A shinobi is a high school student like an other - 11
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Iruka was waiting for me some steps ahead, with curiosity on his face. I could see it clearly since his hair was tied on the back of his neck, and not falling in his face and hiding his expressions. It seemed that he was tying his hair just outside the school.
"What did Ko' want?"
I shrugged, the implications of what had said Kotetsu just beginning to sink. Genma was right, as much as I hated to said it: I was stingy in civilian.
"Oh, nothing... he sure seems quite protective..."
Iruka turned away, lifted his head to the skies and resumed his climbing of the stairs -but he had not turned away quickly enough for me to miss the blush spreading on his face. We passed a level, and we climbed some more. His jeans weren’t baggy enough to hide his ass, just at the level of my eyes in those stairs… Bad thoughts you naughty boy. I cleared my throat.
“Er, Iruka? What happened in the bar exactly?” I said, playing the part of the guy who hadn’t understood a single thing earlier.
He glanced my way, still climbing the stairs.
“The guy who talked, it’s my uncle, Syd. He asked me to go fetch Shika before he freezes to death on the roof, and he added that Ko and me were done for now.”
“Syd? Is he a Pink Floyd fan? And … Shika?”
“Hey, you’re the first one making the link -by the way, I don’t know if he’s a fan… And Shika, that’s shorter for Shikamaru, my cousin.”
It was getting better and better. The whole family had decided to surprise me.
“As in Nara ‘The shadows Tactician’ Shikamaru?”
I heard his smile in his voice.
“Hey, great… Syd is a fanatic about ninja’s history, he couldn’t help himself… My aunt named their daughter, and he named their son.”
"Go on, frighten me for life, how is called your cousin?"
He laughed. "No need to be afraid of her name; she's called Emily."
The stairs finally stopped, three stories higher than the ground. Iruka opened the door -which was opening on the roof. We slalomed between the aerials and the solar panels to the edge of the flat roof. A brown haired boy was laying flat on his back on the wide low wall that was marking the end of the roof.
“Hey, Shika, Syd want you to go back inside,” told him Iruka, once at hearing range.
The wind seemed colder here on the roof, than in the streets when I had arrived. Iruka’s cousin -Shikamaru, couldn’t be older than twelve, and was wearing just a cotton sweatshirt. I was very happy with my pullover, thank you very much.
"Pff," made the kid, "no way of be quiet..."
He rose from the wall, an expression of intense boredom etched on his face - an expression that wasn’t fitting at all on a so young face.
"He just doesn't want you to catch a cold -do you really want to have Alice on your back all day?"
The kid -no, Shikamaru grunted something that sounded like 'How troublesome...' while slaloming at his turn between panels and aerials to the door, without looking back once at us who were staying on the roof.
Iruka stretched, raising his arms over his head and yawing for good measure. The wind was playing with the few brown hair which had escaped the hair tie. He spoke when the door slammed in the strangely quiet air.
"Shika is cool once you know him, he's just a bit weird and totally unmotivated."
"...seems I had understood that part. Who's Alice?"
"My aunt, Syd's wife... by the way, how did you know about Nara Shikamaru?"
I tried to keep a steady tone of voice, the kind of voice every student used to talk about nothing and everything… I gulped, looking away from Iruka’s curious gaze.
“It had been a inevitable point of my education.”
It didn’t fail to happen. My voice had been cold enough to freeze Antarctica over in winter.
“I…,” began Iruka, obviously feeling that this little chat was sailing towards dangerous shores.
I cut him right away, a hand at the back of my neck and a lopsided smile on my face. "Sorry, I don't really like to talk about it -some other time maybe?"
As if I would be ready to talk about my father to anyone someday. But, who knows, Iruka would may be the exception.
Iruka smiled back at me. His breath was beginning to create little clouds of white vapor. He slide his hands in his pockets, turning on the roof toward the major part of Konoha. We could see the skyscrapers of the business center, far away, and closer, the complicated roofs of the older buildings. We could see the tops here and there scattered of the temples, churches and others religious constructions dispersed in the city according to the religious denominations in effect. We could see almost all of Konoha sprawled before us, draping herself in her clothes of light for the night who was coming fast, the light from the lampposts, windows and other beltway creating orange-colored halos under the sky low and heavy with white clouds.
