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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.

Chapter Text

The sky above Konoha was too wide.

Minai stepped through the gates beside Orochimaru, her small hand gripping the edge of his sleeve again, not tightly, but with quiet certainty. The rain had stopped somewhere along the road, yet she still expected it to fall. The silence that came without rain felt wrong, as if the world had forgotten something important.

A breeze moved through the trees overhead. Leaves rustled. She flinched.

Amegakure never rustled. It rattled. It echoed. It hissed. But it did not make soft sounds.

The guards at the gate bowed slightly to the Sannin, though their eyes flicked more than once towards the child half-hidden behind Orochimaru’s cloak. Curiosity rather than suspicion. Konoha eyes were different. Wariness existed here, but it was lined with warmth rather than hunger.

Jiraiya slowed his pace so he walked beside her instead of ahead.

“This is Konoha,” he said gently. “It’s… quieter than where you came from.”

Minai looked up at him, then around again. The air smelled strange. Wet earth, yes, but not metallic. Green. She had never known a smell could be green.

“Why is the ground soft?” she asked.

“Because there’s grass,” Jiraiya replied, trying not to smile. “You’ll get used to it.”

She was not convinced.

They walked further in. Villagers paused in their errands to stare for a moment. A woman carrying laundry baskets slowed her steps. A group of children stopped kicking a ball, eyes widening. No one approached. No one spat. No one shouted for her to move.

Minai did not feel safer.

She only felt watched.

Tsunade adjusted the bag over her shoulder and murmured to Orochimaru, just loud enough for Minai to hear.

“She’s underfed. And dehydrated.”

“I am aware,” Orochimaru replied.

Jiraiya let out a sigh. “You could sound a bit less like you found a laboratory sample.”

Orochimaru didn’t answer. He rarely did when Jiraiya wanted emotion.

Minai kept walking.

The streets were strange. They curved rather than narrowed. There was space between buildings. Bright cloth banners hung outside a shop, fluttering in the wind. She stopped to stare at them.

Jiraiya paused with her. “You like those?”

“They are loud,” Minai said.

“They’re colourful.”

“They do not make noise but they are loud.”

Jiraiya blinked, then laughed quietly. “Fair enough.”

Orochimaru did not turn, but Minai saw the slight flicker of his eyes, noting everything.

They reached the Hokage’s tower as the afternoon sun broke through the clouds, casting long shadows across the steps. Minai stared at the sunlight on the stone. It made the ground look warm but she did not trust it. Rain could hide in warmth too.

Inside, the hallways were spacious and bright. Voices echoed faintly.

When they reached Hiruzen’s office, Orochimaru stopped and looked down at her.

“Speak only when spoken to,” he said softly. “And do not repeat what you told me. Not to anyone but the Hokage.”

Minai nodded. “I understand, it is a danger to say it.”

Orochimaru’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He had not used that word in front of her since the first day. She remembered everything.

Hiruzen dismissed two ANBU before the door even finished sliding open. His pipe rested on the corner of the desk, unlit. When he saw Minai, his expression softened in a way she did not understand. Jiraiya and Tsunade excused themselves to wait outside the office.

He crouched, not enough to become small, just enough to meet her eyes.

“You must be Minai.”

She nodded once.

“I am Sarutobi Hiruzen,” he said. “Do you know where you are?”

“Konoha,” Minai answered.

“And do you know why you are here?”

“Because my mother asked me to find Konoha shinobi.”

Hiruzen’s gaze flickered almost imperceptibly toward Orochimaru, but she noticed.

“I see,” he said quietly. “Do you remember anything else she told you?”

Minai hesitated, then repeated the words exactly as she had been instructed.

“I am not to speak of it except to you.”

Hiruzen did not look surprised. That frightened Minai more than if he had.

“Very well,” he said. “You may tell me.”

Minai stood very still. She glanced once at Orochimaru. He gave no sign at all.

She looked back at Hiruzen.

“She said to tell you that… Uchiha Fugaku is my father.”

The room went quiet. Even the distant sounds from outside seemed to fade.

Hiruzen exhaled slowly. Not shocked.

Weighing. Calculating. Deciding.

“Do you know what that means?” he asked gently.

Minai shook her head.

“It means,” Hiruzen said carefully, “that we will take care of you while we learn more.”

Minai blinked. “I do not need care. I can hide.”

Hiruzen winced faintly, looking away for a second.

“You do not need to hide here,” Hiruzen said.

Minai didn’t respond. The statement meant nothing yet.

Hiruzen stood again and addressed the Sannin present.

“I would like a moment alone with her.”

Orochimaru did not hesitate.

“I will wait outside.”

Before he stepped out, Minai reached for his sleeve again without thinking. Orochimaru paused. He didn’t look back, but he spoke low enough for her only.

“You will remain silent unless asked. That is all you must do.”

She let go.

He left.

The door slid closed.

Hiruzen sat behind his desk, not looming, not distant.

“Minai,” he said, folding his hands, “are you hungry?”

She considered the question. Hunger was normal. Constant. Asking about it seemed strange.

“I am not eating,” she said.

Hiruzen smiled sadly. “That is not quite what I asked.”

She frowned slightly. “Yes.”

He reached for a small tray on the corner of the desk and pushed a wrapped sweet across the surface.

“You may take it.”

Minai approached slowly, as if expecting the desk to disappear beneath her hand. She picked up the sweet and held it without unwrapping it.

“You can eat it,” Hiruzen said.

“I am waiting,” Minai replied.

“For what?”

“To check if someone to tell me not to.”

Hiruzen’s eyes softened sadly.

“No one will.”

She unwrapped the sweet with careful fingers, as if the paper might tear loudly enough to get her punished. The sugar melted on her tongue. Her eyes widened, but she kept her face still.

“Do you like it?” Hiruzen asked.

“Yes.”

“You may have another later.”

Minai considered that. Promises were dangerous when made by adults.

“I will not ask,” she said.

“You do not have to.”

She didn’t respond.

After a moment, Hiruzen leaned back slightly.

“You will stay in Konoha for now. You will have a place to sleep and food to eat. There will be people to look after you.”

Minai stared at him. None of it made sense.

“Why?”

“Because you are a child,” Hiruzen said simply.

She shook her head. “That is not a reason.”

It was the truest sentence she had ever spoken.

Hiruzen did not argue.

Instead, he said, “You are safe here.”

Minai’s fingers tightened around the sweet wrapper.

She did not believe him yet.

Safety was not quiet.

Safety was not sunlight.

Safety was a voice calling her name in the dark.

This place had none of those things.

Hiruzen rose again and opened the office door.

“You may come in.”

Orochimaru returned, expression unreadable. Jiraiya offered Minai a small smile. She did not return it, but she did not look away.

“She will be placed in the village orphanage,” Hiruzen said. “We will revisit her situation if anything develops.”

Minai did not understand what could possibly develop. Nothing about her changed. She was still who she had been this morning, only further away from what used to be her home.

Orochimaru inclined his head but did not look pleased.

Jiraiya crouched slightly beside Minai.

“It’s all right to be scared,” he said softly.

Minai blinked. “I am not scared.”

He studied her carefully. “Then what are you?”

She searched for the right word.

“Waiting.”

Orochimaru’s eyes flickered.

Hiruzen pressed his lips together.

Tsunade finally spoke.

“We will make sure she is taken care of.”

Minai looked at them all, one by one, and felt nothing familiar in any of their faces.

Amegakure had been cruel.

Konoha was gentle.

Neither felt safe.

When they began walking again, Minai followed without being told. She did not hold anyone’s sleeve this time.

The sky stretched endlessly above her.

She almost wished it would rain.

———————————————————————

They brought Fugaku to the Hokage’s office the next morning.

Minai sat on a cushion near the corner, hands folded in her lap the way she had seen other children do when trying not to be noticed. The office felt different today. Yesterday, it had been quiet. Now, the air felt tight, like something waiting to snap.

Orochimaru stood near the wall, arms crossed, eyes unreadable. Jiraiya and Tsunade were gone. Hiruzen waited behind his desk, pipe unlit again.

The door slid open.

A man stepped inside wearing the fan crest Minai had glimpsed on passing shinobi the day before. She recognised it only because she paid attention to patterns. His posture was rigid. His expression was carved from stone.

Fugaku Uchiha.

Minai did not know his name consciously, not until Hiruzen spoke it aloud. But the moment he entered, she felt something shift in the room, as if everyone’s breathing changed.

He bowed to Hiruzen with formal stiffness.

“You summoned me, Hokage-sama.”

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Hiruzen said. His tone was calm, but Minai noticed the faint weight under it. “There is a matter that requires clarification.”

Fugaku’s gaze flicked briefly around the room, passing over Orochimaru, landing on Minai for half a heartbeat, then moving away as if looking too long might make something real.

Hiruzen continued, “This child arrived yesterday from Amegakure. According to her account, her mother instructed her to come to Konoha and state that you are her father.”

Silence.

Minai watched Fugaku’s jaw tighten.

“The child is mistaken,” he said.

His voice was controlled, not sharp, but Minai heard something inside it. Not anger. Not denial for her sake. Fear, for himself.

Hiruzen folded his hands.

“She is repeating what her mother told her.”

Fugaku’s eyes narrowed. “Her mother is a stranger to me.”

Orochimaru’s gaze flicked briefly toward Minai. She sat very still.

Hiruzen nodded slowly, as if he had expected the answer.

“Minai,” he said gently, turning toward her, “do you remember your mother’s name?”

Minai shook her head once, sadly.

“I only called her Mama.”

Fugaku’s expression did not change, but something in his posture eased- relief, barely noticeable, but there.

Hiruzen did not press further.

“We have no proof of lineage,” he said, addressing Fugaku again. “Only the child’s statement.”

Fugaku bowed slightly. “Then there is nothing more to discuss.”

Minai looked at him properly then.

She expected to feel something- anger, sadness, curiosity- but there was only emptiness. He was a man she had never seen before. He did not look cruel. He did not look kind. He looked like someone who wanted a problem to disappear.

She stood.

“I can leave,” she said quietly.

The room shifted.

Hiruzen’s eyes softened. Orochimaru’s narrowed. Fugaku’s breath caught so subtly only someone watching too closely would notice.

“You misunderstand,” Hiruzen said gently. “No one is sending you away.”

“You said there is no proof,” Minai replied. “It must mean I will not stay here.”

Fugaku flinched- not visibly, but in the silence that followed.

Hiruzen did not correct her logic. He simply nodded once.

“You will not be placed with the Uchiha,” he confirmed. “You will remain under the village’s care.”

Minai sat down again, as calmly as she had stood. Nothing in her expression changed.

Fugaku cleared his throat.

“If there is nothing further-”

“There is one more thing,” Hiruzen interrupted softly. “I understand you’re a newlywed, but should the child ever awaken the Sharingan, we will revisit this matter.”

Fugaku froze.

Orochimaru looked away, hiding the flicker of a smile that did not reach his eyes.

Hiruzen’s voice remained steady.

“Thank you for your time.”

Dismissal without force.

Fugaku bowed again, stiff and brief, and left the room without looking at Minai a second time.

The door slid shut. Silence settled.

Minai stared at the empty space where he had stood.

Hiruzen spoke first.

“Do you know what will happen next?”

Minai did not hesitate.

“You will tell me.”

Orochimaru’s expression sharpened, as if the answer had confirmed something he already suspected.

Hiruzen nodded.

“You will be taken to a place where children without families live. It is called an orphanage. They will give you a bed and food.”

Minai considered this.

“Will you be there?”

“No,” Hiruzen said, with honest simplicity.

“Will he?” she asked, glancing at Orochimaru.

Orochimaru’s voice was soft but cold.

“No.”

Minai lowered her gaze.

“Then I will not want to stay long.”

Hiruzen exhaled slowly.

“You must try,” he said.

She did not agree.

She did not refuse.

She simply became quiet again.

Orochimaru stepped closer, but not near enough to be comforting.

“Remember what I told you,” he said.

“Do not speak of it except to the Hokage.”

“Good.”

He paused- not long, but long enough for Minai to notice.

“You understand more than you should,” he murmured.

Minai looked up at him, eyes dark and unreadable.

“I just look and listen.”

Hiruzen dismissed them gently.

“She will be escorted to the orphanage this afternoon,” he said.

Orochimaru hesitated for a fraction of a second, then turned away.

Minai followed when told, silent and obedient, no expression on her face.

But as they stepped into the corridor, she glanced once over her shoulder- not at Hiruzen, not at Orochimaru.

At the door where Fugaku had stood.

Not longing.

Not grief.

Just recognition of a space that would never open for her.

Outside, sunlight warmed the village stones.

Minai did not feel it.

————————————————————————

The orphanage did not feel like a place where people lived.

It felt like a place where people waited.

Minai slept on a thin mattress near the window. Somehow only the blanket they gave her was scratchy and smelled faintly of mould, but she was grateful anyway. At night, children whispered to each other across the room, making up stories about parents who would come back for them.

No one whispered to Minai. They whispered at her- “amegakure scum”, “foreign leech”, and such.

She did not mind it really. 

What she minded was the waiting.

On her third evening there, after dinner had been handed out on metal trays, for the third time she had gotten the smallest portion. Minai approached the caretaker folding sheets near the storage cupboard.

“May I have another slice of bread?” she asked.

The caretaker did not look at her.

“This isn’t an inn. Take what you’re given, Ame brat.”

Minai nodded once. She understood the problem.

“I’m sorry. Thank you.”

She walked back to her mattress, sat down, and did not cry. Crying was something children with someone watching could afford.

That night, she lay awake long after the chattering faded. The room grew quiet, then restless, then quiet again. Minai stared at the ceiling until the shadows changed shape.

She stood up without a sound.

She had learned how to walk silently long before she had learned her name. The floorboards barely creaked as she crossed the room. The corridor was empty. The building was wrapped in the soft hush of sleeping children and tired adults.

Minai slid the back door open.

Cold air brushed her face.

She stepped out.

No one stopped her.

No one even noticed she was gone.

The night streets of Konoha were different from Amegakure’s. There was no smoke hanging low in the air, no shouting in distant alleyways. The silence here was clean, not heavy. It made her uneasy.

Minai walked quickly at first, expecting someone to shout after her. No voice came. The further she went from the orphanage, the more certain she became.

She was already forgotten.

She kept heading towards the quieter side of the village, away from the warm lantern light of shops and houses. The roads here narrowed. The air smelled faintly of broth and old oil.

Her steps slowed.

“If I keep walking, I stay alive,” she murmured. “If I stop, I get found.”

It was not a rule her mum had taught her.

It was one she had written herself.

Eventually, she reached the back of a small restaurant. Crates were stacked beneath the overhanging roof. A metal bin stood nearby, its lid slightly askew. Steam drifted faintly from where warm food scraps met the cold evening air.

Minai crouched.

She lifted the lid and sorted through the contents with careful fingers. Pieces of cabbage. A torn dumpling. Rice stuck to paper. She picked out what was edible and shut the bin again.

She ate slowly.

This was not shameful.

This was survival. And it was more food than what they had in Ame anyway.

She scanned the space, assessing it the way she had watched Ame civilians do during raids.

Dry corner under the roof.

Stacked crates as windbreak.

Cardboard flattened nearby.

A shelter she did not need to build from nothing.

Minai dragged the cardboard into place, smoothing it with her palms. She sat inside, knees drawn to her chest, and pulled a scrap piece of fabric around her shoulders.

It smelled like sunlight instead of rain.

She somehow missed the rain.

Morning came with the sound of clattering dishes inside the restaurant. Someone opened the back door and tossed a bucket of water into the dirt, not noticing her tucked into the shadows.

Minai waited.

No one came looking for her.

When the cook returned inside, she stepped out and began searching the ground around the alley. Sometimes people dropped coins while bringing crates in and out. She had watched enough to know that losing money made people swear.

Her eyes caught a glint near the drainage gutter. Half-buried in mud, a coin lay waiting.

Minai crouched and brushed the dirt away.

She picked it up and studied it.

“You buy food,” she said quietly. “So I will keep you.”

She wiped the coin on her sleeve and slipped it into her small pouch.

The weight increased by almost nothing, but it still felt different in her hands. The world had tiny pieces that could be collected. She understood that now.

As days passed, Minai learned the rhythm of the back streets. When rubbish bins were emptied. When restaurant owners smoked outside. Which cats hissed, and which ones ignored her. She learned where to stand so her shadow did not give her away when doors opened.

Visibility was a weakness.

Noise was a warning.

She became very good at both.

One afternoon, the sun was warm enough to make her blanket too hot to wear. She walked towards the river that cut through the village, following the faint sound of running water.

The river bank was quieter than the market. Only two children played nearby, throwing sticks and shouting. Minai stayed far from them.

She knelt at the edge and dipped her hands into the cold water. Dirt and dried soup rinsed away, swirling downstream.

“Cold means clean,” she whispered. “Clean means no trouble.”

She washed her face next, squeezing water through her hair until it dripped down her back. The river did not smell like Ame’s water. It was clearer. It tasted less like rust.

She waded a little deeper, just enough to wet her clothes fully. When she stepped out, the wind chilled her skin, but she did not mind.

She spread her shirt and blanket across a patch of sun-warmed grass and sat beside them, knees drawn close, waiting for the fabric to dry.

People passed without noticing her.

A woman carrying laundry.

A man leading a dog.

Two shinobi talking quietly, not even glancing her way.

Minai watched them all.

If she wanted to stay unseen, she was learning how.

By the time the week passed, she had scraped together a routine.

She collected discarded vegetables behind the market.

She dried her clothes on warm days and slept with damp ones on cold nights.

She kept her coins in the pouch tied at her waist.

She avoided shinobi unless she heard their steps before seeing them.

It was not a life.

But it kept her breathing.

Every now and then, she looked towards the orphanage rooftops in the distance.

No one stood there searching for her.

No one spoke her name.

Minai did not know what loneliness was called.

She only knew what silence sounded like when it belonged to no one.

That night, curled in her cardboard shelter, she closed her eyes and whispered into the dark:

“I am still here.”

Not a promise.

Not a plea.

Just a fact.

————————————————————————

The rain returned on a night when Minai had nothing left to eat.

It began softly at first, tapping against the metal bins behind the restaurant. Then it thickened, turning the dirt into thin rivers that pooled beneath her cardboard shelter. She pulled her blanket tighter around her shoulders and chewed slowly on the last corner of stale bread she had saved from the day before.

The bread was hard enough to scrape her gums. She swallowed anyway.

A small noise made her still.

Sniffing.

Not human.

Minai lifted her head just as a small pug emerged from behind the crates, nose twitching, fur soaked into dark patches. He paused when he saw her, one paw hovering mid-step.

Minai blinked at him.

“Are you alone too?” she asked softly.

The pug didn’t answer. He only stared, head tilting slightly.

Minai considered him for a moment, then looked at the bread in her hand. It was not much. It was barely anything at all.

“You can have the big half,” she said, breaking it unevenly. “I’m not that hungry.”

She placed the larger piece on the ground between them and retreated back into her cardboard shelter to show she wouldn’t take it back.

The pug approached slowly. He sniffed the bread, then looked up at her once- something like understanding passing in his eyes- before eating.

Minai watched him carefully.

He did not seem afraid.

He did not seem wild.

He seemed… purposeful. Odd.

The rain continued to fall.

A moment later, Minai heard footsteps.

Measured. Adult. Shinobi.

She drew her knees to her chest, but she did not run.

A tall man rounded the corner, silver hair tied back, wearing armour that looked heavier than the rain itself. His eyes landed first on the pug- relief flickering across his face- and then shifted to the cardboard shelter.

He froze.

The pug trotted to him, tail wagging once.

“So this is where you wandered off to,” the man murmured, crouching to scratch the dog’s head. “Pakkun, honestly. What did you-”

He looked at Minai again.

She stared back.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then he lowered himself slowly into a crouch, not invading her space, just making himself level.

“Is this where you live?” he asked gently.

Minai considered the question.

“Only when it rains.”

He glanced at the sky, at the water pooling under the crates.

“It rains a lot.”

“Yes.”

His expression shifted- something tightening, something softening.

“My name is Hatake Sakumo,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Minai.”

“How long have you been here, Minai?”

She thought about it. Time didn’t feel like days anymore- just hunger and sleep.

“A while.”

He nodded, as if that were an answer he understood.

“Are the people at the orphanage looking for you?”

“No.”

Sakumo exhaled slowly.

“Pakkun likes you,” he said.

Minai looked at the pug, who sat beside her cardboard home like a small, silent guard.

“Because I shared.”

“Not everyone shares when they have so little.” Sakumo said as he say the stale bread in his dog’s mouth.

Minai blinked. She hadn’t considered that.

Sakumo stood.

“Come with me,” he said softly. “You shouldn’t be out here in the cold. At least not hungry.”

Minai hesitated, fingers tightening in the blanket.

“If I go, will they send me back?”

“No,” Sakumo said. “Just dinner. Nothing else.”

She rose slowly.

Pakkun walked alongside her.

Ichiraku smelled like warmth.

Not heat- warmth.

Steam curled from pots behind the counter. Lantern light pooled across the wooden stools. The owner looked up when Sakumo entered with Minai, eyebrows lifting slightly.

“Evening, Hatake-san,” Teuchi said. His gaze slid gently to Minai, without judgment. “And who’s this?”

“A friend,” Sakumo answered.

Minai almost corrected him, but the word felt strange and careful, but nice in her mouth, so she stayed quiet.

Sakumo guided her onto a stool.

“Can you read the menu?” he asked.

Minai stared at the hanging wooden boards covered in neat characters.

“…I know numbers.”

Sakumo smiled faintly.

“Then I’ll pick something warm.”

He ordered two bowls.

As they waited, Minai sat very still, unsure if she was allowed to rest her elbows on the counter, unsure if speaking without being addressed was permitted. The sounds in the shop were gentle. Chopsticks tapping ceramic. Someone laughing softly at the far end.

She wasn’t used to gentle.

When the ramen arrived, steam rose in soft clouds. Minai leaned forward without meaning to. The smell was rich and unfamiliar, like something that belonged to another world.

“Go on,” Sakumo said.

She picked up the chopsticks clumsily, hands shaking from both hunger and caution, and took a bite.

Warmth spread across her tongue so suddenly she stopped mid-chew.

Her eyes widened. She swallowed.

Sakumo watched without intruding.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

Minai nodded once.

“It is… good.”

That was the closest she had ever come to praise.

They ate in quiet, shared stillness rather than silence.

When the bowls were nearly empty, Minai reached into her pouch and placed three small coins on the counter.

“I can give three coins, I don’t know how much they are worth thought.” she said.

Teuchi paused, then smiled kindly- but before he could speak, Sakumo did.

“Keep them,” he said. “Someday you’ll buy something for someone else.”

Minai frowned. “I do not need a debt.”

“It isn’t a debt.”

“What is it then?”

“Sharing.”

Minai stared at him, trying to decide if that was a trap. It didn’t feel like one. She collected the coins and tucked them away, whispering a quiet thank you.

When they stepped back outside, the rain had lightened to a mist.

Sakumo walked her to the edge of the street where the alleys grew narrow again.

“Will you be there tomorrow?” he asked.

Minai thought carefully before answering.

“If I am alive.”

Sakumo stopped walking.

She didn’t understand why that changed his face.

He crouched again, voice quiet.

“You will be,” he said. “And I’ll find you.”

Minai nodded once.

She returned to her cardboard shelter. Pakkun lingered a moment longer, giving her a look that felt like understanding, before trotting after his summoner.

For the first time since arriving in Konoha, Minai lay down with real, gentle warmth in her stomach.

The rain continued through the night.

But she did not feel cold.

Chapter Text

The rain did not stop that week.

Minai stayed in her cardboard shelter, blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders, waiting for the footsteps that sometimes came and sometimes didn’t. She did not expect Sakumo to return. Adults rarely did things twice unless they had to.

So when she heard a familiar voice at the end of the alley, she froze.

“Pakkun. Slow down. I am coming.”

