I fiddled with the bandages around my injured hand. They've bloodied up since the incident. I still press on them, just so the pain could distract me. Memories threatened another round of tears, something I couldn't allow myself right now. I needed to be strong.

I didn't cry when I turned up to the Noharas, begging for them to check Mother. I didn't cry when Nohara-san asked me what happened, and where Father was. I refused to answer with tears. Understandingly, Nohara-san led me into this room and left me here to wait while he and his wife tended to Mother.

The fire would've attracted attention by now—it wouldn't be long until an investigation went underway, and our names would suddenly become of interest. Unless Nohara-san reported me, but I doubted it. He'd want to ask me questions first.

I felt the skin around my mouth. It was slick with salve, meant to make the burn better. It didn't really help.

Nohara-san gave me new clothes. They're too big for me but they smelled nice. I tucked my head under the collar; it stuck to the salve but I didn't care.

Anything to hide my shame, my scar.

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Scarecrow In The Farmland
'... I was hurt every time I went here, and you never said anything...'

.

.

.

Mother looked paler.

Her clothes were still the same, stinking of smoke and scorched round the edges. There was a thin scroll wrapped around her nose, glowing with green chakra. Nohara-san said it's to help clear her lungs of smoke. There's another on her forehead, for her fever. For the thing that was making her pale everyday.

Nohara-san said she'd live. That she'd be up in a few weeks—the burns would heal first, then the fever. Nohara-san said that he didn't know about Mother's fever because she didn't tell her. He asked, quietly, if Father knew. And I said I didn't know. I'd never know.

I remembered when Mother took me to school that time. It was sunny. People kept staring because I had silver hair. "Only old people have them," said a kid, who was of shinobi blood. Asuma, I think. But he wasn't as bad as the other kids, who always taunted us because we were from civilian families. There was one kid. I don't remember his name. But I remember wanting to do something bad to him, and they had to call Mother and tell her what happened.

Mother was mad at first. But she wasn't mad at me, she was mad at Father, and I couldn't hear what it was about because I was hiding in the paddock with Kakashi #2. I tried sleeping under the stars but the grass was itchy, and Father found me and carried me to my bed.

The day after, they told me I was going to see a doctor. They said that I had a serious condition and that they couldn't tell me. They said that his name was Nohara-san, and that we'd met before when I was a baby.

And even then I got worse. I threw tantrums all the time. They stopped once I knew how to control them, but they'd been my dark days, where Mother cried and Father stared endlessly at the window, like he was waiting for an escape.

I had put them through so much. And now?

They were dead to the world.

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.

.

Something nice wafted into the gap under the door. I checked the clock. It was around dinnertime.

I left Mother's room and entered the corridor. They were narrow, which I didn't like, but they felt safe and stable now, and I could just reach both ends of the wall with the tips of my fingers and pretend I wasn't about to faint.

The smell led me to the Noharas' kitchen. Nohara-san's wife was frying something in a pan, and Rin was beside her ready with two or three spice grinders.

And Rin didn't need a stool or a peeler because whatever was in the pan didn't need potatoes, which meant no accidents and no going to Konoha and leaving her mother alone. But she already lived in Konoha, in a clinic no less, so maybe she was allowed to make mistakes.

"Kakashi?" Kokoro-san looked surprised, with the way she held her spatula like a weapon.

I said nothing.

"Do you want to cook with us? You can help Rin with the spices."

I shook my head. And ran away. Past Mother's room and mine and into one where it felt the safest.

I closed the closet door and cried.

And I wiped the tears with my sleeves until they were soaked. Then lifted my knees and buried my head into my arms. Letting the salve stick everywhere.

I replayed everything in my head. From the cart to the missing-nin to the fire.

They wanted me. What for? What did I do to make them come after me?

Questions swirled in my head, neverending, never stopping, flowing out in tears.

What do I do to get Father back?

The door opened, but not completely. I looked up and saw brown eyes.

Defiant, I stared back. But they never ran away. Instead, the door opened further and Rin appeared. She pushed a basket of medicine bottles away and sat next to me.

