Chương 23: Dream

Monday morning. Kiba showed up at Shin's door the same way he did every week—Akamaru tucked under one arm, voice already going before he'd made it up the path.

"Shin!" Shin was always up by the time Kiba arrived. That was just how it was. Kiba had figured this out after showing up early one morning and finding Shin already sitting on the wooden veranda, perfectly still, staring at nothing—or at something only he could see. After that, Kiba stopped assuming he slept in.

"We're gonna be late! Shin!" No answer. He waited, scratching Akamaru's ear. The door didn't move.

"... Shin?" He stepped up and knocked. A real knock—knuckles against wood. Nothing. He knocked harder.

"Shin. Hey. Shin!" He kept going until it stopped being knocking and started being something else.

"I'm kicking it open!" A beat.

"I mean it!" He did mean it. He swung his leg—"OW—" Kiba hopped back, grabbing his foot, teeth clenched against a wave of pain that shot straight up his shin. Akamaru woke up properly at that, crawled onto his head, and settled there with what felt like judgment.

"Rrwf."

"Shut up," Kiba hissed. He stood there for a moment, just breathing, staring at the door. The pain faded. The door stayed closed. Shin would've heard all of that. Shin had ears like an owl. And he still hadn't answered once. He wouldn't have left without me. Something uncomfortable moved through Kiba's chest. He never leaves without me.

"... Whatever," he muttered. He turned away. His foot came down hard on the path.

"Not waiting for you!" He raised his voice one last time at the shut door.

"I'm going!" Silence. He went. Shino was at the corner, as usual—standing perfectly still in his long coat and goggles, looking like he'd been there since before dawn.

"Morning," Kiba said.

"Good morning, Kiba." Shino glanced past him.

"Where's Shin?"

"Dunno." Kiba crossed his arms. His voice came out sharper than he meant it to.

"What does that mean?"

"He didn't come to the door." A pause.

"Probably left early." Shino was quiet for a moment.

"He's never done that before."

"Yeah, well." Kiba started walking.

"People change." It didn't even convince him. Shino fell into step beside him.

"Are you sure he left?" Kiba thought about the silence behind that door. The complete, unbroken kind—not the ordinary quiet of Shin's mornings, but something different. The kind of silence where nothing moved at all.

"We'll be late," he said.

"Let's go."

"... Alright." Shin's seat was empty. Kiba stared at it for a full thirty seconds before the classroom noise washed back in—people calling out greetings, scraping chairs, someone laughing too loudly in the back row.

"Hey, Kiba, you barely made it—""Did Shin come in early?"

"What happened to him?" Shino came to stand beside him.

"Shin didn't come," he said, quietly, more to Kiba than to anyone else. Shin. Didn't. Come. The bad feeling Kiba had been carrying since the door got about three sizes heavier.

"Kiba." He blinked. Naruto was standing directly in front of him, looking unusually serious for someone who'd been thrown out of class the day before. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Kiba. Where's Shin? Why isn't he here?" Shin— The door. The silence.

"I—" Kiba opened his mouth. Nothing useful came out. The bell rang. Everyone drifted back to their seats. Iruka came through the door, glanced around the room, did the quiet counting thing that teachers did when the numbers came up wrong. His gaze settled on the two of them still standing in the aisle. Then it moved to the empty desk.

"Where's Shin?" he asked. Kiba was already moving. He didn't run—he bolted, straight past Iruka, out the door, and gone.

"Hey! Inuzuka! Get back here—you do not walk out of my class—!" Behind him, Shino's unhurried voice:"My apologies, Iruka-sensei. Shin may be unwell. We want to check on him. Please excuse us." Then Shino's footsteps, calm and steady, following after.

"Shino—!" Kiba was already on the rooftops. He covered the distance in minutes, chakra burning light and fast, Akamaru flat against his collar and fully awake now. He dropped into Shin's yard without touching the gate and hit the front door at speed.

"Shin!" The house was quiet. He found him in the bedroom. Shin lay on his back in the futon, eyes closed, entirely still. His face was white—not his usual pale, but something else, something that had no blood in it at all. His hair was plastered to his forehead. His pillow was soaked through. His collar was soaked through. Kiba stood in the doorway. He'd seen sick people before. He'd been badly sick himself once, when he was six, and Hana had barely slept for three days. This didn't look like sick.

This looked like something else.

"Hey." His voice came out quieter than he meant it to.

"Shin." No response.

"Shin." Nothing. Not even a twitch." Shin."

"Kiba." Shino appeared in the doorway behind him, looked once, and went still.

"He won't wake up," Kiba said.

"... No," Shino said, after a moment. Kiba's hands did something at his sides that he didn't pay attention to.

"So what do we—""We need an adult." Shino's voice was even and steady, and Kiba latched onto that like a handhold.

"Go get your mother and your sister. I'll stay with him."

"Right." Kiba shook himself.

"Yeah—Akamaru, stay."

"Arf?" Akamaru protested." Stay," Kiba said. And he was gone....... Akamaru padded across the room, climbed up onto the futon, nosed Shin's cheek once, then curled up beside him and waited. Shino stood by the bed and looked at Shin's colorless face and his wet collar and the way his brow was drawn together even now, like something was pulling at him from the inside. He reached out and brushed the damp hair off Shin's forehead.

