The mountain path wound along the hillside like it couldn't decide where it wanted to go, and Konan didn't care because she was finally outside.
She hummed a melody she'd picked up from one of Genjo's biwa songs, the blue bucket swinging at her side with every step. The fishing rods rattled against each other inside, and the cooking supplies clinked whenever she skipped, which was often. After four days of being stuck in that stuffy inn room with nothing to do except count ceiling stains and listen to the wind rattle the shutters, this felt like freedom. Real, actual, breathing-fresh-air freedom.
"How much further is it?" Konan asked, shifting the bucket to her other hand. "Not that I'm complaining or anything, because I'm totally not, I'm just curious. My arm's getting kind of tired from carrying this thing. It's heavier than it looks."
"Maybe another twenty minutes," Genjo said, his staff tapping against the packed dirt of the path. "It's not too far now. You want me to carry it for a while?"
"No, no, I got it. I'm fine. I'm just saying my arm is tired, that's all, I'm not saying I can't handle it." She adjusted her grip. "There's a difference. Complaining and giving up are two completely separate things."
"If you say so."
"I do say so. I'm very tough actually, if you haven't noticed. This is nothing, I've carried way heavier stuff than this before." She switched hands again almost immediately. "Okay, that one doesn't count."
Genjo chuckled quietly. "Sure it doesn't."
Morning light poked through the branches in random spots, sliding around on the ground whenever the wind shook the leaves. Birds were doing bird things somewhere in the trees. A squirrel ran across the path ahead of them and disappeared into the underbrush like it had urgent squirrel business to attend to. Everything smelled like pine and damp earth and the promise of a day that didn't involve being trapped indoors.
Being stuck in that room had been bad. Not because the room itself was terrible or anything, but because there was nothing to do except sit there and let her mind wander to places she didn't want it to go. To her parents. To the house that wasn't there anymore. To all the things she'd lost and couldn't get back no matter how hard she wished.
Out here, though, she could breathe. Out here, there were things to look at and carry and complain about, and that was so much better than sitting alone with her own head.
"So," Genjo started, glancing over at her, "I've been meaning to ask, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but... how are you holding up? With everything, I mean."
Konan made sure to smile before she answered. That was important. If you were smiling, people didn't worry. "Fine," she said. "Great, actually. This is great. I love fishing. Did I ever tell you I used to go fishing with my dad? Back before... yeah. He wasn't very good at it, like at all, but he always said the point wasn't actually catching fish, it was about spending time together and being outside and stuff. Which I'm pretty sure was just his excuse for why we never caught anything, but still. It was nice. I liked it."
She was talking too fast. She knew she was talking too fast. But stopping felt like it would leave too much silence, and silence was where the bad thoughts lived.
"He sounds like he was a good father," Genjo said quietly.
"He was." Skip. Skip. The bucket rattled. "Mom used to get annoyed because we'd come home empty-handed and she'd already prepared all the stuff to cook fish with. She'd pretend to be mad but you could tell she wasn't really. She'd just sigh and say 'I don't know why I bother' and then make us rice balls instead."
The path curved around a large boulder, and for a moment Konan couldn't see what was ahead. When they came around the other side, the river appeared below them, glittering in the morning light like someone had scattered diamonds across its surface.
"Pretty," she said, because it was, and because saying something about the scenery meant she didn't have to keep talking about other things.
Genjo didn't respond right away. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, the path sloping downward now as it led toward the riverbank. Konan focused on her feet, on the bucket, on the way the sunlight kept shifting through the leaves. On anything except the concern she could feel radiating off the old monk like heat from a stove.
"Konan."
"Hm?"
"I don't want to make a big thing out of this, but... you seem a little sad today. Are you doing alright?"
"What? No, I'm not sad. I'm smiling, see? Look at this, this is a smile right here on my face." She pointed at her own mouth like she was presenting evidence. "We're going fishing and the sun is out and the trees are really nice. Look at them. Those are some very nice trees. I'm having a good time."
"They are nice trees," he agreed. He didn't say anything else for a few steps, just let the silence sit there. Then, quieter: "It's just... you've been smiling a lot these past few days. Like, a lot a lot. More than usual."
"Yeah, because I'm happy. That's what smiling means. You smile when you're happy. That's literally the whole point of smiling."
