The petals of the crocus flower are colored by the patterns of shade and light which play across them and when I run my finger down the length of one, it is impossibly soft. Ikkyu is sleeping inside the hermitage and the Cat twitches with dreams on the grass beside me.

"You have a nice voice."

Idle hums morph into a startled yelp and I whip my head up to see Yuuto standing behind me. Then I'm clutching my stomach with laughter. The Cat glares at me and even Yuuto's eyes are wide as he watches me, perhaps taken aback by the dramatic shift in mood.

"Sorry! You scared me!" I'm still snickering at myself. "I didn't hear you come up."

Yuuto rubs his head.

I see Hibashi.

No. I focus on the things that are different, the way Ikkyu told me to.

His skin is darker and eyes, larger. Yuuto's smile is different too, bracketed by dimples. His features are not as thin, but more pronounced. The young man sits beside me, entirely comfortable after coming by for so long.

"I saw that Ikkyu was asleep. Do you mind if I wait here until I can check him?"

I look around and then at an invisible watch on my wrist. "I kind of do… I don't know if you can tell, but I'm pretty busy today."

"Clearly," he laughs with me. "You practicing for the show?"

"What show?" I ask, even though I know he was being sarcastic.

"Oh, right. I meant to tell you the other day. I forgot, I guess. There's a Flower Festival every May. Members of the community put on shows-"

"Can I-" go? I'm leaning into his space in excitement, but then I look to where Ikkyu is resting. He coughs lightly in his sleep. I can't leave him.

Yuuto nods with a sad, understanding smile. "Maybe we can work something out."

"Yeah… Maybe." I roll onto my back once more, watch the clouds drift above. The breeze fills my nose, winding down to my lungs –as if the earth is helping me breathe.

It is utterly inspiriting.

"What song was it?"

I shrug. "Just something I made up."

This is only a partial truth. The tune came from my soul and the past life which it can only recall in borrowed sensations.

"Will you do it again?"

I'm silent for a long moment, both trying to remember the tune and if Kokuchou ever hummed.

No. Not so far as I have gone. I don't think Kokuchou was ever at peace enough to sing, much less hum. It makes me sad for her, that she lived in such a constant state of stress and anxiety. And it makes me happy, because even if it is her talent, this fanciful, fleeting tune is mine.

It may be flawed, not wholly correct, but it is a comfort from a life long since lost.

I look over at the crocus once more. The shadow of an ant crawls up the inside of the flower.

I hum.

Something tickles my toes and I kick out at it.

"Ow," Yuuto complains. I squint up at him against the sunlight. He shakes out his hand. "My own fault, I suppose. I should have known better."

I must have drifted off from the warmth of the sunshine, the gentle wind, and my own song. "How long have I been out?"

"Just a few minutes. I couldn't help myself when I saw your toes."

I don't sit up, but bring my legs above me. I flex my toes. Hibashi had been right -they are rather long. I laugh at them. "You wouldn't be the first."

I grab Yuuto's hand between my feet, using the toes as if I'm examining it. "Did I kick you hard?"

"Gross," he pulls it away with a laugh. "Only enough to crack the bone."

I sit up then. "Seriously."

Yuuto nods and his smile thins. My hair stands on end as he uses his chakra to heal the damage. "Yeah. You got a mean set of legs on you." The man pauses, eyes raking down my body. It doesn't feel intrusive; rather, it is assessing. Like the doctor he aspires to be. "Hokku?"

I like hearing my name from another person's mouth. It makes me want to form other friendships. "Hm?"

Yuuto hesitates, then takes a breath. "I've been meaning to ask… What happened to you?"

My body warms as my heart beats faster. I don't know why I had assumed people would never ask about my past, or lack thereof, or the signs of the life Kokuchou endured. I look at the missing fingertip on my left hand, the vertical scars which run jagged and pink up to my elbows. Various burns and scar tissue litter nearly every inch of her skin.

Yuuto's finger points to the dots on my face. "These aren't freckles. They're burn scars." He runs it up to my bisected eyebrow. It was the scar Kokuchou had gotten in her fight with Minato. There is a large, puckered one on my left thigh and in the middle of my right palm, straight through the hand. "And this. All of it… Are you a shinobi?"

I wasn't, I want to tell him. Hokku has never been anything besides the girl in the grove with her friends Ikkyu and the Cat. But I don't. Ikkyu warned me to be careful during one of our few outings to the village.

"You don't have to lie," he'd told me. "Just be vague. Until we know more about Kokuchou's life." I think of Orochimaru and how, if he is still alive, he will probably want his experiment back.

