Chapter Text
The ramen bowls were empty, and the evening had turned the color of bruises. Kagome set down her chopsticks and turned to the old man behind the counter with a bow so deep it startled him. “I’m terribly sorry– I don’t actually have any money. I only just arrived in the village and I haven’t exchanged currency yet. I promise I’ll come back and pay as soon as I can.”
Teuchi waved a weathered hand. “Any friend of Naruto’s eats free on the first visit. House rule.”
She suspected he had just invented that rule, and the kindness of it made her chest ache. Naruto was staring at the counter as though the grain of the wood held some fascinating secret, but his ears had gone pink.
“Thank you,” Kagome said, “Truly.”
They stepped out into the cooling street. Lanterns were being lit along the main road, warm pools of amber that made the shadows between them deeper by contrast. Naruto shoved his hands into the pockets of his oversized shorts and started walking without a word, as though he expected her to peel away now that the transaction of food was complete.
“Which way is your home?” Kagome asked, falling in step beside him.
He shot her a sideways look. “Why?”
“Because it’s getting dark, and I’d feel better knowing you got there safely.”
“I walk home by myself every night.” It was said with a kind of ferocious pride that made her want to scream at every adult in this village.
“I’m sure you do. But I told you, I’m new here. I don’t know the streets yet, and I’d rather walk with someone than wander around lost.” She paused, then added with calculated honesty, “I don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight.”
That got his attention. He stopped walking and turned to face her fully, his blue eyes searching her face with an intensity that belonged to someone three times his age. “You don’t have a house?”
“Nope. I was thinking maybe a bench somewhere, or–”
“That’s stupid. You’ll get cold.”
She bit back a smile. “Probably.”
Naruto chewed his lower lip. She could see the war playing out behind his eyes– the desperate, bone-deep loneliness pulling against the armor he’d built to survive it. Finally he turned and started walking again, faster this time.
“Fine. You can see where I live. But you can’t touch my stuff.”
“Deal.”
He led her away from the main streets, through increasingly narrow alleys where the lantern light didn’t reach. The buildings here were older, paint peeling from their facades, windows dark. They climbed an exterior staircase on the side of an apartment block that looked like it had been forgotten by whatever municipal bad maintained the rest of the village. The railing was rusted. One of the steps had cracked clean through, and Naruto stepped over it with automatic ease of long practice.
He stopped at a door on the third floor. No nameplate. The lock stuck, and he had to jiggle the key and shove with his shoulder before it gave way.
“Here,” he said, and walked inside without turning on a light.
Kagome followed and immediately tripped over something– a sandal, she thought, or maybe a cup. Naruto flicked a switch, and a single bare bulb buzzed to life overhead.
The apartment was one room.
A bed in the corner of the room, Ut’s sheets tangled and unwashed. A small table held a collection of instant ramen cups, some empty, some waiting. The kitchen consisted of a hotplate, a kettle crushed with mineral deposits, and a sink with a dripping faucet. Dirty dishes were stacked in it– all bowls, all the same size. One person’s worth. A half-open closet revealed a few pieces of clothing, most of them too large or too small. The walls were bare except for a single Academy recruitment poster that had been tacked up crookedly, its corners curling.
There were no photographs. No drawings on the refrigerator. No evidence that any adult had set foot in this apartment in weeks, perhaps months.
The air smelled stale– closed windows, old food, the particular mustiness of a space that was occupied but not cared for. Not because its occupant didn’t care, but because no one had ever taught him how.
Naruto stood in the center of the room with his arms crossed, chin lifted, daring her to say something. His posture screamed defiance, but his eyes– his eyes were terrified. He had let someone in, and now he was bracing for judgment.
Kagome set her backpack down by the door. She looked at the room. She looked at the boy. She thought of Souta’s bedroom in Tokyo, cluttered with toys and books and the comfortable debris of a childhood tended by loving hands, and something inside her shifted with a sound like a key turning in a lock.
“You know what,” She said, keeping her voice light, “This place has good bones. But that faucet is going to drive me crazy. Do you have a wrench?”
Naruto blinked. “A what?”
“Never mind, I’ll figure it out.” She crossed to the sink and examined the tap, then pulled a hair tie from her wrist and used it to get a better grip on the handle. A few form twists and the dripping stopped. “There. That’s been bothering you, right?”
He was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. “How did you know?”
