Chapter 3: The Taste of Rice
Her name was O-Tsuru. She ran a small tea house, though it seemed more like a sanctuary for weary souls than a place to actually purchase tea. The hut was a simple thing — old wood, sun-bleached paper walls, a roof patched in several places with straw and cloth. Yet, despite its age and poverty, the place was spotless. Every corner had been swept, every tool arranged with quiet care. There was no luxury here, but there was dignity.
He stepped inside, carrying the heavy buckets of water, his boots leaving faint prints on the wooden threshold. The scent of steeped herbs wrapped around him like a thin, comforting shawl. It was faint and bitter, perhaps made from leaves boiled for the third or fourth time, but it was warm. After days of silence, battle, and cold wind, the smell felt almost human.
"Thank you," she said, her voice soft but clear — like a bell struck far away. She didn't meet his eyes. Instead, she turned to her kettle, her thin hands steady as she poured the weak tea into a chipped cup. Her hair was tied back simply, streaked with early gray despite her still-young face. She moved with the quiet economy of someone used to making little last long.
The tea was thin and watery, but when she handed it to him, the cup was warm against his calloused fingers. That alone was enough to soften the iron knot in his chest, if only a little. He gave a slight nod — no words, just acknowledgment. In a land this barren, warmth itself was a luxury.
They existed in a quiet, unspoken tension. The kind of silence that was both fragile and sharp. She knew nothing about the man sitting in the corner of her hut — but she could sense the weight around him, the way his presence filled the space like a silent storm. He was a stranger, a dangerous one. A foreigner in a land where strangers often brought only ruin. And yet she had chosen to open her door.
He sat cross-legged on the worn mat near the wall, his white hair catching the soft glow of the small fire. The mat scratched faintly against the fabric of his clothes. He kept his posture straight, disciplined — though inside, exhaustion sat on his bones like lead. He had spent his entire life moving between wars and councils, forests and rivers, but never had the air felt so foreign, so distant from home.
O-Tsuru worked quietly. She swept, folded a cloth, stirred the kettle. A little girl appeared at the doorway, her cheeks round, her kimono patched and frayed. O-Tama. Her bare feet were caked in dust, her tiny hands clenched around her stomach. She didn't need to say a word. Hunger was a language understood without speech.
Without hesitation, O-Tsuru reached for a small, leftover rice ball — hardly more than two bites — and placed it gently in the girl's hands. The girl's eyes lit up as though she'd been given treasure. She bowed, murmured a small thank you, and ran off into the fading light.
Tobirama's sharp eyes caught the subtle thing others might have missed: O-Tsuru's hand pressing against her own stomach when she thought he wasn't looking. A quiet, hungry rumble betrayed her. She had given away what she could barely spare.
The act was so small, so fragile, and yet it struck him like a kunai to the heart. In a place strangled by scarcity, she had chosen to be kind. The Will of Fire — not as a doctrine or a grand speech — but as a quiet, human instinct. Protect the weak. Feed the child. Pass the warmth forward. Even here, far from home, its spark lived.
Night settled slowly over Okobore Town, wrapping the broken streets in cool, blue shadows. Lanterns flickered weakly, their oil nearly spent. The sound of distant wind moving through bamboo filled the silence. Inside the hut, the fire was little more than a handful of glowing embers.
She placed a small wooden bowl in front of him — rice porridge, thin and stretched with too much water. It was likely all she had left for herself that night. He stared at it for a heartbeat longer than he should have, the weight of her generosity pressing on his chest like a stone. Then, without a word, he accepted it.
The first spoonful was warm and plain — but after days of blood and steel, it tasted like something real. Something alive. He ate slowly, not out of politeness but because he wanted to remember this moment. The way the steam curled faintly upward. The faint creak of the wooden bowl in his hands. The fragile kindness that shouldn't exist in a land like this.
When the bowl was empty, he finally raised his eyes to her. It was the first time their gazes met fully. His eyes were sharp, old and cold from too many wars; hers were tired but unwavering.
"This land," he began, his voice low and rough, as if unused for days. "What is it called?"
The question broke the fragile rhythm. She stiffened, her hands freezing mid-motion. "This is Wano Country," she answered carefully. "We are in the Kuri region. This is Okobore Town."
The names slid through his mind like foreign blades — strange, unfamiliar, sharp in their alienness. He kept his tone calm, his face composed, but inside something began to crack.
"How far is it from here to the Land of Fire?"
Her brow furrowed. Genuine confusion, not pretense. "The… Land of Fire? I'm sorry, I have never heard of such a place."
The cold dread rose like a tide. He pressed further. "Konohagakure," he said, each syllable steady, deliberate. "The Village Hidden in the Leaves."
O-Tsuru's pity was worse than fear. She tilted her head slightly, eyes softening in the way one might look at a man who had lost his way too far from home. "I do not know this name. There are no such villages in Wano."
The silence that followed was heavy. Not empty, but full — full of the ghosts he suddenly felt pressing against his back. Hashirama's loud laugh. Hiruzen's eager questions. The faces carved into the Hokage Rock. The clang of steel on wet earth. The scent of Konoha's forests after the rain.
But none of it was here.
He stared down at the wooden floor, the rough lines in the wood blurring before his eyes. This was not a border he could cross. Not a mountain he could climb. His world had been left behind somewhere he could no longer reach.
And so, in that small, poor tea house — with the faint taste of rice and charity still on his tongue — Tobirama Senju accepted the first truth of this new world:
He was not merely lost.
He was gone.
His legacy, his home, his history — nothing more than a story no one here had ever heard.