Chapter 8: The S-Rank Mission of Laundry Day
The enemy was not a rogue ninja. It was not a giant rock. It was a pile of dirty laundry that smelled vaguely of sweat and stale gym socks.
Saturday at the Sunrise Home meant "Community Service Day." For the children hoping to be adopted or those aiming for hero schools, it was a chance to show discipline. For Obito Uchiha, it was a baffling ritual that involved machines he did not understand and chemicals that made his nose itch.
He stood in the basement laundry room, staring at the white, boxy machine in front of him. It had a circular glass door and a panel of buttons that looked more complex than the seal formula for a barrier jutsu.
"It is a simple objective," Obito muttered to himself, crossing his arms—or rather, crossing his left arm over his plastic right one. "Insert clothes. Add cleaning agent. Activate the vortex."
He looked at the basket of clothes next to him. It wasn't just his clothes. It was the communal bin for Room 2B. That meant his hoodies, Kenji's weirdly elastic jumpsuits, and the socks of a kid named Hiro who could secrete slime from his feet.
Obito picked up a bottle of blue liquid. The label said 'Ultra Power Stain Remover: Kills 99.9% of Bacteria.'
"Ninety-nine percent," Obito analyzed. "That leaves a one percent survival rate for the enemy. Unacceptable."
He opened the circular door. He shoved the clothes inside with his left hand. Then, he faced the dilemma of the detergent. The cap had a line on it.
How much is enough?
In the shinobi world, you washed your clothes in the river. You used a bar of soap and a rock. Simple. Here, if you used too much, the machine would foam over (as Kenji had warned him). If you used too little, Hiro's slime socks would still smell like... well, slime.
"You're overthinking it again," a voice drawled from the doorway.
Obito didn't turn. He recognized the footsteps. "I am calculating the chemical-to-fabric ratio, Jiro. It is a precise science."
Kyoka Jiro walked in, carrying her own basket. She was wearing a baggy t-shirt and sweatpants, her earphone jacks draped lazily over her shoulders. She looked tired, her usual cool demeanor softened by the morning grogginess.
"It's soap, Obito. Not gunpowder," she said, setting her basket down on the machine next to his. "Just fill the cap to the line. Pour it in the drawer. Press 'Start'."
"The drawer?" Obito blinked. "I thought you poured it on the clothes."
Jiro stared at him. "Have you been pouring detergent directly onto your clothes for the past month?"
"Maybe," Obito admitted, looking away. "It gets them clean."
"It ruins the fabric," Jiro sighed. She reached over, opened a small compartment on the top of Obito's machine, and pointed. "Liquid goes here. Softener goes there. And bleach goes there, but don't touch the bleach. I feel like you'd accidentally gas the whole building."
Obito watched her carefully. Target identified: Soap Drawer.
He poured the liquid. He closed the drawer. Then he looked at the buttons. Normal. Delicate. Heavy Duty. Quick Wash. Permanent Press.
"What is a 'Permanent Press'?" Obito asked. "Is it a torture technique?"
Jiro laughed, a short, raspy sound. "No, it's for... actually, I don't know. Just hit 'Normal'. It solves everything."
She started her own machine with practiced ease. The hum of the water filling the drums filled the small room, drowning out the distant noise of the orphanage upstairs.
Obito sat on the floor, leaning his back against the vibrating machine. The rhythmic thump-thump-swish was strangely hypnotic.
Jiro sat down next to him, pulling her knees to her chest. "So, Ninja-boy. How's the arm?"
Obito looked at his right hand. The plastic fingers were currently curled into a loose fist. "It is... functional. I practiced the chakra coating yesterday. I managed five steps on the tree before I slipped."
"Five steps is good," Jiro nodded. "Considering you're defying gravity with a piece of plastic."
"It's not enough," Obito muttered. "Kakashi could climb a mountain with one hand tied behind his back when he was six."
"Kakashi," Jiro repeated the name. "You talk about him a lot. Was he your friend? Or your rival?"
Obito closed his eye. The image of silver hair and a mask flashed in his mind. The look of disdain, then respect, then... horror.
"Both," Obito said softly. "He was a genius. I was a failure. He followed the rules. I broke them. We hated each other."
