Chapter Text
“The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.”
—Mark Twain, autobiography
-----
A week later, Nakamura Souta disappeared from the orphanage. He didn’t show up for class at the Academy, either.
“He’s been adopted and his family moved far away,” Ema-san said, monotone.
Cold dread pooled in Atsuko’s stomach. She said as much to Fuun the next day.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Atsuko said, picking at her bento. Fuun munched happily on the cucumber salad in her matching box.
“Are you still talking about Souta?” Fuun sighed. “You’re obsessed with him. He was adopted, plain and simple. It happens all the time.”
“But we haven’t had a visitation day for the last two months,” Atsuko continued. “Did a couple adopt him right off of the orphanage catalogue? Who does that?”
“They could’ve met in private,” her friend said. “You never know.”
She carefully speared a sausage with her chopsticks. “First Hiwako, now Souta. We’re gonna run out of orphans to adopt out, at this rate.” It tasted like the paper wrapping she had purchased it in. She hadn’t had enough time in the kitchen the night before, so she didn’t have a chance to sear the sausages the way she liked. Oh, well. Protein was protein.
“You only think that because you’re still new here,” Fuun said. “Kids get adopted out of the Academy all the time. By my count, it’s something like once every three months.”
“If you were adopted next, would you be okay giving up everything you’ve worked for here to move away with strangers?”
“I don’t suppose I’d have much of a choice.”
“Your parents should care about your feelings. Even if they’re not related to you by blood.”
“How would you know?” Fuun asked sharply. “In case you forgot, we’re both orphans, here.”
Atsuko opened her mouth, thought better of it, and snapped her jaw shut. Of course Fuun wouldn’t find it strange. For all Fuun knew, this was how the world worked. For all Atsuko knew, that was how this world worked.
Then she squared her jaw. It was fucked up, was what it was. Whether she liked it or not, she was the trusted adult in this scenario.
“Grown-ups… don’t always have your best interest in mind,” she said carefully. “You should be careful of someone offering you something too good to be true. Like the chance to jump several years of school, or get special training.”
Fuun twitched. “How did you know that?” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“How did I—” Atsuko’s mind whirled. “Fuun-chan, did a strange old man approach you? With bandages and one eye? It’s dangerous to talk to strangers.”
“He wasn’t a stranger,” Fuun shook her head vehemently.
“He is a stranger,” Atsuko said firmly. “Even if he introduced himself as Councilman Shimura.”
“So what if he did?”
“If he talks to you again, you need to go the other way. You don’t know if it’s really the Councilman, or what he wants. He might do bad things to you.”
Her friend’s face scrunched, the most childlike expression she’d ever made since Atsuko had known her. “What—no! He said I was special!” She abruptly threw her bento to the ground. “You know what? I think you’re just jealous that I’m getting extra attention.”
“I’m trying to keep you safe!” Atsuko exclaimed, exasperated. “He approached me too, you know.”
But Fuun continued, determined. “I think you’re jealous that I’m smarter than you even though I’m younger.” She stood, hands balled into fists at her side. “You’re afraid of being left behind. Because you don’t actually want to be a shinobi.”
“Fuun—”
“I’m going to test out of here whether you like it or not!” Fuun said, barrelling over her. “Danzou-sama will teach me and then I’ll graduate early like Uchiha Itachi and train harder than everyone else and become a shinobi. Then I’ll never be hurt again and I’ll never, ever have to go back to the orphanage again!”
Atsuko leapt to her feet, overturning her own bento box. “Don’t do this, Fuun-chan. I know things feel like they’ll never get better, believe me. But this isn’t the answer.”
“You don’t know that!” Fuun yelled. Her chest heaved as she stared at Atsuko.
For the first time, Atsuko looked, really looked, at Fuun. Took in her patchwork clothing, her unkempt hair. The spider like claw of her hands, bones outlined against skin. The lack of baby fat on her face, cheekbones sharp in a way that people in her previous life would kill for. The way she strained on her tip-toes for an extra inch of height, and still barely cleared the bottom of the chalkboard in their classroom.