"Mm. Maybe." Another few steps. "But sometimes... sometimes when people smile that much, it's because they're afraid of what might happen if they stop."
Konan's grip tightened on the bucket handle. "That's... that's dumb. That doesn't even make sense. I'm just a smiley person, that's all. Some people are just like that. They just smile a lot because that's their personality. It's not that deep."
"Some people are like that, you're right," he said gently. "And some people learn to be that way, because it's easier than the alternative. Because if you're smiling, people don't ask questions, and if people don't ask questions, you don't have to think about the answers."
"That's stupid. I smile because I'm happy. I'm happy because—" She started walking again, faster now, the bucket banging against her leg with every step. "Because we're going fishing, and fishing is fun, and—you're making it weird. You're making it into this whole thing when it's not. It's really not."
"Konan."
"What?"
She didn't turn around. Kept walking. The river was getting closer. If she could just get to the river, they could start fishing, and then there wouldn't be time for conversations like this because they'd be too busy with rods and bait and whatever else fishing involved.
A hand landed on top of her head, warm and heavy and gentle all at once.
For a second she was somewhere else. Standing in her kitchen, flour on her nose, her dad laughing about something she'd said while his palm rested on her hair just like this.
Then the second passed, and she was back on the mountain path, and the hand was still there.
"You know," Genjo said, "you're probably the bravest kid I've ever met. And I'm not just saying that to make you feel better, I really mean it. The way you've been handling everything, just... getting up every morning and keeping going like you have been. That's not easy. That's really, really not easy. Most adults I know couldn't do what you've been doing."
His palm smoothed over her hair again.
"I just wanted you to know that. That's all. You're doing good, kid."
Something hot prickled at the corners of her eyes. She blinked hard, trying to force it back down where it belonged.
"I'm fine," she said, except her voice came out weird and thick. "I'm totally fine. There's nothing to... there's nothing to cry about, so I don't know why you're being all... like this."
Her voice cracked on the last word, which was annoying, because that completely undermined what she was trying to say.
"Crying doesn't help anything," she heard herself say. "Crying doesn't bring people back. It just makes your face all red and puffy and then everyone looks at you weird and asks if you're alright and you have to explain that you're fine even though you obviously don't look fine and it's just... it's stupid. It's pointless."
Genjo didn't answer right away. He just stood there beside her, humming softly, like he was turning her words over in his head.
"You know," he said eventually, "when I was about your age, I lost someone too. And I remember thinking the exact same thing. What's the point of feeling bad about it when feeling bad won't bring them back? So I just... didn't. Or I tried not to, anyway. Kept busy, kept moving, kept smiling. Figured if I acted normal long enough, eventually I'd actually be normal again. Fake it till you make it, right?"
His fingers tapped lightly against his staff.
"Didn't really work out that way though. Turns out feelings are kind of stubborn like that. They stick around whether you want them to or not, whether you acknowledge them or not. The only difference is whether you let them out a little at a time, in small doses that you can handle, or whether they build up and build up until they come out all at once when you're not ready for it."
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
"I'm not telling you what to do," he added quietly. "I'm just saying... if you ever did want to be sad about it, if you ever wanted to just let yourself feel bad for a while, that would be okay. That's all I'm trying to say."
His hand found her head again, resting there gently, and the warmth of it undid something she'd been holding together for days.
"I miss them," she whispered.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I bet you do."
"I miss them so much it feels like there's a hole in my chest where something important used to be. And I keep waking up in the morning and for a second, just for a second, I forget. I forget that they're gone. And then I remember and it's like losing them all over again. Every single morning."
Her vision was blurring. She blinked hard, trying to clear it, but that just made it worse.
"They were supposed to be there," she said, and now her voice had gone all wobbly and she hated it. "They were supposed to watch me grow up. Mom was going to teach me how to make her special dumplings, the ones with the pleated edges that she said took years to get right. And Dad was going to... he said when I turned fifteen he'd take me to see the ocean. He'd never seen it either. We were going to see it together for the first time."
"The ocean, huh?" His hand kept stroking her hair. "That sounds like it would've been nice. Seeing something new together."
A sob escaped her lips, and she tried to push his hand off her head because she didn't want to cry, she didn't want to be weak, she didn't want to fall apart on a mountain path in front of someone she'd only known for a few days.
