The bell above the door jingled, a cheerful, tinkling sound that felt aggressively normal after a week spent in collapsing castles and giant snake guts.
The humidity hit me first—a wall of cool, moist air that made my dried-out skin itch in protest, contrasting sharply with the dry dust still coating my throat.
The Yamanaka Flower Shop smelled like petrichor and pollen. It was a riot of color—buckets of sunflowers, sprays of baby's breath, and rows of potted violets that looked far happier than I felt.
A hidden misting system hissed overhead, coating a bed of ferns in a fine, diamond-dust dew that caught the afternoon light.
"Welcome!" a voice called from the back.
Ino Yamanaka emerged from behind a wall of hydrangeas. She was wearing her usual purple outfit, apron tied neatly around her waist, looking infuriatingly clean. Her blonde ponytail bounced as she walked. She smelled like citrus and expensive shampoo, a sharp, clean scent that had no business existing in the same zip code as me.
"Sylvie!" she gasped, her eyes widening. "You're back! I heard the mission went... wait."
She stopped three feet away from me. Her nose wrinkled.
"Oh wow," Ino said, waving a hand in front of her face. "You smell like a wet dog rolled in a swamp."
I could practically see the heat lines of stink radiating off my jacket, warring violently with the delicate scent of the lilies next to me.
"It's called 'Eau de Trauma'," I said dryly, adjusting my glasses. They were smeared with grime. "It's all the rage in the Land of Fire right now."
"Mother!" Ino called over her shoulder. "Sylvie's here! And she needs help!"
A woman stepped out from the back office.
She looked like Ino in twenty years—same blonde hair, same blue eyes—but there was a sharpness to her features, an elegance that felt older and more structured. She wore a traditional kimono, not ninja gear, and her hair was pinned up with an ornate, lacquered comb.
"Inouye-san," Ino introduced, gesturing grandly. "This is my teammate's... uh, friend. Sylvie."
I bowed, feeling dust fall off my jacket as I moved. "Nice to meet you, Inouye-san. Uh, In-no-way-san?"
The woman smiled. It was a gentle, terrifyingly polite smile.
"It's Inou-ye, dear," she corrected softly. "We respect the old ways in this house."
The silk of her kimono rustled like dry leaves—a sound that felt far too loud and precise in the quiet shop.
"Right. Inouye-san," I corrected quickly. "Sorry. I'm a little... foggy."
Ino walked around me, inspecting the disaster zone that was my appearance. She poked a lock of my hair with one finger. It was stiff with dirt and dried river water.
"Sylvie, seriously," Ino said, genuine concern leaking into her voice. "Why is your hair like this? Have you even looked in a mirror?"
"I haven't showered in about a week," I confessed, letting out a long, weary sigh. "I think I have water-based trauma. Every time I see a faucet, I expect it to turn into a dragon or something."
Ino looked at her mother. She didn't say anything, but the look passed between them—a silent, feminine communication frequency that I had yet to unlock.
Inouye looked at me. She took in the frizzled roots—my natural light brown fighting a losing war against the faded pink dye—the dirt embedded in my pores, and the exhausted slump of my shoulders.
Her face crinkled. It wasn't disgust. It was the look you give a stray cat that just fell out of a dumpster.
"Oh, you poor thing," Inouye murmured. She nodded once, decisive. "Go. Take her upstairs. The back garden bath is warm."
Ino grabbed my arm. "Come on. You're not going to the public bathhouse looking like this. You'll scare the civilians."
She dragged me through the shop, past the perfect flowers, and into the private residence behind the storefront. I didn't argue. I didn't have the energy to argue, and honestly, the thought of a private shower where no one could see the bruises sounded like heaven.
The wooden stairs creaked under my boots, shedding dry flakes of mud with every step I took, leaving a trail of crumbs like a very dirty Hansel and Gretel.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing under a stream of hot water. The pipes groaned deep in the walls, a mechanical shudder before the deluge hit, and the sound of the water drumming against the tiles drowned out the rest of the world.
It was glorious.