The pug trotted around the corner first, shaking water from his ears. Minai blinked at him.

“You came back,” she whispered.

Pakkun gave a short snort, as if it were obvious.

A moment later, Sakumo appeared. He was not wearing armour this time. His clothes were still practical, but softer, as if today was not meant for battle.

He took in the sight of her: hair dripping, bare feet tucked under her, a carefully organised row of collected coins beside the cardboard.

“May I sit?” he asked.

Minai frowned. The question confused her.

“You are a shinobi,” she said. “You can sit anywhere.”

Sakumo smiled a little. Not amused at her expense-just warmed by her logic.

“Then I am choosing here.”

He crouched beside her, not close enough to crowd her, but close enough to share the space.

Minai watched him without speaking. Adults usually filled silence with noise. Sakumo didn’t.

After a moment, she asked, “Why did you come back?”

“Because I said I would,” he replied simply.

She waited for more. That was all.

Pakkun settled himself at her feet, sighing as if this was now his official duty.

After a while, Sakumo stood again and offered a hand, not touching her.

“Are you hungry?”

Minai thought about the answer.

“I have eaten,” she said.

“How recently?”

She paused.

“Yesterday.”

Sakumo nodded once. “Then let us fix that.”

Ichiraku was busier than the first time. The smell of broth drifted out into the street. Lantern light flickered across the counter, making Minai squint.

Teuchi looked up, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Back again, Hatake-san,” he said warmly. His eyes flicked to Minai with a hint of recognition. “And the young miss.”

Minai stiffened slightly. Being noticed still felt dangerous.

Sakumo gestured to the stool beside him.

“Same as before?” he asked.

Minai hesitated.

“Is it allowed?”

“You are allowed to like the same thing twice.”

She nodded slowly and climbed onto the stool.

Teuchi prepared the bowls with practiced ease. When he placed one in front of Minai, steam curled up in soft waves, carrying the scent of chicken and miso, he had added extra chicken for her. Minai waited for permission, even though none had ever been required.

Sakumo gave a small nod.

She ate.

Not quickly this time, but carefully, as if learning the shape of warmth.

Sakumo watched her for a moment before asking, “Do people here speak to you often?”

“No.”

“Do you speak to them?”

“No.”

He didn’t look surprised.

“People can be slow to notice what matters,” he said.

Minai glanced at him. “You are noticed.”

“Sometimes,” Sakumo answered. “Not always in the way I would like.”

She thought about that while chewing.

The meetings continued.

Not every day. Not predictably. Minai did not wait for them- waiting was something that led to disappointment- but when Sakumo appeared at the end of the alley, she stood a little straighter.

On the fifth meeting, he arrived carrying something wrapped in cloth.

“I brought you something,” he said.

Minai blinked. “Why?”

“Because you deserve more than survival.”

He unwrapped the cloth.

Paper. Charcoal. A small slate board.

Minai stared.

Sakumo sat beside her.

“Do you know how to write your name?” he asked.

She shook her head.

He wrote carefully on the slate:

Minai.

“This is you,” he said.

Minai frowned. “I know I am me.”

Sakumo smiled. “Now the world will know too, when it sees this.”

She watched his hand, memorising the shape of each stroke.

“May I try?” she asked.

“Of course.”

Her first attempt was crooked. The second was better. By the fifth, Sakumo paused with genuine astonishment.

“You learn quickly,” he said.

Minai kept writing, not looking up.

“I look and listen.”

He remembered having a similar conversation with his son, he was also around her age.

On another afternoon, they sat on a quiet patch of grass near the river. Pakkun was dozing beside them, chin on his paws.

Sakumo drew a simple diagram in the dirt.

“These are the Five Great Nations,” he explained. “Konoha is here.”

Minai pointed. “And Amegakure?”

“In the centre, between them all.”

She traced the map with her eyes.

“So there are many places,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“Are they all fighting?”

“Right now, most of them are.”

She nodded slowly, accepting rather than fearing it.

After a moment, she looked up at him.

“You are a shinobi, are you not, Sakumo-san?”

“Yes.”

“You protect people.”

“I try.”

“You protected me.”

Sakumo inhaled.

“You were alone,” he said quietly.

“Everyone is alone,” Minai replied. “But you stopped.”

He had no answer for that.

A long silence passed before Minai spoke again.

“If being a shinobi means being like you,” she said, “then I want to be one. I want to protect too.”

Sakumo’s throat tightened. For a moment, he had to look away. Such praise was rare. And she didn’t eve know how touching her words are

“It is a hard life,” he said gently.

“So is this one.”

He let out a breath that sounded almost like surrender.

“Next time I am home,” he said, “I will teach you some shinobi things.”

Minai’s expression did not change, but something in her shoulders eased.

“Is that a promise?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I will be here.”

Pakkun opened one eye, hen she left.

“You’ve done it now,” he muttered.

Sakumo laughed under his breath.

“Yes,” he said. “I believe I have.”

——————————————————————————

The next time Sakumo returned, he was carrying something under his arm instead of food.

Minai noticed immediately. She always noticed what people held. Objects told her whether someone planned to stay or leave.

Sakumo sat beside her in their usual spot behind the restaurant, the rain light enough that the smell of broth from Ichiraku drifted through the alley.

“I brought you something again,” he said.

Minai watched cautiously. Adults rarely gave things without expecting something in return.

He unwrapped a folded cloth.

Inside were several more sheets of scrap paper, a small slate board, and a charcoal pencil, smooth from being used down to half its length.

Minai stared, recognising the items.

“This is all the letter,” Sakumo said.

He wrote slowly across the slate in clean, deliberate strokes and repeated them all once.

She frowned at the board.

“I see,” she said.

Sakumo smiled softly.

“Try it,” he said.

Minai copied the letters.

The first attempts was crooked again, the second shaky. By the third, the lines steadied. Soon, Sakumo blinked in open surprise, once again.

“You really do learn quickly,” he murmured.

Minai continued, writing her letters again and again with the quiet intensity of someone who understood that repetition was how you stayed alive.

A few days later, they moved to the quieter spot near the river. The water was low that week, revealing stones slick with moss. Pakkun stretched out on the grass beside them, looking half asleep.

Sakumo placed the paper between them.

“Today we will add numbers,” he said.

Minai nodded, holding the charcoal as if it were a weapon she was still learning how to balance.

“One,” he said, drawing a straight line.

She copied it.

“Two.”

She wrote it without hesitation.

“Three.”

She paused.

“Why do letters matter?” she asked suddenly.

Sakumo looked at her, surprised by the question.

“Because people forget what they do not write down.”

Minai considered that for several seconds. Her expression did not change, but her grip on the pencil tightened.

“Then I will one day write my mother down, somehow,” she said.

Sakumo’s breath caught, almost imperceptibly.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “You will.”

They continued.

He wrote simple words next:

ramen

home

Konoha

Minai copied each one carefully, her small hands steady despite the cold breeze coming off the river.

When she finished, she asked, “Will these stop someone from forgetting?”

Sakumo paused, choosing his answer with care.

“They will stop you from forgetting,” he said.

That seemed to satisfy her.

On another afternoon, Pakkun was more awake than usual. He sat upright, watching Minai practise writing in the dirt with a twig while Sakumo observed her posture.

Sakumo mentioned it casually.

“Pakkun is a ninken,” he said.

Minai looked up immediately.

“A shinobi dog?”

“Yes.”

She tilted her head, thinking it over.

“So he has a rank too?”

Pakkun let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I am the rank itself, pup.”

Minai froze.

Her eyes went very wide.

Sakumo watched her carefully. Most children screamed the first time.

But Minai didn’t move. She stared at Pakkun as if waiting for a second confirmation.

“You can talk,” she said finally.

Pakkun stared back flatly.

“Apparently you can state the obvious.”

There was a long pause.

Then Minai laughed.

Not a small huff, not the polite sound she sometimes made for Sakumo’s sake.

A real laugh.

It startled them both more than Pakkun’s voice had startled her.

Sakumo felt something tighten in his chest.

Pakkun looked away, muttering, “Humans are emotional.”

Later, when the lesson ended and the light began to fade, they sat together in the grass.

Sakumo glanced at her.

“You took that well.”

Pakkun snorted. “Most kids scream, run, or faint.”

Minai shrugged lightly.

“Why wouldn’t I take it well? Now I have two friends I can talk to.”

Sakumo went still.

Pakkun slowly lowered his head onto his paws, ears tilted back.

For a moment, none of them spoke.

The river moved quietly beside them.

Minai looked down at the slate board with her name written across it, tracing the letters with her fingertip as if memorising their shape through touch alone.

Friends was a small word.

But for Minai, it was the first word that ever meant safety.

And safety was something she had not known until now.

——————————————————————————

The first time Sakumo made her stand in a proper stance, Minai thought it felt like waiting for an attack she could not see.

They met in a small, unused training ground on the edge of Konoha, a place where the grass grew a little longer between scuffed patches of earth. Old wooden posts stood like tired sentries, marked with dents and kunai scars from someone else’s practice long ago.

It was dawn. The village was still half-asleep. Mist hung low, curling around Minai’s ankles as she stood barefoot in the dirt.

Sakumo stood in front of her, arms folded.

“Feet wider,” he said.

She moved her feet apart.

“Too wide. You will fall over when someone nudges you.”

She adjusted.

“Too narrow. Someone will knock you down without trying.”

Minai frowned.

“Then where?”

Sakumo stepped forward and gently used his boot to nudge her foot into place, then the other. He tapped her knee so she bent it slightly.

“There,” he said. “Now drop your weight.”

She lowered her centre of gravity, shoulders tensing.

“Relax here,” he added, nudging her shoulder. “Tension wastes energy. You need that later.”

“This is a lot,” Minai muttered.

“It is the basics.”

“Basics are a lot.”

He smiled faintly.

“Get used to it.”

He moved into the same stance opposite her.

“This is called your guard stance,” he said. “From here, you can move quickly in any direction.”

Minai stared down at her feet.

“It feels like standing in the way,” she said.

“It is standing so you can choose where to move instead of being pushed.”

She considered that.

“Again,” he said.

She reset. Feet wrong. He corrected. Knees straight. He corrected. Back rigid. He corrected again.

By the tenth time, she was less annoyed.

By the twentieth, her body moved into place more smoothly.

By the thirtieth, she did it without thinking.

“Good,” he said. “Now we add movement.”

She groaned quietly.

They practised steps forwards and backwards, then side to side. Sakumo’s movements were clean and economical; Minai’s were small and awkward at first, but she watched with the sharp, hungry focus she had once used to count patrols in Amegakure.

He demonstrated.

“Push off the ball of your foot,” he said. “Do not bounce. You are not jumping. You are shifting.”

Minai copied. Her first attempt was too springy; she lost balance and had to catch herself.

“Again,” he said.

She tried. Again. Again.

By the time the sun cleared the tree line, her legs ached and her breath came in short puffs, but her steps were beginning to match his rhythm.

“Sakumo-san,” she panted, pushing sweat soaked hair from her eyes, “how many times do I repeat it?”

“Until your body remembers without you asking it to,” he replied.

She scowled. “That is not a number.”

“It is the right answer.”

She made a small, dissatisfied noise.

“Again,” he repeated.

She obeyed.

Pakkun watched from the side, tail flicking occasionally.

After an hour, when Minai’s stance finally stopped wobbling every second step, Pakkun ambled over to Sakumo’s side.

“She learns like your pup,” he commented.

Sakumo glanced down at him.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Too fast for my peace of mind.”

He thought of Kakashi in the academy grounds, copying every technique he saw with a precision that made older students nervous. He thought of Minai here, barefoot on half-forgotten earth, learning the same fundamentals without a roof, a uniform, or a surname.

The unfairness stung.

Kakashi had a bed.

Minai had cardboard.

Yet they both moved with the same relentless drive, the same refusal to stay small.

In the weeks that followed, their training found a rhythm.

When Sakumo was in the village and not assigned to a mission or with Kakashi, he slipped away early or late, finding Minai at their meeting places with the unerring sense of someone used to tracking targets.

Their first lesson after stances was how to fall.

“Everyone falls,” he said, standing above her as she knelt on the training ground. “The difference between living and not is how you hit the ground.”

“Do not fall,” Minai replied.

“You will,” Sakumo said. “Even the best do. So we learn to fall well.”

He demonstrated, letting himself drop backwards and slapping the ground with his arm at an angle, distributing the impact.

Minai watched, eyes narrowed, then tried to copy.

She did not slap hard enough. The impact shocked up her spine. She grunted, teeth clicking together.

“Again,” he said.

She glared up at him. “You enjoy that word.”

“It is useful.”

They practised backwards, then sideways, then rolling. Her first rolls were clumsy, ending with dirt on her cheek and hair in her mouth. By the tenth attempt, she could carry the momentum back into a standing position.

“Good,” he said.

She lay flat on the ground for a moment, staring up at the sky.

“It is blue,” she murmured.

“What is?”

“The sky.”

“Yes.”

“In Ame, it was grey.”

Sakumo sat down beside her and followed her gaze.

“Do you prefer blue?” he asked.

“It is too bright,” she said, after a pause. “But it is… less heavy.”

That was enough.

“Again,” he said.

She groaned and rolled to her feet.

Her progress was not linear in the way academy instructors liked to see, but it was precise.

When he taught her how to punch, she listened to every instruction.

“Thumb outside,” he said, guiding her hand. “If you put it inside and hit something, you will break it.”

She adjusted.

“Keep your wrist straight. Your arm should be like a line from your elbow to your knuckles.”

She adjusted again.

He held up a worn practice pad.

“Hit.”

She struck it.

“Not bad,” he said. “Again.”

She punched, and punched, and punched until her arms shook and her fists reddened.

After a time, he asked, “What are you thinking?”

She didn’t stop.

“That this would be easier if people were very still.”

He almost laughed.

Between sessions, he told her stories.

Not the heroic ones Konoha liked to polish for festivals, but small, practical ones: how to read a battlefield from sound alone, how to spot a trap set by Iwa shinobi, how Kiri moved differently in mist.

She listened without wide-eyed awe. She asked questions, good ones. She was sharp as a kunai and hungry for more knowledge.

“If someone is stronger than you,” she asked one day, while practising kicks against a tree stump, “do you run?”

Sakumo considered his answer, watching her foot snap out and back with gradually improving aim.

“Sometimes,” he said. “If running keeps your comrades alive.”

“What if you are alone?”

“Then you run if it means you will live to protect someone another day.”

She stopped kicking, lowering her leg.

“And if you cannot run?”

He met her gaze.

“Then you make sure they never see you in the first place.”

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

“Then teach me that too.”

He hesitated.

“That is harder.”

“You said basics are a lot,” she replied. “You taught me those.”

He sighed quietly.

“Very well,” he agreed. “We will add hiding to our lessons.”

Pakkun huffed.

“You realise she is going to turn into a tiny assassin, right?” he remarked.

Sakumo glanced down.

“Better a tiny assassin who chooses who to protect,” he said, “than a hungry child in a gutter.”

War did not pause for their lessons.

As the months went on, Sakumo was called away more often. Sometimes he disappeared for weeks. Minai did not know where he went. Missions were not stories she was allowed to hear.

When he returned, sometimes with new scars, always with more weight in his eyes, their training resumed as if it had never stopped.

He never apologised for his absences. She never asked where he had been.

When he had more time, they trained first, then ate ramen.

When he did not, they ate first, and he corrected her stance with words instead of hours of repetition.

Between instructions, he would mention things in passing.

“Sand shinobi prefer long-distance engagements,” he said over a bowl one evening. “If they come close, it means they are confident.”

Minai wiped broth from her chin.

“Confident or arrogant?”

“Both.”

“Then you make them regret it.”

He paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth.

“Sometimes I am not sure if I am teaching you or arming you,” he said.

“Both,” she replied.

He thought of Kakashi more often around her now.

His son trained at the academy most days, surrounded by other children, instructors, structured drills. At home, he had a clean futon, proper meals, a father who tried to be present when war allowed.

Minai had carved herself a place in the cracks of the village.

It gnawed at him that his two most talented pupils, blood or not, had such different foundations.

One evening, he arrived with a small bruise on his cheekbone, half hidden by his hair. Minai’s eyes caught it instantly.

“You fell,” she said.

“I did not,” he replied, sitting down. “Someone hit me.”

“You did not move fast enough.”

“Apparently not.”

She studied the bruise.

“Did you fall correctly?” she asked.

He blinked.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“Good.”

He chuckled despite himself.

“My students are ruthless,” he said.

“You have another?” she asked.

“Kakashi,” he said. “My son.”

Minai went still for a heartbeat.

“Is he strong?” she asked.

“Very.”

Her gaze dropped to her hands.

“You teach him too.”

“Yes.”

“You taught him first, that’s why” she said huffing.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Then laughed.

Pakkun snorted.

“Humans and your complicated skill hierarchy,” the ninken muttered.

By the end of the war, Minai’s body had begun to change in small ways. Muscles defined themselves subtly along her arms, her stance solidified. She no longer tripped over uneven ground. She could fall, roll, and stand in one smooth movement.

Her basic kata, though still raw, had a flow that caught Sakumo’s eye more than once. She did not simply mimic. She adapted.

“Your hand is too low,” he said, stopping her mid sequence one day.

“It feels better this way,” she replied.

“Show me.”

She repeated the movement, adjusting her guard slightly. He watched with a practised eye.

“It covers more of your centre,” he admitted. “As long as you keep your elbow in.”

She did.

He nodded.

“Then that is your version.”

She smiled very faintly.

She knew how to punch without breaking her wrist.

She knew how to kick without losing her balance.

She knew how to break a grab on her arm using leverage instead of strength.

She knew, roughly, where Suna was on a map, and why Kiri’s shinobi moved like ghosts in fog.

She did not know how to enrol in the academy.

No one had asked that of her.

But she had a teacher.

And to Minai, that meant more than any classroom.

One evening, as they finished a set of drills, sweat cooling on her skin, she bowed out of habit.

“Thank you, Sakumo- shishou,” she said.

The honorific slipped out as if it had always belonged there.

Sakumo blinked.

He had been called many things on the battlefield. White Fang. Genius. Monster, by his enemies. Hero, by his comrades.

But shishou, spoken like that, quiet, matter-of-fact, with a child’s honest loyalty woven into it, felt heavier than any of them.

“Again,” he said, because he did not trust his voice to say anything else.

Minai reset her stance.

The war at the village’s borders rumbled on.

In a small, forgotten training ground, a man who would be broken by war and a girl who would outlive it kept moving, step after step, until their bodies remembered what their minds could not yet fully understand:

They were no longer alone.

——————————————————————————

The war ended quietly for Minai.

There were no celebrations in the alley behind the restaurant. No banners. No cheers. The only sign that something had changed was that the air smelled less of smoke and more of grilled meat from stalls that stayed open later into the evening.

For the first few days after the announcement, Sakumo did not come.

Minai did not count hours. She measured time by the way her hunger returned and left, by the way the shadows moved across the back wall of the restaurant. On the fifth evening, when the sky was turning the colour of old bruises, she heard familiar footsteps at the mouth of the alley.

Pakkun appeared first, trotting over with his usual, unimpressed expression. Sakumo followed, armour replaced by a flak jacket that looked less battered than before, though there were new scars on his hands.

Minai stood from her cardboard shelter.

“You did not come last week,” she said.

There was no accusation in her voice, only observation.

Sakumo ran a hand through his hair, shaking rain from it.

“Kakashi had a fever,” he said.

Minai considered this, then nodded once.

“Then you chose correctly.”

Sakumo huffed a soft breath, almost a laugh, almost a sigh.

“You say that like you are not a child too,” he said.

“I am not your child, he is,” Minai replied.

Pakkun made a small sound in his throat.

Sakumo looked at her for a long moment.

“Come on,” he said gently. “Ichiraku is still standing. That is something.”

The village was different when it was not preparing to defend itself.

Lanterns seemed brighter. Stalls stayed open later. People lingered in the streets, speaking in tones lighter than Minai had heard before. A man laughed loudly in front of a bar; children raced past them, chasing a ball, not a rumour.

Minai watched everything with the same cautious attention she had given war.

At Ichiraku, Teuchi greeted them with a smile that reached his eyes.

“Hatake-san,” he said. “Feels like I have not seen you in months.”

“I have been away,” Sakumo answered.

Teuchi looked at Minai.

“And you, young miss, you have been keeping my stall in business.”

Minai blinked. “I only have a few coins.”

Teuchi chuckled.

“It adds up,” he said.

They ate in their usual semi-silence. Minai slurped noodles with a little more confidence now, though she still watched other patrons to ensure she did not break some unknown rule.

When they finished, Sakumo leaned his elbows on the counter.

“The war is over,” he said.

Minai stared into the empty bowl.

“For everyone?” she asked.

“Not all at once,” he admitted. “But the fighting is done.”

She nodded slowly.

“Will you be gone less?” she asked.

“I will try,” he said.

It was the most honest answer he could give.

Trying turned out to be more complicated than saying.

Peace brought new kinds of work. Diplomats needed escorting, borders needed patrolling, reconstruction missions needed experienced shinobi. There were still bandits, still pockets of old anger, still the constant hum of politics beneath Konoha’s apparently calm surface.

And there was Kakashi.

Sakumo found himself pulled in two directions; one bound by blood, the other by a promise made in an alley.

Minai felt the change before anyone told her.

He began to arrive later. Sometimes not at all. When he did come, he smelled of hospital disinfectant or travel dust. He moved a little slower.

One evening, he found her halfway between the restaurant and the river, sitting on a low wall with her knees pulled to her chest.

“You moved,” he said.

“I can see the sky better here,” she replied.

He sat beside her.

“How is Kakashi?” she asked.

Sakumo blinked. “You remember his name.”

“You said it,” she answered. “I do not forget names people give me.”

“He is… stubborn,” Sakumo said, but there was warmth in his voice. “The academy suits him. He works too hard.”

Minai tilted her head.

“That sounds familiar,” she said.

Pakkun snorted.

Sakumo rubbed a hand over his face.

“I am an uncreative teacher,” he said.

Minai thought that was untrue, but she did not say so. She watched a bird wheel overhead instead.

“Will you teach him the same things you taught me?” she asked.

“Some of them I already did,” Sakumo said. “Some he will learn a different way.”

She nodded once.

“Good,” she said. “You should teach him more. He is yours.”

He turned to her.

“And you?” he asked.

She shrugged lightly.

“You taught me how to stand,” she said. “I can stay up now.”

It was not an answer that satisfied him, but he did not know how to question it without making it into a wound.

Sometimes, when Sakumo could not come, Minai still went to Ichiraku.

She walked in alone, her clothes still a little too big, her hair tied back with a frayed strip of cloth. She climbed onto the stool that had become unofficially hers and placed her coins on the counter.

“What kind of ramen can I get for this much?” she asked.

Teuchi picked up the coins, glanced at them, and set them back down.

“The usual,” he said.

“But that is chicken miso,” Minai replied. “It is more expensive.”

Teuchi shrugged.

“Call it a regular customer discount,” he said.

Minai narrowed her eyes slightly.

“Is it a gift?” she asked.

“It is lunch,” he said.

She accepted that.

The bowl arrived, steam curling into her face, the smell sliding down into some part of her that remembered being smaller, colder, hungrier. She ate slowly, savouring each mouthful.

When she finished, she pushed the coins towards Teuchi again.

“Until next time, Teuchi-san, thank you for lunch,” she said.

“See you soon kid,” he agreed.

She left without looking back, because turning her head meant risking the hope that someone would be watching her go.

Orochimaru saw her by accident.

He had returned to Konoha with the other Sannin, the war behind them like a shadow that refused to stay on the ground. He had spent the day in meetings, reports, discussions about casualties and resources and future threats. He had spoken to Hiruzen. He had stood beside Jiraiya and Tsunade, the three of them together and separate in ways that tired him.

He was walking past the market in the late afternoon when he noticed a thin figure at the river.