"Stop," she said, shoving at his arm. "Stop patting me."
So he did.
They stood there for a while after that, Konan crying into her hands while Genjo waited beside her without saying anything, without patting her, just being there the way he'd said he would be. Eventually the tears ran out, or at least slowed down enough that she could breathe normally again. He handed her a handkerchief that smelled faintly like incense and she blew her nose into it, which was gross but also necessary.
They didn't talk much for the rest of the walk. Konan didn't have the energy, and Genjo seemed to understand that. He just walked beside her, staff tapping against the path, letting the silence fill the space between them. By the time the sound of rushing water reached her ears, her eyes had mostly stopped stinging and her breathing had gone back to normal.
When they stepped out of the trees, the river was smaller than she expected. Konan stood at the edge of the bank and blinked at what she was seeing. The river was narrow. Really narrow. Like, maybe four or five meters across at most, the water rushing over smooth rocks in a cheerful little stream that looked nothing like the rivers back home.
"This is it?" she asked, rubbing at her still-puffy eyes.
"Mountain rivers tend to be like this," Genjo said, setting down the bucket. "Narrow and fast, mostly. The water comes straight down from the peaks, so it doesn't have much room to spread out until it reaches the valleys."
"Huh." She sniffed and folded the handkerchief into a smaller square, not sure what to do with it now. "The rivers back home were way bigger than this. Like, way bigger. You could probably fit five of these little guys into one of ours and still have room left over."
"Well, Ame gets a lot more rainfall than we do up here. Different geography, different climate, all that stuff." He pulled out the fishing rods and started checking the lines, running them through his fingers to feel for tangles. "Bigger rivers, more water, more fish. But that doesn't mean mountain rivers are bad for fishing. They're just... different."
She watched him work, still feeling like a deflated balloon. Her eyes were sore. Her throat hurt. But somehow she also felt lighter, like she'd set down a bag she hadn't realized she'd been carrying.
"Different how?"
"Faster current, for one thing. The fish here have to work harder to stay in place, which means they're more likely to grab at food when they see it. But it also means your bait moves faster, so you have to be smarter about where you cast."
He handed her one of the rods and pointed toward a large flat rock jutting out over the water.
"Okay, so—see that rock right there? The big flat one? That's where we're going to fish from. The current slows down a bit in the pool just past it, so fish like to rest there. You cast upstream and let your bait drift down naturally. If you do it right, the fish won't even know they're being tricked until it's too late."
"Sounds sneaky."
"Of course it's sneaky. You can't exactly ask a fish politely if it wants to be dinner."
They settled onto the rock, which was warm from the morning sun and wide enough for both of them to sit comfortably. Genjo showed her how to bait the hook, which involved worms and was gross, and then demonstrated the casting motion a few times before letting her try.
Her first cast went sideways and almost hooked a bush.
Her second cast was better but still not great.
By her fifth cast, she was starting to get the hang of it, and by her tenth she'd stopped thinking about her parents every single second and was actually focusing on the water and the line and the little pull of the current against her bait as it floated downstream.
Her dad always said fishing was more about the waiting than the catching. She hadn't really understood that before. But sitting here now, far from Ame, far from everything she knew, watching her line drift down a river she'd never seen until today, she thought maybe she was starting to get it.
That said, getting it didn't make her any less hungry.
"How long does this usually take?" she asked after a while. "The catching fish part, I mean. Because we've been sitting here for a bit and nothing's really happened yet, so I'm just wondering if that's normal or if I'm doing something wrong."
"Depends. Sometimes you get lucky and something bites right away. Sometimes you sit here for hours and hours and go home completely empty-handed with nothing to show for it." Genjo recast his line with a smooth flick of his wrist. "That's fishing. You can't really control what the fish decide to do. They're going to do whatever they want regardless of how well you fish."
"That seems kind of unfair. You learn all the stuff about casting and bait and where to sit and whatever, and you still might not get anything because some fish just decided it wasn't hungry that day?" She frowned at her line. "What's even the point of learning all the fishing stuff if luck is just going to decide everything anyway?"