I put myself just next to Iruka, taking in the shared silence the sight of this city; this swarming city I was making work from the shadows; this changing city I loved as much as I hated her.
“You got the feeling that the whole town is yours from here,” softly said Iruka. “She’s so beautiful… but I always wanted to see the sea from here…”
I slowly nodded, agreeing with him. And I could sense there was a story under his words, I could heard it.
He suddenly frowned, raising a hand as if to take his head between his hands before letting it go back to his side. He breathed in deeply. All this, I had learn to recognize them as the signs that were indicating he had one of those headaches he had ‘all the time’. I frowned too.
“Hey Iruka, what are those headaches exactly?”
He hugged himself against the cold.
“Do you mind if we continue somewhere warmer?”
I wasn't minding at all, the wind was beginning to pass through my pullover and slide under my tee-shirt. We went by the same way than a bit earlier, stopping at the second level. He unlocked the door closest to the stairs while explaining.
"Syd, Shika and the rest of the family live on the third floor, over our heads. Behind, just over the bar, it's mostly stocking space; and here, it's the employees' apartments. There's only mine and Sung's that are used though."
He made me enter into what I thought to be just his room. In place of a room, it was a real apartment, with a kitchen with a counter opening, a door open on a bathroom, a big bed under the only but huge window, a desk in a corner. There was a lot of place, shelves disappearing under the books, pictures and posters on the walls, a patchwork quilt thrown on the bed, clothes scattered here and there, magazines on the floor. It didn't looked like my room at all, nor like my house. It was lived in and used; and , as the pub downstairs, it was comfortable and cozy-known-some place safe... This place was feeling like home, I had no other word to put it.
"Ah-er... sorry about the mess..."
"Na, don't worry, you should see my room... Sung?"
Iruka closed the door behind him, putting his key on the already-well-inhabited counter.
"SungBae Yong, it's the guy who's in the kitchen usually, but he caught the mother of all flu and he went back home -Kotetsu is doing most of his work till he come back."
He fished two bottles from hs fridge and we sit -where we could-, one on the bed, one on the only chair once the stuff sitting on it had met the magazines. There was a framed picture next to me, and I couldn't help but picking it up to take a closer look. A little five or six-years-old Iruka without his scar was looking at me, between a woman with the same eyes as him, fair hair and generally looking European, and a darker-skinned man, with black hair and slanted eyes. They had to be his parents.
"Aah! Don't look at that!" said Iruka, trying to catch it back.
"Why not? You're sooo cute on this picture!" I answered. He violently flushed, still trying to make me leave the picture alone.
"I was five!"
"Seriously, this picture rocks... It's your parents?"
Iruka had sit back. He nodded, but the topic didn't seemed to please him. I didn't rub in, seating the frame back where it was in the first place. But such a picture, it was really so great... I didn't had one. Iruka was massaging his temple with two fingers, frowning.
"What is it, those headaches of yours?"
Iruka put his head on his open hand.
"Nothing more than headaches... I got that since forever really, I remember doing loads of tests to know if there was something wrong wth me or not. Nothing ever came out of it anyway; it's just headaches coming and fading... I got used to."
We chatted a while about stuff and things -it's not only a girls' thing this kind of chat y'know. At some point, he raised from the chair and put a CD into his radio, and we talked about music... Thanks Obito for all the CDs you made me listen to, it was finally useful.
And then we talked about Itachi. There, Iruka raised again.
"Wait, I'm gonna find this again...," he said, searching through pictures books hidden behind stacks of comics. "I've got a picture where we're all on, I think we took it at the party we had thrown to celebrate the end of the school year and our entry into high school... I got it."
He came back with a thick picture album, and sit next to me, opening the album on our thighs. The bottles were since long empty.
A picture was taking a whole page; I recognized Iruka, Kotetsu and Itachi on it, even if the latter seemed nicer and younger here, a large smile on his face. I didn't knew the others. There was a guy with hair falling in front of one of his eyes, another with a bandanna tied on his head and circles under his eyes, and the last one had quite long white hair, obviously dyed.
"We stayed the same group from elementary school to the end of the middle school -then, everybody went his way. Itachi changed a lot during the first year in high school, Hayate's parents divorced... So there. By the way, Hayate is coming back at his father's next week, and he's throwing a party Saturday, you can come, he's living not far from your place."
