The next morning, luck finally smiled on her. Sarada went job-hunting without hope, but at a teahouse on one of the central streets, she was unexpectedly hired.
"What a cutie!" the young waitress exclaimed, clutching an empty tray to her chest. "Come on, I'll take you to the owner."
She kicked off her sandals at the corridor threshold leading to the teahouse's inner rooms, ran barefoot across the polished wooden floor, peeked through the sliding door's gap, and announced loudly:
"Keiko-sama, I found help!"
Sarada followed suit, took off her shoes, and quietly approached from behind her guide.
"Shinko? What do you have there?" a low female voice asked.
The girl turned, grabbed Sarada by the shoulders, and pushed her toward the door.
"Go on, go in."
A plump woman in a kimono sat on the floor smoking. Acrid smoke filled the room, stinging the nose. Glancing at Sarada, the owner squinted and tapped ash from her long thin cigarette.
"Look what a cute girl!" the waitress persisted. "Just precious."
"Cute?" Sarada blushed. "What's cute about me?"
She had never considered herself attractive. Just an ordinary teenage girl. Nothing special. Even downright average.
"Aren't you a bit young? Think you can handle it?" Keiko-sama asked hoarsely, taking another drag.
Shinko didn't miss a beat. She spoke to her employer respectfully, but with surprising freedom, as if they were friends.
"Keiko-sama, I was just like that when you took me on."
"A little older," the woman exhaled a fresh plume of smoke and waved her hand. "Fine, do what you want. You're the one who'll have to deal with her anyway."
"Thank you, thank you!"
Shinko slid the shoji door shut and started jumping for joy, clapping her hands. Her braids bounced in time with her jumps. Sarada stared at her in surprise.
"Well, it worked out, yeah?"
The girl spoke with a noticeable accent. She was probably not from around here.
"Did they hire me?"
She still couldn't believe it.
"Hey, snap out of it," Shinko laughed. "Everything's good, yeah?"
"I just wasn't expecting it," Sarada murmured, flustered.
"Come on, come on. I'll show you everything."
Shinko grabbed her hand, and Sarada meekly let herself be led into the inner rooms of the teahouse.
Her new acquaintance handed her an apron and began explaining where everything was, what needed to be done, how to talk to customers, where to get things and where to take them. Sarada listened and nodded absently.
She kept thinking...
Maybe her encounter with Naruto Uzumaki had such a positive influence on her fate?
She involuntarily recalled the previous evening. The bench, the cool fresh air, the chirping of crickets in the bushes. And the little boy who sat next to her on the bench, kicking his legs and animatedly talking about his boyish life, thrilled that for once he had a listener. Then, calming down, the kid lay his head on her lap and fell asleep. Once he stirred and nearly rolled off the bench onto the ground, but Sarada held him back and was startled by her own impulse. Her hands touched his light t-shirt; Naruto's chest rose and fell faintly with his breathing. He was so warm and small; she wanted to press him to her chest. But she couldn't allow herself that.
This is the Nanadaime Hokage, Sarada. Get a grip.
"Hey, you listening?" Shinko's voice pulled her from her thoughts.
"Huh? Yeah, yeah, I'm listening."
"We get paid on Fridays."
Someone called from the teahouse:
"Shinko! Where are you?"
"That one just won't settle down, yeah?" the girl snorted irritably. "Anyway, let's go. Ask if anything's unclear."
Sarada was nervous. The teahouse was full of new things. She got confused and lost at first, but by mid-day she had gotten the hang of it. And there were fewer customers.
"Shinko-sem pai, thank you," Sarada said to her new coworker when they got a free moment and sat on the bench outside the teahouse to rest. "You really helped me out."
Shinko stretched out her legs and smiled contentedly.
"Oh, no big deal. I was the same way once. By the way, Sarada. Why'd you suddenly start looking for work?"
"I need money," Sarada replied dully, trying not to look the friendly girl in the eye.
"Your parents okay with it?"
"I don't have parents."
She wasn't lying. In this time, she really didn't have parents, and in the future, only her father was left.
Shinko blushed and fell silent.
"Sorry, yeah? I didn't know."
"It's fine."
Sarada caught herself thinking that she had already come to terms with her mother being gone. It had all happened so long ago, and not to her, but to some other Sarada who hadn't seen the Kyuubi tragedy, hadn't slept on the roof of the old Hidden Leaf Village or on a bench with the Nanadaime Hokage in her arms. Too much had happened in the last few days.