"Welcome to fishing. And also, everything else."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching their lines and listening to the water rush past. A bird called from somewhere in the trees. The sun climbed higher and the rock got warmer. Konan's stomach growled, reminding her that they hadn't actually eaten breakfast before leaving.
"Hey, old man?"
"Hm? What's up?"
She fiddled with her fishing line for a second before speaking, not quite looking at him. "I just wanted to say, um... thanks. For earlier."
"Don't mention it."
"I'm mentioning it anyway, so you're just gonna have to deal with that."
"Then I'm choosing to ignore the mention. It's not happening. I don't hear anything."
"You can't just ignore something after you've already acknowledged it, that's not how ignoring works."
"I'm a monk, kid. We've got special ignoring powers, it's part of the training. Very advanced stuff, you wouldn't understand."
She puffed out her cheeks, but the annoyed expression didn't last long before it cracked into a giggle.
About an hour later, she'd caught two small fish and lost three others because she got excited and pulled too early. Genjo had caught four, which he claimed was just luck and not skill, which she didn't believe for a second. The bucket was starting to look like it might actually provide lunch instead of just being a heavy thing she'd carried up a mountain for no reason.
She was watching her line drift downstream for what felt like the hundredth time when something caught her eye.
"Hey," she said, squinting at the water upstream. "What's that?"
There was something floating toward them. Something big. Something that definitely wasn't a fish or a branch or any of the other normal things that floated down rivers.
It was a person.
The body floated face-down, arms loose at the sides, dark clothes soaked through and dark hair fanning out in the water like ink.
"Is that... is that a dead body?" she asked, already getting to her feet for a closer look.
Genjo set down his rod and stood up, watching the approaching figure with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"We'll see."
"What do we do? Should we fish them out? Is that what you're supposed to do when you find a body in a river?"
"It's generally considered polite to pull corpses out of rivers, yes. Common courtesy and all that."
The body rushed closer, swept along by the fast-moving water. Konan found herself leaning forward, trying to get a better look.
"But what if they're a criminal? What if they got thrown in the river by someone who wanted them dead and now we're messing up their whole plan by fishing them out?"
This kid's imagination was something else. Genjo had to actively stop himself from rolling his eyes.
"Then I suppose we'll have made an enemy today." He grabbed his staff and moved toward the edge of the rock.
The current carried the figure closer. Ten meters. Five. Genjo stepped at the edge of the rock and reached out with his staff, ready to hook the body and drag it to shore.
Three meters.
Two.
One.
And then his instincts screamed.
He grabbed Konan by the collar and yanked her backward just as his staff snapped up in a blur.
A metallic crack rang out in front of them, sparks scattering across the stream.
By the time the echo faded, the floating "corpse" wasn't floating anymore.
The figure was already standing on the opposite bank, posture relaxed, tanto held in a reverse grip like he didn't care that he'd just trying to kill two strangers. Water dripped off his clothes. His eyes were wrong, eyes that looked at people and saw targets instead of humans.
The monk's defensive posture lasted about as long as it took him to get a good look at the attacker's face. Then he relaxed, staff dropping to his side, and let out a breath that was half relief and half annoyance.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Of course it's you," he muttered.
The stranger blinked. Stared. Then groaned, dragging a hand down his face.
"Of all the clones in all the countries..."
...
[Shinji POV]
Still dripping from head to toe, I pushed my wet hair back from my face and shook off what water I could. Not that it helped much. I was soaked through and probably looked like something the river had decided to spit out, but there were more important things to worry about than my appearance right now. Like the girl standing next to my clone, for instance. Long purple hair hanging over part of her face, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, watching me with eyes that had clearly seen enough weird stuff lately that a soaking wet teenager showing up out of nowhere didn't even crack her top ten.
Konan. The future problem child I'd wanted to scoop up before Ame's politics could sink their teeth into her. No mission scroll told me to find her. This was just me trying to cut off a disaster at the root before it had time to grow.
She tugged on the clone's sleeve, her eyes bouncing between the two of us like she was watching a tennis match in slow motion.
"Hey, old man," she said, lowering her voice like she was sharing a secret. "That guy over there, his chakra looks... I don't know, it's weird? Like, it's almost exactly like yours, which doesn't really make sense unless—" She squinted at me, chewing on her lower lip. "Is he your brother or something? A cousin, maybe?"
The clone and I exchanged a look.