A child, kneeling at the water’s edge, washing a shirt with practised movements. Dark hair tied back. Bare feet on the damp stones.

He might have walked past. There were many war orphans. The sight was sadly common.

Then she turned her head slightly, and he saw her eyes.

Recognition struck like a kunai.

“Orochimaru-san.”

Her voice had changed a little, but not enough to be someone else’s.

He stopped on the bridge above her, looking down.

“Minai,” he said.

She stood, wringing the water from the shirt. It was one of the few she owned; he could tell by the way she handled it, careful and efficient.

“You are taller,” he observed.

“You are the same,” she replied.

It was almost a compliment.

He studied her in silence for a moment.

Her clothes were patched. Her arms were still thin. There was a hardness in the lines of her shoulders that did not belong on a child her age.

“Where are you living?” he asked.

She did not answer immediately.

“Near the restaurant,” she said at last.

“In the alley,” he said.

It was not a question.

She did not deny it.

Something cold and sharp flashed through him.

“So this is what village protection looks like,” he murmured.

She blinked.

“Sarutobi-sensei said you would be cared for,” he continued. “You look… similar to how I found you.”

Minai glanced at her reflection in the water, then back at him.

“I am not in the rain,” she said. “There is a roof. Sometimes.”

He did not find that reassuring.

“Have you been to the orphanage at all?” he asked.

“I stayed almost a week,” she said. “Then I left.”

“Why?”

“They did not want me there, because I’m a foreigner,” she replied. A simple fact. “And they did not look for me when I left.”

Orochimaru closed his eyes briefly, a muscle in his jaw tightening.

He had not checked on her after bringing her to Konoha. There had been war, and experiments, and missions, and his own darkness gnawing at the edges of his focus. He had assumed the village systems would hold her.

It was a stupid assumption. He did not make those often.

“Do you wish to be a shinobi?” he asked.

Minai looked at him steadily.

“Yes.”

“Why?” he asked, curious of the answer.

She thought of Sakumo, of Pakkun, of ramen, of hours spent falling and standing again.

“Because people who protect should be stronger than people who hurt,” she said. “And because you and Sakumo-shishou showed me that sometimes they are.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“You have terrible role models,” he said.

“I have only two,” she replied.

He turned away abruptly.

“I will speak to the Hokage.”

“Orochimaru-san,” she said.

He glanced back.

“You stopped again,” she said.

Her voice was quiet, but the words landed with more weight than any praise he had ever received.

He left without responding.

Hiruzen was sorting through the latest reports when Orochimaru opened the office door without waiting for permission.

Hiruzen sighed softly.

“I could have been in a meeting,” he said.

“You were not,” Orochimaru replied. He stepped inside, eyes cold.

Hiruzen set his pipe down.

“What is it?”

“I found Minai,” Orochimaru said.

Hiruzen looked puzzled for a moment, then the name clicked into place.

“The Ame child,” he said. “The one who claimed Uchiha lineage.”

“The one I brought here personally,” Orochimaru said. “The one you placed in the orphanage.”

“Yes,” Hiruzen said slowly. “Is there a problem?”

“She is living behind a restaurant,” Orochimaru said. His voice did not rise, but every word sharpened. “Eating from bins. Washing her clothes in the river. Still alone.”

Hiruzen’s shoulders sank a fraction.

“She ran away,” he said. “The staff reported it. ANBU were instructed to keep an eye on her.”

“To watch,” Orochimaru said. “Not to help.”

“Interference can be difficult,” Hiruzen said.

“For you, perhaps,” Orochimaru replied.

The silence stretched.

Hiruzen reached for his pipe, then stopped, fingers curling around nothing.

“What do you propose?” he asked.

“At the very least, enrol her in the academy,” Orochimaru said. “She has aptitude. She survives where others would not. She is precisely the kind of person this village wastes when it looks away.”

Hiruzen exhaled slowly.

“The council will question the decision,” he said. “She has no clan, no sponsor, no proof of heritage.”

“Then sponsor her,” Orochimaru said.

Hiruzen blinked.

“You?”

“Or you,” Orochimaru said. “You are fond of obligations.”

The Hokage hesitated. The war had ended, but the village was still bleeding resources. He knew the council, knew their whispers, their suspicion. An Ame-born child with a rumoured Uchiha father was a complicated knot.

But he also knew Minai’s file. Her early reports. The brief note about how Orochimaru had found her. The line about Amegakure. The unspoken risk of letting such a child drift.

“Very well,” he said at last. “I will see what can be done.”

It was not the firm answer Orochimaru wanted, but it was movement.

He turned to leave.

The door slid open before he reached it.

Danzo stood in the threshold as if he had been waiting for his cue.

Danzo Shimura entered the room like a shadow in bandages.

“Orochimaru,” he said mildly. “Hiruzen.”

Orochimaru’s eyes narrowed.

“Hiruzen and I are discussing academy placements,” Hiruzen said.

“Are you, now?” Danzo’s single visible eye shifted towards Orochimaru. “I heard something interesting, just outside.”

Of course he had.

Orochimaru stepped aside, making no attempt to hide his irritation.

“You are concerned about a stray, I see,” Danzo said. “The Ame child.”

“Concerned that she is being wasted,” Orochimaru replied.

Danzo inclined his head slightly.

“Waste is indeed a problem,” he said. “Especially now. The war may be over, but its consequences are not.”

He turned to Hiruzen.

“If this child is as resilient as you say,” he went on, “and as talented as Orochimaru seems to believe, then perhaps the academy is not the most efficient place for her.”

Orochimaru stiffened.

“Root can provide rigorous training,” Danzo continued. “Discipline. Purpose. Shelter. Food. Everything she lacks now. And we both know, Hiruzen, that this village will need strong operatives in the years to come.”

Root. The word sat in the air like a stone.

Hiruzen’s mouth tightened.

“She is still a child,” he said.

“Root shapes children into weapons that protect the village,” Danzo replied blandly. “Better she be sharpened with intent than left to rust in a gutter.”

Orochimaru’s voice turned cool.

“She is not a piece of discarded metal.”

“She is an asset we cannot afford to ignore,” Danzo said.

The three of them stood in the same room, looking at the same absent child, seeing three different things.

Hiruzen saw a responsibility he had already failed once.

Orochimaru saw a girl who had looked at him with clear eyes in the rain and remembered his name.

Danzo saw potential without a clan to claim it.

“There will be questions,” Hiruzen said quietly. “About why Root.”

“We can present it as charity, if that eases the council’s conscience,” Danzo said. “A war orphan, taken in by a dedicated training programme. It will sound admirable.”

Orochimaru’s lip curled in a snarl.

“At least in Root she will have a bed,” Danzo added. “And three meals a day. That is more than she has now.”

The argument slid under Hiruzen’s armour more effectively than any moral plea.

He thought of her record. Of the orphanage reports. Of the note about her slipping away, about ANBU eyes watching her in the dark and doing nothing. Of Sakumo’s training.

Orochimaru saw the decision forming before the words left Hiruzen’s mouth.

“She should be in the academy,” Orochimaru said.

“Root operates under the Hokage’s command,” Danzo said smoothly. “You would still be… indirectly responsible for her well-being, Hiruzen.”

It was a clever move. On paper, it kept ultimate authority with the Hokage. In practice, it gave Danzo what he wanted.

Hiruzen closed his eyes briefly.

War had trained him to weigh lives against stability, to balance individual cost against collective security. He hated that part of himself. He used it anyway.

“Very well,” he said at last. The words tasted like ash. “She will be placed under Root’s training programme.”

Orochimaru’s hands curled at his sides.

“You are making a mistake,” he said.

“Perhaps,” Hiruzen said. “Perhaps I made the first one when I assumed the orphanage was enough.”

He opened his eyes.

“This way, she will have food. A bed. Training.”

“A leash,” Orochimaru said.

Hiruzen did not deny it.

Danzo inclined his head.

“I will make the arrangements,” he said. “You will not regret this, Hiruzen.”

He left as silently as he had arrived.

The office felt colder.

Orochimaru stood there for a long moment, staring at the door.

“You are giving her to him,” he said.

“I am giving her to a system that will keep her alive,” Hiruzen answered.

Orochimaru’s eyes were like a snake’s.

“Sometimes,” he said softly, “survival is the cruelest choice.”

He turned and walked out.

Minai sat on the riverbank again that evening, watching the water slide past. She had washed her shirt and spread it out on a rock to dry. The sky overhead was streaked with orange.

She heard someone approach and did not need to turn to know who it was.

“Orochimaru-san,” she said.

He came to stand beside her, hands in his sleeves, expression cool and distant.

“Things are going to change,” he said.

“War already ended,” she replied.

“This is different.”

She looked up at him.

“You want to be a shinobi,” he said.

“Yes.”

“There is a place,” he went on, “where children are trained for that life. It is… strict. Harsh. But you would have a bed. Food. Instruction.”

“Is it the academy?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It is another unit. Root.”

She tasted the word silently.

“Is it under Hiruzen-sama?” she asked.

“In theory,” Orochimaru said.

He did not tell her who truly held the reins. She would learn that soon enough.

“If I go there,” she said, “will I stop being in the way?”

“You are not in the way,” he said. It was one of the few outright contradictions he ever offered her.

“But I am in the cracks,” she replied. “They do not see me unless someone like you points.”

He did not argue.

“You would be seen there,” he said. “Constantly.”

She considered that.

“Will I learn how to protect?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. There was no lie in that.

She nodded once.

“Then I will go.”

He felt an unfamiliar sensation twist in his chest at how easily she accepted it.

“Minai,” he said.

She turned her head.

“If it becomes too much,” he said quietly, “remember that you are not something they own.”

She frowned slightly.

“I am me,” she said. “Sakumo-shishou taught me my name.”

He inclined his head.

“Do not let them make you forget it.”

The river moved on, carrying reflections of the village lights.

In a tower not far away, Hiruzen Sarutobi stared at his desk, at an empty corner where a file would soon sit with a new stamp on it.

Root.

Another decision made for the sake of the village.

Another child folded into the machinery.

The system had chosen the most expedient path. That did not make it the right one.

Outside, beneath a sky that was still learning how to be peaceful, Minai watched the last light fade and held her name like a weapon no one could see.

——————————————————————————

Minai found Sakumo in the training grounds near the Hatake compound.

Evening light slanted through the trees, catching on the pale edges of his hair as he corrected a dummy’s harness. The place smelled of dust and cut grass. She watched him for a moment from the shade, taking in the steady efficiency of his movements.

He always moved like someone prepared to be interrupted.

Pakkun spotted her first. The pug lifted his head from where he was sprawled in the dirt and let out a short bark.

Sakumo turned.

When he saw her, his face lifted in a way that reached all the way to his eyes.

“Minai,” he said. “You found me this time.”

She stepped out from the shadow, hands resting lightly on the strap of the small, plain bag over her shoulder. Everything she owned was in it. Danzo had told her she was not to speak of Root to anyone.

She had listened. It was what she had always done.

But she needed to do one thing first.

“I am going to learn how to be a shinobi,” she said.

Sakumo blinked, then smiled, warmth blooming through the tired lines of his face.

“At the academy?” he asked, relief in his voice. “That is good. Kakashi will be starting classes soon too. Maybe you will be classmates.”

Minai thought about the question.

At the academy.

Root was technically under the Hokage, part of the same structure. Children there trained, wore masks, protected the village. It was not a lie, not in the way Danzo would define it.

She nodded once.

“Yes,” she said. “I am going to learn.”

Sakumo exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing.

“I am glad,” he said. “You deserve a place there.”

“I have you, too” she replied.

He hesitated, then stepped closer and rested a hand briefly on her head. He did not ruffle her hair. He placed his palm there gently, like something reverent.

“You do, and you will do well,” he said. “You worked harder than any of them already.”

She looked up at him.

“Then I will learn quickly,” she said, voice quiet but firm, “so I do not embarrass you, shishou.”

The title settled between them more solidly than ever. His hand tightened slightly against her hair.

“You could never embarrass me,” he said.

Pakkun padded over and sat at Minai’s feet.

“Try not to break the academy,” he muttered.

“I will be careful,” she said.

There was a faint scuffing sound at the edge of the grounds, where the path curved towards the Hatake house. A boy’s voice called from somewhere behind the trees.

“Otou-san.”

Sakumo glanced over his shoulder instinctively. Kakashi was a brief silhouette beyond the branches, silver hair as bright as his father’s.

Minai followed his gaze but did not move closer.

“You should go,” she said. “Kakashi needs you.”

“So do you,” Sakumo replied.

She shook her head.

“You taught me enough,” she said. “I can do the next bit.”

He did not like that answer.

“Minai,” he started.

“It is all right,” she said. “You chose correctly before. You will again.”

He searched her face for some sign of hesitation, some weakness he could persuade her out of. All he saw was resolve, sharpened by a life that had required too much of it already.

“If anything happens,” he said, “if you need help…”

“I will not run from training,” she said. “That would be rude.”

He almost laughed.

“Sometimes running is wise.”

“I will remember that,” she said.

“Otou-san,” the boy’s voice called again, fainter now as he moved away, perhaps assuming his father was occupied with other matters.

Sakumo looked back towards the trees, then at her once more.

“Come visit when you can,” he said. “Tell me about your lessons.”

“If they let me,” she said.

He did not hear the edge of truth in that. Or perhaps he did and chose not to name it.

“Goodbye for now, Minai,” he said.

She bowed, formal and low.

“Goodbye, Sakumo shishou. Thank you for everything.”

She turned and walked away, feeling his gaze on her until the path bent and the trees swallowed her.

She will never see him again.

Root did not feel like a place beneath the village.

It felt like a place beneath the world.

The corridors were narrow, lit by sparse lamps that hummed faintly. The air was cool, stale in a way that said it did not change often. Minai’s footsteps echoed softly on the stone as she followed the operative assigned to escort her.

Children were not meant to be here. That was the sense she had. Yet most of the faces she passed were young. Some barely older than she was. Their eyes were blank and focused, like windows with the curtains drawn.

Danzo waited for her in a plain room that might have been an office, might have been an interrogation chamber. The difference was mostly in the furniture, and there was very little of that.

He looked her over with that single, assessing eye, then gestured to the chair in front of the desk.

“Sit.”

She sat.

“You wished to become a shinobi,” he said.

“Yes.”

“This programme exists to protect the village from the shadows,” he said. His voice was smooth, almost gentle, but entirely devoid of warmth. “You will undergo training here. It will be rigorous. You will follow orders without question. You will give yourself fully to Konoha.”

Minai held his gaze.

“Do you understand?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then you will begin.”

That was it. No welcome. No explanation of where she would sleep, where she would eat. She discovered those by following orders, by watching, by imitation.

Her days fell into a pattern that squeezed out everything else.

Wake before dawn.

Physical drills until her limbs shook.

Hand to hand combat.

Weapons practice.

Meditation exercises, mislabelled; they were more like manufactured emptiness.

Lessons on obedience. Lessons on loyalty. Lessons on silence.

Emotion was an error to be corrected.

When the instructors barked commands, she obeyed. When they introduced the suppression exercises, she followed, but within her she kept a small, stubborn core untouched.

She remembered her mother’s face when the coughing had grown worse.

She remembered the feel of Sakumo’s hand resting on her head.

She remembered the first taste of chicken miso ramen at Ichiraku.

The instructors could not force their way into her memories. They could only observe her actions.

And those aligned perfectly with their expectations.

“She adapts quickly,” one of them noted, voice muffled through the wall.

“Too quickly,” another said. “We will have to watch that.”

“Useful,” Danzo’s voice cut across. “As long as control is maintained.”

He watched her through one-way glass more than once.

Her strikes grew sharper. Her footwork, honed by Sakumo, slipped easily into Root’s patterns. She did not resist the harshness of the training. She absorbed it.

Danzo saw a weapon forming.

A potentially Uchiha-blooded weapon without a clan to demand her return.

In the quiet moments when others tried to empty themselves, Minai did something else.

She listed names in her head.

Mother.

Sakumo.

Pakkun.

Hiruzen.

Orochimaru.

She repeated them like kata.

If they stayed, she stayed.

Danzo’s ambitions coiled themselves around the image of her like smoke.

An operative, first. A subtle one, trained from childhood.

A potential Uchiha asset, second. The potential for a Sharingan, unmonitored by Fugaku’s clan compound.

A future tool of breeding, third. The notion slithered through his thoughts coldly, a way to produce Uchiha soldiers under his own authority if the clan ever turned.

He did not linger on that idea. Not out of decency, but because timing mattered. Children grew. Circumstances shifted. He would not be rushed.

For now, she was training.

For now, her value increased each day she survived.

“How is she progressing?” he asked one afternoon, hands hidden in his sleeves as he stood before a row of reports.

“Physically, excellent,” an instructor said. “Emotionally, she… thinks too much.”

“Thinking is not a flaw,” Danzo replied. “It is unchanneled thinking that becomes problematic.”

“Shall we intensify the suppression drills?” the man asked.

“Not yet,” Danzo said. “A mind that can make connections is useful. We will tighten the leash later.”

The underground rooms had no windows. Minai lost the habit of looking for the sky.

Time became rotations of meals and training and sleep. She grew stronger. Scars appeared on her knuckles. Her body learned to move in ways that anticipated pain and redirected it. She watched the other Root children closely. Some went blank around the eyes. Some developed small ticks they never acknowledged. One boy muttered numbers under his breath between exercises.

No one spoke unless spoken to.

It was a rule.

At night, lying on the thin bed assigned to her, Minai stared at the ceiling and counted the breaths until sleep came.

On the thirty-third breath, she would remember Sakumo’s voice.

On the forty-seventh, Pakkun’s sarcasm.

On the fifty-second, the way ramen steam curled in cold air.

She let those memories pass through her without clinging. Clinging was dangerous. Remembering was necessary.

The news came on a day that felt like any other.

They had just finished a sparring rotation. Minai’s lungs burned; sweat clung to her hair, making it heavier against her neck. She sat on the floor against the wall, waiting for the next order.

Two Root operatives walked past in the corridor outside, speaking in low voices. She would not have heard them if the training room’s door had been fully shut.

It was not.

“Did you hear about Sakumo the White Fang?” one said.

Minai’s head tipped slightly, like a dog catching an unfamiliar sound.

“Konoha’s own ghost,” the other replied. “Hard not to.”

“They say he killed himself,” the first one said. “Over that mission.”

Minai’s world lurched.

The breath in her chest froze somewhere between inhalation and exhalation. The sounds in the room sharpened and receded at the same time. Someone’s foot scuffed the mat. A drop of sweat slid down her temple.

“Despair, they say,” the second operative continued. “Shame. Who knows.”

Their voices moved away, the words fading into the hum of Root’s interior. The door swung closed fully.

Minai did not move.

White Fang.

Hatake Sakumo.

She stood up slowly.

The instructor at the front of the room barked an order.

“Next pairs will be…”

“Sir,” Minai said.

Her voice did not shake. It felt distant from her throat, like it came from somewhere further back inside her.

The instructor turned towards her, eyes narrowing.

“You do not speak without being addressed,” he said.

“Sir,” she repeated, “is it true that Hatake Sakumo is dead?”

The room went very still.

“Return to your place,” the instructor said. “That information is irrelevant to your training.”

Minai did not move.

“Sir,” she said again, “I require confirmation.”

The instructor’s jaw tightened.

“Wait here,” he said at last, and left the room.

The others pretended not to look at her. Pretended not to hear.

Minutes stretched, thick and viscous.

When the door opened again, it was not the instructor who returned.

Danzo stepped inside, the quiet sound of his sandals like punctuation against the floor.

“All of you,” he said, without raising his voice, “continue individual drills.”

The children obeyed instantly, forms shifting into kata. The room filled with the controlled sound of fists and feet striking the air.

Danzo approached Minai.

“You asked a question,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied.

“You wish to know if Hatake Sakumo is dead.”

“Yes.”

“It is true,” he said. “He took his own life.”

He delivered the words the way he delivered everything else. Flat. Precise. Without cushioning.

“Why?” she asked.

“He made a decision on a mission,” Danzo said. “The village did not approve. He felt shame.”

Shame.

The word scraped against everything she knew about Sakumo.

“The village…” she began, then stopped. Her throat felt tight.

Danzo watched her carefully.

“You knew him,” he said. Not a question.

“He fed me,” Minai said. “He taught me.”

“He was a prominent shinobi,” Danzo said. “Many children admired him.”

“I did not admire,” she said. “I trusted.”

The distinction seemed to interest him.

“Regardless,” he said, “he is gone. Dwelling on it serves no purpose.”

For Root, perhaps.

For Minai, it tore something open. The brilliant, kind and caring Sakumo-shishou died of shame? The village didn’t deserve him, the world didn’t deserve him.

She thought of the way Sakumo’s hand had rested on her head that last day. The way he had said “Come visit” as if there would always be a next time. She thought of Kakashi’s small silhouette through the trees, calling for his father.

His wife had died when Kakashi was young. Sakumo had told Minai that once, late after training, in the soft, matter-of-fact way people spoke when they did not want sympathy.

Now Kakashi had no mother.

No father.

He was alone.

Just as she had been.

The thought arrived and slotted itself into place with a horrible, perfect click.

Something inside her chest twisted, then cracked.

The room around her tilted.

The lamplight seemed to flare, then narrow. Every sound sharpened until it felt like a knife sliding along her nerves. The faint shuffle of another operative’s foot, the whisper of cloth over skin, Danzo’s slow, measured breathing. Even the drip of water from a pipe somewhere down the hall sounded close enough to touch.

The edges of objects grew too crisp. She could see every fibre in the tatami, every scuff on the training post in the corner, the exact pattern of tiny callouses on Danzo’s fingers where his hands showed.

Her own reflection flashed in his single exposed eye, distorted, red-tinged.

Her heart pounded, not in her chest, but everywhere.

“Interesting,” Danzo murmured.

The world slowed. Movements dragged into elongated arcs, like lines drawn in honey. She watched a bead of sweat fall from another child’s chin and could have counted each fraction of a second as it descended.

“Look at me,” Danzo said.

She did.

He saw it clearly now.

Her pupils were painted vivid crimson. In each eye, three black tomoe had formed at once, evenly spaced, spinning slowly before settling.

Not one.

Not two.

Three.

A fully awakened Sharingan, birthed in a single break.

“Hatake Sakumo,” Danzo said softly, more to himself than to her, “even in death, you give this village weapons.”

Minai’s breath hitched.

She did not understand what had happened to her sight. She only knew that everything hurt to look at.

“I see too much,” she whispered.

Danzo studied her with thinly veiled satisfaction.

“Does it distress you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you still stand?”

She straightened her spine.

“Yes.”

“Then it is not a problem,” he said. “It is an asset.”

In his mind, plans rearranged themselves. An Uchiha child, sharingan fully awakened, already under his command. The clan would be furious if they knew. Which was why they would not.

“We will keep this between us for now,” he said. “There is no need to involve Fugaku.”

Minai flinched very slightly at the name. He noticed.

“You share blood with them,” he said. “But you belong to Root.”

“I belong to Konoha,” she replied.

It was the closest thing she had to defiance.

He smiled faintly, a minimal twist of his mouth.

“Of course,” he said.

He turned to leave, then paused at the door.

“This grief you feel,” he added, without looking back, “you will learn to put it aside. It is a weakness.”

The door slid shut behind him with a soft, final sound.

Minai stood alone in the midst of other bodies.

Her eyes burned. The world refused to blur. She could not cry; every tear that might have fallen had been seared into perception instead.

They resumed drills around her. No one spoke. No one touched her.

Inside, the crack in her chest widened.

The man who had picked her out of the rain, who had made the world make sense in small, warm bowls and repeated corrections, was gone because the village he had protected decided his choice was wrong.

Kakashi was somewhere above ground. Alone in a way that made her bones ache.

Her vision shimmered.

She remembered her mother pushing her under the floor and telling her to hide.

She remembered walking through Amegakure’s mud with rain in her eyes and no voice calling her name.