Then she said, "Are you okay?"

"No," I said.

"That's okay."

"Why are you talking to me?" I asked, after nobody said anything for a while. "You've never talked to me before."

"You're hurt. Mom says you're supposed to help people who're hurt."

"I was hurt every time I went here, and you never said anything."

"Because Dad was there. He's not here now." She paused. "Karitoru-san will be okay."

"And my father?" I hissed. "He won't be okay. He'll never come back and even see if Mother will be okay. You get that?"

Because he's dead. Because he's—

"He's not dead," said Rin. "I mean, he might not be."

I blinked. "What?"

"They'll investigate your house. Uchiha Police, I mean. If they don't find Sakumo-san's body then he might've gotten away alive."

She's...

She's right. Father could have escaped out the window. He was strong, he could've done it... He could be hurt, but alive. Probably limping to Konoha. The guards would see him, send out medics, hopefully Nohara-san, and bring him here...

But if he wasn't...

"Rin," I said, in a quiet but determined voice, "do you think they'll let me go to my house today?"

"I don't know. You can ask Dad when he's back."

"Where did he go?"

"Probably with the Uchihas to help with the investigation. He left when they knocked on the door."

"I need to go back. To check." I eased myself out of the closet and faced Rin. "Is the wagon still outside?"

"You can't go by yourself," she said.

"I need to know," I said.

"You're not thinking straight. You're bottling up your feelings and it's not good. You need to talk to me, Kakashi. Kun. Kakashi-kun."

"Is the wagon outside?"

"Kakashi—"

"Is it outside, Rin?"

"I'm trying to help you!" she shouted, leveling my gaze. "You can't go out there! It's dark! Dangerous!"

At that point I listened. I'd pushed Rin into desperate anger and it didn't suit her.

She took a deep breath, her bangs swaying from her face. "They're looking for you," she whispered. "I heard the Uchiha. Missing-nin are after you."

"But they died in the fire," I said.

"There are others. Prowling in the fields, trying to sneak into Konoha. They haven't caught them yet." Rin glanced around. "They put seals around our house. They won't work if you leave."

Seals... I'd felt safe in these corridors earlier. Was that why? But I thought civilian kids didn't sense chakra, to some extent. Was I really that distraught?

Looking back, Rin was right. I wasn't thinking straight. I wanted someone to explain how they were dead. Why I made them that way.

"Are you okay?"

Rin drew soothing circles on my back. And I tell her, "No."

She said, "That's okay."

We stayed like that for a while. Soon the questions drifted from my mind. I was left with an emptiness, but the sort when someone's finished a tantrum and have no idea what to do next.

Then Kokoro-san called us for dinner.

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Rin took me to her room after we ate. It was the first time I'd been there. She was a bit shy showing me around. She had a futon and a shelf full of medical books, and a desk with papers and pencils. There were drawings of plants and their healing properties, posters of the human anatomy and the chakra points.

"Want to be a doctor?" I asked.

Rin scratched her head. "Sort of. I mean, I could. It's the safe option."

"What do you mean?"

"I... I want to be a medi-nin."

I was surprised. "Medi-nin? You want to be a ninja?"

"Sort of! I'm not that strong. I want to be one that heals, that's all. I can't fight, I don't have the chakra capacity."

She went to the bookshelf and took a ball. It was wooden and had markings all over. "What's that?"

"It's called an Easter Egg. Mom bought it for me." Rin offered it to me. "Here, you try. You put your fingers in the dents and you feed them your chakra. The only way it'll open is if each dent gets an equal amount of chakra, so you have to really concentrate."

I took the Easter Egg and held it by the dents. "Now what?"

"Make your chakra flow into your fingers. It helps if you imagine it happening."

I closed my eyes and thought of streams in my body, water flowing over to my fingers. Nothing happened. I felt like I was trying to crack a stone open.

"Holding it tightly won't help; it isn't about strength," Rin said. "Just imagine, Kakashi. What do you think your chakra is?"