She wasn't wrong about the chakra. In fact, she was uncomfortably right. The whole point of shadow clones was that they were perfect copies, chakra signature and all. I just hadn't expected her to be able to sense chakra well enough to notice.
"You can sense chakra?"
"I mean, I've always been able to feel it ever since I was little. My mom used to say I was making stuff up when I told her someone was coming before they showed up. But I wasn't making it up, I can just... feel people. Like how you know someone's standing behind you even when you can't see them, except more than that." She tilted her head like a curious bird. "The old man said it's called being a sensor, and that it's actually pretty rare, which, I didn't know that, because I figured everyone could do it and just didn't talk about it for some reason. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, your chakra feels almost identical to his, which is super weird, so are you guys related or not? What's the deal here?"
Related wasn't exactly the word I'd use, but she wasn't wrong about the chakra thing. Natural sensor at her age, picking up on signatures without any training. That was genuinely impressive.
The clone shot me a look. A look that said this is your problem now, good luck explaining it.
Thanks for nothing.
"We're not related," I said. "But you're right about the chakra being identical. Actually, that's a good starting point. Are you familiar with clones? The jutsu that shinobi use?"
Konan tilted her head like I'd just asked her what she had for breakfast two days ago. "Yep, kind of. The old man taught me about them a while back. He said shinobi can make copies of themselves out of chakra, and they look exactly like the original but they pop into smoke if you hit them hard enough." Her eyes narrowed as she looked between the two of them, suspicion creeping in. "Why, is that what's going on here? Is that why your chakra feels the same? Are you guys both clones of some third person I haven't met yet?"
Creative theory. Wrong, but creative.
I glanced at the clone. He looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Glad one of us was having fun with this. "Not quite. That guy right there, the monk you've been traveling with? He's a clone. My clone."
Konan didn't respond immediately. She just stared at me, then at the clone, then back at me, her expression cycling through several stages of what looked like attempted understanding followed by immediate rejection.
"No he's not," she said flatly. "That doesn't make any sense. You're like, what, fifteen? Sixteen? He's ancient. He's got wrinkles and everything. His back makes cracking sounds when he stands up in the morning. I've heard it, it's super loud."
"That's a disguise. A henge."
"Mm, I know he's using a henge, I figured that out a while back when I told him his chakra didn't match how he looked." She rolled her eyes with her whole head, the way only kids can. "But that doesn't mean he's your clone. That just means he's a younger guy pretending to be old."
That's when the clone finally opened his mouth, clearing his throat with one of those prim little coughs he'd adopted for the elderly monk persona. "Konan."
"What?"
"He's telling the truth." The clone let the fake rasp fall away, his voice sliding back into something that could've come straight out of my own throat. "I am his clone. My name is Shinji. Well, technically his name is Shinji and I'm a chakra construct created in his likeness with his memories and personality, but the point stands."
And then he let the henge drop.
The transformation happened smoothly, the way transformations always do when you've got the chakra control to make it look effortless. The stooped posture straightened. The wrinkled face smoothed out. The grey hair darkened to black. The clouded eyes lost their milky film. Within the span of a single breath, the old blind monk was gone and in his place I was looking at my own face.
"Guess that's my cue," he said, glancing at me. "I kept her safe. The rest is on you."
"Got it."
He nodded, satisfied, then turned back to Konan with a softer expression. "I'll see you again later," he said, giving her one last smile. "Take care of yourself, Konan."
Then he burst into smoke.
The cloud hung in the air for a second before dispersing into nothing, leaving behind only the faint impression of chakra.
Konan stared at the spot where he'd been standing. Her mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. No sound came out.
"Wait," she said.
I waited.
"Wait wait wait wait wait."
I continued waiting. Seemed like the appropriate response.
"So the whole time I was traveling with him..."
"Yep."
"The lessons? The fish? The blind monk thing?"
"All me. Well, a chakra copy of me, but yeah."
"And when I told him about..." She cut herself off, her cheeks flushing pink. "About personal stuff."
"I have all those memories now, yes."
The pink deepened to red.
"Everything?"
"Everything."
She took a deep breath. Let it out. And then she groaned so dramatically that birds scattered from nearby trees.
"This is so unfair," she muttered. "I told him about the ocean."