She remembered stepping through Konoha’s gates, confused by sunlight.

She remembered the first time someone asked, “Are you hungry?” and meant to do something about it.

Hatake Sakumo had not left her behind because he wanted to. The village had pushed him into a corner and told him he was a failure.

Minai understood corners.

She had lived in them.

She took a slow breath.

If she stayed thinking like this, Root would swallow her too. Not physically. Something worse.

Her fingers curled into fists.

The Sharingan whirred, then steadied. The room remained sharp, colours too bright, edges unforgiving.

Inside that painful clarity, one thought rose above the others and hardened.

I will not fail the people who are left.

Not because the village asked.

Not because Root commanded.

Because Sakumo had given her something no one else had: the belief that she could choose to protect, not merely be used.

Then she promptly passed away from chakra exhaustion.

Word of her awakening did not stay contained for long.

Danzo brought her file to Hiruzen’s desk personally.

“The Sharingan,” Hiruzen said quietly, reading the report. “Three tomoe.”

“Exceptional,” Danzo agreed. “It seems the trauma of Hatake’s death brought it forth.”

Hiruzen closed his eyes briefly.

“She cared for him,” he said.

“Attachment is inevitable sometimes,” Danzo replied. “It can be useful, if directed.”

“The Uchiha will have opinions about this,” Hiruzen said, tapping the paper.

“They need not know,” Danzo said smoothly. “She is not part of their register. She has no name tying her to their clan. And she is already here.”

“She is still a child,” Hiruzen said. “You cannot expect Root level operations from her yet.”

“I expect only that she continue to train,” Danzo said. “With the right guidance, she will surpass most of them in time.”

Most of them.

The words sat heavily in the room.

“We will need to speak with her,” Hiruzen said at last. “About what she wants.”

Danzo’s eye flicked to him, incredulous.

“What she wants is irrelevant,” he said.

“It is not irrelevant to me,” Hiruzen said.

For once, Danzo kept his next thought to himself.

“Call her up,” Hiruzen ordered quietly.

Minai sat alone in the waiting area outside the Hokage’s office.

The corridor here was brighter than Root’s tunnels. Sunlight slipped in through high windows, casting pale rectangles onto the floor. She stared at them without really seeing.

Her eyes still ached, extra details crowding into her vision, uninvited. The grain of the wooden bench beneath her. The faint scrape marks on the wall where someone had moved furniture in too much of a hurry. The way dust drifted slowly through a shaft of light, each mote lazily spinning.

She sat with her back straight, hands resting on her knees, bag at her feet.

The world was too sharp.

Inside that cutting clarity, her thoughts arranged themselves slowly, like the pieces of a puzzle forced to fit.

Hatake Sakumo was gone.

Kakashi was alone.

Her mother was a memory.

The orphanage had forgotten her.

Root wanted to hollow her out and wear her like armour.

And yet.

She still had her name.

She still had the way to stand that Sakumo had drilled into her.

She still had the memory of his voice saying, “You will do well.”

She could not save him.

But there were others.

Naruto did not exist yet in her life.

Sasuke was not yet born.

But there would be people, later, who would need someone who knew what it was to claw their way out of corners.

She would not fail them.

Not as the village had failed Sakumo.

Not as the systems had failed her.

Her eyes burned, but no tears fell.

The door to the Hokage’s office slid open a little.

“Kid,” a voice called. An ANBU mask peered out. “The Hokage will see you now.”

She rose smoothly, shoulders squared, Sharingan hidden behind dark irises, and stepped forward.

Sakumo’s kindness went with her.

Armour and blade, both.

Chapter Text

Hiruzen.

He sat behind his desk instead of standing, which confused her. Important people stood. That was how the world worked.

His voice was softer than she remembered from before Root.

“Minai,” he said, “there is something we must discuss.”

She blinked slowly.

“Am I being sent back?”

Hiruzen’s eyes tightened, not unkindly.

“Not yet. There is another option.”

Minai did not react outwardly. Inside, something unclenched.

Before she could speak, another voice entered the room - Danzo.

He stepped in with the confidence of someone who expected ownership, not permission.

“Her Sharingan is active,” Danzo said, clinical. “This confirms her lineage. We must proceed before the Uchiha attempt to-”

Hiruzen cut him off, still calm.

“Fugaku is being summoned. We will handle this properly.”

Danzo’s jaw shifted a fraction.

He bowed - a stiff, resentful movement - and left.

Minai lay still, staring at the ceiling.

She was six. She understood what the adults did not say far more clearly than what they did.

A little later, she was still seated inside Hiruzen’s office, feet swinging off the chair, bruises from training hidden beneath clean clothes.

The door stood open for only a moment - long enough.

A woman stood outside, graceful and anxious, dark hair gathered neatly. Behind her leg peered a little boy, barely toddling, clutching the fabric of her sleeve.

Minai stared. Their eyes met and the boy didn’t look away.

She didn’t know who they were.

But she understood.

Family.

Then Fugaku stepped into the doorway, closing it behind him.

The image disappeared like a dream.

Inside the Hokage office, the air felt heavy without being loud.

Hiruzen sat behind his desk, expression gentle but edged with something she had never seen before - regret.

Fugaku stood to the side, posture stiff, eyes unreadable.

Hiruzen spoke first.

“Minai has awakened the Sharingan.”

Fugaku did not flinch, but his silence answered everything.

“We wished to confirm whether you will acknowledge her as part of your household,” Hiruzen continued.

Fugaku exhaled quietly.

“I see.”

Minai finally lifted her gaze. Not accusing. Not pleading.

Just present. But she remembered the beautiful woman outside, and the child’s curious eyes. Then she decided, she did not wish to find warmth at someone else’s expense. Sakumo wouldn’t have done that. “Run if it will save your comrades” he told her once. That was precisely what she was going to do.

“Uchiha-sama, you don’t need to take me with you.”

Fugaku’s eyes snapped to hers - not in anger, but shock.

Hiruzen’s expression folded with quiet grief.

Minai continued, voice small but unshaken.

“I know we are related… but we’re not family, I do not belong in your house.”

Hiruzen inhaled slowly, giving her space to choose the last words herself.

Minai bowed deeply, forehead almost touching her knees.

“I only have one request.”

Both men waited.

“Uchiha-sama… if you recall it… may you tell me my mother’s name? I want to mourn her as a person, not only a memory.”

The request landed like a blade in the room.

Hiruzen looked at Fugaku - not demanding, just holding him accountable.

Fugaku swallowed once, jaw tightening.

“Kana,” he said quietly. “Her name was Kana.”

Minai’s eyes filled, tears slipping down without sound.

“Thank you so much, Uchiha-sama.”

Fugaku’s reply was barely more than breath.

“No. I should be thanking you.”

Hiruzen dismissed him gently, and Fugaku left without meeting Minai’s gaze again.

When the door closed, the silence was different.

Not empty.

Respected. 

She then returned to Root.

At the centre of the hall, Minai waited.

The operative moved again, sharper this time, testing rather than striking. Minai shifted her weight, adjusting her stance a fraction before contact. Her footwork was clean, economical - nothing wasted.

She did not fight the way Root wanted.

Root wanted erasure.

Minai moved with memory.

Sakumo’s voice lived somewhere beneath her ribs.

Keep your balance low.

Breathe before you strike.

Do not use force when timing is enough.

She had never repeated those words aloud, but her muscles remembered.

The older operative lunged. She stepped inside the blow instead of retreating, letting the attack pass where she had been a heartbeat ago. Her elbow touched his sleeve lightly, the gesture precise enough to show she could have driven it into his ribs.

The instructor lifted his clipboard.

“Stop.”

Minai lowered her hands. The Sharingan faded slowly, red draining back to black.

The operative stepped away, breathing harder than she was.

The instructor examined her expression, searching for something Root valued - submission, pride, fear.

He found none.

“Your execution is improving,” he said.

Minai only nodded.

He waited for a further response. There was none.

Root expected obedience shaped into emptiness.

Minai obeyed, but not because she was empty.

She obeyed because Sakumo had taught her that skill was not something you abandoned simply because no one was watching.

They moved on to weapons drills next. Rows of children stood before practice dummies, throwing kunai with mechanical rhythm. The sound of metal striking straw echoed evenly, like rainfall without weather.

When Minai’s turn came, she threw three.

All landed cleanly.

Centre mass. Throat. Heart.

The instructor paused a fraction too long before marking his clipboard.

“Proceed,” he said.

Minai returned to her place in silence, but she noted the shift.

Not approval.

Awareness.

Root had begun to realise she was not simply surviving. She was learning faster than they intended.

From the shadows at the edge of the hall, two masked operatives watched. Their voices were low, almost indistinguishable from the hum of the lamps.

“She adapts without instruction.”

“She also retains memory. That was not authorised.”

“There is no attachment. No hesitation.”

“No visible attachment,” the second corrected.

They watched her walk.

“Danzo will be pleased.”

Meals followed training.

They sat on the floor, one arm’s distance apart, bowls identical, movements identical. No one spoke. The rule was not written, but everyone obeyed it.

Minai ate slowly, even though hunger gnawed at her. The food was plain, soft from being boiled too long, but warm. Warm was still something.

Across from her, a boy her age stared vacantly at the floor while chewing, as if tasting and thinking were unrelated. Minai observed his posture, the slackness of his shoulders, the hollow under his eyes.

She knew what Root wanted her to become.

Root wanted silence to replace thought.

But Minai’s thoughts remained intact. Quiet did not mean empty.

She finished her meal, set the bowl down with the same soft click as the others, and rose when dismissed.

As she walked back to her assigned room, she repeated the same silent list in her mind:

Kana.

Sakumo.

Pakkun.

Hiruzen.

Orochimaru.

Warm food.

Sharingan.

Not because she feared forgetting.

Because remembering was her resistance.

Lights dimmed for sleep.

Minai folded her blanket again, smoothing the corners, shaping homely order in a place designed to remove it. She lay down, staring at the ceiling until her breathing levelled.

Root thought that silence made children manageable.

Minai knew silence could also make them sharp.

Before sleep reached her, a final thought flickered - not bitter, simply true:

If Sakumo had been her shinobi model, then Root was only training.

Not transformation.

And Danzo had no idea that the thing he was trying to break was already built differently.

The darkness settled.

Minai closed her eyes.

She would wake again.

Not as Root intended, but still herself.

——————————————————————————

Time passed strangely in Root.

There were no seasons underground. No shifting light. Only repetition wearing different masks. Days layered over each other until they stopped feeling separate.

Minai grew.

Not noticeably. Not in the way most children did. Her limbs lengthened, her movements sharpened, but there was no celebration, no remark. She was growing into a beautiful girl, long dark hair, pale porcelain skin, lithe but fit, elegant figure, but that was irrelevant to them. Root did not measure age by birthdays. It measured usefulness.

She woke, trained, ate, trained again, slept.

For almost four years, nothing changed.

Until something did.

The training hall smelled faintly of metal and matting, the scent that clung to every space in Root. Minai stood in line with the others, now slightly taller, still slight, eyes steady.

Danzo entered.

He did not often appear during regular drills. His presence tightened the air like a pulled wire.

“Minai,” he said.

She stepped forward without hesitation.

“Yes, sir.”

His voice was measured, smooth, nothing ever wasted.

“You will undergo an advanced assessment today.”

There was no explanation. There never was.

She bowed her head.

“Understood.”

Danzo turned, speaking to the instructor without looking at him.

“Ensure she is pushed beyond her current threshold.”

The phrasing was deliberate.

Not break her.

Push her.

That was the intention, but it was foolish for someone set on erasing personalities to expect his subjects to catch that particular nuance.

Root never asked questions, only executed.

Minai returned to her place. Her heartbeat did not change. She had learned long ago that fear wasted oxygen.

But something quiet in her chest shifted.

Not dread.

Recognition.

The world rarely warned her before it changed. Today, it had.

The training space was different.

Not the main hall. A smaller room, bare walls, no observation windows. The lighting felt harsher, humming louder. Four older operatives waited inside, masks hanging loose at their sides.

They did not look at her.

Minai stepped onto the mat when instructed.

Her ribs were still faintly sensitive when she stretched, but she stood straight.

The instructor spoke without inflection.

“You will defend against all four. Do not hold back.”

There was no reason to believe this was unusual.

Except the silence after the command.

It was the wrong kind of silence.

Not disciplined.

Expectant.

Minai lowered into stance.

Her pulse stayed steady.

Sakumo’s voice flickered through memory.

If someone is stronger than you, do not stand where they want you to stand.

She shifted her weight.

The first strike came without warning.

She dodged.

The second followed, aimed low. She blocked.

The third caught her side. Pain flared along her ribs, bright and sharp.

Minai exhaled once, grounding herself, and countered by redirecting, not resisting.

But the blows kept coming.

Too fast.

Too heavy.

Too deliberate. Even with the sharingan, they were fast, and the dojutsu drained her chakra too quickly to be too useful in this exercise. 

Especially since this was not an assessment.

It was an ambush.

Her breath hitched as a kick landed against her back, sending her to her knees. The mat scraped her palms, skin burning. She tried to rise, but a hand forced her down.

Root training taught stillness.

This was restraint.

A fist struck her stomach. Air fled her lungs. Her vision pulsed white at the edges.

Sound began to thin. The room felt far away.

Another hit.

Ribs cracked.

Breath would not come back properly.

Someone said something she could barely hear.

“She is too small. This is pointless.”

“Orders were to break her.”

Minai’s thoughts scattered, then gathered again, stubborn as heartbeat.

This is how things are broken.

Another voice.

“She will not last.”

Then, the smallest thread inside her pulled taut.

I am not a thing.

Hands pinned her shoulders. Her mind drifted, then snapped back.

My name is Minai.

The words did not pass her lips. Root did not allow speech here. But repeating them kept her from falling entirely out of herself.

The ceiling blurred.

The lights streaked.

Everything hurt.

Clothes were ripped.

Hands roamed.

And then hurt became distance.

The world dimmed.

Not to black.

To silence.

When she came back, she was lying on the floor, cheek pressed against cold matting, breath wheezing through partially collapsed lungs.

Voices moved somewhere above her.

“Should we call medical?”

“If she dies, paperwork is worse.”

Feet approached, then retreated.

Someone finally knelt beside her.

“She is alive. Barely.”

A pause.

“Send for transport.”

No urgency. No concern.

Her vision fractured into shapes. She saw sandals. The edge of a mask. The ceiling lamps vibrating slightly.

She tried to move her fingers.

Only one twitched.

That was enough.

It meant she was still here.

Still Minai.

She was carried through corridors she did not recognise. The motion made the broken ribs grind, a deep, wet pain that echoed through her spine. She did not make a sound.

Root did not reward noise.

The doors changed from metal to wood. The air changed too - less recycled, more sterile.

Hospital.

The world reeled sideways as someone spoke above her.

“She needs surgery immediately.”

Another voice snapped, urgent.

“What the fuck happened here?! She is a child!!”

No answer followed.

The ceiling lights streaked again.

Then everything went white.

——————————————————————

The hospital room was quiet in the way battlefield silence could be quiet.

Not peaceful.

Waiting.

Minai lay unconscious beneath white sheets, chest wrapped in layers of bandages, head too, soreness around the apex of her thighs, an oxygen line taped against her cheek. Her skin looked colourless under the sterile lights, lips faintly cracked. The machines beside her clicked with indifferent rhythm.

The door slid open.

Orochimaru stepped inside.

He did not move at first.

He simply stood there, eyes taking in every detail with the precision of a blade measuring the point of entry.

The chart at the end of the bed.

The bruising along her ribs.

The way one arm lay at an unnatural angle.

The fact that someone had tried to realign it too late.

Something shifted under his expression, but it did not reach the surface.

When he finally spoke, his voice was thin and cold enough to cut through glass.

“This is not training,” he said quietly.

“This is dismantling.”

No one in the room answered, because the medic had already stepped back out as soon as they recognised who he was.

Orochimaru moved closer, stopping beside her bed. His hand did not reach out. Touch was unnecessary. Observation was enough.

She had survived. Barely.

But survival did not impress him.

What angered him was the intention.

Someone had not wanted her stronger. 

He read her chart. Someone had wanted her ruined.

His expression did not change, but the temperature in the room seemed to.

He turned and left without a sound.

Hiruzen looked up from his desk when Orochimaru entered, but he did not have time to speak before the door shut behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.

There was no bow. No greeting.

Orochimaru approached the desk slowly, deliberately, like a serpent choosing its distance.

“She is in surgery,” he said.

Hiruzen’s brows tightened.

“Surgery?”

“Collapsed lungs. Multiple fractured ribs. Internal bleeding. And other injuries that suggest this was not a training accident.”

Hiruzen’s breath stilled.

Orochimaru continued, voice unhurried and merciless.

“Your Root program has been busy. Psychological conditioning. Punishment disguised as discipline. And now, it seems, disposal when inconvenience outweighs usefulness.”

Hiruzen shut his eyes briefly, as if bracing for impact.

“I never authorised-”

“You authorised Root,” Orochimaru cut in, quiet enough that it landed heavier than shouting.

Hiruzen swallowed.

Orochimaru stepped closer.

“And there is more.”

Hiruzen’s gaze lifted slowly.

Orochimaru did not soften the words.

“She was not only beaten half to death. The injuries are consistent with deliberate violation of a female. They were four against a child.”

Hiruzen’s face drained of colour.

For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, very slowly:

“Danzo.”

It was not a question.

Orochimaru’s silence was agreement.

Guilt cracked through Hiruzen’s expression like a fault line.

“I thought Root would give her protection,” he said, voice thin.

“You thought convenience would,” Orochimaru replied. “Now she may never recover fully.”

Hiruzen sank back into his chair, the weight of years visible.

“What do you want me to do?”

Orochimaru looked at him with something that might once have been loyalty, now worn down to something colder.

“Remove her from Root. Immediately. And keep her out of Danzo’s reach.”

Hiruzen nodded, the motion slow and heavy, as if it cost something to admit failure.

“I will handle it.”

Orochimaru stared at him for a long beat.

“See that you do.”

He returned to the hospital without speaking to anyone on his way.

The medic straightened nervously when he approached.

“She is stable for now,” they said.

Orochimaru nodded once.

“Leave the chart.”

They hesitated, then obeyed. You don’t just simply argue with a sannin, especially not the snake one.

When the room was empty again, he opened the medical file.

Page by page.

Treatment notes.

Injury diagrams.

Projected outcomes.

He pulled a pen from his sleeve.

His handwriting was neat, unemotional, precise, as if falsifying medical documents was an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was.

He wrote:

Permanent reproductive damage due to trauma.

Future fertility impossible.

Requires continuous hormonal stabilisation when menstruation begins.

He signed it with the appropriate medical clearance. He knew it was needed, for her safety. God, he felt soft even just thinking that.

Then he placed the file back exactly as he had found it.

This was not sentiment.

It was strategy.

Danzo could not weaponise what he believed was already broken.

Orochimaru stood at the bedside again. The child’s breathing was shallow but steady.

Protection, in his hands, did not look like comfort.

It looked like control of information.

He spoke softly, though she could not hear him.

“You were my responsibility before Danzo touched you. That has not changed.”

It was not affection.

It was something more dangerous.

A claim.

The argument did not happen in raised voices.

Hiruzen sat behind his desk, posture rigid. Danzo stood before him, face composed but eyes sharp with irritation. He himself was furious with his operatives when he found out she was left barren.

“You have removed her from Root without cause,” Danzo said.

“There is cause,” Hiruzen replied.

“Children are injured in training. It is necessary.”

“Collapsed lungs are not necessary. Rape. Rape is not necessary.”

Danzo’s jaw shifted.

“And the potential of her dojutsu? You would waste it.”

Hiruzen’s gaze hardened in a way Danzo had not seen in years.

“I will not allow you to treat a child as breeding stock for your private army.”

For the first time, Danzo’s composure cracked - only briefly, but enough.

“She would have strengthened Konoha.”

“No,” Hiruzen said quietly. “She would have strengthened you. She will still strengthen Konoha.”

Silence settled, sharp as frost.

Danzo bowed, the movement shallow and insincere.

“As you wish, Hokage-sama.”

He turned to leave.

Hiruzen did not stop him.

Only after the door closed did he let his shoulders drop.

He had made the right decision far too late.

—————————————————————————

The world came back in fragments.

Ceiling tiles.

The steady tick of a monitor.

The faint sting of antiseptic in the air.

Minai opened her eyes.

Pain arrived a heartbeat later. Not sharp now, but heavy. Her chest felt as if someone had wrapped it in stone. Every breath reminded her that her ribs had been broken and rebuilt.

She lay still and took inventory.

Hospital room.

Clean sheets.

No Root insignia.

She turned her head slightly.

At the side of the bed, someone sat with their hands folded, pipe resting, unlit, on the small table.

Hiruzen.

He looked older than the last time she had seen him this close. Deeper lines around his mouth. More grey in his hair.

“Good morning,” he said quietly.

Minai swallowed.

“Am I alive?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

She considered that.

“Is this temporary?” she asked.

“In general, yes,” he said. “But for now, I intend for you to stay that way.”

Her lips twitched, almost a smile, then stilled.

They sat in silence for a moment.

Then Hiruzen spoke again, voice gentle but threaded with something formal.

“Minai,” he said, “I have made a decision about your future.”

She waited.

“You will not be returning to Root.”

Relief did not show on her face. It moved somewhere inside instead, like a loosened knot.

“Where will I go?” she asked.

“There is another unit,” Hiruzen said. “Above ground. Still secretive. Still dangerous. But under different leadership.”

“Yours,” she said.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“ANBU.”

He inclined his head.

“You know of them.”

“I listen,” she said.

He smiled faintly at the familiar line.

“You would serve as a special operative,” he continued. “You would report directly to me. Not to Danzo. Not to any other commander. Your file would be classified. Your identity, protected.”

Protected.

It was not a word she associated with herself.

“You would receive a shinobi salary,” he added. “And accommodation. A small apartment of your own. No barracks. No dormitory.”

The list sounded almost like a fiction. Or an attempt at penance perhaps.

A place that was hers.

Money that was hers.

She did not ask why now.

She knew.

He felt guilty.

That was not unimportant, but it was also not the point.

“It would still be dangerous,” Hiruzen said softly. “More dangerous than Root training. These would be real missions. Real enemies.”

“I have already had those,” Minai replied. “Without the salary.”

He huffed a quiet breath, halfway to a laugh that never arrived.

“You would be one of my most trusted operatives,” he said. “But I will not force you. This is an offer.”

Choice.

Root never used that word.

Minai studied him for a long moment.

“It is better than Root,” she said at last.

“That is not a high bar,” he replied.

“It is enough,” she said.

He nodded slowly.

“Then we will begin arranging your transfer,” he said. “You will need time to heal first.”

She glanced down at her bandaged chest.

“I can stand,” she said.

“Not yet,” he replied firmly. “You will learn that rest is also a discipline.”

She frowned.

“I do not like that discipline.”

He smiled.

“Most shinobi do not.”

He rose from his chair.

“Someone will bring you paperwork later,” he said. “There will be forms. Even legends have to sign forms.”

“Legends?” she echoed.

“Not yet,” he said. “But you will be.”

He left her with that.

She lay back and watched the ceiling again.

ANBU.

Salary.

A room of her own.

She did not know yet what that would feel like.

But she knew one thing.

Whatever this path was, it moved away from Danzo.

That was enough to begin with.

She was discharged a few weeks later.

Her ribs still ached in cold air. She moved carefully, learning her limits. The nurse escorted her to the front of the hospital, then left her with a folded sheet of paper.

On it, an address.

She followed it.

The building sat on the outskirts of Konoha, where the houses thinned and the line between village and forest blurred. It was plain, two storeys, with wooden steps that creaked when she climbed them.

Her key slid into the lock with a soft metal click.

The apartment was small. One main room, a tiny kitchen area, a narrow hallway leading to a bathroom and a separate room with a futon folded neatly in the corner. The walls were bare. The air smelled faintly of dust and nothing else.

