Kiyoko’s POV
I feel the breath of Kakashi on my head, and I notice when I open my eyes, that I have fallen asleep just like I remembered. Kakashi still slept, and I touched his forehead to check if his fever was still there. I smiled when I didn’t feel the heat anymore, he was going to be fine. I move his arms from around me as quietly as I could, and slipped back to my room. I quietly changed, and I tried to be as quiet as I could, he still needed rest. I close the door, and see Tomoko standing on my window sill. I have to cover my mouth to keep my little yell in.
“What were you thinking just standing there?” I whisper. I see her beak turn into a smirk.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your little cuddle time with Mr. Hottiecopyninja.”
“It- it wasn’t cuddle time, okay. He was ill and I took care of him,”
“ Oh I think you took really good care of him,” She laughs.
“Shh, he’s still asleep,” I angrily whisper. She quiets her laugh but she summons us to Shikkotsu Woods. We were inside home tree, and Sage Moriko was there, a very disturbed look on her face. I swallow the intimidation, and bow my greetings. I turn to look at Tomoko who no longer laughed, all the humor has been suvked away. Something is wrong.
“Follow me Kiyoko,” the Sage shortly says. She no longer had the encouraging character to her that she always had. I follow her deeper into the center of the tree, where it opened for her convenience. Tomoko follows, she doesn’t land on my shoulder which made me realize just how serious this really is.
“Is something wrong?” I asked. Did I do something wrong? Oh god, did someone see me practice earth nature. She must be so angry with me, if that did happen. I was so careful, no one could surprise me, no one. The Sage opens a door leading to a large room. It is a enormous, and it is full of books. Millions and millions of books lined the walls.
“This is the memory vault. Everyone who has ever lived and is living is in here. Books grow as the person lives on, as you can see some books are bigger than others. This is the heaven of information, you can learn anything about anyone here, so I investigated your father’s history. Something came up, and I can’t believe I never caught it.” The Sage uses a rock platform to move to a high shelf near the ceiling. She takes out a thin book, my father’s name was on the cover. It was part of my history too.
“What did you find?” I asked bravely. What could she possibly have missed.
“What is your mother’s name?” She asks, and comes to our level.
“Amira Kimura,” I say.
“She disappeared from your life, she disappeared from everyone associated with her,” Sage Moriko tells me. She gives me the book that is opened to a page. It stated my parent’s information. How could she disappeared, she existed. I know she did, I saw it in my earliest memories.
“How does this happen?” I turn the page, and its my date of birth, where I began to live a life I didn’t choose for myself.
“There are two possibilities that this would occur. To erase something from this memory vault you first have to know it exists. And it takes a large amount of chakra, and mastery of genjutsu, and ninjutsu. They at least had to be sage level, or sannin level. I don’t even think a hokage could do such a thing,” Sage Moriko explains.
Tomoko continues as I turn back to my parent’s page, “Your mother either did this herself for an unknown reason, or she asked someone else to do it for her.”
Her name wasn’t there, like she never existed. There was an empty space under my father’s name, like it was meant to be there, but it clearly wasn’t. I didn’t have a history of my own, I am the chosen one of course, but why was she erased from my father’s.
“Where is my mother’s book?” I asked as I read my father’s life after my birth. His every thought was recorded in there too, but I closed it before I read something I would regret. I already knew what my father thought of me.
“It doesn't seem to exist either,” Tomoko says quietly.
“What?” Her history doesn’t exist either, and neither does mine. Why is this happening?
“I don’t track every single person on this planet, so you can imagine her lack of existence might have gone undetected for years without me noticing. I only noticed your’s because of the vision and because of your life force that I felt when I finally saw you. We don’t know if she erased her existence years ago, or if she even had one in the beginning. All of this is just a big snowball of questions that only seem to be getting bigger.” Sage Moriko sits down on a chair near a window. When everything was just barely making sense, now its not, there is no sense to what is happening.