Atsuko looked down at her own hands. Dirt under her fingernails, rough from hard work in a way her old hands never were. Small, too small by far, to take on the weight of this new world.
Fuun took her silence as permission to continue. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here. I won’t let anything stop me. Not even you.”
She stormed off.
Atsuko stood there, untethered, watching her go. Two bento boxes laid overturned on the grass, clumsily-cut sausages rolling away with the wind.
-----
Atsuko’s heart pounded as she slipped into the empty Academy hallways. Moonlight pooled blue and silver on the ground, casting long black shadows against her silhouette. Nobody had seen her, she was sure, but how unnoticed could you be in a literal ninja world? The Hokage Tower’s light winked in the distance, visible from all vantage points of the village. In that moment it felt like Sauron’s Eye brought to life.
What was she doing? Why was she doing it? It was entirely out of character for her. She’d always been a devout rule-follower. Goody-two-shoes, stick-in-the-mud, a pleasure to have in class… whatever you wanted to call it. And here she was, breaking and entering a government building to sate her curiosity. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely her fault, seeing as their current standard curriculum included a unit on stealth.
She tip-toed to Tama-sensei’s office, which he shared with the fourth- and fifth-year homeroom teachers. The door slid open smoothly on well-oiled hinges. Damn, they were practically begging to be robbed. Her eyes zeroed in on the tall filing cabinet standing sentry in the back of the room. Bingo. It had locks on each segment, but the ever-reliable Tama-sensei kept his non-essential keys in his top desk drawer. Scooping them up, she got to work.
Nakamura Souta’s file was easy enough to find. He wasn’t in the third- or fourth-year sections, but he was right at the top of the pile for ‘Dropouts.’ She flipped through it, noting the copious amount of praise for his natural talent. No discipline infractions, detentions served, or failing grades. Prodigious chakra control and taijutsu potential. Place of residence: Ki Orphanage. A big red ‘withdrawn’ was stamped across the line for his graduation date, with no further details.
Atsuko made a noise of annoyance. This was a waste of time. She went to replace Souta’s file, when the one right below his caught her eye.
Watanabe Kanna. Age 7, year four, Mori Orphanage. Her teacher notes overflowed with praise for her intelligence. She had withdrawn from the Academy in the same month as Souta.
She pulled out the top stack of profiles from the ‘Dropouts’ stack, dating back almost a year.
Satou Hiwaka, her would-be classmate who withdrew a couple weeks after Atsuko started. Skilled in math, chakra control, and high physical endurance. Koeda Orphanage.
Handa Kei. Age 5, year two, Shinme Orphanage. Withdrawn.
Kageyama Masao. Age 6, year four. Shiten Orphanage. Withdrawn.
Arakawa Ryuu, Age 8, year three. Mori Orphanage. Withdrawn.
So the pile went. Every now and then, Atsuko would find a lucky kid whose residence was filled out with a real home, with one or two parents attached to their file. Almost always civilian by birth, these former students clearly struggled, plenty of teacher notes marking them as unsuited for the shinobi lifestyle.
The orphans, on the other hand, all excelled at their studies, to the point that they were allowed to skip several year levels at a rapid pace. And, like Fuun had said, they withdrew at a rate of once per two or three months, if not more.
Something, or someone, was taking these kids.
Atsuko put the files back into the box in the same order she found them, locking up the cabinet and dropping Tama-sensei’s keys back in his desk. She left the way she came, running all the way back to the orphanage. The Hokage Tower watched her all the way, casting ominous shadows through the village.
She slipped into her room through her window. Her roommate twitched as she climbed back into bed, but didn’t wake.