It was not much.

But it was hers.

She set the small bag of belongings on the floor.

For a long moment, she just stood there.

In Root, she had memorised exits, blind spots, angles of approach.

Here, she memorised where the light fell through the single window. The way it framed a patch of floor, warm and bright at certain hours.

She walked around the room, fingertips brushing the wall once.

No one else had a claim on this space. Not an orphanage. Not Root. Not Danzo.

Hers.

That night, when she unfolded the futon and lay down, the silence was different.

Not the heavy, supervised quiet of underground corridors.

Just… quiet.

She had never known the difference until now.

ANBU headquarters was hidden in plain sight.

If you did not know, it was just another sturdy building among many, tucked between other administrative structures. If you did know, the way people moved around it gave it away.

Calm. Controlled. Dangerous.

Minai arrived at dawn, dressed in standard-issue gear that still felt unfamiliar: dark shinobi clothes, armour, reinforced gloves, a blank, pale mask tucked under her arm. Not yet painted. Not yet hers.

An operative wearing a fox mask greeted her with a nod.

“You are the transfer,” they said.

“Yes,” Minai replied.

They did not ask her name.

Names here were a layer beneath the underneath.

“Come,” Fox said.

They led her through corridors that were narrower than she expected, lined with lockers and weapon racks. The air was cool, but not stale. Someone laughed, quietly, in a distant room. The sound startled her more than it should have.

Fox glanced at her.

“You will get used to it,” they said.

“To what?”

“People treating you like you exist.”

She absorbed that without comment.

They led her into a small office.

“Wait here,” Fox said. “The commander will speak with you.”

The commander turned out to be a woman wearing a swan mask on the side of her head, not over her face. She looked at Minai with the frank appraisal of someone used to measuring risk quickly.

“So you are the Hokage’s new favourite secret,” she said.

Minai did not answer. This sounded rhetorical.

The woman smiled faintly.

“It is not an insult,” she added. “You have clearance. That makes my life easier.”

She opened a folder on her desk.

“File identity: Mina,” she read. “Age: classified. Background: classified. Origin: classified. Charming.”

She looked up again.

“Can you live with that name?”

Mina.

It was a near echo of Minai. A shaved edge, not a new shape.

“Yes,” Minai said.

“Good,” the commander said. “Your codename will be Ryuu.”

“Dragon,” Minai said quietly.

“You have lightning and fire affinity,” the commander said. “The Hokage thought it suited. We do not argue with his naming sense. It makes life complicated.”

She pushed a mask across the desk.

It was white, stylised with flared lines like horns and the suggestion of scales at the edges. The eye slits were narrow.

“You wear this on missions,” the commander said. “When you do, you are not Mina. You are Ryuu.”

Minai picked up the mask.

It was lighter than it looked.

“A ghost,” she said.

“A weapon with a face no one can read,” the commander corrected. “But yes, if you like poetry, a ghost.”

She set the file aside.

“You will be operating as a solo unit,” she continued. “High risk, high discretion. Orders will come directly from the Hokage. You answer to him, and to this office for logistics. No one else.”

“No Danzo,” Minai said.

The commander’s gaze sharpened.

“No Danzo,” she confirmed. “Ever.”

Minai inclined her head.

“Understood.”

The first mission came sooner than she expected.

A week after her introduction, Fox found her in the locker room, mask in hand.

“Hokage wants you,” they said. “Briefing room.”

Minai slid the Ryuu mask into place.

The world narrowed slightly. The edges of her vision softened at the periphery, sharpened in front. She could hear her own breath, steady inside the hollow space.

She followed.

Hiruzen waited alone in the small briefing room, pipe resting on the table, unlit.

He smiled when he saw her.

“Ryuu,” he said.

Minai bowed.

“Hokage-sama.”

He laid a map on the table.

“There is a small outpost along the border,” he said. “We suspect information is being leaked. I need you to confirm who is responsible and remove the problem.”

“Remove,” she repeated.

“Quietly,” he said. “No spectacle. No collateral.”

That was, at least, familiar.

She studied the map, committing landmarks to memory, exit routes, likely patrol patterns.

“Questions?” he asked.

“Do I bring anyone back?” she said. “Alive?”

“If the leak is low level, no,” Hiruzen replied. “If you find higher level interference… use your judgement.”

He trusted her judgement.

That felt heavier than the kill order.

She nodded once.

“I will return,” she said.

He closed the file.

“I know.”

The outpost crouched at the edge of a forest, a cluster of buildings surrounded by a simple wooden fence. To ordinary eyes, it might have looked harmless. To Minai’s, even without the Sharingan, it was riddled with weaknesses.

She watched it for a full day and night from the tree line, counting guards, marking rotations, noting who lingered with whom, who avoided whose eye.

The leak revealed itself not in something dramatic, but in something very small.

A man who left his post half a second early. Another who arrived half a second late. A packet passed too casually at shift change.

Root had taught her to see patterns. Sakumo had taught her to question them.

She moved in at night.

Ryuu did not walk. Ryuu flowed.

She slipped over the fence without touching it, boots soundless on the packed earth. Her movements were precise, not a gesture wasted.

Two guards at the back door.

Seven heartbeats.

Two silent strikes.

She dragged the bodies into the shadow between crates and continued.

Inside, the corridors smelled of sweat and ink. Papers lay scattered on desks. She found the small office easily. The same man who had lingered earlier sat inside, writing by lamplight.

He did not look up when the door slid open.

“You are early,” he said.

Minai stepped inside and closed it behind her.

He turned.

The mask was the last thing he saw clearly.

It took one cut.

No noise.

She laid his body gently against the wall so the blood would pool where it would be least visible from the corridor.

Then she searched the room.

Scrolls. Letters. Codes. Evidence.

She took what mattered and burned what did not, using a controlled, contained flame that left only ash.

By the time the next guard passed, the office door was shut. The lamplight was still.

She left the way she had come, footprints erased by her own skill.

The forest received her without comment.

Back in the Hokage’s office, she removed the mask.

Hiruzen took the reports from her gloved hands and scanned them, eyes passing quickly over the essential lines.

“This will be useful,” he said. “You did well.”

Minai did not react.

“I completed the task,” she said.

“That is doing well,” he replied.

“It is doing what you asked.”

He smiled sadly.

“You do not accept praise easily.”

She tilted her head.

“Root did not praise,” she said.

“Then let me be clear,” he said. “You did well, Minai.”

She folded the words away somewhere safe.

Not because she needed them.

Because Sakumo would have wanted her to keep them.

That night, she returned to her apartment.

She removed the mask and set it on the low table.

Ryuu stared back at her with blank eyes.

Minai stared back without flinching.

She was still a weapon.

But now, when she looked at the mask, she knew one thing with absolute clarity.

Nobody owned the person who wore it.

Not Danzo.

Not Root.

Not even the Hokage.

She chose to be Ryuu.

And choice was something no one here had ever expected her to have.

——————————————————————————

War did not begin with a single mission.

It seeped in.

Orders changed flavour. Briefings mentioned borders more often. The maps in Hiruzen’s office shifted focus, attention turning towards Iwagakure lines and contested ground.

Minai, now taller, bones set where Root had broken them, put on the Ryuu mask and stepped into that changing world without comment.

She was ten when the Third Shinobi War began to feel real.

By thirteen, she was a rumour.

The first time she killed on the Iwa border at night, the moon was a thin sliver of dull light behind clouds. The ground was rocky, uneven, speckled with scrub that crunched if you were careless.

Ryuu was not careless.

She moved along the slope in a crouch, weight distributed evenly, each step placed with the precision of someone who had once lived by listening to footsteps behind thin walls.

Up ahead, two Iwa shinobi sat by a low fire, muttering over a worn pack of cards. Their flak jackets glinted faintly in the light. One of them rubbed his neck, tired, the way soldiers did when they had been awake too long.

Ryuu watched from the shadows, Sharingan spinning slowly behind the mask.

The orders had been simple.

Sabotage their supply line.

Leave no one alive to sound an alarm. Or remember you. 

She counted their breaths.

Four.

Three.

Two.

She moved between one exhale and the next. No flashy ninjutsu, that would attract attention, plus people remembered flashy things.

A hand over the nearest man’s mouth, kunai sliding in under the jaw, angling up. A twist. Soft, wet sound.

The other blinked, mouth opening.

Her second kunai hit his throat before the shout formed.

No words.

No declarations.

No thrill.

Just completion.

She dragged the bodies away from the light of the fire, hands steady, arranging them so the shadows hid the worst. Old habits died hard. Even in death, she found herself wanting people not to be reduced to a mess.

The supply crates were stacked carelessly beside a rocky outcrop. She checked for seals, for traps, for anything that would burn hotter than she intended. Then she lit them, small, controlled explosions of flames that ate wood and paper but not the cliff face.

By the time the next patrol came, the fire would be ash and smoke long gone.

When she returned to Konoha, she did not dream of their faces.

She dreamt of the way the cards had been worn at the edges, like Sakumo’s pencils.

The missions blurred.

Ambush on a mountain road.

Silence an Iwa scout team.

Infiltrate an encampment to mark targets for larger strikes.

Ryuu became a familiar shape at the edges of battle reports, never described in detail. The dragon mask was never in the same column as the word successful on a report, but it was the reason for it.

She moved through forests, over rivers, across rocky ridges that cut feet through thin boots. In the rain, in dust, in snow that came in thin sheets along the border heights.

She killed efficiently.

Never vindictively.

She did not take pleasure from it. She did not flinch either.

It was work.

Once, on a night where the fog rolled in dense enough to swallow sound, she found a small Iwa camp perched above a ravine. Four shinobi. One medic. A messenger.

Hiruzen’s orders had been careful on this one.

“Take the messenger alive if possible,” he had said. “We need confirmation on their next move.”

The mask had made it impossible to read Minai’s face.

“Alive,” she had repeated.

“Yes,” Hiruzen had said. “Alive. I trust your judgement.”

So she watched first.

The messenger laughed loudly, a sound too big for the little camp. The medic told him to be quieter, smacking his arm. Someone complained about the cold. They complained about the food. They were not monsters. They were tired men in enemy uniforms.

She slipped into the camp at the thin edge of dawn, when exhaustion sat heaviest and discipline lagged by half a beat.

Two died before they truly woke.

The third raised a kunai. She avoided his strike, disarmed him, broke his wrist with a smooth twist. He crumpled wordlessly.

The medic backed away, falling over a crate, hands up instinctively. She hesitated for the smallest fraction of a moment, then knocked him unconscious with a blow to the neck.

The messenger tried to run.

She caught him at the edge of the ravine, pinning his arm behind his back.

“Do not struggle,” she said, voice flat behind the mask. “You will live longer this way.”

He stopped fighting.

When she delivered him to Konoha, bound and shaking, the interrogation unit took over. She watched him be led away, the knowledge of what waited for him settling like a stone in her stomach.

Alive had not meant safe.

Hiruzen met her eyes, understanding passing there briefly.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded.

She did not ask what would happen to the man next.

Some questions in this world were not questions at all.

At the Iwagakure border, her name spread without ever being spoken.

One night, an Iwa squad huddled in a trench half filled with melting snow, breath frosting red scarves. Their commander passed around a battered notebook covered in oil stains and dirt.

“Read,” he said. “There is new intel on supposed Konoha assets.”

The youngest of them opened it, flipping through pages of faces and sketches.

“That one,” the commander said, tapping a drawing.

A mask stared up from the page, rendered in careful ink strokes. Dragon features stylised, eyes narrow, mouth a simple curve.

Below it, block letters in a language he had grown up with.

Ryuu.

Affiliation: Konohagakure ANBU.

Capabilities: high level

Classification: flee on sight.

The younger shinobi swallowed.

“Flee?” he asked. “Not fight?”

The commander’s face was grim.

“Our last two squads that supposedly encountered that mask did not return,” he said. “The rumour is - if you see it, you are already late.”

“Is it a man?” another asked.

“No one knows. Does it matter?” the commander replied.

They passed the book along, hands lingering on the page longer than they needed to.

Fear did not always come in the form of a bijuu, or a massive jutsu.

Sometimes it wore a mask and moved like silence.

In Konoha, ANBU whispered too.

Not loudly. Not often. But in the locker rooms, when missions overlapped and people moved around each other, glimpses were caught.

“Did you hear the rumours about an operative with a Ryuu mask?” someone muttered, fastening their bracers.

“Yeah, even the medics couldn’t confirm or deny. Either it’s made up, or that one is never injured,” another replied.

“Everyone gets injured.”

“Not always in ways we see.” Said another one.

“Let’s say Ryuu exists, what do you think is under the mask?”

“Old veteran, maybe. Or some madman who likes the work too much.”

“Could be a woman.”

“Could be a chicken too.”

Fox, passing by, heard it all and said nothing.

They knew more than most, but not everything.

They knew Ryuu existed and reported directly to the Hokage. They knew files about her were sealed tighter than most. They knew she went out alone and returned alone. But returned nonetheless.

They did not know that, under the mask, the year count was still barely in double digits.

Minai heard the rumours, sometimes, when they spoke carelessly in public.

She did not step in to correct them.

Let them believe she was a veteran. A demon. A myth.

If fear kept enemies alive long enough to run instead of fight, that meant fewer dead on both sides.

Fear was not always the worst option. She was sure Sakumo would agree with her.

Her life between missions shrank rather than expanded.

The apartment on the outskirts stayed spare.

Futon. Weapons rack. Two changes of clothes. A small table. A few utensils.

One plant sat on the windowsill, its leaves a struggling green.

She had not bought it.

It had arrived as a gift from a medic who had signed “Mina’s” discharge papers months ago and pressed the small pot into her hands. A training incident, the report had said. 

“It helps to have something living around,” they had said.

She had not known what to do with it.

Plants had never mattered before. They had been background, food sometimes, obstacles other times.

But she put it on the sill and watered it when she remembered.

It did not die.

She took silent pride in that.

Sometimes, on evenings between missions, she sat on the floor with her back against the wall and watched the plant instead of the ceiling.

It tilted slightly towards the light, over days.

A slow, stubborn reaching.

“That is inefficient,” she murmured once. “You cannot move far.”

The plant did not answer.

She watered it anyway.

There were nights when she took off the mask and stared at the wall for hours.

Not because she was lost in thought.

Because for the first time in her life, there were stretches of time where no one demanded anything of her.

No mission.

No training.

No orders.

Blankness had always been dangerous. In Root, it meant someone else would fill it. Here, it was only her and the slow sounds of the village beyond her door.

Parents calling children inside.

Dogs barking.

Laughter from a distant izakaya.

She rarely went into the village proper without a reason.

Masks were for missions. Faces were for no one.

Still, sometimes, when she walked back from ANBU headquarters, she saw silhouettes that made her pause.

A tall silver haired shinobi on a hill beyond the training grounds, shoulders bowed.

A boy with the same hair, alone at a memorial stone, staring at names.

Kakashi.

She had heard of him more often as the war went on.

The prodigy.

The youngest ever jonin.

The one who had lost a teammate to a falling rock, then another to his own hand.

Reports filtered through ANBU channels in clipped lines.

Team Minato, compromised, Uchiha Obito KIA.

Hatake Kakashi gained a single Sharingan asset. A gift from a dying friend

Later: Nohara Rin deceased, circumstances classified.

In the market, someone muttered quietly to another, both voices low.

“They say he killed her himself.”

“It was a mission.”

“Still.”

Minai heard only pieces. She did not search for more.

She knew what missions did.

She knew what choices looked like when they were not choices at all.

One evening, coming back from a debrief, she saw Kakashi from a rooftop.

He stood before the memorial stone as the sky bled into orange. Wind tugged at his hitai-ate and the cloth covering his lower face. His posture was too straight to be relaxed, too rigid to be at ease.

He raised a hand, fingers tracing a name carved into stone.

Minai watched from a distance, Ryuu’s mask sitting atop her small face.

She did not go down.

She had no right to speak to him.

But she recognised the shape of someone who had been given more grief than years.

Sakumo’s son.

She wondered, briefly, if Kakashi knew the full story behind the judgement that had driven his father to end his life. If he knew how much of that weight belonged to the village, not the man.

Probably not.

Truth travelled slowly in Konoha.

She turned away and went home.

That night, she sat on the floor for longer than usual, mask on the table, plant on the sill, listening to the quiet.

News of Orochimaru’s defection reached her in a single sentence.

She was returning from a mission when Fox intercepted her in the corridor, hand resting on a scroll.

“Hokage wants tighter patrols,” Fox said. “Orochimaru is gone.”

Minai stopped walking.

“Gone,” she repeated.

“Left the village. Took experiments with him. Bodies. Evidence. Everything.”

The words arranged themselves in her mind with grim precision.

It was not surprising.

She had seen cracks forming in him years ago, hairline fractures where ambition and dissatisfaction pressed too hard against the role he had been given. His eyes had always lingered on things other people looked away from, too fascinated by what lay under the skin of the world to be satisfied with surface.

Still.

He had also saved her. Twice.

Once by bringing her to Konoha at all.

Once by ensuring Danzo could not use her as his personal little soldier.

She thought of him in the hospital room, anger expertly hidden behind deceptively calm yellow eyes.

She felt no urge to truly condemn him. She disagreed, sure, his methods were questionable, yes. Actions taken too far, also yes. But something inside her could never truly hate him. Gratefulness perhaps, the lifelong type.

He had left a village that had already failed both of them in different ways.

Sadness touched her, light as a fingertip on a bruise.

“Do we hunt him?” she asked.

“Not you,” Fox said. “Others.”

She nodded.

Of course.

It would take more than one ghost to catch a man like that.

That night, she lay on her futon and stared at the window.

The plant rustled softly in a breeze. Another person from her list gone. Another friend lost.

Orochimaru had always been a creature of sharp edges. Expecting him to stay within soft lines had never been realistic.

She did not forgive his crimes. She did not justify them. She still hoped to one day see him again, friend or foe, to at least thank him properly, to at least say goodbye.

So, she simply accepted that he had always belonged to his own path, not Hiruzen’s, not Konoha’s. 

And in that acceptance, she found a strange sort of peace. 

On the front lines, the whispers grew.

An Iwa squad huddled round a dying fire, voices low.

“They say the dragon mask was supposedly seen briefly again.”

“Where?”

“Two valleys over. Took out an entire scouting unit, apparently. No one heard a thing.”

“It is just a story.”

“Then why did command add this to the briefings?”

He pulled out a folded, smudged page and passed it round.

The sketch looked the same as before, only darker now, lines pressed in harder as if the artist had wanted to pin the image to the paper.

Ryuu.

Flee on sight.

One of them laughed nervously.

“What if we cannot flee?”

“Then kiss your ass goodbye,” another muttered.

The commander shook his head.

“If you see the dragon mask,” he said quietly, “you run. If you cannot run, you pray.”

They were not religious men.

Their prayers went unanswered.

In Konoha, Minai’s days continued to follow their narrow loop.

Mission.

Debrief.

Apartment.

Mask on the table.

She cleaned her weapons with almost obsessive care, wiping each blade until it shone, checking edge, balance, weight. She took more care of the kunai than she did of herself.

Food was functional. Sleep came when she let it.

Sometimes she caught sight of herself in the small mirror above the sink.

A girl, pretty, some would say, mid teens, obsidian eyes older than they should be, long dark hair tied back in a practical knot.

Mina.

Minai.

Both and neither.

She did not linger on her reflection.

The mask made more sense.

——————————————————————————

The last mission of the war did not come labelled as such.

It arrived like any other: a sealed scroll, Fox at her door before dawn, voice quiet.

“Border again,” they said. “Hokage wants you.”

Minai dressed without comment, armour settling over familiar scars, Ryuu mask cool in her hand.

Outside, the air held that brittle chill of late war. Not quite peace. Not quite open conflict. A held breath.

She went to the tower.

The briefing room was lit by a single lamp. Shadows stretched long across the map on the table. Hiruzen stood with his back to the window, pipe unlit between his fingers again.

He looked older.

Not in a way that could be measured by years, but in the way his shoulders had begun to carry weight even when he was not sitting down.

“Ryuu,” he said, nodding to her.

“Hokage-sama,” she replied.

He tapped a point on the map.

“There is an Iwa unit positioned here, in the valley near the old supply route. They have not withdrawn with the others. We suspect they intend a final strike before the truce is signed.”

“Objective?” she asked.

“Disable them,” he said. “Permanently. No survivors.”

The words did not shock her.

“Intelligence?” she asked.

“Captain level commander. Likely earth release specialists. Numbers uncertain, but not enough to form a full division,” he said. “They are desperate. That makes them dangerous.”

She nodded.

“Any support?” she asked.

Hiruzen studied her for a moment.

“Not this time either,” he said. “I need this to be clean and untraceable. If this goes poorly, it could damage negotiations.”

“Then it will not go poorly,” she said.

For a flicker of a moment, he smiled.

“Be careful,” he said.

She inclined her head.

“I will return,” she answered.

The valley was narrow, carved by an old river whose bed had long since dried to cracked stone and dust. High cliffs rose on either side, pocked with ledges and cracks perfect for ambushers.

Which made it a terrible place to camp.

Unless you wanted to spring a final trap.

Minai watched from above, lying flat on her stomach at the edge of the cliff, cloak blending with rock. The Sharingan bled into her vision calm as breath. She saw everything.

Below, she counted.

One, two, three… eight uniformed Iwa shinobi. One commander, distinguished by the way the others glanced at him. His chakra flared more strongly than the rest, heavy and grounded.

Earth release. Likely high level.

They were setting marks along the valley walls, hands pressing seals into stone.

She watched the pattern form.

If they completed it, anyone travelling through this path could be crushed in a single, carefully crafted landslide.

High casualties. Clean deniability.

She could not allow them to finish.

She waited until the commander stepped away from the others to check the work.

Then moved.

Ryuu dropped from the cliff like a shadow cast free.

She landed on the wall itself, feet sticking with a brief pulse of chakra. The commander looked up, eyes widening as the dragon mask filled his view, backlit by grey sky.

He reacted quickly.

Earth spikes erupted from the rock where she had stood a heartbeat before, tearing chunks of stone free. She had already moved, springing sideways along the wall, hands forming seals. The Sharingan was an awfully convenient ally.

Fire release.

She exhaled a stream of flame, not wide, but focused, lancing towards the nearest cluster of sealing marks. They burned away in a flash of hungry orange, the intricate pattern disrupted.

“Enemy!” someone shouted below.

Kunai and shuriken arced up towards her, a brief deadly rain. The Sharingan tracked their paths, predicting their angles. She twisted between them, cloak snapping, some glancing off stone where she had just been.

The commander slammed his palm against the rock.

“Earth style. Rock prison.”

The wall beneath her feet lurched. Segments of stone rose, folding inwards, trying to trap her between closing slabs.

She dropped, allowing gravity to pull her free.

The valley floor rushed up. She landed in a crouch, knees bending to absorb the impact, hand skidding along dust.

Two Iwa shinobi charged her, one from each side.

She turned towards the first, caught his wrist, and used his momentum to hurl him into the path of the second. They collided in a breathless grunt. Her foot snapped up, heel cracking under the chin of the nearest, dropping him limp.

The second scrambled to his feet, forming signs.

She did not let him finish.

Lightning danced along her fingers, sparked alive with a precise pulse of chakra. It was not a technique as refined as the ones she had heard whispers about on Kakashi’s side of the war, but it did not need to be.

Her hand pressed to the man’s chest.

The shock jerked through him, muscles locking, eyes rolling back.

He fell.

Behind her, the commander roared, a full-bodied sound that shook dust from the walls.

“You think one ANBU can end us?” he shouted, slamming both hands to the ground.

The valley trembled. The floor buckled, chunks of earth rising like the backs of surfacing beasts. A fissure tore across the ground towards her.

She leapt back, flipping onto one of the newly raised boulders, using it as a springboard to close the distance to him.

He met her with a stone clad fist, forearm hardened by earth chakra, aiming to break bone on contact.

