Chapter Text
Over the icy
sea, winds shatter foamy waves
Such bitter kisses
“Out with you, you filthy little brats!” The shopkeeper shouted, swinging his broom with surprising accuracy at the giggling and shrieking gaggle of children running out the door and into the crowded streets before them.
“Don’t let me catch you in here again!”
The children weaved through the legs of shoppers and the stands selling fish, cloth, ceramics, tatami, and other sundries until they were safely hidden within the throng of market day. “Touma, you idiot!” Whinged Kaito, smacking his cousin upside the head “You got caught! By a civie! Some shinobi you’ll be.”
“I didn’t see you do any better!” Touma snapped back, rubbing his head with a sour look.
“Ugh, but I’m hungry. Auntie won’t let me eat sweets now that I’m starting Academy” The eldest, Ahmya groused, though mostly just to brag that she was in school and they yet weren’t.
“Nuh uh, that’s just because you’re fat!”
The bickering continued as they left the crowded streets of the market district and made their way further afield to the third caste outskirts, kicking the detritus that had fallen to the ground from the crumbling buildings out of their path and scrambling over shipping crates and salt encrusted netting.
Nanami followed at a quick pace behind her cousins, smaller than them and trying to keep up with only one free hand. “Itoko…”
She huffed when she received no response.
“Ahmya, I-“
“Not now, Nanami! Touma called me fat!”
Nanami sighed and easily slipped away from the others, meandering down the shabby streets towards her grandmother’s home in the dilapidated slum of the Sano neighborhood, a short walk from her own apartment. Mother was away again and Nanami often found herself staying with Granny Utano, hand in hand visiting the local shrine with prayers for Chiyoko’s safe return. She picked carefully at one of the slightly squashed anpan she had pilfered while the shopkeeper had been distracted by Touma’s clumsy attempt.
As to be expected, the machiya house her grandmother occupied was old, tired, and worn, but it was clearly looked after and loved. The windows that let in the dull light and poor views of Mist were painstakingly cleaned and shone, the potted plants, greenery hardy enough to tolerate the low light, sat tidy along the front of the home, and the small wooden stool outside the door her grandmother sometimes sat upon to chat with the neighbors was currently occupied by a lazing tortoiseshell cat that roamed the neighborhood. Nanami, accustomed to neglect, thought it the most magical and lovely place she knew.
“Morning, Granny!” She said around a mouthful of sweet bread.
“Chew before you speak, child.” Her grandmother chastised from her kitchen. She was steeping a pot of jasmine tea and the remnants of her morning meal lay by the wash basin.
Wordlessly, Nanami stepped into the practiced routine of setting the table for tea and placed her ill gotten gains beside the aged, but well kept tea set.
“Mm” Granny hummed, pleased at the sight of the small treat beside her cup.
“Chestnut?” She didn’t ask where Nanami had come by the sweet.
She shook her head, “Red bean.”
“Ah, well, just as tasty.” With a slow shuffle, Granny made her way to the table, lightly tapping Nanami’s Sano nose as she always did.
They sat in the stillness, each with their tea in hand for a quiet, peaceful moment. Nanami watched the leaves swirl around at the bottom of her cup. One of the older girls, Ahmya’s older sister, had said you could read your fortune from the leaves. Frowning, Nanami studied the fall of the leaves in her cup. They just looked like squiggly lines to her.
Never one for idleness, the moment she was finished, Granny dusted her hands off, signaling the end of their reprieve and spoke. “Shouldn’t you be off with the others, learning your hand seals?”
Yes. She should be. Nanami wrinkled her nose and frowned, giving a simple shrug as she brought the dishware out to wash.
“Nanami…”
“I don’t like it, Granny, you know that.” She soaped up the cups and pot, carefully slipping into the oversized gloves Granny insisted upon wearing to keep their hands soft. “Why can’t I just stay with you?”
Granny sighed, “You’re Izumi, child. You must learn your clan’s hiden techniques.”
“Touma’s dad is out on a mission so Souta’s teaching us today. He’s…”
Nanami tried to find the words to describe how uneasy the venomous teenager made her feel. How he saw the clean, comfortable apartment Nanami and her mother lived in, compared it to the moldering, damp, overcrowded space of his own accommodation and took his jealousy at the small amount of wealth her mother had accumulated out on Nanami. How because he knew anything martial held little interest to the girl preordained to be a shinobi just like himself, he often singled her out, demanding faster and faster results, quick to demean her for any errors real or imagined and made her witness cruel examples of the Izumi secret technique.