Slipping under the thin sheet on her straw-stuffed mattress, she hugged her knees to her chest and shivered. Even though her door was shut tight and the window curtain was drawn closed, the back of her neck prickled with the sensation of being watched.
-----
Fuun didn’t go to class the next day. Or the one after that.
Atsuko didn’t ask any questions. She only sat in her usual seat and kept her gaze glued resolutely to the window, resisting the instinct to look around the crowd of snot-nosed kids, so that she could pretend that Fuun was only mad at her and sitting on the other side of the classroom where Atsuko couldn’t see.
But the sun was too bright and it made her eyes sting. It was terribly unfair that it kept on shining, she thought, when something so awful was going on in the village. Didn’t the universe care?
It probably didn’t, she conceded. How else would she have ended up in this world?
The day dragged onward. Everything felt muffled, as if she were underwater. None of Tama-sensei’s words registered in her ears. She slumped, unable to keep her head up.
A hand shook her shoulder.
“Get up!” Her classmate hissed. He looked like a Hyuuga with his pupilless eyes. Fuun’s eyes were like that too. “Go already!”
“What?” She frowned at him blearily.
“We’re going to take the taijutsu test! Haven’t you been paying attention?”
The taijutsu test. Atsuko almost smacked a hand over her forehead. Instinctive panic set in; this was a major assessment that could make or break a passing grade for the year. She was supposed to practice her side kicks with Fuun yesterday.
Make or break her grade… the gears in Atsuko’s mind began to turn. This could be her chance. Her breath caught in her throat as the inkling of a plan began to form. Could she fail her whole year on this one test?
As she stomped outside, wincing at the light, she noted how soft the dirt was under her feet. It was more like mud, really; the training ground was usually moistened lightly so that the dirt could compact down into a hard floor for taijutsu training. Whoever had gone before them had overwatered it, though. Usually, she hated having to train in the mud, but today it could be her saving grace.
Tama-sensei began pairing them off with their assessment partners. When he got to Atsuko, however, he paused. Fuun’s customary shadow at her side was conspicuously absent.
“Hmm, odd number today,” he muttered. Normally he would simply have another student double back for a second sparring match with her, but she wondered if assessments were different. Couldn’t give Atsuko an easy out against a tired opponent. “No matter,” Tama-sensei said, reaching the same conclusion as Atsuko. “You will spar against me.”
Even better for her plan.
Atsuko rocked nervously on the balls of her feet, blind to the matches ahead of her. Since Tama-sensei was her opponent, she had been placed last in line so that he could focus on grading the others first. All the more time for her to stew in her anxiety.
What if it didn’t work? Would she have to drop out of the Academy to escape her fate? Maybe that would be worse; at least here she had a paper trail. Fat lot of good that would do her if she was really taken, other than scaring some other poor orphan discovering the same conspiracy after she was gone.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
All too soon, Tama-sensei called, “Nakamura!” He set his clipboard down, stepping carefully into the sparring ring, mud already clinging to his sandals.
Atsuko followed him in, feeling distinctly like a prisoner going to the gallows.
Tama-sensei squared off in a defensive stance. She mirrored him, twisting her hands in the customary seal of confrontation.
“Begin!”
Atsuko charged Tama-sensei. She made sure to dig her feet too deeply into the soft earth, feeling clods of mud fly out behind her to startled yelps from her classmates. Her arm went wide in a right hook, too wide, the kind that only look good on a movie screen but in reality left one’s side open to retaliation.
Tama-sensei took it, tapping her ribs in a warning kick. Even with him pulling his moves short, the impact still knocked some of the breath from her lungs. She allowed herself to stumble away, bracing her hands on her knees to avoid falling. Let a desperate expression cross her face while spinning to look back at the man.
She charged a second time. Counted down in her head to get the timing right. Kept her eyes trained on the slick patch on the ground right in front of Tama-sensei. At the last possible second before she reached him again, she planted her heel into the mud, and threw her weight forward—and toward the ground.