I scrubbed my scalp until it tingled. The water ran down my back, turning dark gray before finally clearing. The steam filled the small, tiled room, smelling of lavender soap and safety. I watched a literal clod of mud dissolve near the drain, swirling away like a miniature landslide until the white ceramic was visible again.
I grabbed the bottle of hair dye Ino had shoved into my hands ("Because friends don't let friends have roots," she had declared). I squeezed the magenta gel into my palm and worked it through my hair.
The shower turned neon pink. The color bled down my neck, over my shoulders, turning the water into a fluorescent river. The chemical tang of the dye cut through the steam, sharp and artificial, stinging the back of my throat but overriding the smell of the swamp.
I closed my eyes, letting the heat soak into my bones.
It wasn't just the dirt washing away. It was the fear. The shaking hands. The feeling of being small in a world of giants.
I ran my hands over my arms, feeling the smooth skin, the muscles that were slowly, painfully starting to define themselves.
It's... different.
I opened my eyes, watching the pink water swirl down the drain.
But it's also right. Like... I was always meant to be this way. Soft, but not weak.
My skin turned pink under the heat, stinging pleasantly where the new scratches from the castle debris were still knitting together.
I turned the water off. The silence in the bathroom was heavy, but for the first time in a week, it wasn't threatening.
Back at my room that evening, the lantern flickered, casting long, shivering shadows against the wall that reminded me, unpleasantly, of swaying tall grass. Outside, a cicada buzzed once and fell silent, as if the night itself was holding its breath to listen.
I sat at my desk. The surface was a chaotic mosaic of paper scraps—pieces of a notebook page that had been ripped apart, crumpled, and then smoothed back out. I was trying to link them back together like a poorly made puzzle. The paper felt rough under my fingertips, the fibers raised and stiff where they had been soaked in sweat and dried in the sun.
The nib of my pen hovered over a scrap of parchment stained with a deep, toxic violet hue—dried miasmic blood from Manda.
I felt a strange restlessness in my hands. My fingers began to tap against the wood.
Tap... tap... tap.
No. That wasn't it.
I snapped my fingers.
Snap... snap... snap.
The rhythm was addictive. It was sharp. It was the cadence of a truth told through a sneer. I closed my eyes and saw him again—Orochimaru, standing on the head of a giant snake, his arms broken and useless, laughing at the sky. He had looked monstrous. He had looked high. And he had looked utterly unburdened by the "sanctity" of the village's myths.
He had looked at a "Great Sage" and seen a lecher in a mask.
The memory tasted like copper—blood and old coins—coating the back of my tongue.
I began to write, my pen flying to keep up with the snapping of my left hand.
(Snap, snap, snap!)
Neon-lights
Leaf-town
Zip-zapping the ninja like insects
In the dark we are hiding
Ryō for 'a new life' just like
Cheap toys in a plastic ball.
I stopped, staring at the ink.
The poem was cynical. It was mentally ill. It took my deepest, most aching desire—to find a "new beginning" with the boy I followed—and compared it to a 10-ryo vending machine prize. Cheap. Disposable. Something you bought and then lost under the couch.
Then Anko's voice rang in my memory, sharp as a kunai.
"He's just a junkie who broke his own toys because he got bored playing with them."
I felt a chill crawl up my spine.
I wasn't just writing poetry; I was filtering my soul through the rhythm Orochimaru had beaten into the dirt with his dead arms. It was a terrifying realization: I had taken the poison of a villain and turned it into the ink for my own truth.
Anko's voice echoed inside my mind again: "Don't you dare admire the performance."
"I'm... not..." I protested aloud to the empty room.
But my hand was still trembling. Even in his madness, the snake had taught me how to see beauty in darkness. How to find the rhythm in the breakdown. My pulse throbbed in my fingertips, syncing perfectly with the imagined clack-clack of the wooden blocks, a metronome made of bone.
I folded the paper carefully. I didn't crumple it up this time. I slid it under the drawer of my desk, hidden in the gap between the wood and the frame.
The wood of the desk was cool and solid, grounding me even as my mind tried to drift back to the purple smoke.
The rhythm still snapped in the back of my mind, faint but persistent.
Snap... snap... snap.
I blew out the lantern. The room went dark, but the beat remained, contained within the art.