Interlude: Instances of Two Individuals Spending a Day Together in Order to Facilitate Greater Mutual Knowledge and Familiarity, Arranged in Anticipation of a Potential Long-Term Relationship, Part 1
Yuri stood frozen in place. No, petrified. No, paralysed. Yes, she stood paralysed.
She was here. Why was she here? How could she be here? The thoughts were irrational, denials marshalled by her mind to assault plain fact, and Yuri could only take comfort in the expectation that once her heart slowed down, plain fact would triumph as it always did.
Lady Nara was dressed conservatively, in a blue and white outfit that defiantly presented snowflakes to early autumn. It wasn't particularly fashionable, at least according to the KEI fashions Minori half-heartedly tried to instil in her, but that just made Yuri feel a little better about her all-purpose purples (a colour that both matched her eyes and could be mended with cheaper black thread without making the wear and tear obvious to a casual observer).
"I didn't think you'd come," Yuri blurted out, and hated herself instantly for saying something so ridiculous and potentially insulting. Minori had
offered to practise smooth romantic lines with her, and Yuri had been fool enough to turn her down out of embarrassment.
Lady Nara gazed at her with the perplexed expression the statement deserved. "Why would I not?"
It was too late to backtrack now. Yuri was painfully aware that she was in no state to look for a way back onto the conversational cliff she had just jumped off.
"It was just a… a letter," Yuri said, at least managing not to stammer. "I thought you'd simply file it with all your fan letters and move on."
It was Minori who'd insisted, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained", persisting in her self-appointed role as Yuri's courage (and her recklessness, and didn't Yuri wish she was better at telling the difference).
"Fan letters?" Lady Nara asked, incongruously as if the concept were alien to her. "I do not receive fan letters. I suppose there are those missives from the Nara Keiko Fan Club, but those are less purposeful acts of communication and more stray shards of the universe's ever-shifting insanity. Was what you sent me a fan letter?"
An out. A rope cast down into the abyss, to be seized by those who didn't care who was holding the other end.
A confession to Lady Nara. What had they been
thinking?
They had been thinking of a girl whose courage had given them the strength to be open about their love. What kind of twisted irony would it be to conceal romantic feelings from her out of cowardice?
"No," Yuri said with all the resolve in her heart. "It wasn't a fan letter. It was a statement of intention as well as feeling."
"Then what?" Lady Nara asked. "I confess, despite my best efforts, I cannot perceive your intentions in writing this."
She couldn't perceive…?
"It was the metaphor, wasn't it?" Yuri asked resignedly. "I should have realised you wouldn't recognise Fire Country classical traditions. If… if you don't mind, I could write a new one." She certainly couldn't just come out and say it to Lady Nara's face.
Lady Nara shook her head. "I am far from an expert in poetry, in this country or any other, but insofar as Mist Academy detention involved analysis of self-indulgently florid prose, I assure you I have no difficulty handling synecdoche, anacoluthon, and even some amount of cruel and unusual zeugma."
Suddenly, Yuri had a much better idea of why Lady Nara spoke the way she did, though the idea that the devices the Mist Academy used for punishment were rhetorical, rather than mechanical and covered in spikes, contradicted everything she had learned about Mist as a student. Also, her crush had just intensified by twenty percent.
"The message was unambiguous," Lady Nara went on, "and, may I say, elegantly constructed. However, the intent behind it continues to elude me. Tachibana, why would you write
me what I struggle to interpret as anything but a love confession?"
For a moment, Yuri didn't know what to say.
"Lady Nara, why does
anybody write love confessions?"
"I have often wondered," Lady Nara said. "It seems as if their primary role is to be implausibly misinterpreted, sent to the wrong person and unquestioningly taken at face value, inaccurately seen as evidence of adultery by associates of the receiving party, or otherwise used by hack authors to lay groundwork for extended drama of the kind that could be resolved with five minutes of clear communication between the parties involved."
It was a test, Yuri was forced to conclude after a second's bewilderment. Lady Nara was highlighting Yuri's awkward indirectness by pretending to be obtuse until Yuri made her intentions clear. It was a little harsh, but on the other hand, wasn't Yuri the one wasting Lady Nara's time by inviting her and then dancing around the subject?
Fine. Yuri took a deep breath, then another one when that wasn't enough, and called for help from the part of her that could say the things she wanted to say, if only in verse. She was plummeting from a great height, and there was no such thing as a second chance at a breakfall.
