Healing, Aoi learned, was slower when the patient noticed.
Shigen recovered steadily, but never quickly. The damage to his chakra pathways wasn't severe, yet it required precision—cooling inflammation without freezing it, guiding flow without forcing it. Aoi worked in silence, hands steady, expression unreadable.
At first, Shigen treated the sessions like maintenance.
He endured.
He thanked.
He waited for the end.
But over days that blurred together under the constant snowfall, he began to notice things he hadn't before.
Aoi never rushed.
She adjusted pressure by instinct, not measurement. When his breathing tightened, the temperature around her palms changed before he spoke. When pain flared, she paused—not to ask, but to let his system catch up.
"You don't heal like a medic," he said once, half-curious.
Aoi didn't look up. "I heal like someone who can't afford mistakes."
That answer lingered.
Between treatments, Shigen watched her move through the compound. She spoke little, but when she did, people listened—not out of fear, but trust. Children gave her space instinctively. Elders deferred without ceremony.
She belonged here.
And yet, she carried herself like someone already halfway gone.
One afternoon, while snow drifted lazily past the windows, Shigen broke the quiet.
"Why help me?" he asked. "Really."
Aoi's hands stilled for a fraction of a second.
"You were injured," she said.
"That's not enough," he replied gently. "Not here."
She considered him then—properly. Not as a patient. Not as a liability. Just a man asking without expectation.
"Because you didn't ask what I was," she said finally. "Only if I was alive."
Shigen absorbed that.
In Konoha, people always asked what came first.
He found himself thinking about her when she wasn't there. About how she listened more than she spoke. About how her presence didn't demand attention, but altered it.
This unsettled him.
Shigen did not fall easily. He analyzed, anticipated, and controlled. Affection, when it came, was usually obvious in its cause.
This wasn't.
It grew in the spaces between words. In shared silence. In the way she corrected his posture without touching him. In how she trusted him not to pry—and how that trust made him want to be worthy of it.
One evening, as the compound settled into the night, he found her standing alone near the outer path, watching the snow.
"They're still out there," he said quietly.
"I know," she replied.
"You're not afraid."
Aoi shook her head. "Fear wastes time."
He hesitated. "And you? When you leave… what then?"
She glanced at him, something unreadable in her eyes. "Then I keep moving."
"For how long?"
"As long as I have to."
The answer should have been enough.
It wasn't.
Shigen realized then that what he felt wasn't urgency or desire or even hope.
It was a concern.
Quiet. Persistent. Dangerous.
Not the kind that demanded action—but the kind that changed priorities without asking permission.
As they stood there, snow settling softly around them, Shigen understood something else, too.
Understanding Aoi wasn't about asking questions.
It was about learning when not to.
And somewhere in that restraint—mirroring her own—something unfamiliar began to take root.
Not yet, love.
But no longer nothing.
And for a man who lived his life several moves ahead, that uncertainty was the most telling sign of all.