She had felt lonely after her mother's death, but back then, in the future, she had friends and her father. They supported her, invited her over. They tried to take care of her. But she had truly become lonely the moment the deity's alarm clock went off and the technique hurled her back to October 10th many years ago.
"Mom died," Sarada said. "We were renting an apartment, but now I can't afford it. Do you know anywhere cheap to stay?"
"For the money you're gonna make here at the teahouse?" Shinko frowned.
She shoved her hands in her apron pockets and twisted her sandal toes, thinking.
"There are flophouses, y'know... Cheap ones. But they're not great. I'd rather invite you to my place, but my parents would be against it, yeah."
"Not great is still not great, Sarada thought. Anything would do.
"I'll give you the address, sure."
"Thank you so much."
Sarada leaned back on the bench and relaxed. The sun pleasantly warmed her legs and soaked into her black sweater.
"Senpai?"
"Yeah."
Sarada hesitated, not sure how to ask best.
"You took me on like that. Everyone else turned me down before this teahouse. Why did you stand up for me?"
Shinko smiled.
"Because I was just like you. At thirteen, I was looking for work."
She took a deep breath, as if recalling something of her own.
"I was a genin, yeah."
Sarada jumped.
"What?"
Shinko slyly glanced at her.
"Yeah, I graduated from the academy, worked on a genin team about three years ago. But then I realized it wasn't for me. So I just up and left. Mom said find a job if you're not gonna be a ninja."
"But why'd you quit being a shinobi?"
"My teammate died. His name was Tenma, yeah. He was annoying, always picking on Itachi. We argued all the time."
The girl grew sad.
"Then he died and... that's it. I realized I didn't want that."
"With Itachi?" Sarada repeated slowly, looking into her coworker's eyes.
"Uchiha Itachi," Shinko gazed into the distance, as if vividly recalling her former teammate. "He was just a kid, but he outdid us all by miles, yeah. Second reason I decided to leave. It's tough, y'know. Seeing a genius like that every day and realizing you're so, so far behind."
Sarada froze. Fate seemed to be mocking her. Why, out of all possible places in Konoha, did she get hired at the teahouse where her uncle's former teammate worked?
But something didn't add up.
"Shinko is already grown up. She's about sixteen, Sarada thought. Uncle was about five when Dad and the Nanadaime were born. Right now, the Seventh is almost the same age as Uncle on the day of the Kyuubi attack. So Uchiha Itachi should be my age. Maybe even younger. How could they have been on the same team as Shinko?"
She skeptically eyed her new acquaintance.
"Senpai, but how old is Itachi?" Sarada asked doubtfully.
Shinko thought.
"About your age."
"But then how..."
"Oh, that? He's a genius, yeah. Itachi graduated the academy in his first year and joined our class when we were twelve. So they put us on the same team, yeah."
In his first year of training...
Sarada remembered that small confident boy who had dragged her through the chaos of destruction, and her thoughts: "What will he become?"
"What is he like? Uchiha Itachi..."
Shinko thought again.
"He was small and serious. Quiet too. Only spoke when it mattered. Idiot Tenma was always at him, but Itachi acted like he didn't notice. He had everything under control, yeah. Any mission, any plan—he controlled and orchestrated it all, even Minazuki-sensei went along without arguing." Shinko sighed. "The perfect shinobi. Emotionless, cold-blooded, and incredibly talented."
"But if he's an Uchiha," Sarada said uncertainly, "then his talent makes sense. Sharingan..."
"You know a lot about shinobi, yeah?" Shinko said, surprised. "No, when we were on the same team, he didn't have the Sharingan. Itachi awakened it later, after I left. I get what you're saying. Uchiha is a powerful clan. But Uchiha Itachi is a genius even among them."
Sarada stared down the road. Stupid slip-up asking about the Sharingan. It was easy talking to Shinko, but sempai shouldn't know she was a shinobi too. Still, Sarada was very interested in her father's older brother.
"Will you honor Itachi's will?" Dad had once asked their enemy. "You know nothing about him."
What was Itachi's will?
"Mysterious uncle, genius of the Uchiha clan. Who is he that people still talk about his will years later, when he's long dead?"
"By the way," Shinko said suddenly. "You look like him. Same black hair and black eyes as you."
She laughed brightly.
"You're not an Uchiha by any chance, Sarada?"
"Nonsense."
Sarada adjusted her glasses and pouted offendedly, as if Shinko had tried to insult her.
"Oh, another customer. I'll go. You can sit if you're tired. Being on your feet all day is tough at first."
Shinko picked up the tray from the bench and flitted back into the teahouse.