She met it with open palm, redirecting his arm just enough that it glanced off her shoulder instead of smashing straight through.

Pain flared. She ignored it.

He snarled and drew back for another blow.

She saw his chakra flare a moment before he moved. The Sharingan whispered to her in the way it always did now, not with words but with arcs of potential.

His weight would shift forward. His back foot would anchor there. His guard would drop for an instant to generate more power.

She stepped into that opening before he made it.

Her hand cut across his throat with a kunai, a clean, fast slice.

The earth armour protected skin cracked, flesh inside. Blood sprayed, hot and fast. He staggered, eyes wide, hand flying to his neck.

She stepped aside as he collapsed, watching him fall without satisfaction.

The remaining shinobi faltered.

“Retreat!” one shouted. “Get word back to–”

Ryuu moved.

Fire.

Steel.

Silent, inevitable steps.

She did not let them run.

Not because she enjoyed the chase.

Because Hiruzen had been clear.

No survivors.

By the time the valley stilled, the only sounds were the settling of disturbed stone and the faint hiss of cooling embers where sealing marks had burned away.

She stood alone in the middle of the ruined pattern, mask steady, breath slightly elevated but controlled.

Her shoulder throbbed. Dust clung to her armour. A smear of blood darkened one glove.

Inside, she felt almost nothing.

Just a line ticked in her mind.

Mission complete.

The emptiness that followed was deeper than usual.

It frightened her more than the blood at her feet ever had.

Back in Konoha, the sky looked the same as it always did.

Blue. Wide. A little too open for someone who had grown up underground and under rain.

Minai reported directly to the tower, armour only half cleaned.

Hiruzen waited in the same briefing room as before, map rolled up now, pipe in hand.

She set a small packet on the table.

“Evidence of sealing pattern,” she said. “Commanding officer neutralised. Entire unit eliminated.”

He opened the packet, scanning the charred remnants, the notes she had made on enemy positions and chakra signatures.

“This will be enough,” he said.

He sank into his chair more heavily than usual.

Minai watched him quietly.

“You are injured,” he said, glancing at her shoulder.

“It is minor,” she replied. “He hardened his arm.”

“Earth release,” Hiruzen said. “You countered with… lightning?”

“Yes.”

“And fire to disrupt the pattern,” he added.

“Yes.”

He studied her for a long moment.

“You truly are remarkable,” he said softly. “Large chakra reserves, dual fire and lightning affinity, a combat prodigy skill level, fully mature three tomoe Sharingan, a tactical mind that would shame most jonin, and yet you speak of your own work as if you were filing reports for someone else.”

“I am filing reports,” she said.

He smiled tiredly.

“Of course you are.”

He set the packet aside and leaned back, pipe rolling between his fingers.

“The fighting is ending,” he said.

Minai did not react at first.

“Ending,” she echoed.

“An official ceasefire will be signed soon,” he said. “Troops are already being withdrawn. You will see fewer missions like this.”

“Fewer,” she repeated. “Not none.”

“No,” he admitted. “Never none, likely.”

Silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, but heavy with the shape of what they had both done in the name of this village.

“I will step down,” Hiruzen said quietly.

That startled her more than any mention of war ending.

“You are the Hokage,” she said. It was not quite an objection, but close.

“I have been Hokage for a long time,” he said. “It is time for someone younger. Someone whose body and chakra are not exhausted by decades of battle and difficult choices.”

She breathed out once.

“I have chosen who will be Fourth,” he continued. “A new Hokage. And I would like you to serve him as you have served me.”

Serve.

The word no longer tasted like erasure.

“Who?” she asked.

“Namikaze Minato,” Hiruzen said.

She knew the name.

Even someone who rarely left their apartment, who spent more time underground than under the sky, knew that name.

The Yellow Flash of Konoha.

The man Iwa hated so much they had issued kill on sight and flee on sight orders in the same breath.

Calm genius.

Golden reputation.

The opposite of a ghost.

“He is a very different shinobi from me,” Hiruzen said. “From Danzo. From Orochimaru. His view of the village is… brighter.”

Minai considered this.

“Will he expect me to be bright too?” she asked.

Hiruzen chuckled once, genuinely.

“Probably not,” he said. “He will be grateful you keep the shadows from swallowing that brightness whole.”

She nodded slowly.

“If you ask it, I will serve him,” she said.

“I am not asking as Hokage,” Hiruzen replied. “I am asking as the man who watched you become what you are. I believe he will value you not as a tool, but as a comrade, an ally.”

The idea sat strangely in her.

Comrade.

A word for people who stood side by side on equal ground.

She had never had one of those.

“All right,” she said.

That night, Minai climbed to a secluded rooftop on the outskirts of the village, Ryuu mask hanging from her fingers.

Below, Konoha breathed.

Lanterns glowed softly along streets. A dog barked somewhere, then quieted. The hum of voices drifted up from a cluster of houses where a family ate together, their laughter faint but real.

The Hokage monument loomed in the distance, three faces carved into stone. A fourth space waited, not yet claimed and not yet shaped.

Minato’s space.

The war was ending.

Her missions would change shape, but not vanish.

She would put on the dragon mask again. She would move through shadows, silence, blood. She would protect this village that had given her as much pain as shelter, because there were people in it who needed someone like her to hold the line.

Children like Kakashi once had been.

Children like others she had yet to meet.

She looked down at the mask, turning it over in her hand.

For the first time since Root, she allowed her mind to step half a pace away from the path laid in front of her.

If I ever stop being a shinobi… what would I be?

The thought startled her more than any enemy ambush.

There was no answer. It wasn’t needed anyway. She likely wouldn’t be anything but a shinobi in this life.

She slipped the mask back into place.

For now, she was Ryuu.

Minai cam second.

The village slept on, unaware of the girl on the rooftop who had given it her childhood.

The war was ending.

And she didn’t know it, but her story was just beginning.

Chapter Text

The summons came at dawn.

Not urgent; simply formal. Delivered by a masked runner with a voice like a bell struck once and allowed to fade. Ryuu acknowledged it with a nod, sealed the scroll, and tucked it into the inner lining of her flak vest. Her movements were precise, efficient, everything in her life designed to leave almost no echo.

The Third Shinobi War had ended ten days ago.

She still felt nothing.

Or perhaps feeling nothing had become another kind of wound she was no longer trained to recognise.

Konoha was quiet this morning. The village was suspended in that strange, too-soft calm that always follows a war - when even the birds seemed to question whether it was safe to sing again. Ryuu walked through that fragile hush without disturbing it, crossing tiled rooftops and narrow alleys until she reached the Hokage Tower.

Guards bowed their heads but did not speak. ANBU did not exchange small talk. Especially not Ryuu.

Especially not after the war she had fought.

Outside Hiruzen’s old office stood a single ANBU operative, Fox mask. He inclined his head respectfully.

“He’s waiting,” he murmured. “I won’t be here when you get out, my shift has almost ended, but I hope you get good news Ryuu.”

Ryu nodded once and stepped inside.

But it was not Hiruzen who stood behind the Hokage’s desk.

It was Namikaze Minato.

The Fourth Hokage looked nothing like the legends she had heard.

Most great men carried heaviness with them - war clinging to their backs like the smell of smoke. But Minato stood tall and calm, as if war had washed over him without sticking to his spirit. His cloak gleamed white, untouched, embroidered with the red flames of a title newly earned. His blond hair caught the light like a reflection on clean glass.

And his eyes, blue, impossibly clear, lifted to her with a gentleness that made her hesitate at the threshold.

It felt wrong to step into such light wearing a mask meant for shadows.

“Thank you for coming, Ryuu.” Minato’s voice was warm without being soft. Steady, like someone who knew the weight of lives yet carried hope anyway. “Please. Come closer.”

She obeyed, boots silent.

Minato dismissed the guard with a nod. The door shut behind them with a click that sounded louder in her ears than it should have.

They were alone.

And Ryuu understood, on instinct, that this meeting was not optional formalities. The Fourth Hokage wanted something from her. Something Hiruzen had once wanted too: truth.

He studied her mask for a long moment.

“Could you remove it?” Minato asked, not ordering, not demanding, asking. “I would like to see the face of Konoha’s most elusive operative.”

Ryu hesitated.

Not out of fear.

Out of uncertainty.

Because no one asked to see her.

Not like this.

But she had been trained to obey, and Minato was Hokage now.

Her fingers lifted, steady as ever, unfastening the mask.

When she lowered it, Minato inhaled softly.

Not pity.

Not shock.

Just recognition.

A girl.

Barely thirteen.

With eyes too old for her years and posture carved from war.

She bowed.

“Ryuu reporting as ordered, Hokage-sama.”

Minato didn’t speak immediately. He circled the desk, stepping closer until he stood within an arm’s reach.

“You’re younger than I expected,” he said quietly.

“I was recruited early,” she replied.

“That is one word for it,” he murmured. “I’ve read your file, it didn’t have your age in it, only your name and an estimation, it said under 21 years old.”

She resisted the urge to tense. The Root file.

Not hers.

Just the one written about her.

Minato seemed to sense the shift.

“I’ve also spoken to Hiruzen-sama,” he said. “His words were… different from those records. And far more telling.”

Ryuu kept silent.

Minato didn’t press. He simply stepped back and folded his arms behind him.

“I asked to meet you because the war is over. Konoha must move into peace with stronger foundations, not hidden splinters. And you, Minai…” His eyes softened. “You’re not a splinter. You’re someone this village failed in many ways.”

She didn’t know how to answer that. Failure was not something she attributed to others. Only to herself. Only to missions.

Minato continued, careful, as if navigating a fragile line.

“I would like to ask you a few questions. Simple ones. Answer as you wish. Not as a report.”

Report.

The word clung to her bones like instinct.

But she nodded.

Minato gestured toward the low table at the side of the room. Tea waited there - three cups, though only two were needed.

She sat. He sat across from her.

“How do you live?” he asked gently.

“Efficiently,” she replied.

“Do you have anyone here for you?”

“No.”

Minato’s expression shifted, subtle, but real.

“Do you want any?” he asked.

She blinked.

Want?

The concept was foreign.

Root conditioned needs, not wants.

“I want to serve the Hokage,” she said finally.

Minato sighed, not frustrated, just… sad.

“That wasn’t the question,” he murmured. “Minai, what do you want? As a person, not as a weapon.”

As a person.

She didn’t know how to conceptualise herself that way.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted.

And Minato’s eyes softened even more.

“That’s alright,” he said. “You will. I’ll make sure of it.”

He poured tea into her cup.

“From today forward,” he continued, “I will ask you to serve under me. As ANBU. As Ryuu, one of my strongest. But I will also ask something else.”

She waited.

“I want you to have a life outside ANBU. However small at first. You are a child. And you deserve to be one.”

“A child?” she repeated, confused. “I completed thirty-eight solo missions in the last eight-”

“And that is exactly why,” he said. “You should have been allowed to grow, not be sharpened.”

Silence fell between them like dust settling after a collapse.

Minato changed the subject, shifting from warmth to practicality.

“I will need,” he said, “your true name. I want you to say it.”

She hesitated.

Not because she feared him.

But because no one had asked for it in years.

“Uchiha Minai,” she said quietly.

And Minato blinked-slowly, deliberately-processing the weight of that truth.

“You’ve never been registered,” he murmured. “Not properly. Not under that name.”

“No.”

“Danzo?”

“Yes and no, Uchiha-sama wasn’t aware of my existence, he had a life of his own already.”

A long exhale left him. Not angry, but controlled. Deep. The kind that came from recognising a rot under the floorboards of a home he’d inherited. He had heard her story from Hiruzen, but hearing this girl, this child, talk so nonchalantly about her lack of family, by choice mind you, was unnerving.

Minato leaned forward.

“Minai,” he said, using her name with the gentle precision of someone placing a fragile object on a shelf. “I am going to fix this. Your identity, your record, your place in this village. But before I do…”

He paused.

“I’d like you to trust me. Can you do that?”

She didn’t know how to answer that either.

Trust was a currency Root never issued her.

But Minato’s eyes were steady and impossibly patient.

So she chose the closest truth she could.

“I trust that you do not lie,” she said.

Minato smiled softly.

“That’s a good start.”

Kakashi was waiting outside the office, his shift just began, leaning against a wall with the lazy posture of someone who slept too little and thought too much. He hadn’t been told who Minato-sensei was meeting, only that it was “classified.”

Which usually meant ANBU.

Or something even more complicated. Hopefully the latter.

He watched the door.

Waited.

Waited longer.

He was used to waiting.

When the door opened, he expected someone tall. Brutal. One of Konoha’s masked ghosts with dead eyes and heavier footsteps than normal shinobi.

Instead-

A girl walked out.

A girl who moved like she wasn’t sure she was allowed to exist loudly.

Dark hair, long, tied neatly. Civilian clothes beneath ANBU plating. No visible clan symbols. And her eyes - obsidian, deep and unreadable, but not empty. Just… controlled. Too controlled.

Kakashi straightened.

That was no ordinary kunoichi.

He knew fighting posture better than he knew breathing.

Hers was perfection - silent and surgical.

But she looked thirteen. Maybe.

She didn’t notice him immediately. Or pretended not to. Her senses were sharp; he could tell by the micro-adjustments in her stride.

She paused at the railing, looking out at Konoha with an expression Kakashi couldn’t decipher. Not sadness. Not longing. Something quieter. Something like confusion wrapped in habit.

He stepped closer.

“ANBU?” he asked.

She didn’t turn fully. Just enough for one eye to meet his.

“Yes.”

Her voice was low, smooth, practiced.

Mask voice.

But without the mask.

Kakashi tilted his head.

“New?”

“Not to ANBU.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow. “Never seen you before.”

“Most people don’t.”

Cryptic.

He found it irritating. And intriguing.

But before he could ask more, the Hokage’s door opened wider.

Minato stepped out, smiling warmly.

“Ah, Kakashi. Good timing.” He touched the girl’s shoulder. “This is Mina. She’ll be working under me from now on.”

Mina.

A Konoha name.

Simple. Clean. No last name mentioned.

Kakashi blinked. Something felt off. As if a much larger story lived behind that single syllable.

Mina bowed politely. “Hatake-san.”

Kakashi narrowed his visible eye slightly.

So she knew him.

But he didn’t know her.

That meant she’d been watching.

Or someone had told her everything.

Minato stepped between them before Kakashi could question it.

“You’ll meet again,” the Hokage said cheerfully, as if reading both their thoughts. “Ryuu will continue serving in my ANBU corps, just less…anonymously now.”

Ryuu.

Kakashi froze.

Because that name he knew.

Everyone in ANBU knew Ryuu.

The ghost.

The prodigy.

The silent blade during the war.

A girl as old as him.

The one they whispered about with half-disbelief.

He looked at the girl again.

Small.

Calm.

Unassuming.

No.

Not unassuming.

Coiled.

Like a weapon sheathed only because she was ordered to be.

And Kakashi understood something:

The ghost had always been real.

He just never imagined she’d be a girl his age.

Mina, or Ryuu, walked past him, descending the steps with the controlled grace of someone who had never been allowed to stumble.

Kakashi watched her go.

And for the first time in a long time, something like curiosity flickered inside him.

Who was she?

Not her file.

Not her mask.

Her.

Minato clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“Keep an eye out,” the Hokage said softly. “She’s talented. But she’s been like you, alone a long time.”

Kakashi didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

He was already watching.

——————————————————————————

Minato did not like opening Root files.

They smelled wrong, even on paper. Not of ink or dust, but of the way a room felt after someone raised their voice then pretended they hadn’t. The air went thin. The walls listened.

Tonight, the Hokage’s office was quiet save for the scratch of paper and the faint tick of the clock on the far wall. Moonlight leaked past the curtains. A single lamp pooled gold over his desk, lighting the three folders laid out before him.

One with the Root seal.

One with the standard ANBU hawk stamp.

One with the neutral, bland insignia of Konoha’s civilian registry.

All three were about the same person.

Or rather, three different versions of a person who should never have been split in the first place.

Minato rubbed at his eyes and forced himself to start with Root.

The Root file was older than it should have been for someone her age. The first page was a brief:

NAME: Minai

ORIGIN: Amegakure (Refugee)

STATUS: Acquired asset

AGE AT ACQUISITION: ~below ten (estimated)

POTENTIAL: High. Chakra reserves anomalous. Sharingan suspected.

NOTES: No clan. No guardian. No ties.

There were no words like “rescued” or “protected.” Just acquired. Like a stolen weapon or a scroll.

Minato flipped the page.

Mission logs began at five. Five years old. Training assessments written in the same flat, clinical hand. “Responds well to conditioning.” “Obedience excellent.” “Pain tolerance remarkable.” A red-ink note in the margin: “Eyes show unusual pattern under stress - monitor for ocular development, potential sharingan activation - likely.”

His jaw tightened.

He made himself read every line.

The file spoke of a shadow moving through the Third War long before anyone had called him “Yellow Flash.” Silent eliminations. Infiltration missions whose locations were not even written, just coded. There was a pattern of assignments that went into places even he hadn’t been told about.

And over and over, the same annotation instead of a proper field evaluation:

RECOMMENDED: Continue training.

Minato exhaled slowly through his nose.

He had killed on the battlefield. He had sent others to kill, because that was the job, and he had accepted that burden. But there was something fundamentally wrong in the way Root wrote about a child. It treated her like a tool you sharpened, not a person who bled.

He turned to the last page.

A brief, clipped note. The handwriting changed here, marginally sharper, as though the writer had been angry and hiding it.

SUBJECT: Minai

TRANSFERRED: Per Third Hokage directive

DESTINATION: Direct ANBU oversight under Hokage

ROOT ACCESS: REVOKED

No complaint. No signature, just the Root stamp.

Hiruzen had done that much, at least. Pulled her out.

But it meant one thing very clearly: Danzo Shimura had once had his hands on her. And people Danzo touched rarely walked away without scars.

Minato pushed the Root folder aside, as though the physical distance could make any of it less ugly.

He opened the ANBU file next.

The contrast was almost jarring.

NAME: Mina

AGE: below 18 (estimated)

RANK: ANBU operative

CODENAME: RYUU

PRIMARY ELEMENT: Katon, Raiton

NOTABLE: High-level Sharingan confirmed, three tomoe, chakra control remarkable, combat abilities exemplary, shown skill in combat strategy 

The assessments here were clipped, professional, but…less cold. Evaluations from Hiruzen whom she had served under. Mission reports. Confirmed kills and missive extractions, information gathering missions, but phrased with shinobi pragmatism rather than Root cruelty.

“Operative Ryuu displays exceptional situational awareness and real-time strategy.”

“Recommended for high-risk solo assignments.”

“Loyalty to Hokage appears absolute.”

One margin note, in neat script Minato recognised as Hiruzen’s own:

She is too used to obeying faceless orders. Needs an anchor. Someone she to remind her of the girl behind the mask.

Minato’s gaze lingered there.

He could hear Hiruzen’s voice from earlier that week, when he’d handed him the ANBU key and the sealed list of ghosts who had served directly under him. When he told him of this child’s tragic upbringing, of her Uchiha blood, of Fugaku, of Sakumo’s kindness to her, of Root.

“She’s one of ours, Minato. But she was never allowed to be anyone’s. Be careful with her.”

He’d met her the next day. Ryuu. The mask with the dragon pattern, the perfect posture, the sparse answers. The way she had stood in his office, thirteen years old and standing like someone bracing for impact.

When he’d asked if she had anyone, she had replied, “No,” in that calm, not-quite-empty voice.

And when he’d ordered her to take off her mask, he’d seen the Uchiha in her.

Not just the kekkei genkai itself, but the history in her face, the elegance of her features, but the deadly posture, the eyes - the way she watched exits, tallying threats, the tension in her shoulders that never dropped. Her face still had a softness to it, the kind teenagers had before they really grew into their bones, but her gaze was all veteran.

He flipped to the last ANBU page.

There, in fresh ink, was a postscript he himself had written after that meeting.

Pending: review civilian registration. Identity fractures with former Root designation “Minai” need to be addressed. Danger of leverage if this remains.

Minato closed the ANBU folder.

Last, he opened the civilian registry.

As expected, it was a mess.

Two separate entries. One, half-finished, under “Minai,” stamped with the small notation: “Origin: Amegakure (Refugee),” then crossed out with a heavier pen. The second, “Mina,” in a different clerk’s hand, tagged as “Status: Classified—See ANBU file.”

A note at the bottom:

REQUEST FOR CONSOLIDATION: PENDING HOKAGE REVIEW.

Paper, he thought, should not be allowed to look this anxious.

Minato sat back in his chair and let the three folders form a crooked line on the desk.

Minai. Mina. Ryuu.

Three lives, one girl.

Any one of those could be used against her. Or against him.

If someone like Danzo wanted leverage, all they had to do was point and say: Ame-born Root weapon. Enemy refugee. Illegitimate Uchiha. Too much, too dangerous, too foreign.

If another village got their hands on her Root file, her Uchiha origin would make her a target for dojutsu theft forever. If anyone sympathetic to Danzo in T&I or Administration dug deep, they’d find the fracture and tug.

He pressed his fingertips into the wood.

No. He wasn’t going to leave her like that.

When Minato made seals, he made them clean. Lines meeting perfectly, the flow of chakra seamless so there were no points of weakness for an opponent to exploit.

He would do the same thing here.

By the time the lamp’s oil had burned low, his decision was made.

He set the Root file to the far left, opened it again, and picked up a brush.

“Hokage-sama?”

The soft voice belonged to the night-duty clerk, a nervous, round-faced chunin who always looked as if he were afraid someone would yell at him for breathing too loud. He lingered in the doorway carrying a tray with tea.

Minato smiled at him, gentle despite his exhaustion. “Thank you. Come in.”

The clerk tiptoed forward, set the tray down, then glanced at the spread files and went pale when he recognised the Root stamp.

“Oh. I- um, I can come back-”

“It’s fine,” Minato said. “Actually, I need you.”

The man blinked.

Minato turned the ANBU and civilian folders so they faced the chūnin.

“This operative,” he said, tapping the header where “Mina” was written. “Her records need to be standardised.”

The clerk nodded quickly. “Of course, Hokage-sama. Consolidation- I saw the note you left for me, but I didn’t know which name was correct, because-”

“Neither,” Minato said lightly.

The chunin’s mouth opened, then closed.

Minato’s smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“We’re going to do this properly,” he continued. “From today forward, her full legal name is Uzuha Mina. Origin: Konoha, war orphan. Status: ANBU operative under Hokage command. The Root designation ‘Minai, Amegakure refugee’ will be sealed under Hokage-level clearance only. I want that entire file moved out of general archives and into deep storage. Nobody touches it without my direct order. No one outside this office knows the name Minai exists. No one is to know of this, or hear of this either.”

The chunin stared at him, eyes wide. “Y-yes, sir. Uzuha…Mina. Konoha war orphan. I’ll- I’ll draft the forms and update the registry immediately.”

“Good.” Minato’s tone stayed calm, but firm. “For ANBU access systems, for mission rosters, for any official document that leaves this room, she is Uzuha Mina. Codename Ryuu. Nothing connects her to Root or Ame. If someone asks where she came from, the answer is simple: here. We raised her. Understood?”

The man swallowed, but replied determinedly. “Understood, Hokage-sama.”

Minato let his chakra flicker, just enough to underscore the words.

This wasn’t cruelty. It was clarity.

“I’ll bring the revised file for your signature before sunrise,” the clerk promised.

“Thank you,” Minato said. “And…be careful, please. If you encounter any resistance to this change from other departments, I want to hear about it.”

The chunin nodded fervently. “Yes, Hokage-sama.”

When the door closed again, the office felt a little quieter.

Minato sat alone with the Root folder in front of him.

He looked down at “Minai” one more time.

“I’m not erasing you, I promise” he said softly, to the empty room. “Just putting you somewhere Danzo can’t reach.”

He closed the file with decisive fingers, wrote the transfer seal himself, and applied the Hokage stamp.

Minai’s past slid into the dark, locked behind all the protections he could muster on short notice.