"He did actually care. The emotions weren't faked."
Konan stared at me like I'd just tried to explain that water wasn't wet.
"That doesn't make it better."
"…It makes it a little better?"
"It really, really doesn't." She puffed out her cheeks. "You tricked me into thinking some nice old monk saved my life when it was just you wearing a wrinkly face the whole time."
"I mean, a version of me did save your life. The clone's actions were real even if the clone itself wasn't permanent."
"The clone isn't permanent?!"
"Well, clones disperse when they take too much damage or when the creator decides to end them. That's why he turned into smoke just now."
Konan's expression suggested that this new information was not helping her current emotional state.
"So he's just... gone? Forever? The old man I spent days with?"
That was actually a complicated philosophical question, and not one I felt equipped to answer while still dripping river water. The clone's memories lived on in me. His experiences were now my experiences. In a sense, he continued to exist through me. But also in another, more accurate sense, he was definitely gone and would never exist as a separate entity again.
"His memories are in my head now," I said, settling for the simplest explanation. "So in a way, he's still around. Just... inside me instead of outside."
Konan opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I need to sit down," she said finally. "I need to sit down and think about this very carefully and maybe throw something at your head afterward."
"That's fair."
"It's extremely fair. I've earned the right to throw at least one thing at your head."
"I won't dodge."
"You probably will, you're a ninja."
"I won't dodge very hard."
…..
An hour later, Konan had fish grease running down her chin and the biggest smile I'd seen on her face since she fished me out of the river.
"Oh wow," she said around a mouthful of grilled flesh. "This is so good. This is actually so good. What did you even do to this? Did you put something in it? Is this some kind of jutsu?"
I sat on the rock across from her, my own fish half-eaten and currently forgotten, because watching this kid demolish her meal was somehow more entertaining than actually finishing mine.
"It's just grilled fish," I said. "Seasoning, heat. That's pretty much it."
"No, no no no." She shook her head violently, still chewing. "Don't even try to 'just' this. This is not just anything. This is like, the best thing I've ever eaten in my entire life. Ever. In the history of me eating food, which is my whole life by the way, nothing has ever tasted this good."
I could only stare at her. Genuinely, truly stare, because what was I supposed to do with that information? What had this kid been eating her whole life if a campfire fish with basic seasoning was blowing her mind like this? Rocks? Dirt? Sadness sprinkled on top of more sadness?
She took another bite and made another one of those sounds, completely oblivious to my growing concern for her culinary history.
"What?" she asked, finally noticing my expression. "Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?"
"You have a lot of things on your face. But that's not why I'm staring."
"Then why?"
"I'm trying to figure out if I should be impressed or worried."
"About what?"
"About the fact that you just called basic grilled fish the best thing you've ever eaten. That's either a compliment to my cooking or a tragedy about your life. I genuinely can't tell which one."
She wiped her chin with the back of her hand, smearing the grease around more than actually cleaning it. "It can be both. Both is fine. I'm okay with both." Another bite. Another happy noise. "So are you like, a chef or something? Is that your actual job? Because if it is, you're really good at it. You should open a restaurant. I'd eat there every day."
"I'm not a chef."
"Then how do you cook like this?"
"Practice. And not wanting to eat garbage."
"Huh." She considered this while chewing. "Maybe I should learn how to cook. Then I wouldn't have to eat garbage either." Her eyes suddenly lit up, and I could practically see the idea forming in her head before she even opened her mouth. "Hey. Hey, wait. You should teach me."
"Teach you to cook?"
"No, I mean, yes, cooking too, but also other stuff. Shinobi stuff." She leaned forward, fish temporarily forgotten. "You're a ninja, right? A real one? You can do all those cool jutsu things and walk on water and throw kunai and whatever else ninjas do. You should teach me some of that."
"I should, huh."
"Yes. You should. It's basically your responsibility at this point."
"How do you figure that?"
"Because you saved my life, which means you're responsible for it now. That's how it works. I'm pretty sure that's a rule somewhere."
"That's definitely not a rule anywhere."
"Well it should be." She was bouncing a little now, that post-meal energy hitting her system all at once. "Come on, please? Just something small. Something cool. I promise I'll pay attention and not complain and do whatever you tell me to do. Mostly. Within reason."