“Because dripping faucets bother everyone.” She turned and surveyed the room again, this time with purpose rather than heartbreak. “Okay. First things first– have you eaten anything besides ramen this week?”
The guilty silence was answer enough.
Kagome crouched beside her backpack and began rummaging through it. The bag had survived the well’s malfunction with its contents mostly intact– a minor miracle. She pulled out a package of rice crackers, a tin of pickled plums she’d packed for the Feudal Era, and a bottle of green tea.
“These won’t spoil overnight,” she said, setting them on the table after moving the ramen cups aside. “You should have some before bed. The plums are sour, but they’re good for you.”
Naruto edged closer, eyeing the food like it might vanish. “Why are doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Being nice.” He said the word as though it were a foreign language he’d only read about. “Nobody’s nice to me. Not unless they want something. Or unless it’s old man Twuchi, and he’s– he’s different.”
“Maybe I’m different too.”
“You’re not. You’ll leave.” He said it with absolute certainty, the way other children stated facts about gravity or the color of the sky. “Everyone leaves. Or they were never here in the first place.”
Kagome lowered herself to the floor so she was sitting cross-legged, bringing herself below eye level. It was a technique she’d learned with Shippo– making herself small, unthreatening, a presence that could be approached rather than one that loomed.
“You’re right. You don’t know me yet.” she said. “And I can’t prove anything with words. So I won’t try. But I’ll tell you one thing, Naruto, and you can decide later if it’s true.” She met his eyes. “I know what it feels like when everyone in the room looks at you and sees something you didn’t choose to be.” The silence that followed was absolute. Even the faucet had stopped its dripping.
Naruto’s lower lip trembled. He crushed it between his teeth, hard enough that she saw the skin whiten, and turned sharply away. “Whatever,” he muttered. “You can sleep on the floor if you want. I don’t care.”
“Thank you.”
“I said I don’t care!”
“I heard you.”
He threw himself onto his bed and pulled the tangled sheet over his head. Kagome sat quietly, listening to his breathing even out from ragged to deep. It took less than ten minutes. He was exhausted– the particular exhaustion of a child who spent every waking moment with his guard up.
When she was sure he was asleep, Kagome stood and began to clean.
She washed the dishes in the sink, using the last of a soap bar she found on the ledge. She stacked the empty ramen cups and tied them in a plastic bag for disposal. She wiped down the table and hotplate. She couldn’t do much about the sheets without waking him, but she found a second blanket in the closet– thin, but clean enough — and draped it carefully over his sleeping form.
His face in sleep was heartbreaking. The mask was gone. Without It he was a simple boy, five years old, with dirty fingernails and sunburned cheeks and three strange marks on each side of his face. His hand had crapt out from under the covers and lay open on the mattress, fingers curled slightly inward, as though reaching for something that wasn’t there.
Kagome brushed a strand of blond hair from his forehead. A sealed energy inside him pulsed faintly at her touch– a slow, deep rhythm like the heartbeat of something immense. Her miko senses flared in response, a gentle warmth that rose unbidden to her fingertips. The dark energy didn’t recoil. It settled, like a dog that had caught the scent of something familiar.
“What did they put inside you?” She thought. “And who left you alone with it?”
She slept sitting up against the wall, her backpack as a pillow. She’d done worse in the Feudal Era.
The knock came at dawn.
Three sharp raps, authoritative. Kagome was on her feet before the second one finished, years of sleeping in dangerous territory have made her a light sleeper. Naruto shot upright on his bed, instantly awake, his eyes darting to the door with an expression that mixed defiance with something uncomfortably close to dread.
“Stay here,” Kagome murmured, and opened the door.
Two figures stood on the landing. Both wore the dark uniform and flak best she’d come to associate with village’s ninja. One was a woman with short purple hair and a stern mouth. The other was a tall man whose expression suggested he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Kagome Higurashi?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“The Third Hokage requests your presence. Immediately.”
Kagome glanced back at Naruto, who had pulled the blanket up to his chin and was watching the exchange with wide eyes. She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I’ll be back.”
“No you won’t,” he said quietly.
The words hit her like a physical blow. She held his gaze. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”
The ninja escort led her through morning streets still mostly empty of civilians. The air was cool and smelled of dew. They climbed the steps of the large red tower she’d noticed the day before– the administrative center, judging by the constant flow of uniformed personnel. Up several flights of stairs through a heavy wooden door, and then she was standing in an office that smelled of tobacco and old paper.