He left the ANBU and civilian folders open.

“Uzuha Mina,” he murmured, testing the name. “Let’s see if we can make that mean something better than your last name meant for you.”

It was easier to think when he wasn’t surrounded by paper.

Later that night, Minato lay back on the tatami floor of his living room, one arm under his head, listening to the soft clink of cups in the kitchenette.

Kushina hummed off-key as she rinsed dishes. The smell of miso and grilled fish lingered in the air; his stomach felt pleasantly heavy.

He’d only meant to stop at home long enough to grab a quick meal and some fresh clothes. Instead, he’d stayed. It was hard to leave once Kushina started talking, and harder still when she tucked herself against his side on the couch and started weaving absurd stories about the various council members as if they were characters in some parody play.

He watched the lights from the neighbouring windows spill across the ceiling. Konoha was quiet at this hour. Recovery took a different sort of strength than war.

Kushina padded back into the room, drying her hands on a towel. “You’re making the squinty face,” she announced.

He blinked. “I have a squinty face?”

She flopped down next to him, red hair spilling like a blanket across his chest. “Your ‘I’m thinking about depressing political things and trying not to worry you’ face. It’s like this.” She scrunched her brow and lips in a terrible approximation of his serious expression.

He laughed, despite himself. “Is it that obvious?”

“To me?” Kushina poked his forehead. “You’re basically a glass of water, dattebane.”

He sighed and let his hand find her hair. “Hiruzen introduced me to one of the ANBU he’s been using. A girl.”

Kushina shifted, propping her chin on his chest. “A girl?”

“She’s…” How to explain Ryuu? “Thirteen. Maybe. Uchiha. Strong. Very strong. Too strong for someone who looks like she should be skipping class to eat dango by the river.”

“An Uchiha kid?” Kushina’s nose wrinkled. “Why haven’t I seen her at clan gatherings with Mikoto?”

“That’s part of the problem.” He hesitated. “She’s…illegitimate. Born in Ame, apparently. Orochimaru brought her to Konoha from one of his missions with the Sannin, Danzo got to her first. Root trained her as a weapon before Hiruzen pulled her out. She suffered a lot Kushina, and apparently only the White Fang did something about it, while he was still alive. Kakashi doesn’t seem to know, I don’t think I should tell him, so I haven’t, On paper she’s three different people, depending on which system you check.”

Kushina went very still.

Minato watched the anger gather in her eyes like thunderheads.

“Wait,” she said slowly. “Danzo got her when she was a kid. From Ame. And then we- as in, our village- put her in a mask and kept using her as a knife. And no one thought to give her an actual life?” Her voice sharpened. “What the hell, Minato?”

He flinched, not because she was angry with him, but because she wasn’t wrong.

“I’m trying,” he said quietly. “That’s why I’m telling you. I’ve started consolidation paperwork. I’m…making her a proper registration. A clean one. No Ame, no Root designation anyone can casually access.”

Kushina’s gaze searched his face. “What kind of registration?”

“Konoha-born war orphan,” he said. “Uzuha Mina. ANBU operative under Hokage command. Her old file goes into deep storage. Only I can pull it. This way if anyone goes digging, all they find is a sad story about a kid we recruited young because she showed talent in the Academy and Konoha at war was desperate for troops.”

Kushina sat back a little, chewing on her lip.

“Uzuha,” she repeated. “That’s a new one.”

“I thought…” Minato looked away, a bit sheepish. “It’s part ‘uzu’ from your surname, a nod to the way you were similarly brought to Konoha to be used for something, and ‘ha’ from UchiHA. A nod to you. And to her actual bloodline. A way of saying she’s…both her past and her present. Or can be, if she wants. I want us to help this girl, Kushina”

Kushina’s expression wavered between fond and furious.

“You sap,” she muttered, but there was no heat in it. “You enormous, dangerous sap. I love it-ttebane.”

He smiled.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” he asked.

Kushina’s brows drew together. “I don’t know. Names are…tricky. Especially if she’s had several forced on her already. But at least this one was given by someone who doesn’t see her as a tool.” Her fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Are you going to keep her in ANBU?”

“For now,” Minato said honestly. “She’s good at it. And there’s too much clean-up work after the war to sideline a shinobi like her completely. But I’m going to formalise her position. Give her a team on paper. Structure. And…”

“And?” she pressed.

“And ties,” he said softly. “People. A life outside the mask. Hiruzen said she needs an anchor. I think he’s right.”

Kushina stared at him for a long moment.

Then she sighed, the sound long and low.

“Bring her here.”

He blinked. “What?”

“At some point,” she clarified. “Not right away, idiot, don’t drag her into our house tomorrow and scare her. But if you’re serious about this ‘ties’ thing…” She gestured vaguely around them. “She should know what a home looks like. A real one. Not a bunk. Not a barracks. Somewhere she can eat food that isn’t ration bars and not worry about who’s watching her posture dattebane.”

Minato swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“You’re incredible,” he told her.

“Obviously,” she sniffed, then softened, eyes turning distant. “Also…if she’s Uchiha, and she’s been Root’s little hidden murder machine, Mikoto should at least know she exists. But that’s politics, and you can deal with that part later.” She reached out, poked his chest. “Right now? Don’t let Danzo anywhere near her file. Or her. Or me. Or our future kid. Or I’ll punch him so hard he’ll reincarnate into rocks.”

Minato laughed, helpless and quiet.

“I’ll keep that in mind, but we can’t tell Mikoto. Mina…she’s… she’s Fugaku’s kid actually, from before his marriage. He’s met her, tried to deny her before her sharingan activated at the loss of Hatake Sakumo, then during the meeting that was meant to plan her integration into the clan, she bailed him out.” he said, eyes tearing up “she apparently caught a glimpse of his family from the door before the meeting and decided she did not want to intrude. Only asked for her mother’s name, to grieve her properly…”

Kushina was already crying by the time Minato finished the story. “Oh my…this is a mess dattebane…”

“I know,” came Minato’s quiet reply, “but we’ll help her.”

“Yes, we most definitely will.”

The revised file was on his desk before dawn.

True to his word, the nervous chunin had worked through the night. Two fresh forms, ANBU and civilian all matching, all neat.

Minato picked them up one by one.

NAME: UZUHA MINA

ORIGIN: KONOHAGAKURE (WAR ORPHAN)

STATUS: ACTIVE ANBU OPERATIVE (CODE: RYU)

GUARDIAN: VILLAGE CARE, THEN DIRECT HOKAGE OVERSIGHT.

The Root file lay off to the side, now marked with the Hokage’s personal seal: DEEP RESTRICTED. The “Minai” line crossed through in an official, heavy stroke - but still legible beneath. Not erased. Just…buried.

He signed the new forms, added two more seals, one for privacy, one for classification, and closed the ANBU folder with a quiet finality.

There. Now he needed to tell her.

She arrived at his summons eleven minutes after the messenger had been sent, even though he’d specified no rush.

Ryuu stood in front of his desk, mask in place, posture straight. Cloak draped just so, hands loose at her sides - always ready, never relaxed.

Minato wondered, briefly, if anyone had ever simply told her she could sit.

“Ryuu,” he said. “At ease. Take off your mask, please.”

She obeyed immediately, fingers deft as she lifted the dragon mask and tucked it under one arm.

The Sharingan wasn’t active, but he could feel the weight of her gaze all the same. Dark eyes, too steady, taking in everything. Her face was unmarred, no scars, no visible damage, but he knew that was luck and precision, not softness of life. He activated the privacy seal, as he had done in her previous visits to his office.

“Good morning, Hokage-sama,” she said.

“Good morning, Minai,” he replied.

The flicker in her eyes was almost imperceptible. A tightening. A flinch that didn’t reach her muscles.

She hadn’t heard that name aloud in a long time, he realised.

“I wanted to speak to you about something that isn’t a mission,” he continued gently. “Your records.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” she said, wary now.

He gestured to the seat across from him. “You can sit.”

Her hesitation lasted half a second, as if she were scanning for traps. Then she moved, settling on the chair with precise care, hands folded in her lap.

Minato turned the three folders so she could see them.

“You have a Root file,” he said. “Under the name Minai, from Amegakure. You have an ANBU file, under the name Mina, codename Ryuu. Your civilian registry had just Minai. That kind of fracture is dangerous for a shinobi in your position.”

She watched him, expression blank but eyes too sharp. “I understand.”

He paused.

“Do you?” he asked.

She blinked, the smallest concession to confusion.

“What I mean is, that if someone were to seek leverage,” Minato explained, “they could use any inconsistency in your identity to question your loyalty. Your origin. Your place as a refugee here. They could reach back to Root. To Uchiha bloodline. To Ame and things that are dangerous to the person you are now. They could claim you don’t belong or try to hurt you..” He held her gaze. “I won’t allow either of that.”

Something in her posture went stiller. Not rigid - but thinner, as if she’d sucked in breath and was waiting to see if she’d be allowed to exhale.

“Hokage-sama,” she said carefully, “with respect, my life belongs to the village. If they decide I do not-”

“I decide,” Minato cut in, quietly but firmly. “That’s what this hat means.”

Her mouth shut.

He tapped the civilian folder.

“From today forward,” he said, “your full legal name is Uzuha Mina. On all official documents, on all rosters, on every form that is not locked in my private archive, you are recorded as a Konoha-born war orphan. No Ame designation. No Root notations. No trace to Uchiha heritage. You are an ANBU operative who was recruited young because of exceptional talent during wartime. That is the story anyone sees if they look.”

She stared at him.

He watched the words sink in, layer by layer.

“Uzuha,” she echoed, barely above a whisper.

“I thought it suited you,” Minato said. “I took the Uzu part from my wife’s surname, she is also a naturalised Konoha citizen, originally from another village, and the end part is a subtle nod to your true surname. If you don’t like it, we can discuss alternatives. But the important part is: Root can no longer claim you, neither administratively nor on paper. Danzo will not be able to pull you back with a line item and an old stamp.”

A flicker of something crossed her face. Not quite hope, too cautious for that, but some tautness loosening inside.

“How?” she asked.

“Because the office of the Hokage outranks Root,” Minato said simply. “And I’ve sealed your old file. No one can access it without my clearance. I haven’t erased it. Your past is still your past. But it isn’t a chain you have to drag into every room.”

She looked down at her hands.

Her fingers had curled, gripping the edge of the chair.

“My name is not in Root anymore,” she said slowly, like testing the shape of the thought. “Not where they can…reach it.”

“No,” he confirmed. “Your name is here.” He slid the new registry paper across the desk to her.

She took it without quite touching it at first, as if it might burn. Finally, her fingertips brushed the ink.

UZUHA MINA.

Someone had written it in careful, clean strokes. Age: 13 (approximate). Rank: ANBU. Guardian: Hokage (temporary oversight).

Something fragile moved in her face, barely there.

“Why?” she asked, after a moment. “I mean. I understand the tactical reasons. But…” Her eyes lifted to his. “Why go to this much trouble for one operative?”

Minato leaned back, folded his hands.

“Because you’re not just an operative,” he said. “You’re a child of this village, whether it knew how to claim you or not. Because Hiruzen entrusted you to me, and I don’t take that lightly. Because the war is over, and if we keep treating our youngest as tools, then we haven’t really won anything at all.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed.

“You told me, when we met,” he added gently, “that you had no one here for you. No one. That was a report-answer. Correct. Efficient. Root-trained.” He tilted his head. “I’d like that to change, eventually.”

Her eyes widened a fraction.

“I’m not…good at that,” she said, almost apologetic.

“We’ll figure it out,” Minato said, smiling. “You don’t have to decide anything today. For now, all I’m asking is that you remember this: if someone ever tries to use your past as Minai against you, or against me, you tell them to take it up with the Hokage. Understood?”

She studied him.

He let her look.

At last, she nodded. “Understood. Hokage-sama.”

“Good.” He softened his tone. “You can keep that copy,” he said, nodding at the registration in her hands. “It’s yours. If you want it.”

She glanced down at the paper again, then carefully folded it along the middle, fingers almost reverent.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I…would like to keep it.”

He felt something uncoil in his chest.

“Then it’s yours,” he said. “Also, my wife has invited you to dinner, come whenever you feel comfortable enough doing so. It is not an order. Dismissed, Uzuha Mina.”

She blinked at the name.

Slowly, she rose. She put her mask back on, dragon face slipping into place, but he could see, in the angle of her shoulders, that something had shifted. Not much. Just a fraction. But it was there.

When she bowed, it wasn’t the brittle, too-perfect bow of Root conditioning.

It was almost…normal.

“Thank you,” she murmured, so softly he almost didn’t catch it.

Then she was gone.

Kakashi first noticed the name change on a mission roster.

He wasn’t looking for it. He’d come to the ANBU Headquarters because a messenger bird had knocked on his window at an ungodly hour and told him there was a file to pick up for Team Ro’s next assignment.

He slouched in front of the mission desk, mask off for once, hair a worse mess than usual. The ANBU clerk slid the assignment folder across with a too-bright “Good morning, senpai!” that Kakashi ignored in favor of flipping the file open.

His eye caught on the second page.

ASSIGNED OPERATIVES:

- Hatake Kakashi (Hound)Team Ro Captain

- Tenzo (Cat)

• Yugao Uzuki (Lynx)
• Namiashi Megumi (Penguin) - on medical leave due to injury

- Uzuha Mina (Ryuu) - substitute team member.

He frowned behind his mask out of habit, even though it wasn’t on his face.

“Uzuha…Mina?” he murmured.

“That’s Ryuu,” the clerk chirped. “Didn’t you hear? Hokage-sama released her file. Surname and everything. Very official, now Ryuu’s no longer a ghost in ANBU. He even came down to sign the substitute form for her on team Ro in person. Scared the life out of poor Sato, he thought he’d misfiled something-”

Kakashi tuned him out halfway through the sentence.

Ryuu.

He met her already.

In the field, Ryuu was known to move like water around a blade’s edge. Efficient. Precise. Not wasteful, the way some cocky jonin got when they realised how strong they were. The legend of the mask preceded the dark haired girl he was introduced to in front of the Hokage office.

Now, though, here it was in neat ink: Uzuha Mina.

A real name. A real record. A little note beside it, in the Hokage’s own handwriting: “File updated. Information sealed. For ANBU use only.”

Minato rarely wrote on rosters himself.

Kakashi closed the folder.

“Something wrong, Hatake-san?” the clerk asked, anxious.

Kakashi shrugged one shoulder. “Just curious,” he said. “Didn’t know Ryuu’s full name.”

The clerk chuckled. “To hear Admin talk, no one didn’t until last night, when he released her file.”

Kakashi mulled that over.

Minato-sensei had a soft spot for people the village had failed. It was one of the things Kakashi both admired and found quietly terrifying about him. The man could forgive and reach out in ways Kakashi, even now, could not always understand.

But he understood loyalty.

And if Minato was putting his own seal on this Ryuu’s file, that meant something.

Kakashi slipped the folder under his arm. “Got it,” he said. “Thanks.”

As he left HQ, he glanced up at the building, at the windows specifically.

For a moment, he thought he saw a slim figure leaving through the ANBU exit two floors down, dragon mask glinting in the morning light. Smaller than most of the operatives, posture a little too straight.

He wondered, briefly, if she felt any different, carrying her name on her sleeve now.

Then he pulled his own mask down, tucked the question away with all the others he never voiced, and headed out to meet his team.

There would be time enough, later, to see what kind of person Uzuha Mina was.

For now, all he needed to know was that Minato trusted her.

That was enough.

For now.

——————————————————————————

Minai spent the hours before six o’clock the next evening like she would before any mission.

She cleaned her apartment twice, even though it did not need cleaning the first time. She checked her weapons, then reminded herself she was not supposed to bring a full arsenal to a civilian dinner. She put three blades back. Then took one out again. Just in case.

Her wardrobe was hardly a wardrobe. ANBU standard black. Training gear. A single dark blue shirt she had bought once because the shopkeeper had said it looked nice, and she had not known how to refuse.

She put that on.

The fabric felt slightly different from her usual mission clothes. Softer. A little less armoured. As if it expected her to live through the night rather than disappear into it.

By the time she reached the street leading to the Namikaze house, she had gone over possible conversational pitfalls in her head.

If asked about missions, deflect.

If asked about Root, deflect harder.

If asked about her favourite food, invent something plausible.

She rounded the corner and saw him waiting.

Minato stood just outside the gate, cloak off, posture relaxed in a way she had only seen in flashes. Without the Hokage uniform, he looked less like a symbol and more like what he was, at his core.

A shinobi who smiled easily and worried deeply.

He noticed her approach at once.

“You came,” he said.

“You ordered-“ she corrected, then paused. “I mean invited.”

His mouth quirked. “I am glad you listened to the second part.”

He stepped aside to let her pass through the gate.

The garden leading up to the house was small but cared for. A few potted plants. Some herbs. The evening air carried the scent of broth and something savoury.

Minai’s senses catalogued points of entry and escape out of habit. Window left open on the second floor. Loose tile near the step. No ANBU watch visible, but she could feel them on the rooftops nearby, a familiar pressure at the edge of perception.

It calmed her more than it should have.

Minato walked beside her at an easy pace.

“Thank you for coming as yourself,” he said quietly.

She glanced at him.

“It would be disrespectful to meet your wife under a disguise or with ANBU gear.”

“True,” he said. “Later, when my wife eventually drags you out to go in public, continue being yourself, even i you feel the need for henge. I know attention can be a lot, but you are allowed to learn to be yourself, Mina.”

Her brow furrowed. “Because she is the Hokage’s wife?”

“Partly,” he said. “Partly because you are very noticeable.”

She frowned, not understanding.

“In what way?”

Minato looked genuinely confused that she did not know.

“Mina,” he said slowly, “you are a very beautiful girl.”

She stopped walking.

The word hung in the air between them like something fragile and dangerous.

Beautiful.

It was a word she had heard used. For ladies in fine kimono. For kunoichi at festivals. For flowers, sometimes.

Never for her.

She searched his face for mockery, a test, a trap. Found only sincerity.

“I am a weapon,” she said, almost reflexively.

“Yes, for now,” Minato replied. “And also a beautiful girl.”

The data did not compute. She filed it away for later processing and moved again.

At the door, she stopped.

For all her experience stepping into enemy bases, this threshold felt more daunting than any fortress.

Minato opened it and stood aside.

“Come in,” he said. “You are welcome here. Always.”

Her body stayed where it was. It took a moment for her mind to catch up and instruct her legs to move.

She stepped over the threshold.

Warmth met her first.

Not just temperature, though the air inside was pleasantly heated compared to the early evening outside. It was the kind of warmth made by steam from cooking, by people breathing the same air, by laughter trapped in the walls long enough to become part of them.

The living area opened directly from the entrance. A ltable set with three bowls, chopsticks resting neatly across them, a large pot on a side counter still simmering. Cushions. A worn rug. A few books stacked in the corner.

And in the middle of it all, hair a vivid, impossible red, apron tied loosely over casual clothes, stood Uzumaki Kushina.

Minai felt the impact of her presence like stepping into sudden sunlight.

Kushina turned at the sound of the door. Her eyes, warm brown and bright with life, swept over Minai in one quick, assessing glance, then softened.

“Oh,” she breathed. “So this is her.”

Minai straightened automatically.

“Kushina-sama,” she said, bowing. “Thank you for having me.”

Kushina’s brows pinched immediately.

“None of that,” she said, waving a hand. “You will call me Kushina, or Kushina nee-san, if you like. I am not ‘sama’ in my own house.”

Minai blinked. “It would be disrespectful.”

“It would be familial,” Kushina corrected.

The word pierced straight through something in Minai’s chest. She had no defence prepared for it.

Minato slipped by them to the kitchen counter.

“Kushina has been talking about you non-stop,” he said lightly, picking up a ladle. “I am surprised she let you finish a sentence.”

Kushina shot him an unimpressed look and then smiled back at Minai, turning the force of it down as if she realised too bright a grin might make the girl bolt.

“You must be starving,” she said. “Sit, sit. Food is almost ready.”

Minai looked at the table.

There were three places laid out.

She knew how many that meant.

Her throat tightened.

“I am not… used to sitting for meals,” she admitted. “Usually you eat quickly, you do not take up too much space, and you leave.”

Kushina’s expression gentled even further.

“Here,” she said, “you can take up all the space you want.”

Minai considered this, then approached the table and knelt in perfect posture.

Back straight. Hands on thighs. Head slightly dipped.

Minato and Kushina shared a look above her head.

Kushina moved to sit opposite her, folding her legs comfortably under her. Minato took his place at the side.

“Well, this is serious,” he joked. “Are we interrogating someone, or having dinner?”

Minai glanced up, confused.

“Is my posture incorrect?” she asked.

“No,” Minato said. “It is very correct. Just very formal. Very terrifying.”

Kushina laughed softly.

“You can sit however you like,” she told Minai. “You will not be graded.”

Minai shifted slightly, unsure how to translate that into specific action.

“You can sit like this,” Kushina demonstrated, crossing her legs under her and leaning an elbow on the table. “Or this,” she folded into a looser version of stance. “Or this,” she sat sideways, one leg stretched.

Minai found them all too exposed.

“I think I will stay like this,” she said.

Kushina shrugged, accepting.

“Alright,” she said. “We can work on it later.”

Minato began ladling ramen into bowls.

The smell hit Minai first.

Pork broth. Spring onion. Soy. And something else, something that reached into her memory and tugged.

Ichiraku.

She exhaled without meaning to.

“You know this smell?” Minato asked, noticing.

“Yes,” she said. “Ramen.”

Kushina grinned.

“Good nose. Have you eaten much ramen before?”

Minai hesitated.

“Yes.”

She did not elaborate.

Kushina did not push.

Minato set a bowl in front of her and rotated it a fraction, so the toppings faced her neatly. It was such a small gesture that it took Minai a moment to realise what he had done.

“Proper presentation is important,” he said solemnly.

Kushina snorted.

Minai looked between the two of them.

She picked up her chopsticks the way she had seen others do it, hand steady, posture perfectly upright. She waited.

Minato smiled.

“Go ahead,” he said. “You do not have to wait for us to start.”

Her training screamed at her that of course she had to wait. Hierarchy dictated the highest rank ate first. But the smell was warm, familiar, and it had been longer than she liked to admit since she had sat down to a hot meal that was not in a dark corner between missions.

She brought noodles to her lips and took a careful bite.

Flavour flooded her tongue.

Fatty, salty, rich, a hint of miso, the sharpness of onion cutting through. It tasted like the alley behind a ramen stall and Sakumo’s quiet presence and Pakkun’s soft snuffling.

Her hand trembled just slightly.

“This is…” she began, then stopped, searching for a word beyond fuel, calories, sustenance.

“Good,” she finished lamely.

Kushina laughed.

“Good is a start,” she said. “We will get you to ‘delicious’ eventually.”

Minai took another bite, slower this time.

“This is like mission rations,” she said thoughtfully. “Upgraded.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Minato choked on his miso.

Kushina dropped her chopsticks.

“You did not just compare my cooking to rations,” she wheezed, half offended, half delighted.

Minai froze.

“I did not mean to insult…”

Kushina waved both hands frantically.

“No, no, no, I am not angry. That is just the funniest thing I have heard in a long time.”

Minato coughed, wiping his mouth, eyes watering with laughter he was trying to suppress.

“Mission rations,” he repeated weakly.

Minai stared at them both.

“I do not understand,” she admitted.

“That is because calling this,” Kushina gestured at the steaming, lovingly prepared ramen, “rations, is like calling the Hokage Tower ‘a tall shed’.”

Minai considered this.

“That would be inaccurate,” she said.

“Exactly,” Kushina replied. “This is not just fuel. This is food. There is love in this broth.”

Minai glanced down at the swirling soup. It looked like liquid warmth. The idea of love being in it was… new. Ridiculous. And strangely believable, coming from Kushina.

“I will upgrade my classification,” she said finally. “It is better than rations.”

