Shoma Kyosuke
Kyosuke opened his eyes and breathed in deep, pulling in some of the hot, moist air and them letting it out with a relaxed sigh. Relaxing, he sunk down even deeper in the hot spring water, until it covered his whole up to right below his nose. As he breathed he could feel the water getting pushed away from his nostrils. He looked around the hot spring, he was alone. It was very clean and well-ordered. The pool itself vaguely resembling the shape of a kidney. On a shelf nearby was a pile of white, clean and folded towels of varying sizes to grab for whatever needs you had. The whole place was surrounded by a thick green bamboo-fence at least three meters high to keep peepers out (not that there’d be any out there to begin with). The last side was taken up by a house where you could get changed and probably have a shower or something to drink and eat. He wasn’t quite sure as he’d never explored such a place fully before. The sun was shining bright in the sky and the warm rays worked wonders with the warmth of the water. With another deep, relaxed sigh he closed his eyes and tried to forget for a second what day it was.
Suddenly three loud bangs on the door startled the boy and as his reflexes kicked him into battle-mode his hand found a sharp edge on the old and worn tub. The cut wasn’t particularly painful, but enough to break his spell and as his eyes opened he was back in the orphanage’s dark and dank bathroom.
“I said a quick bath, you’re going to be late!” Crowed an old woman’s voice through the door. Kane Miyako, one of the so-called caregivers working at the orphanage. She’d seen the better part of a century, had decided that she didn’t like it and that everything that didn’t go exactly as she’d planned was bad or needed a good beating, probably both. He didn’t reply, and as her dragging steps slowly started making their way away from the door Kyosuke glanced at the old clock on the wall. The ceremony was a bit more than an hour away, he’d need only a few minutes to get dressed and the academy wasn’t far. He could easily stay in the bath for at least half an hour to get a really good soak and still have time to grab something in the kitchen to eat on the way to the ceremony. But now he was annoyed and wouldn’t enjoy the bath anyway, it would probably go cold soon as well.
He gave himself a good scrub with the sponge and washed his hair. He got up, dried off and picked up the mirror beside the tub that he’d used to put himself under the illusion. It was fogged up and he wiped it off with his towel to reveal the same face he’d seen every morning for years. Shoma Kyosuke, orphan, genjutsu artist, medic… Ninja.
In his mind he tasted that last word. Technically he’d been a ninja for quite a while, it all depended on your definition on when you became one. If the talent to mould chakra made you a ninja then it was something you were born to. If actually molding chakra into jutsus was the key factor then most became ninjas as young children. However, no matter what, the graduation from a proper ninja academy, and the evidence of this in the form of a forehead protector carrying the mark of your village, no one could argue with that. And today was the day he’d finally get his. He’d start going on missions, make some money and finally get out of this dump.
He went back toward the dorms to get dressed, only wearing his pyjama bottoms. Running around half-naked was pretty common in the orphanage, especially when going to or from the bath so it didn’t raise any eyebrows. Just how invisible he was didn’t really occur to him until he sidled himself along the wall of the dining hall and one of the girls got up and elbowed him right in the head as he was trying to get past. Sadako. She immediately started to apologise and he gave her a grunt of intermediate displeasure as a reply, hoping to cut the interaction short so he could get away. She started talking about the graduation and by reflex he gave an annoyed sigh which cut her off. He hadn’t really meant it like that, but if it worked, he’d take it. She excused herself, they did the “trying to get past”-dance for a second before they managed it and she ran away in the direction of the girls barracks.
Miyako was in the dorm when he arrived. She’d looted the donation bin and picked out some “nice clothes for you to wear to the ceremony”. Kyosuke picked them up from his bed and eyed them. The shirt wouldn’t have fit him two years ago, and was clearly too small. The pants were alright, but so worn that the black looked almost greyish white. He put on the pants first, the waist fit sort of, but he had to fold the legs so he wouldn’t trip. Then he made a show of trying to put on the shirt, just to show that he could get one arm in, the sleeve would end way before his wrist and if he had one arm in then he could not get the other one on as the arm-hole was somewhere in the middle of his back. Miyako got visibly annoyed at him and started tugging and pulling at the shirt, painfully bending his arm as far as it would go to get it into the hole. He gritted his teeth went into himself as to restrain the violent impulse to take out his frustration on the woman. Lacking in the physical department compared to his class mates he was still more than strong enough to beat her to death. Luckily most of her strength had left her long ago and she wasn’t actually capable of seriously harming him. After a good twenty minutes of anguish, screaming and tears she gave up and told him to “fix it yourself then” before she left, muttering to herself.
Kyosuke pulled the shirt off and dried his tears on it before he crumbled it into a ball and threw it in the donation bin. He sat down on the bed for a few minutes, glad only for the fact that he was alone in the dorm.
“I’m getting out of here.” He told himself, voice breaking. “As soon as I can, I’ll live in a fucking box if that’s what it takes, as long as I’m not in this hellhole…”
He’d thought about running away before. Many times. But he understood enough about the world to know that a sort of, slightly trained, half-shinobi would not fair very well in the world. If he didn’t get killed while he tried to run away, he was bound to run into a real ninja sooner or later who would finish the job.
It took a few minutes for him to calm down enough to get out of his own head. A clock on the wall told him that time was seriously running out. He reached into the donation bin, rummaged around for a bit and drew out a short-sleeved, striped shirt that was meant for a much larger body than his. But he could stuff it into the pants and it would be wearable.
He ran through the orphanage to get to the door. No time to comb his hair, no detour through the kitchen to get a bite of breakfast. Shoes on. Door.
