obsidian eyes.
Children usually cried when they saw shinobi.
The civilians here had learned to fear everything that carried a blade.
But this girl did not look afraid.
Orochimaru stopped walking.
Jiraiya nearly bumped into him.
“Oi, warn a man,” Jiraiya grumbled, shaking water from his hair. “What are you staring at now? Another puddle?”
Tsunade followed their gaze and spotted the child.
Her expression shifted, not softening, but sharpening with medical assessment.
“She’s starving,” Tsunade said quietly. “Badly.”
Orochimaru did not answer. He stepped closer, slowly, not crouching yet. The child’s eyes tracked him with precise attention, the way a wounded animal measures distance.
“Come out,” he said.
His voice was flat, without coaxing. He was not expecting obedience.
The girl blinked, then pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. The blanket slipped, revealing limbs far too thin for her age. Her hands hung at her sides, fingers pale and stiff.
She stood in the rain as if she had forgotten what it felt like to be dry.
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes.
“How long have you been alone?”
She opened her mouth, but at first no sound came. She swallowed, then tried again.
“I don’t know, my mother is gone.”
The words were simple, not dramatic. Stated as fact.
“Dead?” Tsunade asked gently.
The child nodded once.
Jiraiya’s expression shifted, grief flickering through it like lightning.
“Kid,” he said softly, “where is your home?”
She pointed vaguely behind her, towards the deeper part of the district.
Orochimaru could picture the scene without needing to see it.
A body cooling on the floor.
A child slipping away unnoticed because everyone was too busy dying to care.
He finally crouched, knees folding smoothly.
Not tender.
Not comforting.
Just level.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Minai.”
Her voice was rough from disuse, but steady.
She hesitated, then spoke again, as if repeating something memorised rather than understood.
“My mother said… to find Konoha shinobi. Are you?”
Jiraiya tensed. “Yes. Why?”
Minai swallowed. Her small hands curled into the blanket.
“She said to tell you… Uchiha Fugaku is my father.” She whispered quietly, only for Orochimaru to hear
The rain seemed to still for a heartbeat.
Tsunade’s eyes stared curiously at the exchange she didn’t catch. “What did she say-”
Orochimaru raised a hand, silencing her.
Something cold and precise slid through his mind.
Uchiha.
A child.
Born beyond the clan’s control.
A threat.
A weapon.
A possibility.
Her eyes were not red. Not yet.
But they were sharp. Too sharp for a child who should barely understand her own name, let alone the meaning of bloodlines.
“Do you know what that means?” Orochimaru asked.
Minai shook her head.
“Good, don’t tell anyone else until I tell you to,” he murmured.
Jiraiya stepped forward, expression softening after he got a good look at the girl.
“Come on, kid,” he said gently. “You shouldn’t have to walk in the rain again. Let me carry you.”
Minai took half a step back.
Her gaze flicked from Jiraiya’s outstretched arms to Orochimaru, and something in her posture shifted. She moved closer to the pale man instead, fingers gripping the edge of his sleeve.
It was not trust.
It was instinct.
She had chosen the devil who did not pretend to be harmless.
Orochimaru froze for a fraction of a second. The reaction was so unfamiliar it annoyed him.
Jiraiya let out a quiet breath.
“Seriously? Of all of us, she picks you?”
“Children are like snakes,” Orochimaru replied calmly. “They know where to coil.”
Minai did not understand the metaphor, but she tightened her grip anyway.
Tsunade scanned the street again, eyes narrowing.
“We should not stay here. More patrols will be coming.”
Orochimaru stood, lifting Minai with effortless precision. She was so light it felt wrong. Bones and rainwater.
She did not flinch when he touched her.
That disturbed him more than if she had screamed.
Jiraiya adjusted his pack and sighed.
“We are not taking a child back to Konoha, Orochimaru.”
“We are also not leaving one to die in a gutter,” Tsunade countered.
Orochimaru ignored them both.
“This is no longer a matter for debate,” he said.
Jiraiya frowned. “Since when do you care?”
Orochimaru did not answer.
Care was the wrong word.
This was calculation.
A variable that could not be ignored.
Yet as he looked down at the child in his arms, he felt something unfamiliar move beneath the cold surface of his thoughts.
Not pity.
Recognition.
He turned sharply.
“We are leaving. We are expected to report back soon anyway, before our next deployment to this wretched place.”
Jiraiya opened his mouth to argue but stopped when he saw Orochimaru’s expression.
Tsunade nodded once. Practical. Efficient.
As they moved, Minai’s head slowly dropped against Orochimaru’s shoulder. Exhaustion overtook apprehension. Her breathing evened out, a soft rhythm beneath the storm.
By the time they reached shelter, she was asleep.
They camped in an abandoned storehouse on the village’s edge. The fire Jiraiya built crackled weakly, steam rising from their soaked clothes.
Minai lay on a folded cloak near the wall, the blanket drawn around her. Her face, in sleep, looked younger. Fragile in a way that made the world seem crueler for noticing.
Thunder rolled outside.
Orochimaru stood apart from the others, arms folded, watching her.
Jiraiya approached, voice low.
“You planning to explain why this kid matters?”
“No,” Orochimaru replied.
“She’s a child,” Jiraiya pressed. “Not a specimen.”
Orochimaru’s eyes did not move from Minai.
“Children grow,” he said softly. “And the world will shape them into something. Better she be shaped by us than by what waits for her here.”
Jiraiya stared at him, something unreadable in his expression.
“You’re not as empty as you pretend,” he muttered.
Orochimaru said nothing.
Tsunade finished checking Minai’s condition and covered her more securely.
“She’ll survive,” she said. “As long as she eats soon.”
Orochimaru inclined his head slightly.
Minai shifted in her sleep, brow furrowing for a brief moment before smoothing again.
Outside, the rain beat against the roof.
Inside, for the first time since she was born, Minai was not cold.
Orochimaru watched her eyelids flutter, her breathing settle.
The girl who should have died in the rain would live.
Not because fate was kind.
But because he had stopped walking.
He turned away at last.
The thunder cracked again, shaking the walls.
The rain never stopped in Amegakure, but for the first time for Minai, it did.