"Lady Nara," she said slowly, "I am aware that you are a village hero while I don't even qualify for the Chūnin Exam." She had applied. Twice. No reason for rejection had been given.
"I am aware that in status, you are two steps down from the Hokage while I am one step up from nothing.
"I am aware that you already have an impressive husband and a charming girlfriend." Yuri knew Lord Nara only by reputation, but as a logistics and supply officer she was aware that he had been at twelve what she was working hard to become by eighteen. Tenten she had met once, for a fraction of an evening, and found her talents in the field of companionable silence to be a balm to her socially-exhausted soul.
"I understand if you intend to reject me, or if you have rejected me already and are here only to tell me in person. Even so…"
She faltered. This would have been—this had been—so much easier in writing. How was Yuri to avoid sounding like an awkward teen with an inappropriate crush when, in the world beyond ink and parchment, she was in fact an awkward teen with an inappropriate crush?
"Tachibana," Lady Nara said into the silence, sounding fully as anxious as Yuri felt. "Forgive me if I misunderstand, but are you attempting to tell me that the reason you wrote me a love letter is because you harbour romantic feelings for me?"
Yuri wanted to scream.
"But
why?" Lady Nara demanded incredulously.
Because you were supposed to be an enemy missing-nin wrapped in lies and ushered away from the hammer of judgement, but then you changed everything and I knew you really were someone who could awaken to the Will of Fire in the darkness. Because even the mortal avatar of unity had treated us as an afterthought, and then a stranger who didn't know us and owed us nothing decided she would be our Hashirama. Because you stand side by side with the village champion and the enchantress, and make me believe that a girl with an abacus and a notebook can be a hero too. And because while Minori and I were busy admiring Lady Nara the leader, you faced down every power in the village at once and told them they didn't get to choose who you loved, and in that moment you stopped being the KEI's and started being ours.
"Because you are... special to me," Yuri said. "Isn't that enough?"
She could see from Lady Nara's face that it wasn't, but she'd reached the limit of what she could say out loud without bursting into flame.
"Well," Lady Nara said eventually, "I suppose I owe you a response."
Yuri swallowed.
"I have cleared my schedule for the afternoon. If you are free, would you be amenable to joining me in an instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship?"
"You mean a date?" Yuri asked dazedly.
"No! Why does everyone—" Lady Nara broke off with a shake of her head. "Tachibana, I am honoured, if confused, by your feelings, and aware that they require a proper response—which, naturally, I cannot give since I simply do not know you sufficiently to judge any kind of romantic compatibility. I am inviting you to spend time together today for the purpose of rectifying this problem."
Yuri's attempts at a love life before Minori could be summed up as years of diving for pearls in a cold, murky lake filled with predators and slimy things, while being both incompetent at swimming and ignorant of the crucial fact that the lake could never have contained pearls to begin with. But while she could hardly call herself an expert, Lady Nara's proposal sounded exactly like a date. Still, she wasn't going to argue with a girl who, in defiance of all the odds, had just
failed to reject her.
"I would be delighted," Yuri said, setting the future in stone before it could get away.
-o-
"This is a disaster," Yuri muttered to herself, rummaging in her bag. "No, a cataclysm. No, a catastrophe. Maybe a calamity? No, definitely a cataclysm."
Yuri had thought it more likely that the sun would rise in the west, or Rock Lee extol the virtues of old age, than that Lady Nara would come to give her response in person. And even in such an astronomically-challenged timeline, she had hardly dared hope for more than to be let down gently. Nevertheless, she was a member of the Third Logistics and Supply Unit under Moritani Sadamune, the man whose Alternative Genin Loadout C saved the day at the Battle of Shikyū Hill after Cloud had wiped out the sealmaster squad. To be prepared for everything—materially if not emotionally—was not a matter of professionalism for Yuri but a matter of honour.
Which made it doubly cataclysmic that Yuri's proposed itinerary, together with the personally-annotated map of Tanzaku Gai, was still in the bedroom where she'd presented it to Minori for a final sanity check. No, triply cataclysmic, because not being able to offer her crush a satisfactory not-date was a whole extra layer of awful to presenting herself as scatterbrained and incompetent before the Nara consort.
"Tachibana? Is something the matter?"
She had been silent too long.
Truth or lie? Incompetent or underprepared? Unreliable or unready?
As she was about to give up and confess, Yuri saw her inner Minori in her mind's eye, waving a banner of encouragement. Yuri couldn't tell what the banner said, Minori's handwriting traditionally emphasising enthusiasm over legibility, but if Minori were here with her unconquerable optimism, she would say... yes, that passion and creativity can overcome any obstacle. It was Minori who, when Yuri insisted that there was a hundred-metre wall between them and the likes of Lady Nara, pointed out that no wall had ever stopped a real shinobi.