“No!” She screamed, as she tripped in a dramatic tableau of her own making. “Augh!”
Her hands flew out in front of her, open-palmed and desperate to latch onto anything that would break her fall. They were barely out of reach of Tama-sensei, shorter than what she was used to. No, no, not good enough. It was now or never; in a last, desperate push, she stretched as far as she could, until her fingers brushed up against Tama-sensei’s loose standard-issue shinobi trousers.
Atsuko latched her fingers into the fabric and pulled his pants down in front of her whole class.
There was a beat of silence as she sat, stunned, on the muddy ground. She panted for breath, looking up to see the results of her work. Choked on her tongue.
Tama-sensei was wearing white boxer shorts with red hearts printed on it. Like something straight out of a cartoon. Atsuko couldn’t quite believe her luck as, one by one, her classmates shattered the silence with roaring laughter.
A shadow fell over her face. Tama-sensei, face nearly as red as the designs on his underwear, towered over her with a thunderous expression.
“Nakamura…”
He was a delicate man with a delicate ego. This incident would probably be enough for her purposes, but Atsuko had to be sure. She couldn’t afford to leave anything up to chance. So she forced her lips to curl, peel away from her teeth in a mockery of a smile. Her pulse thundered in her ears. And she laughed.
Pure rage exploded across his face. “Detention!” He roared, scruffing her roughly by her shirt and practically choking her against the collar. “Detention for the rest of the year! And a complete failure for this test! Zero!”
Atsuko pretended to sober abruptly from her laughter.
“I-I can’t retake it?” She said, doing her best to let her voice quaver. “But if I fail, I won’t be able to pass the year! Please, Sensei, it was an accident!”
“Should’ve thought of that before,” Tama-sensei said, sneer curling across his lips. A bully of a teacher, who got off on exerting his power over helpless kids. “Get ready to see me again next term, Nakamura.”
She had succeeded. She had failed. She was going to repeat the year. Danzou wouldn’t look at her twice now because what good was a shinobi who couldn’t pass a basic taijutsu test? It would be an embarrassment, to say the least.
Real laughter bubbled up her chest and forced its way past her lips. She let it out, hysterically, hiccuping from how hard her chest heaved with it. Tears gathered in her eyes and trailed down her cheeks, until her lips cracked from dehydration and she could no longer see the path ahead of her.
-----
One by one, the other orphans disappeared. Atsuko hardly noticed. Eventually, Kageyama Dai, Fuun’s yearmate from Shiten left, and then Atsuko was well and truly alone. She kept her mouth shut, eyes cast down.
Entire new generations of orphans came and went. She dragged through the Academy, riding out the full two years she had left. The senseis shook their heads at her, clucking about wasted potential. Kids in older grade levels whispered as she passed, laughing behind her back. Kids in younger years viewed her with shining eyes, waiting for the day she pulled off another legendary prank on Academy grounds. It made her skin crawl, but it was a small price to pay—the protection of visibility.
She performed a manageable Kawarimi and abysmal Shunshin for graduation. Her hitai-ate weighed like a cinderblock in her hands.
When her potential jounin-sensei told her to survive the ‘deadly’ obstacle course she set as their final test, she turned tail and ran. Probably would’ve been more convincing if she had thrown herself into one of the traps and been injured, but at her core she was a coward.
Instead, she crawled under a bush and laid there, breathing, watching the sun arc through the sky and over the horizon. She thought of her family—the old one, the one she could remember. If she stared long enough into the sun, until her vision went spotty with patches, she could almost see their faces again. Maybe she would book the next flight home, screw her savings. She didn’t know where she was; she was lost, and surely someone would call her mother to come pick her up soon at the security desk.
Eventually, the jounin came to tell her she’d failed the test. Said that she would never amount to anything as a shinobi, not with that attitude. Her would-be teammates spat and cursed at her. She only smiled bitterly in response.
Atsuko never saw Fuun again.