A thin moon hung bright. Its light slipped through the mesh of the gauze screen and scattered across the stone sill like crushed jade.
At the dining table in the sitting room, beneath a white lamp, Might Guy cupped the bottom of his bowl and studied the girl sitting prim and straight across from him.
She looked six or seven, maybe one meter thirty at most. A loose white cloak swallowed her small frame and half her legs. Silver-gray hair spilled over her shoulders and caught the light with a faint metallic matte sheen. A thick black strip of cloth covered her face. The cut edges were rough, as if torn from some old garment, and it wrapped her eyes, the bridge of her nose, even part of her cheeks.
On his way home from a day of brutal training, walking on his hands as usual, Guy had seen a blind girl huddled on the curb, hugging herself in the night air. He brought her home. That was the whole story.
"Here," he said.
"Thank you," Konome Taketori replied, accepting the ramen and chopsticks as if she needed no help at all. The blindfold might as well have been an accessory.
She lifted noodles with a soft breath, quiet as a cat. Across from her, Guy ate like a boar at a trough, snorting happily.
Slurp-slurp-slurp.
He tipped the bowl and poured broth and noodles straight in, loud as a tractor harvesting a wheat field, then jogged to the kitchen to ladle a second mountain and came back slurping.
Ten laps of Konoha at dawn. One-finger handstand pushups, one thousand per finger before noon. High-intensity weighted lifts in the afternoon. He was starving.
Konome ate neatly, emptied her bowl, rose, and went to the kitchen to fill up again. Her speed was not much behind Guy's.
"Luuuurp. Konome, you… hic… can you see?"
Belly full, Guy hiccupped and twitched, peering at the blindfolded girl who moved around the kitchen like she knew every inch. The glossy bowl cut under his green jumpsuit's collar shone, and his small eyes gleamed with surprise.
He had assumed she was a helpless orphan begging on the street. Apparently not.
Konome's dead-ash eyes turned beneath the cloth. The Byakugan's full circle of vision opened. The room peeled to translucence. Edges and interiors came into focus. Milk in the fridge close to expiring. Fruit. A wallet stuffed with coins and only a few notes in the bedroom. Secret scrolls under the bed. A racy booklet with a pinup cover. And Might Guy himself, inside out, muscle fibers and bones and organs and the slow pulse of chakra in his tenketsu, each thread clear.
"Blind," she said, tilting her head and tapping the cloth. Her voice was cool, matter-of-fact.
"Ah, sorry," Guy blurted. It was rude to prod at a stranger's illness. He stopped asking and let the mystery go.
"It is fine. Thank you for the ramen. It was very good."
No one praised his cooking. Guy rubbed his bowl cut, mouth already grinning to his ears though he tried to play it cool. "Nothing much. Eat up, little one. Make yourself at home."
The Byakugan saw through the act and the blindfold both.
Slurp-slurp-slurp.
Another great bowl went down. Every taijutsu specialist is a hidden big eater. As for Konome, Shikotsumyaku plus Byakugan made for a body built to bully taijutsu. Stack the two, set aside the Eight Gates Formation, and she could already imagine one day becoming every taijutsu user's doting grandmother.
Not grandfather. Grandmother.
Her chopsticks clicked the empty porcelain. Guy popped up.
"I got it."
Obedient as a junior, he took their bowls in both hands and zipped into the kitchen.
Dinner ended quickly. Guy had not expected Konome to eat so much and had not cooked enough. After two giant bowls each, the pot held only a skim of broth with oil droplets.
"Uh… the pot, there is no, no…"
He emerged with Konome's bowl now full of soup and froze. The helpless blind girl from the street squatted on the floor and casually unrolled her dingy tan pack.
Crack.
He squeezed too hard. The soup bowl shattered in his hands. Broth splashed everywhere, but he did not notice.
Inside the pack lay bricks of money. Thick bundles of Fire Country's largest notes, strapped with yellow paper bands. Thicker than the paving bricks he had hauled for villagers back when he was a cash-strapped genin. The "money bricks" were stacked like scrap paper. The clothes he had assumed were rags were folded sharp and wedged neatly between bundles.
Would wearing those smell like cash.
Guy, who had never seen so much money in one place, grumbled silently to himself.
"Here," Konome said. She took out a bundle. It was so thick she needed both hands to hold it. She turned and offered the brick to the stunned Guy.
"For me?"
"Mm. For dinner and the room."
"I cannot take that much."
"The rest is to thank you for taking me in."
"This…"
Maybe poverty softened his voice. The man with the thunderous shout spoke almost gently now. Watching the blindfolded girl stand in the middle of his living room and wave a small fortune like a fan, he had the odd feeling that he was the stray she had rescued.
No, wait. A room fee. I never said you could stay.
He weighed the brick. Heavy. The words died. Strength flowed back into his tired limbs on reflex. He fetched a rag and mopped up the broth.
Konome caught the look he tried to hide. First time paying with blunt force, she marveled. No matter how the world bends, some tools always work.
After she fled the dock where that hellbound ship had moored, she had gone to settle accounts with Boss Choryu. He had known full well that the ship spelled trouble. Before Konome ever found him, both Orochimaru and Zabuza had taken his money, and the tickets for the Hope had flowed out through him.
Everyone planning to run cleans out one last job. Minds think alike.
In the end, Konome had bled the local casinos of their working cash. What lay in her pack was a sliver. The rest sat in anonymous Fire Country accounts. Large enough that the annual interest alone was no small thing.
"Guy," she said at last. They had already exchanged names, and she used the one she knew from a past life.
"What is it?"
On his knees with a rag, he glanced back.
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Eh?"
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