(This was factually incorrect, because a competent sealmaster could consecrate a vertical space to Death as easily as any other, but it was also true, which sometimes counted for more.)
"Nothing important, Lady Nara. How do you feel about Tanzaku Gai?" Improvisation wasn't Yuri's strong suit—she had far more faith in a well-laid plan—but she was the one who'd developed the itinerary in the first place. Why shouldn't she be able to reconstruct it?
"Tanzaku Gai? I am not unfond of it, though the crowds can be wearying. As it happens, it is the site of my proposed itinerary for today, if you are willing."
"
You have a proposed itinerary?" Yuri said, the filter between her mouth and brain once more failing miserably. Why did she find herself struck dumb when it counted, yet infinitely capable of faux pas the rest of the time?
Still, that Lady Nara should have gone to the effort, instead of leaving the heavy lifting to the supplicant…
Lady Nara seemed unsurprised by her surprise. "An instance of two individuals spending a day together in order to facilitate greater mutual knowledge and familiarity, arranged in anticipation of a potential long-term relationship, contains its objectives by definition. In a way, that is its main point of appeal. From there, there is nothing that cannot be achieved with ordinary optimisation."
"Then," Yuri said with well-concealed relief, "please lead the way."
-o-
"This means that the daimyo for the Tanzaku domain have always been Aburame retainers, in a way, and the city's culture reflects the Aburame's attitude of benevolent indifference," Yuri said, having discovered an opportunity to impress Lady Nara with her competence after all. Apparently, the until-recently-foreign girl's studies of the Fire Country had been primarily statistical rather than cultural, and while she'd spent time in the city, her focus had generally not been on her surroundings (whatever that meant). Yuri, on the other hand, was the type to capture whatever caught her interest, and make it her own through research.
"Seventy percent of ninja signing out at the gates for personal travel list Tanzaku Gai as their destination. Apart from the proximity, and rich opportunities for entertainment, you must be able to feel it in the air: the lack of militarisation, of a siege mentality. The people here believe, rightly or wrongly, that war won't come to Tanzaku Gai. It's like bathing in nectar."
Lady Nara nodded. Yuri couldn't be completely sure that she really was taking this as an educational experience, and not just letting Yuri calm her nerves by reciting facts Lady Nara already knew perfectly well, but she persisted in her chosen course.
"It would be misleading to say that they're more tolerant of people like us"—she wouldn't lower her voice, she
wouldn't—"but things aren't quite the same outside Leaf, or the civilian villages that would go extinct if they didn't have enough people." Normally, that would be a
major faux pas—a reminder to others that she was close enough to the civilian world to know how they lived—but not with a leader of the KEI.
"How so?"
Was Lady Nara going to make her say it? Madara's burning eyes, she was going to make her say it. "There's less pressure to… to… um…"
Lady Nara waited, either politely or mercilessly.
"…to reproduce," Yuri finished lamely.
Lady Nara nodded. "Whereas we are under constant unstated pressure to provide chakra-capable children for the war effort, such that refusal to do so is construed as a betrayal of the village."
"Yes! And in places like Tanzaku Gai, people can see two girls holding hands, and it might not even cross their mind to ask whether we're a threat to the village's survival or just close friends."
Not that she and Minori had dared. Not until Lady Nara made her stand.
"Can we change the subject?" Lady Nara asked, and that was the point at which Yuri remembered that a clan consort had an absolute duty to provide an heir.
"The early Tanzaku daimyo also had fascinating tastes in art!" Yuri exclaimed. "They thought they could appeal to the Aburame with insect-themed artwork and there's a whole art tradition stemming from their patronage and some really unique architecture which I can show you if you'd like!"
"Yes," Lady Nara said after a second, "that would be acceptable."
-o-
Lady Nara was a mystery. Countless, countless layers of mystery fading into each other like the colours of a sunset, and just as ineffable. Her choice of café, out of every café available in Tanzaku Gai, was just one more colour that confounded the rational mind. Who, in this world or any other, could deliberately choose the notorious Mendoi Café for a first not-date?
"I recommend the sushi," Lady Nara advised. "One of my great disappointments when I first came to Leaf was the poor quality of its seafood, especially within an affordable price range."
Yuri inwardly winced. Not that she didn't appreciate Lady Nara's concern for the pitiful contents of her purse, but maybe she could have done with a little less forthrightness.