The Sage no longer looked so serious, but I couldn’t stop thinking of my mother. How could she do this, erase her history and mine, and why? Why? We don’t even know if it really was her, maybe someone else did this. Maybe it was my father, because he was the only one who still had his book.
Sage Moriko said she would look into this, but I expected answers, not questions, because now I don’t know what to think anymore. Was she really my mother? Is my father really my father? Who exactly am I?
“How about training to let all of this out of your system. I can teach you a few more earth jutsus, before we start with wood technique,” Sage Moriko offers. She takes my father’s book from my hands, and lets Tomoko shelf it for her. I don’t argue, and follow her to the training area. I had to get things out of my head, especially if there was no answer to my questions. My mother is dead, I can’t simply ask her and if she was alive I wouldn’t want to ask anyways. I saw in my memories just how much she really hated me. My father was out of the question, and I have no relatives that I know of. I was alone in this.
Sage Moriko brought me to the field where we train, and explained the next jutsu I was to learn.
“This is called earth pillar spears. It is quite easy as well. Your objective is to create spears that should penetrate your opponent, like all the others you can use your chakra or the ground right beneath you. I’ll demonstrate, I’m going to try to penetrate you, so you’re going to have dodge me. This will also be a dodging exercise.” She weaves her hand, and extends her right hand in front of her. I expect them to come flying out of her hand, but I feel rumbling beneath me. They are coming from below.
I move out of the way, but I see earth spears begin to grow from the ground I was hopping to, I use my chakra infused leg to kick them down. Dirt begins to fly everywhere, like always. Sage Moriko was very aggressive when it came to testing jutsu with me. The spears began to penetrate the ground everywhere, even through the trees near by. This jutsu was beginning to alter the landscape around us. Sharp earth spears grew tall and wide from the ground beneath me, clear land was diminishing. I use my chakra to cling to the side of a few spears, but spears grew from spears.
“I thought this was a dodging exercise! Can I at least fight back?” I yell at her, she’s some distance away from me.
“Never said you couldn’t use other jutsus, feel free to do anything to make them stop, to stop me!” I see her raise her hands, and the earth grew closer to me. She’s going too far with this. Water won’t be much use against Sage Moriko’s earth jutsus. I create an earth wall on my right and left, it stops the earth spears from getting closer to me. Like she said before my chakra is different, and stronger than her’s. I just don’t have the control she does. I can’t imagine I would ever be able to change the landscape like she just did. She’s insane scary when she battles, her smile on her face makes her look like an old witch. Good thing I don’t have a history book that records my every thought, I wouldn’t want her to read what I just thought.
After a few hours of trying to fight back, and not succeeding, Sage Moriko has sent me back home. I had scratched all over my body from the the sharp end of the earth pillar spears. It looks like a cat attacked me, which would be a great excuse if anyone asked. I was a bit annoyed, I didn’t even learn earth pillar spear, all I did was run around trying not to get a hole in me.
It was early evening, just past four when I arrive to the apartment. The door is unlocked, Kakashi must be home. I brush all of the dirt I could feel, brushing thoroughly my hair. When I finally go inside I smell yesterday’s stew in the air. I enter the kitchen to see Kakashi slurping away and munching vegetables. He looked healthier, but the color of his face still wasn’t quite right. He was up on his feet which was a good sign.
“What happened to you?” He asks as he sees my scratches.
“I was just walking, and I helped a little boy get his cat from a tree, the cat didn’t cooperate with me,” I grab a bowl for myself. I sneak my hand on his forehead, he didn’t have his fever anymore.
“At least you look a lot better, how are you feeling?”
“Like new, thank you for taking care of me last night. My father died when I was young, and my mother as well, so since a very early age I’ve always been taking care of myself. Yesterday was different, I’ve never had anyone cook dinner for me, or take care of me when I’m ill.”
“Kakashi you promised me you will never let me go through what I went through, right? No more loneliness and no more fear, and you’ve done just that. I want to do that for you, its all I can give you.”