The man behind the desk was old. Deeply, heavily old, in a way that had nothing to do with the lines on his face and everything to do with the weight behind his eyes. He wore white and red robes and a hat with the kanji symbol for ‘fire’. A pipe rested between his fingers, trailing a thin ribbon of smoke toward the ceiling.
Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Third Hokage. She’d overheard the name in the market yesterday.
He studied her for a long moment. Then he set down the pipe and folded his hands on the desk. “Mis Higurashi. Thank you for coming. Please, sit.”
She sat in the chair opposite him, back straight, hands in her lap. She could feel something emanating from this man– not the dark sealed energy of Naruto, but a vast, controlled power that pressed against her spiritual awareness like the heat from a bonfire.
“You arrived at our gates yesterday without identification, without money, and without any record of your existence in any nation our intelligence network covers.” he said. His tone was conversational, even gentle, but his eyes missed nothing. “You were observed having dinner with a particular child. And you spent the night in his apartment.”
So they had been watching. Of course they had.
“I did,” Kagome said.
“May I ask why?”
“Because he was alone, and no child should be.”
The Hokage was silent for a beat. When he spoke again, his voice had shifted– still measured, but with an undercurrent of something raw. “You carry an unusual energy, Miss Higurashi. My sensors detected it the moment you entered the village. It is not chakra. It is something… older.”
Kagome’s hand drifted unconsciously to her collarbone, where the jewel rested beneath her shirt. “I’m a miko,” She said. There was no point in lying to a man who clearly already knew she was different. “A priestess. Where I came from, I was trained to sense and purify dark spiritual energy.”
“And where do you come from?”
“Somewhere very far away. I’m not entirely sure how I got here, and I don’t yet know how to get back.”
He held her gaze for a long time. She held it back.
“I will be direct with you,” Hiruzen said finally. “You are an unknown element in my village. Under normal circumstances, I would have you detained and interrogated until your story could be verified. But these are not normal circumstances.” he picked up his pipe again, turned it between his fingers without lighting it. “The boy you found yesterday carries a burden that I cannot discuss in detail. What I can tell you is that he is important– to this village, to its future– and that he is, as you observed, profoundly alone. This is a failure that I carry personally.”
The admission surprised her. She hadn’t expected honesty from a leader.
“I would like to offer you a provisional arrangement,” he continued. “Residency within Konoha, access to housing and basic provisions, in exchange for your cooperation with our security protocols and periodic meetings with me. We will assess your abilities and intentions over time.”
“And Naruto?”
The old man’s eyes sharpened. “What about Naruto?”
“I want to keep seeing him. Visiting him. Making sure he eats something besides instant ramen.”
Hiruzen leaned back in his chair. For the first time, something that might have been hope crossed his weathered face– fragile, cautious, the hope of a man who had watched too many good intentions crumble.
“Miss Higurashi,” he said slowly. “That is precisely what I was going to ask you to do.”
Behind the bookshelf to the left of the Hokage’s desk, concealed by a jutsu that bent light and sound around him, a silver-haired man with one visible eye listened to every word. Kakashi Hatake had been assigned to monitor this meeting by the Hokage himself. His orders were to assess threat level.
The women’s energy was strange– warm, luminous, nothing like any chakra signature in his considerable experience. And when she’d spoken the boy’s name, there had been no hesitation, no political calculation, no pity.
Just certainty.
Kagome left the Hokage’s tower with a key to small apartment, a voucher for basic supplies, and a weight in her chest that felt less like a burden and more like purpose. She walked back through the streets that were now busy with morning traffic, past vendors who didn’t know her and children who didn’t fear her.
She climbed the rusted staircase. She stepped over the cracked step. She knocked on the door.
It opened immediately. Naruto stood there, still in yesterday’s clothes, his eyes red-rimmed in a way that he would deny with his dying breath.
“Told you I’d come back,” she said.
He stared at her. Then he stepped aside to let her in, and as she passed him, his small hand darted out and caught the hem of her sleeve– just for a second, just the barest touch – before he snatched it back and crossed his arms.
“You let the plums,” he said gruffly. “They were gross.”
Kagome laughed, and the sound filled his small apartment like sunlight finding a room that had been shuttered for too long.