The next inevitable problem, not knowing what to say now that they no longer had nightmare giant millipedes to admire, unfortunately solved itself not long after their meal arrived.
"Well, hello there, pretty ladies."
There was a reason women knew to avoid the Mendoi Café, at least unless they had very specific tastes in male companionship.
There were two of the leering degenerates, one bald and with the muscles of a man unsuited to anything more than menial labour (though not much of that either, if he had time to pick up girls in the middle of the day), and the other thin and with a haircut that aimed for suave and landed in the realm of greasy abstract art. Yuri had long since given up on trying to control her own hair, but surely there were limits?
Lady Nara gave Yuri a measuring look, then looked up at the pair.
"We are not interested in additional company," she said coldly.
Take the hint, Yuri thought. Walk away.
"Aw," said the other degenerate, "don't be like that. You come with us, and I promise we'll give you the time of your life."
Emotions poured into Yuri like colours streaming from the palette of a painter caught in the rain. Revulsion at what these boys were and what they stood for. Anger at the interruption to a special day, and a darker shade of anger at rudeness to her crush. That ugly impulse for domination that she'd been taught was a protector's right. And, as an unexpected background colour, pale but pervasive, pity. So much pity. How did they, from Tanzaku Gai of all places, not understand?
She still remembered the day the Hyūga came to her village. (Lady Nara did not need to know that she was first-generation; no one did.) Mister Kashiwagi had tried to make them take his daughter too, insisting she was smart, and strong, and her ninja powers would show themselves any day now. He'd gone too far, laid hands on one of the ninja. The man had broken him, casually, without a second thought. Mister Kashiwagi had still been clinging to life when Yuri's family moved away, but even if he survived, he'd never work the fields again.
One of the boys reached out for Lady Nara, and Yuri's instincts screamed.
She shot up.
"Both of you, let's go."
The boys' lascivious grins widened.
"If you would excuse me, Lady Nara?"
Lady Nara nodded and busied herself with her meal, displaying no further interest in the altercation (which Yuri chose to take as a sign of trust).
Yuri led them around the corner, into an alleyway.
"Oh," the bald one said. "Right here, huh? Well, can't say I—"
Yuri wasn't quite ambidextrous—she'd left her hopes of that career behind—but these were civilians. Two left wrists broke in her grasp, and in the same motion she thrust the hands attached to them over the two boys' mouths, pinning them to the wall by their heads.
They tried to speak, muffled by the gags made of their own hands, but at least had the belated common sense not to resist.
Yuri let the anger take over from the pity.
"Ninja are monsters," she hissed to the two terrified boys. "We are taught to hate, and to destroy what we hate. You will be kind to strangers, and you will be polite, because anyone could be a ninja—and the next monster won't show you mercy."
Then, she twisted, yanking on their broken wrists to throw them down into the filth of the alley. She stood over them for a few seconds, willing them to burn the image of contempt from an unreachable height into their minds. Willing them to understand how much easier it would have been, how much more satisfying, to wipe them from existence so they could never threaten a woman who didn't have a shinobi's power to defend herself.
She asked for another bowl to rinse her hands, and give herself a moment to stop hating everything, before she rejoined Lady Nara for their meal.
"Did you kill them?"
Lady Nara's tone was neutral, but her gaze, focused, sharp like a blade, pinned Yuri in place. The café felt a little colder than when she'd gone out.
"Broken wrists and a warning," Yuri said hastily.
"May I try one of your hosomaki?" Lady Nara asked, with no sense of transition, the tension and the cold disappearing into nothingness so instantly that Yuri might have imagined them.
Suddenly, Yuri understood why Lady Nara had chosen the Mendoi Café, though not whether she'd passed or failed.
-o-
"Look, Lady Nara, it's a Yamanaka with Byakugan eyes!"
Lady Nara had been inexplicably thrilled to discover a new exhibition by Heta Ahō, widely considered to be a painter so horrific that she had to be either a victim of a sealing failure or a secret genius having fun at the world's expense. Yuri had initially been worried about what Lady Nara's tastes might say about her as a person, but that was only until she had been initiated into the Nara school of art appreciation.
"I can see why you would assume that," Lady Nara observed, "since he is tending a Yamanaka flower shop while wearing Yamanaka colours, but the short black hair and the Uchiha crest on his haori suggest far more nefarious designs at play. Generations of selective breeding would be necessary to create a florist half so lethal."
"Is that an Uchiha crest? I thought it was an impressionist rendition of the Death of Seashells."