As he went through the gate he heard a swoosh above and saw the blurry figure of Sadako speed past him, going the rooftop path to the academy. Kyosuke would do the same, but wasn’t too fond of the thought of crossing the broader streets that way. Falling did hurt, and any other day he’d kind of take it and move on, but he’d rather not turn up at the graduation looking like a pig that had rolled in the mud. Normal foot-walking would do, he did have enough time after all.
The ceremony felt like it went on for hours. It had been bad enough during rehearsal, but doing it all again, this time knowing full well exactly what to expect and when was definitely worse. He grabbed his forehead protector and shared a quick look with the kage’s assistant. He was pretty well-known to Kyosuke as he was an expert genjutsu artist and had held a lecture for the special class once, and visited a few times. He put it on at the same time as everyone else and filled the space with a collective “schwii” as scores of headbands were tightened all at once. It was a strange custom to hand out a piece of armour like this, but he knew the story well. One of the strongest and ironically most common attacks with a sword was the straight downward slash, often one of the first attacks tried by regular swordfighters. In the old days before the truce between ninjas and the samurai some unknown genius developed a dashing attack, head first, straight into the attack. The enemy’s sword would clash with the forehead protector and gave the ninja free access to all those lovely vital organs.
After what seemed like an eternity the newly graduated genin were given a week to relax before missions would start. Kyosuke hated the sound of that sentence. The faster he could start earning money, the better. He looked around and saw relieved faces, some of whom belonged to students from his own special classes. Some of them were decidedly not ready for their future. He understood that the academy had been a cake walk and that he was expected to work with a team from now on. He only wished he wouldn’t have to do all the work in his future team, they better pull their weight.
The ceremony ended, smiling faces all around. They had obviously not grown up at the orphanage. There was no way Kyosuke was heading “home” before dark. He turned to leave, but something grabbed his arm. His instincts kicked in immediately and he fruitlessly tugged at his arm to get loose. Whoever it was was stronger than he.
Hikari, one of the girls from his normal classes had somehow managed to catch both him and Sadako at the same time, talking about some party she’d planned. He then remembered that she’d come by the orphanage not long ago and brought an envelope each for him and Sadako. An invitation. For a brief moment he felt a bit guilty for not having opened and read it, but then remembered that it wouldn’t have changed anything. He had his plans for the day all figured out weeks ago.
Sadako started making excuses for not being able to go to the party and Kyosuke shot her a sharp look, trying to figure out if she was just making excuses or if she actually meant it.
“It’s graduation day.” He said, not bothering with saying hello, smiling or being polite in any way. It was a statement with layers. Hikari probably wouldn’t understand.
For most students on the ninja academy it would mean one of the happiest days of their life. The day they were accepted into the loving arms of their future life and the day they were asked to stand beside the legendary giants of the ninja professionals. Not as equals, they were just genin, but as comrades in arms.
For the orphans, or perhaps only for Kyosuke he came to realise, it was a horrible day.
He’d been living at the orphanage for almost as long as he could remember. Every year had a graduation day, when the older children dressed their best, left in the morning and came back around lunchtime with a headband to a nasty surprise.
Graduation day was the busiest day of the year for the orphanage. There was usually a line of prospective adoptive parents waiting by the time the newly graduated orphans came back. Many times the children weren’t even allowed to have something to drink or a bath before being rushed into the meeting room for an endless series of interviews with hopeful future parents.
Kyosuke shrugged at the thought. These people were not driven by the sudden realisation that their household lacked the pitter-patter of tiny little trained assassin-feet. Their households lacked a reliable income. Genin typically didn’t make much, only enough to rent a tiny flat and keep themselves fed and clothed if they didn’t go overboard. However, for many of the poor people in Ame, having a genin in the house could double their earnings.
For some it was the life they’d hoped for, but for Kyosuke it was too little, too late. No one had wanted him for years, there was no chance in hell he’d give his dire earnings away now that he was so close to finally getting them. If he didn’t come home, they couldn’t auction him off to the highest bidder as no one in Ame, not even the poor and desperate, would take even a genin at sight unseen.
“I won’t be there” Kyosuke said to Hikari, and in a moment of weakness as a group of former students almost collided with the trio, he managed to twist his arm free from the young kunoichi’s grip and gain some distance. He didn’t stick around. His work here was done. If Sadako had needed to be reminded of what probably awaited her then he’d done his good deed for the day. After gaining a few steps of distance from the two he leapt high into the air and landed with chakra-enhanced grip on top of the wall that surrounded the academy. He turned and took one last look at the academy, it’s busy courtyard and empty classroom windows, before he turned away and made another high jump, aiming for the roof of a nearby building. He should’ve felt something, sorrow, remorse, even relief. The characters in his books were always so emotional when they were leaving something and heading toward the sunset. Kyosuke just felt… Done. He discarded the academy and what had happened there much like he’d discarded the shirt that didn’t fit him earlier that morning. He didn’t have any friends there to tearfully say goodbye to, “We’ll stay in touch”, “We’ll still see each other on weekends”. What a joke.
He made his way across the village carefully. From rooftop to rooftop. The rain made everything slippery, so he didn’t have the luxury of just leaping from tree to tree like he’d heard ninjas from other villages could. Without a firm layer of gripping chakra spread evenly over the soles of his feet he’d get to meet the pavement on the street four stories down sooner than he’d expected.
He didn’t move faster than he had to. He wasn’t in any kind of rush. If someone wanted to tail him or even catch up to him, most of the other new genin would be able to do so without much trouble as he headed toward the village library.