"Water."

"Okay. Now imagine it's like molten lead. It's heavy and hard to control. Now make it flow into your fingers. Not too fast, but not too slow. It's like—like when you spill something and the spill grows bigger and bigger."

I thought of lead, of lava. What I imagined lava to be, from what I'd read in my encyclopedia. The one I lost at the fire. Then I thought of other liquids—the wine and—the missing-nin's blood pooling out, growing bigger and bigger—

"Kakashi!"

I opened my eyes and found light.

It was dark and crackly like thunder, a sickening violet that was awfully similar. It was coming from the markings in the Easter Egg. I dropped it, shocked, and it broke open the moment it hit the floor.

I stared at my hands and kept picturing them with the same light. Where have I seen that light? I shuddered. Rin spoke from beside me.

"Kakashi... look."

I looked. On the floor lay the Easter Egg unraveled, torn apart at the markings like a doily. In the middle rested something shaped like a teardrop that I've never seen before. Apparently Rin has, because she leapt at it like a cat. "What is it?" I asked.

'It's a conch shell,' she said, picking it up with a smile. "It's these weird things made out of calcium that wash up on shore. One of Dad's clients gives us these every appointment, and I've been collecting them since. Look!" Rin pulled a box from under her desk. "I have lots of types. I've never gotten one this big, though."

"That's..." I started, but shook my head. "Rin, that light. That... that wasn't my chakra, was it?"

Rin's smile vanished, replaced by a blank look. "I don't know. I mean, chakra can be visible, but only if you release a lot of it."

"But I couldn't have done that. I'm not a ninja."

"Maybe one of your ancestors was a ninja."

I thought about it. "My father told me he had the skills to be one."

Rin shrugged. "Then he must've passed those skills to you when you were born, and that's why he couldn't become a ninja anymore."

"That doesn't make any sense," I argued. "You can't lose chakra."

"Maybe it isn't chakra. Maybe it's a dojutsu like the Sharingan."

"You can't lose that either."

"You can, it's in the history books. Uchiha used to gouge each other's eyes out to become more powerful. Plus, non-Uchihas can have a Sharingan if they get one transplanted."

I cringed at Rin's blunt explanation. "Even so, there's no way the Uchiha would just give my father a Sharingan. What's the point?"

"That's true," Rin said, staring absentmindedly in her box of shells, before looking at me with curious eyes. "Hey, Kakashi-kun. Have you heard of jinchūrikis before?" I shook my head. "Do you remember the Sage of Six Paths?" I nodded. "Well, it's to do with him and the Ten Tails.

"After its defeat the Sage sealed it inside him, making him the first ever jinchūriki. Before he died, he split its chakra into the nine tailed beasts. It wasn't long before Hidden Villages began making jinchūrikis of their own; I read about a boy named Gaara who had one sealed in him before he was born.

"Maybe that's what happened to you. Maybe your dad could become a ninja because he was a jinchūriki. But when you were born, they sealed the beast in you."

"That's..." I started, but shook my head. "Rin, that can't be. Why my father? Why not someone from a clan?"

"How do you know your father wasn't in a clan?" she challenged.

"His parents weren't shinobi. And before you ask, my mother's civilian. I'm telling you Rin, there's no way."

Rin stood up so suddenly that I did a double-take. She crossed her arms and scowled — actually scowled — at me. "You've been going to my dad ever since you were a kid. You beat up Uchiha Obito with your bare fists. You cracked open the Easter Egg, which is hard, even for shinobi kids." Then Rin looked away. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You... have missing-nin after you."

She's...

She's right. It wasn't even about the jinchūriki thing. Jinchūriki or not, I was the reason everything went to shit.

I must've said that out loud because Rin flicked my forehead. I looked up to brown eyes. "You're not," she said, sitting me on her futon. It was soft. Warm.

Nobody said anything for a while, until;

"Are you okay?"

I said, "I think so." Our conversation still echoed in my mind, trying to fit itself in the mess.

And all Rin said was, "Cool."