Chapter Text
Kaya’s feet hurt. There were other things wrong, but they were less related to walking so they mattered less than her shitty straw sandals not doing enough even on a paved road.
Buildings stacked high and uneven like unwashed dishes on both sides of the road. She knew fuck all about big places—the word “village” for this was utter bullshit and she knew that much at least—but this seemed to be the poorer half. Maybe that's why the shinobi at the gate hadn’t tried shit when she'd come in. Not that she'd know; someone had to shake her awake when the trading cart stopped to set up and…here she was.
(Thank god no one had kicked her in the gut yet. Every day for a month of traveling, and still no one had done it. Then again, that would’ve been one way to go. Painful, but it would’ve done the job, probably. Hopefully.
But Kaya was never that lucky.)
The only reason she found the healer's building was because someone in a crutch hobbled in first. The doors were glass, holy shit. Why the fuck were they using that much glass and why did it look smooth and clear and not fogged up like stale piss?
…The folks in there looked clean. Kaya hadn't washed in ages. She probably smelled like sweat and shit.
Fuck it. She had nowhere else to go. In she went.
The doors opened without so much as a creak. The lights inside shined weird as shit, all sharp and unnatural. They made her straw sandals look like they'd fit better on a barn animal. Ah, shit, right—she had to watch how she spoke. Civilized people didn't talk like she did. Like they spat mud when they opened their mouths. Fuck, she needed to remember—shit, dammit. Okay. Fine. Just do it. Just say it quick and shut up.
Kaya told the woman at the front desk what she was there for. The woman did not call her a dirty whore and throw her out onto the street. A bloody miracle. Instead she smiled and gave her a stack of paper— holy shit that's so much paper. Three sheets! What the fuck!
Kaya was too busy gawping at them to say that though, thankfully. The woman said some things that she also missed. Then she told her last room on the right so that's where Kaya went.
The building was bigger than any she’d been in. In most places, a healer either went visiting or did healing out of their own house. Meanwhile, the end of the hall had a stairwell that led up to at least one more floor, if not more. This place looked big enough to shack up a dozen families and still have room. Not that a sane person would want to live there, with the lighting and the smells and the strange looking tools in the room she went to.
The door opened and a shinobi walked in— what the fuck. Why were they everywhere?! It was a shinobi village but shouldn’t there be civilian streets too? Or what, did they go and give every street its own shinobi?
No one wanted to deal with shinobi. Violent bastards, always making trouble and wrecking shit. The entire point of the villages was to get them away from common folk just minding themselves. And here Kaya had the great idea to stroll right into one of those villages and come face to face with one such bastard, fuck her tiny, mortal life.
The unnatural woman smiled like Kaya didn’t want to kill herself out of self-preservation. “This clinic is funded by a council member. There will be no extra charges if I or the other iryo nin here treat you, so don’t worry.”
Council? What council? What was she talking about? Did “clinic” mean the healer’s building? And what did she mean medic nin? Ninja ain’t medics!
“…’m sorry, but I don’t…” don’t cuss, don’t cuss, don’t cuss, “…uh, I don’t understand what…?”
“Oh right, they’d said at the front, hadn’t they? You have no funds yet? That’s fine, that’s fine, we’ll handle it later. Let’s take a look at you first.”
The woman’s hands moved. Kaya twitched. Except…nothing happened. No glowy hands. No fire or weapons or pain. Just her waving her hands about and staring real hard at Kaya. Oh shit, what if this wasn’t a shinobi at all and just some crazy person? She wasn’t being stabbed with one of the pointy things on the desk but that could change. What was she supposed to do now? How could she get out of this? Where was the window—?
The woman suddenly smiled real big. "It's very strong. Everything seems to be progressing nicely...I see no issues. I want to examine you again—shall I set up an appointment for next week?"
Kaya gawped at her. The woman kept smiling.
“…I don’t have money.”
“You don’t have money yet. I have a solution for that. Here, let me see those papers.”
The papers were useless to Kaya, but the shinobi woman got out a small stick, asked Kaya if she could sign her name (no she couldn’t), put away the stick and got out an ink pad, and then made Kaya press her thumbprint onto one of the pages plus half a dozen more. She—the woman’s name was Arakawa, and people called her Arakawa-sensei—walked them back to the front desk and next thing Kaya knew she had a job at the clinic, a fistful of cash, and a scrap of paper that she was supposed to give to the first…inn? Apartment? That she could find.
…Was Kaya actually still asleep? Was this some strange dream she was having?
This was not supposed to happen to her. Things like this did not just happen to people like her. She hadn’t had much of a plan to begin with but it’d never included this.
What was going on in this place that she could just get a job?
The warm air became thicker. The buildings teetered inwards, moving closer like they planned to fall on her head. Kaya couldn’t stay here. She had to—she needed to go.
A door across the street slid open. It stayed open long enough for Kaya to dart in and be met with tables and chairs and then off to the side these long benches that were just right for sliding into and hiding in a corner of.
Kaya gripped her head in her hands, knuckles pressed into the cold, smooth wooden table top. Her heart rabbited in her chest, which was horseshit because there was nothing hurting her. She was already fifteen, for fuck's sake. Women got married at her age. She shouldn’t be acting like this. If she could just calm down for once…
“Are you alright, okyaku-san?”
Kaya jerked sideways. Her eyes went up, then up some more, until it finally reached the head of the biggest man she’d ever seen up close.
There were only two reasons she knew for people being fat. One was if they were so rich they could eat as much as they wanted. The other was if it wasn’t fat that covered them but muscles so big they could fit an ox and strong enough to match. The man’s clothes weren’t fancy enough to be rich people clothes, which made him the second one.
