Naruto: Crimson Hair

"That took awhile," said Sai, closing the notebook shut and climbing to his feet. "I was beginning to wonder whether I should be ordering extra coffins." When Mayu's face paled and her mouth opened, he smiled. "Just kidding. The merchant is doing fine. She just needs some rest."

With that, they began to follow Sai along a dusty but well-trodden path that led away from the bridge.

...

The mist dwindled rapidly as they got further away from the waterside, and soon, they were walking past a rickety rotting sign and into a settlement with rows of wooden buildings alongside a thin river that cut through its middle. The paint on the rooftops looked like they could have been bright once, but had dulled and chipped away, while some buildings were not even graced with a rooftop, and were instead covered with what looked like cotton sails. Most of the buildings were short, as if clinging to the ground, but at their center was one tall building which spiraled out to a watch post at its tip.

The streets were busy, but not with the hubbub of an afternoon market; the majority of the people there were walking along dejectedly in their straw hats, looking as if they had nothing else to do. Some wore sandwich signs that advertised their willingness for any type of job, while others dazedly lay sprawled out along the sides of the street with a half-empty bottle in their hands. Mayu stopped at one point, when they passed by a group of small children sitting hunched over against a wall, but was pulled away by Rai.

As the others followed Sai inside what looked like a grocery store, Naruto paused as for some odd reason, he felt like he was being watched. Then, his hand whipped out and firmly grabbed the wrist of a bony man whose hand had been straying too close to the bag on his back.

"Careful," he said, giving the wrist a warning squeeze before letting go. With an answering yelp, the man scampered away and disappeared into the throng of people passing by. For several moments, Naruto waited with narrowed eyes – but the sensation that he was being watched had disappeared. He frowned; were the people of this village really so poor and broken as to try and rob a (seemingly) defenseless child in bright daylight? He'd visited a large variety of places with Kakashi over the past year, but never somewhere as pitiful as this one.

The store's bell clang as Naruto entered, and he'd barely been able to take in the scarcity of the nearly-empty shelves before he realized that his teammates were talking to a bespectacled old man with a towel wrapped around his neck and a girl in an eye-catching red qipao. She looked vaguely familiar with her long pink hair, and she was wearing a Leaf hitai-ate like a hair band.

"Ah, and there's our team leader," said Rai, gesturing toward him. The old man raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.

"I don't think I even saw this many kids in the entire village while I was there," he said exasperatedly, though not unpleasantly. "You ninjas sure start out young."

"Who are you?" asked Naruto, looking curiously at the odd pair.

"I'm Tazuna, master bridge-builder," said the old man, tipping his straw hat with some pride. Naruto nodded, his thoughts turning to the bridge they'd seen as they docked.

"I'm Sakura. I'm here with Team Shirakumo," said the girl, and Naruto nodded again, remembering that the Hokage had told him about them. Her eyes flitted to the Leaf hitai-ate on their foreheads, and lit up. "So you four are all from Konoha too, huh?" She scanned their faces, and to Naruto's surprise, paused at his. A look of recognition flashed across her face. "Oh...I remember you! You were in my class for a bit, weren't you? At the Academy? The quiet one?"

"Oh wow, I actually forgot...Naruto, you were transferred to our class late, huh?" said Rai, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

Naruto had stopped paying attention to his classmates early on, so he couldn't say he remembered 'Sakura,' but he did vaguely remember having once sparred against a girl with her hair color.

However, without responding, Naruto looked straight at Sakura. "If you're on an escort mission, why are you still here?"

Immediately in response, Sakura looked away and bit her lip, while Tazuna coughed uncomfortably.

"This sort of talk would be better kept behind closed doors," said Tazuna, directing a meaningful look towards the shopkeeper. "I'd invite you to my home, but it looks like you already have somewhere to be?"

The others looked at Sai, who shrugged and pointed at a small stairway near the counter. "We're already here."

Exchanging a few words with the shopkeeper – a short man who looked nervously around the store's premises – they headed up the stairs, which creaked at every step. Sai knocked four times on the door, and after a few seconds, they heard the sound of shuffling. The door opened a crack to reveal an eye, before opening to reveal Toru, whose head was swathed in bandages; her face seemed to have regained some of its previous color.

She stepped back, ushering them in with a quick wave of her hand. "Quick, come on in. Nobody's supposed to know I'm...here..." She trailed off as she finally saw Tazuna standing at the edge of the group.

He gaped back at her, his glasses hanging askew. "Kaine!"

With a blank look on her face, Toru regarded Tazuna silently before finally heaving a sigh. She opened the door wider in a sign of invitation. "...You'd better come in, then," she said quietly.

Inside was a small, clean three-room apartment not unlike Naruto's own home in Konoha – but judging by the poverty of the rest of the village, it might have been considered luxurious. Toru – or Kaine – disappeared into the kitchen, and with Mayu helping, distributed cups of tea for all of them. With everyone sipping from the hot tea, the story soon came out.

"My real name is Kaine," said the merchant. "And as I'm sure you've deduced by now, I am being targeted by Gatō for being an accomplice of the bridge's construction."

"So you were our mysterious benefactor?" Tazuna said heavily, looking down at his untouched cup. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"What good would that have done?" snapped Kaine. "Whenever you weren't working on the bridge, you were just a bumbling, drunk fool of an old man."

"The past year hasn't been kind to you," said Tazuna, not rising to the taunt.

"At least I'm still alive," she retorted. "Which is better than what I can say about my dear brother."

There was a pregnant pause; while Sai appeared to be gazing at the design of the tea cups with some fascination, Sakura and Mayu stared wide-eyed at the hard-faced merchant woman. Rai uncomfortably gulped down his tea, and Naruto followed suit, taking his first sip of the drink. It was bitter.

"You are angry with me," said Tazuna at last. "For being alive."

Kaine's head snapped back as if she'd been slapped. "Why would I be?"

"You wish I'd been the one executed instead of Kaiza," said Tazuna. This time, it was Kaine's turn to be silent.

"Um...who's Kaiza?" asked Sakura awkwardly, raising a hand as if she were in class.

"The hero of this city," Tazuna answered and at the same time, Kaine said, "My brother." Kaine's mouth thinned into a single line, and Tazuna took off his glasses to wipe it with his sleeve before continuing. "He married my daughter, and became my grandson Inari's father. They were like a true father and son, and inseparable...but when Gatō took over, he stood up to them. And for that, he was executed in front of everyone. Kaiza was the bravest man I ever knew, and died because of it."

"My brother wasn't brave," sneered Kaine, her hands visibly tightening over her cup. "He couldn't protect his first family, so he ran away to Wave country and thought he'd redeem himself by playing at being a hero, only to get killed...but I suppose compared to you, he was brave." She raised her eyes aggressively toward the older man. "He didn't cower behind a fence, watching as an innocent man got murdered. He didn't sit complacently at home, drinking himself silly and venturing out only when someone gave him some coin. He wasn't brave, but he wasn't a coward like you."

"That's not true!" Sakura burst out angrily. "Even though it was dangerous, Tazuna-san came all the way to Fire country. On the way to Wave country, we even got attacked by a missing-nin named Zabuza!"

Naruto's eyes widened and from beside him, Rai spit out a mouthful of tea.

"A missing-nin...?" Mayu repeated, growing pale.

=====================

If you want to support me, Or just want to read ahead of the public release, you can check my p atreon :

 p atreon.com/sybife