Kushina laughed again, eyes crinkling.

“Good enough.”

Dinner began in earnest.

At first Minai ate too neatly, rationing her bites as if the bowl might vanish if she finished it too quickly, as if someone might take it away if she was too noticeable. Her movements were careful, measured. She chewed each mouthful as if she expected it to be her last for some time.

Within a few minutes, Kushina noticed.

“Minai,” she said gently, “you know there is more in the pot, right?”

Minai paused, chopsticks hovering.

“Yes.”

“So you can eat until you are full,” Kushina continued. “Not until you think you should stop.”

Minai considered that.

“I do not know when that is,” she said quietly.

Kushina’s face softened.

“Then we will figure it out,” she replied. “Together.”

Minai nodded, slowly, and took a slightly bigger bite.

They did not ask her about Root.

They did not ask her to elaborate on her mission history.

Instead they talked about small things.

Kushina described a shopkeeper who tried to overcharge her on rice and how she had glared him down into apologising. Minato told a story about a mission report written in such terrible handwriting that it took him an hour to realise it was reporting on the wrong battle.

Minai listened at first like she would to intelligence.

Then, slowly, like someone listening to music.

“Do you have any hobbies, Minai?” Kushina asked at one point, sipping her broth.

Minai stared at her.

“Hobbies.”

“Yes. Things you do for fun.”

Minai had to parse the question twice.

“I train,” she said.

“Do you train when you do not have to,” Minato asked.

“Yes.”

“Then that might count,” he conceded, “but we can maybe add one or two more that do not involve bruises.”

Kushina leaned forward, excitement lighting her face.

“Do you like books?”

“I read mission reports.”

“What about stories?”

Minai hesitated.

“I do not know.”

Kushina sat back.

“Then we will find out.”

Minai ate another mouthful to avoid having to react to that level of determination.

As dinner went on, her shoulders slowly lowered. The tight line of her spine softened. She did not notice at first. But Minato did.

At one point, he leaned across to adjust something near her bowl. He rotated it just so, placing the slice of pork and egg where she could reach it more easily.

Minai blinked.

“Is there a tactical reason for this,” she asked.

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “Aesthetics.”

Kushina snorted.

“And because it tastes best when you eat it from that angle, according to him,” she added.

Minai looked down at the bowl. The arranged food. The steam curling into her face.

She understood battlefield angles. Shadow casting. Kill zones.

This kind of angle was entirely new.

She tried the pork again.

It did taste better.

She did not know if that was the bowl or the company.

She suspected both.

They ate until the pot was nearly empty. Minato went back for seconds. Kushina went back for thirds. Minai, after some hesitant glances and gentle encouragement, also went back.

“You can,” Kushina told her quietly. “We made enough for you to have more.”

Minai did.

The warmth in her stomach felt almost alarming. Like chakra gathering, but gentler.

When the last of the broth was gone, Minai set her chopsticks down neatly.

“Thank you,” she said. “For the meal.”

“You are welcome,” Kushina replied easily. “You ate well. That makes me happy.”

Minai looked at her, genuinely perplexed.

“My eating makes you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it means you are here,” Kushina said simply. “Alive. At my table. Talking to us.”

Minato nodded.

“You asked earlier why your wellbeing matters,” he reminded her. “This is why. You being here changes the world a little. For the better.”

Minai stared at them both.

She had no frame of reference for being told she made anything better.

“Your wife only met me today,” she said.

“Konoha has known you for years,” Minato said. “You just have not been allowed to see it.”

She swallowed.

“What if I am not… good at this?”

“Good at what,” Kushina asked.

“At… being…” Minai struggled for the word. “Normal.”

Kushina smiled with sudden mischief.

“Oh, Minai,” she said. “If you want normal, you chose the wrong family.”

Minato choked again.

Kushina continued, grinning.

“I am me. My husband is the Yellow Flash. Our future child will probably set something on fire by accident before he can walk. There is nothing normal about this house.”

Minai considered that.

“Then what should I be?” she asked.

Kushina’s smile softened into something bright and gentle.

“Here,” she said, “you can just be Minai.”

The room seemed to tilt, just a little. As if the axis of her world had shifted by one degree.

Minato rose first, collecting bowls.

“Let me,” Minai said automatically, reaching for them.

“You are a guest,” he reminded her. “Guests do not do dishes.”

“In Root, everyone did chores,” she replied.

“You are not in Root,” he said firmly.

She stopped, then lowered her hand.

Kushina touched Minai’s shoulder lightly as she stood.

“We will put you to work eventually,” she said cheerfully. “But not tonight.”

Minai sat there for a moment longer at the low table, hands resting on her knees, eyes on the empty bowl in front of her.

Warmth pulsed through her ribs. Strange. Persistent.

It did not feel like battle readiness. It did not feel like rage. It did not feel like her Sharingan waking at the edge of pain.

It felt like sitting in a room where the air did not hurt to breathe.

When she finally stood to leave, the sky outside had deepened into indigo.

Minato walked her to the door.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

“Thank you… for feeding me,” she replied.

The phrasing felt inadequate, but she did not know a bigger one.

He smiled.

“We will do this again. If you want.”

She hesitated.

“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”

The honesty of it surprised even her.

Kushina appeared at the doorway behind Minato, waving.

“Come back soon, Minai. Next time I will make something that is not ‘mission rations upgraded’.”

Minai bowed.

“It was the best upgrade I have ever had,” she said, sincere.

Kushina laughed, bright as bells.

Minai stepped out into the night.

The air was cooler now. Crisper. The moon hung low above the rooftops, throwing silver over tiled roofs and quiet streets.

She walked home slowly, for once not taking to the rooftops. The village felt different under her feet. Less like territory to be patrolled, more like a place people lived.

Halfway back, she pressed a hand lightly against her stomach.

The warmth there had not faded.

She did not know what to call it.

Not hunger. Not chakra. Not illness.

Something else.

She thought of Minato’s eyes, steady and kind. Kushina’s laugh, loud and unafraid. The way they had placed three bowls without hesitation, as if the third had always been there, waiting for someone to claim it.

For her to claim it.

Minai walked the rest of the way with a small crease between her brows, as if she were solving a puzzle. The puzzle of a world where she might be wanted for more than what she could kill.

By the time she reached her apartment, the crease had softened.

She closed the door behind her, leant her back against it, and let out a breath she did not know she had been holding.

For the first time in a very long time, the silence of her home did not feel heavy.

It felt like a pause between one kind of life and another.

Her ribs still held that strange, stubborn warmth.

Confusion curled around it.

But under the confusion, slowly, almost shyly, something else began to grow.

Hope.

——————————————————————————

A few days later, Kushina arrived at her door like a storm disguised as a knock.

Three quick raps. A pause. Two more, impatient. Minai, who had been in the middle of cleaning her kunai, looked up as if expecting an emergency summons.

No chakra flare. No ANBU signature. Just a familiar, blazing presence on the other side of the wood.

“Mina! It is me,” Kushina called. “Open up before I break this door down on principle.”

Minai set the kunai aside and stood, smoothing her shirt automatically. She crossed to the door, slid it open and blinked.

Kushina stood there in casual clothes, hair flowing freely like a red river, hands on her hips and eyes alight with purpose.

“Get dressed,” she said.

Minai looked down at herself.

“I am dressed.”

“In combat-ready monochrome,” Kushina replied. “We are going shopping.”

Shopping.

Minai’s instinctive reaction was the same as if she had been told to infiltrate enemy territory with no mission parameters.

“For what.”

Kushina swept an arm past her, gesturing at the apartment as if it were a battlefield report.

“Clothes. Things. Life. You cannot keep rotating three shirts and a lifetime of trauma.”

“I rotate four shirts,” Minai corrected.

Kushina put a hand over her heart.

“Oh good, that changes everything.”

Minai stood in the doorway, still, eyes calm.

“I have adequate clothing.”

“Barely,” Kushina said. “And all of it is black, blue or looks like it would disintegrate if it ever met a festival light.”

She shifted tactics, eyes softening.

“Humour me,” she added. “One afternoon. If you hate it, we will come back and I will never drag you clothing hunting again.”

Minai considered the offer like a mission contract.

“I will have to return for weapons if something happens,” she said.

Kushina snorted.

“If something happens while I am with you, then the ‘something’ will have a very bad day. I’m strong too. You can leave the full arsenal behind.”

Minai hesitated.

“What will I need?”

“Money normally,” Kushina answered. “But I have that. You just need to bring yourself.”

That, at least, was something she could manage.

She stepped out, closed the door behind her and fell into step beside Kushina.

They had barely made it to the street before Kushina halted abruptly and turned to look her dead in the eye.

“Not bad,” she said. “You could make a very cute civilian.”

Minai frowned slightly.

“I have not changed much. Just took the armour off.”

“Yes,” Kushina said, “that is the terrifying part.”

They began walking.

Konoha’s streets were busy. Vendors called out. Children darted between stalls. Sunlight fell warm across tiled roofs.

Minai did her best to fold down her awareness, to stop reading every doorway as a possible threat. It went against everything Root and ANBU had carved into her.

Kushina seemed to sense the tension vibrating under her skin.

“Start with small things,” she said quietly. “What do you feel right now?”

“Crowd density. Escape routes. Potential blind spots,” Minai answered automatically.

“I meant emotionally.”

Minai opened her mouth. Closed it.

“I do not know how to catalogue that,” she admitted.

“Then we will learn that too.”

The first shop they entered was a clothing place near the main street. Not a shinobi supply store, but one with bright fabrics stacked in neat piles, displays in the window, dummies wearing dresses that looked more like art than armour.

A bell chimed as they stepped in.

The shopkeeper, a middle-aged woman with her hair in a neat bun, looked up, saw Kushina and lit up.

“Oh, Kushina-san! Good morning. And… friend?”

Kushina beamed.

“This is Mina,” she said. “She needs clothes that are not designed for stabbing people.”

The shopkeeper laughed, some of the initial stiffness leaving her when she realised the Hokage’s wife was not here to be formal.

Minai remained near the entrance, eyes running over the interior like a map.

“Come on,” Kushina mouthed at her. “You are not a ghost.”

Minai stepped forward with the kind of careful precision she normally reserved for avoiding traps.

Kushina headed straight to a rack of shirts.

“Alright,” she said, pulling one free. “Pick something you like.”

Minai looked at the rack.

There was too much.

Patterns. Colours. Cuts. She was used to knowing what she needed before entering a place. Here, need and want blurred in an unfamiliar way.

She reached for the simplest options first. Dark grey. Black. Deep navy.

Kushina watched, lips twitching.

“You are choosing like a jonin picking mission gear.”

“These are practical colours,” Minai said.

“Yes,” Kushina agreed. “They are. Now pick something because it makes you feel nice.”

Minai frowned at the idea.

“Dealing with feelings is inefficient.”

Kushina wheeled on her.

“Did Danzo tell you that?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then he can shut up, even in your head. Pick a colour, not a tactic.”

Minai thought about that, then turned back to the clothes.

Her hand hovered over a white shirt with soft sleeves, then moved away. White stained easily. Impractical.

Then she saw it.

A deep, rich red. Not too bright. Like a dried leaf. Or old lacquer. The colour sat heavy on the fabric, grounding, familiar. It pulled at something in her memory. The Uchiha fan. The crest she was not allowed to wear.

Her fingers brushed it.

She put it back.

Then, two hangers over, she saw a shirt in a warm, soft orange. Not the harsh neon of warning tags. A friendlier shade. Like sunset. Like the colour Kushina wore often in some form or another.

She reached out and touched that too.

Kushina saw the motion and hid a smile.

“You can pick more than one, you know.”

Minai looked from the red to the orange. Her hand moved back and forth between them as if she were conducting an internal debate only she could hear.

Finally, she picked them both off the rack.

“These,” she said quietly.

The shopkeeper approached, smiling.

“Good choices,” she said. “The red will look wonderful with your dark hair, and the orange will warm your pale complexion.”

Minai blinked.

“I do not know what that means.”

“It means you will look very pretty,” the woman said.

Minai went still.

“Oh,” she answered, as if presented with a completely new type of weapon.

Kushina smirked.

“You will get that a lot, you know,” she told Minai as they moved to the next section.

“What?”

“Pretty. Beautiful. Stunning. Take your pick.”

Minai frowned. “No one has said that to me.”

Kushina’s expression softened.

“Because most of the people around you have been idiots. You are beautiful Mina, all pale skin, long, dark hair and deep, full lips, gentle face and obsidian eyes dattebane.”

Minai thought of Root, of Danzo, of ANBU masks and battlefield mud.

“Beauty is not relevant to combat,” she said.

“No,” Kushina agreed. “It is not. But it is relevant to you. And to other people. They look at you and they see something that catches their eye. It matters, even if only because it changes how you are treated.”

Minai shifted uncomfortably.

“I do not want to be treated differently because of my face.”

“You already are,” Kushina said. “You just do not notice because you are busy checking for exit routes.”

Minai had no answer to that.

They moved on to trousers. Minai gravitated towards weapons holsters. Kushina redirected her towards things that looked like they were meant for walking around in, not sprinting across tree branches.

By the time they reached the front, they had a small pile:

Two shirts. One red, one orange. Two pairs of trousers that were not made of tough shinobi canvas. A soft knitted jumper that Kushina had thrown in without asking.

At the counter, while Kushina paid, Minai’s attention drifted.

Two women by the next display were talking quietly, glancing over.

“…she’s very pretty…”

“…such delicate features…”

“…do you think she’s a cousin… maybe from another clan…”

Minai turned slightly to see who they were talking about.

The only other people nearby were Kushina and herself.

Kushina caught the movement and followed her gaze. When she realised what Minai was trying to do, her lips tugged into a wide grin.

“They are talking about you, you know,” she murmured.

Minai snapped her eyes back.

“Why?”

“Because they have eyes.”

Minai frowned.

“I am not doing anything.”

“You do not have to,” Kushina said. “You exist. That is enough.”

Minai looked increasingly unsettled by this entire revelation.

“I would rather they did not talk about me,” she said.

“You cannot stop people from having eyes,” Kushina replied with a shrug. “But you can decide what you do with the attention.”

“What should I do?”

“For now?” Kushina smiled. “Just ignore it or say thank you. Later, if any of them are rude, you can glare at them.”

Minai considered this.

“I am good at glaring.”

“I know,” Kushina said proudly. “We will weaponise it properly later dattebane.”

From the clothing shop, Kushina dragged her into what Minai quickly decided was the most confusing place she had ever entered: a beauty and skincare shop.

Shelves lined the walls, full of small jars and bottles and boxes in colours that had nothing to do with utility. It smelled faintly floral, with a hint of herbs.

Minai froze in the doorway.

“This seems… unnecessary.”

“It is not necessary in the survival sense,” Kushina agreed as she moved confidently between the aisles. “But it is necessary in the ‘taking care of yourself because you deserve to feel good in your skin’ sense.”

Minai hovered near the entrance.

“Skin is skin,” she said.

“Skin dries. It cracks. It scars. It holds you together,” Kushina replied, plucking a jar from a shelf. “You put your body through a lot. You can be kind to it sometimes dattebane.”

Kushina opened the jar and held it out.

“Here. Smell.”

Minai hesitated, then leant forward the minimal amount required.

The scent that hit her was soft and clean. Something like rice, something like milk, faintly sweet without being overwhelming.

“What is it?”

“Moisturiser,” Kushina said. “Face cream.”

“What does it do?”

“Makes your skin less dry. Keeps it soft. Imagine armour for your face, but nice.”

Minai stared at the jar like it might leap out and attack her.

“Why would my face need armour?”

“Because the world keeps throwing things at you,” Kushina said. “Wind. Sun. Sand. Fire. Explosions.”

Minai considered that reasoning.

“That is… logical,” she admitted, with deep reluctance.

Kushina looked very pleased.

“That is the spirit.”

They collected a couple more basic items. A simple cleanser. A small stick of lip balm. Kushina kept the explanations minimal, sensing that too much information would send Minai back into mission-mode processing.

Back at Minai’s apartment, they sat on the floor with the haul spread between them.

“Right,” Kushina said. “Lesson one: skincare.”

“This feels like a briefing,” Minai said.

“It is,” Kushina replied. “The mission is: stop looking like ANBU was the only place you ever lived.”

She poured a little cleanser into Minai’s palm.

“Rub this between your hands, then on your face. Gently.”

Minai obeyed. At least, she thought she did.

She rubbed too vigorously, movements brisk and functional. Foam streaked up into her hairline, across her cheeks.

“Alright, alright, you are not sanding wood,” Kushina said, laughing. “You can be gentle. Your face is not the enemy.”

Minai slowed down, adjusting pressure.

“It feels strange,” she said.

“That means it is working,” Kushina replied cheerfully.

When it came time for moisturiser, Minai scooped far too much out of the jar. It squelched between her fingers.

“This is excessive,” she said flatly.

“Yes,” Kushina said. “Wipe some off. Your face is not an excavation site.”

Minai attempted to dab it on delicately, failed, and ended up with white streaks across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.

Kushina clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh and failed entirely.

“Oh no,” she wheezed. “You look like you lost a fight with a snowstorm.”

Minai blinked.

“This is ineffective,” she agreed.

Kushina leaned in, still giggling, and used her thumbs to spread the cream properly, smoothing it into the skin.

Minai sat there, very still, letting someone else touch her face, something she seldom allowed. The sensation was odd. Gentle. The warm drag of Kushina’s fingers, the faint citrus scent of the cream.

“There,” Kushina said. “Now you look less like someone who sleeps with one eye open in the rain.”

“I did,” Minai said.

“I know,” Kushina replied softly. “We are changing that dattebane.”

They moved on to the lip balm.

“Now this,” Kushina said, holding up the small stick like it was a sacred scroll, “is precious. It is to keep the dryness away.”

Minai took the tube, turned it in her fingers, removed the cap. The product looked like some kind of pale wax.

She paused, then, with the same decisiveness she used to make split second combat decisions, dabbed it under her eye.

Kushina stared.

“Did you just put lip balm under your eye??”

Minai blinked. “You said it is for dryness.”

“For your mouth,” Kushina said, voice strangled. “Hence ‘lip’. Lip. Balm.”

Minai froze. “I misinterpreted.”

Kushina burst into laughter so hard she had to brace a hand on the floor. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, Mina,” she choked out. “You are… you are killing me dattebane.”

Minai wiped the balm away, vaguely offended at products that did not label their use more clearly.

“This is not an efficient system,” she muttered.

Kushina laughed until the sound looped over itself and softened into something warm.

Eventually, Minai found herself smiling. It happened without warning, the corners of her mouth lifting, her cheeks easing. The expression felt like an unfamiliar stance.

As soon as she realised, she reached up and touched her lips, startled.

“What,” Kushina asked, still wiping at her eyes.

“I…” Minai frowned. “I did not intend to make that face.”

“That is called a smile,” Kushina said. “People do it when they are happy, or amused, or sometimes when they want to punch someone but are being polite.”

Minai considered that.

“It does not feel like a combat expression.”

“It is not,” Kushina said softly. “Which is why I am very glad to see it on you.”

Minai dropped her hand, slightly embarrassed.

“It may have been an accident.”

“Then we will just have to make it happen again on purpose,” Kushina replied.

A few days later, Minato stopped her in the Hokage Tower corridor.

He had been looking over scrolls at the end of a meeting, posture tense from hours of sitting. When he stepped away from his desk and saw Minai standing near the window, he frowned slightly.

“Your shoulders are up here,” he said, tapping the air near his neck.

She blinked.

“This is my standard state,” she replied.

“That is the problem,” he said.

He crossed the room and stood in front of her.

“May I?” he asked, lifting his hands in clear view, palms open.

She gave a short nod.

His hands settled on her shoulders lightly, thumbs near her collarbone, fingers resting over the fabric of her shirt. The touch was professional, careful, like a medic assessing tension.

“Breathe in,” he instructed.

She inhaled.

“Now let your shoulders drop with the exhale.”

She tried. They lowered by a fraction.

He made a thoughtful noise.

“Again. Relax your jaw this time too.”

“I am relaxed,” she said.

“You are the opposite of relaxed,” he replied politely. “You are trying to be a kunai. You are allowed to be a person.”

She almost argued. Then, perhaps because she trusted him more than she had meant to, she tried again.

Inhale. Exhale. She felt his hands guide the motion, not forcing, just suggesting a different alignment.

Her shoulders sank another degree.

“There,” he said. “Better.”

“They feel wrong,” she said.

“They feel like they are not trying to strangle your spine,” he corrected.

He stepped back and mimicked her old stance, shoulders up, neck tight, jaw clenched, eyes scanning the room.

“This is assassin posture,” he said. “Useful. But exhausting if you hold it all the time.”

He shook the tension off, then stood normally, arms loose, weight evenly distributed.

“This is civilian posture. Also useful. For blending, for convincing people you are not about to stab them.”

Minai tilted her head.

“I do not usually care if civilians believe I will stab them or not.”

“Here is a secret,” Minato said conspiratorially. “People are much more forthcoming when they do not feel like they are one wrong sentence away from death.”

She considered that.

“That makes tactical sense,” she conceded.

He smiled.

“Good. Practise walking like you are not on a mission all the time.”

“I am on call at all times,” she reminded him.

“You can still let your body rest between calls,” he replied.

As she left the office, she consciously forced her shoulders down. It felt like trying to wear clothes that did not belong to her.

But Kushina had told her she deserved to feel good in her skin. And Minato had told her she was more than a blade. So she tried.

The changes were subtle at first.

She answered more than a single sentence when Kushina spoke to her. She started eating half a rice ball before checking the periphery of a room instead of the other way round. She sat, sometimes, with her back not entirely pressed to a wall.

When she walked through the market with Kushina, she began to notice not just threats, but details.

A child crying because they dropped their sweet. A mother bending down to wipe their face. Two teenagers arguing over which hair ornament matched a kimono. A merchant throwing a tarp over his stall as a cloud passed overhead.

And there, slipping between conversations, threads of whispered comments.

“She’s pretty, that girl with Kushina-san…”

“…those dark eyes, wow…”

“…do you think she is from a clan…?”

Minai’s shoulders crept up again, despite her efforts.

Kushina’s hand brushed lightly against her forearm, a grounding touch.

“They are not enemies,” she said under her breath. “Just people with opinions.”

“They are wrong,” Minai muttered back.

“About what?”

“About me.”

“In what sense?” Kushina pressed.

Minai searched for the answer.

“I do not see what they see.”

Kushina smiled.

“That is alright. You do not have to.”

“If I do not see it, how can it be true?”

“Do you see your own chakra,” Kushina asked. “Without a mirror. Without any technique. Just with your eyes?”

“No.”

“Is it still there?”

“Yes,” Minai admitted.

“Then let others see what you cannot, and do not argue with every compliment,” Kushina said. “It is exhausting dattebane.”

Minai scowled faintly.

“A compliment has no tactical purpose.”

“It has emotional purpose,” Kushina said. “And you are not a mission report.”

Minai did not have a good counter for that any more.

She was running out of them.

A week later, Minato saw her arrive at his home for dinner and stopped mid-greeting.

“Something is different,” he said.

Minai looked down at herself, then back at him.

“Kushina made me wear the red shirt,” she said.

It suited her unnervingly well.

The deep colour made her eyes stand out, brought warmth into her skin, softened the severity of her features without dulling their sharpness.

“She chose well,” Minato said. “You look… more like a teenager and less like ANBU decided to disguise as one.”

She frowned.

“I do not know what that means.”

“It means you look good,” he clarified. “Strong. And… at ease.”

She blinked.

“I am not at ease,” she said.

“You’re better,” he corrected. “Better than before.”

Inside, Kushina took one look and squealed.

“There it is,” she said. “You see? You can wear colour without exploding.”

“Exploding is not usually a side effect of clothing,” Minai observed.

Kushina grinned.

“Have you seen some of the things Suna women wear? Anyway, you look lovely dattebane.”

Lovely. Another variation. Minai wondered how many ways people had to say the same illogical thing.