…He’d called her a guest. Was that what she was?
She didn’t know what to tell him, was what. Her throat was too dry to make words.
“Would you like to eat?”
Did she want to? Yes she did. But she didn’t have—oh shit, the money. Kaya grabbed it from where it’d fallen on the table. She stared at it, stared at the man, stared back at the money. “…Yes.”
“What would you like?”
“…I don’t know…” She didn’t even know where the hell she was.
“…You don’t know what you want to eat, or…?”
Kaya shrugged. What could she say? ‘I’ve lived out in the sticks my entire life and I’ve never eaten rice’? Or ‘I spent this month sleeping outside and taking what I could get’?
The only thing she could really say was, “‘m sorry.” And then, “I have this much money. If—if you want some.”
The man waved away the money she held out. “It’s fine, there’s no need for that. Hm…say, what if I brought you something? Would that be fine?” Kaya nodded. “Good. Any preferences? You’re not allergic to anything?” Kaya didn’t know what that meant. She shook her head no. “Alright. I’ll be right back.”
He walked away, going around the big desk thing on the other side of the room and through a door behind it. Most of the other tables looked empty. She couldn’t say for sure from where she sat, though; the seats were tall and her view was short. Her corner made it so that she couldn’t even see the front door. But it meant no one else coming in would see her either. Thank fuck.
The man returned with a bowl. The moment it slid before her Kaya’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. Steam floated in her face from the pile of noodles. Bright, fresh vegetables lay on top, as well as an egg cut in half. A whole egg! The yolk looked so yellow, and the vegetables looked so green, and they were so bright and—and deep that they didn’t look real. That wasn’t the right word, but they sure made it very hard for Kaya to stop looking and eat.
Or it would have, but the steam smelled so good that the next time she blinked half the noodles were gone. The man leaned on the table smiling at her. Kaya slowly chewed and swallowed her mouthful. “‘m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. It’s a compliment. By the way, are you from around here? I haven’t heard your dialect before.”
“No. I just got here today. To the village, I mean.”
The man whistled low. “Wow. That’s amazing. Well, if you need help you just let me know. And you can keep eating, don’t worry.”
Kaya’s mouth wrinkled, but she ate some more anyway. How did he expect to help her? There was nothing she could think to ask him for, except, “…Um, you know what this is called? So I can eat it again.”
“It’s ramen. You haven’t had it before?” Kaya ducked her head. “Really? Never been to a ramen stand? Izakaya? Restaurant?” Kaya sank lower in her seat.
“…Huh. Then I guess I should feel honored that you came here first.” The man sat down in the seat opposite hers. “My name is Akimichi Daisuke and I work here. What about you?”
“…Tsu–Tsukauchi Kaya. My name is Tsukauchi Kaya.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Tsukauchi-san.”
He talked some more at her. The place they were in was called a restaurant, and he didn’t just work there but he’s the one who owned it. He’d only just turned twenty and finished his apprenticeship a few months back. Kaya told him she’d also gotten a job, and it turned out he also spent the afternoons helping at the exact same clinic she’d visited. So not only would they see each other again, but he’d be her senpai.
Kaya couldn’t finish her ramen. She tried. She ate so much she wanted to puke, but she still couldn’t do it. It was so fucking unfair that she’d just had the best meal of her entire life and she couldn’t even eat all of it.
And what would Akimichi-san think of her then, wasting food like that? He's the one who’d have to throw it away when she left. If it were her she'd hate herself too. Kaya glared at the bowl, tears starting to crowd her eyes.
“—though I'm sure they'll tell you more about that when you go in tomorrow—oh, are you done? Do you want me to pack that for you?”
Kaya blinked at his hand suddenly lifting the bowl away. She had no choice but to get up and follow him to the big desk. Most of the tables stood empty. So that's why he'd had time to sit and yammer with her. But why would a restaurant be so empty in the middle of the day? Was it because it was new? Or for something else?
Kaya had questions, but she kept her mouth shut. She dumped the money on the front desk thing for him to sort out, then she grabbed the money left over (most of it) and the bag and walked away.
Too many buildings stood on the street with no way to know what they were for. In most places, the only thing to do would be to go in and ask. The idea made Kaya’s teeth clench. No. Fuck no. Fuck that. No one who looked and smelled like shit got to do that. Not unless they wanted to get chased off.
The only reason Kaya marched into the last building on the left was because it was the only one that didn't have a sign or big glass windows full of strange shit. The woman smoking at the front desk didn't look up until Kaya put the money and the scrap of paper in front of her. Then when she'd taken all of the money, her eyes went real big on the paper for some reason and she threw a key and half the money at Kaya and told her to scram.
The key had a weird, flat chunk of a thing attached to it that had some symbols carved on. Kaya would've asked, except the front desk woman had just run out the doors like there was a fire. What the fuck was that about?
Kaya did not go to every floor and stick the key in every door. She stood at the front desk and stared at the big poster behind it until the writing swam in her eyes. Then her eyes drifted up to the sign next to it that had one of the symbols on it. But the first one was different. Kaya walked up the stairs that started off to the side of it. On the next floor was another sign nailed up, only this one had a different symbol in front of the one that matched her key.
Kaya walked up two more floors before the sign almost completely matched. The first door she slid the key into opened up to her new home.
The place was big. It was dark. The hallway led to two different rooms, each mostly empty but with a few things here and there.
Kaya walked into the big room in front of her, the one with a window that had that same kind of smooth, clear glass. The floor had dust on it. The wall had stains on it. It was the nicest room she'd ever stood in.
…What the hell was she supposed to do now?
Kaya was fifteen and alone, with no idea what to expect in her future.
Kaya was fifteen and alone, and pregnant.