“No! Fuck, Nanami, you end on hare. How stupid are you?”
Nanami glared up at the older boy berating her. She knew she had been doing it right, her mother had quizzed her on her seals just yesterday.
“I’m not stupid, that was hare. Maybe you need to head back to the academy for a refresher.”
A few of the other children laughed and an ugly red blush rose on Souta’s face.
“Oh you think you know better than me? An actual genin? Putting on airs just because your mom managed to make jonin? I guess it’s easy on your back with your legs spread. Wasn’t even married when she let your Sano dad breed her like a dog.” His mien was vicious and Nanami trembled, trying to hold back her anger and the tears that threatened to spill even if she didn’t quite understand what he was saying.
“Speaking of dogs..” Souta’s attention was focused on one of the many stray dogs that wandered Kiri and pitched his voice to the rest of the group. “Do you know why our technique is called Kōtta Chi? The blood of your enemy isn’t frozen as if it stopped; no, it literally freezes in their very body,” He made the necessary seals, the dog began shrieking and howling, “and it’s very painful.” He kept his hands on hare, sweat beginning to bead on his brow, “if you hold it long enough, they’ll die.” The dog collapsed.
“Not very nice.” She finished.
Granny said nothing for a long moment, simply gazing at Nanami with solemn, shrewd eyes. “Alright, you may stay with me in the mornings until your regular teacher returns.” She rubbed her hands together, warming her arthritic limbs. “But I won’t have you laying about. Let’s practice your brushwork.”
Nanami’s shoulders sagged in visible relief and she padded over to the oshiire, finding the thin slab of slate, brushes, and empty chipped cup for water she kept under her futon when staying with Granny. She was too young and inexperienced to waste valuable ink sticks and paper on practicing her shodo. Her grandmother was a demanding teacher, but calm and never cruel with her criticism and Nanami found the quiet art of writing her beautiful words soothing.
“Where did you leave off last time, Nanami? Begin there before we practice new kanji.”
“Three years sitting on a rock.” She answered, wetting her brush. “Which is a silly proverb. Who wants to wait that long?” Nanami complained.
“Ah yes,” Granny smiled, “your father said the same thing those years ago when I was teaching him just like you.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “He was always so impatient,” her smile waned a bit and her thoughts were clearly with the past, “the boy couldn’t sit still if you paid him all the gold in Water Country. And his brushstroke, ack! Like chicken scratch.” Granny took out her own ink and paper. “Not like you, child. Your hand is improving.”
Nanami repeated her brushstrokes, pleased with the rare praise, watching as the stone deepened in color with the touch of her wetted brush before slowly fading back to its chalky tone. She tucked away the knowledge new to her like a precious jewel. My father had messy handwriting.
“What is that?” She asked, gesturing to Granny’s paper, admiring the fluid roll of the ink. Granny was a Master and used shoso, which was impossible for Nanami to read.
“Hanafubuki,” seeing Nanami’s puzzled expression, she continued, “it is when the sakura blossoms fall so fast it looks as if it is snowing.”
“Oh!” She frowned, trying to imagine such a sight. Kiri didn’t have much in the way of sun loving cherry trees, “I’ve never seen that.”
Granny sighed and placed her piece in a safe place to dry. She would later sell it at less than a tenth of its value. Before the Sano had been annexed, Granny as a young woman had run a small school as shihan. On nights when Nanami couldn’t sleep, sore from her katas or homesick for her mother, Granny would tell her stories of her youth. Times before Kiri, before the mist and damp, when there was sun and green, and room to breathe. So mesmerizing and extraordinarily wonderful were these stories to Nanami that they may as well have begun with “Mukashi mukashi”.
“One day, child.”
“Granny?”
“Hmm?”
“I’d rather just stay with you everyday.”
Granny placed a soft, knobby hand on Nanami’s cheek, her gaze trained on her impeccably clean window and an expression Nanami couldn’t quite read on her face.
“You are worth too much to this village to stay here with an old lady.”
“But I’m just a girl.”
“I know, child. But they’ll turn you into a weapon.”