I rubbed the back of my neck, putting on my best conflicted expression. Like this was some huge decision I needed to wrestle with instead of exactly what I'd been hoping for. Teaching her meant keeping her close. Keeping her close meant getting her out of Iwa territory without it looking like I was kidnapping some random kid. If she came along willingly as a student, that solved about twelve different problems I'd been trying to figure out since pulling myself out of that river.
"I don't know," I said, dragging it out. "Taking on a student is a big commitment. There's a lot of responsibility involved. I'd have to think about whether I'm ready for that."
"You look ready. You look very ready. You look like the readiest person I've ever seen."
"Flattery won't get you anywhere."
"What about begging? Because I can do that too. I'm very good at begging. Ask anyone."
I let the silence stretch for another few seconds, making a show of mulling it over. Furrowing my brow. Rubbing my chin. All the classic thinking poses.
Konan watched me with those bright, eager eyes, practically vibrating with anticipation.
"Alright," I said finally. "Fine. I'll teach you."
She practically bounced off the rock she was sitting on, her whole face lighting up.
"But," I held up a finger, "if I'm going to be your teacher, we need to do this properly. That means you call me sensei from now on. Got it?"
"Got it!" She nodded so hard I thought her head might come loose. "Sensei. I can do that. That's easy. Thank you, sensei. When do we start? Can we start now? What are you going to teach me first? Is it going to be something cool? It's going to be something cool, right?"
"Sensei," she said again, like she was testing how it felt in her mouth. "Sensei, sensei, sensei. Okay, yeah, I like that. It sounds official."
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.
Because honestly I was having a hard time reconciling the girl in front of me with the woman I vaguely remembered from my memories. The Konan I knew about, the one who stood beside Pain in Akatsuki was quiet and reserved. She spoke when necessary and let her paper do the talking when it wasn't. Cold, distant, a presence so muted it made you forget she was even in the room until origami butterflies started slicing through your jugular.
This Konan would not shut up.
This Konan had opinions about everything and zero hesitation about sharing them. This Konan made happy squeaking noises when she got excited and called grilled fish a life-changing experience and said "sensei" five times in a row just to hear how it sounded. This Konan was bright and loud and so aggressively alive that it felt like trying to babysit a hyperactive sunbeam.
What happened between now and then? What turned this chatty, fish-obsessed kid into that silent specter of a woman? Was it Pain's influence? The war? Losing people she cared about one after another until there was nothing left to talk about?
I didn't know. And honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.
"First lesson," I said, shaking off the thought. "Finish your fish. Can't learn anything on an empty stomach."
"Yes, sensei!" She grabbed her fish and went back to devouring it twice as fast as before, still smiling between bites.
...
Meanwhile, somewhere in Iwa's rocky wasteland, a certain blonde kunoichi was having a significantly worse morning.
Tsunade's clone moved through the terrain like a woman possessed, her boots scraping against stone as she climbed yet another ridge, hoping, praying, that this one would give her a better vantage point than the last seventeen had.
It didn't.
The landscape stretched out before her in all directions, an endless expanse of brown and grey that looked exactly the same no matter which way she turned. Rocks. Cliffs. More rocks. The occasional scraggly bush clinging to life in a crack between boulders. Nothing that looked remotely like a sign that a human being had passed through here in the last century, let alone the last day.
Sweat rolled down her cheeks despite the morning chill. She'd been at this for hours now, ever since the real Tsunade had pulled the squad back toward Konoha's forces. Hours of climbing, searching, scanning every shadow and crevice for any hint of where Shinji might have gone after his fight with Chiyo.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
She dropped into a crouch at the top of the ridge, catching her breath. Her chakra reserves were starting to run low. Shadow clones weren't designed for extended independent operations like this. They were meant to be tactical tools, disposable copies that could fight or gather information and then report back. Running one for hours on end, pushing it through difficult terrain while spamming shunshin to cover more ground, that burned through chakra faster than almost anything else.
She had maybe another hour or two before she'd have to dispel whether she wanted to or not. And if she didn't find him by then...
The clone clenched her fists and kept moving.
Somewhere to the northeast, completely unaware that anyone was looking for him, Shinji was laughing at Konan's third attempt to pull her fish off the skewer without it falling apart in her hands.