He scratches his neck, “its really not much of a bother, you can say we’re even in a sense.”
We eat an early dinner together, and I try not to think about Kakashi’s parents, he’s been on his own for much of his life, I still had a father, but it feels like I never did. Of course I wanted to know more, and of course I could look at his book in the memory vault at home tree but I wanted to know everything from him, not from anyone else. I take a careful shower to avoid too much pain, but its hard to put my clothes on afterwards, the Sage only took her frustrations out on me.
Late in the evening Eri stops by, a bag in her hands. She wore dresses now, her shirts are too small for her growing midriff. She was already four months pregnant, I’ve been in the Leaf for four months already.
“I brought some yarn and needles, I thought we can knit baby clothes together.” She seems really excited about it, me not so much. I don’t even know the basics to knitting anything. Kakashi reads in the living room while I get us some tea. Eri brought different pink colors, and flower pins, and any girly accessory you can think of. Wouldn’t it be a pain if Yasuko ended up being a tomboy.
“Here I’ll show you how to start, its simple really,” Eri scoots closer to where I sit. She holds both knitting needles in front of her, and begins to gather the yarn in her hands. She moves the needles in ways that I can’t copy. She gives me my own needles, and expects me to start, but there was no way. I tried to do what she did, but I only ended up making a big knot in the yarn.
“Wow, you really suck at knitting, its not even that complicated. I think I’ll just let you do the cooking while I am in recovery from the pregnancy. Hey Kakashi why don’t you try. I’m sure you’ll become a father some day,”
I hear Kakashi choke on his tea, and closes his book. Eri laughs, “you’re the copy ninja, I’m sure after seeing it once you’ll be able to get it.
“No I can’t, I have no instincts for those kind of things,”
“You’re just like Kiyoko,” She pouts. Eri stops teasing Kakashi and continues to knit a deep pink blanket. She did however manage to teach me how to sew on a few flowers on the corners. Even though I did prick my fingers quite a few times. I walk Eri home that evening, telling Kakashi to get to bed early instead of tagging along, he was still not entirely healthy again. Though I doubt he will sleep early, he was so engrossed in his book. The cold winds were leaving quickly, this night was warmer than before. Spring was at our doorsteps, and I welcomed it with open arms. Spring time was my favorite time of the year. I remember the fourteen years that I ran around the country, the seasons were very obvious in nature. Snow covered the land, and then it melted away, the sun would beat hard on the earth, and then the leaves would turn green to red, and finally the snow would fall again. It was beautiful to watch, but spring was the best time. The fruits would be fresh and ripe weeks after winter, and the rivers would defrost. Everything came back to life, and I saw animals come out from their sleep.
“Even though you don’t have great knitting skills, I think someday you will become a great mother. Kakashi told me about the first mission you went on. You have a deep rooted love for anyone who is close to you. You’ll be become a loving mother, and a caring wife someday. It may seem scary and unreachable right now, because you have so much on your plate, but it’ll come sooner than you expect,” I see Eri rub her hand over her womb. She stops quickly.
“Touch right here, right here, you can feel her move just a bit.” She takes my hands and puts them on the spot, I felt Yasuko move around, pushing on her mother’s wall. She was in there, a new life, and soon she will be coming out of sleep like the change of seasons. The thought of having a baby wasn’t even comprehensible, and being married was unreal, I don’t think I love anyone just yet. It’ll be hard for me, to love, but I see how Eri talks about her husband sometimes, and the way she smiles when she mentions him. She loves him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do that. We walk to her house, the lights are on, Eri told me her husband was home tonight, she had someone who waits for her.
“I can take my guesses as to who you’ll marry,” Eri winks, she runs inside before I can ask about her comment. But I hurried home, I’m sure Kakashi hasn’t gone to sleep yet, he always said goodnight before he got to bed and I didn’t want to make him wait.
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Chapter notes: Here is another chapter. Hope you enjoy.
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Until next chapter!