Sarada understood what Shinko meant when she talked about cheap flophouses. Every city has that one place you shouldn't go—a sewer where all the riffraff hangs out. Konoha had one too. Sarada stepped onto the street where, according to sempai, she could crash for next to nothing, and immediately regretted coming.
"Maybe the roof isn't so bad?" she thought hopelessly.
The house walls were scrawled with obscenities. Two drunken men arguing were voicing those same words: the soberer one held the other by the collar of his sweater, shaking him and slamming his back against the wooden fence. The boards creaked under the impacts, and Sarada felt like the fence would collapse with the next hit. A dirty barefoot man with long hair falling over his face sat right on the road by a house. His eyes weren't visible. Maybe he was asleep, or maybe watching the girl fate had blown into a district totally unfit for kids.
Just seeing the street made Sarada uneasy. As a shinobi, she could fend off ordinary civilians if they bothered her, but she didn't want to reveal herself, and it was best to avoid unnecessary confrontations. Otherwise, explain to the Leaf's Military Police where you got the Sharingan from.
Shinko had loaned her some money to stay somewhere and fed her dinner at the teahouse—the owner treated her workers well and let them eat right there.
Sarada cautiously made her way down the street, repeating to herself: "I'm lucky." She really was. Lucky that Shinko had been on Uncle's team. And that Uncle was a genius, and the kind girl, seeing him, decided to quit being a shinobi and work at the teahouse. Lucky that Shinko needed help. Lucky...
She spotted the crooked flophouse sign, went through the courtyards, dodging another shady group in a stinking passage, exhaled, and climbed to the room that promised to be her new home for a small fee.
A short squinty-eyed man sat behind the counter, chewing dried roots and reading a newspaper. Sarada coughed to get his attention. The man didn't react.
"Can I stay here?" Sarada asked loudly.
The squinty little guy looked up from the paper and stared at her greedily.
"Money."
"How much?" Sarada asked nervously.
The man nodded at the cardboard with prices.
Sarada bit her lip and laid coins on the counter. The man swept them up, counted carefully, made a note in a crumpled notebook, and said:
"Woman's side left. Shower opposite."
For a few seconds, Sarada tried to figure out what he meant, then headed to the women's dorm. Shadows flickered behind the closed paper door. Sarada slid the shoji open and peeked inside cautiously.
Futons lay directly on the empty room's floor. Half-dressed women of various ages, mostly young, sat on their bedding, talking loudly, brushing hair, or trying to sleep despite the flophouse racket. A group by the wall had pushed futons together and was playing dice. A few women glanced at her with mild interest; others ignored her. Sarada closed the shoji behind her and timidly stood by the wall.
Now what?
The women felt completely at ease. Sarada watched them, listening to her pounding heart. Dice rattled in a wooden cup—from the same corner where the women's group had settled on the pushed-together futons. Some wore robes, others street clothes. A third sat in underwear, unashamed as bra straps slipped off shoulders with every arm movement.
"Girl," one future neighbor said to her. "Don't just stand. Grab a bed."
"Where?"
She was thirsty again, like the day after the Kyuubi attack.
"In the cabinet there."
The woman pointed to the wooden wall.
"Thanks."
"I'd never have guessed that's not a wall," Sarada thought, sliding the panel open and picking a rolled futon from the shelf.
She unrolled it on a free patch of floor and went to the shower.
"No, this isn't home," Sarada thought, lying in bed a bit later. "I even doubt it's better than the roof."
Talk, laughter, and dice rattling didn't stop. Lights stayed on. Sarada curled under the blanket, still dressed, clutching her pouch with the medkit and weapons to her chest, unable to shake the nagging thought: "Hope there are no fleas or ticks here. Right?"
She had stopped seeing the world as a living story. At first, she feared touching anything, showing herself, talking to people. Afraid it would cause major changes in the future. But the past was drawing her in. Now Sarada was part of the story too.
She had a job and a place to sleep. She had managed to gain some footing in this unfamiliar time. But what to do, how to save her loved ones—she still had no idea.
And most importantly: when would the next wave come?
Last time, less than a day passed before the wave threw her half a dozen years into the future. But now the second day was ending, and no wave. Instability. A wave could hit any moment, hurling her who-knows-where, maybe even back to her own time.
Falling asleep with that thought amid the women's flophouse noise was especially hard. But Shinko was right. A full day on her feet at the teahouse took its toll. Plus, Sarada had slept outside two nights, and the soft futon did its job: sleep tugged at her. The last thought in her drifting tired mind whispered:
"Just no fleas."
***
Read the story months ahead of the public release — early chapters are available on my Patreon: Granulan