"Sounds like a classic shonen manga dynamic," Jiro mused. "But you said 'was'. Is he..."
She let the question hang in the air.
"I don't know," Obito admitted. This was the hardest part. The uncertainty. "I saved him. I pushed him out of the way of the rock. I thought I died. When I woke up here... I don't know if he made it out. I don't know if Rin made it out."
"Rin?"
"The girl," Obito's voice cracked slightly. "The one who held the team together. The one who... healed us."
Jiro didn't say anything for a long time. She just let the washing machines fill the silence. She unplugged one of her jacks from her phone and gently tapped it against Obito's plastic wrist.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
It was a slow, steady rhythm.
"You're not a failure, Obito," she said finally. "You saved your friend. That's the ultimate hero move. Doesn't matter if you have a license or not. Doesn't matter if you're a genius or a dunce. You moved when it mattered."
Obito felt a lump in his throat. He swallowed it down. "I promised I'd become Hokage. To change the world. To stop the wars."
"You can still do that," Jiro said. She looked at the spinning clothes in the window. "This world has wars too. Different kinds. Villains, corruption, people getting left behind. It needs a Hokage. Or whatever the equivalent is."
"Symbol of Peace," Obito quoted the banner from the mall with a sneer.
"Maybe something better," Jiro suggested. "Maybe a Symbol of... Reality? Someone who knows that saving people isn't always pretty."
The machine beeped loudly, startling Obito.
"Spin cycle," Jiro announced. "The best part."
They watched the clothes spin into a blur of color. It was a mundane moment. Just two kids in a basement. But for Obito, it felt like a brief ceasefire in the war inside his head.
After the laundry was hung out to dry in the backyard—Obito refusing to use the dryer because "sun and wind are natural allies"—they were assigned their next task: cleaning the common room windows.
Matron Satako handed Obito a spray bottle and a squeegee.
"Top to bottom, Obito-kun. No streaks," she ordered, then marched off to supervise Kenji, who was trying to clean the ceiling fan with his webs.
Obito stood before the large glass pane. It was dirty with fingerprints, city grime, and the residue of the rain.
"Another barrier to clear," Obito whispered.
He sprayed the glass. He lifted the squeegee with his left hand. He swiped down.
A perfect clear line appeared.
Satisfying.
He swiped again. And again. His movements were precise. His Sharingan might be gone, but his muscle memory for repetitive tasks—like throwing shuriken—was intact. Spray. Swipe. Spray. Swipe.
"You're pretty good at that," Jiro commented. She was dusting the bookshelves nearby, using her jacks to vividly vibrate the dust off the books before wiping it up. "You have a rhythm."
"It is all about the angle," Obito explained without stopping. "Forty-five degrees. Constant pressure. If you hesitate, you leave a mark."
He reached a spot that was too high for his left hand. Instinctively, he switched the squeegee to his right hand—the prosthetic.
He lifted it. The plastic shoulder joint whined. He placed the rubber edge against the glass.
He tried to pull down.
SCREEEEEECH.
The rubber stuttered against the glass, creating a horrific noise and leaving a jagged, ugly streak of water and grime.
Obito froze. He stared at the streak. It ruined the perfect clarity of the window.
"Damn it," he hissed.
He tried to correct it. He pushed harder.
CRACK.
A spiderweb fracture appeared in the glass, right under the pressure of the plastic hand.
Obito pulled back as if burned. The squeegee clattered to the floor.
"Obito!" Jiro dropped her duster and ran over. "Are you okay?"
Obito stared at the cracked window. He hadn't meant to push that hard. He couldn't feel the glass. He couldn't judge the pressure.
"I broke it," Obito whispered. "I break everything."
He looked at his plastic hand. It was just a tool, but a tool he couldn't master. It was a blunt instrument in a world that required a delicate touch.
"It's just a window," Jiro said, grabbing his flesh arm. "Hey, look at me. It's just glass."
"It represents my control," Obito said, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "I have no control. If this was a person... if I was trying to save someone..."
"But it's not a person," Jiro said firmly. "It's a pane of glass. And you're still learning. You're... what, three weeks out of surgery? Give yourself a break."
Matron Satako appeared, drawn by the sound of the crack. She looked at the window, then at Obito's pale face.
Most adults would have scolded him. They would have yelled about the cost.