Lady Nara gave an unexpectedly unladylike snerk and then glanced at Yuri with an adorable sheepish look that had twice the impact when contrasted with her usual remote demeanour.
"There is in fact a painting entitled
The Seashell Reaper which you should come and examine," Lady Nara said quickly. "The Second Raikage's unexpected prowess as the Clam Summoner truly puts my meagre skills to shame."
"The secret is the mountainous terrain, Lady Nara," Yuri explained. "All the climbing practice develops the clams' stamina, and allows them to sustain the lightning speed for which Cloud shinobi are famous."
For a little while, Yuri's worries were forgotten as she learned that the loftiest of nobles and the humblest of genin could join hands (not that she'd dream of it) in mockery of the incompetent.
But for good or ill, Heta was only so prolific. Soon enough, they'd burned their way through the comedy material on offer, and retreated to a nearby park bench to regenerate their supplies of deadpan.
"Thank you, Lady Nara," Yuri said. "I feel I've learned a lot about art appreciation today."
"As have I," Lady Nara said regretfully. "On that subject… I have been meaning to ask. The poem you wrote me… do you craft many such?"
Eek. Yuri's poem had been both elaborate and heartfelt, and also the most embarrassing thing she'd done since those Inoue sonnets that had kickstarted her relationship with Minori. Thinking about Lady Nara reading it was almost painful.
"Some," Yuri gave an accurate but completely opaque answer, much as when Tower paper-pushers tried to scrutinise the Third Unit's operating budget.
"To what end?"
Because it keeps my soul alive when I am murdering people because a piece of paper says they're evil. Because truth has to be diluted before we can stand it. Because poetry can immerse itself in darkness without being defiled, or reach through to a brighter world that none of us will see until we are reborn. Because when there is nothing left of me, this will remain.
"Because it's special to me," Yuri said, hoping she'd get away with it twice.
"Do you… have any thoughts on writing?" Lady Nara asked, allowing it, with what could have been awkwardness if that didn't mean Lady Nara herself being awkward in front of someone like her. "On how to create a story that is not soulless, or derivative, or merely an adjunct to one's own ego?"
"Why?" Yuri asked. "Lady Nara, do you write?"
"No!" Lady Nara exclaimed. "What a preposterous notion. I was merely curious. As one who appreciates literature."
Yuri repaid the favour by not pressing the point.
"I think writing poetry is different to writing prose," she said thoughtfully. "When you write poetry, you take something subtle and nameless, and then you wrap words around it, but the words are there as a guide so someone can reach through them and feel the same nameless thing you feel. When you write prose, the words come first, and then people can use them to find something inside themselves that completes what you've written instead of transcending it."
She caught herself. Even Minori drifted away when Yuri tried to talk literary theory, and she made an earnest effort to keep up with Yuri's more intellectual hobbies.
"But really, these are just random thoughts," she said. "And I don't even write prose. Please don't treat me as an expert. Wait, why are you writing this down?!"
"For later analysis," Lady Nara said matter-of-factly. "Please continue."
Put on the spot, Yuri wasn't sure she could tell Lady Nara her favourite colour, much less her thoughts on the complex and elusive issues at the core of human communication.
This didn't mean she wanted to appear tongue-tied in front of the kind of girl who would turn one word into twenty-five for the sake of clarity. She needed a distraction.
"Say, Lady Nara," she asked slyly, "if you
were to write something, hypothetically, what would it be?"
"Anything," Lady Nara said without pausing to think. "So many authors create fascinating worlds, then fail to populate them with stories to match—or worse, populate them with feeble drivel such as would empty the stomach of an intelligent critic. When vast domains are left unexplored, is it not basic human nature to wish to fill in the blanks, and draw out the latent potential of incomplete settings, characters, or relationships?"
For the first time today, Yuri felt satisfied with herself. Maybe even a little smug.
"It is a pointless hypothetical, however," Lady Nara concluded. "I lack the gift. Though, that said, I would not be wholly averse to hearing more of your thoughts on the subject."
Yuri looked up at the sky, where the setting sun was drawing a line under an extraordinary day. If she stayed out any longer, Minori would have to cook, and that would not end well for anyone.
How much courage did Yuri have left?
"Perhaps," she said in the most casual voice she could manage, "on a second da—y spent together?"
"I will give the matter due consideration," Lady Nara told her. To her surprise, Yuri believed she would.
-o-
Voting is open, and closes on Saturday 5th of December, 1 p.m. New York time.
