Shadows of the Leaf

The first time I killed a man, I was twelve years old and my hands were still small enough to fit inside his ribcage.

That's not a metaphor. That's just what happened.

I want to be clear about something from the start, because I've heard the way people talk about me in the streets of Konoha, the way they lower their voices when I walk past like I'm a dog that might bite. They say I was born wrong. They say the fox made me what I am. They say if the Fourth Hokage had known what his sacrifice would create, he might have let the village burn.

None of that is true. I wasn't born wrong. I was made wrong, and there's a difference. The difference is that someone chose it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start where it actually starts, which isn't with the killing or the fox or even the village. It starts with a girl and a bowl of ramen and a promise I made that I had no business making.

---

The Academy was a squat building at the edge of the market district, close enough that the smell of grilled squid and miso broth drifted through the open windows during afternoon lessons. I used to sit in the back row, third from the left, where the wall had a crack shaped like the Land of Waves. I'd trace it with my finger while Iruka-sensei droned on about chakra theory. He was a good teacher. I want to say that because of what came later. He was patient with me in a way that most people weren't, and I didn't appreciate it until it was too late.

That day, Sakura Haruno raised her hand during the taijutsu demonstration and asked if she could spar with Sasuke instead of me.

"I've already beaten Naruto twice this week," she said, and flipped her hair over her shoulder like she was flicking away something unpleasant. "It's not fair to the other students if I keep taking the easy matchups."

Iruka-sensei's face did that thing where it tried to be neutral and failed. "Sakura, in a real mission you don't get to choose your opponent."

"Then consider it training for disappointment," she said, and half the class laughed.

I laughed too. That's the part I don't like to remember. I laughed, because I was twelve and stupid and I thought if I laughed along with them, they might forget I was the reason they were laughing. It didn't work. It never worked.

The spar lasted forty seconds. She put me on my back with a textbook hip throw, and when I got up, she was already walking away, already looking at Sasuke, already planning her future as the wife of the last Uchiha. I remember the way the afternoon light hit the back of her neck, the small pale triangle of skin below her hairline. I remember thinking that I would make her look at me one day. Not like that. Not the way she looked at Sasuke. But look at me. See me. That was all I wanted.

Hinata Hyuga was sitting on the bench by the water fountain, and when I walked past, she pressed her fingers together and said something so quiet I had to stop and ask her to repeat it.

"I thought you did well," she said. Her face was the color of a ripe tomato. "The throw. You almost had her."

I almost had her. I hadn't almost had her. I'd been on the ground before I understood what was happening. But Hinata said it with such conviction that for a second I believed her. That was her gift. She could make you believe things about yourself that no one else could see.

"Thanks," I said, and then, because I was twelve and couldn't help myself, "One day I'm going to be Hokage. Then she'll have to look at me."

Hinata smiled. It was a small smile, careful, like she was holding something fragile between her teeth. "I'll look at you," she said. "I already do."

I didn't understand what she meant. Not then. I was too busy chasing the wrong girl to notice the right one standing three feet away.

---

That night, I went to Ichiraku's and ate three bowls of miso ramen while Teuchi-san pretended not to notice I was counting coins under the counter.

"You're short," he said, when I pushed my pile forward.

"I'll pay you back."

"You always say that."

"And I always do."

He laughed and waved me off, and I ate until my stomach hurt, and then I walked home through the empty streets of the village I was supposed to protect. My apartment was on the fourth floor of a building that smelled like old wood and older secrets. The lock was broken. I'd told the landlord three times, and three times he'd said he'd send someone, and no one ever came. I'd stopped asking. You learn to stop asking when the answer is always no.

I lay on my futon and stared at the ceiling and thought about Sakura's hair and Hinata's smile and the way Iruka-sensei had looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching. Pity. That's what it was. I was twelve and I already knew what pity looked like, because it was the only thing anyone ever gave me for free.

I didn't know that in six months, I'd be a genin. I didn't know that in a year, I'd fail my first chunin exam and watch a boy I considered a brother die in front of me. I didn't know that in three years, I'd hold Sakura in my arms while she bled out on a bridge in the Land of Waves, and that Hinata would be the one to save her, and that I would owe her a debt I could never repay.

I didn't know any of that. All I knew was that I was hungry and alone and angry in a way that had no shape yet, and that somewhere in the dark of the village, the thing sealed inside me was stirring, and it was patient, and it was waiting.

---

The next morning, I woke up to someone pounding on my door.

It was Sakura. Her hair was a mess and her eyes were red, and she was holding a scroll with the Hokage's seal on it, and her hands were shaking so badly she almost dropped it.

"They're assigning teams today," she said. "Iruka-sensei sent me to get you. You're late."

I sat up. "Why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I'm allergic to dust. Your apartment is disgusting."

"I know."

She looked at me then. Really looked at me, for the first time since I'd known her, and something passed across her face that I couldn't name. It wasn't pity. It wasn't disgust. It was something closer to recognition.

"You're going to be on my team," she said. "I heard Iruka-sensei talking to the Hokage. It's you and me and Sasuke."

"Sasuke?"

"Don't get excited. I'm not happy about it either."

But she was. I could see it in the way her fingers tightened around the scroll, in the way her breath caught when she said his name. She was happy, and she was terrified, and she was standing in my doorway at seven in the morning because for reasons I wouldn't understand for years, she had chosen to come get me herself.

"Fine," I said. "Let me find my sandals."

I never found them. I walked to the Academy barefoot, and Sakura didn't say a word about it, and when we got there, Sasuke was already sitting in the back row, third from the left, tracing the crack in the wall shaped like the Land of Waves.

I sat down next to him. He didn't look up.

And that's when everything started. That's when the world I thought I knew cracked open and showed me what was underneath.