I shudder even in the warmth and turn my face away. "My body was a tool," I say. And it is not a lie. I did not say, 'Yes, I was a shinobi', neither did I dispute the evidence of it on my skin.

Yuuto nods. I know that he was, too. That's why his sandals had looked so familiar and why he could arrive at the hermitage so quickly. He'd told me weeks ago about how he'd quit being a shinobi the previous year to practice medicine with Sukuna-sensei.

He'd never told me why.

I never asked.

"And your-" he seems to steel himself. "And your ovary?"

It is a very, very personal question even for a healer. But I see it for what it is: a form of release. A way to connect over shared traumas. A desire to be understood by another person. I do not blame him for it.

My hand immediately falls to the space in my abdomen as it so often does. I have suspected, but never wanted to know. Not for certain. Not with what connotations it would have for Kokuchou, for me.

What do you mean? I do not dare ask it, because who cannot remember such a thing happening? Instead, I say, "How bad is it?"

I'm sure his mentor told Yuuto what he'd found the one time he'd used the diagnostic jutsu on me.

"Sukuna-sensei said it was a clean oophorectomy, everything healed almost perfectly. There are no signs of past infection or any complications. I just… I don't- Was there a problem with it?"

He is hopeful, for my sake. That there was a tumor perhaps, or cysts or any number of biological reasons as to why the ovary had been removed.

I can only shrug. That man, Orochimaru- Kokuchou hates him. It makes me want to hate him, too. For the horrors to which he'd subjected her and the atrocities to which he'd made her a witness. But I don't know that I do. Not yet. Not until I experience them firsthand and not just in our nightmares.

Yuuto frowns at his hands. "Sorry, I don't mean to pry. That, whatever happened… It couldn't have been easy."

I don't have anything to say to that and I can feel the tug of memories start to pull me under, so I start humming again and play with my toes. I need to ground myself.

Yuuto misunderstands my silence. "They did things to me, too. My village. Other villages. To my teammates, and to my friends. It's why I quit after the War."

The War? As far as Kokuchou is aware, the Third had been ongoing. Could it still be happening?

"You fought in the Third War?"

Yuuto's brow furrows. Then he laughs. "No, that ended almost two decades ago! Are you telling me you fought in that as a five-year-old?"

"Of course not," I laugh, too. But it is not as free as usual.

Ikkyu told me during my first days of lucidity that this body appears to be in its early twenties. Appears. But if the Third War ended nearly twenty years ago, that would mean Orochimaru did something to keep her from aging. He'd kept Kokuchou in that tube, in stasis for twenty years.

I feel faint.

To think such a thing is possible. To know that someone out there is capable of it…

What does that mean for when, if I ever meet them? Kokuchou's friends? Itame-sensei? Shou? Kushina and Minato? I've come to know them the way Kokuchou did because I have experienced everything alongside her and I love them even better because my soul remains untarnished by life the way hers had been.

I breathe deep. Dig my toes into the soil. My words feel thin enough to be carried away on the breeze. "Ikkyu and I, we've been here for a while. We aren't really aware of what has been happening outside of this forest."

Yuuto whistles. "There was a Fourth Shinobi World War, Hokku."

He tells me of the Five Great Nations uniting with the samurai of the Land of Iron to fight against Madara Uchiha, of resurrected shinobi, an army of strange plant clones, and enormous chakra monsters. He tells me of the Infinite Tsukuyomi, but skips over what he'd dreamed his life being like. Yuuto tells me of its heroes and villains and the tentative peace and the underlying chaos that has risen in the wake of the Fourth Shinobi World War.

Then, Ikkyu coughs from within the hermitage. "Yuuto-kun? Is- that you?"

"Yes!" the young man hops up. I trail slowly behind, taking it all in. I do as Yuuto asks of me as we tend to Ikkyu and he prepares to leave for the evening. We eat a dinner of noodles and vegetables together with Yuuto- he has always made sure to bring some fresh produce along.

That night, I struggle to meditate beside Ikkyu's sleeping form. His chest rattles with each breath and the if feels more like a when once again.

One day, maybe not soon, but one day Ikkyu will die and when that happens, I will be alone. Perhaps I will make more friends like Yuuto and Sukuna-sensei. I could travel, see the world with unjaded eyes or return to Konoha… But no one will understand my situation as Ikkyu does.

I do not know what I will do when that happens, because I do not know her story. Not in its entirety. Ikkyu seemed worried when he'd asked me not to divulge the details of her past to anyone.

I don't know if he is right to be.

So, before he goes, or I go, or before anything else can happen, I need to be finished with Kokuchou's story.

I want to be finished with it. With Kokuchou.

I want to be Hokku, free to experience everything for myself without her memories to hold me back.

I must keep writing.