But Satako sighed and adjusted her glasses. "Well," she said calmly. "I suppose that window was getting old anyway. Kenji! Bring the duct tape!"
Obito looked at the Matron. "I... I will pay for it. When I start missions... I mean, when I get a job."
"You can pay for it by finishing the rest of the windows," Satako said. "With your left hand only. Consider it... training."
She walked away.
Obito looked at the crack. He picked up the squeegee with his left hand.
"She's cool," Jiro noted.
"She is... tolerant," Obito corrected. But deep down, he was relieved.
That evening, the sun set in a blaze of orange and purple, reflecting off the glass towers of Musutafu. Obito and Jiro sat on the roof of the orphanage—a restricted area that everyone ignored.
They were eating ice pops. Obito had chosen a blue one because it reminded him of the Rasengan. Jiro had a purple one.
"So," Jiro said, swinging her legs over the edge. "You really want to go to UA?"
"It is the strongest hidden village... I mean, academy, in this region," Obito corrected himself. "If I want to change things, I need to be at the top. I need power."
"UA is hard to get into," Jiro warned. "The entrance exam is brutal. Robots. Points. It favors combat quirks."
"Robots?" Obito raised an eyebrow. "Puppets?"
"Giant metal machines with lasers," Jiro clarified. "And you have to destroy them. With one arm and no quirk... Obito, the odds are practically zero."
Obito bit into his ice pop. The cold stung his teeth.
"The odds were zero when the rock fell," he said quietly. "The odds were zero when I woke up. I don't care about odds."
He looked at her. "What about you? Why do you want to be a hero? To get famous? To sell toys?"
Jiro looked down at her hands. She wiggled her fingers. "No. My parents... they're musicians. They make people feel things with their songs. Happiness, sadness, excitement. But music can't save you when a villain knocks down your house."
She looked out at the city lights. "I want to save people. But not just physically. I want to be the kind of hero who... listens. Who hears the people crying for help when everyone else is just watching the big fight. My quirk isn't flashy. I can't punch a building down. But I can hear a heartbeat under ten tons of rubble."
Obito stared at her. He remembered being under the rubble. He remembered wishing someone could hear him.
"That is..." Obito searched for the word. "That is a worthy path. A true shinobi path. Info gathering and rescue."
Jiro chuckled. "You and your ninja terms. But thanks."
She finished her ice pop and stood up. "I'm going to practice bass. You coming? Or are you going to stare at the moon and brood?"
Obito looked up. The moon was bright tonight.
"I have training to do," Obito said. "I need to fix the window technique. I need to learn to control the pressure."
"Don't break any more glass," Jiro warned, heading for the access door.
"I won't."
When she was gone, Obito didn't go to the window. He went to the railing. He looked at the metal bar.
He placed his prosthetic hand on it.
Pressure, he thought. Not a grip. A touch.
He closed his eye. He visualized the chakra not as a cushion this time, but as a sensor. A very thin film of energy extending from his shoulder, wrapping around the plastic, trying to feel the metal through the dead material.
It was impossible. Plastic had no nerves.
But Obito Uchiha was stubborn.
If I can't feel the metal, he thought, I will feel the resistance.
He pressed down. The servo whined. He eased up. The whine stopped.
He listened. Not with his ears, but with his body. The vibration of the motor told him how hard he was pressing.
Whine... pitch change... stop.
Whine... pitch change... stop.
He spent hours there, just pressing his plastic hand against the railing, learning the language of the machine attached to his body. He was learning to listen, just like Jiro said.
By the time he went back inside, his shoulder was numb, but he had learned something vital. The arm wasn't dead. It had a voice. A mechanical, electric voice. And if he listened closely enough, he could speak back to it.
Obito walked past the broken window in the common room. He paused. He touched the duct tape with his left hand.
"Next time," he promised the glass. "No cracks."
He went to his room, where Kenji was asleep, mumbling about flies. Obito lay down, the smell of fresh laundry detergent on his pillow—thanks to Jiro—filling his nose.
It wasn't the smell of home. But it was a clean smell. A fresh start.
Obito closed his eye and drifted off, dreaming not of rocks, but of a giant robot, and a boy with one arm tearing it apart, bolt by bolt.