"Mhm, who's Hayate?"
Iruka pointed the one with the circles under his eyes. He named the others two too.
"That's Izumo, he's the boyfriend of my cousin Emily -you're forced to have crossed them in school, they're the local 'goth leaders'..."
I inclined my head, narrowed my eye and tried to imagine the normal guy on the picture clothed from head to toe in black and wearing eye-liner. Iruka laughed at my attempt.
"Well, yes, maybe..."
"And here, i-it's Mizuki."
Nothing more, and I hadn't missed the hesitation. The topic seemed closed. Iruka closed the album on the picture, and turned his head toward me -while I was turning my head too, and toward him. Our faces were a few centimeters apart; behind us, a punk band whose name I had already forgot was singing 'please someone touch me, dig away my loneliness, please someone please someone'. We stayed stuck like that for a while -or maybe it was only for a second. And then Iruka turned away, raising to put his picture album back in its place. It seemed to me my heart just began remembering how to beat. A blank floated between us, the uncomfortable silence only disturbed by the still playing CD.
Someone knocked at the door and put his head inside –I recognized this someone as the guy who had came to fetch Iruka from school.
“Sorry to interrupt guys, but it’s time to get back to work ‘Ruka.”
He closed back the door behind him. Iruka looked at his watch.
“Seven p.m. already?”
“I suppose it’s your shift… Wasn’t he the guy who came to rescue you from school?” I asked while standing up.
Iruka replied by a ‘mm’.
“It’s my other uncle, Franck, Syd’s baby brother… I’m sorry, but I got to go back to work…”
“No problem, I’m going to go back to my place…”
We were almost out when Iruka asked me “Will you come the Saturday of next week to Hayate’s?”
“Give me the address and I’ll go,” I answered him with a little smile.
He went back in, fished a pen from somewhere on his counter, closed the door and took my hand in his in the corridor. He had warm hands. He wrote the address on the back of my hand.
“There, you don’t need to show up early, most people won’t be there before midnight…”
Once back in the pub, he went behind his counter, we waved and said ‘see you Tuesday’, and I left the ‘Ocean’s shore’ behind me.
Saturday of next week, I was really hoping the nice little meeting between drugs lord and ninja wouldn’t last long.
While walking in the deserted streets, I played again the last hours in my head… especially the ‘face-to-face’ episode.
I had wanted to kiss him.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO End eleventh part OoOoOoOoOoOoO
All Iruka’s family are OC ( even is Syd is very influenced by Cid Highwind, from Final Fantasy VII if there were some who didn’t know), Sung is an OC too, and Izumo, Kotetsu and Mizuki are in the manga.
The punk band forgotten by Kakashi is ‘Thursday’, and the song played was ‘Into the blinding light’ on the album ‘A city by the light divided’.
Thanks to all reviewers, each one of your comm help me.
- where:Savoie
- what:Ghost in the shell Stand Alone Complex OST
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alexiel_neesan- alexiel is close enough from my real name...
Comments
I LOVE the flow of this story. Sure there are little grammar things here and there, but hell! I couldn't write something for a 5 year old ina foreign language so this is freakishly IMPRESSIVE! but the mood of this piece is so striking.
I'm going to snatch it to my harddrive to re-read on my upcoming internetless trip because the characterization and the mood is just so impressive. I want to say the emotion of the piece, but it's not emotion, it's almost the overwhelming apathy at points, but some repressed emotion ... ahhh I dont know and I'm incoherant from packing all day, but how kakashi comes off in this is just amazingly brilliant. I love how you've re-written the cannon characters.
I like to think I kept people in character, but you did it and in sucj a unique setting. It is so hard to keep the characters themselves when they are thrust into a completely differant world, but you have done it in such an amazing way. I wish I spoke french and could read ahead of the translation, but I believe the only thing I know is how to count to 5 and a few other tidbits from growing up watching Canadian seseme street.
I am soo sorry for not having commented for the past few chapters, but I kept forgetting to come back when i was logged in .. so in the future I will just comment from my RP journal instead of worrying about making sure I'm on my writing/normal journal. So anycomments from a kz_Izumo are me :)
*hugs* this is such a good story, and you have such a tallant for storytelling. Thank you so much for translating this for those of us who can really only read english.
Thank you so much. I don't know what else to say.