Then he used his sleeve to wipe the sweat away—carefully, without thinking too hard about why carefully felt like the right way to do it.

"Shin?" he said, softly.

"... Yuko." Shino went still. He hadn't expected that. He hadn't expected anything. He leaned in slightly. Shin's lips had stopped moving again. No more sound. A girl's name. Or it sounded like one. Shino filed it away in silence. The sweat was already returning. He wiped it again. Whatever this is, he thought, it's not ordinary sickness....... The room blurred—one moment quiet, the next Hana was there, crossing to the bed in three strides. She looked at Shin. Her expression shifted.

"This much sweat—?" she said, mostly to herself. She pressed her palm to his forehead. No fever. No heat at all. Her brow creased.

"Shin." She leaned close, voice low and careful.

"Can you hear me?" Nothing.

"Shin. Wake up." Nothing." Shin." A sharper edge now, the gentleness still there underneath.

"Open your eyes." Silence. She straightened. Her palms lit green—chakra settling around his shoulders, reaching. She held it there for a moment, probing. Then she let it go.

"Hospital," she said.

"Now." She got her arms under him and lifted him onto her back in one motion. Shino stepped in to help support the weight. Shin's body pressed warm against her, and she glanced down at the futon—the fabric was saturated, dark and heavy with it. She made herself breathe through the tightening in her chest. Mom's not here. We're going to be fine.

"Shino," she said.

"Go get your father. Meet us there."

"Understood." She moved. By the time Shibi Aburame reached the hospital, Shin was already in a room—IV line running, color a shade or two better than the ghost-white Kiba had found him in. Hana sat beside the bed. She stood when Shibi came through the door.

"Shibi-san." He stopped at the bedside. Looked at Shin for a moment.

"What do we know?" Hana's voice stayed steady. She'd had time to compose it.

"Severe dehydration. The doctors are working on replenishing fluids, but he keeps sweating. They can't stop it." A pause.

"And—it's not ordinary sickness. His chakra is disrupted. That's why he won't wake up. It has all the signs of genjutsu."

"We tried to dispel it," she continued.

"I tried. The doctors tried. Nothing worked." She looked down at Shin's face—still furrowed, still caught somewhere she couldn't reach.

"The genjutsu..." She stopped.

"It can't be broken," she finished. The air in the room went very still. The meadow stretched out in every direction, green and unhurried, scattered with wildflowers that Shin didn't know the names of—small ones, stubborn ones, heads turned toward a sun that sat warm and indifferent overhead. Bees worked their way through the blossoms. Butterflies drifted past. Yuko was already there. She sat with her legs folded to one side, her dark blue yukata scattered with a small print of pale blossoms, hair loose.

She wasn't looking at anything in particular. She heard him when he came—not footsteps, just the way the light shifted and the butterflies lifted off the flower nearest to her and didn't return.

"You're back," she said, without turning around.

"Yeah." Shin came around to sit beside her.

"No footsteps, though. How'd you know it was me?" Yuko pointed at the flower. The butterfly was gone.

"They always fly away when you get close," she said.

"Very reliably."

"I get it. Butterflies don't like me." He made a face.

"I've accepted it."

"It's very consistent of them." She turned to look at him.

"You won again?"

"Obviously." A small, satisfied curl at the corner of his mouth.

"The Sōken-ryū menkyo kaiden wasn't anything special. I expected more."

"That's three this month." She tilted her head.

"They're calling you something, in the towns."

"I heard." Shin Tachikawa, the menkyo-kaiden slayer. He didn't sound bothered.

"Schools like that have inflated their own reputations until they don't know what a real master looks like anymore. They're bringing the title down."

"A very generous reading."

"The Ittō-ryū, the Shinkage-ryū, the Mujushin-ryū." He ticked them off, staring at the sky.

"Those are the ones that matter. The rest don't count." A beat.

"The Morisaki-ryū came after me because of what I did to Ogata. After that, the real schools put up signs. Shin Tachikawa and associates not permitted entry."

"I know." Yuko's voice was dry.

"I was there."

"Ogata's katana was poorly balanced anyway."

"He's a famous swordsman, Shin."

"He was." Shin spread his hands.

"Now he's a famous swordsman whose blade I broke." Yuko pressed her fingers to her forehead.

"General Fujino's been writing again," she said, after a moment. Shin's expression changed, slightly.

"I know."

"He needs you back. Whatever comes next—he needs you there."

"I know," he said again. Different inflection this time. He fell back onto the grass and spread his arms wide—big and boneless and done with the conversation—and stared up at a sky that was the exact color of nothing bad. The grass was soft. The flowers swayed. A bee moved past his ear, uninterested. What a headache, he thought. What an absolute pain.

"Shin." She'd shifted. Her face appeared above his, her hair falling forward, loose ends trailing against his chest. She was close enough that he could see her expression clearly—not quite worried, not quite amused. Something in between. He raised one hand and pressed it to her cheek. She didn't move.

"I'll go back," he said.

"I know what I owe him. When it's time, I'll go." He met her eyes.

"And I'll cut through whatever's in the way." The meadow swayed around them, patient and slow.

"There's nothing in this world," Shin said, quiet and certain, "that I can't cut."